Since the moment Ava smiled at him that night in the Garden of Eden.
"You believed in me when I had a dream," he told Xander, "a dream to escape the enclaves and gain the right for a man or woman to live life freely. And I led you to that freedom. Well, I have another dream now. A London where it doesn't matter if you are man, mech, verwulfen or blue blood. A London where all four races can survive side by side with equal rights, and forge their own futures. Peace, Xander. And not this wary mockery of it, but a true peace.
"And someone wants to take that peace away. There's an Echelon lord who's formed this... this bloody secret society of blue bloods who want the old ways back. They call themselves the SOG, and they're the ones who created this weapon against blue bloods-their own race. They're planning on killing the Nighthawks, or any blue bloods that don't agree with them, in order to drive the remaining blue bloods who aren't quite sure which side of the fence they're on into a war against humans."
Xander paled, shaking his head.
"You're a tool, Xander, that's all you and the rest of the humanists are to them. They're the ones stirring up the riots. They don't care how many humans or Nighthawks die in the streets. And I'm trying to stop it. We're on the same side here."
"Fuck." Xander scraped his hands over his face.
"Can you help me?"
"What do you want to know?" Xander asked hoarsely.
Relief flooded through him-he hadn't been certain if his oldest friend would do this. "Tell me about the humanists, tell me what they're planning, what they're up to, what the latest rallying cries are."
And Xander did, spilling about riots, and people getting together and muttering, and the odd theft. Nothing he needed to hear.
"What are they complaining about the most?"
"It's the blood taxes, K," Xander said. "Those cursed draining factories looming in the East End, churning with blood-our blood-to feed those pasty-faced vultures. That's the bone of contention. Some said we should blow them up, but then the taxes will go up again to refill them, and the Echelon guards them like hawks these days."
"That's not very helpful. How could this weapon-" Kincaid froze. He'd been phrasing it carefully, to keep Xander in the dark about Black Vein, but if he called it what it really was... it all made a horrible sort of sense. Poison. Black Vein was poisonous to blue bloods, and how better to poison the whole bloody lot of them than to contaminate their food source? "Jaysus, that's it. The draining factories." He shoved to his feet. "Ava?"
She and Maggie appeared in a flurry of skirts. Ava looked to him. "What is it?"
"Ulbricht's not looking for dart guns, or pistols. He's going to poison the blood supplies at the draining factories."
Twenty-Eight
"LET'S NOT WASTE any more time," Malloryn commanded, slipping inside his steel-plated armor vest. "We're looking for humanists, or Ulbricht and his SOG, but don't forget the dhampir. They've seemingly gone to ground, but we cannot afford to presume they won't resurface at some point."
They were gathered near the outer edge of the factories, and smoke billowed into the moonlit skies as the factory furnaces burned coal. Ava breathed into her cupped hands. Nerves skittered in her belly. They needed to shut down this attack before it began, but she hoped they wouldn't be clashing with humanists tonight. For Kincaid's sake.
Maggie had given another hint before they left: some of the humanists had been talking about bombing the factories. Hopefully those plans hadn't amounted to much.
And it might be a hunch-Ulbricht wanting to poison the blood supply-but she hoped it paid out. She wanted this done, case or no case. She'd proven to herself what she needed to.
"Hold still," Byrnes muttered nearby, tugging the laces on Ingrid's armored corset tight.
"I'm not the one who can be poisoned," Ingrid muttered, and their eyes met.
Kincaid checked his pistol, shooting Ava a look as if to say he knew exactly how Ingrid felt. Ava had insisted upon coming, and Gemma was fitting her out in split skirts, with an armored corset, and a set of pistols.
A hiss of rope whirred past her as Charlie rappelled off the top of a building, landing in the street beside them and unhooking his grappling device. "There's definitely some suspicious movement near the factories. Lynch is coordinating the Nighthawks at factories one, two and three, and he's content to leave four and five to us. I couldn't afford to get too close, but there are dozens of shadows slipping into the factory."