Rooks and Romanticide

by J. I. Radke

  Ah, yes, he’d been waiting for this. Teeth and tongue and little breaths shivering from Levi’s silky lower lip, and the rattle of buckles and whisper of brocade as they molded together under the damning shadows of the Virgin and Christ.

  With both arms now, Levi hoisted Cain off the steps. Cain wasn’t much smaller than him. He was pleased with how easily Levi lifted him and deposited him on the front pew as their mouths worked together. Levi sank down to his haunches before Cain and Cain let his knees twitch apart as he welcomed Levi forward with greedy fingers.

  They kissed. Cain’s heart was in his throat. He was hot and nervous and full of reckless lust, and the thrill tasted like metal on the back of his tongue. Levi nipped at his lower lip. He ripped open his waistcoat and unfastened Cain’s shirt down the front, raining kisses on the pale skin there and driving Cain wild in the pew before him, like a wayward churchgoer moved to tears by the Mass. It felt so invigoratingly dirty, to be colliding like this under the watchful eyes of the angels and other holy figures. Felt utterly wrong and oh so good. Cain was a defiant thing by nature. Perhaps it came with the name.

  Levi’s lips were almost like silk, and he smelled like rain and gunpowder and something else exotic. He lit a Turkish cigarette, staying on his knees before Cain, and peered up at him through his lashes, without lifting his head, in that tender and carnal way that had ensnared Cain from the start. Cain curled his fingers in that soft, damp blond hair, the last of the heated shivers running through him as he convinced his more impulsive parts that this was as far as they were going tonight.

  “What do you know about me?” Cain whispered.

  “I’m sorry?” Levi whispered right back, lashes lowered on those deep eyes as he flicked cigarette ash over the edge of the pew and filled the sanctuary with smoke. It was like sinful incense.

  “The feud between the Dietrichs and Ruslanivs,” Cain reminded him, and when Levi stared back stupidly, Cain narrowed his eyes. “The feud itself runs deep. You know that, surely, even claiming neutrality as you do. But with my standing as the Dietrich heir, my focus is not on ancient bloodlust. My focus lies in the present.” He paused. He shook his head, throwing his gaze elsewhere. He could feel the hatred coming down over his face, washing away all the good feelings. “You know what happened to me, don’t you? It wasn’t that long ago, and it was the talk of New London for months.”

  Levi stared at him, eyes heated and alive with that raw dark passion of his.

  “My parents were murdered,” Cain filled him in, coldly. “And I know the culprits are Ruslanivs in some way or another, because no petty street gang could manage something so calculated—killing my parents and making my life a living hell for as long as they did. I’m going to make them pay. I’m going to make them bow down and kiss my feet. That, Levi, is the Dietrich focus while I am head of the family. You get it now, I assume?”

  Cain knew the weight of such a revelation was crushing. He understood the gravity of his place, and his motives, and his history, and his impetus. He was aware of the demands it made of others. But if Levi did not get it, then there was no point in using him for anything—scouting, patrolling, fighting, nothing.

  “You will not rest until you’ve exacted your revenge,” Levi surmised in a husky voice, Turkish cigarette smoldering between his knuckles and a new curious light sparking in his aloof eyes. “I understand.”

  He put out his cigarette against the front of the pew, a blatant desecration that pleased Cain for some reason.

  “Do you?” Cain drilled. “Do you understand, Levi? I know you want me.”

  “Like you want me.”

  “I won’t deny it. But I haven’t contracted you as my paramour. I’ve contracted you as a fighter.”

  “Ah, my lord,” Levi said quietly, “I told you before, I am whatever you want me to be.”

  Cain’s face pinched. He felt the stab of a tiny and guilty fear, the dreadful idea that perhaps the primal throb of lust was unreciprocated. I am whatever you want…. Did Levi mean to imply he was simply going along with all this for money—killing and sex for money? Could one really hold it past a man to do something so depraved? Did Levi pity him? Did he think he was lonely or something? A wave of cold, black, insulted rage crested in Cain quickly, to feel so pathetic and manipulated—or at least, to suspect as much.

