Of Silk and Steam (27 page)

“It’s amazing.” He circled the first iron soldier, peering at it from all angles. “A vast improvement on the metaljackets.”

“Having a human to drive it makes it far more efficient,” she replied, hopping up inside the cavity and sliding her feet into the hollow legs, hooking her boots into the feet molds. She strapped the leather harnesses to her thighs and tugged them tight. The boilers on the thing hissed to life with a press of a button, the Cyclops vibrating. Sliding the chest harness over her shoulders, Mina manipulated a set of levers with brisk efficiency, and one of the arms jerked to attention, pointing a flamethrower-mounted arm directly at his face.

“Are they difficult to manage?” He peered inside, his face inches from her thighs. She had legs like a dancer or a duelist.

For the first time, she looked uncertain. “Not truly. One wields it physically. If I take a step, it moves with me, but they will require a certain amount of instruction before one launches them into battle.”

Tension filled him.
How
much
time
did
they
have?
“We’d be better off using the mechs to drive them. They, at least, know what everything does. Blade’s men can clear the way until we have some semblance of control.”

Her gaze slid to Kincaid.

“Don’t doubt yourself,” he murmured, sliding a palm over her thigh and squeezing it. “He’s not going to make a move. If he’d wanted to, he’d have done it by now, while you weren’t here.” Taking a deep breath, he continued, “You cannot understand how in awe I am of you, Mina. To create all of this, right beneath the prince consort’s nose… To start with nothing and build an army large enough to shake the foundations of the Ivory Tower… You are the most fearless, amazing woman I know.”

“I worked with the queen and others—”

“Yes, but you were the catalyst.” He stepped up onto the Cyclops’s bent knee, until his face was of a height with hers, leaving her trapped in her harness. Leo brushed his fingers against her cheek, using the other hand to support himself. “Don’t you like compliments?”

“I’m used to flattery.”

Comments on her beauty. He’d seen the way she shrugged such things off in the past. Leo traced the path of her jaw. “I remember the first time I ever saw you. It was the duel with Peter. You were breathtaking—fierce and aloof and so coldly focused on what you were doing. Determined beyond all means. I wondered then what you could make of yourself.” He looked around. “This far surpasses even my expectations.”

Something caught his eye. A leather cap drawn low over a young man’s face as he darted behind a Cyclops. Leo swore under his breath as he stepped down for a closer look.
Charlie
. Who was supposed to be at the rookery.

A hand tightened around his arm as he took a step toward the lad. “Don’t,” she said, leaning precariously out of the Cyclops’s shell.

“You knew he was here?”

“I saw him but a minute ago. There’s nothing to be done now. We cannot send him back, and indeed, I don’t believe he’d go. He might as well stay with us—it’s the safest place for him.”

“You don’t understand.”

That earned him an arched brow. “Enlighten me.”

He didn’t want to. What man wanted to speak of his greatest shame? But Mina was watching him with a steady gaze. It couldn’t have been easy for her to offer him her trust with so much at stake. And if he wanted to prove himself worthy of it…

“I can’t let him get hurt,” Leo said, looking away and sliding his hands into his pockets. He presented the very picture of a man of repose, but inside…inside his heart was lead. He added softly, “I caused Charlie’s infection with the craving virus. I hated his father—my father. So much so that I sabotaged the vaccine Todd was preparing to inject into himself. I didn’t realize Todd intended to use the same vaccination on his son. Charlie…he nearly died, Mina, because of me.”

Understanding softened her eyes, then they turned thoughtful. “Your guilt is blinding you. He’s not a boy anymore, Leo, but a young man, restless with the cage you’re trying to force him into. If you and Blade keep trying to smother him, sooner or later, he will do something foolish—something risky—just to escape it. And if I can see that, then you’re closer to that point than you realize.”

Leo opened his mouth. Then closed it. He scraped a hand over his stubbled jaw.
Bloody
hell.
“So you think I should let him come along?”

