Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy

by Bec McMaster

  Good God, if she'd known what Malloryn intended when she set out to deliver his invitations, she'd have balked. Last night as she lay in the dark in her bed staring at the ceiling, she'd finally accepted the fact that she would have to work with Byrnes in the company. She'd even told herself to buck up, because with half a dozen spies in the group, what were the chances that she'd have to spend much time with him?

  She hadn't expected Malloryn to partner them together.

  "Are you there, Jack?" she called, gathering her skirts as she thudded down the stairs. Jack was her lodestone, her emotional compass, and right now she was far too vexed to think straight. The typical verwulfen curse. Her kind were driven by their emotions and thrived in a state of fury, or even passion. It drove them, gave them their strength—but it could also prove crippling if one wasn't able to control it. Right now, she wanted to punch her fist through the wall, but that would only tear the skin on her knuckles and smash a brick or two into powder.

  You are not ruled by the beast. You control it, not the other way around.

  If she repeated it to herself enough, she might even start to believe it.

  Boxes and crates crowded the benches, and Jack muttered under his breath as he limped through the darkness. "Down the end here! Give us a lift, will you?"

  Ingrid grabbed the box he'd indicated and carried it toward him.

  Jack turned, his breathing mask hanging loose under his chin. Evidently the air down here didn't affect his lungs too much, which was a good sign. It scared her when he suffered one of his attacks, and they'd been coming far too frequently for her liking of late.

  He took one look at her eyes and started. "What is it? What's set you off?"

  Her eyes were hot, and she knew that the amber irises were flaring a dramatic bronze with her mood. There was no point even trying to hide it, and Ingrid trusted Jack. Ingrid dumped the crate on the bench, growling under her breath. "Malloryn's given me a new partner."

  "Oh?" Jack crossed his arms over his flamboyant waistcoat, though he moved slowly. Once, a long time ago, the man who'd put Ingrid in a cage had poured acid all over Jack's skin. Ingrid hadn't expected him to survive, not with all of those runnels and scarred pits in his flesh, but he had. Jack was a survivor, just like her. But the damage made him stiff, and ginger to the touch. "Anyone I know?"

  "Caleb Byrnes."

  Watching her in a sidelong fashion, Jack slid the crate lid open. "Not a name I'm familiar with."

  Ingrid hadn't told him. She hadn't told anyone about what had happened a year ago, though Jack’s sister Rosa had somehow found out about it. Most likely through her husband, Lynch, who used to be the guild master of the Nighthawks. "He's a Nighthawk."

  "One of the new recruits, eh? You don't care for him?" Jack hefted a microscope, wincing under the strain.

  Ingrid stepped forward quickly and lifted it easily out of its nest of straw.

  "Thanks," Jack told her, red spots heating his cheeks. "So why does the Nighthawk bother you?"

  Ingrid slid onto the bench and let her feet dangle. "I've met him before. We worked together last year during the Vampire of Drury Lane case."

  "Ah."

  "Ah?"

  "I remember that case," he replied, wiping his hands on his pants. "You weren't at all yourself for nearly two weeks. I wondered what had set you off. Or more importantly, who."

  "It's not the who, so much as the how. He makes me... so angry." Which wasn't quite the truth.

  "Angry, or uncertain?"

  Ingrid shot him a dark look. "Curse you. Both. I don't know what he makes me feel." Too small for her own skin, irritable, competitive... nervous.

  "What does he look like?" Jack moved to pour her a brandy, which was her poison of choice.

  "He's a little taller than I and ridiculously muscled." Or at least if her memory could be believed. "Lean, dangerous-looking, the type of blue eyes that can pin you on the spot and make you feel naked."

  "Handsome?"

  Incredibly so. "If one is interested in dark-haired men, then yes."

  "Here's to handsome dark-haired men, then." Jack smiled, as he clinked his glass against hers.

  Ingrid threw the brandy back. "There was... a bit of a moment between us last year."

  "I'd guessed that. Do tell."

  "We made a bet," she said, then filled him in on the details, including the fact that she'd left Byrnes tied to his bed. Naked.

