MINISTRY ATTACK

Xiaodan needed no further details. She was gone from view long before the Reaper was done finishing his sentence.

“Go to Her Majesty, milord,” Malekh told Riones tersely. “I’ve entrusted her with the serum needed to combat these infections. We’ll be needing them sooner than we thought.” And then he too, disappeared.

With a loud curse, Remy dug into his pocket, discovered a bloodwaker, and downed its contents swiftly.

“What are you doing, Pendergast?” Riones demanded.

“Going after them.” He nodded at the man’s coat. “Any of that yours?”

“Thankfully, no. We were hauling bodies out of Agenot’s ice bunker under Her Majesty’s orders. One of the bastards stood up without warning and tore Kibold’s throat out.”

“Didn’t Agenot inject them with the Third Court noble’s serum?”

“Agenot told us nothing for nuts. All he said to do was load the corpses up into the waiting wagons. We got most of the scientists out, but there’s a few more bunkered down inside. Oswald ordered us out to sound the warning, but he and Maxwell and Pyalia’re still in there. The speed of those pendejos—not even vampires could move so—”

“Oswald Craggart?”

“Yes. Friend of yours?”

“No.” Craggart was the Reaper responsible for dumping him with all the bounties no one else wanted to take on, hoping one would be enough to kill him. Didn’t stop Remy from taking them, though. “Any soldiers surrounding the Archives?”

“We’ve sealed all the exits as best we could, but that means nothing if those things break through. Don’t tell me you’re going in with them, Pendergast! Let the vampires sort out the—”

“They didn’t do this, Riones. This is all on Astonbury and Agenot, and the vampires, of all people, are trying to help us. Oswald’s sent me on far too many of these shit-arsed hunts. He won’t want me to stop now when it’s his gonads that are on the line.” It was said with more confidence than Remy actually felt. “Secure the premises, find as many other Reapers as you can spare to bolster the defenses at the Archives’ barricade. If whatever’s inside is set loose on the populace, it’s over.”

“Pendergast—”

“It wasn’t Craggart’s intention to make me the most experienced Reaper on hand to be dealing with this damned lot, but that’s how things stand. Blast it, Riones. Let me do my job so you can do yours.”

Riones slumped, accepting the inevitable. “Get them out quick, Pendergast, and stay careful. We’re losing hunters as it is.”

Xiaodan was scanning the building for other signs of life when he finally caught up. Malekh was ordering the royal guards already in the vicinity to step away.

The building itself stood, silent and empty, with no signs of anyone else inside.

“How many more humans?” Malekh barked at another soldier.

“A few of the doctors and two Reapers, I think,” came the terrified reply. “Also Sir Oswald, but we don’t know what’s happened to—”

A window shattered on the first floor, sending shrapnel their way. From behind the broken glass several creatures leaped out, so severely mutilated that it was impossible to believe they had ever been human. The first to clamber forth was gray and massive, with the hunched shoulders and massive chest of a brute, and nearly shed of all its skin, revealing muscle filaments and blood vessels. Just like Harveston, the infection had caused its body to swell to grotesque proportions, but its fangs were larger, protruding halfway down its torso to further highlight its monstrous nature.

More creatures came tearing out, all with varying, distorted degrees of the same skinless shapes, all possessing the same asymmetry of aberration, and Remy realized with horror that tatters of black cloth remained on at least one of them; even in its shredded state, there was no mistaking the dark clothes the Reapers favored.

Malekh drew out his curved sword and disappeared briefly to stab at the nearest mutation. There was a wretched, sickly sound as the blade plunged into the creature’s mouth and a deft twist as the noble’s hand sliced its face in half, leaving only the lower mandible connected to the rest of its form.

“Keep your distance!” Remy ordered the other guards, snapping out Breaker’s twin scythes. The knifechain tumbled into his hand, and Remy looped it through the air, curving it down to strike at another rampaging monster through its chest, pivoting to attack with his scythes in one measured swipe that promptly took its head off.