“If he wants to come, then he can suit up in one of the Cyclops. It’s the safest place for him. I’m quite happy to make it clear that he either follows our orders precisely, or I shall see him chained up in one of the cells for unruly mechs.”

“No, I’ll do it.” He glanced across the room, jaw tightening. “Just give me a minute, or I’m likely to say something else to him entirely.”

“Very well. Here, help me finish strapping in. It will show you what to do.”

The next minute was a quiet one, as Mina showed him each control and how it worked. Leo threw himself into the task, pushing Charlie to the back of his mind. Or trying to.

He felt eyes upon him. “Why did you hate your father so much?” she asked.

Leo reached out, helping to strap her buckles into place, taking his time with the answer. He locked the last one tight, testing it across her shoulders, before resting his hands on her hips and looking up. He felt like he was cutting open an old wound, long years of ugly emotions oozing up inside him like an infection that needed to be lanced.

“Perhaps the correct word is not ‘hate.’ Perhaps it’s because I wanted him to be something he wasn’t.” There were razor blades in his throat. “Todd made it quite clear he never gave a damn about me.”

“You hoped for such recognition once?”

“I knew from an early age that the duke was not my father. He told me on the morning of my sixth birthday.” Not the best present he’d ever received. “Let us simply say that Caine was a rather cold, exacting ‘father.’ I remembered Todd from his time serving under Caine’s patronage. He was polite, highly intelligent, and driven. Of course, I began to imagine him to be something else; more of a dream than a reality. When I was thirteen, Caine suggested I visit with him. He told me I should learn something of the scientific advances of the time, and it fit with my schooling.”

Mina was no fool. “He wanted you to see your father for who he was.”

No denying it. Leo’s voice roughened. “It didn’t matter how harshly Caine treated me, because he wasn’t my father. My real father wouldn’t have treated me like that, or so I thought. So I began to take instruction with Todd once a week.

“He was obsessed with a cure for the craving and so was his new patron, Vickers. And I wanted to please him. You may find this somewhat ironic, but Todd was one of the first humanists in London. A founding member.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “He was responsible for developing the plans for the Cyclops. I’ve always likened him to da Vinci.”

“Truly?” That surprised him. Todd had always been mechanically minded but… Leo’s hand roved over the Cyclops’s steel flank. He could not conceive of a man who could create such a work of mechanical art and still be such a cold bastard.

“So what happened?”

“My fourteenth birthday came—and Caine officially applied to the Council of Dukes to recommend me for the blood rites.” The crowning achievement of every aristocratic son’s childhood. Only those deemed worthy were infected with the craving virus during their fifteenth birthday rites. “But of course, by that stage I had begun to parrot Todd’s humanist sympathies in a bid to earn his respect.”

“You didn’t want to be a blue blood?”

“I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew that Todd would despise me if I were a blue blood.” A remarkable piece of foresight. “Of course, my application was approved. For all intents and purposes, I was Caine’s son. I couldn’t avoid it except… Todd was working on a vaccine. He promised me it would stop me from becoming ‘a monster.’”

The sympathy on her face was too much to handle. “It didn’t,” he said brusquely. “It was untested, and within weeks I began to show signs of the virus. My visits with Todd ended and Caine helped me hide the fact that I was already infected until after the blood rites.”

“And Todd turned his back on you.”

“In a way.” That wasn’t the worst of it. “Caine saw fit to provide me with copies of Todd’s journals, where he detailed all of his experiments, including that of Subject 13, whom he tested with the fifth variant of the vaccine. I was clever enough to follow the trail of the dates mentioned. It had to be me. ‘Subject 13—though a healthy young man—shows signs of the virus. Variant Five is defective. I will continue to find willing participants in these trials until I meet with success,’” Leo quoted. “Todd was using me for a trial because he did not dare complete these experiments under Vickers’s notice. Vickers didn’t want a vaccine. He wanted a cure.”

