You Only Love Twice (London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy Book 3)

by Bec McMaster

  "Queen of Diamonds," she whispered.

  "Someone pinned this to my front door with a knife, then put a bullet in it. It happened just before lunch, and woke me."

  Gemma’s breath came a little faster. "He wanted you to know he was coming for her."

  "Indeed."

  She was convinced, as nothing else could have convinced her. The Chameleon had spent years playing games with Malloryn. Every death had been a mockery. A catch me if you can. And then she'd finally done it, and the murders stopped, and she'd had no reason to doubt the Chameleon's identity. "This is him. He's back. And he's definitely after the queen."

  But where had he been for three years?

  "Find him," Malloryn instructed. "I need to return to the Tower and put security protocols into place."

  "He'll be on the inside already," she whispered.

  "I know."

  Their eyes met.

  "If he kills the queen, then London goes up in flames," Malloryn said in a dangerously soft voice, and suddenly Gemma knew the stakes were higher than they'd ever been. "We cannot afford to fail."

  No matter what.

  But who the hell was the real Chameleon?

  And where had he been?

  Chapter 5

  "Where the hell is Langley?" Ghost demanded, standing on the docks that led to the Core—the secret heart of their London operations.

  Where you'll never find him, Obsidian thought, though he didn't dare meet his brother's searing blue eyes.

  The leader of the dhampir paced along the train platform deep in Undertown, where their base was hidden. Ghost stood almost an inch taller than him, his hair an unruly shock of white, his brows and eyelashes bleached to match. He didn't dare go aboveground for fear he'd send people screaming at the sight of his pale, pale skin; a certain sign of the Fade.

  But then, Ghost generally preferred to avoid most humans anyway, unless he was thirsty.

  "You sent Langley after a dangerous target," Silas replied. He was another of the original dhampir who'd been created by Dr. Erasmus Cremorne at Falkirk Asylum. There'd been seven of them that survived the initial experiment, their bond forged through blood, pain, and finally fire, when they'd banded together to break out. "What'd you expect?"

  "Success." Ghost clasped his gloved hands behind his back. "This makes two of our acolytes dead by the hands of one of the Company of Rogues. The Master won't appreciate our failure. And Langley was good. I trained him myself. This makes no sense."

  "Clearly your new batch of dhampir aren't as good as you think they are," Obsidian murmured. "Or you underestimated Miss Townsend."

  The same way he once had.

  Never again.

  "Do you want me to take care of it?" Silas asked. "Why not send your best?"

  Obsidian's gut muscles locked. He kept all expression off his face, however, and merely stared at the old train platform beneath his feet.

  Silas was the one dhampir he actually gave a damn about anymore.

  If he considered anyone a brother, it was Silas.

  Killing him would be... difficult.

  Could he do it? Was Miss Townsend's life worth the price of the one man he still considered a brother?

  No. Surely not.

  But there was that slither of darkness within him, a whisper of demand and ownership. Mine. The mere thought of someone else putting their hands on Gemma made the craving rise within him, as if his darker half was trying to tell him something.

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  What had she done to him?

  "Why not send two of the acolytes?" he countered. Ghost stiffened, as if considering both options, and Obsidian realized he needed to sell his suggestion. "This is plainly a larger task than one can handle alone, but I hardly think Silas needs to stir himself. Send two. Give them a week, at least, to watch Miss Townsend's movements before they make an attempt. Perhaps Langley rushed the job?"

  "Perhaps I should send you?" Ghost's voice grew dangerously soft. "If we're speaking of my best...."

  "I thought you wanted me watching the Ivory Tower? You've been praising your new Falcon recruits. Surely they can handle a simple assassination?" Pain bloomed within him, stabbing through his brain. Easy. This felt like a trap, though he had nothing to prove. He'd burned Gemma from his memories years ago.

  Which is why you're killing those sent to hunt her.

  Ghost and Silas exchanged a glance.

  "You are," Ghost finally said. "I want you to get me inside the tower."