But the mutations were already targeting the other soldiers. An unfortunate guard screamed as he went down, the sound cutting off when one of the creature’s teeth tore through his throat. “Keep your distance!” Remy hollered again, planting himself between the rest of the men and the creatures closing in. He spun the chain around himself, the cylinder in his hands blurring into a spinning arc above his head, a rhythm he’d mastered since he’d been but a novice, until he’d created a personal, nearly impervious shield about his person. An infected drew near and promptly lost three limbs. Its scream was abruptly cut off when Remy’s flying blades found their mark with another flick of his hand, ripping swiftly through its throat before gutting its stomach.

Several lunged for his knifechain at the same time, slowing down the momentum of his swing even as they ignored the limbs Breaker lopped off. Remy was forced to keep turning constantly as the attacks came from all directions, cutting swathes through the creatures even as they closed in on him.

Xiaodan reappeared behind one of the infected attacking Remy, hand already raised and angled away, a cutting gesture. Remy didn’t see the attack, but he did see the creature falling apart, gobs of flesh and meat spattering the ground.

The vampiress was gone again, blurring into view beside a second mutation, crosshatching it into segments within seconds. In another ten, she had done the same to the rest of the creatures before Remy could do more.

Smiling, Malekh cut down the last of the infected standing. “You needn’t worry about her,” the noble said calmly. “You’d need more saving than she does.”

Remy already had his knives out; it was almost a shame he couldn’t stab his ally, too. “These were all the bodies at the lab?”

“It would appear so. Someone knew that the bodies were to be transported today, took steps before Riones and the other Reapers could get to them.”

“They already got to some of the Reapers.” Remy stood over one of the creatures he’d killed, staring down at the familiar, ripped clothing. Now he recognized its partial features, disfigured as it was, and the one remaining blue eye. “Maxwell Scorenge,” he said. Not the first time he’d had to identify a fellow Reaper by their remains, but it never got easier. “He was helping Riones transport the bodies. Just how quickly does the infection spread?”

“Far quicker than it should. Even quicker than I feared, Lord Riones.”

The marquess had returned to the scene, his face ashen as he took in the dead, decomposing bodies strewn about them. Several men were dragging a heavy case behind him. “That’s Scorenge,” he choked out. “Mierda. What happened in there?”

“Is that my serum?” Malekh asked him, nodding to the chest.

“Yes, but how—”

“Take all the men you can spare and throw these bodies into a pile. Find the nearest apothecary and procure as many syringes from them as you can. Inject the serum into every body you can find—one part mixture to two parts water—one cc should be more than enough for each. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when you see a thick cocoon-like layer form over their skin. Cart them into Giantsmound, as Her Majesty ordered, and keep them under guard there. We will incinerate every last piece of flesh from these remains, and we shall do it outside the city. Elouve has been compromised enough as it is. Do you understand, Riones?”

“Yes,” the other man said. “If it’ll keep any more of them from rising, I’ll do it. You heard him!” He roared at the other, terrified soldiers. “Take yourselves to Madame Sophia’s and bring back all the needles she can provide us!”

“I smell something bad,” Xiaodan said.

“I believe that goes without saying,” Remy grunted, watching the soldiers run.

“No. It’s not just the Rot. I smell vampire.”

“Vampires don’t smell like anything.”

“Not to humans, no.”

“Are you telling me there may be vampires inside the Archives along with those already infected?”

“After the war between my court and the Fifth, I heard rumors that some of Etrienne’s men not young enough to be ashed were sent back to Elouve for study.” Malekh’s smile was cold. “Astonbury issued a statement denying it then. He’d always struck me as someone who thought he was cleverer than he really was. The morgue he maintains appears to have more than just the infected in storage. Agenot was keeping things from us.”

He stood. “I want eyes on every inch of the building, Riones. Anything so much as twitches, I want it taken down. How many personnel still inside?”

“There must be at least four more scientists in there,” Riones said crisply, “and two more Reapers unaccounted for, excluding Scorenge.”

“We must flush them out before they escape into the populace. Xiaodan and I will head in to hunt for survivors.”

“I’m going with you,” Remy interjected.

“You are human,” the noble said dismissively.

