The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  “Please do forgive me for the presumption, Mrs. Tunstell, but yours was the nearest house.” He lay Biffy down on the small lavender couch and quickly reached behind it to draw the curtains over the window, just as the sun’s first rays peeked above the horizon. Biffy’s previously still form stiffened and then began to shudder and convulse.

  Throwing all decorum to the winds, Professor Lyall rushed at Ivy, got one arm firmly about her waist, and hustled her to the door. “Best you not be here for this, Mrs. Tunstell. Send in your husband, would you, once he awakens?”

  Ivy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times like an affronted poodle, and then whirled to do as he had bidden. There was a woman, Lyall thought, forced into efficiency through prolonged exposure to Alexia Tarabotti.

  “Tunny!” she called, trotting back down the hallway, and then with far greater sharpness, “Ormond Tunstell, wake up. Do!”

  Professor Lyall closed the door and turned back to his charge. He reached into his waistcoat for one of his trusty handkerchiefs, only then remembering he was wearing no more than a greatcoat, retrieved from the shore, having dressed for change, not company. Wincing at his own temerity, he grabbed one of Ivy’s pastel throw pillows and wedged a corner of it into the new werewolf’s mouth, giving Biffy something to bite down upon and also muffling his whimpering. Then Lyall bent low, bracing the shuddering form of the wolf with his own body, curling about him tenderly. It was partly Beta instinct, to protect a new member of the pack, but it was also sympathy. The first time was always the worst, not because it got any better, but because it was so unfamiliar an experience.

  Tunstell let himself into the room.

  “God’s teeth, Professor, what is going on?”

  “Too much to explain fully right now, I’m afraid. Can that wait until later? I’ve got a new pup on my hands and no Alpha to handle him. Do you have any raw meat in the house?”

  “The wife ordered steak, delivered only yesterday.” Tunstell left without needing to be pressed further.

  Lyall smiled. The redhead fell so easily back into his old role of claviger, doing what needed to be done for the werewolves around him.

  Biffy’s chocolate fur was beginning to retreat up to the top of his head, showing skin now pale with immortality. His eyes were losing their yellow hue in favor of blue. Clutching that writhing form, Lyall could feel as well as hear Biffy’s bones breaking and re-forming. It was a long and agonizing shift. It would take the young man decades to master any level of competency. Rapidity and smoothness were markers of both dominance and age.

  Lyall held Biffy the entire time. Held him while Tunstell returned with a large raw steak and fussed about with varying degrees of helpfulness. Held him until, eventually, he was left with an armful of nothing but naked Biffy, shivering and looking most forlorn.

  “What? Where?” The young dandy pushed weakly against the Beta’s arms. His nose was twitching as though he needed to sneeze. “What is going on?”

  Professor Lyall relaxed his embrace and sat back on his heels next to the couch. Tunstell came over with a blanket and a concerned expression. Just before he covered the young man over, Lyall was pleased to notice that Biffy appeared to be entirely healed from the bullet wound, a true supernatural, indeed.

  “Who are you?” Biffy focused fuzzily on Tunstell’s bright red hair.

  “I’m Tunstell. Used to be a claviger to Lord Maccon. Now I’m mostly just an actor.”

  “He is our host and a friend. We will be safe here for the day.” Professor Lyall kept his voice low and calm, tucking the blanket about the still-shivering young man.

  “Is there some reason we need to be? Safe, I mean.”

  “How much do you remember?” Lyall swept a lock of brown hair back behind Biffy’s ear in a motherly fashion. Despite all his transformations, his nudity, and his beard, the young man still looked every inch the dandy. He would make an odd addition to the gruff soldiering masculinity of the Woolsey Pack.

  Biffy jerked and fear flooded into his eyes. “Extermination mandate! I found out that there is a… Oh, dear God, I was supposed to report in! I missed the appointment with my lord.” He made as if to try and rise.

  Lyall held him back easily.

  Biffy turned on him frantically. “You don’t understand—he’ll swarm if I don’t make it back. He knew I was going after the potentate. How could I have gotten caught? I’m such an imbecile. I know better than that. Why, he’ll…” He trailed off. “How long was I down there?”

