Kiss of Steel
Page 13

Her poor shoes rested forlornly on the rug. He fetched them and brought them toward her, his expression guarded. “You ain’t ever this quiet,” he observed.
She reached for the shoes, but he knelt at her feet and caught her ankle in his hand.
“That’s quite unnecessary,” she said.
He slipped her foot into the shoe and tugged it into place, moving with a smooth surety of action. Even here he thought he had the right to do as he willed with her body. Perhaps he did. She shivered a little at the thought.
“You were ready to offer me your vein a few moments ago,” he said. “What’s wrong with me touchin’ your foot?”
“Nothing. I just…it’s unnecessary.”
He took her other foot, his fingers stroking over the fine wool of her stocking. There was a hole in the heel and she squirmed, trying to hide it. “Honor,” he murmured, his fingers stroking her toes as he caught her gaze. “Bein’ a blue blood’s thrall…it’s an intimate thing. You’ll need to get used to it. To me.”
“I know it’s intimate.” The word practically shriveled on her tongue. She almost felt like touching her cheeks to see if they were as hot as she imagined.
He dug his thumb into the arch of her foot. “I ain’t talkin’ ’bout just puttin’ me mouth on you. About tastin’ you.”
Oh, goodness. She shut her eyes, but the image was burned there.
Again his fingers stroked her foot, tickling the soft underside of her arch. “I look after me thralls. I know ’em. What goes on in their lives, what they need. They’re like me family.”
Honoria’s eyes shot open and the words were out before she could stop them. “A harem.”
His fingers stilled. “A harem? Christ, Honor. I wonder what Will’d say about bein’ part of me harem? Or Mrs. Faggety down the road. Or Charlene and Mabel, the two Buckham spinsters.” He chuckled. “Mrs. Faggety’d wash your mouth out for darin’ to suggest such a thing.”
“I’ve seen what happens when a blue blood feeds.”
The laughter died. “It’s an unfortunate side effect but rare. Will’s a virile young lad, ’e feels it more ’an most. Mrs. Faggety don’t feel it no more ’an a mild flush. The others…some do. Some don’t. Some like it.”
“I know,” she said stiffly. “I’ve seen them. In the city, following the blue bloods around like addicts.” He was still caressing her foot. She’d almost forgotten about it for a moment. “Are you going to put my shoe on?”
“As madam insists.” He smiled and put her shoe on. Then he stood.
Her gaze drifted over the hard, muscled thighs directly in front of her. Blade had no inkling of the proper distance he ought to give a woman.
She stared at the hand he offered.
“You can’t tell me that all of your thralls are old women and men,” she said, taking it.
Blade drew her to her feet, but didn’t back away or let her fingers go. “Do you want to know if some of them share me bed, Honor? Is that what you’re askin’?”
“Of course not.”
“The answer is yes. Sometimes they do. Some of ’em ’as needs. And so do I. There’s two as I share a bed with on occasion.”
Goodness. When she tried to tug her fingers from his, he tightened his hold reflexively. The back of her knees bumped the armchair. There was nowhere to go. She could only endure.
“But not for a while.” He searched her face.
“That’s none of my business anyway.”
Blade took a step back. He looked almost disappointed, and she didn’t know why she felt as if she’d failed at some test.
“Come. I’ll walk you ’ome.” He gave a pointed glance at the package by her feet. “And keep the gloves. That’s an order.”
Chapter 7
The streets were empty. Fog hung heavily over the ’Chapel, a silent blanket that trapped sound. Their footsteps echoed in the night and Honoria shivered, glancing around uneasily.
“Relax,” Blade drawled. “Ain’t nothin’ gettin’ close without me hearin’ it.”
He strolled beside her, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Despite the night’s chill, he wore only his shirt, rolled up to the elbows. Practically indecent. A hint of his tattoo peeked out from the edge, ending in the hollow of his elbow. She couldn’t quite get a good look at it. The heavy ink was vaguely tribal. Savage. It suited him.