  “I want you to be honest with me,” he whispered urgently through his teeth, before he realized the depth of the ache at such a suggestion.

  Levi’s eyes moved across his face, almost frantically. It was odd. It was like a man with a secret, looking a complication right in the eyes. Maybe it was just that he had been trying to convince himself he would be whatever Cain wanted, because it was too much for him to admit inside that the feelings were real. If freelance gunmen hadn’t buried all their own feelings early in life. Maybe Cain was just lucky enough to have found the last gunslinger on the streets of New London who possessed a functioning moral compass—and whether it might one day spin wildly out of control like Cain’s own, didn’t matter.

  “Honest….” Levi echoed, and Cain couldn’t bully him any longer.

  He could see the emotional struggle blazing in Levi’s eyes. And he looked so little and defeated, on his knees before him, wide dark eyes and loose blond hair. It was like he was trying to piece together normal feelings inside, his own version of bruised and broken trust after the world had stomped on his soul too many times. Or so Cain guessed.

  “Honest,” he repeated. “Be honest with me. I told you I wouldn’t accommodate lies, not even lies to yourself. You’re not on your knees before me just for me, Levi. Admit it. There’s something between us, and it has a mind of its own. There’s no fighting it. So be my lover, and be my soldier, but don’t ever let one influence the other—”

  Levi kissed him again. Cain yielded to it. He’d said his piece. He’d meant every bit of it. He was satisfied with it.

  And that was it, then.

  That was the inevitable click of destiny’s hammer, fate sealed by hungry kisses.

  Bloodstained fate for two children with bloodstained hands, and they were helpless to change it.

  SCENE FOUR

  LEVI KNEW it was a secret and that he had to keep it. And keep it he did, because he was greedy.

  Imagine, the notoriously young and unforgiving Earl Dietrich, a bloody queer!

  That is, he didn’t want BLACK to know what he knew about the Earl, because this twisted victory over the Earl’s private moments was something he wanted to savor on his own for a while. He couldn’t explain why, but he didn’t try either. It was just that simple.

  Be honest with me, the Earl had said, and God, that hurt so sweet and twisted.

  It was much easier to take on the role of the Earl’s hidden ace than he’d expected—slipping into character wholeheartedly was nothing—but at the same time, it was also quite taxing.

  He’d passed the Earl’s series of tests, and by Guy Fawkes Day—when all the nonpartisan folks of New London were burning little handmade popes and filling the streets with their silly hymns, a sea of candles lighting their crooked alleys and children prancing around in those awful white masks—the demands of his and BLACK’s tentative little scheme became fully clear to Levi.

  “You’re not allowed on the manor grounds without an escort,” the Earl outlined, standing on the front steps of St. Vincent’s as the autumn rain fell in dismal slants through the fog and spill of light from the gas lamps along the street. A fierce wind had kicked up, and leaves danced along the slick cobblestones. An escort. It was a smart move. The Earl was no fool, not even after desperate kisses. Levi could see the Earl’s security, shadows like ghosts slinking about the churchyard. Ah, what fun this was, to literally have the enemy in his grasp and make the conscious decision not to strike yet. After all, what was the rest of the plan? He’d have to speak with BLACK later…. If he felt like it, anyway.

  “Understood, my lord,” Levi whispered.

  “We will meet ever
y night here to discuss missions I have for you, and if we don’t, I’ll forward a message to you explaining why. I’ll also send assignments.”

  We will meet every night here. Would they? Levi couldn’t suppress a devious smile, a little ironic chuckle. Of course they would. Because there was a mutual intrigue between them, or however the Earl wanted to put it. Clever little imp.

  Be honest with me.

  As it turned out, by the very next day, the courier Levi had stationed on the Rue at the fake address came to him delivering a wax-sealed packet. It seemed the Earl already had assignments for his new ace in the sleeve.

  There was no real fighting involved, and some part of Levi was thankful for that. Those on the streets knew him better than the Earl did, after all, and he would have hated to stumble upon some familiar face here or there and have to explain what he was doing and why he was doing it alone.

  No, the Earl just wanted to use Levi like another set of eyes, peeking into the worst parts of New London that he himself was loath to enter.