  Lyall sighed. “He did swarm.”

  “Oh, no.” Biffy’s face fell. “All that work, all those agents pulled out of covert placement. It’ll take years to reintegrate them. He’s going to be so very disappointed in me.”

  Lyall tried to distract him. “So, what do you remember?”

  “I remember being trapped under the Thames and thinking I would never escape.” Biffy brushed one hand over his face. “And that I really needed a shave. Then I remember water flooding in and waking in the darkness to shouting and gunshots. And then I remember a lot of pain.”

  “You were dying.” Lyall paused, searching for the right words. Here he was, hundreds of years old, and he could not explain to one boy why he had been changed against his will.

  “Was I? Well, good thing that didn’t take. My lord would never forgive me if I up and died without asking permission first.” Biffy sniffed, suddenly distracted. “Something smells amazing.”

  Professor Lyall gestured to the plate of raw steak sitting nearby.

  Biffy tilted his head to see, then looked back at Lyall in confusion. “But it’s not cooked. Why does it smell so good?”

  Lyall cleared his throat. As a Beta, he’d never had to perform this particular task. It was the Alpha’s job to acclimatize the newly turned, the Alpha’s job to explain and be there and be strong and be, well, Alphaish for a new pup. But Lord Maccon was halfway to Dover by now, and Lyall was left to deal with this mess without him.

  “You know that dying issue I just mentioned? Well, it did take, in its way.”

  At which juncture, Professor Lyall had to watch those beautiful blue eyes turn from dazed confusion to horrified realization. It was one of the saddest things he had ever seen in all his long life.

  At a loss, Lyall handed Biffy the plate of raw steak.

  Unable to control himself, the young dandy tore into the meat, gulping it down in elegant, but very rapid, bites.

  For the sake of his dignity, both Professor Lyall and Tunstell pretended not to notice that Biffy was crying the entire time. Tears dribbled down his nose and onto the steak while he chewed, and swallowed, and chewed, and sobbed.

  The preceptor’s picnic, as it turned out, was a little more elaborate than Alexia and Madame Lefoux had been led to believe. They trundled a sizable distance into the countryside, away from Florence in the direction of Borgo San Lorenzo, arriving eventually at an archaeological excavation. While the antiquated carriage attempted to park on a hillock, their Templar host announced with much pride that they would be engaging in an Etruscan tomb picnic.

  The site was lovely, shaded with trees of various bushy Mediterranean inclinations that took being leafy and green quite seriously. Alexia stood up while the carriage maneuvered around, the better to take in her surroundings.

  “Do sit down, Alexia! You shall fall, and then how will I explain to Floote that you had—” Madame Lefoux stopped herself before she inadvertently mentioned Alexia’s unfortunate condition in front of the preceptor, but it was clear her worry was largely for the child’s safety.

  Alexia ignored her.

  They were surrounded by a series of tombs: low, circular, and grass covered, almost organic in appearance, quite unlike anything Alexia had ever seen or read about. Never having visited anything more stimulating than a Roman bathhouse, Alexia was practically bouncing with excitement—if a lady once more corseted and trussed up to the height of proper British fashion and encumbered by both parasol and pregnancy could be d
escribed as “bouncing.” She sat down abruptly when their carriage went over a bump.

  Alexia refused, on principle, to admit that her new high spirits were on account of Conall’s printed apology, but the world certainly seemed a far more fascinating place today than it had yesterday.

  “Do you know anything of these Etruscans?” she whispered to Madame Lefoux.

  “Only that they came before the Romans.”

  “Were they supernaturally based or a daylight exclusive society?” Alexia asked the next most important question.

  The preceptor overheard her.

  “Ah, My Soulless One, you ask one of the most troublesome questions of the great Etruscan mystery. Our historians, they continue to investigate this matter. I did think, however, that given your peculiar skill set, you might…” He trailed off meaningfully as though intentionally leaving the thought unfinished.

