As they wound their way up through the castle toward the top turret where the aethographor resided, Alexia explained her theory that the now-destroyed mummy had once been a preternatural, that, after death, it had turned into some strange sort of soul-sucking weapon of mass disintegration. And that Angelique, believing the same, had tried to steal the mummy. Probably to get it into the hands of the Westminster Hive and Countess Nadasdy’s pet scientists.
“If Angelique did manage to reveal all to the hive, no possible good can come of it. We might as well tell Madame Lefoux; at least she will use the knowledge to make weapons for our side.”
Lord Maccon looked at his wife oddly. “Are there sides?”
“It would appear to be that way.”
Lord Maccon sighed, his face worn with care, if not the passage of time. Alexia realized she was gripping his hand tightly and had thus brought him back into mortal state. She let go. He probably needed to be a werewolf right now, tapping into his reserves of supernatural strength.
He grumbled. “The last thing we need is a competition over weaponry based on dead preternaturals. I shall issue standing orders that all soulless are to be cremated after death. Covertly, of course.” He looked to his wife, for once not angry, simply concerned. “They would all be after you and those of your kind dotted about the empire. Not only that, but you would also be more valuable dead if they knew that mummification worked as a preservation technique for your power.”
“Luckily,” Alexia said, “no one knows how the ancients conducted mummification. It gives us some time. And perhaps the transmission did not go through. I did manage to blast the aethographor with my magnetic disruption emitter.”
She retrieved Angelique’s metal scroll from where she had stashed it. It was not reassuring. The spy’s message was burned completely through, and the track marks from the spark readers were evident across most of it.
Lady Maccon swore an impressive blue streak. The earl gave her a look that was half disapproval, half respect.
“I take it the message was sent on successfully?”
She passed the slate over to him. It read simply, “Dead mummy is soul-sucker.” Not so many words in the end, but enough to complicate her life considerably in the future.
“Well, that has gone and torn it,” was Lady Maccon’s first cogent sentence.
“How can we be certain it went through to the other side?”
Alexia picked up a faceted crystalline valve, completely intact, from where it rested in the resonator cradle. “This must belong to the Westminster Hive.” She tucked it into her parasol, in the pocket next to the one for Lord Akeldama’s valve.
Then, with a thoughtful frown, she pulled that one out and examined it, twisting it this way and that in her gloved hand. What had Lord Akeldama’s message said when they were testing Madame Lefoux’s repairs? Something about rats? Oh no, no, it had been bats. Old-fashioned slang for the vampire community. If Lord Akeldama was monitoring the Westminster Hive, as she’d thought at the time, would he, too, have received the transmission about the mummy? Would him knowing be any worse or better?
Only one way to find out. Try sending him a message and see if he responded.
It was well past her arranged transmission time, of course, but Lord Akeldama’s was the kind of apparatus that, if it was on and directed toward the appropriate frequency, would receive whatever was sent. If he had intercepted something significant, he would be expecting Alexia to contact him.
Instructing her husband to please stay as silent as possible, with a glare that indicated real consequences should he misbehave, Alexia went to work. She was getting quite adept at running the aethographor. She etched in her message as quickly as possible. Fitting Lord Akeldama’s valve into the cradle and the slate into its holder and activating the machine to transmit was much less difficult this time. Her message consisted of two things: “?” and “Alexia.”
As soon as the transmission was complete, she went into the receiving chamber. Her husband merely continued to stand outside the aethographor, arms crossed, watching his wife’s frilly form. She scuttled about, twiddling various dials and flipping large, important-looking switches. He might approve of her bluestocking tendencies, but he would never understand them. Back at BUR, he had people to run his aethographor for him.
Lady Maccon appeared to have things well in hand, however, as a message began to appear, letter by letter, in the magnetic particulate. As quietly as possible, she copied it down. It was rather longer than any transmission she had received before. It took a good deal of time to come in and even longer for her to determine where the breaks were between words and how it should read. When she finally managed it, Lady Maccon began to laugh. “My petal.” The italics were visible even across the length of England. “Westminster’s toy had tea issues. Thank Biffy and Lyall. Toodle pip. A.”
