“A God-sanctioned purpose, to hunt and kill.” Madame Lefoux’s tone was full of censure, not unsurprising given her choices in life—she was a creator, an engineer, and a builder.
The preceptor looked from the Frenchwoman to Alexia. “And what do you think her God-given purpose is, Scientist Lefoux—a soulless creature whose only skill is in neutralizing the supernatural? Do you think she was not placed on this earth as a tool? We can give her purpose, even if she is only a female.”
“Now, wait just a minute there!” Alexia remembered once complaining to Conall, before their marriage, that she wanted something useful to do with her life. Queen Victoria had made her muhjah, but even with that gone, killing vampires and werewolves for a sect of religious fanatics was not precisely what she had been hoping for.
“Have you any idea how rare you are, a female of the species?”
“I am beginning to get the impression that I am more rare than I had thought.” Alexia looked about suddenly, feigning physical discomfort. “Do you think I might visit a convenient bush, before we depart for the long drive back?”
The Templar looked equally discomforted. “If you insist.”
Alexia tugged at Madame Lefoux’s sleeve and dragged her off behind the tomb and down the side of the hill a little ways to a small copse of trees.
“It took Angelique this way,” commented Madame Lefoux, referring to her former lover. “During her pregnancy, she always had to… well… you know.”
“Oh, no, that was merely a ruse. I wanted to discuss something with you. That ankh around his neck, did you notice that it had been repaired?”
Madame Lefoux shook her head. “Is that significant, do you think?”
Alexia had never told Madame Lefoux about the mummy nor the broken ankh symbol. But in her experience, it was the hieroglyphic sign of a preternatural.
So she quickly moved on. “I think the terra-cotta man in the tomb was a preternatural, and the woman was a vampire, and the offering of meat was for the werewolves.”
“A harmonious culture? Is that possible?”
“It would be terribly arrogant of us British to think England was the first and only progressive society.” Alexia was worried. If the Templars comprehended the significance of the ankh, she was in more danger than she had thought. They would find a way to turn her into a tool, living or dead.
“I do hope Floote managed to send that message to BUR.”
“Love note to your werewolf?” Madame Lefoux sounded wistful. Then she looked about the empty hillside, suddenly nervous. “I think, my dear Alexia, we should head back to the carriage.”
Alexia, enjoying the countryside and the intellectual advantages afforded by their ancient surroundings, had not registered the lateness of the hour. “Ah, yes, you may be correct.”
It was, unfortunately, well into nighttime before they were even halfway back to Florence. Alexia felt awfully exposed in the open-topped carriage. She kept her parasol close and began to wonder if this whole excursion was not an attempt by the Templars to use her as some kind of bait. After all, they fancied themselves great supernatural hunters and might very well risk her safety simply to draw local vampires out. Especially if the Templars had enough foolish pride in their own abilities to believe there was little true peril. The moon was just rising, no longer entirely full but still quite bright. In its silvery light, Alexia could make out a gleam of anticipation in the preceptor’s normally emotionless eyes. You rotten sod, this was all a setup, she was about to say, but too late.
The vampire appeared out of nowhere, leaping with exceptional speed from the dirt road into the carriage. He was single-minded in his attack, heading straight for Alexia, the only apparent female of the group. Madame Lefoux gave a yell of warning, but Alexia had already thrown herself forward onto the open seat opposite her own, next to the preceptor. The vampire ended up where she had just been sitting. Alexia fumbled with her parasol, twisting the handle so that the two sharp spikes, one wood and one silver, sprang out from its tip.
The preceptor, suddenly brandishing a long, evil-looking wooden knife, gave a yell of pleasure and attacked. Madame Lefoux had her trusty cravat pin already out and in play. Alexia swung her parasol, but all were merely normal humans pitted against superhuman strength, and even fighting off multiple bodies in the awkwardly tiny venue of an open-topped carriage, the vampire was holding his own.
The preceptor dove forward. He was grinning—a real smile for the first time. Maniacal, but real.