  Jack's eyebrows were both halfway to his hairline. "Good God. What were you thinking?" A laugh escaped him, then another. "Or were you?"

  "It's not bloody funny," she said, which of course set him off laughing again. "I was quite prepared to enjoy what I'd started until he opened that fat mouth of his and said something along the lines of 'I knew I'd get you on your knees eventually,' and then of course I reacted badly." She groaned. "It was not my finest hour, but he... I... God, stop it, will you!"

  Jack leaned against the bench, wiping his eyes. One last wheeze of laughter escaped him, then he tried to sober. "So what are you going to do?"

  "I have to work with him, clearly," she said. "Whilst keeping him at arm's length. And that's if I don't kill him first. He's already headed off to follow his own leads."

  “How vexing. Are you going to let him get away with it?”

  "Absolutely not." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I am not going to let that man get under my skin ever again. I swear."

  "You could just go to bed with him and burn this curiosity out of your blood, you know.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous. And there is no ‘curiosity.’” But her cheeks heated.

  “Liar,” Jack replied.

  Ingrid lifted her head as noise rasped above them. "And that sounds like a saw. Ava must be starting the autopsy. I wanted to be there to see it."

  "Just in case you learn some interesting little tidbit that might give you the head start on Byrnes?" Jack's smile was pure innocence.

  "It's tempting, I agree. Then I remember there's a dead woman upstairs who will never get to return home to her family, and it reminds me that there are more important things to life than rivalry." Ingrid sighed as a woman's half-remembered face sprang to mind, a face that looked like hers. Sometimes she wondered if she were only imagining those bronze eyes and dark hair, or whether it truly was a memory. "What if this poor girl has children at home, Jack? Or a husband waiting for her?"

  "You're thinking of your parents. You'll find them one day, Ingrid."

  She merely shrugged. The telegram burned a hole in her pocket. Hope couldn't burn bright forever, but if she couldn't find her own parents, then at least she could bring the dead girl home to hers. "I have to find the people who did this so I can help lay that poor woman to rest. And if that means working with Byrnes, then I can lay aside my pride for the moment."

  "Just be careful. If that woman was torn apart by some sort of animal, then you might be dealing with more than you can handle. You're not invincible, Ingrid, though you might be damned hard to kill."

  Ingrid paused to brush a kiss across his cheek. "I love you too. But you can be an old fusspot at times."

  * * *

  BACK AT THE GUILD, Byrnes finally collapsed into his sheets after a long fruitless search through the archives. The only comparison between the cases was the use of Doeppler orbs to dispel the gas, and the fact that people had died. Once again, if the killer had been a blue blood in a blood frenzy, then they wouldn't have stopped. There would have been more bodies, more blood.

  Not a trail that vanished.

  His lead had shriveled into nothing.

  So what else did they have? What did the Begby Square disappearances have in common with the Venetian Gardens, besides the missing people?

  No signs of a struggle. That wasn't much use, and Ava was working on that. An unidentified body, ravaged by... something. No lead there. Not yet. His mind threw up an image of the flag that had been painted in blood.

  There'd been a black flag painted on the wa
lls near Begby Square. The same letter there too, a “0.”

  He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen that black flag symbol before. The more he worried at it, like a dog with a bone, the more convinced he became.

  But where, damn it?

  He was just falling off to sleep when he finally realized where he'd seen it.

  Byrnes's eyes shot open. "Debney."

  FIVE

  IT WAS THE early hours of the following morning before the door to Debney's bedroom opened and the young viscount staggered in, kicking the door shut with one boot even as he tried to remove his striped coat. And failed. Debney staggered, looking down as though somewhat perplexed by the way his elbow simply wouldn't bend out of the way.

  Bloody hell. He was soused.

  "A good night by the look of it, Debney," Byrnes said, stretching in the chair he'd been napping in. Every Nighthawk knew how to snatch a few winks of sleep here and there when they were on a case.

