Mission: Improper: London Steampunk: The Blue Blood Conspiracy (39 page)

“Doing something reckless.”
Charlie's grip on her arm slackened, but didn't disappear.
"He wants to keep you safe.
He told me about the threat against you."

A growl sounded in her throat.
"And what about him?
Who's going to protect Byrnes?"

“We all are,” Charlie replied.
“Time to bring in the others.
Zero’s taken the bait.”

A whirring sound stopped her tirade in its tracks.
Ingrid's gut plummeted through the soles of her boots.

The arrow was spinning.

A
hand reached
out and jerked the black hood off his head.

Byrnes flinched as light stabbed his sensitive eyes.
He scrambled back, but his hands were bound to the chair they'd thrust him into and the chair only scraped on the stone floor.
Zero circled him with slow sideways steps, wearing a set of black leather breeches similar to the Nighthawks uniform and a burgundy-colored coat made of velvet.
Her silvery hair curled over her shoulder in loose waves, and kohl darkened her eyes.

Rather than finding it enticing, his blood chilled.
Four maggot-pale vampires lolled around the room, resting on the rug in front of the fireplace like hounds.
Each of them wore a thick leather collar with metal coils and wires through it.

"Looks like you found me, after all."
Zero smiled, and somehow Byrnes forced himself to drag his gaze back to her.

"Looks like I did," he replied, swallowing his fear and distaste.
"Now what?"

"Now," she whispered, straddling his thighs and curling a hand around his neck, "
my
friends take care of your friends."

Byrnes's blood ran cold.
"What?"

"Oh, Byrnes," Zero crooned, tugging at his shirt collar and fiddling with it flirtatiously.
"Please tell me you didn't think I wouldn't notice a half dozen Nighthawks wandering around my asylum?
And your pretty little friend...
the verwulfen bitch.
She looks lonely—" Lifting a small flute, she blew out a series of notes.
"I think she needs someone to play with, now that you're mine."

Several chitters echoed out of the shadows of the room as all four vampires sprang to attention.
Zero lifted a small control box with an antenna on the end and smiled at him as she pressed the button.

Electricity buzzed, and two of the vampires sank back down, resting their heads on their claws as static crackled over their collars.
One of them had clearly been a woman, with sagging teats and straggly white hair that hung in clumps from its skull.
The other two headed for the door as Zero played the same set of notes on her flute.

Byrnes tried to struggle, but it was no use.
Zero's weight and the manacles were too strong for him.

"Go and glut yourselves, my pretties," she hissed behind her to the pair of vampires that slunk out through the door, before wrapping her arm around his neck playfully and crooning, "After all, we wouldn't want to be disturbed.
Would we?"

"
A
N ASYLUM
."

Of course.
The map showed that Byrnes’s beacon signal was coming from the abandoned St.
Mary's Home for the Criminally Insane.

"Makes sense," Charlie replied, taking a step in the heavy Cyclops suit that he wore.
Pistons hissed as he knelt to peer through the opening that he'd just made using the Cyclops to tear down half a brick wall.
All Ingrid could see through the glass slits in the Cyclops's headpiece was his pale face with that mop of blond curls.
"They'd have cells here to incarcerate their vampires when they weren't using them.
Or to hold people perhaps.
And they're sitting right on top of this abandoned section of Undertown.
Nobody would even see them coming in and out."

"Plus the asylum's reputation would keep most curious onlookers at bay," Garrett noted, running a hand down the stone wall.
The Nighthawks guild master insisted upon coming along and bringing two of his men.
Something about a debt he owed Byrnes from a few years ago.

Water dripped in the darkness through the hole Charlie had just made, but apart from that, all was silent.
The smell, however....

"Jesus," Garrett muttered.

Ingrid had smelled death before.
"That smells like old death," she told him.
"Something's been dumping bodies just through here."
One of the EMLEDs in hand, Ingrid crept through the hole in the wall onto a ledge, and looked down.
The Electro-Magnetic Light Emitting Device would be one of their greatest weapons this morning.

The room fell away into a pit with a narrow pair of boards stretched across it.
Ingrid squatted on the plank and then activated the EMLED, dropping it down into the hollow below.

