Dreadfully Ever After

by Steve Hockensmith

  Kitty pushed back Judith’s cart, raised her axe, and brought the heavy blade down flat across the creature’s skull with enough force to crush it. A great gooey geyser of rotting brain squirted onto the floor, and Judith was at last not merely dead, but dead.

  Lizzy leaned in beside a still-screaming Dr. Sleaford and brought her lips to within an inch of his ear.

  “Now your life hangs in the balance. Tell me where the cure is, and you will get the first dose.”

  “Over there! In those drawers! The top one, the top one!” Dr. Sleaford lifted his head and strained for a look at his arm. “How much of me did she get?”

  “Not much,” Kitty said, appraising the man’s wound with a cocked head. “Only a chunk about the size of an apple.”

  “Ohhhhhhhhh!”

  “Well, a small apple. Maybe just a lime.”

  Lizzy opened the drawer Dr. Sleaford had indicated and pulled out a small glass tube with a needle at one end and a plunger at the other.

  “It looks like a poison dart,” Kitty said. She glanced over at Nezu. “The sort of thing your lot would like.”

  Nezu still wouldn’t meet her gaze, but he wasn’t wearing his usual look of stoic remoteness. He looked pained, strained, like a man fighting some great inner battle. Or perhaps stifling a belch.

  “It is an invention of ours,” Dr. Sleaford said. “The Sleaford Needle.”

  “The other one calls it the MacFarqwand,” said Gurdaya, who was peeking into the laboratory through Nezu’s legs.

  The ninja turned and shooed her away.

  “Sleaford Needle, MacFarqwand, call it what you will,” Dr. Sleaford said. “It is a device that allows us to safely make subcutaneous injections, if that means anything to you. Now will someone at least staunch the bleeding? I’m starting to get all soppy here!”

  Lizzy looked at Kitty and nodded.

  “Hands only.”

  Kitty unfastened the straps around the man’s wrists and helped him sit up. She then handed him a hankie, which he pressed to his wound.

  “Thank you. That’s so much better.” Dr. Sleaford looked down at his arm and winced. “I shall probably need a tourniquet. Honestly, did you have to let Judith bite me so hard?”

  Lizzy lifted a small dark vial out of the same drawer from which she’d produced the MacFarqwand.

  “The cure?”

  Dr. Sleaford nodded and began explaining to Lizzy how to administer what he called the “vaccine.” A moment later, she was filling the MacFarqwand’s glass tube with black liquid from the vial.

  “More,” the doctor said. “More. There. Stop.”

  “So much?” Lizzy asked. “That’s half the vaccine. Is this all you have?”

  “I’m afraid so. It is not easy to make. Now, if you please?”

  Lizzy brought the needle toward the man’s arm.

  “Wait,” Mary said.

  Lizzy froze.

  “Oh, please!” Dr. Sleaford wailed. “You’re going to torment me now? That’s just cruel!”

  “I merely have one more question, while you’re still inclined to be candid,” Mary said. “Your former lodger across the hall: It was whom I thought?”

  “Yes! Yes! Now can we get this over with?”

  “By all means,” Mary said.

  Lizzy jabbed the needle into Dr. Sleaford’s arm and pushed down the plunger. Slowly, the blackness in the tube disappeared. When it was gone, Lizzy pulled the needle out and said, “And now you are cured? As simple as that?”

  “Now I might be cured. The vaccine is still experimental.”

  “But it worked on the king,” Mary said.

  Dr. Sleaford sighed. “Please tell me you’ll be discreet about that.”

  “The king?” Kitty said. “You mean our king?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t mean Nebuchadnezzar.”

  Mary looked rather proud of her attempt at wit, but all she got from Kitty was a blank stare, and Lizzy stared off dreamily at nothing.

  “Of course,” Lizzy said. “That’s why the king was kept out of sight all these years. He wasn’t mad. He was here, in secret, under guard. Stricken with the strange plague. And the serum that was keeping him from becoming an unmentionable …”

  She looked over at the doorway. Nezu no longer blocked it, and Gurdaya was back, peeking in warily from the hall.

