My Lady Quicksilver

* * *

They strapped him into a set of manacles and dragged him high using a winch. Lynch jerked into the air, unable to do a damned thing to stop himself from being hung like a slab of beef. He hated this, hated the vulnerability.

The cell was deep in Undertown. They’d blindfolded him and wrapped him tight with chains, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been able to make some sense of where they’d taken them. The smell of tar and rope lingered in the air as they entered the tunnels—somewhere near Sailmaker’s Lane if he wasn’t mistaken. From there, it had been a brief journey down through the chilly tunnels to this godforsaken cell where they’d ripped the blindfold off.

The leader strode through the door with a scowl of frustration. “String ’er up too.”

“Get your hands off me!”

Lynch fought to lift his heavy head, trying to see what they were doing to Rosa. Red flared through his vision as two men dragged her into the cell. Her hands were bound behind her, blood sprayed across her skirts, but she squirmed in their grasp as if she thought to free herself.

One of them balled his fist and smashed her in the abdomen. Rosa gasped, crumpling over the man’s arm with a soft cry. Kill them… Lynch stirred, his leg kicking faintly. The muscles in his shoulders ached as he strained to get some movement into his body. Anything other than hanging here uselessly.

Where the hell was Byrnes? He should have doubled back once he noticed Lynch was missing.

The leader stepped back as they dragged Rosa’s gloved hands into another set of manacles and yanked her high. The toe of her boots dragged on the ground, then she cried out as they winched her into the air. Whatever sort of operation they were running here, they knew what they were doing.

The barest light gleamed through the heavy cell door. Lynch caught Rosa’s gaze and saw the frustration and pain echoed there. She stopped kicking when she saw him, taking a deep, shuddering breath, her dark eyes rich with fear.

“Did…they hurt you…?” he managed to rasp.

Rosa shook her head. “No.”

With a laugh, the leader slapped Lynch’s thigh, sending him swinging, the toes of his boots dragging over the cold stone floors. “Don’t need to.” A broad smile lit his ugly face. “That’s what you’re ’ere for.”

Words. Just words. But ice ran down his spine at the thought. He looked at Rosa, her coppery hair bedraggled and tumbling around her pale face. She bit her lip and shifted against the weight dragging on her shoulders. Lynch’s gaze raked over the cell. It was bare, but he could see faint splashes of darkness against the walls. Blood. Sprayed across the walls as if someone had torn a man’s throat out.

He went cold.

That’s what you’re ’ere for…

They wouldn’t have to hurt Rosa. He would. He knew it as certainly as he knew his own name. These men were involved with the massacres somehow. The mechs that Mercury spoke of.

He didn’t know what they’d done to Haversham, Falcone, and Alistair, but he had a suspicion he was about to find out.

No. He jerked—or tried to. Every muscle in his body felt sluggish, as if they’d weighted his bones down with steel implants.

“All right, boys,” the leader called. “Let’s leave ’em to their fate.” He met Lynch’s eyes with a leer. “I’ll be seein’ you in an hour or so, Sir Nighthawk.”

Then the cell door clanged shut behind them.

* * *

“Rosa.”

She kicked uselessly. The muscles in her abdomen ached and she still hadn’t quite gotten her breath back, or else she’d have protested more.

“Rosa.” Lynch’s voice was cool, but something warned her—some underlying hint of tension.

She looked across at him. Bars of light striped his face from the small barred window in the cell door. Movement stirred in his limbs, signs that the hemlock was finally wearing off. They must have hit him with a huge dose in order to keep him down for so long.

“What?” she whispered.

For a moment, an unknown emotion crossed his face, there and gone so swiftly she didn’t recognize it. Her breath caught and she stilled, staring across the shadowed expanse at him.

“They took your pistol, didn’t they?” he asked. “Do you have anything at all that might be used as a weapon?”

Only herself and her training, but he could not be allowed to know that. “No. I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing to fight them with.”

His expression tightened. He cursed under his breath and looked around. “Are your manacles fastened tight? Can you get free?”

His urgency burned through her. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Just answer the damned question!” he snapped.

It shocked her. He’d never once been frightened. And that was what she recognized in his clenching fists as he strained against the manacles.

Rosalind licked her lips and looked up. “Maybe,” she admitted. “I have several pins in my hair. I might be able to pick the lock on these.”

“Do it.”

Pressing her lips tightly together, she put all her weight onto her right wrist and reached up to grab a loop of chain with her left. Her iron hand clutched tight around the links and she hauled herself up, high enough to dig her right hand into her hair. Her fingers finally locked around the edge of a pin and she tugged it free with a gasp, her body weight tumbling back against the manacles. This would have been easy ten years ago, but she no longer trained every day as she had under Balfour’s care. Then she’d been fit and limber and far stronger than she was now.

“Got it,” she gasped, her shoulders aching against the swing of the manacles.

Voices sounded in the corridor outside the cell. Their eyes met.

“You need to get out, Rosa,” he said. “Pick the lock and get out. Get as far away from here as you can.”

A laugh outside. Her gaze jerked that way as someone yanked open an iron trapdoor in the door.

“Give ’er me regards, Sir Nighthawk.”

Rosalind flinched as something was thrown into the room. The iron ball was barely the size of Lynch’s closed fist and it rattled across the stone floors, bouncing off the far wall before spinning to a halt in the center of the room. It looked almost like the clockwork tumbler balls that children played with in the alleys aboveground, chasing them until they finally wound down. Like one of the balls they’d found in Falcone’s dining room.

She stared, cold sweat lining her lip. What the devil was it? And why was Lynch staring at it as one would eye a live snake? He strained against the manacles, a silent snarl on his lips as he jerked and twisted.

“I’d love to stay and watch the final test,” the stranger called. “But you cravers don’t take kindly to being locked up. We’ll be nearby…for when it’s over.”

The iron trapdoor slammed shut and then the laughter was edging away.

“Lynch,” she whispered, fear knifing through her. “What’s going on?”

The iron ball quivered, a thin line becoming apparent around its circumference as though some internal pressure fought to force it open.

“This is what they did to Falcone,” Lynch snarled. He fought furiously, twisting his body up to try and wrench the manacles from the ceiling. “I’m sure of it. You have to get out.”

What they did to Falcone… She stared at him for a long moment as his words penetrated. He’d known. Somehow he’d known what was to come—just as he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from hurting her.

She saw the truth in his eyes as he flailed helplessly, then fell still, panting hard. He couldn’t free himself. He had been weakened by the hemlock until he was almost human in strength, but if the bloodlust hit him the way it