Alexia took a firm grip on her parasol with both hands and used a hacking blow to stab with the wooden spike at any part of the vampire that emerged from the wrestling match long enough for her to pin it down. It was a little like trying to hit the heads of ground moles as they appeared out of their holes. But soon enough, Alexia was getting quite into the game of it.
“Touch it!” yelled the preceptor at Alexia. “Touch it so I can kill it.”
The preceptor was an excellent fighter, for he was single-minded in his attempt to drive his wooden weapon into the creature’s heart or some other vital organ. But he was simply not fast enough, even when Madame Lefoux came to his aid. Madame Lefoux got in a couple of wicked strikes to the vampire’s face with her cravat pin, but the cuts began to heal almost as soon as she had delivered them. With the air of one swatting at an irritating bug, the vampire casually backhanded the inventor with a closed fist. She fell hard against the inside of the carriage and then slumped inelegantly to the floor, eyes closed, mouth slack, and mustache fallen entirely off.
Before Alexia had a chance to react, the vampire managed to heave the Templar up and forward. He hurled the preceptor against the driver so that both fell out of the carriage into the country lane below.
The horses, spooked into screams of panic, took off in a crazed gallop, surging forward, straining against their traces in a most alarming manner. Alexia tried to maintain her footing in the wildly pitching carriage. The four cavalry Templars, who had almost caught up to the ruckus, were left behind in a cloud of swirling dust kicked up by frantic hooves.
The vampire lunged toward Alexia again. Alexia took a firm grip on her parasol and gritted her teeth. Really, she was getting very tired of these constant bouts of fisticuffs. One would think she was a boxer down at Whites! The vampire lunged. Alexia swung. But he batted the parasol away and was upon her, hands wrapped around her neck.
He sneezed. Aha, thought Alexia, the garlic!
When he touched her, his fangs vanished and his strength became that of an ordinary human. She saw in his beautiful brown eyes a look of surprise. He may have known what she was intellectually but had clearly not experienced the sensation of preternatural touch before. Yet his fingers tightened inexorably around Alexia’s throat. He might be mortal but he was still strong enough to strangle her, no matter how she kicked and struggled.
I’m not ready to die, thought Alexia. I haven’t yelled at Conall yet. And then she thought about the baby really as a baby and not an inconvenience for the very first time. We’re not ready to die.
She heaved upward, pushing the vampire up and off.
And just then, something white hit the vampire crosswise so hard that Alexia heard bones breaking—after all, the vampire was currently quite mortal and lacking any supernatural defenses. The vampire screamed in surprise and pain.
The hit broke his hold around her neck, and Alexia stumbled back, panting hard, eyes fixed on her former attacker.
The white thing resolved itself into the frenzied figure of a massive wolf, growling and thrashing against the vampire in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and blood. The two supernatural creatures scrabbled together, werewolf strength against vampire speed, while Alexia pushed herself and her parasol back into one corner of the seat, protectively shielding Madame Lefoux’s fallen form from claws, teeth, and fangs.
The wolf had the advantage, having attacked while the vampire was rendered vulnerable through preternatural contact, and he never lost it. In very sh
ort order, he wrapped his powerful jaws about the vampire’s neck, sinking his teeth into the man’s throat. The vampire gave a gurgling howl, and the smell of rotten blood filled the fresh country air.
Alexia caught a flash of ice-blue eyes as the wolf gave her one meaningful look before he hurled both himself and the vampire out of the moving carriage, hitting the ground with a tremendous thud. The sound of their battle continued but was rapidly lost in the clattering of hooves as the horses raced onward.
Alexia realized it must have been the scent of the wolf that initially panicked the horses. It was now up to her to slow them down before the terrified creatures broke their traces or overturned the carriage, or worse.
