“Only if you promise never to use a pun like that again.”
Thus two of the vampires were now incapacitated. The other two had retreated out of range to regroup, clearly not having anticipated such resistance.
Madame Lefoux glared at Alexia. “Stop stalling and use the lapis solaris.”
“Are you certain that is strictly necessary, Genevieve? It seems so discourteous. I could accidentally kill one of them with such a substance. We’ve already had a little too much of that kind of tomfoolery.” She nodded with her chin at the vampire Floote had shot, who now lay ominously still. Vampires were scarce, and generally rather old. Murdering one even in self-defense was like thoughtlessly destroying a rare aged cheese. True, a fanged and murderous rare aged cheese, but…
The lady inventor gave the preternatural woman an incredulous look. “Yes, final death was the idea when I designed it.”
One of the vampires lurched forward again, intent on Alexia. He held a wicked-looking knife. Clearly he was adapting better to her preternatural ability than his now-inert cohorts.
Floote shot his other gun.
This time the bullet hit the man’s chest. The vampire fell backward, crashed into a loaded display cabinet, and landed on the floor, making exactly the same sound a carpet makes when whacked to get the dust out.
The remaining vampire was looking both annoyed and confused. He had brought no projectile weapons. The vampire Madame Lefoux had spiked in the eye yanked out the offending optical impairment and lurched to his feet, the socket oozing blackened, sluggish blood. The two joined forces to charge once more.
Madame Lefoux slashed, and Monsieur Trouvé, finally understanding the gravity of the situation, reached around and pulled a long, wicked-looking spring-adjuster from its cradle on the wall. It was brass, so it was unlikely to do any serious damage, but it might slow even a vampire if applied properly. A sharp wooden knife had now appeared in Floote’s hand—both guns being of the single-shot variety and thus out of ammunition. Such a competent man, Floote, thought Alexia with pride.
“Well, if I must, fine. I’ll guard the retreat,” said Alexia. “Buy us some time.”
“What, in a clock shop?” Madame Lefoux clearly couldn’t resist.
Alexia gave her a withering look. Then she opened and flipped her parasol over in a practiced motion so that she held it backward by the tip instead of the handle. There was a tiny dial just above the magnetic disruption emitter, set into a nodule. She stepped slightly forward, mindful that she could harm her friends as well as the vampires with this particular weapon. Then she clicked the dial round two times, and three ribs of the parasol began to spew forth a fine mist of lapis solaris diluted in sulfuric acid.
At first the stampeding vampires didn’t quite understand what was happening, but when the mixture began to burn them severely, they backed out of range.
“Up the stairs, now!” yelled Alexia.
They all began to retreat up the tiny staircase, Alexia bringing up the rear, brandishing the misting parasol. The smell of acid burning through carpet and wood permeated the air. A few drops landed on Alexia’s claret-colored skirts. Well, she thought, resigned, there is one gown I won’t ever be able to wear again.
The vampires stayed just far enough out of range. By the time Alexia had reached the top of the stairs—going backward and up with both hands occupied was no mean feat in long skirts and a bustle—the others had gathered together a quantity of large, heavy objects with which to barricade the top. Alexia’s parasol sputtered once, then emitted a sad little hissing noise and stopped misting, having used up its store of the lapis solaris.
The vampires renewed their attack. Alexia was alone at the top of the stairs. But Madame Lefoux was ready for them and began hurling various interesting-looking gadgets down, until, at the last possible minute, Alexia managed to sneak behind the rapidly growing pile of furniture and trunks that Floote and Monsieur Trouvé had piled at the head of the staircase.
While Alexia recovered her breath and equanimity, they built up the improvised rampart, wedging and tilting a mountain of furniture downward, relying on gravity and weight as assistants.
“Anyone have a plan?” Alexia looked around hopefully.
The Frenchwoman gave her a fierce grin. “Gustave and I were talking earlier. He says he still has the ornithopter we designed at university.”
Monsieur Trouvé frowned. “Well, yes, but it isn’t certified by the Ministry of Aethernautics to fly within Parisian aetherspace. I did not think you actually intended to use it. I’m not sure if the stabilizers are working properly.”
