"YOU'RE QUIET," AVA murmured as she examined the body.

The riot had disbursed by the time they left Kincaid's uncle's house, leaving the streets oddly bare, though its echoes remained. Rubbish lay strewn in the gutters, glass was smashed in several shop fronts, and a smoky pall hung over everything. There'd been a full dozen Nighthawks holding the scene for her—three times as many as usual for something like this—and they'd been tense as she and Kincaid arrived.

"Got anything?" Kincaid clearly didn't want to discuss the odd scene at his uncle's house, and the way he'd barreled them out of there with barely a goodbye to his cousin.

And then, of course, there was that half-muffled argument she'd tried desperately not to listen to, humming under her breath as voices rose.

"I'm not certain." Ava looked down at the deceased blue blood on the examiner's gurney. She'd been lucky Dr. Gibson, the Nighthawk who managed the mortuary at the guild, had been rostered on when this came in.

"Apart from his name...." Kincaid glanced at the notes the Nighthawks had given them. "Mr. David Thomas. Unfortunate cause of a riot. I wonder if they'll put that on his headstone?"

"Mr. Thomas had nothing to do with the riot," she protested, stroking a gloved finger gently over the deceased man's face. Black veins traced their way through his skin, making him look half-mottled and violent. That was unusual, and clearly where the “disease” had gotten its name. "There was obviously malcontent in this borough with blue bloods, and when he died—revealing his true nature—it set off his neighbors."

They'd heard it all as they entered through the throng of neighbors: such a nice man; never knew he was one of them; a craver living right here on the doorstep; where was he getting his blood from, I demand to know....

Unusual that nobody had ever suspected him. Mr. Thomas's pale skin and preference for night should have given it away, though perhaps—with the response his death and subsequent coming out had achieved—there'd been good reason to keep his true nature under wraps.

It had been a long time since she'd felt uncomfortable with what she was. Or more to the point, uncomfortably aware other people thought her ilk monsters. London had been at peace for three years, damn it.

Ava sighed, and slid her magnifying goggles up on top of her head. "I've taken samples of Mr. Thomas's blood and the froth at his mouth to make sure there's no sign of chemical interference." Not that poison had much of an effect on a blue blood, despite the fact hemlock paralyzed them for several minutes until the virus burned through it. "But something tells me I won't find anything. Gibson would have tested the other victims’ blood work. He wouldn't miss something like poison. This fellow appears to have suffered some sort of apoplectic fit, and bitten half his tongue off. The veins disturb me, however, and I think this needs further investigation." What had made them stand out like that? They looked black, and his irises were violently dark, as though the darker side of the craving virus had roused in him before he died.

Blue bloods had darker blood than humans—an almost bluish-red which gave them their name—but that didn't account for the blackness.

There was limited sign of livor mortis too, as though barely any blood had pooled in the corpse's back and legs.

Internal bleeding?

The only time she'd seen something similar was when Malloryn found Zero's body slumped in the cells last month, with no sign of a break-in. Malloryn had intended to question Zero about the whereabouts of her fellow dhampir, and just precisely what they were up to, but she'd been dead.

And dhampir were just one step along in the evolution chain for a blue blood. Ava paused. The black veins looked very similar, though Zero's capillaries had all burst, and she'd bled internally. Though the craving virus should have healed her, especially with the CV levels Zero had, for some odd reason it hadn't.

Something stopped her body from healing, even as it caused her to bleed.

Was this the same? Was it some sort of disease? A malady that killed only blue bloods and their evolved brethren, the dhampir?

Or something else?

"You think there's more to the death than there seems?" Kincaid asked.

"I'm just wondering.... Zero had black veins just like this when she died," she replied vaguely, peeling the blue blood's lip up to see if there was anything in his mouth that might have caused this.

"If Malloryn thought this had anything to do with Zero's death then he wouldn't have sent us. He'd have been here himself, probably with Byrnes and Ingrid, despite their wedding."

"You think I'm conjuring a link between the two deaths?"

"Six deaths," he pointed out. "There's been five blue bloods go down with whatever this is."

Ava quietly gathered her skirts around her and stood, fussing with her gloves as she pried them off. "But you think I want this to be connected?"