  First it was that Levi had to patrol a certain neighborhood where rather insignificant Ruslaniv gangs were terrorizing Dietrich working class, like packs of angry dogs chasing rabbits in and out of their burrows.

  Then there was a minor dispute on the bankers’ block down by Alderstower, and masked thieves outside Leroy Square, and a scouting mission that required Levi spend some time in the East Streets—strictly Ruslaniv territory, and slummy territory at that. It was already familiar to Levi. Cleveland Street and Dalley’s Street and Old Yew Bailey Court where gamblers organized boxing matches and swordfights, Foxe’s and Fleet’s Inn, hotels and cafés and all other sorts of haunts the parties of nightlife loved. But still he was always on edge, waiting to be caught as this Other Levi, this spying spy—caught by those who knew him, or those who thought they knew him.

  Not long after that the Earl asked him to infiltrate a notorious Ruslaniv dance hall where opium and cocaine barons spoke of their sales and deals, and he was to report back to the Dietrich house with overheard plans so the Dietrich men could hijack the barons’ shipments and hold them over their heads.

  It wasn’t hard to roam the streets unchallenged by Lord Ruslaniv.

  His father was confident in Levi’s anonymity. He’d helped to fortify it, anyway, and after all that had happened over the years, he had stopped asking about anything. Now and then it was just a weary glance over breakfast or luncheon, when Levi was frequently hungover, or distracted, or sporting badges from a night of carousing—tousled hair, darkened eyes, yesterday’s clothes, bloodied knuckles, broken blood vessels.

  It was the same now, sneaking around for Earl Dietrich. The servants noticed Levi was gone, as did his father’s dutiful agents. They whispered and exchanged looks when he came trudging through the marble halls at daybreak, exhausted and accepting guilt for their simplest suspicions. They’d go whispering to his father by midday about his antics, but they were clueless of just what antics he was up to lately. They judged him as a rowdy and ruthless young man, taking advantage of his good looks and fat wallet with the rest of the gang he’d inherited from his older brother, the older brother who actually had taken advantage of his good looks and fat wallet.

  But that was the thing. Levi was not out gallivanting with the crew he’d inherited. And to avoid BLACK’s questions as to why he didn’t join them at all their favorite clubs and casinos, raising hell through New London as the Ruslanivs’ most elusive and ominous gang….

  That balancing act was the part that really grated on Levi’s nerves.

  “How’s it going?” they’d ask carefully, with critical glances—Elliot, the Witch, William—when what they really meant was What the devil are you doing with the Earl that makes him get you more than we do now?

  Their resentful glances made him giddy.

  Be honest with me.

  “Listen,” Levi said, and he looked at Eliott because he knew Eliott would understand the urgency even if it went unexplained. “BLACK needs to lay low while I’m involved with the Earl. Let us become shadows in the night again, because we can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves with as much as he’s watching the streets.”

  He was twenty-four years old, the Honourable Lawrence Levi Ruslaniv, elusive heir of the Ruslaniv fortune and infamy, and until he’d been seven, his world had been one of governesses, the nursery, the high walls around the manor, the screams he sometimes heard outside those walls. Screams cursing his family, sometimes punctuated by gunshots.

  He’d learned about his family’s history and burdens for the first time when he was eight. He’d whispered to himself the reasons he couldn’t go outside the Ruslaniv walls like he whispered his prayers. Too dangerous, too dangerous, not safe for an heir.

  He’d pulled his first trigger when he was nine, entered into BLACK’s training when he was twelve, killed for the first time when he was fifteen.

  And now, almost ten years later, he was tangled up with an earl—the Earl, the son of the enemy, the new enemy now, apparently.

  Wasn’t it absolutely wild?

