Changeless: The Parasol Protectorate: Book the Second

by Gail Carriger

  The potentate, of all people, seemed a little more convinced. Perhaps it was simply that he did not want to believe she had access to such an ability.

  Alexia continued. “I mean, really, how could one preternatural, however powerful, affect an entire area of the city? I have to touch you in order to force your humanity. I have to touch a dead body in order to exorcise its ghost. I could not possibly manage to be in all those places at once. Besides which, I am not touching you right now, am I? And you are both mortal.”

  “So what are we dealing with? A whole pack of preternaturals?” That was the dewan. He was prone to thinking in numbers, the consequence of an overabundance of military training.

  The potentate shook his head. “I have seen BUR’s records. There are not enough preternaturals in all of England to exorcise so many ghosts at once. There are probably not enough in the civilized world.”

  Alexia wondered how he had seen such records. She would have to tell her husband about that. Then she returned her attention to the business at hand. “Is there anything more powerful than a preternatural?”

  The not-vampire shook his head again. “Not in this particular way. Vampire edict tells us that soul-suckers are the second most deadly creatures on the planet. But it also says that the most deadly of all is no leech, but a different kind of parasite. This cannot be the work of one of them.”

  Lady Maccon scribbled this down in her book. She was intrigued and a little put out. “Worse than us soul-suckers? Is that possible? And here I was thinking myself a member of the most hated set. And what do you call them?”

  The potentate ignored this question. “That will teach you to get full of yourself.”

  Alexia would have pressed the issue but suspected that line of questioning would be ignored. “So this must be the result of a weapon, a scientific apparatus. That is the only possible explanation.”

  “Or we could take that ridiculous man Darwin’s theories to heart and postulate a newly evolved species of preternatural.”

  Alexia nodded. She had her reservations about Darwin and his prattle on origins, but there might be some little merit to his ideas.

  The dewan, however, pooh-poohed the idea. Werewolves were, largely, of a much less scientific bent than vampires, except where advances in weaponry were concerned. “I am more sympathetic to the muhjah on this point if nothing else. If she isn’t doing it herself, then it must be some newfangled contrivance of technical origin.”

  “We are living in the Age of Invention,” agreed the potentate.

  The dewan looked thoughtful. “The Templars have finally managed to unify Italy and declare themselves Infallible; perhaps they are turning their attention outward once more?”

  “You think this may herald a second Inquisition?” The potentate blanched. He could do that now.

  The dewan shrugged.

  “There is no point in wild speculation,” said the ever-practical Lady Maccon. “Nothing suggests that the Templars are involved.”

  “You are Italian,” grumbled the dewan.

  “Oh, fiddlesticks, is everything in this meeting going to come back around to my being my father’s daughter? My hair is curly too—could that somehow be involved? I am the product of my birth, and there is nothing I can change about that, or believe you me, I might have opted for a smaller nose. Let us simply agree that the most likely explanation for this kind of wide-scale preternatural effect is a weapon of some kind.” She turned to the potentate. “You are positive you have never heard of this kind of thing happening before?”

  He frowned and rubbed at the crease between his green eyes with the tip of one white finger. It was an oddly human gesture. “I will consult the edict keepers on the subject, but, no, I do not think so.”

  Alexia looked to the dewan. He shook his head.

  “So the question is, what could someone hope to gain by this?”

  Her supernatural colleagues looked at her blankly.

  A tap came on the closed door. The dewan went to answer it. He spoke softly for a moment through the crack and then returned with an expression transformed from scared to bemused.

  “The effects would appear to be negated just outside the afflicted zone we discussed earlier. Werewolves, at least, revert back to fully supernatural. The ghosts, of course, cannot relocate to take advantage of this fact. And I cannot speak for the vampires.”

  What he did not say was that what changed werewolves was also likely to change vampires—they were more alike than either race preferred to admit.

  “I shall look into this myself, personally, as soon as our meeting is concluded,” said the potentate, but he was clearly relieved. It had to be a product of his human condition; normally his emotions were not so obvious.