“I know,” she replied. “I’m simply not used to the…the silence.”
He gave her a sidelong look. “You ain’t lived through martial law before, luv.” Even his words seemed quieter, as though he too felt the weight of the fog. “You ought ’ave been ’ere fifty years ago when the Ech’lon were fire-bombin’ the ’Chapel with their metaljackets. Weren’t no one allowed out for near on ’alf a year.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist. “They were hunting for you?”
“Aye. They found me too.”
She’d heard the stories, of course. Of how Blade had escaped the Ivory Tower and become lord and master of the ’Chapel, fighting off dozens of the metal-plated drones the Echelon sent after him. They’d nearly burned Whitechapel to the ground, until the mob rose against them, forcing them back behind the city walls.
“How did you rouse the people against them?” she asked.
“My debonair charm, ’andsome looks, and superior oratory skills.”
She shot him a look.
He smiled and her breath caught. Such a wicked, devilish smile. If she had been a normal young woman, without the heavy burden she carried, she might have let her gaze linger. Or if he had been a man instead of a monster.
“I went straight to Rory O’Loughlan. He were leader o’ the Sharks gang as run these parts. Told ’im I’d throw in with ’im if he kept ’em off me back.”
“And he agreed?” A single rookery gang up against the Echelon?
“He were ’avin’ problems with the Slashers. I ’elped ’im with ’is little problem. Then he ’elped me. Ole O’Loughlan were smart enough to see a use for me in ’is organization. Roused his men, they spread the word, said as ’ow the Ech’lon were comin’ in to take their women and children as blood slaves. Rumors spread like wildfire. The mob rose up and started tearin’ down the city walls, clawin’ to get at ’em. The metaljackets coulda mowed ’em down like wheat, but the country were already up in arms over the latest hike in blood taxes. So the Ech’lon pulled back. Didn’t want me that much.”
“And you became a hero,” she said. “For fighting off the metaljackets. They never knew why you did it.”
Blade shrugged. “I takes good care of ’em. I don’t ask for too much. Some few of ’em know the real story. They think I were clever, usin’ ’em against the Ech’lon like that. And some good come out of it.”
“Oh?” she asked.
“It taught the people that the Ech’lon were afraid of ’em too. Before that the blood taxes were gettin’ ’igher and ’igher. The rulin’ Council of Dukes were pushin’ for the king to commit to more drainin’ factories. But when Whitechapel rose up against the city, they didn’t dare. The blood taxes ’ave been set at two pints a year for near on ’alf a century.”
“The draining factories are still there,” she said. “People still starve because they can’t afford the regular taxes to pay for the prince consort’s war against New Catalan.”
“They make their own choices in goin’ to the Drainers,” he said. “They coulda come to me. And the war’s one of the few things the prince consort and I agree on.”
She shot him a startled look. The animosities between England and New Catalan had been going on for nearly twenty years. New Catalan had ceded from Spain under papal rule when the Inquisition drove the blue bloods out of Spain. A Catholic-dominated country, it had set its sights on cleansing England as the only remaining nation in Western Europe left under blue blood control.
“Of course you’d have a vested interest in it,” she retorted. The war was familiar ground. Her father had followed the Humans First Party in that last year when his sentiments against the blue bloods worsened, and he spent most nights arguing the war into the ground.
“New Catalan’s full o’ righteous lunatics, frothin’ at the mouth for blue blood ’eads. They’re dangerous because they won’t stop till we’re all dead. And even then they’ll find blue bloods in every corner, never mind whether it be true or not. Thousands ’ave burned at the stake in New Catalan and Spain, and many of ’em were only ’uman.”
“They’re a small country,” she argued. “Hardly a threat.”
“Aye. And if they drag France in, with their anti–blue blood stance, then we’ll ’ave a horde of bleedin’ fanatics on our doorstep armed with the finest airships France ’as got. The Germanic states won’t ’elp us. They’re overrun by bloody verwulfen and—”
“Maybe the Echelon shouldn’t have slaughtered the Scottish loupe clans, then,” she suggested. “They might have a few more allies rather than only the Russos.”