“If you think I can’t handle a building full of mutated bastards, then you should have complained more when Xiaodan invited me along,” Remy said. “If I’m bait, as you say, then there’s no better time to put me to good use than here. And if I do wind up getting myself eaten by one of these horrors, then you can wash your hands of me. Cheerfully cremate my remains, if you’d like. Pour your little augmented coagulant whatsit on my bones and give me a rousing send-off at daybreak. But if I stomp on inside and prove I can take on any infected and vampires within, then you owe me. Even if the vampire arse I beat winds up being yours.”

It took counting five of his own heartbeats before Zidan’s mouth tilted up, albeit not in any amused, genial way, briefly exposing a good amount of fang. It took another five before the noble turned away. “The three of us shall be entering the Ministry,” he said to Riones. “If we do not return in the next two hours, you are to set the whole building on fire.”

“Lord Malekh!” the lord protested.

“Even that may not completely stop its spread. The alternative is three hundred thousand in the city exposed to the Rot. Her Majesty will know what to do next.”

“Now that that’s settled…” Xiaodan strode toward the main entrance. Before anyone could stop her, she had wrenched the doors open, splintering the frame in her eagerness, and stepped inside.

Malekh sighed. “My fiancée grows impatient. The queen is your priority, Riones. We’ll do the rest.”

---

THE DOOR to the laboratory stood wide open, this time with no Dr. Agenot to welcome them in.

Beyond it was a slaughterhouse.

Many of the bodies strewn about within had not undergone the rapid decay that so marked the Rot mutations, but none of them were… intact, for lack of a better word. Staring at the grisly remains, Remy could barely fight off a wave of nausea. He hoped they’d all been dead before they’d been ripped apart, half-consumed, and then further decimated.

He spotted Agenot’s body. The doctor was staring mutely at the wall, mouth parted in an expression of surprise. Remy was glad to see no fear on the man’s face—mayhap there had been no pain for him. The rest of the doctor’s lower body lay propped against the wall he was gaping lifelessly at, a bloody track on the ground connecting both.

“Light,” Remy said.

“I can still smell them,” Xiaodan whispered.

Malekh was prowling the room, ignoring the other sprawled bodies there in favor of inspecting the equipment. “I can’t find it,” he said.

“The rest of Agenot’s body? It’s right here. It’s all bloody here.” Remy had found two more assistants. What he thought were two, anyway. There was far too much blood to be just the one, but too few limbs to be more than that.

Malekh ignored him. “Agenot looked to have been re-creating my serum when the attack occurred. But the vials are missing.”

“Perhaps he stored it somewhere else beforehand,” Xiaodan suggested.

“Maybe.” Malekh didn’t sound convinced.

“Could have shattered during the fight,” Remy grunted. He counted at least three more people in the room, in no better shape. “Oh, fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” Xiaodan asked.

“Found the other Reapers.” Pyalia had clearly bled out, her throat horribly mangled. Oswald Craggart, on the other hand, sat with his back to the wall, mouth still twisted in rage. His fire lance, unused, lay beside him.

“I’m sorry. Were they friends of yours?”

“Not really. But they weren’t mauled like the others.” Remy used Breaker to push Craggart’s coat to one side, revealing a deep wound on his chest. “I don’t think it’s the infected that got to them. These look to have been made with weapons.”

“This should lead to the yakhchāl.” Malekh nodded toward another door near Craggart’s prone form. That it was also open did not inspire confidence.

“May as well,” Remy said, already moving toward it. He had some knowledge of architecture—enough to know that the Archives was a hideous-looking piece of shit, objectively speaking—but wasn’t familiar with how the cone-like structure could lower temperatures enough to keep items within it frozen. The more pressing business was that he could detect no amount of cold whatsoever coming from within the room, which he presumed was a bad sign.

Unexpectedly, his chest throbbed.

Remy turned just in time.

His instincts were the main reason the creature hadn’t already opened up his chest. Instead, there was only a clanging sound as its claws hit cylinder, Remy planting the weapon between himself and his attacker in the nick of time. It was another infected, as swollen and as massive and as dirtbag-ugly as its fellows. Remy shoved it hard, and the creature stumbled back.

