by Bec McMaster
"Excellent."
The doctor put his notebook aside and picked up the leather mouthpiece. "Open, if you will."
Obsidian allowed the intrusion, breathing heavily through his nose as the doctor strapped it into place, some of his hair pulling as it was caught in the buckle. He stared directly at the far wall, the dissimuler pendulum making a rabid clicking noise as his heart rate accelerated and his breathing quickened.
A dull pit of fear blossomed within him.
He couldn't afford to forget again. Not now, with Gemma locked up in Mably House, and Ghost's assassins out there searching for her.
And the truth beckoning....
"It's all right," Richter assured him, patting him on the shoulder. "This is an assessment, nothing more. I promise."
The doctor picked up a long cylindrical advice. With a twist of the far end, light erupted from the pinhole at the opposite end. Richter clasped his chin and lifted the light to his eyes.
Obsidian flinched, momentarily blinded. Spit slid down his jaw as a growl tried to escape the leather mouthpiece strapped to his head. You submitted to this. But no matter how often he told himself such a thing, he couldn't escape the frenetic impulse urging him to burst out of his straps.
He felt like a caged animal. The sudden flashing images of Richter drawing his cortex resectioning device into place around Obsidian's head, and strapping the helmet tightly made his gut churn. He couldn't hear the rasp of a leather belt slapping into place without feeling a chill down his spine anymore.
I'll have him schedule a reconditioning appointment for you....
No. Richter had promised. Just an assessment.
"Pupils responsive." Dr. Richter murmured, drawing the ocular spyglass away. "No sign of muscle spasm in his face, nor eyelids. No slurring of speech."
"And?" Ghost asked, from where he watched the process in the shadows.
Dr. Richter stepped back from the chair Obsidian was bound to, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "There's no sign of malfunction with the neural regulating actuator implant."
"Nothing?" Ghost sounded disappointed.
"Not as far as I can tell." The doctor unstrapped the leather buckle locking Obsidian's mouthpiece in place. "My apologies. A necessary precaution with your teeth."
Obsidian's chest heaved, the panic a little easier to rein in now he was no longer so tightly arrayed.
Vile tasting thing. He spat the mouthpiece free, breathing hard as he glared at Ghost through the strands of his hair. "So much for that theory."
"He has been increasingly insubordinate of late," Ghost said coldly.
"I do as commanded." Obsidian stared blankly at his overseer. "I wasn't aware I wasn't supposed to speak my mind as I did it. Perhaps you'd be better off investing in some of those new automatons they're selling to the docks? They don't speak back, or so I am told. Or send for one of your lickspittles if you want someone to kiss your ass. You seem to forget where we came from. Brother."
"Lickspittles?" the doctor asked, cleaning the ocular spyglass.
"The new recruits," Ghost replied.
"Ah."
"Or better yet," Obsidian said softly, the muscles in his arms flexing as he tested the leather straps that bound him to the doctor's examination chair—for his own safety. "Why don't you just sentence me the way you did to Zero?"
Ghost paused in his pacing, one of his white eyebrows arching. "That's what this is about."
The doctor had been in the process of dusting off his hands, and froze. "Miss Annabelle? I thought she died by the hands of the Duke of Malloryn's agents."
"No. She died by the Wraith's hands," Ghost said, meeting Obsidian's gaze.
"Don't call me that."
A vein throbbed in his temples. Obsidian's lip curled off his teeth. The Wraith. He'd seen the bastard's cold eyes in the mirror when he returned from a mission and needed to wash the blood off his hands, off his face. Heard the ringing in his ears when the Wraith was activated, and it felt like something else took over his body and all that was left of him became a silent bystander. All he knew of the world narrowed down to that piercing sound, as though he stood right under one of the enormous bells at the top of the Ivory Tower as someone beat upon it. The very world vibrated around him until hours later, when the ringing finally stopped, he would find himself lying helplessly in the dirt somewhere, blood dripping from his nose.
