“Well, Saint Peter’s piss!” The gloak trudged across the grassy stretch toward me. “You’re looking mighty fine. A hell of a lot better than last time I saw you.”
He snickered at his own joke and drew close to me, towering over me even in my taller faux-Delphine body. He smelled of gin and unwashed clothes. My pulse pounded a little stronger, faster. I pulled Dietrich’s magic closer to me, using it to reinforce my own to maintain my shape.
“I have the final payment.” I held up the bag. Delphine had given me instructions on how to make the transaction.
“What did you do—take out another loan to get a healer to patch you up? You look ready for round two.”
Panic surged in me.
Steady. I won’t let him hurt you. He’ll die first. The controlled fury in Dietrich’s words, the heat of him, even this far away, broke through my fear.
You are such a steam engine, you know that, right?
I felt his low laughter in my mind. I haven’t even done anything yet!
I didn’t say anything to the man. Just pulled out the stack of bills with trembling fingers, fanned them so he could see it was all there, and then counted out half to give to him. “I’ve got the other half right here. Now sign the paid in full document.” Delphine had said that the document was priceless. It was the only proof the loan shark would accept that the transaction had been made. He would leave her and her family alone, but only if his henchman here signed it.
He thumbed through the bills and tucked them in the pocket of his grimy coat. “Tell you what—how about I sign it in exchange for tupping your creamy little arse again? I promise not to rough you up as much this time.”
I gave the man my best Delphine sneer. “Fuck you. Sign the damned document, now!”
He shoved me against the tree and slapped his hands on either side of me. “You think you’re some kind of bloody duchess? You didn’t learn your lesson last time, your grace. Think I’ll have to teach it to you again.”
Oh god. Dietrich! I’m going to lose it.
You are not. Dietrich’s voice was strong, commanding. His magic pressed tighter around me. Keep going. I’ve got you.
I glared into the gloak’s face. “All I want is to finish this payment and to have the document signed.”
“No way you could come up with this kind of blunt except on your back, duchess. You want to finish this? Give me a piece of that.”
My vision was growing dark. My heart shook with fury and fear. “You already had your piece. You owe me your signature.”
At once, his knees buckled. One meaty hand disappeared behind him. He tumbled forward, his head nearly brushing my breasts. Before he could speak, I jammed my fingers into his eyes.
He howled, and reared back. Then he gasped, freezing.
A long, gleaming blade pressed against his throat.
From the way he was arching his back, I suspected another knife was pressing from behind.
“I think the lady made a reasonable request.” The voice was soft, deadly, like the whisper of cobra before it strikes.
Thank god, Dietrich. Took you long enough. I cringed at the snippy Delphine tone.
You’re ever so welcome, Miss Birdwell, came the sardonic reply.
“Who is this, duchess?” The man’s voice was thinned, constrained by the knife blade, but as vicious as ever. “Did you get yourself a protector? Goes to show not every man is very picky—”
The knife points pressed harder, halting his hateful words. His hands moved toward his throat. Another jerk of the knife stopped that, too. I saw the dark gleam of blood on his neck. He held up his hands in surrender.
“Where’s the paid in full document?” I demanded.
“Coat pocket,” he rasped. “Left side.”
Shit, I have to touch him?
Be quick. I don’t know how much longer I can hold him, and he’s quite a bit bigger than me. And he likely has a gun.
All great reasons to hurry. I drew close, but his hand flinched.
The knife dug deeper into his skin.
“You move your hands again and you’re dead.” The voice was eerily calm, pleasant, as if Dietrich were remarking on the very fine weather or the lovely flowers.
I swallowed hard. Quickly, I flipped back the left side of the man’s coat and pulled a folded document from the inner pocket. A fountain pen was tucked next to it and I grabbed that too.
Now step away. To the side.
I did as Dietrich ordered.
“I’m going to slowly twist my knives into your sorry corpse,” Dietrich hissed. “If you sign the document quickly enough, you’ll live. If not, I’ll have the pleasure of ridding the world of you.”
