Dancing in Red (a Wear Black novella) (6 page)

The housekeeper hadn’t been mean or
cruel to her. Considering the circumstances, she had been decent. And because
of her, Nellie hadn’t had to whore herself again.

Carefully, Nellie folded the shawl,
tucking in the tiny wisps of thread that had bowed out as best she could. She
found some brown paper and wrapped the shawl in it and left it on the corner of
the kitchen table as she left, attached with a little note.

“Ready, my dear? We’re going to have to
find you some new dresses, aren’t we,” Mrs. O’Connor said with a glance at the
only dress that Nellie had to her name. “Some traveling suits, I think. And a
good meal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nellie said. And without a
turn for one last look, she stepped forward, following Mrs. O’Connor. Her life
was starting over, and she had the world to look forward to.

For her revenge, though—that was
something different altogether. She was Irish. She was patient, she could wait.
For years, if necessary. But revenge would come.

The End

About The Authors

Heather Hiestand
was born in
Illinois but her family migrated west before she started school. Since then she
has claimed Washington State for home, except for a few years in California.
She wrote her first story at age seven and went on to major in creative writing
at the University of Washington. Her first published fiction was a mystery
short story, but since then romance has been her focus, with forays into
speculative fiction. That first published romance short story was set in the
Victorian period and she continues to return, fascinated by the rapid changes
of the nineteenth century. The author of many novels, novellas and short
stories, she has achieved bestseller status on Amazon’s Romance Anthologies and
Historical Romance lists and on Amazon UK’s Romance Short Stories list. At
Barnes & Noble, she is a top 140 seller. With her husband and son, she
makes her home in a small town and supposedly works out of her tiny office,
though she mostly writes in her easy chair in the living room.

For more information, see her website at
http://
www.heatherhiestand.com
. Heather loves to hear
from readers! Her email is
[email protected]
.
She spends too much time on Twitter where she is @hahiestand.

Eilis Flynn
has worked at a
comic book company, a couple of Wall Street brokerage firms, a wire service, a
publishing company for financial cultists, and a magazine for futurists. She’s
also dined with a former British prime minister and a famous economist, can
claim family ties to the emperor of Japan (but then can’t we all?) and the
president of a major telecommunications company, worked at most of the
buildings of the World Trade Centers, stalked actress Katharine Hepburn (for
one block), and met her husband when he asked her to sign a comic book. With
all these experiences (all of which are true!), what else could she do but
start writing stories to make use of all that? She’s written a variety of
things that also don’t seem to belong together, but they do: comic book stories
both online and in print, scholarly works in a previous life as a scholar, book
reviews and interviews, and articles about finance (at odds with her
anthropology background), before settling down to write romantic fantasies
about the reality beyond what we can see.

Eilis lives in verdant Washington state
with her equally fantastical husband and the ghosts of spoiled rotten cats. She
was written Superman family stories for DC Comics (as Elizabeth Smith). Her
novels are available at most online retailers, and her novella,
Riddle of
Ryu
, is available at the same digital stores. Her latest comic book story, “30-Day
Guarantee,” is available at
http://www.myromancestory.com
.

If you’re curious to find out more, you
can check out http://
www.eilisflynn.com
. She can be
reached at
[email protected]
. If you’re
looking for a professional editor for your own work, check out her rates at
http://emsflynn.wordpress.com.

More Stories

By Heather Hiestand

Anthologies:

 “The Burro” in Murder Across the Map

“Victoriana” in Holiday in the Heart

Looking Forward, Looking Back and Other
Stories

“The Bachelor” in Cupid Gone Wild

Novellas:

Victoriana Adventure

Steampunk Smugglers 1: Captain Andrew’s
Flying Christmas

Steampunk Smugglers 2: Captain Fenna’s
Dirigible Valentine

Steampunk Smugglers 3: Captain Gravenor’s
Airship Equinox

Novels:

Cards Never Lie

One Juror Down

Gunshot Grange

Two on the Hunt

In Flight

Wear Black (with Eilis Flynn)

The Marquess of Cake

One Taste of Scandal

His Wicked Smile (2014)

By Eilis Flynn

Novels

The Sleeper Awakes

Festival of Stars

Introducing Sonika

Echoes of Passion

Static Shock

Wear Black (with Heather Hiestand)

Caprice

Novellas

Riddle of Ryu

Short Stories

“Dancing in Red” (with Heather Hiestand)

“Halloween for a Heroine” (a Sonika
short)

Graphic Novellas

“30-Day Guarantee”

Comic Stories (as Elizabeth Smith)

“The Weak Link”

“One of Those Days”

“Hero for a Day”

“Two-Edged Sword”

Wear
Black, a novel, is available now in electronic and in print forms

DEATH
DID NOT END HIS SERVICE TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE

Beneath
Windsor Castle, a shadow network of immortals keeps the British Empire safe.
Army captain Lucas Fitzrobbins becomes one of them when the cure for his mortal
wound turns out to be a vampirism potion. He is abruptly inducted into the
secret St. George Protector Society…and it’s not long before the Society’s
newest recruit discovers it has dark mysteries as well…

MARKED
AS A TARGET

Hampering
Lucas’s efforts to adjust to his after-life is
An Tighearn
operative
Nellie Clifton, a beautiful and enigmatic assassin, who has marked Lucas as her
latest quarry. But then…

SECRETS
ARE THREATENED TO BE REVEALED

A
brutal killer stalks the seamy underside of London. Protectors and assassins
alike must leave the shadows to find the fiend before their existence is
revealed to the world. Tasked with the job of tracking down the murderer, Lucas
discovers that the crazed butcher may have connections that go to the heart of
the British Empire. One thing is certain:

THE
QUEEN MUST NEVER KNOW

Seven
Seconds, the second Wear Black novel, is coming soon

In Which Details Do Not Add Up

The machine’s sword slashed through the
air, forcing Lucas Dudley to leap out of its way. He landed three feet south,
on one of the marble half-walls of the alcove, his boots sliding on the slick
surface. The automaton projecting the image of the assassin Nellie Clifton
offered intense, dangerous battle to anyone who chose to try it, but Lucas
didn’t want to be the first vampire to break his neck while avoiding its
weapon. He jumped, somersaulting smoothly, landing with his sword on guard.

Jumping when the Nellie-ton thrust low,
he dropped his sword when he grabbed for the overhead lamps. The brass and iron
machine continued to jab in his direction, even without an opponent in front of
it. Steam gushed with every hissing thrust of the pistons controlling its arms.

Right then, Williams walked into the
alcove and stopped to stare at Lucas’s dangling feet. When Lucas had first been
introduced to the big russet-haired inventor, Williams had seemed the dourest
soul he’d ever met.

He’d been wrong.

Williams laughed heartily, blood-red
tears running down his cheeks. “I take it the automaton is winning,” he said.
“Fortunately, the real Nellie Clifton is either less effective or has a soft
spot in her heart for you, because otherwise you would be quite dead by now.”

With a flip of a switch and a tap on the
automaton’s back, Williams stopped the Nellie-ton, the gears within the machine
easing down.

Shaking his head, Lucas dropped to the
floor, his boots momentarily sinking out of sight beneath the steam cloud.
“Thank you,” he said, chagrined. “I don’t know why the usual shutoff didn’t
work for me. I thought I’d give it a go—”

“Fotheringay didn’t build it for a
simple demonstration, you know,” Williams, who was the Society’s technology and
weapons master, reminded him. “Of course, he also rejiggered it a few days ago.
It runs faster now and adapts better to its opponent. The chap is a genius.
Don’t know what he changed.”

“I doubt he’s of a mind to enlighten us
at the moment.” Lucas picked up his sword and sheathed it in the cane scabbard
all Society protectors used to disguise their primary weapon. Charles
Fotheringay was sitting in a Society cell in the dungeon.

“No,” Williams said. “Not without
persuasion.”

Lucas winced as he wiped blood-sweat
from his forehead. The Society’s interrogations were intense. “He tried to kill
me, committed treason. Still I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”

“Don’t,” Williams said, pushing a lever
on the back of the Nellie-ton. Wheels appeared at its base and he tilted it
back.

The two vampires left the alcove and
heading toward the science labs. “Fotheringay knew what he was doing. He had
been working to betray the Society for decades. You just stopped him before he
could put his plans into motion. The theft of the Hohenzollern crown was only
the beginning.”

“I can’t find the device he’d intended
to plant in it, though,” Lucas admitted, glancing through an open door into the
lab that had been Charles Fotheringay’s domain. “We have been searching for
days.”

The large, gaping hole in the wall,
where the treacherous scientist had secreted the stolen crown, leered like a
madman’s grin. The hidden room had also been where Fotheringay had been living,
as close to his beloved technology and science as he could. “He wanted to use a
mesmerism device in the crown to control the Kaiser, but he couldn’t
miniaturize it. It’s not here, though.”

“Maybe he was lying,” Williams said as
he wheeled the Nellie-ton into the corner.

“About the device or where he hid it?” Lucas
asked. “Of course, there’s a lot there we have to sift through yet, and we
don’t know what it looks like, either.”

The lab was still being picked apart,
piece by piece, by the St. George Society technicians and scientists, and would
be for some time. But Fotheringay had been working on his plans in that lab for
decades, and a great deal awaited closer examination. What else could be hidden
there, and why?

Williams rubbed his jaw. “This is
Fotheringay we’re talking about. If it exists, it will be in the last place
we’d expect. I’ve known him for many a year, Dudley. We can’t underestimate
him. Right now I’m taking control of all his devices so I can give them a
thorough look.”