And no idea how he got there.
Ghost stepped closer, sneering a little. "Did Zero call you a traitor as you did it?"
He needed to be very careful right now. "No."
She begged instead. And then I held her while the Black Vein I gave her killed her.
Annabelle's words damned him every bloody night he closed his eyes. "Do you think that he won't d-do the same... to you—?"
He hadn't wanted her to die alone. It was the first time he'd ever been able to find his way out of the vibration, enough to gain some control over his body. Enough to hold her as the Black Vein tore through her veins, and obliterated her heart.
Something happened within him that night.
When he slipped out of Malloryn's safe house after her body took its last breath, he'd felt the ground spiraling beneath him.
First Omega turned on Ghost, and died.
Then Zero was "terminated".
Who was left of their fractured family when Ghost was the one who'd engineered both their deaths?
X? Raving mad and locked in his cell below, with his muzzle permanently strapped in place?
Silas? The one true brother Obsidian still called by that name?
Dido, who'd gone off to Russia with Lord Balfour, her loyalties shifting from her brethren to the spymaster?
And why the hell did his head pound so much when he caught a hint of Gemma's scent?
"You terminated Miss Annabelle?" Richter asked.
"Zero betrayed us," Ghost said coldly, as the doctor cleaned his spectacles, looking a little distressed. He'd been the one who'd warned that Zero's conditioning was failing. "She would have ruined us, and eventually Malloryn would have broken her down and gotten the information he wanted from her. She needed to be eliminated before she became a larger problem."
"All she wanted was revenge," Obsidian whispered. His fingers flexed. It was all any of them had ever wanted. In the beginning.
Revenge against Caine, Casavian, and Vickers—the three dukes who'd sponsored the Falkirk project and condemned him to his fate.
"We are getting revenge," Ghost said.
"Against who?" Obsidian looked up. "Malloryn? What did the Duke of Malloryn ever do to us?"
Dangerous, dangerous words. Lord Balfour had taken them from the streets following the burning of Falkirk. He'd given them everything, as Ghost often preached.
But I can't seem to remember what, precisely, he gave us.
Or why we play his little games for him?
"Careful. You're speaking treason now," Ghost whispered.
Gemma. Think of Gemma.
"Forgive me." Obsidian let his head and shoulders slump. His head was aching again. "I forget so much, sometimes I merely wonder...."
"You see?" Ghost said, to the doctor. "There's clearly a problem with either the neural implant or his conditioning."
"I warned you that you can't keep doing this to them," Dr. Richter cast aside his cleaning cloth with a flurry that betrayed his feelings regarding Zero's death. "What if there's some form of scarring building up? Who knows what is happening inside his brain? You saw what repeated bouts of reconditioning did to Annabelle."
Guilt trembled in the doctor's voice.
"And you made your choice ten years ago," Ghost said, stepping closer to the man and towering over him. "Don't grow squeamish now. I think a reconditioning session necessary."
Dr. Richter's lips grew pinched. "It's only been a month since Obsidian first caught sight of Miss Townsend and you insisted upon a session. I urge caution—"
"We cannot afford to have a fraction within our c
ause at this moment."
"And you cannot afford to melt his brains out of his ears," the doctor countered sharply. "Dhampir heal from almost anything, including the cerebral cortex resectioning. Eventually. But his last reconditioning put him down for nearly three days before he could be used again. He needs time to recover between bouts. I won't do it."
"Won't do it?" Ghost lashed out, capturing the good doctor by the throat.
Richter kicked ineffectually as Ghost hauled him into the air, his notebook and spring pen clattering to the floor as his hand lashed out.
Obsidian's lashes fluttered half-closed as he watched it all unfold emotionlessly.
There was something wrong with his conditioning. He'd suspected it for weeks.
It had something to do with Gemma Townsend.
Whatever the doctor did to him, his failsafe's began to collapse the second he'd laid eyes upon her.