The coldness of his voice brought chills even to me. I didn’t say anything to him through our connection. I was more than a little scared to.
“Give him the pen and document,” he told me. He pressed the blades deeper.
The gloak whimpered.
I put the paper and pen into his trembling hands. He brought his hands together, fumbling with the document and pen.
Dietrich hadn’t been bluffing—he really was slowly, excruciatingly driving the knives into the man’s flesh. His rage, barely restrained, roiled around him.
Now, Miss Birdwell.
I had one more job to do. I reached into a pocket in my skirt and pulled out a syringe. I uncapped the end with a long, thick needle.
I had only practiced this a few times on a chicken carcass.
The man shook the pen—it wasn’t signing. Tears ran down his face. I forced myself not to feel pity. He had nearly killed Delphine. If we hadn’t found her when we did, he would have been a murderer.
Quickly!
Right. I took a deep breath. Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped close to the man.
I jabbed the needle hard into his upper arm. It slid easily through the wool of his coat and through his shirt sleeves, piercing his skin.
“Bloody hell!” he cried.
Without thinking, I pressed the plunger down. He cried out.
I yanked the syringe out, wringing another groan from him. I capped the needle, not wanting to see how it shone with his blood.
He scribbled an illegible signature onto the document and flung it at me.
Dietrich released some of the pressure of the knives.
I gave the man the pouch with the rest of the payment.
“What did you do to me?” His voice was hoarse.
His neck was smeared with blood, but I didn’t think Dietrich had hit the main artery.
“Just made sure you will never, ever get a ‘piece’ of anyone’s creamy little arse again.” I put to use all of Delphine’s hatred and scorn. “In that syringe was a tiny machine. It runs on the protein in your muscle, and it will be there the rest of your life.” I felt a little bolder now. I stood by the tree, in his line of vision, but out of reach of his hands. “It secretes a chemical, and in about ten minutes, your little tool—” I fluttered my fingers dismissively toward his crotch. “—is going to be as limp as a month-old stalk of celery. For the rest of your life, you’ll be lucky if you can pee with it, much less fuck anyone with it.”
As my words sank into his terror-addled brain, a dark flush spread over his face. “You bitch,” he growled. “I’ll kill you!”
Instantly, the knives pressed in again. “No. You won’t,” came the ghostly calm voice. “But here’s what you will do. You will take the payment back to your master. You will leave Miss Birdwell’s family alone. Neither you or your master will ever contact her or her loved ones again. The debt is paid in full.”
“How will you stop me from hunting down her brood of street rats? I know exactly where they live.”
“They’ve been moved someplace safe. And there are investigators watching over them. If you try to trace them, you’ll find a detective more than happy to track you back to your master. And I’m sure there are plenty of things you wouldn’t want an investigator to discover. Am I right?”
<
br /> The man put on a blustering grin that was more grimace than smile. He looked straight at me. “Don’t know why you’d bother with a whore like her,” he told Dietrich. “Unless you like screwing a dead, cold fish.”
“Oh, that’s quite enough from you.”
In a blur, he released the knives. The man spun around to face him. Before he could move further, Dietrich’s hand slammed into the gloak’s nose. His head snapped back, blood spurting. He dropped to the ground.
Dietrich stepped back, shaking out his hand. He slid the knives into scabbards at his hip, and knelt to check the man’s pulse. “He’ll be fine. Well, relatively speaking, anyway. When he wakes, he’ll take the payment to his employer. If he doesn’t, he’s a dead man because Delphine will have the signed Paid In Full document.” He sounded a little out of breath. His dark hair was flung across his eyes, and he held himself with the arrogance and grace of a lion.
I couldn’t move. Even the carnival master had never been so deadly. “My god, where did you learn to do that?” It was my own voice speaking. I must have lost the shift when Dietrich knocked out the man.
