Bec McMaster: My Lady Quicksilver

A slow, stealthy smile crept over Garrett’s mouth. “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

The candle guttered in the chill breeze as Rosalind climbed down the ancient stairwell. Once, a long time ago, it had been designed as access from an abandoned surface station to the underground train platform below. Now it was boarded up and long forgotten, except for the timber slats she’d carefully broken and then forged into a slender gap—access to her world, the musty caverns and dark tunnels they called Undertown.

Water dripped in the distance. The only other sounds were the faint shuffle of her flat-soled boots and the echoing moan of a breeze stirring through the abandoned rail tunnels. Rosalind reached up and dragged the stifling mask over her head. Cool air met her heated skin and she sighed in relief.

The taste of Lynch lingered. Or perhaps that was the mocking burn of memory, taunting her with what she’d done.

Or rather, how she’d reacted.

You liked it .

A horrible, gut-clenching thought. She’d never cared for men, a deficit she’d thought of as a relief until Nathaniel had come into her life and awakened her to the joyous misery of lust. Her husband had been the brightest light in her life…and the greatest sorrow. If his death had taught her one thing, it was never to betray herself again. Never to let another man close.

And she’d succeeded. Until now.

Unclenching her hand around the satin mask, she shoved it into her pocket grimly. Tonight she’d played her game and she’d enjoyed it. It wouldn’t happen again.

Stepping out onto the platform, she had only a second’s warning before a breath of wind blew the candle out. The sudden darkness obliterated her vision but not her senses. She felt something move, and reacted, shoving her arm up in a block. Twisting her finger, she felt the hiss of vibration as the blade slid through her metal knuckle—

A hand hit her high in the chest and Rosalind gasped as her lungs emptied. Then she was smashed up against the brick wall, mortar crumbling around her.

“You’re dead,” a husky voice said in disgust.

Rosalind tilted her head back as her vision slowly adjusted to the darkness, and panted, trying to ease the vice around her lungs. She pressed her hand a fraction forward. The tip of the blade dug into the hard muscle of abdomen. “And you’re gutted.”

A grunt. Then Ingrid shoved away from her. “Wouldn’t kill me.”

Truth. Rosalind’s face twisted in disgust at herself. A distracted revolutionary was a dead one. She eased the blade back into the mech hand, rubbing her thumb over the polished steel. “You’re back early.”

“You’re late.” The dark shadow materializing in the depths of the tunnel was starting to take shape. Ingrid towered over her at nearly six foot, with broad shoulders and shapely hips. She had a warrior’s physique, courtesy of her Nordic ancestry, though she was smaller than many others of her kind. The loupe virus that made verwulfen what they were encouraged growth and muscular development. Or so the scientists said.

Though Ingrid’s words were harshly spoken, Rosalind heard the gruff, underlying fear. “I’m back,” she said, sliding a hand over Ingrid’s forearm. The other woman was almost a sister to her. An overbearing, overprotective sister at times, but Rosalind found she appreciated it. “I had a run-in at the enclaves. The new boiler pack is lost.”

“What happened?”

“I ran into the Nighthawk.”

Silence. Then Ingrid slowly released a breath. “I hope it was with a sharp knife.”

“Unfortunately not. Come. We need to meet with Jack, find out how his night went.”

Ingrid followed as Rosalind leaped down onto the train tracks. A rat chattered in the dark and Rosalind smiled as her friend cursed.

“Bloody rats,” Ingrid said in disgust. But she kept close to Rosalind’s side, just in case.

“They won’t bother you,” Rosalind replied, disappearing into the dark silence of the tunnel.

They walked for several hundred feet, unerringly following the abandoned steel tracks. Ingrid could see in the dark, but Rosalind was forced to rely on memory, silently counting the steps. Her groping fingers found an ironbound door in the side of the tunnel just as a gust of wind blew through the emptiness, stirring her hair. It sounded like a faraway scream, no doubt one of the trains that ran in nearby underground systems.

Some of the locals who ventured down here thought the sounds were the cries of ghosts; those long-dead miners and engineers trapped down here when the Eastern line collapsed. Or those who had died three summers ago, slaughtered by the vampire that had haunted the depths until it was killed.

Rosalind was scared of neither. A vampire was just a blue blood gone wrong and she knew how to kill those. As for ghosts…well, she had plenty of her own.

Shimmying into the access tunnel, her hands and feet found the metal ladder and she scurried down it. Ingrid followed, shutting the iron door behind her with a clang.

A sickly green light burned below. Rosalind slid the last few feet to the bottom of an old ventilation shaft. An enormous fan stirred lazy circles in the wall, casting flickering shadows through the phosphorescent light. A man leaned against the pitted brickwork, his arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face. He saw her and relaxed, pushing off the wall toward her.

“Jack,” she said, letting out her own breath of relief. Her brother looked tired, what little she could see of his face. A heavy monocular eyepiece was strapped over one eye to help him see in the dark and a leather half mask obscured his lower face. The eerie green tint of the phosphor light-amplifying lens unnerved her. With it, he could see almost as well as Ingrid.

Rosalind lifted a hand to touch him, then paused when he flinched. Jack didn’t like to be touched anymore, even through the heavy layers of his coat and gloves. Rosalind’s fingers curled into a hard fist. That was one of the things she missed so much about Jeremy—the way he’d wrap an arm around her shoulders and drag her close, taunting her about the fact that he’d outgrown her. The way she’d kick his feet out from under him and take him to the ground with a laugh. “ You might be taller ,” she’d say, “ but I’ll always be your older sister .”

Jack’s hard gray gaze ran over Ingrid. “No trouble?”

“Not for me,” Ingrid replied.

Rosalind found herself the recipient of that stare. She shot her friend a hard look. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Well, I’m curious,” Ingrid said, stalking past. “Just how did you get away from the Nighthawk?”

Gritting her teeth together, Rosalind ducked past her brother’s startled gaze and hurried after Ingrid. “I seduced him.”

“Rosalind!” Jack snapped, trailing in her wake. Three long strides and he was close enough to fall in beside her, the phosphorescent flare stick in his hand highlighting the harsh planes of his face. “Tell me you two are jesting.”

Ingrid laughed under her breath.

“Unfortunately not,” Rosalind replied. “I lost the shipment and five men.”

“Steel can be replaced,” Jack replied.

“So can men,” Ingrid called back.

But not the money for either. Rosalind ground her teeth. The money was filtered through the Humans First political party, along with information from several sources in the Echelon. The humanist network had already been in place before she stepped into her husband’s shoes and tried to fulfill his dream; it was only lately that she’d begun to wonder where so much money was coming from.

Ahead of them, a rectangle of darkness was limned by bright yellow light. Home. Rosalind’s shoulders drooped, starting to feel the exertion of the night. The excitement with Lynch had driven her through the streets on the run from his men, but now, in the shadowy darkness of safety, her energy began to flag.