  "I'm working on it." He'd been patiently mapping the keep’s strengths and weaknesses for weeks now. The queen lived there, high in her gilded tower, thinking herself safe from the world.

  Obsidian didn't truly care whether the queen lived or died, but the Master had given strict instructions.

  The queen needed to die a bloody death.

  London needed to burn.

  And the Duke of Malloryn needed to watch it all happen.

  "Then work harder," Ghost threatened. "I need a way inside the Ivory Tower before the queen's birthday ball."

  "My apologies. It's not as though there are several legions of Coldrush Guards to avoid, a good legion of metaljacket automatons one mustn't wake, and a wall that's impossible to climb—even for me."

  "Are you being sarcastic?"

  "Would I dare?"

  They stared at each other. Careful. Brother. Obsidian gave Ghost a thin, faintly edged smile. Frustration edged within him. Ghost ruled the dhampir. He always had, but ever since he and Dr. Richter managed to make a breakthrough with the elixir vitae and learned to create new dhampir, Ghost had become insufferably demanding.

  I am not one of your sycophantic underlings. And if you think I'm going to kiss your boots, then you should perhaps think again.

  "It's that straight fuckin' face of his," Silas said, bursting into the silence as he slammed a hand down on Obsidian's shoulder, squeezing lightly in warning. "Can never tell when he's makin' mock, but Obsidian knows how important this is. He'll get us in. Ain't nowhere he can't get into if he's half a mind. You know that. Just needs time."

  Ghost's eyes narrowed. "You're dismissed. You have three days to get inside the tower and out again. I need the transmitter placed at the very top. And I think you're overdue a visit to Dr. Richter. I'll have him schedule a reconditioning appointment for you."

  "You're too kind. But I’ll need all my faculties for the task ahead of me." Visits to Dr. Richter's always helped ease the headaches that plagued him, but the cost was several days rest. Obsidian couldn't afford to lose consciousness for so long. Not with the target on Miss Townsend's back. He bowed his head as he stepped backward. "I'll work on the tower."

  Ghost turned to Silas. "Send two of the new class after Miss Townsend. They have a week to deliver her body to Malloryn's doorstep. I want him distracted, his attention turned away from the tower, while we plan how to get at the queen."

  "Consider it done," Silas replied.

  "And how goes Project: Chameleon?" Ghost murmured under his breath to Silas, as Obsidian turned toward the narrow stairs that led from Undertown up to the streets of Bethnal Green.

  His ears pricked up.

  "You could say... it's been resurrected," Silas replied.

  "Good. That should catch Malloryn's attention."

  Even with his back turned, Obsidian could hear the smile in his brother's voice. Taking the stairs two at a time, he threw himself into the climb, his thoughts churning.

  The situation with Miss Townsend wouldn't end with Ghost's defeat.

  No matter how many dhampir Obsidian killed, Ghost would keep sending them until she was dead, and it made the muscle in Obsidian's jaw tense.

  She was his.

  His target.

  His to kill.

  She'd betrayed him in Russia. He remembered that, though his memory was patchy. He also remembered the taste of her mouth, though he refused to think about those thoughts at all.

  He needed to get this G
emma situation under control. Find out why he couldn't kill her. Find out why he couldn't stay away from her.

  But first, he needed to ensure his fellow dhampir never got their hands upon her. He'd managed to give himself time. A week before they made their move. Which meant he had a week to burn her out of his system for good.

  How the hell was he going to lure her into the open?

  He couldn't break into Malloryn's not-so-secret townhouse and steal her out of her bed, as the rest of the Company of Rogues was on the defense following his recent break-in and the last thing he needed was to draw attention to the act.

  Somehow he had to get his hands on her and finish this, before Ghost did.

  And that was when he realized just how to get her out of the safe house.

  "We've got another potential Chameleon target," Baroness Schröder said, striding into the breakfast room.

  Gemma almost spilled her cup of tea as the baroness slapped the file on the table. She jerked it toward her. "Another? I thought he was going after the queen?"

  Inside the file was a King of Diamonds card with a bullet hole right through the center.

  "Leo Barrons received this late last night," the baroness said.