  The dewan sneered at him. “You will be able to move that endangered queen of yours, should you deem it necessary.”

  “Do we have any further business to address?” asked the potentate, ignoring the comment.

  Alexia reached forward to tap at the harmonic auditory resonance disruptor with the butt end of her stylographic pen, getting it vibrating once more. Then she looked to the dewan. “Why have so many regiments returned home recently?”

  “Indeed, I had noticed something of an overabundance of the military roaming the streets as I left my house this evening.” The potentate looked curious.

  The dewan shrugged, trying for casualness and failing. “Blame Cardwell and his blasted reforms.”

  Alexia sniffed pointedly. She approved of the reforms, far more humane to cut out flogging and change enlistment tactics. But the dewan was an old-timer; he liked his soldiers disciplined, poor, and mildly bloody.

  He continued as though she hadn’t sniffed. “We had that steamer in from West Africa several months ago crying that the Ashantis were giving us hell. The Secretary of War pulled everyone we could spare out of the east and back here for rotation.”

  “Do we still have that many troops in India? I thought the region was pacified.”

  “Not hardly. But we have the numbers to pull several regiments out and leave the East India Company and its mercenaries to take the brunt of it. The empire should stay sound. The duke wants proper regiments with werewolf attachments down in West Africa, and I can’t say I blame him. It’s a nasty business down there. These incoming regiments you see around London are to reconfigure as two separate battalions and ship back out within a month. It’s causing a moon’s worth of mess. Most had to be routed through Egypt in order to get back here fast enough, and I still don’t know how we are going to stretch to fill the orders. Still, they’re here now, clogging up the London taverns. Best get them fighting again right quick.”

  He rounded on Lady Maccon. “Which reminds me. Get your husband to keep his ruddy packs under control, would you?”

  “Packs? There was only the one last time I checked, and let me inform you, it is not my husband who has to discipline them. Constantly.”

  The dewan grinned, causing his massive mustache to wiggle. “I am guessing you met Major Channing?” There were just few enough werewolves in England that, as Alexia had come to learn, they all seemed to know one another. And gracious did they enjoy a good gossip.

  “You would be guessing correctly.” Lady Maccon made a sour face.

  “Well, I was referring to the earl’s other pack, the Highland one, Kingair,” said the dewan. “They were running with the Black Watch regiment, and there’s been a bit of a dust-up. I thought your husband might stick a paw in.”

  Lady Maccon frowned. “I doubt it.”

  “Lost their Alpha out there, the Kingair Pack, you do realize? Niall something-or-other, a full colonel, nasty business. The pack was ambushed during high noon, when they were at their weakest and couldn’t change shape. Threw the whole regiment over for a while there. Losing a ranking officer like that, werewolf Alpha or not, caused quite a fuss.”

  Alexia’s frown deepened. “No, I was not aware.” She wondered if her husband knew of this. She tapped her lip
with the back of her pen. It was highly unusual for a former Alpha to survive the loss of his pack, and she had never managed to extract from Conall the whys and wherefores of his abandonment of the Highlands. But Alexia was pretty darn certain that a leadership void placed him under some sort of obligation to his former pack, even if it had been decades.

  The discussion moved on to speculation as to who might be responsible for the weapon: various not-as-secret-as-they-wanted societies, foreign nations, or factions within the government. Lady Maccon was convinced it was Hypocras Club style scientists and held firm on her stance over deregulation. This frustrated the potentate, who wanted the surviving Hypocras Club members released to his tender mercies. The dewan sided with the muhjah. He wasn’t particularly interested in scientific research of this kind, but he wasn’t about to see it fall wholly into vampire hands. This derailed the conversation onto distribution of Hypocras goods. Alexia suggested they go to BUR, and despite her husband’s charge of the institution, the potentate agreed so long as a vampire agent was attached.