She scrambled up onto the driver’s box, only to find that the reins had fallen forward and were hanging down near the shackle, perilously close to the kicking hind legs of the horses. She lay, belly down over the box, holding on with one hand and desperately reaching with the other. No luck. Seized with an inspiration, she retrieved her parasol. It still had the two spikes sticking out from its tip, and she managed to use those to catch the dangling reins and pull them sufficiently close to grasp. Victorious, she only then remembered she had never actually driven a carriage before. Figuring it couldn’t be too difficult, she tried a gentle tug backward on the reins.
Absolutely nothing changed. The horses continued their mad dash.
Alexia took a firmer grip with both hands and yanked backward, leaning back and applying all her weight. She was not as strong as a gentleman of the Corinthian set might be, but she probably weighed about the same. The sudden pressure caused the animals to slow, first to a canter and then to trot, sides heaving and flanks lathered with sweat.
Alexia decided there was no point in stopping entirely and kept the horses headed back into the city. It was probably better to attain the relative safety of the temple as quickly as possible in case the rest of that vampire’s hive were also after her.
Two of the mounted Templars, white nightgowns floating becomingly in the breeze about them, finally caught up. They took up position, one to either side of the carriage, and without acknowledging or even looking at her, proceeded to act as escort.
“Do you think we might just pause and check on Madame Lefoux?” Alexia asked, but no verbal response was garnered. One of the men actually looked at her, but then he turned aside and spat as if his mouth had been filled with something distasteful. Fear for her friend’s well-being notwithstanding, Alexia decided that getting to safety was probably most important. She glanced at her two stony-faced escorts once more. Nothing. So she shrugged and clucked the horses into a more enthusiastic trot. There had been four Templars on horseback originally. She assumed that of the other two, one went back for the fallen preceptor and the other was off hunting the vampire and the werewolf.
With nothing else to occupy her but idle speculation, Alexia wondered if this white werewolf was the same as the white creature she had seen from the ornithopter, the one that had attacked the vampires on Monsieur Trouvé’s roof. There was something awfully familiar about those icy-blue eyes. With a start, she realized that the werewolf, the white beast, and the man in the mask at the customs station in Boboli Gardens were all the same person and that she knew him. Knew him and was, at the best of times, not particularly fond of him: her husband’s arrogant third in command, Woolsey Pack’s Gamma, Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings. She decided she’d been living too long with a werewolf pack if she could recognize him as a wolf in the middle of a battle when earlier, as the masked gentlemen, she had not been able to place him at all.
“He must have been following and protecting me since Paris!” She said out loud to the uninterested Templars, her voice cutting into the night.
They ignored her.
“And, of course, he couldn’t help us that night on the Alpine pass because it was full moon!” Alexia wondered why her husband’s third, whom neither she nor Conall particularly liked, was risking his life inside the borders of Italy to protect her. No werewolf with half a brain would voluntarily enter the stronghold of antisupernatural sentiment. Then again, there was some question, so far as Alexia was concerned, as to the extent of Channing’s brains. There was really only one good explanation: Channing would be guarding her only if Lord Conall Maccon had ordered it.
Of course, her husband was an unfeeling prat who should have come after her himself. And, of course, he was also an annoying git for meddling in her business when he had taken such pains to separate it from his own. But the timing meant he still cared enough to bark out an order to see her safe, even before he had printed that apology.
He must still love her. I think he might actually want us back, she told the infant-inconvenience with a giddy sense of elation.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In Which the Infant-Inconvenience Becomes Considerably More Inconvenient
Eventually Biffy slept and Professor Lyall could afford to do the same. They were safe under the watchful eye of Tunstell, and then Mrs. Tunstell, if such a thing was to be imagined. The two werewolves dozed throughout the day and well into early evening. Eventually, Ivy went off to check on the hat shop, and Tunstell, who had rehearsals to attend, felt it safe enough to wake Lyall.
“I went to the butcher for more meat,” he explained as the Beta sawed off a chunk of raw steak and popped it into his mouth.
Professor Lyall chewed. “So I taste. What’s the word on the street, then?”
“It’s very simple and baldly put, and everyone is talking about it. And I do mean everyone.”