  Debney nearly jumped out of his pale skin, tripping over a pair of boots that had been left on the floor and knocking a tray of cologne off the top of his vanity. It bounced, luckily. "Blood and ashes, Caleb! Give a man a fit next time.... What are you doing skulking about in my bedchamber?" Sneering slightly, he used the tip of his boot to lift the baseboard quilt around the hem of his bed. "No murderers tucked under 'ere, eh?"

  "By the look of it, nothing but cobwebs and dust." Byrnes took a sniff. "Were you swimming in a vat of brandy?"

  Clearly the viscount had been participating in a rather dedicated spree of dissipation if he was coming home this late after the sun had risen, but Byrnes had smelled gin hovels in Whitechapel whose scent was less inclined to knock him off his feet.

  Debney sprawled back on the bed, lifting his heel. "'Ere. Help me get these off."

  Byrnes stood and took a slow circuit of the room, trying to breathe through his mouth. "I'm not your valet, Francis. Get them off yourself." Picking up one of the sprawled bottles of cologne, he ignored the young viscount and took an experimental sniff, then recoiled. How anybody could wear so many chemicals astounded him. You wouldn't be able to smell anything else.

  Slight improvement on Debney though.

  Debney grunted, and then a boot hit the floor. With a sigh, he collapsed back on the bed. "So what do you want?"

  Taking the jug of water on the washstand, Byrnes poured a glass, then crossed to the bed, considering the state of the viscount. "I need to ask you some questions about something, and I can't explain why."

  Debney sighed, his eyelids fluttering closed. Byrnes threw the glass of water in his face.

  "Jesus!" Debney came up, wide-eyed and wet. "You sodding bastard!" He looked down at himself, hands held wide. "What was that for?"

  "To wake you up." Byrnes put the glass aside, then dragged his chair around and resettled in it. Tugging a piece of paper from his pocket, he held up the photograph of the Begby Square black flag. "Have you seen this symbol before?"

  He'd thought that nothing would sober Debney up at this rate, but the second the viscount saw the picture, his face paled even further and his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. "Put that away. I'm going to cast up my accounts."

  Byrnes complied, watching as his half brother stumbled to the basin and retched. Hell. He rubbed at his temples. "I know I saw an invitation with that symbol embossed upon it on your desk a few months ago."

  Debney spat and rinsed then turned, giving him a frightened look. "I don't know what you're working on. I don't care. But if you go digging into that symbol, then you won't find whatever puzzle piece you're looking for. You'll simply die, Caleb."

  Well, now. Byrnes took his chair again, resting his elbows on his knees. "You know who's behind it."

  Debney shook his head. "Don't. I beg of you. If they find out I told you about it—"

  "How are they going to find out? Nobody knows of the connection between us." A connection he'd be quite pleased to keep quiet forever.

  "They'll find out. They always do," Debney protested.

  "Who are they?"

  "Caleb—"

  "If you think I'm going to leave this alone, then you don't know me very well," Byrnes replied. "I can make your life hell, Francis. Besides..." His eyes narrowed to thin slits. "You owe me."

  "I always bloody owe you," Debney snapped, pacing the room. "When will it end? You cannot keep calling in this debt! Do you think that if I could go back and change things, then I wouldn't? I would. I swear, I would. I'd have sent word to the Council that his craving virus levels were high. Or I'd have... stood up to him—"

  "If you could go back, you'd cower behind your mother's skirts the same way you did then." An abrupt slice of the hand cut the young lord off in his tracks. "Let's not pretend any different."

  "He always—"

  "We're not talking about your father," Byrnes countered, and the crack of his voice startled Debney into silence. "Not now. Not ever."

  Sullen and starting to shake now, Debney stared at him belligerently. "Unless you want something," he said, "and use him to browbeat me into complying. And he's your father too! This is the last time, Caleb. The last. I do this, and I don't owe you anything else. Do you understand?"

  "Perfectly. Tell me what I need to know and I'll never bother you again."

  Something about Debney's eyes caught his attention. A sudden, stricken expression.

  "What's wrong?" he demanded.