  By the time Queen Victoria arrived to confer with her council, they had come to several decisions. They informed her of the plague of humanization and their theory that it was some kind of secret weapon. The queen was appropriately worried. She knew perfectly well that the strength of her empire rested on the backs of her vampire advisors and her werewolf fighters. If they were at risk, so was Britain. She was particularly insistent that Alexia look into the mystery. After all, exorcism was supposed to be under the muhjah’s jurisdiction.

  Since she would have gone out of her way to investigate regardless, Lady Maccon was happy to have official sanction. She left the Shadow Council meeting with a feeling of unexpected accomplishment. She desperately wanted to pigeonhole her husband in his BUR den, but, knowing that would only end in a row, she headed home to Floote and the library instead.

  Lady Alexia Maccon’s father’s collection of books, normally an excellent, or at least distracting, source of information, proved a disappointment on the matter of large-scale negation of the supernatural. Nor did it have anything to say on the potentate’s tantalizing comment concerning a threat to vampires worse than soul-suckers. After hours of flipping through the worn leather-covered books, ancient scrolls, and personal journals, Lady Maccon and Floote had uncovered absolutely nothing. There were no further notes in her little leather book and no further insight into the mystery.

  Floote’s silence was eloquent.

  Alexia nibbled a light breakfast of toast with potted ham and kippered salmon and went to bed just before dawn, defeated and frustrated.

  She was awakened in the early morning by her husband, in an entirely dissimilar state of frustration. His big rough hands were insistent, and she was not unwilling to awaken thus, especially as she had some very pressing questions that needed answers. Still, it was daylight, and most respectable supernatural folk ought to be asleep. Fortunately, Conall Maccon was a strong enough Alpha to be awake several days running without the ill effects younger members of a pack would sustain from such solar contamination.

  His approach was unique this time. He was squirming his way up under the covers from the foot of the bed toward where she lay. Alexia’s newly opened eyes met the ludicrous sight of an enormous lump of bedclothes, swaying back and forth like some sort of encumbered jellyfish, laboring toward her. She was lying on her side, and his chest hair tickled the backs of her legs. He was lifting up her nightgown as he went. A little kiss whiskered just behind one knee, and Alexia jerked her leg in reaction. It tickled something dreadful.

  She flipped the blankets and glared down at him. “What are you doing, you ridiculous man? You are acting like some sort of deranged mole.”

  “Being stealthy, my little terror. Do I not seem stealthy?” He spoke with mock affront.

  “Why?”

  He looked a little bashful, which was a categorically absurd expression for an enormous Scotsman to wear. “I was after the romanticism of an undercover approach, wife. The BUR agent mystique. Even if this BUR agent is disgracefully late home.”

  His wife propped herself up on one elbow and raised both eyebrows, clearly trying to suppress laughter but still look intimidating.

  “No?”

  The eyebrows went, if possible, higher.

  “Humor me.”

  Alexia swallowed down a bubble of mirth and pretended a gravity suitable to a Lady Maccon. “If you insist, husband.” She placed a hand to her heart and sank back into the pillows with a sigh of the type she imagined emitted by the heroine of a Rosa Carey novel.

  Lord Maccon’s eyes were halfway between caramel and yellow, and he smelled of open fields. Alexia wondered if he had traveled home in wolf form.

  “Husband, we must talk.”

  “Aye, but later,” he muttered. He began hiking her nightgown up farther, turning his attention to less ticklish but no-less-sensitive areas of her body.

  “I loathe this article of clothing.” He pulled the offending garment off and tossed it to its customary repose on the floor.

  Lady Maccon went almost cross-eyed in her attempt to watch him as he moved predatorily the rest of the way up her body.

  “You purchased it.” She squirmed down to bring herself in greater contact with his body, her excuse being that it was cold and he had yet to replace the covers.

  “So I did. Remind me to stick to parasols from now on.”

  His tawny eyes turned almost completely yellow; they tended to do that at this stage in the proceedings. Alexia loved it. Before she could protest, had she thought to, he swooped in for a full, all-absorbing kiss of the kind that, when they were standing, tended to make her knees go wobbly.