Kincaid's mercurial gaze settled upon her, and he crossed his arms. "I know you want a case—"

She threw her gloves on the floor. "That is not true, damn it. Or yes, it's true—I want a case. But I'm not simply trying to conjure a link because I want this to connect back to the missing dhampir, or even Ulbricht. I've been taught to assess facts, not find a conspiracy. And the facts state this man died in mysterious circumstances, and his symptoms are familiar in some ways—though not all—with the mysterious death of our dhampir captive. Even you have to admit the black veins are conspicuously similar."

His gaze remained flat. "If this does lead back to the dhampir, then perhaps it would be best to bring in the others."

"What are you saying?"

"That neither of us is equipped to deal with those monsters. I'm human, and you're...." He suddenly seemed to realize she was glaring at him.

"I'm what?" Ava practically dared him to say it.

After all, she'd heard it all before. She had hysterical attacks at times; she'd panicked the one time she'd tried to shoot a pistol at a man who'd tried to kill her; and she felt both a little ill and excited at the sight of blood, which was ironic in itself considering the craving virus. What sort of blue blood disliked the idea of drinking blood?

She was not Gemma, femme fatale and dangerous spy.

She was not Ingrid, whose Amazonian build and verwulfen temper frightened even the boldest of men.

She was Ava. Quiet conqueror of the laboratory, the woman most men overlooked in favor of others, and awkward enough in company she generally sought to avoid it these days.

A muscle in Kincaid's jaw ticked. "You... are no match for a dhampir."

Ava threw her hands in the air. Coward. "Who is a match for a dhampir? One of them took down both Byrnes and you without breaking a sweat."

"That's not the point," he said, his voice heating.

"Or should I say... by breaking a nose?"

Kincaid winced, and she focused on the slight hook to his nasal column. "The point is neither of us is suited for a confrontation with a creature that could rip our throats out without even blinking. If there is a link between Mr. Thomas's death and Zero's, then we're calling in Malloryn and the others, and gratefully handing this case on."

"Fine. If this leads to the dhampir, then we wash our hands of it." She didn't have to like it. This case was hers. "I'll go with Mr. Thomas to the morgue at the guild and see if I can sit in on the autopsy. I want to see if he's bleeding internally, as Zero was."

"You'll be careful?"

Ava looked up sharply.

"This is the fifth blue blood that has died like this," he pointed out. "What if it is some disease? I'm fairly safe, but who knows if you could become ill?"

"If it is a disease, then it's not very contagious." At his blank look, she continued. "It was compulsory for unapproved blue bloods to be listed before the revolution overturned the process. I checked the blue blood registry before we came, and there are certain boroughs of London that were approved for blue blood housing. This borough was a hot spot, which means there are quite a few blue bloods living in the area—probably the cause of the rumblings of discontent we ran into. Last year's census showed over thirty in this borough alone. If the disease were contagious, you'd expect more cases. This is the only one in this district. Clerkenwell's the only borough with more than one death within it."

"We don't know what's causing this. So promise me you'll be careful. Just in case."

Ava sighed. "I promise. I'll wear a mask during the autopsy, and I'll make sure I don't get any blood on my skin."

"There is one other way it might be transmitted... if it is a disease."

There was? Ava looked up.

"Something that might, ah, control the spread of the disease. It depends how they caught it, after all." Kincaid's face grew curiously flat. "Similar to the French pox."

Oh. She understood what he was trying to say. "All of the victims have been male."

"Women were never allowed to be infected with the craving virus, so that doesn't mean it applies only to men."

"Nor were any men who didn't have aristocratic blood flowing through their veins, but accidents happen," she said dryly, gesturing to herself. "And there are more female blue bloods out there than you'd think. A few cases have come out of the woodwork now it's no longer so strictly controlled. But I see your point. It could be only men who've been stricken down because there are more male blue bloods by a factor of a thousand, or it could be... because they're more prone to sharing certain bodily fluids. But where is the index patient? Something like syphilis is easily spread. We'd see more cases among the blue blood population if this disease was spread by sexual contact." She thought about it. "Unless we're catching this early. Maybe there was a... a lady in common. Or they've all visited the same brothel? Maybe it kills them before they've had a chance to spread this? Or perhaps humans don't develop the disease, but only carry it?"

Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Zero and the dhampir? Her shoulders slumped a little. It wasn't as though she wanted to come face-to-face with the terrorists, but this case.... She'd thought it might be her break. Her first chance to really prove herself for the Company of Rogues.

Anyone could do the lab work.

Kincaid knelt and picked up her discarded gloves, tucking them behind his belt so she wouldn't have to touch them. "Might not even be a disease."

"Then they're ingesting something, but poison doesn't affect a blue blood. Not permanently. There's no mark upon him, nothing to suggest a needle, or a cut. Not even under his lips."

"Could've healed. And you haven't checked everywhere yet."

Ava growled. "Maybe, maybe, could have, and possibly.... This is utterly perplexing. I'd hoped we'd have more to go on."

"Wait for the autopsy," he said, with a shrug. "You'll know more then."

Including what—precisely—had killed David Thomas.

* * *

"Internal bleeding," Dr. Gibson confirmed the following afternoon, pushing his goggles up on top of his head, and removing his gloves with the kind of pristine care a cat used to groom itself. "Myocardial rupture. Ruptured spleen. Bleeding in the liver, the kidneys, and the gallbladder."

Exactly as suspected. Ava frowned. "What caused it? He's a blue blood, after all."

She hadn't been able to isolate the agent.

Gibson sighed and tossed his gloves toward the medical waste bin. "Your guess is as good as mine, lass. Something caused the late Mr. Thomas to bleed out internally, and destroyed his organs. Something stopped his body from healing the ruptured veins and capillaries. No sign of poison in his blood work, but then the craving virus is rabid at detecting threats and removing them, so that's no guarantee. Only those odd-shaped blood cells that keep popping up here and there, but then is that a response to whatever happened to him? Or the cause?"

Ava peered through the microscope, and those odd-shaped cells came into sharp view. She'd been staring at them for nearly an hour, and neither she nor Gibson had any sort of clue where they'd come from. Except.... "Do you have the autopsy results on the dhampir I brought in two months ago?" Gibson didn't know precisely where she was working these days, nor what she was working upon, but she'd insisted upon him performing the autopsy. Gibson was an expert. "I examined them afterward, but I seem to recall fairly inconclusive results. As in, something killed her, and we don't know what."

Malloryn suspected Zero had been assassinated by her brethren, and the safe house breached. There'd been such a mad flurry as they were transferred elsewhere and locked down, and she'd been busy dealing with Byrnes, who'd been forcibly given the elixir vitae that transformed a blue blood into a dhampir.

They hadn't thought he'd survive, and Ava had pored over the diary of Dr. Erasmus Cremorne, the man who'd first created the elixir many years ago. Zero's results had been a minor note in her life, and by the time she had a chance to review them, it had been over a month later.

Gibson stroked his mustache. "It was inconclusive, yes, but I seem to recall a myocardial rupture only, and her capillaries and veins disintegrated. She died from mass internal bleeding, and the heart attack, but there was none of this other damage. Mr. Thomas's internals look like pulp. Zero's were fine, apart from the disintegration of her superior vena cava and the pulmonary artery."

"A dhampir is stronger than a blue blood, with presumably better healing qualities, though we haven't had a chance to test this theory. But Byrnes said a cut on Zero's skin healed in moments, where it would take a blue blood a few minutes for the wound to seal. So if the same agent killed both Zero and David Thomas, then perhaps her body fought the agent better." Ava tapped her lips. "This is a mystery. Did you test his CV levels?"

"Twelve percent." Gibson looked insulted. It was probably the first thing he'd done.

"Twelve? Why, he's barely a blue blood. Mr. Thomas must have been newly infected. He shouldn't even be showing any signs of the craving yet." Which made her wonder... "How did his neighbors know he was a blue blood? He would only just be starting to feel the stir of the hunger."

"I think you'd need to question his neighbors first," Gibson shrugged.

The thought made nervousness stir through her. The sudden shout of fury from the riot echoed in her ears. "I'm not certain that's a good idea. They weren't very receptive to blue bloods. However...." Kincaid sprang to mind. "I know someone who might be able to coax the information out of them."

For if it wasn't a disease, then someone had killed Mr. Thomas, and with so much outcry today, it was more about narrowing down a suspect pool than trying to find someone with the motivation to murder.