stands.”
“Of course,” he said, battling to control himself. He knew his eyes had darkened as the hunger sank its claws through him. They’d notice his state—and wonder. “I still have almost two weeks.” His voice sounded as though it came from miles away, a rushing sound filling his ears.
“Is there a time limit I’m not aware of?” Maitland’s voice sounded like an echo as he took a smooth step forward.
A foolish move to present his back to his enemy. Lynch eyed him. It would be ridiculously easy to snap his neck. Not even a blue blood could recover from such an injury.
He was letting the hunger rule his thoughts, his emotions. He ached to rip Sir Richard’s smirking head from his shoulders—to stop him before he ever got a chance to look for Mercury.
Making a supreme effort, Lynch reined in his impulses, forcing his mind to empty of all thought, most particularly the revolutionary he had a score to settle with. Three shallow, controlled breaths and the shadows dropped from his vision, though they lingered at the edges as though he’d not quite banished them. That had never happened before.
Sound snapped back in upon him, the world suddenly gleaming with too much light. The Duke of Bleight watched him closely. He wore barely any fripperies and disdained to powder his hair the way most of the court did. It was white enough as it was and heavy creases lined his predator eyes.
They’d never been allies. When Lynch had pleaded his case before the council forty years ago, Bleight had been the only duke to vote no to his proposal to form the Nighthawks. “
Of course he hadn’t. Lynch had been a threat and Bleight didn’t like to leave an enemy alive, despite the fact he’d been all of fifteen.
“Shall we make it fair?” Bleight intoned with a malicious little smile. No doubt he was hoping Lynch would fail. “Two weeks for both of them?”
“Sporting odds,” the Duke of Goethe replied seriously. He was one of the few dukes that Lynch admired; indeed, they’d once been contemporaries, before the death of his cousin catapulted Goethe to power. Now his close-cropped black beard was salted with silver and his eyes, once as dark as obsidian, had begun to lighten— faint signs of the Fade. Goethe had only ten years or so left in him before the color drained out of him completely.
“Two weeks.” An oily smile spread over Maitland’s face. “I’ll have Mercury in half that time.” He saluted briskly. “By your leave, Your Grace?”
The prince consort nodded and Maitland strode past Lynch, his pale gaze fired with ambition.
“It’s good to see a man so enthusiastic about his task,” the prince consort said.
“He needs the head start. Is that all you wished of me? I have work to do.”
“No doubt,” the prince consort replied. “The Falcone attack?”
The way he said the words, as if testing them, made Lynch alert. The prince consort wasn’t the only one with an interested gleam in his eyes. Each of the Council had stilled, resembling a painting of heightened anticipation.
Or fear.
“I believe both the Falcone and Haversham cases to be connected. I have no information on the agent that drove them into bloodlust, but witness statements and my own conclusions draw a parallel between them.”
“So it’s true?” the flame-haired Duchess of Casavian murmured. “They were both in a state of uncontrollable bloodlust?”
“They acted as if the Fade were upon them,” he replied. “However, both their CV counts came in quite low. I believe something exacerbated the condition.”
“Reports state that your hand killed Falcone,” the prince consort stated. “He was a distant cousin of mine.”
“He’d slaughtered his entire household. I had no choice. If he got loose in the city, we’d be awash in panic- fueled riots this morning.”
The prince consort dropped his gaze. With relations between the Echelon and the working classes as they were, it wouldn’t take much to set off a riot and he knew it.
“I want a report on the case,” the prince consort demanded. “Mercury must be your priority, but I can’t allow this madness to become an epidemic. You don’t think it some disease that afflicts blue bloods, do you?”
“No.” He’d considered that. “The attacks came on too swiftly. By all accounts, Lord Haversham enjoyed a night at the opera with his consort before ripping her to pieces. There were no symptoms of disease, no sign that he was out of sorts. I believe it to be influenced by some sort of toxin or poison, though I have no conclusive evidence.”
“You’ll find it.”
“I will.”
Both men slowly nodded at each other.
“Then you’re dismissed. I want your report by tomorrow morning.”
“As you wish.”
Fire burned in a barrel on the street corner, though not even a single soul gathered around it. Night had fallen and with it the brutal choke of martial law. Metaljackets prowled the city in troops, their iron-booted feet ringing on distant cobbles.
Lynch ignored the biting cold, striding through the night with his cloak swirling around his ankles. Three nights with no sign of Mercury. After the council meeting, he’d increased the flood of Nighthawks he had on the streets to counteract the sea of Coldrush Guards. A part of him was almost thankful that Mercury had gone to ground. He’d rather cut his own throat than see the woman in Maitland’s hands.
Hearing the heavy tread of a metaljacket legion nearby, Lynch cursed under his breath. Grabbing hold of the edge of a drainpipe, he hauled himself up, hand over hand, onto the roof of the nearest house. The vantage gave him a good view of the city and would keep him hidden from most eyes. He didn’t want Maitland breathing down his neck, trying to find out what leads Lynch had on Mercury.
No doubt there’d be one or two Nighthawks who reported back to the Council or even Maitland; that was the way of the world. But if they hoped to find anything in the guild, they’d be sorely mistaken. He kept everything important in his head, where no one could decipher it.
Hurrying across the rooftops, he saw the wall of the enclaves looming ahead. The last time he’d been here, he’d had his whole world shaken by a slip of a woman in a mask. Desire ran its smoky hand through him. How he burned. He wanted her desperately, wanted to get his hands on her and exact his revenge.
Leaping off the roof, he landed lightly in the street and started toward the gatehouse. A heavy-set guard with the sleeves cut off his vest stepped forward, a dark look in his eye. “Here now, you ain’t s’posed to be out at night—”
Lynch opened his cloak, flashing the stark black leather of his body armor.
The man bowed, mutiny flashing in his eyes before his lowered gaze hid it. “My apologies, me lord—”
“I’m not a lord.” Lynch stepped past him, toward the gatehouse. “I need access to your records.”
At that the guard’s head shot up. “Now, sir, I ain’t s’posed to give that without Council orders.”
Lynch stared at him. “The key,” he said softly.
Lips thinning, the guard muttered under his breath and looked around. “I don’t want no trouble from this.” He dragged a key chain over his head and held it out flat, in his palm.
Lynch took it and turned toward the gatehouse. “I was never here.”
Inside the gatehouse, the stench of stale coffee and long congealed ham struck him. The room was dark but he traversed the shadows easily until he reached into his pocket and struck the flare stick he carried with him.
The records chamber was just past the main room. It was a long room, filled with filing cabinets. Inside
