withdrew his knife.
Damn her. She deserved to die.
"MY GOD! Scott, hurry and fetch the doctor, will
you? Miss? Miss...."
Blinking in and out of consciousness, Gemma
slowly found herself on the floor. Someone was
patting her shoulder. She jerked and caught his
wrist in an iron grip, then looked around. Blood.
She could smell blood, and it called to the
parasitic predator deep inside her.
"Get away from me," she snapped, scrambling
backward on the floor.
The curator remained kneeling, his face white
and his mustache quivering as he held his hands up
in a sign of surrender. "Miss, I'm trying to help.
You're bleeding."
Help. The poor man thought that she was
frightened of him. If only he knew that Gemma was
frightened of what she might do to him in this state.
"Just... give me some room to get some air,"
she told him. And stay right where you are, with
all of that tempting blood on your hands. Her
blood, she realized, and forced herself to take
stock.
The man sucked in a sharp breath as he saw
her eyes, and scrambled back.
"Don't move," she said, as the darkness inside
her whispered, Look how it flees us. Look how it
runs. Like prey....
Gemma squeezed her eyes shut and
swallowed hard. She was in control of herself.
Always. "Just don't move quickly," she repeated in
a choked voice. "I need a moment to gather my...
my wits."
The man swallowed. "As you wish."
Gemma let go of the breath she'd been
holding. The world slowly receded in intensity as
the shadows washed from her vision, and the
staccato beat of his heartbeat grew quieter. A blue
blood might pretend to be human, but what beat in
their ragged hearts was anything but. And
sometimes the chilling intensity of that darker part
of herself bothered her. People were not prey.
They were flesh and blood, with hopes and dreams
of their own, but when the darkness washed over
her, she couldn't see that anymore.
"It's all right," she told the curator,
swallowing the saliva that had flooded her mouth.
"I'm myself again. Just move slowly."
"Are you... unhurt?" His gaze dropped to the
blood on her coat, but he kept his hands upright in
the surrender position.
Gemma patted her side, where the knife had
gone in. Her fingers came away wet, but she felt
fine. The stab wound was tender, but not the sort of
fiery pain that she'd expected. Her coat was tied
neatly around her padded waist. How had...? The
last thing she remembered was it being torn open...
and the man with his hands around her throat.
And then the darkness.
Or no.... Had she seen someone else then?
She winced. What had happened? There was no
sign of her attacker, only a smear of dark blood on
the floor, as if someone had hastily wiped it up.
And it wasn't her blood. Hers was a richer color: a
blue-red in tone, which was what had given the
blue bloods their name. This was the blackest
shade of red she'd ever seen.
What on earth...?
"Hold still, my dear. I'll..." The curator
looked around helplessly, evidently unaccustomed
to dealing with injured blue bloods. "I'll fetch a
doctor."
Then he was gone, and Gemma carefully
levered herself to her feet.
She had no intention of staying here. After all,
someone had just tried to kill her, and although
she'd blacked out before he could do so, clearly he
hadn't just stopped out of the goodness of his heart.
She had to get to safety, before he tried again.
And then there was Ulbricht's comment to
deal with.
SIXTEEN
INGRID’S NOSTRILS FLARED. "I smell blood."
She yanked open the front door just as Gemma
staggered against the lintel.
“What happened?” Ingrid demanded, grabbing
the other woman by the arm. There was blood on
her coat, and her wig hung askew. “Ava!”
Ulbricht a couple of hours ago,” Gemma said,
looking pale. “I’m fine, Ingrid, I promise.
Everything has healed, but I'm still a little weak at
the knees.”
Ava came out of the parlor, wiping her hands
on her apron. “Oh, my goodness!” she said,
hurrying
to
Gemma’s
other
side.
“What
happened?”
Together they helped Gemma inside as she
told them about it.
"You're certain the attacker was a blue
blood?" Ingrid demanded, once Gemma had
finished.
"It happened so quickly," Gemma replied,
"but his skin was as pale as snow, and his hair so
white it was almost translucent. He was definitely
a blue blood. One quite close to the Fade, I'd
expect, as his blood was almost black."
"But blue bloods don't have to deal with the
Fade anymore, do they?" A few years ago, the
Fade had been a blue blood's greatest fear; when
the craving virus began to overwhelm them and
their color began to fade, until they were slowly
starting to transform into a vampire. "Isn't there that
Distillation device, where they can counteract the
CV virus in their blood? The Duke of Moncrieff
designed it before he died."
“This way,” Ava said, guiding Gemma into a
chair. “Let me have a look at it.”