“Fantastic!” said Lady Maccon, grinning.
“What?” Her husband’s head looked in at the door to the receiving chamber.
“My favorite vampire, with the help of your illustrious Beta, managed to get his fangs into the Westminster Hive’s transmitter. Angelique’s last message never made it through.”
Lord Maccon frowned darkly. “Randolph was working with Lord Akeldama?”
Lady Maccon patted his arm. “Well, he is far more accepting than you about these things.”
The frown increased. “Clearly.” A pause. “Well, then, let me just…” Her husband, still holding the slate with Angelique’s message on it, twisted the dangerous thing around itself, his muscles expanding impressively, and then crushed the scroll together until all that remained was a crumpled metal ball. “We had better melt it down as well,” he said, “just to be on the safe side.” He looked to his wife. “Does anyone else know?”
“About the mummy?” She bit her lip in thought. “Lachlan and Sidheag. Possibly Lord Akeldama and Professor Lyall. And Ivy, but only in that way Ivy knows things.”
“Which is to say, not with any real cogency?”
“Exactly.”
They smiled at each other and, after Alexia shut down the machine, made their way leisurely back downstairs.
“Miss Hisselpenny has eloped.”
After the general chaos of the night before, everyone had retired to their respective beds. Those still affected by Angelique’s sleep drug were carried up by the pack. Then most of them, werewolves driven once more by antisun instincts and everyone else through pure exhaustion, slept the day away.
When Alexia came down for her first meal of the day, right about teatime, the sun had just set. It was as though her old pattern of nighttime living had miraculously transplanted itself to the Scottish Highlands.
The Kingair Pack sat about munching down fried kippers at the rate of knots, all looking brighter and bushier of tail, seeing as they now could go back to having tails. Even Lady Kingair seemed in slightly better spirits. She certainly relished delivering the news that Tunstell and Ivy had set out for Gretna Green sometime that morning, while everyone was still abed.
“What?” barked Lady Maccon, genuinely surprised. Ivy was silly, but was she really that silly?
Felicity, whom Alexia had, it must be admitted, entirely forgotten about in the chaos of the night before, looked up from her meal. “Why, yes, sister. She left you a note, with me of course.”
“Did she, by George?” Alexia snatched the scribbled missive from her sister’s pink-gloved hand.
Felicity grinned, enjoying Alexia’s discomfort. “Miss Hisselpenny was awfully distraught when she composed it. I noticed no less than ten exclamation marks.”
“And why, pray tell, would she leave it with you?” Alexia sat down and served herself a small portion of haggis.
Felicity shrugged, biting into a pickled onion. “I was the only one keeping respectable hours?”
Alexia was instantly suspicious. “Felicity, did you encourage them in any way into this rash course of action?”
“Who, me?” Her sist
er blinked wide eyes at her. “I never.”
Lady Maccon was confident that if Felicity had helped, she had done so out of malice. She rubbed at her face with one hand. “Miss Hisselpenny will be ruined.”
Felicity grinned. “Yes, yes, she will. I knew no good could possibly come of their association. I never liked Mr. Tunstell. I never even thought to look in his direction.”
Lady Maccon gritted her teeth and opened Ivy’s message.
All about the dining table, fascinated eyes watched her and less fascinated jaws masticated even more kipper.
Dearest Alexia, the message read. Oh, please absolve me of this guilt I already feel squishing on my very soul! Lady Maccon huffed, trying not to laugh. My troubled heart weeps! Oh dear, Ivy was getting flowery. My bones ache with the sin that I am about to commit. Oh, why must I have bones? I have lost myself to this transplanting love. You could not possibly understand how this feels! Yet try to comprehend, dearest Alexia, I am like a delicate bloom. Marriage without love is all very well for people like you, but I should wilt and wither. I need a man possessed of a poet’s soul! I am simply not so stoic as you. I cannot stand to be apart from him one moment longer! The caboose of my love has derailed, and I must sacrifice all for the man I adore! Please do not judge me harshly! It was all for love! ~ Ivy.