  “Well, my dear Mr. Templar, I fail to see how I could possibly be of assistance. I am no trained antiquarian. The only thing I can identify with any consistency is my own kind. I—” It was Alexia’s turn to leave a thought unfinished, as she realized the implications of his statement. “You believe there might be a preternatural focus to this culture? How remarkable.”

  The Templar only shrugged. “We have seen the rise and fall of many great empires in the past, some run by vampires, others by werewolves.”

  “And some that have been founded upon the persecution of both.” Alexia was thinking of the Catholic Inquisition, an expurgation movement the Templars were rumored to have taken a keen and active interest in promoting.

  “But never yet have we found evidence of a civilization built to incorporate your kind.”

  “As difficult as that kind of proximity might be?” Alexia was puzzled.

  “Why do you think the Etruscans might be the exception?” Madame Lefoux asked.

  The coach stopped and the preceptor stepped down. He did not offer Alexia a hand, allowing Madame Lefoux to jump out and take over that dubious honor. Some distance away, the Templar cavalry dismounted as well and stood about as though waiting for orders. The preceptor gave them one of those hand signals, and the men relaxed into a casual milling group. The silent efficiency was unsettling, to say the least.

  “Don’t say much, do they?”

  The preceptor turned his emotionless eyes on Alexia. “Would you ladies prefer to explore or eat first?”

  “Explore,” said Alexia promptly. She was wildly curious to see the inside of the strange round tombs.

  The preceptor led them down into the dry, dim interior of the already cracked tomb. The underground walls were lined with limestone. Steps led into a single chamber, not much bigger than Alexia’s drawing room back at Woolsey Castle. The limestone was elaborately carved to look like the inside of a house, with nooks, stone columns, and even ceiling beams picked out in the sandy, porous rock. It was the interior of a home, frozen in stone. Alexia was reminded of the elaborate jelly sculptures she had eaten at fancy dinner parties, made of aspic and formed with the aid of a mold.

  There was no furniture, nor any other artifacts inside the tomb, the sole object being an extremely large sarcophagus in the center of the room. On the top lay two full-sized clay figures: a man lounging on his side and leaning up on one elbow behind a woman doing the same, his free arm draped affectionately over her shoulder.

  It was a lovely sculpture, but despite what the preceptor had said, Alexia experienced no sense of repulsion, no feeling about the place that she would have expected when in the presence of a preserved preternatural body. Either there was none present, or the remains had long since decomposed beyond effectiveness. The Templar was staring at her, monitoring her reactions closely. Face impassive, she walked about, self-conscious under his dead-eyed scrutiny, examining some painted images on the walls.

  The place smelled musty, in the same way that old books do, only with an overlay of dirt and cold stone. But there was nothing there that engendered any adverse reaction in Alexia. In fact, she found the ancient abode quite comforting and restful. She was glad of this. She would hate to have to hide her instinct to run if there had been some kind of preternatural mummy in residence.

  “I am sorry to say, Mr. Templar, I do not think I can be of any help. I do not even see why one might associate this culture with my kind.”

  The preceptor looked disappointed.

  Madame Lefoux, who had been watching him while he watched her friend, turned sharply to stare down at the sarcophagus.

  “What were they holding?” she asked.

  Alexia wandered over to see what Madame Lefoux was on about. She was struck by the pleasantness in the almond-shaped eyes of the statues, but upon looking closer, she realized what it was that had drawn Madame Lefoux’s attention. The man was leaning on the elbow of one arm, the hand of which was up and flat as though offering a carrot to a horse. His other hand, behind the woman’s neck, had thumb and forefinger curved in the act of holding some small object. The woman had both hands curved in such a way as one might pour libations or offer up a flask of wine.

  “Good question.”

  Both ladies turned to look at the preceptor inquiringly.

  “The woman held an empty ceramic flask, its contents long since dried and evaporated into aether. The man was offering a piece of meat on his open palm. The archaeologists found an animal bone resting there. He was holding something very strange in his other hand.”

  “What was that?”