“And the colonies,” he muttered.
“Which are an entire ocean away.”
Blade shot her a look. “Do you simply enjoy arguin’, or is it just me?”
Honoria shut her mouth. Perhaps there was more of her father in her than she realized. She’d listened to Blade’s arguments, of course, but she hadn’t truly understood them until she lived in the rookeries, watching as people starved because of a war that didn’t involve them.
“Ah, then, it’s me.”
“It’s not you,” she replied. “It’s just—”
“So you admit to bein’ argumentative?”
Honoria growled under her breath. “I do not. Stop interrupting. I was saying that I never understood the cost of war, until…well, until recently. Last month I watched a woman sell her children to the Echelon as blood slaves because she couldn’t afford to feed them anymore. They’ll be well fed and protected—until they’re old enough to donate blood—and then they’ll become nothing but cattle for the rest of their lives.”
The woman hadn’t lived much longer. A kind of despair had settled over her and she’d disappeared. Honoria added bitterly, “The Echelon take our money and they take our blood to feed themselves, and there’s nothing we can do about it. There are too many of them, and they control the metaljackets and the Trojan cavalry. No mob could stand against them.”
It would be slaughter. The armored mechanical horses would simply cut through a mob like a scythe, and then the legion would follow, restoring order with brutal precision.
Blade was looking at her in the gas-lit darkness. The faint bluish light played over his face, giving him an enigmatic expression. He saw her looking at him and took a deep breath, his gaze shifting away. “Would you prefer the New Catalans, with their Illumination and fanatics?”
“Of course not.”
“Then the war’s necessary,” he said. “Ain’t much we can do ’bout it. You’d be swappin’ one despot for another.”
“The queen is human,” she replied. “If the people had some form of a voice, then—”
“The queen’s doped up to ’er eyeballs and dancin’ on the prince consort’s strings. They parade ’er out regular for the people to see and pretend she’s in charge.” He shook his head. “Ain’t mean shite, luv. Ain’t nobody to stand against the prince consort. He’s got the Council of Dukes on ’is side and the queen in ’is pocket. Who could take ’im on?”
Bitterness burned in her mouth. “What if there was a…a way to vaccinate against the craving? Or a cure?”
Vickers had been commissioned with finding a vaccine, a way to prevent the Echelon’s servants, thralls, and women from accidental infections. It had been proposed that any boy denied the blood rites in his fifteenth year would also receive the vaccine. A way for the Echelon to control a man’s place in the world, after several families had sought to elevate their sons’ status by illegally infecting their children. To become a blue blood was to become an elite, and there would be no more mistakes tolerated.
It also served her father’s purposes. Vaccinate enough of the uninfected aristocracy and their children, and the blue bloods would slowly die out, her father claimed. The Echelon would never stoop to offering the blood rites to anyone lowborn. It was a devious way to limit their numbers if a cure couldn’t be found.
Blade shook his head. “Sounds like a pipe dream, luv. Sounds like somethin’ the humanists and the Humans First Party’s been spreadin’ in their propaganda pamphlets.”
An icy chill ran down her spine. It wasn’t a dream and it wasn’t propaganda. She’d seen the notes, carefully detailed in her father’s private journals. His work for Vickers at the Institute had brought untold wealth to the House of Lannister, but over the past two years Vickers had been focused on something else: a cure. It became his all-consuming desire, and her father’s too.
Honoria and her father had worked on dozens of rogues who had been institutionalized because they couldn’t control themselves. Or at least that was the reason Vickers gave them. It was a year before she witnessed the truth. Vickers was infecting them with his own blood to create test subjects. She’d been hiding from him in the servants’ passage when the house drones brought in a young streetwalker. Vickers had held the girl down and forcibly injected her with his blood.