Parrying with the cane-sword, he barely managed to block the first blow, then the next one, let alone use it to his advantage. Falcone was monstrously fast and each blow echoed up the muscle in Lynch’s forearm. Lynch ripped the sword free of the cane, but Falcone lashed out, nails screaming on steel as he knocked it out of Lynch’s hand.
“Help!” Barrons yelled, scrambling upright. Blood bubbled on his lips and his chest was a raw mess. He clutched at the stained velvet, trying to drag himself into a sitting position against the wall.
Falcone’s head turned at the sound and Lynch seized his chance. He leaped forward, tackling the man to the floor and using his own considerable strength to force Falcone onto his face. Yanking on an arm, he wrenched it up, putting a shoulder lock on the creature.
Light flooded into the room as the door opened.
Lynch recoiled from the bright glare just as Falcone gave a mighty heave beneath him. Rosa rushed inside, backlit by the light, a pistol in her hands and her face grim as her eyes locked on him.
“Get out!” he bellowed. “Get out of the house!”
Falcone strained, the tendons in his shoulder tearing. Lynch could feel his grip slipping, and horror sank its cold claws into his gut as he saw Rosa’s jaw drop in surprise.
“Run!” he screamed as Falcone rolled and threw him aside.
Lynch hit the wall, the breath whooshing out of him. He landed on hands and knees, just in time to see Rosa flee down the corridor. Falcone went after her in a blur.
“Perry! Garrett!” He shoved off the wall and lurched toward the door. Something hurt in his side. Maybe a cracked rib. No time though. He had to stop Falcone—before the creature tore Rosa’s throat out.
That thought burned through his chest like fire. Tearing through the door, he saw the flap of Falcone’s coattails as the lord bounded down the stairs. Rosa screamed out of sight and a gun barked.
“Bloody hell!” Garrett’s voice echoed through the entry.
Lynch sprinted along the corridor as shouts broke out. He didn’t know what was happening. More gunfire coughed. Perry screamed Garrett’s name and then the gunfire fell silent.
Vaulting over the rail of the staircase, Lynch leaped through the air, raking the scene with a sharp glance. Rosa tripped on the bottom step and went sprawling. Garrett was down, clawing at his chest. He was perhaps the only reason Rosa was still alive. Falcone had stopped to attack him first.
Lynch landed hard on the marble foyer below, the vibration shivering up his legs. Falcone ignored him, leaping on Rosa and riding her to the ground. Her head cracked on the marble tiles and the gun in her hand tumbled free.
No!
Blind rage turned his vision to shadows. The demon in him—the hungry, darker side of him—rose with a choking grip until he could barely see. The next thing he knew, he was hauling the creature off Rosa and throwing it into the wall. Falcone gathered his feet under him as he hit and rebounded off it with athletic grace.
Lynch had a knife in his hand before he knew it. Falcone hit him hard, blunt teeth sinking into his throat. Lynch drove the knife up, deep into the creature’s chest. As if realizing his intentions, Falcone jerked, his jaw opening. Lynch grabbed him and yanked him over his shoulder, slamming the lord flat on the ground. His bone handled knife hilt gleamed in the golden light, and he knelt down, using his knee to shove it home as he grabbed Falcone by the head and snapped his neck.
Silence fell, broken only by the gasping wheeze from Garrett’s throat.
Lynch staggered off the body, the shadows draining from his vision. He felt light-headed all of a sudden. Rosa was on her feet, her mouth parted in shock as she stared at him.
“Stay there,” he snarled, stabbing a finger toward her. One last glance at Falcone—he wasn’t getting up again—and he staggered toward Garrett.
Perry was on her knees, hands clamped over the wound on Garrett’s chest.
“How bad is it?” Lynch demanded. Not Garrett. He’d been only a boy when Lynch took him on, streetwise and full of an insincere charm he used to protect himself, running along at Lynch’s heels, emulating him, driving him insane with a thousand and one questions.
He reached out and tilted Garrett’s head to the side.
Garrett winced. “I’ll live,” he gasped. With a bloody smile, he added, “Can’t leave so many bereft women behind. They’ll be…crying for days.”
Perry shrugged out of her coat and pressed it over the mess in Garrett’s chest. Lynch saw blood pumping through an artery and felt the iron grip of those icy fingers rake his gut again. The heart. Falcone had hit the heart. There was no surer way to kill a blue blood.
“He needs a physician,” Perry said in an emotionless tone, but that didn’t mean she felt nothing. When she looked up, light gleamed off her eyes, suspiciously bright. “Fast.”
Lynch straightened and looked around. “Where the bloody hell are the Coldrush Guards Barrons brought with him?”
Nobody could answer that.
“Rosa, I need you to fetch help,” he said, trying to prioritize needs in his mind. Lynch liked Barrons enough that he didn’t wish to see the lord die—but more than that, he knew losing the Duke of Caine’s heir would be a monumental catastrophe. Garrett however…Garrett was personal.
“I’ve got him, sir,” Perry said softly, seeing the dilemma in his face.
He nodded shortly. “Barrons is down. I need to see if he’s going to survive. Rosa, send for a physician or a doctor. Even a bloody midwife will do.”
Rosa’s gloved hands were clenched in her navy skirts as she stared at him with those liquid-dark eyes. She made no move to obey.
Had the fright shocked her insensible? “What?” he snapped.
“You’re bleeding.” Her lips compressed, a hint of defiance glinting in her eyes. “Quite badly.”
He slapped a hand to his throat and felt the wetness there. The room stank of blood—most of it not his, thank goodness. But the smell of it… Lynch almost groaned, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. That was the only sign of his discomposure, but she saw it.
“I’ve had worse,” Lynch said, tugging the collar of his leather coat up. Gesturing toward the door, he added, “Hurry. Before the others bleed to death. And then make sure you stay outside until this is dealt with.”