  The Templar shrugged and fished about his high collar with one finger, finally pulling out a chain that was around his neck. Carefully he lifted it out from underneath nightgown, jacket, waistcoat, and shirt. All three of them moved toward the light streaming down from the entrance. A small gold charm dangled from the end of the chain. Alexia and Madame Lefoux bent to examine it.

  “An ankh?” Alexia blinked in amusement.

  “From Ancient Egypt?” Madame Lefoux arched one perfect black eyebrow.

  “Were the two cultures chronologically comparable?” Alexia scrabbled to remember the dates of Egyptian expansion.

  “It is possible they had some form of contact, but it is more likely that this little object came into Etruscan hands through trade with the Greeks.”

  Alexia studied the small piece of gold closely but, uncharacteristically, pursed her lips and said nothing. She found it odd that an Etruscan statue would offer up the Egyptian symbol for eternal life, and while, to be sure, she had many theories on the subject, she was unwilling to share them with a Templar.

  The preceptor tucked his charm away when neither lady had anything further to say and led the way back up the limestone stairs and out onto the sun-dappled hillside. The other tombs were much the same, only in not quite such good repair.

  The picnic that followed was an uncomfortably silent affair. Alexia, Madame Lefoux, and the preceptor were seated on a square of quilted gingham spread atop the tomb while the other Templars enjoyed their own meal a short distance away. One of the Templars did not eat, but instead read from the Bible in lugubrious tones. The preceptor seemed to feel this was an excuse not to engage in any conversation with his two companions.

  Alexia ate an apple, two rolls of crunchy bread spread with some kind of tomato sauce, and three hard-boiled eggs dipped in more of the green stuff that had so delighted her the day before.

  With meal finished and Bible put away, the party prepared to leave. There was one benefit to picnicking, Alexia realized. As she had used no utensils, nothing needed to be destroyed because of contamination.

  “It is not a bad life we lead here, is it, My Soulless One?” The preceptor spoke to her at last.

  Alexia was forced to admit that it didn’t appear so. “Italy is a lovely country. And I cannot fault your cuisine or climate.”

  “You are—how do I say this politely—unwelcome back in England?”

  Alexia was going to correct him and boast of Conall’s public apology but then thought better of it. Instead she
said, “That is a very diplomatic way of putting it, Mr. Templar.”

  The preceptor smiled his horrible cheerless grimace. “Perhaps, My Soulless One, you might consider staying here with us, then? It has been a long time since we of the temple at Florence had a preternatural in residence, let alone a female of the species. We would make sure of your every comfort while we studied you. Provide for you your own, more isolated quarters.”

  Alexia’s face soured as she thought back to her unfortunate encounter with Dr. Siemons and the Hypocras Club. “I have entertained such an offer before.”

  The Templar tilted his head, watching her.

  Since he seemed, once more, to be in a chatty frame of mind, Alexia asked, “You would put up with devil spawn permanently in your midst?”

  “We have done so before. We of the brotherhood are God’s best weapon against the supernatural threat. We were made to do what needed to be done no matter what the cost or personal risk. You could be very useful to our cause.”

  “Goodness gracious, I had no idea I was that appealing.” Alexia waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  Madame Lefoux joined the conversation. “If that is the case, why are you not equally welcoming to werewolves and vampires?”

  “Because they are not born daemons. To be born with the eternal sin is not much more than to be born with original sin. The soulless suffer, as we all do, under the metaphorical cross, only for them there is no salvation. The vampires and werewolves, on the other hand, have chosen their path voluntarily. It is a matter of intention. They have turned their backs on salvation in a way far more reprehensible, because they once had excess soul. They could have ascended into heaven had they only resisted Satan’s temptation. Instead, they traded the bulk of their soul to the devil and became monsters. They are offensive to God, for only he and his angels are allowed immortality.” He spoke calmly, with no emotion, no inflection, and no doubt.

  Alexia felt chilled. “Which is why you wish to see all supernatural folk dead?”

  “It is our eternal crusade.”

  Alexia did some calculations. “Over four hundred years or so. Commendably committed of you all.”