“Never you mind that. Is it on the roof?”
“Of course, but—”
Madame Lefoux grabbed Alexia by the arm and began dragging her down the hall toward the back of the apartment.
Alexia made a face but allowed herself to be tugged along. “Well, then, to the roof with us! Ooof, wait, my dispatch case.”
Floote dove to one side to retrieve her precious luggage.
“No time, no time!” insisted Madame Lefoux as the vampires, having attained the top of the stairway, were apparently engaged in trying to bash their way through to the landing by application of pure physical force. How vulgar!
“It has tea in it,” Alexia explained gratefully when Floote reappeared with her case.
Then they heard a horrible noise, a rumbling, growling sound and the crunch of flesh between large, unforgiving jaws. The banging on the barricade stopped as something sharp-toothed and vicious distracted the vampires. A new sound of fighting commenced as the vampires engaged whatever it was that was hunting them.
The little group of refugees reached the end of the hallway. Madame Lefoux leaped up, grabbing at what looked to be a gas lamp fixture but what turned out to be a pull lever that activated a small hydraulic pump. A section of the ceiling flipped down at them, and a rickety ladder, clearly spring loaded, shot down, hitting the hallway floor with an audible thump.
Madame Lefoux scampered up. With considerable difficulty, hampered by dress and parasol, Alexia climbed after her, emerging into a crowded attic richly carpeted in dust and dead spiders. The gentlemen followed and Floote helped Monsieur Trouvé winch the ladder back up, disguising their retreat. With any luck, the vampires would be stalled trying to determine where and how their quarry had attained roof access.
Alexia wondered what had attacked the vampires on the stair: a savior, a protector, or some new form of monster that wanted her for itself? She didn’t have time to contemplate for long. The two inventors were fussing about a machine of some kind, running around loosening tether ropes, checking safety features, tightening screws, and lubricating cogs. This seemed to involve a phenomenal quantity of banging and cursing.
The ornithopter, for that is what it must be, looked like a most incommodious mode of transport. Passengers—there was room for three in addition to the pilot—were suspended in nappylike leather seats the top of which strapped about the waist.
Alexia dashed over, stumbling against an inappropriately placed gargoyle.
Monsieur Trouvé ignited a small steam engine. The craft lurched upward and then tilted to one side, sputtering and coughing.
“I told you: stabilizers!” he said to Madame Lefoux.
“I cannot believe you don’t have strapping wire on hand, Gustave. What kind of inventor are you?”
“Did you miss the sign above the shop door, my dear? Clocks! Clocks are my specialty. No stabilizers needed!”
Alexia intervened. “Wire, is that all you require?”
Madame Lefoux held her fingers a short width apart. “Yes, about so thick.”
Alexia, before she could be shocked by her own audacity, lifted her overskirts and undid the tapes to her bustle. The undergarment dropped to the ground, and she kicked it in Madame Lefoux’s direction. “That do?”
“Perfect!” the Frenchwoman crowed, attacking the canvas and extracting the metal boning, which she passed to Monsieur Trouvé.
While the clockmaker went to work threading the wire through some kind of piping about the contraption’s nose, Alexia climbed inside. Only to discover, to her abject embarrassment, that the nappy-seat design caused one’s skirts to hike up into one’s armpits and one’s legs to dangle below the enormous wings of the aircraft with bloomers exposed for all the world to see. They were her best bloomers, thank goodness, red flannel with three layers of lace at the hem, but still not a garment a lady ought to show to anyone except her maid or her husband, a pox on him, anyway.
Floote settled comfortably in behind her, and Madame Lefoux slid into the pilot’s nappy. Monsieur Trouvé returned to the engine, situated behind Floote and under the tail of the craft, and cranked it up once more. The ornithopter wiggled, but then held steady and stabilized. Victory to the bustle, thought Alexia.
The clockmaker stepped back, looking pleased with himself.
“Are you not coming with us?” Alexia felt a strange kind of panic.