  But they were not standing, and Alexia was now fully awake and unwilling to give in to the persuasions of her knees, her husband’s mouth, or any other area of the body for that matter.

  “Husband, I am very angry with you.” She panted slightly as she made the accusation and tried to remember why.

  He bit down softly at the meaty place between her shoulder and neck. Alexia let out a small moan.

  “What have I done this time?” he paused to ask before continuing with his oral expedition about her body: her husband, the intrepid explorer.

  Alexia writhed, attempting to get away.

  But her movements only caused him to groan and become more insistent.

  “You left me with an entire regiment encamping on my front lawn,” she finally remembered to accuse.

  “Mmm.” Warm kisses littered her torso.

  “And there was a certain Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings to boot.”

  He husband left off his nibbling to say, “You make him sound like some sort of disease.”

  “You have met him, I assume?”

  The earl snorted softly and then began kissing her again, moving down toward her stomach.

  “You knew they were coming, and you did not see fit to inform me.”

  He sighed, a puff of breath across her bare belly. “Lyall.”

  Alexia pinched his shoulder. He returned his amorous attentions to her lower body. “Yes! Lyall had to introduce me to my own pack. I’ve never met the soldier element before. Remember?”

  “I am given to understand, from my Beta, that you handled a particularly hard situation perfectly adequately,” he said between kisses and little licks. “Care to handle something else hard?”

  Alexia thought maybe she might care to. After all, why should she be the only one panting? She pulled him up for a proper kiss and reached downward.

  “And what about this mass exorcism in London? You did not see fit to tell me about that either?” she grumbled, squeezing softly.

  “Um, well, that…” He huffed against her hair. Persuasive mouth. Mutter mutter. “… ended.” He nibbled her neck, his attentions becoming even more insistent.

  “Wait,” Alexia squeaked. “Were we not having a conversation?”

  “I believe you were having a convers
ation,” replied Conall before remembering there was only one surefire way to shut his wife up. He bent forward and sealed her mouth with his.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hat Shopping and Other Difficulties

  Alexia lay staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling, feeling about as wet and as limp as a half-cooked omelet. Suddenly she stiffened. “What did you say had ended?”

  A soft snore greeted her question. Unlike vampires, werewolves did not appear dead during the day. They simply slept very, very heavily.

  Well, not this werewolf. Not if Lady Maccon had anything to say about it. She poked her husband hard in the ribs with a thumb.

  It might have been the poke or it might have been the preternatural contact, but he awoke with a soft snuffle.

  “What ended?”

  With his wife’s imperious face peering down at him, Lord Maccon took a moment to wonder why he had thought to crave such a woman in his life. Alexia bent over and nibbled at his chest. Ah, yes, initiative and ingenuity.

  The nibbles stopped. “Well?”

  And manipulation.

  His bleary tawny eyes narrowed. “Does that brain of yours never stop?”

  Alexia gave him an arch, “Well, yes.” She looked at the angle of the sunlight creeping in around the edge of one heavy velvet drape. “You do seem to be able to give it pause for a good two hours or so.”

  “Was that all? What do you say, Lady Maccon—shall we try for three?”

  Alexia batted at him without any real annoyance. “Aren’t you supposed to be too old for this kind of continuous exercise?”

  “What a thing to say, my love,” snorted the earl, offended. “I am only just over two hundred, a veritable cub in the woods.”

  But Lady Maccon was not to be so easily distracted a second time. “So, what ended?”

  He sighed. “That strange mass preternatural effect ceased at about three a.m. this morning. Everyone who should have returned to supernatural normal did, except for the ghosts. Any ghost tethered in the Thames embankment area seems to have been permanently exorcised. We brought in a volunteer ghost with a body about an hour after normality returned. He remained perfectly fine and tethered, so any new ghosts should establish in the area without difficulty, but all the old ones are gone for good.”