"I don't know why my attacker's CV levels
were so far advanced, but he was clearly at the
higher end of the scale." Gemma shuddered and
touched her throat as if remembering, her voice
dropping. "He was so much stronger than I am."
"SOG Agent, do you think?"
Ava peeled the coat back and sucked in a
breath. “Hmm. This is healed, but there’s some
unusual mottling here. Let me test your CV levels.
Here, hold out your finger.” She pricked Gemma’s
finger, and headed to the brass spectrometer to take
her CV percentage rating.
"I don't know." Exasperation gained an edge
in Gemma's voice as she glanced at what Ava was
doing. "I'm usually more aware than that. I don't
even know how they got the jump on me. They
shouldn't have."
"The real question is: how did you escape?"
Ava murmured, and the room fell silent as the brass
spectrometer spat out a small curl of paper with
her CV levels on it. "Or more to the point, what is
wrong with you?" Ava frowned, examining the
paper.
"Wrong with me?" Gemma sat up.
“They've gone through the roof," Ava said.
“You told me you were in the low thirties.”
“I am.” Gemma held out a hand, and Ava
deposited the reading there. “Oh, my goodness.
They’re eighty-three.” She looked up, pale faced
with fear. “What does that mean?”
“Let me test it again,” Ava muttered. “That
can’t be right. The machine might need to be
recalibrated.”
Gemma bit her lip. “The stab wound had
healed over before I even woke. And I couldn’t
have been out of action for too long. That's not
normal. It should have taken two or three hours for
the wound to seal over completely."
Ava held up a thermometer. "Open up. I want
to check your temperature."
Ingrid paced. An attacker who was in the
Fade.... She couldn't help but think of Ulbricht's
mistress, with her silvery blonde hair and skin like
bleached snow. "Describe the assault again," she
said abruptly. "Every last detail. You thought you
saw someone in the reflection, you said... do you
think that someone saved you?"
"I don't know what to think," Gemma admitted
around the thermometer, and it was clear that the
assault upset her. But she went through the attack
again, her voice clear and devoid of emotion,
dealing out nothing but the facts. "But there's no
other reason for him to stop trying to kill me.
Something startled him, and he ran off."
"None of this makes sense,” Ingrid muttered.
"You're telling me."
The brass spectrometer spat out a scroll of
paper with little figures on it. Ava frowned as she
held it up. "That's odd."
"Odd?" Gemma looked at her. "What do you
mean odd?"
Ava lowered the piece of paper. "You’re
definitely at eighty-three." She poked the
spectrometer. "Unless there is something seriously
wrong with this device."
"Still?" Gemma swung off the table, and
snatched the piece of paper off Ava. "Hell and
bloody ashes. I don't feel any differently."
"Well, something healed that wound faster
than it normally would," Ava said, fiddling with
her microscope. "Sometimes a wound can
exacerbate the amount of craving virus in the body.
We call it the blooming, though I've only ever
heard of rare cases. It's usually a grievous injury
that sets it off, where the body can no longer fight
against the craving virus and the injury, so it stops
fighting the virus, we think, in order to save the
person's life. The virus blooms out of control and
the blue blood survives, but he's now prone to
irrational hungers and dangerous side effects."
"I was stabbed in the side, Ava. It was hardly
life-threatening. Or not like a knife to the heart,
anyway. Would that cause this blooming?"
"I don’t think so. But how else do you explain
how you're healing so swiftly, or why your CV
levels went through the roof," Ava pointed out.
"Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"What I am," Gemma replied, pressing her
hand to her temples as if expecting to find herself
sweating, "is filthy and freezing cold. I need a bath,
and a glass of mulled blud-wein to make myself
feel quite human again. I am positively covered in
grime. And no doubt Malloryn shall want a report
on this, and... oh, hell! I meant to track Sunderland
to this meeting with the SOG." She screwed up her
nose, then winced as a sharp movement forced her
hand to her side.
"You're not tracking anybody," Ingrid said.
"We cannot simply allow this chance to slip
through our fingers! What if the entire membership
is in attendance?"
"It won't," she assured Gemma. "I'll go. You
do have the tracking device, don't you?"
Gemma handed it over.
"Not alone." Ava tsked. "At least let Byrnes
know what's going on. And maybe take Charlie
with you. You don't know how many blue bloods
will be there, or what you'll be walking into."
"I'll go find them right now," Ingrid replied.
Ava might be out of her depth in company, but she
was rapidly becoming the mother hen of the group.