The light tumbled end over end, then splashed to a halt far below.
Something looked up and hissed, it's eyes shining blue-white with cat shine, and then the shadowy creature fled into the darkness.
And that's when Ingrid began to make out the bodies.

Bone gleamed as the EMLED burned like phosphorus.
There were the ragged remains of clothes and misshapen lumps of rotting flesh.
She didn't need to see more.

"Vampire below," she murmured over her shoulder, looking into the darkness where the planks stretched.
"I'm guessing this is where they dump the bodies.
You're going to have to leave the Cyclops suit here, Charlie.
The plank won't sustain the weight."

"Kincaid," Charlie murmured, touching the communicator in his ear.
"Can you hear me?"

A static buzzing sounded, and Charlie's shoulders eased in relief.
"We've got something here," he said.
"Found a vampire, and maybe a way into Zero's holdout.
She's been using the old asylum as a vampire den.
Ingrid and I are going in."

Static crackled, and Charlie smiled as he let go of the button.
"I think he's actually starting to come round," he joked quietly.
"Even wished us luck."

"Really?"
Garrett arched a brow.

"Well, it was more like, 'Go kill them bloodsuckers, and don't get bit, 'cause I ain't comin' in after you.'"

Ingrid had to grudgingly admit that Charlie gave an impressive impression of Kincaid.
"You coming?"

"Of course," he replied, pressing something that made the chestpiece open on the steel suit.
Charlie looked strangely vulnerable as he stepped down out of it.

A vampire couldn't gut a Cyclops, but it might do so to him.

"Kincaid's going to enter the asylum from the north with Malloryn and Gemma," he said, touching his earpiece again.
"Ava's coordinating the Nighthawks and will have them slip into place surrounding the asylum so that nothing escapes.
It's up to us to get Byrnes out."

In one piece.
Ingrid swallowed.
"Let's go then."

The two Nighthawks that Garrett had brought scrambled over the planks, running low with their weapons raised.
Flanders, the one in the lead, pressed his spine to a crumbling brick wall and cocked his head to listen before flicking two fingers.
The other Nighthawk, Nicholson, vanished into the shadows in response.

"It's clear," Garrett said, and urged her and Charlie forward into the darkness.

She quite enjoyed working with people who knew what they were doing.

"Anyone think that this seems a little easy?"
Charlie whispered, swallowing hard as they hurried through the abandoned tunnels.

"What do you mean?"
Ingrid asked.

"Not a single guard, or a vampire sighting," he pointed out.

Which was troubling.

Nicholson returned from ahead, appearing out of nowhere.
"We've reached the bottom level of cells," he murmured.
"It's quiet."

"Too quiet," Garrett added grimly, then gestured them on ahead.
"Expect anything.
This is starting to feel like a trap."

"How would she know we were coming?"
Charlie whispered.

"Maybe she saw us?"
Ingrid replied.
"Flanders, take point.
Nicholson, cover the rear.
Everyone, weapons out."
She tipped her head toward Garrett, gesturing him to slip in behind Flanders.
"I've got your back."

"Thanks," he murmured, unholstering his enhanced pistol.

They all carried firebolt bullets, which could take off a vampire's head if necessary.

The phosphorus glow from the glimmer light in the headset around Flanders's head provided just enough light to see by as they wound down, through half-used tunnels filled with rot and mud and the filth of this part of London.
All of them were preternatural: they could see with the faintest of lights, and light made them a target in these tunnels.

The vampire tracks they were following led to a half-rotted door set into stone.
Up, then.
The scent through here was stronger, and bones lay scattered around.
Ingrid's eyes watered, as her sense of smell was the strongest, and she took a moment to wipe them as the men fanned through the room and down the two tunnels spearing out from it.

"There are people in here," Charlie whispered, slinking back along the corridor from a small excursion.
"I can hear them."

People?
Ingrid went to the first cell and peered in.
A pair of children scrambled away from her, curling into their mother's arms.
An old man lifted a piece of chair and waved it threateningly.
"Stay away from us," he rasped.

Jesus
.
The stench hit her again: unwashed bodies, blood and old death, mixed with a strong presence of
eau de vampire
.