Malekh was on it, his saber flashing. The creature’s head slid noisily off its shoulders, and the rest of its body followed its slide down toward the ground with a nasty squish.

“I didn’t need your help,” Remy said.

“I’m sure you didn’t.” Malekh was already whipping out another syringe—how many of these things was the coxswab hiding in his coat?—pushing the needle into the creature’s body. “Stay close,” he said as he stood back up and strode into the yakhchāl. Remy stabbed at the new corpse at his feet unnecessarily with his scythe, then followed a few feet behind.

The room was larger than he expected. There was little to differentiate it from the standard morgue, with a similar iron table at the center for autopsies and large human-sized cabinets where the bodies lay stored, stacked atop one another. But the floor was wet, and there were small blocks of ice puddling in the corners. Dr. Agenot said that the room was always kept cold. The melting ice around them and the fact that Remy was sweating meant the location had been compromised.

Malekh slid the nearest cabinet open. It was empty. “The doctor said there would be about two dozen corpses in here. Though given everything, I’m inclined to believe he lied about that as well.”

Remy tugged another open—nothing inside there, either. “We fought about twenty of those bastards outside,” he said, “minus the one that attacked me in the lab, which means there are at least four or five more that are unaccounted for. Not including any Fifth Court bodies Astonbury might have stolen, if he did.” He opened another and stared at the corpse laid out within, teeth bared to reveal its vampiric nature, but otherwise lifeless. “Three or four now,” he amended.

There were two more corpses still in stasis inside the yakhchāl, bringing their count down to another two still missing. Remy’s heart sank; Lady Daneira’s body had not been among them.

“Astonbury, you old fool,” Malekh hissed quietly as he yanked open the last of the storage compartments. Peering inside, Remy detected another corpse, this time much more considerably mummified than the others, as if it had been residing there for much longer.

“This is Arnoso Steinbeck,” his companion said. “A Fifth Court vampire. I know this because I killed him myself during the war. Astonbury did bring in dead Fifth Court vampires to Elouve. This one is safely dead, at least.”

Closing the door behind them after Malekh had given the fresh corpses their necessary shots, they resumed their search.

“Zidan,” Xiaodan said softly. “Do you smell that?”

Remy didn’t, but Malekh’s brow furrowed. “Yes. Vampire.”

“It could be a trap. An attempt to lure us farther in. It’s coming from here.” Xiaodan stepped through another doorway. Malekh headed in after her. Remy was poised to follow, but a scraping noise caught his attention.

It was coming from the vault that had once held Tal Harveston’s corpse prisoner.

The window had been shattered, pieces of it scattered among the levers and switches, but the steel door inside was firmly shut.

A woman stood before it, clawing in vain at the wall. “Urgghh,” she moaned. “Rnnghaa.”

Remy knew who she was before she turned to face him. His heart twisted painfully. “Lady Daneira.”

He almost didn’t recognize her. Something had caused her face to melt away, leaving nothing but empty eye sockets and a layer of tissue and what he could only assume was fat resembling gelatinized soup. But her hair, her one vanity, was still as thick and as lustrous as ever, settling around a head that sat neatly on her shoulders like he hadn’t sliced it off at their last encounter.

Everything else about her was repulsive. Similar to Harveston, parts of her were in the later stages of decomposition, in a perpetual cycle of decay and regeneration where bits of her looked ready to slough off on their own, the rest healing just enough to keep her mostly intact.

“Nghaaa,” she gurgled, raising her arms to him.

He should have moved by now, finished what he’d started from what felt like a lifetime ago. But Remy remained rooted to the spot, paralyzed as she approached him, unable to look away.

She rushed at him without warning, even faster than when she was newly turned. Remy’s reflexes finally kicked in.

Breaker sliced into her. Her wounds made no spatter, her body simply falling over with a wet, squelching sound.

Remy backed out of the room—and ducked a sword that had been hurtling toward his head. He blocked the next blow with Breaker’s base, and then whipped the knifechain into a sweeping arc before him to keep the new attacker out of reach.