"As for you," Ava speared Gemma with her
gaze, "I'm not going to stop digging into this. I'm
going to get a second spectrometer, to make sure
it's not the device."
"Dig away, my dear." Gemma headed for the
door, rubbing at her arms. "I shall be upstairs,
soaking in my tub."
And then she was gone.
Ingrid waited until Gemma was clearly out of
earshot. "You're worried about something."
"It's nothing." Ava tugged her apron off.
Ingrid crossed her arms over her chest. "You
do realize that you're the worst liar I've ever
encountered?"
Ava sighed. "Have a look at this. I didn't want
to show Gemma, until I work out what it means."
She gestured to her microscope, and Ingrid
peered through it. A bunch of black-red sickle-
shaped objects appeared, circulating among
redder, rounder globules. "What is it?"
"It's Gemma's blood," Ava replied, and
reached past her to replace the slide with another.
"And this is what a blue blood's blood should look
like. This is my sample."
There was definitely a difference. Ava's
example was a paler blue-red, and the globules
were rounder, like the others in the first sample,
only there were no sickle-shaped elements. Ingrid
jerked back from the microscope.
"Something happened to Gemma in that
museum. Something healed her wound at an
exacerbated rate, upped her CV levels, and set her
body into some sort of fever. Which is virtually
impossible for a blue blood. We don't fall ill. We
don't get fevers, but I quite think she's succumbing
to one, as her temperature has increased by three
degrees. None of this makes any sense to me."
"I'm certain you'll figure it out," Ingrid told
her. She frowned again. "There was something
different about Ulbricht's mistress too. When she
was unleashing the vampires from the device they
were using to tear Debney apart, she pulled a lever
down as though it was barely a nuisance. I could
barely lower it, even with all of my strength, and
verwulfen are stronger than blue bloods,
especially when we're in the midst of the
berserkergang."
"I fail to see the connection."
"Ulbricht's mistress looks like a blue blood
deep into the Fade," Ingrid replied, thinking out
loud. "And now Gemma's been attacked by a man
who looks like he's well into the Fade too, and her
CV levels
have
changed
following
their
altercation. Then there are vampires afoot, when
that is the natural conclusion to the Fade. Too many
coincidences make me begin to wonder. What if
Gemma got some of her attacker’s blood into her
wound? Would that make any difference? After all,
sometimes blue bloods use their blood t
o heal
wounds. What if this Fade blue blood had CV
levels higher than Gemma's? Would that account
for the discrepancy?"
Ava blinked. "Do you know, that is an entirely
possible theory! His blood could have healed her."
She paused in her mad rush for the spectrometer
however. "Though the shape and color of the blood
cells are unlike anything I've ever seen."
"Maybe there's some kind of change to the
fellow's... craving virus? An abnormality?"
Ava looked up from the spectrometer. "Which
means that we're not just dealing with one blue
blood deep in the Fade. We're dealing with at least
two, possibly more."
Hell.
"YOU CALLED?" Byrnes said, flourishing the
small note Ingrid had left on his pillow two hours
ago.
"Gemma's found us a lead," she said, striding
past him down the hallway of Baker Street.
"Ulbricht met with the Duke of Sunderland today,
and they mentioned a meeting of the SOG tonight.
She's too injured to follow, which means it's in our
hands. Charlie and us."
Byrnes fell into step beside her. He tucked the
note back into his shirt pocket, along with her first
one, feeling like an idiot for keeping them but
unable to leave them elsewhere. If Garrett got
wind of them, he'd never live this down, and the
idea of burning them.... No. Just no. "Just how are
you getting inside the Nighthawks headquarters?"
"Headquarters?" Ingrid paused in front of the
main door. "Or your room?"
"Both. And what did you do in there? Your
perfume was... everywhere."
On his sheets, on his pillow....
Stepping closer, she pressed her fingertips
lightly against his chest and whispered in his ear,
"Use your imagination."
Then she was through the door and striding in
those ground-eating steps toward a steam carriage
that idled at the curb. Charlie waved at him from
the driver seat, wearing fingerless gloves and a
bowler hat.
And then they were off, even as “Use your
imagination” was still plaguing him.
Cursed woman.
THOUGH he often preferred to work alone,
Byrnes swiftly began to realize that he didn't mind
working with others when they knew what they
were doing.
Ingrid loped ahead of him through the fog that
adorned London's rooftops like the icing on a cake,
with Charlie at her heels. Taking off, Byrnes leapt
across an alley and landed beside them as Charlie
fiddled with the levers on a small brass box.