Even now his head began to ache right behind his left eye, as if the mere thought of her shattered something inside his brain.
One last constraint, perhaps.
The conditioning is necessary, the doctor had told him.
It helps to control the rage inside you, Ghost had assured him.
Don't you want to forget the pain?
Don't you want to make it all go away?
Obsidian didn't know what he wanted. He didn't know what the hell he believed in anymore. Too many patchwork memories.
Who are you? The Wraith? Obsidian? The thought slithered through his back brain like a sibilant whisper.
Or...
She'd called him Dmitri.
And he had a sudden flash of remembrance of a warm body in his arms, Hollis's laughter in his ear, as he tumbled her onto a picnic rug, careless of the world around them. Careless of anything other than the feel of her skirts crumpling beneath his hand, and the smooth kiss of her skin beneath his fingertips....
The pendulum swung again as his lungs expanded sharply, but Obsidian was the only one who noticed.
"It doesn't... matter—" the doctor choked out, "—what you do to... m-me. Without me—"
Ghost let him collapse against the bench, where the doctor sputtered and coughed, grasping at his throat.
"Without me," Richter wheezed, "you can't... control them. Lord Balfour... gave me... jurisdiction over... these matters." He pushed himself up into a sitting position. "If you push the reconditioning too far, then you will kill them. And then... you will deal with Balfour's rage."
Obsidian stared thoughtfully at the doctor. The mere thought of Richter's rooms made him flinch, as if some part of his subconscious knew more about what the doctor did to him, than his conscious mind. But the man seemed to be arguing on his behalf.
"So be it," Ghost spat. "But if he slips his leash, then you shall be the one who earns Balfour's wrath. Not I."
What were they truly doing to him with the reconditioning?
Obsidian felt like dozens of pieces of memory floated around him like obnoxious jigsaw puzzle pieces, refusing to slot into place. He was missing something. Some important piece of the puzzle that would make all those memories become whole.
And it had to do with Russia.
Gemma held the key to his past.
To his identity.
Could he trust her to tell the truth? He barely recalled St. Petersburg. Only fire. A pair of scorching kisses. A smoking pistol.
And the sound of someone screaming.
Someone who might have been him.
Gemma Townsend is a liar and a seductress, Ghost's whisper taunted him.
But as he watched Ghost quit the room in a fury, while the doctor trembled and cursed under his breath, Obsidian suddenly wondered whether he could trust Ghost either.
"Tell me about Russia."
Gemma paused with her glass of blud wein at her lips. She should have known he'd had ulterior motives when he brought in the small table.
"What precisely were you interested in knowing? It's a lovely place, if one likes snow, vodka, ornate palaces, and bloodthirsty scheming princes—"
"No." Obsidian stilled, his silver-tipped lashes fluttering low over his eyes. "You claim my recollection of what occurred in Russia is wrong. Tell me about us. About the first time we met."
Us.
Gemma's smile melted off her face, and she swallowed. She almost asked in a lighthearted flirtatious voice, what would you like to know?
But that was instinct speaking.
Deflection. Shields. Walls settling into place, though she knew other people often failed to even realize, because of the exquisitely flirtatious tone she used.
It was why she understood Malloryn so bloody well.
Because they were the same, she and he.
But where Malloryn used ice, Gemma used a smile and a faint shrug of her shoulder.
"What would you like to know?" she asked carefully, watching the shift of intense emotion flicker across his face.
11
"We need to send the Duke of Malloryn a message...."
The word's echoed in Obsidian's ears as he slipped along the edge of a roof, stalking his quarry. Fog swirled around his boots, tendrils curling away from his cloak like the tentacles of an octopus. Ahead of him, a pale figure vanished over the next gable, completely unaware of the danger that stalked him.
This was Langley's first mission.
Too bad it would also be his last.