His new opponent didn’t look like any of the other infected. He looked remarkably human, with all the expected body parts where they were supposed to be, and free of any discernible decay. He was golden-haired and blue-eyed, about six inches of height over Remy, with milky-white skin and strong, handsome features. Only his fangs gave him away—they were long and sharp.

“Another Reaper,” the vampire laughed, eyes alight with malicious glee. “Another prize for me.”

“Who in the bloody hell are you?”

“I was hoping to find Malekh, but you’ll do for now. You must be his newest plaything—he always did have an itch for the brunettes.” The vampire swooped closer, but Remy’s chain kept him at bay. “Oh, and you can fight, too! Wouldn’t it—”

The knifechain wrapped around the man’s waist; one jerk was enough to snap it free. “—be grand—”

The vampire disappeared from view, rematerialized behind Remy. “—if I were to—”

Remy turned and yanked Breaker up just in time; his assailant’s fangs probed for flesh and hit nothing but weapon.

“—leave a pretty mark on you for him to find?” With almost no effort, the vampire dragged Breaker to the side, leaving his throat exposed.

Remy was going to lose. The fangs were inches away from his neck. All the vampire needed to do was shove Breaker two more inches to the right, and nothing would have stopped him. The man smiled, sensing victory, and yanked the scythe away with a triumphant snarl.

Remy released his hold on Breaker, kicked at the knifechain that lay on the ground at his feet. It leaped up, wrapped around his foot. He kicked out and it unraveled again, struck at the vampire’s face when the latter shot forward.

The fair-haired bloodsucker reappeared several feet away, hands clasped against one eye. “You little bitch!” he hissed. “I’m going to make sure you die slowly.”

“You will do no such thing, Vasilik.” Remy didn’t see how Malekh had found his way between him and the other vampire, and he would die before showing his relief. “Sanchin swore he saw you perish at Etrienne’s lair.”

“Sanchin knows little of so many things, as do you.” Vasilik grinned around the trickle of blood still streaming down his face. “Many things can escape notice if you don’t look hard enough. And you never looked hard enough for me, did you, Zidan?” He blurred from view once again. Malekh took off after him without another word.

“Leave them be,” Xiaodan said from behind Remy, sounding weary, and he jumped. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you. We took care of the rest. The Archives are secured.”

“That vampire—Basilisk or whatever—he didn’t have the Rot.” Remy crouched down to retrieve his broken chain, heart still pounding. “There could be more like him lying in wait.”

“There’s no one else here. His scent was the only one I could detect, though he’d used that as a ploy to come after you first.” She was holding something in her left hand—a badly bent pair of eyeglasses, the wire frames twisted and both lenses missing. She held it out for him to see. “Found it stuck to one of the mutations inside. It looked so odd on a creature that was no longer…” Xiaodan’s smile bloomed with relief. “I’m glad you’re all right. Vasilik used to be a member of the Third Court. Zidan’s former…”

She shrugged and sighed. “He switched his allegiance to the Fifth to spite Zidan, but it seems he didn’t die in battle as we thought. And while he is more than capable of bearing long grudges, Malekh says he doesn’t have the necessary scientific knowledge to engineer a plague of this scale. I don’t know if he’s working in league with someone else or simply exploiting the situation. But it’s clear Vasilik knows enough about the infection to join in the chaos. Likely he was the one to have started all this, perhaps sabotaged the ice.”

“He killed Craggart and Pyalia. That much I can tell.”

Xiaodan held out a small container of clear, shimmering liquid in her other hand. “This was what Agenot was working on,” she said. “It looks like he discovered something before the attack came. Stored it inside one of his lockboxes before he fled, which may have cost him his life. Malekh has no idea what it is yet, but if Agenot chose to save it instead of himself, then it may be something important. I hope it is. I don’t think Aluria can take much more of this.”

“I hope it is, too,” Remy said, mind still spinning at how close the new vampire had come to tearing his throat out. He looked at the carnage around them, at how close the creatures had come to getting loose in the city. “Because I’m not sure I can take much more of this, either.”