  It had always been a mystery why the plague never spread beyond Great Britain. It had something to do with their island isolation, some said. A peculiarity born of the purity of English blood.

  And now, looking into Gurdaya’s dark, sad eyes, Kitty understood where the cure lay: in the blood of foreigners.

  “It is abominable,” she said.

  “I might concede you the right to judge me,” Dr. Sleaford said, “if your sister hadn’t let a dreadful bite off half my arm.”

  “Oh, you didn’t lose half. An eighth, at most.”

  “None of that matters now,” Lizzy said.

  “It matters to me,” the doctor grumbled.

  Lizzy ignored him. “We have the cure and we know how to use it. We must get it to Rosings immediately.”

  She turned back toward the tabletop on which she’d left the vaccine. Nezu stood there now, the vial in one hand. With the other, he drew Fukushuu.

  The other ninjas—all six of them now spread out around the room—drew their weapons as well.

  “Oh, yes. The cure is going to Rosings,” Nezu said, slipping the little stoppered bottle into a coat pocket. “But you and your sisters will be staying here, Elizabeth Darcy. Permanently.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “Finally,” Nezu heard Ogata mutter.

  “We should have slit their throats a week ago,” Hayashi whispered back.

  “We didn’t have the whatever-it-is then,” Ishiro said. “The thing the mistress wants.”

  “Well, thank Death that Nezu has it now,” said Ren. “I cannot wait to kill that little fool who’s laughing all the time.”

  “Oh, yes! Her!” said Momoko. “I would’ve gutted her already if Nezu hadn’t—”

  “Shut up, all of you,” Kenji said. “The time to strike draws near.” And he threw Nezu a glare that added, Why do you still talk to those we must kill?

  Nezu was thankful the ninjas ringing the room spoke no English. That he’d been educated, hand-picked for “improvement” by Lady Catherine, had always set him apart from his fellow assassins. He was Shinobi, but he was also English, in his own way, and that made him an outsider even in a clan of outsiders. This was going to be difficult enough without them knowing just how far outside he’d almost strayed.

  “Nezu,” Kitty said.

  He forced himself to look at her, but it was difficult gazing into her eyes. He could see too clearly the pain of betrayal in them. So he tried to focus on her nose. It was such an admirable nose, though—not dainty or buttonish, but slightly bulbous in a way that seemed proud, unapologetic.

  He tried looking at her chin.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Kitty said.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Elizabeth Darcy replied for him, and Nezu was grateful for the excuse to look elsewhere. “Lady Catherine has not been helping us. She has been using us, and now our usefulness has come to an end. She has what she wants—Darcy and the cure—and now vengeance shall be hers as well.”

  “Nezu,” Kitty muttered, stunned, “how could you do this to us?”

  She didn’t add “to me,” but Nezu could hear the accusation in her voice.

  He raised his katana a little higher, looking at it rather than her.

  “My father gave this sword to me. I named it Fukushuu—Revenge—after he died.” He gazed at Elizabeth Darcy. “It was you who killed him. He was one of the ninjas sent for you at Pemberley after your marriage to Mr. Darcy.”

  “And you would blame her for that?” Kitty said. “Wish revenge upon her because she defended herself?”

  She took a step toward Nezu that forced him to look at her once again. Or look at her l
eft ear, anyway.

  What a fine ear it was.…

  “You fool,” Kitty said. The words came out sad rather than spiteful. “If you wish to hold someone accountable, choose the woman who threw away your father’s life on a petty vendetta.”

  “Lady Catherine is my mistress. I have sworn my life to her, as did my father.”

  Nezu dragged his gaze away from Kitty’s ear and found himself looking into eyes that reflected distress but not despair. Even now, he could see hope and love and life in Kitty Bennet. Everything that had always been lacking within himself.

  “Duty and honor cannot be ignored—you know that,” he said. “We do what we must. We obey. We avenge.”

  “Not always,” the Man in the Box said. “Sometimes, we change.”

  Nezu had almost forgotten the Man was there. It would have been easy to do. If not for his dogs, he could have been mistaken for a small cabinet on the other side of the laboratory.

