Wicked After Midnight (Blud)

  Even with my eyes closed and my body hidden, I could sense a strange tension in the following silence.

  “I’m going to look over there,” said the dry voice.

  “There’s nothing over there, Vale.”

  “Exactly.”

  Soft footsteps spelled anger in the dirt. He was moving toward me, and if he got too close, the patchy bushes and grasses wouldn’t conceal my overly bright teal dress. Dammit. Why couldn’t I have just stayed unconscious for this part or dressed in the boring green of the moors? And where was Cherie?

  “Only the coachman and a gentleman, Father. No women.” The smug voice was far away and muffled, and I could easily imagine a piratical man with the arm of his floofy blouse over his mouth and nose to keep out the scent of burning flesh.

  Nearer me, the man they’d called Vale struck the bushes. Breathing in, I scented a strange mélange of good and bad and spices. He reminded me a little of Veruca the Abyssinian, and I assumed he was a half-breed of some sort.

  “No bodies over here. Just a bush.” The shout was sarcastic and falsely bright, and I struggled not to grin. My teeth clacked together seconds later as his stick poked my thigh through several layers of skirt. “What ze hell?”

  His hands parted the twigs, and in a moment of panic, I sat straight up and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him through the bush and dangerously close without taking time to look at his face. To his credit, he didn’t topple over or shout.

  Into a caramel-tan ear with three gold rings in the lobe, I whispered, “I am not in the mood to be found. Or raped.”

  With a soft laugh, he whispered, “Excellent. I’m not in the mood to rape.”

  When he didn’t shout or otherwise broadcast my existence, I let go of his shirt, noting that he smelled like a chai latte mixed with hearth smoke and starlight, with an undercurrent of something . . . wrong. But oddly tempting. He pulled away gently, no sudden moves, and studied me. I scooted back and wrapped my arms around my trembling knees, realizing how close my lips had been to a seriously hot guy. Peridot-colored eyes lined in black and set in molten tan skin regarded me with a cat’s mixed disdain and curiosity. He had a two-day beard that framed full lips and matched his recently shorn hair, which wasn’t normally my preference but worked in his favor. He was dressed in all black like the Dread Pirate Roberts, sitting back on his haunches with a loose-limbed confidence that made my limbs a little looser, too. His eyes blended in with the moors perfectly, an endless shifting amber green, like a glass of chilled wine that made me feel thirsty all over for something other than blood.

  “Anything behind that bush, Vale?”

  I jerked and flailed at his father’s shouted words, and Vale’s lips curled up, revealing white teeth.

  His eyes raked from my mussed hat down to the tall leather boots peeking out from beneath foamy black layers of petticoats, as if he was pondering which end of a Chinese buffet to start at. I’d felt like a stone-cold predator since waking in Sang under Criminy’s bloody wrist, but now my middle went hot and soft.

  “Just ze prettiest girl I have ever seen.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Lazy, lying bugger!”

  Something plinked against Vale’s back, and he laughed and held up a river-smooth stone for me to see.

  “Get to work, you worthless ass!”

  Vale shrugged, unaffected. Barely loudly enough to be heard, he said, “Sometimes I tell ze truth. It keeps them guessing.” Another stone thwacked him in the head, and he rubbed it with a black-gloved hand. “Stay here. I will return.” Before I could respond, he had disappeared, leaving shivering grass and skin in his wake.

  I flopped onto my back, just in case one of the other men should doubt his lie this time. Eyes open, staring at the lavender-gray clouds, I listened for more footsteps. Partly because I wanted to avoid notice and partly because I wanted Vale to come back and look at me as if I was a candy apple waiting to be licked all over. But most of all, I wanted them all to leave so I could find Cherie.

  I didn’t smell her anywhere near, couldn’t smell anything over the smoke and now the highwaymen and their predatory mounts. But from the men’s shouts, at least I knew they hadn’t found her body. Cherie was small and agile and clever, and I could only hope she was hiding in another copse or backed into an empty bludbadger den, waiting for the pesky band of brigands to finish their plundering and go the hell home. Maybe Cherie was a predator, but she was also a beautiful young woman, and all we knew of Franchia was ancient history from the daimon dancing mistress and tips on navigating city life. Who knew what dangers actually lurked here in the wilds?

