The Mech Who Loved Me(6)

A pity.

She was beautiful in her own way, though firmly on his do-not-touch list. Even if he'd wanted to flout his own set of rules and poach a virgin, Byrnes had threatened him with dismemberment if Kincaid even looked at her. He wasn't scared of Byrnes, but Byrnes had a rather large advantage in any fight: he was now married to a verwulfen woman with a fiery temper, who happened to quite like Ava. Byrnes probably wouldn't even have to lift a finger. Nobody in their right mind crossed verwulfen. Their berserker rages were legendary, and even a blue blood would have a hard time taking one down.

Hell, Kincaid had seen Ingrid dismantle a vampire piece by piece, and that was possibly the only thing scarier than her.

Still... nothing was quite as tempting as a woman you couldn't have. Kincaid crossed his arms over his chest. Ava hadn't asked what he'd done with the blasted flowers. Indeed, she'd barely looked at him as he entered, though her cheeks bore a trace of color. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. A messenger arrived with something urgent for His Grace."



       
         
       
        

"You didn't listen in?" She had superior hearing after all, thanks to her cursed blue blood nature.

"Of course not. It was private."

"And at least one of you knows what that word means," Malloryn said, entering the study as silently as a ghost, with Isabella Rouchard, his right-hand woman-and mistress, Kincaid suspected-on his heels.

Gemma Townsend and Charlie Todd entered behind them. Together with Byrnes, Ingrid, Ava, and himself, they made up the Company of Rogues, Malloryn's hand-picked team. Gemma, both seductress and assassin, looked ravishing in red silk, and Charlie was a man just over the threshold of adulthood. Both were blue bloods.

In fact, he was currently surrounded by them, which always made him a little uneasy.

The duke locked the door. There was a file under Malloryn's arm, and Kincaid's gaze went directly to it. He'd been out of action for over a month while his broken nose healed, and he needed to get back to work.

"You put together a company of spies," he pointed out. "Don't be so surprised if we want to know everything that goes on 'round here."

Malloryn shot him a chilling smile. "Keeping you in the dark, Kincaid, gives me no small amount of enjoyment."

Bastard. His temper roused, but he fought to restrain it to just the muscle jumping in his cheek. Malloryn knew Kincaid didn't like him, and seemed to take perverse pleasure in pushing that fact in his face. If the prick didn't have access to something he desperately wanted, then he'd have pushed on from this whole scenario weeks ago.

Maybe.

There was the small matter of the Sons of Gilead and their intention to destroy the newfound peace in London; a peace Kincaid had worked hard for, three years ago, during the revolution. There was also the fact he needed the coin-and there was nowhere else he could earn this kind of living, doing violent reckless things, which was precisely his forte.

Destruction is your gift, after all. Kincaid rubbed his knuckles, trying to force his brother's words deep into the dark recesses of his memory. "Please tell me you've got something interesting for me."

"Something for all of you," Malloryn replied, slapping the file down.

That... was not quite what he'd planned. Kincaid glanced at Ava beneath his lashes. "I wasn't aware Miss McLaren was to be working in the field."

"Not usually, no," Isabella broke in. If Gemma was a seductress, then Isabella was a cool goddess, warming only when Malloryn looked at her. "But Miss McLaren's specialty is crime scene investigation and... other things of which this case has particular need."

"We have a crime scene?" Ava blurted.

"A fresh one," the duke replied, sliding the file toward her, which she grabbed with eager hands. 

"Dhampir?" It had been over a month since the mysterious group of evolved blue bloods had revealed themselves as their opponents. Kincaid still couldn't quite come to terms with it. Blue bloods were bad enough, what with most of the aristocracy infected with the craving virus that made them what they were. Then there were vampires, who were a nightmare out of any old story, but they were bloodthirsty monsters, devolving to an entirely predatory existence. Terrifying and extremely difficult to kill, but driven purely by the thirst for blood.

Dhampir... were something else.

Kincaid crossed his arms subconsciously, his nose aching in remembrance. A blue blood's one fatal flaw was the fact that as the craving virus colonized them over time, they began to devolve into a vampire. However, two months ago the Rogues had discovered there was one other option available for those devolving blue bloods if they used an elixir vitae to control their transformation. Instead of dying during the last stages of the Fade and being reborn as a vampire, those blue bloods transformed into the dhampir. They bore the same strengths of a vampire-faster, stronger, almost impossible to kill-but they retained the rational instincts of a blue blood.