“And when Todd finally found a vaccine that worked, you sabotaged it before he could use it.”

“An eye for an eye,” he murmured. “I kept abreast of his work after the blood rites. Todd despised what I’d become, but it didn’t change the way he treated me. That…it told me everything I needed to know about his feelings for me. I think my ‘lessons’ catered to his sense of importance—a captive audience, so to speak—and I never told him that I knew what he’d done. Just waited until he finally worked out the solution.

“By that time he’d tested it on Honoria and Lena. I’ll never mention it to them, but if he’d truly given a damn about them, he’d never have used them like that. Honoria was always his favorite, but he still vaccinated her before he used it on himself. And when it came time for his attempt…I swapped the vaccines.”

“I don’t blame you. He sounds like a horrible man. Anyone who makes the Duke of Caine look like the hero—”

“He’s not,” Leo said quickly. “And neither am I. I didn’t…I didn’t like the man I became. It wasn’t until Honoria turned up on my doorstep four years ago that I realized that there had been consequences to my actions. My selfishness nearly killed my half brother, and not once had I considered that Todd might have used it on someone else.” He swallowed, feeling slightly ill. “It’s a hard thing to look at yourself in the mirror and not like what you see. Or worse, to see your father looking back at you. Both of them.”

“It’s even harder to admit that,” she told him. “Or to seek to change your ways.” A slight bow of the head. “You would not be the man you are now if your actions had not caused Charlie’s infection. You would still be angry and bitter toward a father you barely knew, careless of consequences. Perhaps…perhaps despite all of the pain you’ve been dealt, you have become a better man for it.”

It almost undid him. Leo looked away, swallowing against the bitter shards in his throat. Yet, in a sense it rebuilt a part of him that he’d feared lost. She gave him an anchor against the tide of despair that had swept him away… God, how long had it been? Only a couple of days ago?

In the shadows, dozens of mechs swarmed over the Cyclops suits, fitting themselves into the interiors. Leo watched, but his mind wasn’t on them.

What had he lost, truly? Caine’s face sprang to mind. Nothing worth such grief. This…what he saw here. This was his legacy. His deeds, not the extent of property he’d owned or people who didn’t give a damn about him. And Mina. Of everything, she had become the most important.

Reaching out, he brought her fingers to his lips. “Thank you.”

He tried to let her hand go, but Mina turned it, cupping his cheek in her palm as she stroked his face with her thumb. Her eyes were soft and contemplative. “Sometimes I grow so angry when I think of all that has befallen me. But then…where would I be if it had not? The queen would be a stranger. I would most likely be trapped in a thrall contract, and”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“I would never have met you.”

The words rocked him to the core. Was she saying what he thought she was? “I thought you wanted to be free of me.” Deceptively casual words. His gut muscles locked tight in anticipation of her answer. Nothing of the future had been discussed between them.

“I did.” Her eyes were shining bright.

“And now?”

“I’m not entirely certain.” A pained whisper as she studied his face. Still wary, still cautious. “It was easier before I knew the type of man you were—before the prince consort tried to destroy you. I don’t know if I would have let you seduce me then. Now?” Mina took a deep breath. “When this is all over, I want you to be my lover on a permanent basis.”

Not enough. Never enough. He wanted her and he wanted her forever, and if she wouldn’t dare take that step, then he would. “When this is all over,” he whispered, stepping up onto the Cyclops’s bent knee so that their faces were but an inch apart, “I’m going to ask you to be my wife.”

Her shocked intake of breath stole his. “Leo—”

Sliding a hand around her nape, he drew her mouth to his, tasting the sweetness of it in soft, hungry kisses that gave way to something far more possessive. He wasn’t lost anymore, unable to determine his future or second-guessing every decision he made… The words were a rash declaration, but they rang so true that a part of him ached.

He knew what he wanted now.

This. Her.
The dark depths of his hunger rose, a brutal claiming that stirred his very soul. Drawing back, he cupped her face, forcing her to look at him. “I’m going to make you mine, Mina.”