Gustave Trouvé shook his head. “Glide as much as you can, Genevieve, and you should be able to make it to Nice.” He had to yell in order to be heard over the grumbling engine. He passed Madame Lefoux a pair of magnification goggles and a long scarf, which she used to wrap about her face, neck, and top hat.
Alexia, clutching parasol and dispatch case firmly to her ample chest, prepared for the worst.
“That far?” Madame Lefoux did not raise her head, busy checking on an array of dials and bobbing valves. “You have made modifications, Gustave.”
The clockmaker winked.
Madame Lefoux looked at him suspiciously and then gave a curt nod.
Monsieur Trouvé marched back around to the rear of the ornithopter and spun up a guidance propeller attached to the steam engine.
Madame Lefoux pressed some kind of button and, with a massive whoosh, the wings of the craft began flapping up and down with amazing strength. “You have made modifications!”
The ornithopter jerked into the air with a burst of power.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Monsieur Trouvé was grinning like a little boy. He had a good pair of lungs in that wide chest of his, so he continued to yell after them. “I replaced our original model with one of Eugène’s bourdon tubes, activated by gunpowder charges. I did say I had taken a keen interest recently.”
“What? Gunpowder!”
The clockmaker waved at them cheerfully as they flapped upward and forward, now a good few yards above the rooftop. Alexia could see much of Paris laid out below her wildly waving kid-boots.
Monsieur Trouvé bracketed his mouth with his hands. “I’ll send your things on to the Florence dirigible station.”
A great crash sounded, and two of the vampires burst out onto the roof.
Monsieur Trouvé’s grin vanished into the depths of his impressive beard, and he turned to face the supernatural threat.
One of the vampires leapt up after them, hands stretched to grab. He got close enough for Alexia to see that he had an impressive collection of jagged bite marks now about his head and neck. His hand just missed Alexia’s ankle. A huge white beast appeared behind him. Limping and bleeding, the creature charged the airborne vampire, hamstringing him and bringing him back to the rooftop with a crash.
The clockmaker yelled in fear.
Madame Lefoux did something to the controls, and the ornithopter flapped two mighty strokes and surged up. Then it shifted suddenly sideways in a gust of wind, tilting precariously. Alexia lost sight of the action on the rooftop behind one massive wing. It was presently to become irrelevant, for the ornithopter reached ever-greater heights, and Paris became lost under a layer of cloud.
“Magnifique!” yelled Madame Lefoux into the wind.
Sooner than Alexia would have believed possible, they attained the first of the aether atmospheres, the breezes there cool and slightly tingly against Alexia’s inexcusably indecent legs. The ornithopter caught one of the southeasterly currents and began to ride it with, blessedly, a long smooth glide and much less flapping.
Professor Lyall had plenty he ought to be doing that night: BUR investigations, pack business, and Madame Lefoux’s contrivance chamber to check up on. Naturally, he ended up doing none of those things. Because what he really wanted to find out was the current location of one Lord Akeldama—vampire, fashion icon, and very stylish thorn in everyone’s side.
The thing about Lord Akeldama was—and in Lyall’s experience, there was always a thing—that where he himself was not a fixture, his drones were. Despite supernatural speed and flawless taste in neckwear, Lord Akeldama could not, in fact, attend every social event of note every single evening. But he did seem to have a collection of drones and associates of drones who could and did. The thing that was bothering Lyall at the moment was that they weren’t. Not only was the vampire himself missing, but so were all of his drones, assorted sycophants, and poodle-fakers. Usually, any major social event in London could be relied upon to temporarily house some young dandy whose collar points were too high, mannerisms too elegant, and interest too keen to adequately complement his otherwise frivolous appearance. These ubiquitous young men, regardless of how silly they might act, how much gambling they might engage in, and how much fine champagne they might swill, reported back to their master with such an immense amount of information as to put any of Her Majesty’s espionage operations to shame.
And they had all vanished.