The young dhampir operative had been newly transformed only a year ago, the elixir vitae changing him from a blue blood afflicted with the craving virus into a more evolved creature. Faster than a blue blood, stronger, and practically invincible, the dhampir were what blue bloods were always meant to become.
Obsidian remembered the agony of transformation, though the precise details were lost in the blazing fugue of pain. Few survived the transformation, and those who did never forgot it. The loss of his ability to walk beneath the sun was small payment for his incredible senses.
Even he, with his fractured memories and the taunting blank spots where he knew something important had happened, could remember the night Dr. Erasmus Cremorne injected him with the first dose of serum.
Langley paused at the edge of the gutter, sinking to his haunches to survey the street below. He flexed his right fingers, as if nervous. Probably was. This assassination had been requested by the Master himself; the man who ruled Obsidian and his fellow dhampir. The others worshipped the master, though Obsidian felt nothing.
Emotions sucked like a black hole within him, bleeding him dry. He remembered nothing.
He felt nothing.
He was nothing.
"I am a weapon," he whispered to himself by rote. "Forged out of the flames themselves."
Obsidian melted into the shadows, pressing his back to a chimney. Below him on the street, he could make out Langley's quarry.
The young woman wore a becoming dress of lavender that set off the pale cream of her skin, despite her dirty apron. She'd dyed her hair black since the last time he'd seen her seven years ago, and swayed through the crowd with an innate sense of grace that drew the male gaze, no matter what role she played. One of the Duke of Malloryn's spies, she'd worn many names and faces over the years. She called herself Gemma now, though he'd known her as Hollis Beechworth.
Obsidian's hand slid to the knife at his side. There. There was the hot press of emotion, flaming like a supernova through his veins. He didn't understand it. He knew her face. Could recall the night she tried to kill him all those years ago.
But nothing else.
Only this curious surge of hunger within him as the darkness in his soul suddenly reared its head the second he saw her.
He needed to know why Gemma—he refused to think of her as Hollis—pulled at him like this.
And he needed her alive if he was going to decipher what it all meant—just why he was so drawn to her.
"Have her killed," his master had commanded, "Put her in a white gown, like something a debutante—or a thrall�
�would wear. Then shoot her straight through the heart. And leave her on Malloryn's doorstep."
A message for the duke—their nemesis.
A mission for Langley, to prove his allegiance to the cause.
A pity Langley was never going to pass his test.
Obsidian let the fog mask his movements as he set out in search of his prey. The other dhampir had vanished, stepping off the rooftop and landing in the alley below. Obsidian stalked along the edge like a cat on the prowl, watching the young disciple slip along the alley.
Gemma made her way through the streets, tucking a strand of black hair behind her ear and flashing a wicked smile at a man who tripped over his feet when he saw her. In the murky London afternoon, that smile brightened the day. She would never be the most beautiful woman in the room, her chin a little too pointed to be classically handsome, and her pillow-shaped mouth too full for the current fashion, but she was eye-catching in a way no other woman could compete with. Vibrancy flowed through every inch of her body, and she made a man feel alive just looking at her. Every glance from those hot-lashed eyes seemed like she'd just thrown down a gauntlet; try and take me. If you dare....
For a second Obsidian paused, his gaze drawn to her smile. Color vanished from his vision, the world bleeding into shades of black and white as the hunger roused within him, and his heart gave a shuddering pulse. He wanted to dare. He wanted his hands on her, his lips and teeth skating over that creamy skin. He wanted to slam her back against a wall and capture that lying little mouth and make a ruin of her prim gown. He'd never felt like this before—at least, as far as he could recall—and the reckless desire chafed at him.
Why her?
Why did his inner darkness stir whenever he thought of her?
Because she's mine, whispered the darkness within him.
Then she was gone, and Langley scurried to the edge of the alley, as if to make his move.
Obsidian stepped off the edge of the roof, gravity catching hold of him. He landed in the alley lightly, his knees bending to absorb the blow and the long edges of his great cloak flaring out around him like wings.