  “THE SECURITY on the western wing of the manor might be a bit lax tonight,” the Earl whispered, a sly hint in the dancing dark of St. Vincent’s. He turned his eyes up so seductively, so serenely as they lingered close together in the shadows near the doors after another business meeting, which had quickly gone from talk of guns and politics to talk with tongue and teeth. It was curious how the hot golden glow of candles in the dark could seem like something hellish even in the dusty peace of the sanctuary. That light rendered the Earl utterly dark and dangerous-looking, a little devil, mastermind of these rendezvous, a vagrant agent of Cupid or Venus or some less well-intentioned deity sent to test the convictions and willpower of men. Such assignations were clearly nothing new to him. He knew what he was doing, what it meant, and how illicit it was. The utter lack of shyness in his eyes was mesmerizing, like staring into a flame as it changed colors. And God, but he was so hot and slim and perfect, and the way that knowing smirk passed across his face as he bid Levi good night and disappeared from the church, out into the dark…. Oh, it was just too good.

  Levi turned and scowled up at the Virgin Mary, who peered down at him in such mournful disappointment.

  “Shut up,” he hissed, and pinched out one of her prayer candles before leaving.

  Levi played along, because it was his duty to play along. The name of the game was to get on the Earl’s good side, wasn’t it?

  He was surprised, of course. Who else in all of New London knew the young Earl’s shameful inclinations? Who else in New London had the Earl romped with? Had Levi really expected anything else from someone who had seen the belly of Father Kelvin’s brothel and lived to tell the tale, like the Earl had?

  He wondered if the Earl would ever even mention as much to him. Certainly men were not required to disclose prior sins to present lovers.

  Levi felt no guilt for it. At least, not for the deceit. He enjoyed the kisses and the playful tension, without a doubt. But he also felt somewhat detached, cold and in awe of himself for doing such things and not feeling a single moral shiver about it. It was a delicious game. He couldn’t deny that. The kisses, the brush of fingertips, the racing of his heart, and the way the Earl’s damning glances and secretive smirks just grabbed his desire by the throat…. Well, why couldn’t he get a little pleasure out of it too?

  Sitting in the dark on the Earl’s balcony, or before the fire in his wide elegant room, or in the dancing shadows of St. Vincent’s, they even talked together.

  They talked of politics and business, and they gossiped about parties and people and the jokes of life in general. They talked about nothing. They talked about everything. They shared childhood memories, which Levi carefully edited on his part.

  There was no stopping the inevitable befriending.

  But Levi needed to know things.

  It was vital to know things in his complex and duplicitous position.

  �
��I find myself wondering,” he prompted from below the Earl’s balcony, where it was safe tonight, a beckoning bed partner like he had been when BLACK had urged him back over the wall almost a fortnight ago, “just how many men like me you’ve gobbled up as lovers?”

  The Earl was in that oversize smoking jacket of his, the one his butler had draped over him the same night. He hoisted himself up to sit near the stone gargoyle, and it was either stupidity or an unwavering and rebellious bravery with which he left himself vulnerable on his balcony like that, stripped of formalities and security.

  “I hope you’re not accusing me of trickery and selfishness,” the Earl called down, hooking his feet at the ankles and lounging against the gargoyle. It made Levi nervous to see him perched on the ledge like that. He did not want him to fall. “Don’t be insulting. I like to think I’m rather selective about my bedmates.”

  “Selective, you say?”

  “Yes, you should feel honored.”

  Levi was no stranger to utilizing surroundings, and with something just short of ease, he climbed the vines and uneven stones of the manor until he was beside the Earl’s balcony. The Earl wore that ever-teasing smirk of his, the one that said Levi could trust him if he wanted to, but for all he knew, he could still just be using him for his own manly needs. The Earl slid away from the gargoyle and helped Levi over the stone and onto his balcony.

  “I do feel honored,” Levi replied.

  “Are you jealous?” The Earl sounded eager. “You’re jealous of those in my past?”

  “I’m curious,” Levi parried.

  “Admit it,” the Earl hissed, fingers digging into Levi’s arm. His eyes were wide and lit by a mischievous light as he ducked out of view from the open bedroom doors, and that teasing smirk became a full greedy grin. “Admit it, you can’t resist me.”

  Levi stared at him for a moment, not really feeling moved one way or the other, except for the fact that a natural and unaffiliated sort of lust was stirring between his hips, hardening and responding to the pure physical aspect of it all, which was numb and terrible in and of itself.