These Violent Delights

“I’ve seen this before; it’s the lunacy of an addict.”

Roma was not afraid. He only feared the power of others. Monsters and things that walked the night were strong, but they were not powerful. There was a difference.

For months they flirted and pretended and toed the line between enemy and friend, both knowing who the other was but neither admitting to it, both trying to gain something from this friendship but being uncareful, falling too deep without knowing.

It came into the world with veins and vessels and capillaries attached to its belly. It was as if the insect were an entity unto itself and the dead man grew out of it, when really, the paper-thin lines of pink and white sprouting from the insect were being pulled from the man’s brain. Benedikt could have been fooled.

The veins trembled as a stray gust of wind blew in from the waterfront.

“What do you know?” Benedikt said. “I think we just discovered what’s causing the madness.”

“Do you ever imagine what life would be like if you had a different last name?”

“All the time. Don’t you?”

Juliette had thought about it. “Only sometimes. Then I consider all that I would miss out on without it. What would I be if I weren’t a Cai?”

Roma had lifted onto his elbow. “You could be a Montagov.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Very well.” Roma had leaned in, close enough that she could see the twinkle in his dark eyes, close enough to see her own blushing face in the reflection of his gaze. “Or we could erase both names and leave this entire Cai–Montagov nonsense behind.”

Was the line between enemy and friend horizontal or vertical? Was it a great plain to lumber across or was it a high, high wall—either to be scaled or kicked down in one big blow?

“If we kill the monster, we kill each and every one of these peculiar insects in Shanghai. If we kill the monster, we stop the madness.”

“The vaccine is both legitimate and not,” Archibald answered carefully. “The Larkspur makes one strain in his lab, using the opiate I deliver. The other strain is simply colored saline.”

Roma blinked. “What?”

If the madness was not stopped, at some point, it would spread to every corner of Shanghai. With two strains of the vaccine, one that was true and one that was not, the Larkspur controlled who was immune and who was not.

The weight of this revelation smacked Juliette dead center in the chest.

“The Larkspur is essentially picking and choosing who lives and who dies,” she accused, incensed.

“It is never as simple as one truth,” Roma replied hoarsely. “Nothing ever is.”

Tears were falling down his face. “This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did.”

Back then she had believed just as Roma did, believed that this divided city could be sewn back together. She believed it when they sat under the velvet night and looked out at the haze of lights in the distance, when Roma said he would defy everything, everything, even the stars, to change their fate in this city.

“Astra inclinant,” he would whisper into the wind, so heartachingly sincere even when quoting in Latin, “sed non obligant.”

The stars incline us, they do not bind us.

She… hoped. And hope was dangerous. Hope was the most vicious evil of them all, the thing that had managed to thrive in Pandora’s box among misery, and disease, and sadness—and what could endure alongside others with such teeth if it didn’t have ghastly claws of its own?

“We still have a monster to catch,” Juliette said.

“I hate that the blood feud forced my hand, but I can’t—I did what I had to do and you may think me monstrous for it. The feud keeps taking and hurting and killing and still I couldn’t stop loving you even when I thought I hated you.”

She was tired of hatred and blood and vengeance. All she wanted was this.

Juliette twined her arms around him and pressed her chin to his shoulder, holding him as close as she dared. It was a reacquaintance, a homecoming. It was her mind whispering, Oh, we are here again—at last.

“I forgive you,” she said softly.

A love like theirs was never going to survive in a city divided by hatred.

This would be the death of them all.

Unless Juliette could save them.

“I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.”

Juliette Cai strode forward, directly in front of Marshall. She knelt down callously, pulled his hand away from his wound, inspecting him as if he were nothing more than a piece of trash tossed before her feet.

“An eye for an eye,” Juliette said.

She struck Marshall hard across the face. He was sent skittering, his body colliding with the hard, cold floor, both his arms winding around his head, a hand in front of his face as if to protect himself. Blood. So much blood beneath him.

Juliette put both her hands around her weapon. She made a twisting motion to her pistol, securing her grip. Then:

“A life for a life.”

Bang.

“No!” Benedikt roared. Marshall’s head lolled back. He was motionless.

“But you saved me,” Marshall said. “Because you love him.”