  "It doesn't matter." The viscount collapsed on the bed. "It's not like you'd care anyway, or as if I mean anything to you."

  Byrnes stared at him.

  Debney saw his perplexed look and laughed. "Look at you. Not even a hint of consternation. You just want to know about your precious black flag. It wouldn't bother you to walk away and never look back, would it?"

  For the first time, Byrnes felt some stir of emotion, hot and bloody. He'd been trying not to think about it, but this house—and all the memories it contained—disconcerted him. "No. It wouldn't."

  Debney looked away. "They're called the Sons of Gilead. Don't ask me why. I'm hardly in favor at the moment."

  S.O. G. Everything inside him lit on fire. "Who are they?"

  "A group of disgruntled Echelon lords who don't like the new world order the queen has presented us with."

  "Names?"

  Debney's nostrils flared. "Caleb—"

  "Who are you protecting? Yourself? Your friends? Are they involved?"

  "I don't have any friends, curse you. Look around. I'm certain it hasn't escaped your notice that I'm distinctly short of a valet at the moment. I had to let my thrall go earlier this year too—I couldn't afford to pay her the pin money the queen insists every thrall must receive, thanks to her new laws, so Elsie had to return to her father. In the eyes of the Echelon I'm in dun territory. Creditors keep hounding me, and my so-called friends seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. My mother's dead, my brother wants nothing to do with me, and even though old Henslow and his wife are still here, I'm fairly certain I'm going to have to let them go by the end of the year too.

  "You know what?" Debney seemed to find some strength from somewhere. "Who am I protecting? Myself? What a joke. There's nothing to protect. Maybe if they killed me it'd be a bloody relief. I'll even do you a favor—consider it one for the road before we part. There's an invitation around here somewhere for a house party this weekend at Lord Ulbricht's country home. The bloody SOG are throwing some kind of party for young disaffected lordlings like me. I dismissed it, for I'm not an idiot—it's a recruiting drive if ever I've seen one, and I'd really rather not be caught between the ruling Council of Dukes and the SOG—but I'll give it to you. It's on the secretary there, I think."

  Byrnes examined him for a moment longer. They'd never truly been brothers and he despised most of what Debney was, but there was a sense of hopelessness in his half brother's face. This was the most impassioned Debney had ever been. "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

  "Why? Worried yo
u'd be called in to identify the body? I'm sure such a thing would only be an inconvenience for you."

  Byrnes eyed the stiff way Debney sat. "I don't wish you ill. I've never wished you ill. It would... grieve me to see you dead."

  Debney raked a hand over his face, the sneer vanishing as something more akin to hopelessness filled his expression. "I'm not going to do anything suicidal. I'll leave that to you and your mad scheme to confront Ulbricht and his cronies." Looking up, his voice softened. "They're dangerous, Caleb. Those who speak out against them or threaten to reveal their secrets have a tendency to go missing. And we're talking about dukes and barons here, people in positions of power. If you think that your Nighthawk status protects you, then you're wrong."

  "I'm used to dealing with dangerous people," he replied, crossing to the secretary and rifling through the piled up invitations there. He finally found the one he wanted and tapped the invitation against his thigh as he turned back to Debney. "It's made out in your name."

  "Of course." Debney frowned, then understanding dawned. "You can't use it yourself."

  "Why not?" Undercover work was one of his fortes. "Just how large is this gathering going to be?"

  "It doesn't matter how large it will be." Debney's gaze raked over him. "You're not.... You wouldn't fit in. They'd spot you from a mile away."

  Byrnes looked down at himself. "I mustn't have realized that my rogue blue blood status was emblazoned on my forehead. I might, however, need to borrow some clothes—"

  "It's not the clothes, or the fact that your infection was unapproved," Debney protested. "Christ, Caleb, it's the attitude, it's everything—even the calluses on your hands. You don't look like some idle aristocrat, and you never will."

  Which wasn't something that had ever bothered him. Byrnes arched a brow.

  "You look like you kill people for a living." Debney interpreted the look correctly.

  "Part of the job description sometimes. I don't do it for fun."