Professor Lyall couldn’t identify most of them by face or name, but as he made the rounds of London’s various routs, card parties, and gentleman’s clubs that evening, he became painfully aware of their collective absence. He himself was welcome at most establishments but was not expected, for he was thought to be rather shy. Yet he was familiar enough with high society to mark the difference one vampire’s disappearance had wrought. His carefully polite inquiries yielded up neither destination nor explanation. So it was that, in the end, he left the drawing rooms of the wealthy and headed down toward dockside and the blood brothels.
“You new, gov’na? Like a li’le sip, would ya? Only cost ya a penny.” The young man propping up the shadows of a scummy brick wall was pale and drawn. The dirty scarf wrapped around his neck no doubt already covered a goodly number of bite marks.
“Looks like you’ve given enough already.”
“Not a chance of it.” The blood-whore’s dirty face split with a sudden smile, brown with rotting teeth. He was of the type vampires rather crudely referred to as snacky-bites.
Professor Lyall bared his own teeth at the youngster, showing the boy that he did not, in fact, have the requisite fangs for the job.
“Ah, right you are, gov. No offense meant.”
“None taken. There is a penny for you, however, if you provide me with some information.”
The young man’s pale face became still and drawn. “I don’t grass, gov.”
“I do not require the names of your clientele. I am looking for a man, a vampire. Name of Akeldama.”
The blood-whore straightened away from the wall. “Won’t find ’im ’ere, gov; ’e’s got enough of ’is own ta slurp from.”
“Yes, I am well aware of that fact. But I am wondering if you might know his current whereabouts.”
The man bit his lip.
Professor Lyall handed him a penny. There weren’t a lot of vampires in London, and blood-whores, who made it their livelihood to service them, tended to know a good deal about the local hives and loners as a matter of survival.
The lip was nibbled on slightly more.
Professor Lyall handed him another penny.
“Word on the street is ’e’s left town.”
“Go on.”
“An’ how. Didn’t suss a master could be mobile like that.”
Professor Lyall frowned. “Any idea as to where?”
A shake of the head was all Lyall got in answer.
“Or why?”
Another shake.
“One more penny if you can direct me to som
eone who does.”
“Ya ain’t gunna like me answer, gov.”
Professor Lyall handed him another copper.
The blood-whore shrugged. “You’d be wantin’ the other queen, then.”
Professor Lyall groaned inwardly. Of course it would turn out to be a matter of internal vampire politics. “Countess Nadasdy?”
The young man nodded.
Professor Lyall thanked the blood-whore for his help and flagged down a seedy-looking hansom, directing the driver toward Westminster. About halfway there, he changed his mind. It wouldn’t do for the vampires to know so soon that Lord Akeldama’s absence was of interest to either BUR or the Woolsey Pack. Banging on the box with his fist, he redirected the driver toward Soho, intending to call upon a certain redhead.
* * *
Professor Lyall alighted from the hansom at Piccadilly Circus, paid the driver, and walked a block north. Even at midnight, it was a pleasant little corner of the city, swimming in young people of artistic propensities, if perhaps a bit dingy and lowbrow. Professor Lyall had a good memory, and he recalled the cholera outbreak of twenty years earlier as though it had happened only yesterday. Sometimes he thought he could still smell the sickness in the air. As a result, Soho always caused him to sneeze.
The apartment, when he knocked and was duly admitted by a very young maid, proved to be neat and tidy if a tad gleefully decorated. Ivy Tunstell bustled forward to greet him in the hallway, her dark curls bobbing out from under a large lace cap. The cap had blue silk roses clustered above her left ear, which gave her an oddly rakish appearance. She was wearing a pink walking dress, and Lyall was pleased to see he had not disturbed her at rest.
“Mrs. Tunstell, how do you do? I do apologize for calling at such a late hour.”
“Professor Lyall, welcome. Delighted to see you. Not at all. We keep to a sunset schedule. After he left your service, my dear Tunny never could manage to break the habit, and it does suit his chosen profession.”
“Ah, yes. How is Tunstell?”
“Auditioning as we speak.” Ivy led her guest into an absolutely tiny receiving room, with barely enough space to house a settee, two chairs, and a tea table. The decor seemed to have been chosen with only one theme in mind—pastel. It was a resplendent collection of pink, pale yellow, sky blue, and lilac.
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