Her pulse flickered in her throat like a rabbit’s. She wet her lips. “If this were a different world, I might say yes.”

He’d pushed her far enough. Any more and she might run. Leo stepped back, letting go of the Cyclops’s arm. “Then let’s go forge another world together.”

Lena slid her phosphorus-lens goggles up onto her head, chewing on her lip as she peered out into the darkness. Will was a warm, steady presence at her back, one of his hands splayed over her hip. He was a comfort in the dark night, his job only to protect her on this dangerous mission.

Perched on the rooftop with him, overlooking the crowd of metaljackets, she fiddled with the frequency on the control device Leo had given her. A few adjustments earlier had altered the control pad into something that amplified the waves that controlled the automatons. She’d tried to alter the frequency, but the metaljackets only seemed to respond to something of a similar wavelength. “Please let it work,” she whispered, glancing at Blade perched high up on the rookery walls.

Wave after wave of automatons stared at the wall, a larger assault than had been launched so far. Blade’s expression was grim, even from this distance. There was no way the walls could withstand this kind of assault, and from the look of the front row of metaljackets, Morioch was sending in his spitfires to burn the rookeries.

Images burned through her head, making her perspire. Honoria, in bed with her niece…helpless as fire leaped from house to house. The houses were so closely packed that the spitfires would barely need to use their flame-throwing cannons once the first house caught.

“It’ll work,” Will murmured, hunting the shadows for anyone who might have seen them.

His complete confidence in her abilities made her heart soar. Taking a steady breath, Lena watched as Morioch lifted his arm in the air.

“Burn them out!” he yelled, and his arm dropped, just as more than four hundred metaljackets took a step forward, iron boots ringing simultaneously on the cobbles.

Time to find out if her device worked.

* * *

Blade tensed, one arm lifted in the air as he watched Morioch’s arm drop and the metaljackets surge forward as one. Flanked by plain metaljackets, the spitfires came first, their flame-throwing cannons dropping into place as they aimed at the walls.

Seemed Morioch wasn’t going to bother with destroying a legend and creating a martyr. He just wanted the rookeries destroyed.
Christ
, the walls were only lightly manned, barely enough to deflect heavy artillery. Where the hell were Leo and the duchess?
Honor…
Blade’s breath caught in his chest, panic a cold spiral through him. An image of his daughter’s sleeping face flashed to mind. Two people he’d die for, if that were necessary to keep them safe. “Sorry, luv,” he whispered into the night, knowing Honoria would never forgive him if he didn’t come home to her, if he didn’t keep the promises he’d made when he left her trying grimly not to cry.

His gut twisted, his arm starting to drop to urge his own men on and—

One by one the metaljackets went mad.

Blade caught his arm in mid-descent. “Hold!” he roared. The demon of his hunger, his craving, wasn’t on him now and he had to make do with only slightly enhanced vision. Never before had he been so frightened that he’d been unable to rouse it.

“Bloody ’ell,” Rip said.

Flame spurted into the air as a spitfire spun in circles, unleashing jets of liquid Greek fire across its compatriots. Several of the metaljackets simply slumped to the ground, the ones behind them grinding straight over the top of them. Mayhem. Sheer, glorious mayhem.

“It worked,” he said incredulously, eyeing the nearby rooftop where Lena worked her device.

“Only within a certain range.” Rip pointed at the far side of the wall, where metaljackets advanced grimly on the rookery.

“I’ll take advantage o’ whatever Lady Luck can send me.” A vicious note descended into his voice. This time the darkness of his craving swept up over him, the edges of his shadowy vision tinged with red. No fear now. Only the violent desire to do as much damage as possible before the metaljackets reached the walls.

This time when he lifted his arm, there was no doubt. “Into the streets, boys! And aim for the joints!”

A roar shook the wall as men slung grappling hooks into the wall, then leaped into the melee below.