Something occurred to Lucas. “Maybe the
device exists, but it’s not in the shadow castle.”

“Maybe he had a partner. Consider that,
old man.”

“I have,” Lucas said, shaking his head.
“I’ve only been with the Society a few months, but I’m living proof that some
of the Society members have interests outside of our cause.”

Lucas, then Baron Fitzrobbins, had been
in London planning his wedding only a few months before when he was killed by a
footpad seemingly intent on robbing a lady. He was given a potion that restored
him to life…rather, an afterlife, as a science-created vampire.

He learned His Royal Highness Prince
Albert, the late consort of Queen Victoria, was inadvertently killed and
brought back to life by his cousin. Henry Coburg had hoped to cure the prince
of his fatal illness. He had only partly succeeded, however, because he’d made
Prince Albert a vampire—and the prince could never inform the Queen that he
still lived, albeit in altered form.

Thus was the St. George Society created.
In the nearly three decades since, Albert had kept a close eye on his beloved
family, knowing he could never communicate with them again. The society grew as
the potion was offered to royals, scientists, visionaries—everyone who could
aid the organization in protecting the empire, and the Queen, from underworld
threats.

“There’s more,” Williams warned him.
“The Society’s like a maze. There’s always something around the corner you
don’t expect. It still surprises me, after all this time.”

“Nothing simple or straightforward,”
Lucas said with a sigh. “It is times like these that I miss the army.”

“It’s times like these I’m glad I’m here
and not in the army,” Williams said, with a flash of a grin. “Simple and
straightforward can be boring after a while, Dudley. A little mystery does
wonders. Gives you a reason to wake up every day. Or every night, depending on
your preference.”

“I can think of better reasons,” Lucas
said. One last glance around the lab, and a glance into what remained of the
hidden room, and he was ready to move onto other priorities.

He didn’t think Williams would notice he
left. The transporting device Fotheringay had claimed he was working on lay in
pieces on the work table now, and Williams stared at it as though the
box-shaped machine was his entire world.

That had to be nice, Lucas mused as he
let himself out. The world was a simpler place for those like Williams, in
which Science was all.

Lucas had had an eventful year, one that
had radically changed his own world view. First his brother had died, forcing
Lucas to leave the army to take up his title. Soon thereafter, he himself had
died. Now, he served a calling other than the army, though he still served the
British empire. But he wasn’t always sure what was best to do on a daily basis.

Certainly he shouldn’t be at the beck
and call of the vampiress who was waiting for him, even if she was his superior
in the Society.

Lady Emerald Downey, who had been a
duchess in life and distant member of the royal family, stood in the grand
entry of the shadow castle, dressed impeccably as always in her trademark
green. Today she wore a suit, up-to-date and fashionable, sure to be the envy
of any woman who glanced at her. She was the very model of a major modern
matron, bringing to mind an opera he had seen some time ago. She too had
information about vegetable, animal, and mineral, but no one could know the
extent of her actions.

In fact, Lucas would never have known
she had orchestrated his murder if not for a series of events that led him to
discovering who had stolen the crown. And yet, though his murderer, she was
also his ally.

Today.

“Ready, Lucas? The German ambassador
awaits,” she said cheerily, donning the special spectacles that hid the oddly
shaped and colored eyes that marked many Society vampires, Lucas included.
“Once the crown is back in his hands, we can wash our hands of him and return
to other, more pressing matters.”

Two oversized creatura were with her,
between them hefting a crate that held the Hohenzollern crown. Society
scientists had gone over the crown in detail, making sure there was nothing on
it that even hinted of the mesmerism device that Fotheringay had been working
on for so long. Lucas had watched it being loaded into the crate after the
minute and intense examination, making sure the top was fitted on and hammered
shut. It was a symbol of his friend’s treachery and he wanted it out of the
shadow castle as soon as possible, back into the hands of its owners.

“Has it been out of your sight since the
lid was closed?” he asked the bigger creatura, a man who had to stand well over
six and a half feet and was almost as broad. Creatura were humans who swore
fealty to the Society, to protect the empire and the Queen alongside the
vampires who made up the core of the membership.

The creatura shook his head. “We watched
the lid get nailed closed, and we brought it up here,” he said, his baritone
echoing in the vast marble entryway. “We swear the crown is in the crate.”

“Good. The quicker we hand it over, the
better off we’ll all be.”

“One hour to go,” Emerald said. “Lucas,
you and I will travel in my carriage.”

He shook his head. “I travel with the
crate and the creatura. I want to make sure the handover goes without
incident.”

She pouted. “I suppose that makes sense.
Perhaps we could dine later on.”

“I have to return to my original
assignment of searching for the Whitechapel fiend,” he reminded her.

“We’ve kept you busy, haven’t we? But
you’re so efficient. You’ll find him.”

…And there’s more to come!