  The hooves of a single horse pounded close, the bludmare’s scream protesting her rider’s harsh treatment.

  “You were right, boss. Usual slavers riding hell-bent for Paris in that damnable fast conveyance. Farther along than we thought. But the others might still catch them before they reach the underground.”

  “Great humping Hades!” I could hear echoes of the old man’s greatness in the bellow of his baritone. Bludmare squeals and the squeaks of butts in saddles meant I would soon be alone again. “Lorn, you’re with me. Vale, you continue investigating your precious bushes. Dig through ze rubble. Bring in at least a silver’s worth of plunder, or don’t bother to come home, you spineless coward.” He spit in the dirt, and despite my ambivalence, I flinched. That was some cold shit.

  I barely heard Vale’s muttered, “Have fun in ze catacombs, arsehole.”

  The horn sounded, and the horses took off amid the men’s whoops and hollers. I sat up before Vale could pry his way through the bushes, smoothing my bangs and licking my lips and hoping I looked less like a terrified girl and more like a sophisticated, exotic, and possibly dangerous lady on a mission gone awry.

  “We keep meeting like zis.” He grinned and held out a hand, and I took it, well aware that the two gloves between us lessened the heat no more than grabbing a hot cast-iron skillet with a paper towel. I stood, but he didn’t let me loose. “I’m Vale Hildebrand, first son of Curse Hildebrand.” He paused as if waiting for a response. “Lord of ze infamous Brigands of Ruin. Nothing? Really?” Dark eyebrows swept up, and he rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Damn. You’re very hard to impress.”

  In just a few moments, his hot Franchian accent had become my new normal. I could have listened to him talk all day—if I hadn’t been so hellbent on finding Cherie.

  “I’m not from around here. Name’s Demi Ward.” Then, before he could derail me, “Have you seen another girl about my age and size but blond?”

  “Unfortunately, you’re the only one today. Perhaps I should start setting snares.”

  He released my hand, and I stood tall but not quite tall enough to look him in the eye.

  “My best friend is gone. We were on the coach together—it was just us and another girl and her chaper-one and a gentleman. Headed to Paris.”

  He put a hand on the small crossbow on his belt but refused to look away. “Who wore the pumpkin-colored dress?”

  “The chaperone. An old nursemaid.”

  Vale exhaled and jerked his head toward the smoking coach. “There is a blood-stained scrap of orange fabric caught on an arrow. Two men are dead and burned. I see no sign of your friend or the other girl.” His hand landed on the puffed shoulder of my gown, and I took a deep breath to meet it. “I’m sorry. We try to catch the slavers before they swoop in, but they’re fast.”

  “Slavers?”

  “We call them slavers, although we don’t honestly know what happens to their victims once they abscond to the catacombs under Paris. They mostly take young girls, although they’ll sometimes take an older woman or a young man. We believe they take girls off the streets, too. And from the cabarets. We try to track them, but . . .” He shook his head. “They simply disappear. Like smoke.”

  I couldn’t breathe, and my back felt more boneless than usual. “Do you never find them? The girls?”

  “Not once they’re under
ground.” His eyes went skittery, and I knew he was lying.

  “What about my friend?”

  He squeezed my shoulder and gave me the warm but useless smile someone might give a child at a funeral. “I know I’m a complete failure, but the rest of our band are sharp as hell and twice as fast, I promise you. There is still time.”

  I nodded once and walked to his giant black-and-white-spotted bludmare where she stomped around a picket driven deep into the earth. She tossed her muzzle at me, and I shoved the metal cap away, sending bloody froth flying.

  Vale blanched. “Please, Demi. You will want to—”

  “Hang on to your waist really tightly? Yeah, I know. Let’s go.”

  He allowed himself a smirk. “Look, bébé. I beg you. Just wait until the rest of the band returns. We’ll take you to our camp, and the women can feed you and help you wash up. We’re brigands, but we are honorable, and we can get you home safely in a wagon with far less bouncing and biting.” He winked. “Not that I would mind you bumping against me.”

  “You’re wasting time, Vale.”

