22

The glow worm ceiling went dark as fires burned below. One by one, the tiny worms winked out, like stars retreating as dawn approached. We no longer needed their eerie blue light to see; bonfires throughout the cavern lit the way and gave the few remaining vermin nowhere to hide. Soldiers ferreted them out, beheaded, and dragged them to the pyres.

"We should look for smoke in the morning, see if this cavern vents anywhere," Seth said as we watched the fumes spiral up and obscure the roof.

"There's so much to do," I murmured. We had vermin to find and destroy, and the catacombs were calling to be explored. How deep did these tunnels go, and what did the veiled sections of honeycomb hide?

There was another task I really didn't want to perform: telling Charlotte I had killed her mother and handed over her sister to be a captive freak in London.

"Tomorrow, Ella. There is nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. I think right now we all deserve a hot bath, a meal, and a decent night's sleep." The smile lifted his lips as he took my hand.

Seth was probably right, but I wanted everything done now. Then my stomach growled. It had been a rather long day. My clothes carried the strong smell of petrol and fried vermin that I wanted to scrub away. "What if we miss one?"

"Lieutenant Bain is more than capable of supervising the clean-up operation. Let the fire burn and the lads will rig out the cavern with lanterns. In the morning we can poke around." He tugged me toward the tunnel and the way out. The lieutenant directed operations and men swept the cavern in a regular pattern, hunting every remaining vermin.

Smoke filled my lungs, and my mouth watered at the thought of crisp, sweet night-time air. And then a bath. "Very well."

Alice and Frank joined us for the slow walk out. Not together though. Frank still had ground to make up, and Alice was doing an excellent job of ignoring him. Alice walked beside me while Frank walked on the other side of his half-brother. Or I suppose not his brother at all, after Seth's revelation.

"Who is your father, then?" I asked Seth, curious about the man who wore the ducal title. Imagine if Warrens was really his father—oh, the scandal!

"The same man as fathered Frank." His hand tightened around mine as we trekked from tunnel to the smaller catacomb.

I frowned. I was tired but I usually wasn't this slow to figure things out. "But you told Elizabeth the ducal bloodline and ducal title were carried by two different people."

Seth stopped me from peering into niches to see what they held and pulled me up the next tunnel. "I lied. I could see Jake trying to get you out of that cage and figured I needed to come up with something good, something that would keep Elizabeth and Louise focused on me."

I must be a bad influence on the duke, if my original deception about my parentage had rubbed off on him. "Lord Leithfield, I am mortified that you told such an outrageous lie."

"Worked, though, didn't it?" He grinned wider.

A weight seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders now that we had not only found but torched Elizabeth's hive. For the first time in a number of weeks, I allowed myself to think of the future. We had won this battle, but the Grim War continued, although now there appeared a small burst of sunlight. My confidence that we would emerge victorious grew, just as my chest swelled with love for Seth.

I wasn't sure if the other two would come out of this stronger or apart. That was for Alice to decide. She seemed different wearing pants and with the mallet over her shoulder. No longer the housemaid, but a warrior in her own right. I wanted to interrogate her about what had happened after she left with Frank, but I certainly wasn't going to do that with the lads eavesdropping. Tonight I would curl up in the attic with her and we would talk until sunrise.

We emerged into another night-time world, with real stars above our heads. I stopped and drew deep lungsful of fresh air. I hadn't realised how stale the air below was until I stood under the sky again.

"I'll find us a ride to take you back to the farm," Seth said, and then slipped away from me.

A familiar grinning shape emerged from the tunnel and came to stand next to me.

I asked him, "How did you do it, Jake? What happened?" When Louise had stopped us in the tunnel with her vermin guard, Jake had disappeared as though he had never been one of our party. Then he had materialised when I needed him most.

His teeth flashed white in the dark. "Well, miss, have to admit I was being nosey and wandered off, peering in those little cubbyholes in the rock when Miss Jeffrey struck."

Ha! Couldn't fault him for his curiosity. I was itching to go back with a lantern and see what secrets we would find down there. "But why didn't the vermin notice you?"

He shrugged. "I was standing amongst them when you were split up. Maybe I got myself a bit dirty crawling around. But when I realised they weren't paying me any mind, I made myself dirtier, kept my mind blank, and followed along."

It didn't make any sense. Given that the vermins’ sole purpose was to bite or scratch the healthy, why did they ignore Jack in their midst?

"He should have been one anyway," another voice said from the dark. Jack stepped forward, a mirror image of his twin—except his uniform was cleaner.

"What do you mean?" The itch started in the back of my head again.

"After the war, Jake caught the influenza on the ship home and—"

"I should have died, but Jack wouldn't let me." Jake finished his twin's sentence.

There should have been a cymbal crash in my head as thoughts tumbled into view and formed themselves in a cohesive picture. "You survived the pandemic and it somehow made you immune. That's why they didn't want Charlotte. She also survived the original pandemic."

"Who didn't want Charlotte?" Seth had returned and caught the last part of our conversation.

"I have kept watch over Charlotte, in case Louise and Elizabeth tried to snatch her to be part of their undead family. When I asked why they hadn't, Louise said they didn't want her taint. I assumed they meant her trace of humanity, but what if they meant some taint that lingers in the survivors of the original pandemic?"

Seth let out a whistle. "Something that might be like a poison to them? Which is why they didn't bite Jake. We never thought to track survivors to see if any were subsequently Turned."

Jack laughed and smacked his twin on the back of the head. "Maybe they didn't bite you because you would taste bad. You might have made them sick or something."

