My Lady Quicksilver

shirtsleeves.

“Get out of the way,” she snapped, aiming the pistol. “It’s obviously barred from the outside.”

A clever move. Rosalind’s gaze fell on the hinges and she took aim, then fired twice. The hinges, a large section of the door and half the door frame vanished in a small explosion of brass slivers and splinters.

Covering his face with his sleeve as he coughed, one of the men rammed his shoulder against the door. Someone had shoved a heavy bar through the handles on the other side. There was no way to open it, but somehow a pair of the blue bloods managed to pry the outer edge open just wide enough to slip through.

“Hurrah!” one of the lords cheered, clapping her on the back.

“My thanks,” another blue blood said sincerely, his pale blue eyes wide and frightened.

I didn’t do it for you. But then she stopped, watching as he helped a frightened young woman through the narrow gap. She of all people should know that sometimes the monsters were just as human as the rest of the world.

Rosalind didn’t bother to watch as the first of the crowd slipped through the gap. She had to find Lynch or, barring that, Garrett or Perry.

Something caught her eye as she glanced around the darkened theatre. A tall man flashed through the green-tinted lens of the opera glasses, his rough-hewn face watching something in the chairs intently as he stalked forward.

Mordecai.

Her blood went cold when she realized who he was staring at.

* * *

Lynch ground his teeth together and wrenched the blue blood’s head sharply to the right. A faint crack. Then all of the fight drained out of the man and the body slumped to the floor beneath him.

A thrall in buttercup yellow lay on the carpet between the seats, staring up at him in shock and horror. Blood splashed her skirts and there was a bite mark on her shoulder that would leave a scar. Her lips parted as the blue blood collapsed, then she scrambled to her hands and knees at his side.

“Epson?” she whispered. Her hands began to shake and she looked up at Lynch with wide blue eyes. “You’ve killed him.”

“It was either yourself or him,” he replied, struggling to assuage the bloodlust that roared through his veins. The mask helped. Each breath tasted like sugared buns, but though it stirred his heartbeat, he could control himself.

“Look out!” a woman screamed.

Lynch spun low, ducking between the seats as a man behind him lifted a pistol. The shot went over his head, an enormous chunk of plaster exploding on the wall.

The pistol lowered and Lynch stared down the barrel. The man’s face was rough with stubble, his eyes cold and merciless as he thumbed the hammer back. “Fare thee well, Sir Nighthawk.”

A blur of cream silk came out of nowhere just as the pistol retorted. The pair of them tumbled out of view, but he knew who that had been as surely as he knew his own name.

Rosa.

What the hell was she doing here? And where the hell did that bullet go? There was no sign of struggling, no sign of movement… The anger that had consumed him at her treachery lost its fire, a cold hard knot twisting in his chest.

Leaping over the row of chairs, Lynch skidded to a halt in the aisle. The stranger reached for the pistol on the ground with grim determination—an enormous brute in a workman’s shirt that strained over his enormous shoulders. Scrambling to her knees, Rosa launched herself past the stranger and kicked the pistol under the chairs.

“Curse you,” the stranger snarled, rolling to his feet. “Who’s damned side are you on?”

Rosa straightened, her cool glance shifting past him to settle on Lynch. Just a moment, one that burned him right through. “You want to know what I am? Who I am? Then stay out of this.”

The stranger shot him an uneasy look.

“Where’s my brother, Mordecai?” she asked.

So she had been telling the truth.

If she thought he could stay out of this, she was mistaken. She’d betrayed him, lied to him, made him think there was more between them than there was… But to watch her get hurt was beyond him.

“Ain’t seen ’im,” Mordecai retorted, turning so that he could keep them both in view. “Probably the same place as mine.”

Rosa’s lips thinned. Her expression was tight and focused, so far removed from Mrs. Marberry’s saucy cheer that Lynch suddenly realized he was seeing the reality of who she was. Not Mrs. Marberry. Perhaps not even Mercury. She stood with a self-assurance and determination that were but echoes of the other two women.

Herself.

“I’m sorry about that,” she admitted. “But Mendici went for his gun. I was faster.”

“Aye.” Darkness shadowed Mordecai’s eyes. “But are you faster ’an me?”

He lashed out with a meaty fist. Lynch leaped forward, then stopped as Rosa ducked beneath the blow as if she’d expected it, her elbow locking Mordecai’s arm in place as her metal hand chopped down in a brutal blow against the fellow’s neck. Mordecai roared in pain and drove her into the seats with his shoulder in her midriff.

Rosa drove a knee up, bringing her elbow down between his shoulder blades. Each movement was sparse and economical, lacking the flamboyancy of someone who did this to prove his skill. She could have drawn this out, but instead she aimed for blows that would cripple and maim—the swifter to finish this.

So quick. Mordecai staggered to his feet and Rosa hopped up lightly on the chair to get height, then kicked him in the face. Her skirt tore at the extension of her leg, high and graceful. Mordecai stumbled backward, blood dripping from his nose, but he didn’t go down.

Lynch’s vision dripped between color and black and white. The Doeppler Orbs had dissipated, but he didn’t dare take off the mask. He wanted to step in, to end this, despite the fact that Rosa had matters well in hand. The darkness in him was a gathering storm. For a moment his vision dulled, fury riding through him. This was his woman. His. And he wanted to kill anyone who threatened her.

Their eyes met.

Just long enough for Mordecai to lash out.

Rosa staggered back several steps in the aisle, grinding her teeth against the blow. Lynch dug his fingernails into his palms, fighting every instinct he owned.

Mordecai swung the enormous metal fist of his right arm. Rosa blocked it with her own bio-mech hand, but the force staggered her back into the seats. Light from the stage backlit them as Lynch took a step closer then stopped.

Mordecai flexed his metal fingers. “You hit like a girl.”

Rosa looked up, her eyes black as night. Kicking out, she drove her heel into his kneecap and Mordecai screamed as it shifted.

It should have been the end. But even Lynch was surprised when the huge mech lunged forward in an awkward lurch and drove his enormous body directly into Rosa.

For a moment they hovered on the edge of the orchestra pit, Rosa’s wide, startled eyes meeting Lynch’s and then they were gone. An enormous cacophony of noise drifted up.

“Rosa?” Lynch scrambled to the edge of the pit.

She lay on her back amongst the strings section, wincing as she lifted her hip. Her groping hand found the edge of a brass cymbal and she clenched it in her mech fingers, the edge a dangerous weapon.

Mordecai groaned, flat on his face beside her. Rosa scrambled over him, driving a stockinged knee into his back as she jerked his head back by his hair and pressed the cymbal to his throat. It wasn’t sharp but with enough force…

Lynch leaped down beside her, catching her wrist. “Enough.”

She looked up, black eyes gleaming. In that moment, he saw the coldness in her. She’d have done it. Not because she wanted to, but because it was what she should do—The next step to this.