Lady Maccon passed the missive to her husband. Several lines in, he began to guffaw.
His wife, eyes twinkling, said unhelpfully, “Husband, this is a serious matter. There are derailed cabooses to consider. You have lost your valet, for one, not to mention a promising claviger for the Woolsey Pack.”
Lord Maccon wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Ah Tunstell, the nitwit, he was never a very good claviger. I was having doubts about him anyhow.”
Lady Maccon took Ivy’s note back from him. “But we must feel sorry for poor Captain Featherstonehaugh.”
Lord Maccon shrugged. “Must we? He has had a lucky escape, if you ask me. Imagine having to look at those hats for the rest of one’s life.”
“Conall.” His wife slapped his arm in reprimand.
“Well,” Lord Maccon said truculently.
“You realize, husband, this puts us in an exceptionally embarrassing position? Ivy was in my charge. We shall have to inform her parents of this sad affair.”
Lord Maccon shrugged. “The newlyweds will probably make it back to London before we do.”
“You believe they are headed there after Gretna Green?”
“Well, Tunstell is hardly likely to give up the stage. Besides, all of his possessions are at Woolsey.”
Lady Maccon sighed. “Poor Ivy.”
“Why poor Ivy?”
“Well, my dear, you must admit, she has come rather down in the world.”
Lord Maccon waggled his eyebrows. “I always thought your friend had a flair for the dramatic, my dear.”
Alexia winced. “You suppose she will join him in treading the boards?”
Lord Maccon shrugged.
Felicity, who had been avidly listening in to their conversation, slapped her fork down on her empty plate with a clank. “Well, I say! You mean she will not be completely ruined?”
Lord Maccon only smiled.
“You know, husband”—Lady Maccon glanced at her sister—“I think you may be right. She might make for a passing good actress. She certainly has the looks for it.”
Felicity stood up from the table and marched out of the room.
Lord and Lady Maccon exchanged grins.
Alexia figured this was as good a time as any. “Husband,” she said, casually helping herself to another small portion of haggis and assiduously avoiding the kippers. Her stomach was still feeling a little queasy, having never really recovered from the dratted dirigible experience, but a body had to eat.
“Aye?” Conall loaded his plate down with mounds of various dead critters.
“We will be departing presently, will we not?”
“Aye.”
“I ken it is time you bit Lady Kingair, then,” she stated baldly into the quiet munching of the dinner table.
The pack was immediately in an uproar, everyone talking at once.
“You canna change a woman,” objected Dubh.
“She’s the only Alpha we got left,” added Lachlan, as though Alpha were a cut of meat to be acquired at the butcher.
Lady Kingair did not say anything, looking pale but resolute.
Alexia, rather boldly, took her husband’s chin in one gloved hand, turning him mortal and turning him toward her.
“You need to do this, regardless of your pack laws and your werewolf pride. Take my counsel in this matter; remember, you married me for my good sense.”
He grumbled but did not jerk his head away. “I married you for your body and to stop that mouth of yours. Look where that’s got me.”
“Aw, Conall, what a sweet thing to say.” Lady Maccon rolled her eyes and then kissed him swiftly, on the lips, right there in front of the whole dinner table.
It was the surest way to silence a pack—scandalize them all. Even Conall was left speechless, with his mouth hanging slightly open.
“Good news, Lady Kingair,” said Alexia. “My husband has agreed to change you.”
The Kingair Beta laughed, breaking the dumbfounded hush. “I’m guessing she is a proper Alpha for all she was born a curse-breaker. Never thought I’d see you line up short to the petticoats, old wolf.”
Lord Maccon stood up slowly and leaned forward, staring across at Dubh. “Want to try me again, pup? I can beat you down just as soundly in wolf form as I could in human.”
Dubh quickly turned to one side, baring his neck. Apparently he agreed with the earl in this matter.