  "The Duke of Caine's heir?" she asked, looking up in surprise. Barrons served as Caine's proxy on the Council of Dukes and remained firm friends with Malloryn. Indeed, he was possibly the only person Malloryn truly considered a friend these days. "Does Malloryn know?"

  Isabella poured herself a cup of tea. "Yes. Herbert said Malloryn sent a servant with the card this morning. He couldn't make an appearance himself. Apparently he's having his final fitting for the wedding this morning. But he'll be here at eleven, and he wants you ready."

  Hell. Chameleon or not, that had been carelessly done of her.

  Gemma circled the table, setting her own tea down, and hugged Isabella from behind. "You know Malloryn cares nothing for Miss Hamilton. This is merely a result of the girl outplaying him. Her reputation is ruined and if Malloryn doesn't marry her then so is his."

  After all, the girl's dress had been torn and her throat bloodied when she'd thrown herself at Malloryn in the garden of some blue blood's ball. Two seconds later, half the Echelon came walking around the hedge, and the girl claimed he’d proposed. As a proponent of the Thrall Bill, in which he'd argued for tighter laws concerning what a blue blood could and could not do with his contracted thrall, Malloryn could hardly refuse.

  It was clear she'd been with some blue blood.

  If Malloryn had denied her, he'd have been considered a hypocrite, and any sort of political sway he'd managed to build behind the bill would have vanished.

  Isabella reached up to squeeze her hand before politely disengaging. "Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

  "Give him time to deal with this wedding fiasco, and then...."

  "I don't need time." Isabella pushed away from her and dumped two sugar cubes into her tea. "He called off our arrangement weeks ago. Said it wasn't fair to either of us. I suspect he meant me."

  Gemma stared at her friend helplessly. "I never knew you had such intense feelings for him."

  "I don't," Isabella replied sharply. "I knew what I was getting myself into when I seduced him. Malloryn doesn't own a heart. There was no point trying to capture it."

  But he'd captured hers.

  Gemma could see it written all over the other woman.

  With her own experience in heartbreak, she ached to see someone else desperately trying to gather their shattered decorum and put the pieces of their heart together.

  "What are you doing tomorrow night?" she asked.

  Isabella's dark eyes flickered to hers. "I haven't any plans. Why?"

  "Come with me. You and I shall have a night at the theatre together. We'll laugh and drink far too much champagne, and maybe engage in a little casual flirtation." Somehow she managed a saucy smile. "Who knows? Perhaps the both of us will find a distraction for the night? My bed's been empty for far too long."

  Isabella's eyes lit up, then she sighed. "I suspect you're going to be too busy with this Chameleon business. Malloryn wants you working on Barrons. He's setting things into play at the tower to protect the queen himself."

  "Shall we postpone it then?" Gemma lifted her cup of tea to Isabella's. "The second I capture the Chameleon, we'll celebrate. No gentlemen allowed. Perhaps we could invite Ingrid and Ava?"

  Instantly Isabella's face shuttered. "As much as I enjoy their company, they're both sickeningly happy at the moment. I don't think I could stand to hear any more talk of weddings right now, and if matters go the way I suspect they will, Miss McLaren will be wearing a ring on her finger in no time."

  Most likely a correct assumption. Gemma deliberately chinked her porcelain cup against Isabella's. "Just you and me then. We'll drink to broken hearts and set out to break a few of our own. Now. Brief me on the Barrons situation."

  She'd taken the bait.

  Obsidian strolled through the misty shadows around the Duchess of Casavian's manor, watching as the curvaceous figure moved through the windows. He'd recognize Gemma anywhere; nobody else quite managed that seductive sway, with the flirtatious lift of her shoulder and the tilt of her chin.

  He could vaguely remember seeing her for the first time across the ballroom of the Winter Palace five years ago.

  Blond curls had been draped elegantly over one of her pale shoulders, and her gown had been the color of blood on snow. She moved like a woman well aware of her body, all honeyed smiles and swaying hips as she rested her hand on the Duke of Malloryn's arm, surveying the ballroom before her. Elegant, graceful, and sensual. The cut of her gown hugged those rounded breasts, with a thin scrap of lace not quite hiding her cleavage. Everything about her was a tease. No man could resist. Even him.