  When Nezu looked his way, he saw the barrel of a gun protruding from the bottom of the Man’s box.

  It was pointed at Nezu.

  “You side with them?” he said.

  “I do. As should you.”

  “Kore de ii no?” Hayashi said. “Douka shimishita ka?”

  What’s going on? Is something wrong?

  Kenji was more assertive. “Shizuka ni shiro dare ka o korose!”

  Shut up and kill somebody!

  But Nezu preferred to take first things first. Priority number 1: not dying.

  He threw himself into a somersault, vaulting high enough to run a few steps on the ceiling, then flipped over and landed on the opposite side of the room, behind the Man and his gun. By the time he had his feet planted firmly again, everyone else was in motion.

  Momoko and Ogata were bounding along opposite walls, hurling throwing stars, while Mary Bennet matched them bounce for bounce, catching every star they threw and whipping them right back. Hayashi and Ishiro, meanwhile, were rushing the Man in a pincer movement, arcing in on each side, their long sai daggers ready to plunge through the top of the wooden box and into the head just beneath. Ell and Arr intercepted them in midair, latching onto the men where they could inflict the most damage—or the most pain, anyway. And Elizabeth Darcy was dodging poison darts from Ren’s blow gun as Kenji charged Kitty twirling twin kama scythes.

  “Lizzy! Trade!” Kitty shouted, throwing her battle axe toward her sister.

  Elizabeth tossed up her katana.

  The weapons crossed in midair. Then each woman snatched down her new weapon and went on the attack.

  Elizabeth sent the axe spinning end over end toward Ren while Kitty leapt feet first into the wall and sent herself rocketing across the room—straight at Nezu. She only barely missed both Kenjis’ swiping scythes and Dr. Sleaford, who was busily undoing the restraints that still held down his legs.

  “I’m sorry about your father,” she said once she’d landed in a crouch before Nezu.

  He jabbed at her with Fukushuu as she straightened, but it was a half-hearted thrust, easily parried.

  “The past is the past, though,” Kitty went on. “We can’t live there. We have to live here. Now.”

  Again, he sent Fukushuu at her heart, and again she easily turned the blade aside.

  “We can honor what lies behind us without being a slave to it,” Kitty said. “It’s time you faced what could lie ahead. You wouldn’t have to do it alone, you know.”

  Nezu’s thrusts started coming more quickly now, yet Kitty kept deflecting them. She kept talking, too.

  “You once asked me how I could be a warrior and remain so human. I suppose it’s because I never saw the two things as mutually exclusive. And so what if they are? Then I would be neither a true warrior nor a true lady. I would be something for which there is no label. And I wouldn’t care. Just call me Kitty!”

  “You are babbling,” Nezu said as his blade clanged again and again against hers. “If there is some point to all this, I cannot make it out.”

  “Then allow me to make it as clear as possible.”

  Kitty lowered her sword, then dropped it.

  “You can decide what you are, Nezu.”

  Behind her, the room was still a chaotic swirl of hacking and punching and kicking and biting and dying. A gun went off. Someone screamed. A bloody hand landed at Kitty’s feet. Yet she remained utterly still, even though with one swing of Nezu’s sword, she would be dead.

  “If you truly must obey your mistress, if you truly must have revenge, then you can start with me,” she said. “But if you choose to follow your own path … well, you can start that with me, too, if you like.”

  Nezu looked into her eyes.

  She smiled.

  He threw himself forward, thrusting out his katana as far as he could, sinking it deep into soft belly flesh.

  “Omae aho ya de …,” croaked Kenji, who’d been rushing up behind Kitty with his scythes raised high.

  You are such an ass.

  As the man toppled over sideways, Nezu simply let go of his sword handle, and Fukushuu dropped away with the dead ninja. Then Nezu slipped a hand into his coat pocket, pulled out the vial containing the cure, and handed it to Kitty.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Nezu looked down at Kenji’s crumpled, bloody body.

  “I am no longer Shinobi,” he said. “I do not know what I am.”

  “Oh, that’s simple.” Kitty wrapped an arm around his. “You’re one of us!”