Lord Maccon made his way over to where Lady Kingair sat, still and straight in her chair at the head of the table. “You certain about this, lass? You ken ’tis probably death that’s facing you?”
“We need an Alpha, Gramps.” She looked to him. “Kingair canna survive much longer without one. I be the only option we’ve got left, and at least I’m Maccon. You owe the pack.”
Lord Maccon’s voice was a low rumble. “I dinna owe this pack anything. But you, lass, you’re the last of my line. And it’s time I took your wishes into consideration.”
Lady Kingair sighed softly. “Finally.”
Conall nodded once more. Then he changed. Not entirely. There was no full breaking of bone, no complete melting from one form to the next, and no shifting of hair into fur—except about his head. Only there did Lord Maccon transform: his nose elongating, his ears expanding upward, and his eyes shifting from brown to full yellow and lupine. The rest of him remained fully human-looking.
“Goodness me!” exclaimed Lady Maccon. “Are you going to do it right here, right now?” She swallowed. “At the dinner table?”
No one responded. They all stopped eating—a serious business, indeed, to put a Scotsman off his food. Pack and claviger alike became still and focused, staring hard at Lord Maccon. It was as though, by sheer strength of will, they could all see this metamorphosis through to a successful conclusion. Either that, or they were about to regurgitate their meals.
Then Lord Conall Maccon proceeded to eat his great-great-great-granddaughter.
There was really no other way of putting it.
Alexia watched in wide-eyed horror as her husband, wearing the head of a wolf, began to bite down on Lady Kingair’s neck and then kept on chomping. Never before had she thought to behold such a thing.
And he was doing it right there, supper dishes not yet cleared away. The blood leaking down from Lady Kingair’s throat seeped into the lace collar and silk bodice of her dress, a dark spreading stain.
The Earl of Woolsey savaged Sidheag Maccon. Not one of the pack stepped in to save her. Sidheag flailed against the full bite. Instinct would not deny such a reaction. She clawed and hit at Conall, but he remained unmoved and unhurt, his werewolf strength easily outmatching her pathetic human struggles. He simply clamped
those big hands about her shoulders—and they were still simply hands, without claws—and kept on biting. His long white teeth ripped through skin and muscle right down to the bone. Blood covered his muzzle, clotting the fur there.
Lady Maccon could not pull her eyes away from the gruesome sight. There seemed to be blood everywhere, and the copper smell of it battled against the scent of haggis and fried kipper. She was beginning to discern the inner workings of the woman’s neck, as though this were some kind of horrific tableside anatomy lesson. Sidheag stopped struggling, her eyes rolling far back, showing almost all the whites. Her head, barely still attached to the rest of her body, lolled dangerously far to one side.
Then, in some farcical mockery of death, out came Conall’s big pink tongue, and like an excessively friendly dog, he began licking over all the flesh he had just butchered. And he kept on licking, covering Sidheag’s face and her partly open mouth, spreading lupine saliva about Lady Kingair’s gaping wounds.
I am never going to be able to perform my wifely duty with that man ever again, thought Alexia, her eyes wide and fixed on the repulsive sight. Then, entirely unexpectedly and without even knowing it was about to happen, she actually fainted. A real honest-to-goodness faint, right there, face forward into her half-eaten haggis.
Lady Maccon blinked awake to her husband’s worried, looming face. “Conall,” she said, “please do not take this the wrong way. But that may have been the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life.”
“Have you ever attended the birthing of a human child?”
“No, of course not. Don’t be vulgar.”
“Well, perhaps you had best wait to pass judgment, then.”
“Well?” Alexia levered herself up slightly and glanced about. She appeared to have been carried into one of the drawing rooms and put to rest upon a brocade settee of considerable age.
“Well what?”
“Did it work? Did the metamorphosis work? Is she going to survive?”
Lord Maccon sat back slightly on his haunches. “A remarkable thing, a full Alpha female. Rare even in our oral histories. Boudica was an Alpha, did you know?”
The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set Page 59