  “And you waste your breath. Nice girls don’t ride into Paris bareback on a brigand’s hellbitch.”

  With a snort, I stepped out of the mare’s reach, took a deep breath, and bent over backward into a C. From the backbend, I walked my hands between my feet, curling under until my forearms were on the ground beneath my skirt. Putting my boots on my own shoulders, I felt the frothy layers of the dress fall down around me, giving him a fine look at the slim-fitting trousers I favored for just such an occasion.

  “I’m not that nice. And I’m not just a girl.” I grinned, showing fangs.

  To his credit, he didn’t freak out. Just put his head to the side like a crow watching a jewel glint in the sun. For the first time, his tone went serious, quiet. “Now, that I did not expect. Tell me, Demi. What is it that you want?”

  “Right now?” I did a front walkover and turned to face him with a swirl of skirts. “I want you to take me to Paris and help me find my best friend.”

  “Say we find her. Say we don’t. What’s your endgame, bébé?”

  I windmilled my arms, loosening up. I was a little sore after the crash, not to mention the previous hours I’d spent crammed between Cherie’s shoulder and the wooden wall of the carriage. Just to see what he would do, and to stretch out further, I slowly lifted one leg until it was right beside my ear, perfectly pointed straight up.

  “I want to find Cherie and then go to Mortmartre and be the stars of the cabaret, of course.”

  “There are no Bludmen in the cabarets—”

  “Not yet. There will be. Once I find Cherie, there will be two. We’re an act.” I dropped my leg—and my smile. “But I have to find her first. So are we going now or what?”

  He shook his head, earrings winking. “But where will you stay, bébé? Where will you sleep? How will you feed? If you drink from a human, they’ll drain you. Unless you have money, which I don’t believe you do, you are destitute. Even with my connections there, I cannot keep you.”

  My narrowed eyes shot to him, my shoulders rising and my mouth drawing down as I prepared to give an earful about what exactly he could keep.

  He cut me off before I could start, a hand slicing the air. “Forgive me. The language barrier is perhaps as unkind as your tongue. I don’t mean to keep you like a pet. I mean that nothing is free, more so in Paris perhaps than elsewhere.” But his eyes said something different about keeping me.

  “Then take me to a cabaret, and let me earn my blood. It’ll be a good base of operations.”

  He exhaled, his head on the side. “You understand that women here are sometimes sold into cabarets as chattel. That it’s a life no sane girl with options would choose.”

  I swallowed hard against a lump in my throat approximately the size of Cherie’s white fist. “Then I’m not sane, and I don’t have options. I’m choosing it.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and looked off into the hazy distance, where a single dark spear pierced the clouds. The Tower, they called it—some daimon scientist’s clever way to attract and channel lightning into electricity for the City of Light. Funny, how it looked exactly like the Eiffel Tower from my world but actually served a purpose here. Paris wasn’t tall and humpbacked like Sanglish cities but sprawled, orderly, and leisurely, in neat squares. The daimons weren’t known for leading lives of fear, nor were the humans who had taken up residence alongside them. There was a wall around the city, of course, but they’d given the artists free rein to make it beautiful, from what I’d heard. Daimons made things much nicer than Pinkies, as I was learning since touching down in Franchia.

  I’d always wanted to see Paris on Earth. And now it was the key to finding Cherie in Sang.

  Vale followed my gaze and nodded, rubbing his buzzed head. “It will be a hard ride. If you fall off, I will laugh at you. Odalisque is a bitch of a mare, and there’s no room for you on the saddle.” He met my eyes, steady and unblinking. “And odds are we will not find your friend.”

  “I’m not scared. And I will find her.”

  “Perhaps you are deaf. Do you understand that girls are kidnapped from the city, too? The brightest stars of the cabaret are often among the victims. It may be your dream, but ma chère, it could become your nightmare. The safest thing for you to do is let me return you to your people, or at least to mine. Getting taken yourself will not bring your friend back.”

  I rolled my eyes. “But it sounds like getting taken is the fastest way to find her. Can we go now? At least try to catch her?” I paused, let a little of the brave front down to show him the blud tears gathering. “We have to try. She’s all I have.”