“Go on.”
“The potentate is dead. You and the old wolf had a busy night last night, didn’t you, Professor?”
Lyall put down his utensils and rubbed at his eyes. “Oh, my giddy aunt. What a mess he has left me with.”
“One of Lord Maccon’s defining characteristics, as I recall—messiness.”
“Are the vampires very upset?”
“Why, Professor, are you trying to be sarcastic? That’s sweet.”
“Answer the question, Tunstell.”
“None of them are out yet. Nor their drones. But the rumor is they find the situation not ideal, sir. Not ideal at all.”
Professor Lyall stretched his neck to each side. “Well, I have been hiding out here long enough, I suppose. Time to face the fangs.”
Tunstell struck a Shakespearean pose. “The fangs and canines of outrageous fortune!”
Professor Lyall gave him a dour look. “Something like.”
The Beta stood and stretched, looking down at Biffy. The rest was doing him good. He looked if not healthier, at least less emaciated. His hair was matted with muck from the Thames, and his face was streaked with dirt and tears, but he still managed an air of dandified gentility. Lyall respected that in a man. Lord Akeldama had done his work well. Lyall respected that, too.
Without further ado, he swung the blanket-wrapped Biffy up into his arms and headed out into the busy London streets.
Floote was still out when Alexia pulled her panting horses to a stop at the door of the temple. Madame Lefoux was immediately whisked away to the infirmary, which left Alexia to make her way alone through the luxurious building. And, because she was Alexia, she made her way to the calm sanity of the library. Only in a library did she feel completely capable of collecting her finer feelings and recuperating from such a wearying day. It was also the only room she could remember how to get to.
In a desperate bid to cope with the violence of the attack, her discovery of Channing’s presence in Italy, and her own unanticipated affection for the infant-inconvenience, Alexia extracted some of Ivy’s precious tea. Quite resourcefully, she felt, she managed to boil water over the hearth fire using an empty metal snuffbox. She had to do without milk, but it was a small price to pay under the circumstances. She had no idea if the preceptor had yet returned, or even if he had survived, for as usual, no one spoke to her. With nothing else to do for the moment, Alexia sat in the library
and sipped.
It was foolish of her not to realize that the all-pervading silence was not one of prayer but one of impending disaster. Her first warning came in the form of a volatile four-legged duster that hurtled into the library, breaking the calm quiet with a bout of such crazed yipping that a lesser dog would have become ill at the effort.
“Poche? What are you doing here, you vile animal?” Alexia fiddled with her snuffbox of tea.
Apparently, Poche’s current and sole desire in life was to launch a vicious attack on Alexia’s chair leg, which he got his little teeth around and was gnawing on passionately.
Alexia contemplated whether she should attempt to shake him off, kick him with her foot, or simply disregard him entirely.
“Good evening, Female Specimen.”
“Why, Mr. German Specimen, what an unexpected surprise. I thought you had been excommunicated. They let you back into Italy?”
Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf walked into the room, stroking his chin with the air of one who has suddenly acquired the upper hand and was reveling in the state of affairs. “I found myself in the possession of some, shall we call it, negotiating power, ya?”
“Ya?” Alexia was irritated enough to mimic him.
Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf came to stand near her, looking down. Which must be a particularly unusual experience for him given his diminutive stature, Alexia thought nastily.
“The Templars will, with the information I provided, convince His Holiness Pope Blessed Pius IX to repeal my excommunication and accept me back into the fold.”
“Will they, indeed? I had no notion they possessed such influence.”
“They possess many things, Female Specimen, many things.”
“Well”—Alexia was suddenly quite nervous—“felicitations on your reintegration.”
“I have my laboratory back,” he continued proudly.
“Good, perhaps you can figure out how—”
The preceptor came into the library. Alexia stopped midsentence and looked him over, noticing bandages about his limbs and scrapes across his face. He was clearly a little worse for his encounter with the vampire and subsequent fall from the carriage.
The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set Page 84