I think he had literally hit it on the head. Vermin didn't bite survivors because something about them repelled their undead tastes. This was one missing piece of the puzzle we needed, quite apart from learning why Elizabeth needed Seth.

"We've been so focused on those who died, Turned, and those who were subsequently struck. It never occurred to us to look for patterns in survivors and what has happened to them. Jake moved amongst them unnoticed, and Louise and Elizabeth recoiled at the idea of having Charlotte as part of the hive."

Seth tapped his jaw as he thought. "It might be a way to harm them, or to somehow protect innocents from the effect of a bite. A type of inoculation, perhaps."

"Something to report to the War Office tomorrow." Bath and a bed called my name. Let the doctors and scientists figure out what surviving the pandemic meant. Perhaps they would discover something under their microscopes that would aid our fight.

"I have a car waiting to take us home." Seth took my hand and we walked down past the trucks. Alice trailed behind, deliberately avoiding Frank.

I sat in the back and Alice climbed in with me, leaving the men up front. She had a determined glint in her amber eyes, as though she had made up her mind about something. I suspected I was about to be drawn into one of her schemes.

"What are you planning, Alice? And don't tell me nothing. I can see it written all over your face, I just can't read what."

Frank slid behind the steering wheel and started the motor. He backed the car down the death road until he found a clearing between two trees that was wide enough to turn around. Then we headed back through the forest, trees picked out by the headlamps and flashing past us like ancient sentries, keeping guard over the ancient site we had discovered.

"Would you be terribly upset if I didn't want to be a maid anymore?" Alice chewed her bottom lip, waiting for my reply.

Was that all that preyed on her mind? "No, but I do hope you would still be my friend?"

"Oh, of course." She punched me lightly in the arm. "But you are embarking on your own path, Ella, and I want to claim a piece of that road for myself."

I couldn't see Alice as part of the war effort, but she did suit a uniform. "You want to join the army?"

"No, silly." She laughed. "It's a new century, and you are turning into a new woman. I want to be one, too. An independent woman who doesn't need a man in her life to look after her."

She may not have noticed, but Frank was awfully quiet, soaking up every word Alice uttered. If she wanted a modern career instead of being in service, I would do whatever I could to assist. If Frank had half a brain, he would listen and figure out how to help her dream come true, too. "What do you want to do, Alice?"

Her eyes shone in the moonlight, excitement and possibilities gleaming in their amber depths. "Women have the vote, but still no voice. Those lucky enough to be eligible are expected to blindly follow the dictates of their husbands or fathers. That's not right. I want a world where women have more rights, more control over their lives, and I want to be a part of that."

"Politics?" Better her than me. I would grab my sword and dive back into a vermin hive before I would tackle a room full of politicians. But then, Alice had a way about her, and she'd probably have them all eating out of the palm of her hand.

"If that's what it takes. I want to help women and children to improve their lives. I just don't know how to start." A frown pulled her pale brow and she leaned back against the seat.

"If that's what you want, we'll figure something out," I said, and pulled her to me for a hug.

Frank pulled the motorcar into our driveway and up the gentle sweep to the house. Magda, Henry, and Stewart came running out.

After a good night's sleep, I would have to figure out how to defeat a long-dead ancestor of Seth's. My skin crawled at the sound of her name, but everything we had learned pointed to the global spread of vermin having a three-hundred-year-old point of origin: Millicent deMage.

Alice ran into the open embrace of Magda.

Seth left the car and came around to me. "Promise me you will get some sleep tonight?"

"I promise." I'd go to bed at least, but I had a list a mile long to make of things we needed to do. His arms slid around me and I let myself soak in his warmth of his embrace.

"I'm going to deliver Louise to London, and then I will have Warrens pull everything we have on the history of Serenity House and Millicent," he said against my hair.

Mentally, I added the name Aleister Crowley to the list of people we needed to research. Along with druids, ley lines, death roads, and possible reasons why vermin didn't like the pandemic survivors. Oh, blast, I also needed to see Charlotte before local gossip caught up with her.

"Tomorrow, Ella. I can feel your mind buzzing with things to do, but they will wait a few hours."

A sigh heaved itself free and a wave of fatigue hit. I slumped against Seth and he held me. That night I learned anything was possible when you surrounded yourself with people you trusted. I would allow myself a few hours to recover my strength, and then we had to push on with the Grim War.

I raised my gaze to meet his serious grey one. "Just so you know, I am going to be hard to impress after this."

A smile pulled the corners of his mouth and one eyebrow raised. "Whatever do you mean?"

"After we blew up the first hive, you promised me an explosive evening. I'm ready for that now, but I wonder how you’re going to do better than a monstrous, flaming wicker man of the undead?" I smiled up at him and hoped he picked up on my hint that I was ready to advance our relationship.

I had done a fair bit of thinking about how I wanted that evening to unfold. Somewhere in that enormous house they must have a bear or tiger skin rug. I was sure that was how intimate moments usually occurred in romantic novels, on the back of some poor deceased animal.

A frown wrinkled my brow. That didn't sound terribly romantic now that I thought about it. I substituted a woollen blanket for the dead bear. But then wool against bare skin always made me itch, so that wouldn't work either. Becoming a fallen woman seemed a fraught path. What was comfortable and romantic but wouldn't make my skin break out in a rash? Instead of rolling on the floor, I placed us on the silk-covered chaise. Much better.

Seth stroked my cheek and then crooked a finger under my chin, tipping it toward him. "I promise you an evening where you will fly so high you will be able to touch the stars."

Oh. I couldn't wait. Well, it would have to wait, since I desperately needed a bath first. Then he kissed me, and I completely forgot about my list of things to do.