  And when their eyes met....

  A breathtaking moment had shaken him, where the world had dropped away around him, his heart feeling like it stopped, quite literally, in his chest.

  With the memory came the lash of pain. Obsidian sucked in a sharp breath, bracing himself for the harsh file over his nerves.

  Do you still love her? Dr. Richter whispered in his ear as he connected the reconditioning machine to the steam-driven generator.

  Nyet, he'd replied, his body flinching as Richter flicked the switch and the generator began to hum. He knew this pain far too well, and his muscles clenched as he began to anticipate it.

  Ghost took up the positive and negative clamps. The bitch betrayed you. She tried to burn you alive and then protested her innocence, thinking we'd fall for that. We shall burn her from your mind. By the time I'm done, you'll never willingly think of her again.

  Please, he'd begged, needing to drive the ache of her from his heart.

  The reconditioning had succeeded far better than he'd have ever hoped.

  He couldn't think of Gemma without feeling the answering echo of pain anymore.

  He could barely remember their time together.

  Just the whisper of poison from her lips as she lied to him with her touch and her smile. The kiss of heat on his skin as he woke to find the bed hangings on fire and "Hollis" nowhere to be seen.

  In the window before him, Gemma reached for the lantern on the stark outline of what he presumed was a chest of drawers. Second window from the end of the house, third floor.

  Skoro moya yadovitaya lyubov....

  Soon.

  Gemma leaned forward to blow the lantern out, and light fled from the room, plunging it into merely another darkened square in the stucco brickwork.

  Sensing a shadow moving on the rooftop next to Casavian manor, Obsidian faded into the overgrown hedge across the street like a wraith.

  Moonlight refracted off pale hair on the rooftop. Just a brief flicker before the shadow vanished, but Obsidian knew who it was.

  Caleb Byrnes, the COR agent who'd been transformed into a dhampir by Zero. Though newly made, Byrnes represented a threat, because he alone could potenti
ally match Obsidian if it came down to a fight between them.

  He'd gotten her out of the COR house.

  Now he had to separate her from the rest of Malloryn's agents.

  The sensation of being watched was back.

  Gemma gathered her skirts as she climbed the steps to the British Museum at Barrons's side, her gaze darting here and there, and the small briefcase she carried banging against the side of her leg.

  This was where a pale man had tried to kill her almost two months ago, leaving her bleeding and begging on the floor.

  This was where a second man had saved her, though she'd caught only a glimpse of him in the reflection of one of the glass cases.

  For a moment she'd thought she'd seen a ghost from the past, but it had to have been her mind playing tricks on her.

  Dmitri had died in Russia, according to all Malloryn's reports.

  And yet, what were the chances two "pale men" had been sighted right when the city seemed overrun with these cursed dhampir.

  Gemma couldn't suppress her nerves. Barrons had been invited to a lecture on the White Court. The Imperial Family of the White Court were considered the world's first blue bloods, and she and Malloryn had bandied about theories they were actually dhampir, for Dr. Cremorne's research indicated as such when he had discovered how to create the elixir vitae from some ancient Tibetan documents.

  A lecture on dhampir origins in the exact place where one had attacked her?

  Surely it had to be mere coincidence.

  Either that, or the Chameleon was amusing himself at her expense.

  "This way," Barrons said, catching sight of the group of tweed lingering in the foyer.

  "I wasn't aware you had an interest in the origins of the craving virus."

  Barrons strode at her side like a leonine creature stalking his own personal savannah. "It's a recent interest of mine. Malloryn asked me to do a little research."

  He had? Gemma hurried along at Barrons's side, reverting to her meek secretary persona.

  "What do you want me to do?" Barrons asked.

  "Nothing out of the usual. Attend the lecture, talk with the other scientists. I'll be in the background, keeping an eye out for any unusual activity. As soon as we arrive, I'll take a brief tour of the museum to check the security."