"Sir," Garrett called under his breath.
"Sir, I'm with the Nighthawks.
I'm not here to hurt you."

Relief dawned on the man's face and the woman started sobbing.
The man grabbed the bars, desperation plain on his face.
"Please!
Please let us out!"

"Who are you?"
Garrett asked, looking around for a key.
"What happened?"

"I don't know," the man gasped, gripping the iron bars on the cell doors as if afraid that they would leave him here.
"Something rolled into the room of my house and started hissing gas.
The next thing I knew, I woke up here with Verna and the children."
The man swallowed.
"There's vampires here.
You can hear the screams at night, when they come and drag some of us away.
They don't come back."
He started sobbing.
"They took my son three days ago, and they didn't bring him back."

Garrett came back out of the shadows.
"No keys."

Ingrid slid her hand inside one of the pouches on her belt and withdrew her lock pick set.
As much as she was frightened for Byrnes, she couldn't leave these people here in the dark.

She knew all too well what it felt like to be locked in a cage.

"A woman after my own heart," Charlie said as she set to work.

"Stop flirting, and keep an eye out."
The lock was old, but it gave an appreciable click.
Ingrid listened intently, but it seemed there were no guards on duty who'd heard the small noise.

The door was another matter.
It groaned on its hinges, and she cursed under her breath as the old man yanked on it.

"Quiet," she hissed, holding the door firm.
"You'll have to slip through the gap.
And don't make any noise."

"Hullo?"
someone called from further up the passage.
"Hullo, is anybody there?"

She exchanged a look with Garrett.
More prisoners.
"Keep them quiet."

Garrett nodded and slipped into the darkness with the two Nighthawks following him.

The cell door opened and Ingrid helped the old man out.
His wrist was shockingly thin, and the children were crying silently as their mother carried them out.
Ingrid took the small water flask from her hip, wishing she had more as she shared it between them.

"Where did you live?"
Ingrid asked, stroking the dirty hair out of one child's face.

"Begby Square," the man replied.
"This is my neighbor, Anne, and her children."

"My husband?"
Anne pleaded, grabbing hold of Ingrid's hand.
"Please, my husband!
They took him three weeks ago.
Are there other cells?
Other people?"
She looked frantically back down the hallway where Garrett and the Nighthawks were freeing other hostages.

Three weeks ago.
Ingrid swallowed, for the only answer she suspected she had was not one the woman would want to hear.
"It's a warren down here.
We'll make sure they all get out," Ingrid said soothingly, "but we need to get you and your children to safety first.
I'm sure if your husband is down here, we'll find him.”

The old man exchanged a look with her as he tried to help Anne to her feet.
"I'll make sure she gets out," he said, and Ingrid saw in his eyes the same thoughts that lurked within her.
Anne's husband wasn't going to be found.
Not alive, anyway.

This then, was what had happened to all the people who went missing.
Someone had taken them, both in order to cause chaos and for far more practical reasons.
After all, what could you feed to vampires?

It made her furious, and all of the hairs along her arms rose as the
berserkergang
fired within her.
People weren't objects, and they weren't food.
They didn't deserve to be locked in cages.
Like she had been.

Zero had done everything possible to make this personal.
Ingrid ached to smash her face in.

"Easy," Charlie muttered.
"Save your anger for the one who deserves it."

"Oh, I will," she snarled, standing and glaring up the passage.
"I'm going to make that bitch rue the day she ever set eyes on Begby Square."

"But first, we need to get the prisoners out," Charlie said.

Garrett came out of the darkness, a little girl wrapped in his arms and a trail of sobbing people hobbling behind him.
His expression looked as haunted as her heart, and she realized that the little girl in his arms was only a year or so older than his twin daughters.
"I'll get them out," he promised.
"I've sent Nicholson back for more Nighthawks.
You two go on ahead and rendezvous with Kincaid and Malloryn.
We can't risk this bitch taking her anger out on Byrnes."

"It will be my pleasure," Ingrid growled, as she let the fury spill within her.
She'd never let the berserker part of her nature have free rein before, but now wasn't the time to play nice.