  She started leading him from the laboratory, and he numbly noticed the black-wrapped torsos they were stepping over as they went. All the other ninjas were dead.

  “It appears the doctor escaped in the confusion,” Elizabeth said as she and Mary and the Man and his dogs followed Kitty and Nezu out.

  “He could cause trouble for us,” the Man said.

  When they were all in the hallway, they found Gurdaya and her brother kneeling beside a closed door. The rest of the prisoners had fled.

  “You are free to go,” Mary said to them.

  “Go where?” the girl replied.

  The sounds of slurping and munching could be heard from the other side of the door.

  “What’s in there?” Kitty asked.

  “Barry,” the boy said.

  “Barry?”

  “Subject Six,” Gurdaya explained.

  “It sounds like he’s not alone,” Nezu said.

  “That’s because he’s not,” the boy said.

  There was an especially loud crunch from inside the closet.

  No one bothered asking the children if they’d seen where Dr. Sleaford went.

  “You know what?” Elizabeth said to them instead. “I think it’s high time you two went on holiday, don’t you? How does Hertfordshire sound?”

  She held out her hands.

  The children took them.

  CHAPTER 38

  Darcy’s strength faded during the long walk back to Rosings, but his resolve did not. When he reached the manor house, he went straight to the trophy room and retrieved his aunt’s hara-kiri sword—the one he would use to gut himself.

  He would do it in his room, he’d decided. Immediately. Daylight was fading, and his aunt would be back any minute, covering the miles on her white charger much more quickly than he had on foot. He didn’t want her or his cousin interfering.

  Even with Lady Catherine’s treatments, his world was lost to him forever, and if Anne was anything to judge by, his humanity would soon follow.

  A “life” of half-death and obscene appetites … and without Elizabeth? No. Time to die. It would be his final gift to his beloved wife: a widow’s freedom to fight. Perhaps he could make her happier in death than he had in life.

  He paused for one last look through the trophy room’s long picture window. The grounds hadn’t changed in nearly thirty years. He could almost see himself out there, engaged in a round of Stricken and Slayers with Anne. Even when they were children, she’d been good at playing dreadful. He neve
r had any idea she was near until she leapt out from behind a stack of cannonballs or a topiary shogun and “ate” him.

  And then there she was, doing it again. A glance away and back, and the grounds were deserted no longer: Anne was halfway to the house from the dojo. Perhaps she’d been visiting her zombie friends again, biding her time until her cousin chose to join her little salon of the undead. Darcy would see to it that she had a long, long wait.

  He started to leave, intending to hurry to his room and do what he had to quickly, but a flurry of movement on the lawn turned him toward the window yet again.

  A man on horseback had ridden around the side of the house and was approaching Anne. His presumption was extraordinary. His appearance was shocking.

  He was a big heavy-featured man with a sweaty face, bristly chin whiskers, and fiery eyes. The luminosity Darcy could see around him seemed to ebb and flow, strobing from almost blinding bright to a dull gray glow.

  As Darcy watched, the man slid from his saddle, shoved a hand under his dust-covered coat, and produced a stubby pepper-box pistol—which he proceeded to point at Anne.

  Darcy raced from the room, and seconds later he was bursting out of the servant’s entrance at the back of the house, his aunt’s suicide sword still clutched in one hand. The man swung his gun on him as he came closer, and it occurred to Darcy that there might be no call for hara-kiri after all. Perhaps the stranger would spare him the trouble.

  “Stay back!” Anne cried out when she saw Darcy. “This needn’t concern you!”

  She looked even paler than usual—a feat on order with the Atlantic growing wetter.

  The woman could walk among unmentionables without a care, yet this man, whoever he was, seemed to fill her with fear?

  Darcy kept approaching.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he called to the man. “Who are you?”

  “He is a lunatic, that is all,” Anne said. “He rides out here from Sevenoaks from time to time to spew his fantasies of persecution. He’s no danger as long as we—”

  “I am Sir Angus MacFarquharrr,” the man said firmly (and with a burr as thick as a Highlands porridge).