He glanced up at me, blinking, as if he had almost forgotten I was there. “The fight master in Caerdydd.” He shrugged as if it weren’t important. “Are you all right?”
No! I was never going to be all right. I wanted to curl up in my own bed or in Nadine’s parlor next to the fire and never come out again. “I’m fine. I thought you knew fencing.”
“Among other things. We should go now. Before he wakes up.”
My feet wouldn’t move. My mouth was dry. Even the river water was looking good at this point. “You…were going to kill him.”
His eyes snapped to me. “No I wasn’t.”
“Looked that way to me.”
He smiled a little. “Every director has a little acting ability, don’t you know that? I can be convincing when I need to be.”
I didn’t totally believe, though, that tonight had all been an act. His raw fury had seemed too real to me.
But at the same time, he had defended me. He’d really had my back the entire time. We had been a team, and we’d delivered our unorthodox version of justice, for Delphine.
The fear subsided a bit, and in its place I felt a rush of triumph. Suddenly, scary, dark, avenging Dietrich looked damn sexy to me.
Maybe it was post-fight euphoria. Maybe it was plain old lust. But I was totally energized. My entire body flamed. For him.
I strode around the unconscious man and slammed my hands against Dietrich’s solid chest.
“You—” Thump. “Scared—” Shove. “Me!” Thud.
He graciously stumbled back a few steps, a rather wicked grin twisting his lips. “I scared him too.” He kicked toward the knocked out goon.
“Maybe you need to start using some of that during rehearsals. I bet Delphine would stop giving you so many problems.”
He looked startled. A rueful smile touched his lips, as if he hadn’t quite thought of that possibility yet.
Are you saying I need to frighten them?
Hello? Yes, my dear, cog-brained director! Well, maybe don’t use knives…Master Fenrey might object.
“All right. No knives. Swords?”
“Idiot.”
“I sense I’m about to get thoroughly scolded.”
“Amazing—they don’t call you a genius for nothing, do they.”
He shrugged. “You’re welcome to scold me. All the way to the theater. I’ve got some delightful ideas on how to silence you.”
He wasn’t the only one with some acting ability. I huffed, spun around, and marched toward the steps to the underground river. Then I looked over my shoulder. He was still standing by the man.
“You have to catch me first,” I called, offering him my most flirtatious smile. Then I took off for the steps, my heart racing, and laughter coloring my breath.
The chase was brief. He caught me, because I wanted him to. He slammed me against the limestone walls of the stairway and devoured me. He laced his fingers with mine and pinned my hands against the cool stone. He kissed away my fear, burning it to ash with his fire until I was liquid flame.
I told you, I’ve got you, Gia. I’ll always be there for you. I’ll never give you reason to distrust or fear me. Never.
He kept kissing me until even my heart believed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Over the next five days, each moment became more precious as the seconds and minutes flowed together, an ever-quickening stream of time.
Ten hours training Nadine to use my gadgets, the inner satisfaction of knowing she’d never need to.
Sixteen seconds—our record for quickest shift. I lost track of the number of times my friends pressed around me, their magic lifting me up and making my own magic strong.
Five nights spent rehearsing.
Twenty-five hours—about how much sleep we got over those five nights.
Seventy-eight minutes to figure out how to kidnap Nadine. Another hour and a half to convince Lucy to help us—not including the carriage ride between her house and the theater.
Six hours and thirty-seven minutes. That’s how long I had stayed shifted the night we decided to stop counting. I didn’t lose the shift that night—I chose when to return to my own form.
Fifty-seven minutes—the entire amount of time the police graciously gave to Dietrich to coordinate their plans with his. Plans that were supposed to keep an apprentice from being murdered. They didn’t know that the real Nadine was expecting to perform that evening—she had to keep it secret or else the Theatrical Guild would have put a quick stop to the whole thing. Just as well, since we had no intention of letting her anywhere near the stage that night.
A nanosecond. The length of time for Dietrich to win my heart over and over again. Stolen kisses, a steamed glance, the flash of a smile, or brush of his hand against mine. Fleeting moments—all the time we had.