  He held out his hands as if grasping for sense and finding nothing but air, a gesture I recognized from both Criminy and Cherie when dealing with me. “It’s suicide, bébé. Life in the cabarets isn’t easy, even if they will hire you on. And if you survive the ride to Paris, sneaking in will be messy.” He looked me up and down, and I gave him my Bludman’s stare, promising all sorts of yummy violence. “But if you really are that determined, I will take you.”

  “If you don’t take me now, I’ll start walking.” I realized what I’d said a heartbeat after he did and almost dived back into the bush to die of embarrassment in peace.

  His grin was luscious. “How can a gentleman turn down a threat like that?”

  With practiced movements, he snatched out the mare’s tether and slid the picket spike through a slot in her metal muzzle cap to make reins. He threw them over Odalisque’s head as she danced, then put a foot into the wide stirrup to leap into the saddle. Still grinning, he held down an arm for me. I took it, surprised at his strength as he swung me up behind him, his wide crystal-green eyes showing in turn his own surprise at my agility. The mare screamed and crow-hopped, trying to shake me loose, and he jerked the reins and kicked her. Odalisque reared and bucked before collecting herself for a pounding gallop.

  I fastened my arms around Vale’s lean waist and settled my cheek against his back, inhaling deeply and willing the beast to run faster toward Cherie. Back in the caravan, I had ached for a goal, an adventure, for something to care about. My wish had definitely been answered but not in the way I had hoped. The adventure wasn’t important anymore, not until I got my best friend back.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to rip you to shreds?” I asked, trying to cover the fact that I’d all but nuzzled the hard muscles of his back through the worn black shirt.

  “I’m half Abyssinian. My blood would drive you mad and kill you,” he shouted into the wind. “But please, bébé, keep trying.”

  I snuggled against his back as the bludmare thundered toward Paris, my cheek nestled up to his ribs, hoping he couldn’t feel my tears soaking into his shirt. I might have shown him my brave face before, but inside, I was falling apart. Cherie had trusted me, and I had brought her nothing but disaster. I let out a racking sob, and Vale tensed in the cage of my arms, muscles taut a
s the horse leaped and skidded across the road. Finally, he exhaled in a sigh I felt more than heard, and his hand reached down to squeeze mine where it held on to him for dear life.

  He didn’t let go.

  5

  We didn’t talk much, which I appreciated. Staying on the horse’s wildly undulating rump was a struggle, even with my performance-honed muscles. The cacophony of hoofbeats made conversation almost impossible, and every time I opened my mouth, I got a face full of shirt scented with woodsmoke and herbs, which wasn’t so bad but definitely distracted me from my strategizing.

  “Not much longer.” His words thrummed against my chest before the wind snatched them away from my ears. “Are you perhaps scared of dark, dangerous places full of bones?”

  “Not if Cherie is waiting on the other side.”

  Thunder vibrated the clouds, and the mare tossed her head and screamed a dare at the sky. It was darker over Paris, and a bolt of blue-white lightning arced from the gray thunderheads to the Tower and briefly lit the stark black skeleton of iron beams like a neon sign. A fat raindrop plunked on my cheek, and I burrowed further against Vale’s back, glad for my hat’s wide brim and annoyed with all the layers of my Pinky costume, which would soon be soaked and weighing me down when I wished to be fast and unencumbered.

  The road turned from hard-packed dirt to a slick slurry that slid beneath the mare’s hooves. When Vale turned her off the road and into the waist-high grass, I was glad to be on more solid ground. The wall was finally in view, but we were galloping swiftly away from the grand iron gates. Vale angled the mare toward a dark, boggy area surrounded by cattails. An enormous pipe jutted from the earth like a fallen Tower of Pisa, broken and overgrown with moss and filth. I smelled it then—deep, old death soaking up through the ground. Even closer, jagged tombstones poked up from the sludge like black pegs of rotten teeth. No one but the richest families in Sang buried bodies anymore, thanks to the lack of land within the cities and the possibility of a funeral party being eaten by a troop of bludsquirrels. Cremation and pretty urns were the fashion. Not surprisingly, the graveyard was long abandoned, untended, and falling back into the earth.