Lynch needed her out of here. He’d not risk her life again and right now, with the way she was looking at him and the intoxicating scent of blood, he just might be the one who lost control.
Rosalind shivered on the doorstep of the mansion, tucking her cape-jacket tight about her shoulders. More of the Nighthawks had arrived in the last hour, as well as a pair of physicians and enough Coldrush Guards to secure the mansion. Crowds of curious onlookers loomed beyond their impassive forms, desperate to know more of what had happened.
“Was it them humanists?” a blue blood lord called, his top hat bobbing in the crowd.
“A vampire?” another cried, waving his walking stick.
Panic edged their voices and the crowd murmured. Rosalind edged back into the concealment of the trailing roses that cascaded over the entrance and tugged her bonnet up around her face. Nobody would know her here, yet vulnerability rode her. She was surrounded by too many blue bloods—half the Echelon it seemed, clad in their flamboyant velvets and silks. Even at this time of the day, gaudy feathers bobbed in ladies’ bonnets and Rosalind caught a glimpse of several white wigs and powdered faces in the crowd—older blue bloods, by the look of it, those still mired in fashions from the past. Or perhaps seeking to hide the effects of the Fade. Who knew?
“Rosa?”
Lynch’s voice cut through her scrutiny. Rosalind turned swiftly, her skirts slithering over the tiled portico and her heart leaping into her throat. She was used to keeping a cool head in moments of stress, but once the excitement had settled, she couldn’t seem to stop her heart from pounding. So close. Falcone’s eyes had been full of madness and hunger. She’d heard his harsh panting as he chased her down the hall, knowing that she’d never make it in time, knowing that he would have her… And then Garrett had looked up, his eyes widening in shock before he smoothly drew his pistol and put a bullet into Falcone’s chest.
He’d saved her life. A second more and Falcone would have had her. As it was, the shot had barely slowed him. Rosalind had stumbled down the stairs, Garrett launching himself past her to meet the maddened lord—another action that saved her.
It was easy to despise the blue bloods after everything they’d done to her, but Garrett had risked his life for hers without a thought. She didn’t like that. It didn’t fit her view of the world.
Lynch had tried to hastily wash the blood from his skin and rake his hair back into place, but the same feverish glow that burned in her chest lit his eyes. “I need you. Come.”
Tugging her notebook and pencil out of her reticule, Rosalind followed him inside. The stale scent of death seemed to permeate the air in the grim afternoon light and two of the Coldrush Guards were stationed inside. Her gaze went immediately to where Lynch had launched himself over the railing of the banister. He’d landed lightly, the edges of his long leather coat flaring around him, his eyes cold with purpose, before he’d thrown himself at Falcone. Killed him in fact, with grim, efficient purpose. She hadn’t missed the way he’d moved; someone had taught him a brutal fighting style. Falcone had been stronger and faster, but Lynch knew how to disable a man with a few swift chops of the hand.
Rosalind looked up, light gleaming through the facets of the chandelier above. A good twenty-foot drop and he’d handled it like it were a step off the porch. A shiver worked its way along her spine.
Dangerous.
Blue bloods were superior in strength and speed to a human, but that didn’t always mean the balance was uneven. A trained assassin could cut down an untrained blue blood in hand-to-hand combat. Someone like Lynch though? Impossible.
If he ever realized who she was, Rosalind had no intentions of getting close enough to him to find out who would win.
“Here,” Lynch said, gesturing to the body by the stairs. Someone had draped a sheet over the corpse, but it clung wetly to Falcone, drenched in blood. “Write this down. We’ve taken an analysis of Falcone’s CV levels with the portable brass spectrometer. They came in at fifty-three percent. Note: Request Haversham’s CV levels when we return.”
The butler was covered with a coat someone had found. Rosalind frowned. “Do you usually cover the bodies?”
“No.”
He’d done it for her then. Her pencil paused, scratching to a halt. Then she hastily wrote the rest of his words.
“From what I can determine, Falcone was in the dining room with his family when the…seizure…took him,” he continued, starting up the stairs. “His cup was nearly full, but the decanter levels indicate he’d partaken of a quart of blood. He shouldn’t have been driven by the craving. His CV levels indicate he was far from close to the Fade. Something caused this then. An outside influence? A toxin? Was the blood he was drinking tampered with? Or some hitherto unknown disease that afflicts blue bloods—”
“Wait,” she called, trying to scribble furiously in her writing pad as she followed him up the stairs.
Lynch waited. “This way.” He started down the corridor, barely giving her pause. “What—”
“What happened to Garrett?” she asked, interrupting him. “And the duke’s son?”
“Barrons is recovering in Falcone’s room with the physicians. Thankfully his wounds are already healing, though they were serious enough at the time. As for Garrett, he’s in the kitchen. Doyle arrived through the back with the rest of my men and he’s trying to stitch him up.”
“Will he recover?” The thought shouldn’t have bothered her. One less blue blood for the world to worry about.
Lynch’s dark lashes shuttered his eyes. “Garrett’s stronger than he appears, but he’s lost a lot of blood. Perry had to give him some of hers.”
He strode through the doors ahead of him. Rosalind followed, a fistful of skirts in her hand. He might not have cared, she thought. Truly, for all the emotion he showed, Garrett could have been any man off the street.
“Here,” he said, gesturing to the dining room. Two bodies lay beneath the bloodied linens of the tablecloth. “This is where he was dining.”
Rosalind stumbled on the doorstep, her gaze narrowing on the small shapes beneath the table cloth. So small… Her throat tightened, the blood draining out of her face. Shards of porcelain littered the floor, a spilled decanter flooding the mahogany tabletop with a pool of spreading red wine. It dripped from the edge in a steady, monotonous plummet.