Eternity. How long I wished it could all last.
I had told Raymond I couldn’t deal with romance until after the performance, but the closer Monday came, the deeper the truth grew in my heart that there might not be an “after” for me. It seemed unfair that Raymond had lost before he’d really had much chance to compete. And it wasn’t that I didn’t have feelings for him—the way I felt about him was deep and sweet and beautiful.
But there was fire between Dietrich and me, a knowledge that our time was brief. Either I would be murdered by the Peacock on Monday night, or I would survive—and we would have to face the reality that a vicimorph and presul could never be together.
As it was, I was more than a little concerned that our magic would bond before the performance. There was just too much that no one knew about comagica bonds, and nobody thought it was a good idea to waste valuable presuls or vicimorphs in trying to experiment.
After a long tech week, Sunday evening was the final dress rehearsal. I sat next to Dietrich as he partnered with Nadine and gave me some final coaching on how to best emulate her. After the dress rehearsal, the four of us did our own final run-through. Dietrich said I was as ready as I could be. He sent Thea and Raymond away and gave me a kiss so hot, I was surprised the fire curtain high above the stage didn’t drop down on us.
I wish we had stayed that night in each other’s arms. I don’t know if I could have made love with him, but I wish we had tried. Instead, we did the responsible thing and said goodnight. We needed sleep if we were to face a murderer the next day.
Monday dawned, and Dietrich and I remained unbonded magically. It seemed like such an ordinary day. I met Nadine for breakfast. We talked about how Delphine was doing, and I made arrangements with her later that day to access her costumes so that I could sew in some of the devices I had created. She didn’t know I was also planning to shorten the hems by a half inch to account for the necessary difference in height between her and my pseudo-Nadine persona. Since she was a living person, I couldn’t duplicate her exactly when I shape-shifted. The half-an
-inch difference in height was only one of several subtle differences we’d created in order to allow our magic to work.
Her tension was almost tangible. I didn’t miss the irony in that. We both were bracing ourselves for what we thought might be the last day of our lives. I wanted to talk to her, to ask her that one, deepest question plaguing my heart. But her knuckles were already white as she gripped her teacup, and her eyes were shadowed and troubled. I didn’t want to make it worse, so I kept the conversation light. I was her clever, witty Minx, until I teased a smile to her face.
I even attended a few classes. It seemed strange to be back, possibly for the last time. I made sure to talk to as many of my fellow apprentices as I could. Hopefully, they would never have to know I meant it as goodbye.
In the afternoon, I wrote a set of notes—to Nadine and Raymond and Thea, a general one to our other friends, and even one for Delphine. And yes, one to Dietrich. I placed them in the drawer of my nightstand, planning to tell Thea to retrieve them if anything happened to me. If I ended life this evening, I wouldn’t leave many possessions behind. It was those people who mattered, and I wanted them to know I was thinking of them on this final day.
The sun sank low in the sky, and I was ready—alterations done, preparations made. I couldn’t eat, so I skipped dinner.
All too soon, it was an hour until call, when the cast was required to be in their dressing rooms. The theater vibrated with the usual opening-night energy. The halls and lobby were crawling with the Empress’s own elite guard of rozzers, making sure all was secure for Empress Antonia to take her place in the royal box. She was a frequent patron of the Alchemy, so we knew what to expect when she was in the audience.
Unfortunately, those rozzers were all sworn to dedicate their whole efforts to keeping the Empress safe. A person could be shot in the head in front of them, and they’d make no move to prevent it, unless the Empress was in danger. I understood the need for such discipline, but I couldn’t help resenting it tonight.
But I couldn’t dwell on that. It was time.
I met Thea, Raymond, and Dietrich in his office to sort of wrap things up before Lucy arrived. There wasn’t really much to say. I think we all just wanted to be together one last time.
Chains of Silver: a YA Theater Steampunk Novel (Alchemy Empire Book 1) Page 34
