A gigantic tiptoeing octopus came through, looking almost as though it floated atop the cloud of steam that gushed forth from under its mantle to swirl about its tentacles. The doors were not quite tall enough to permit an easy exit, but this didn’t seem to trouble the creature. It simply took a chunk of the roof off with its head. Tiles fell and splintered, dust wafted up, and steam wafted down as the world’s biggest automated cephalopod tentacled its way into the London street.
“The octomaton, I presume. I see Genevieve didn’t quite get the size measurements right,” said Alexia to no one in particular.
The octomaton didn’t notice Lady Maccon, a rotund little being far below in the shadows, but it spotted her carriage. It raised up one tentacle and took careful aim. A burst of fire came pouring out the tip. The beautifully matched horses (chosen for appearance and docility around werewolves rather than for bravery) panicked, as did the stunned coachman (chosen for precisely the same reasons). All three took off at high speed. The carriage careened wildly around a street corner, ribbons trailing merrily behind it, and disappeared into the night.
“Wait!” cried Lady Maccon. “Come back!” But the conveyance was long gone. “Oh, bother. Now what?”
The octomaton, untroubled by Alexia’s cry or predicament, began to make its way up the street away from her, following the carriage. Lady Maccon raised her parasol and pulled at the special lotus leaf in the handle, activating the magnetic disruption emitter. Even aimed directly at the massive creature, it had absolutely no effect. Either Madame Lefoux also had access to the vampire’s porcupine technology, or she had installed some kind of defensive shield to protect her creation from Alexia’s armament. Alexia was not surprised; after all, the Frenchwoman was not so thickheaded as to build one weapon that could so easily be defeated by another of her own design. Especially if she knew Alexia was on the case and might very well find her out.
Alexia switched to Ethel, raising and firing the gun. The bullet bounced harmlessly off the octomaton’s metal exterior. It left behind a dent, but once again, the massive creature did not register her tiny efforts against it.
It proceeded down the street in a not-very-dignified manner. Madame Lefoux had not gotten the en pointe tentacle balance quite right. Windows rattled as it passed, and periodically it staggered slightly to one side, crashing into and partly destroying the sides of buildings. At last, rounding the corner away from the Pantechnicon, it lurched into one of the streetlamps, an old-fashioned brassier-style torch, tipping it onto the thatched roof of a storage shed. Almost immediately the shed caught fire, and the flames began to spread. Metal roof notwithstanding, it presently became apparent that even the Pantechnicon could not resist the blaze.
Alexia was at a loss. None of her parasol’s special abilities were designed to deal with fire. In her current state, she reckoned her best option was to beat an undignified retreat to safety. After all, she was practical enough to know when there was little even she could do to rectify such a situation. She turned south, toward the river.
As she limped along, Alexia’s mind whirled with confusion. Why would Madame Lefoux build such a creature? She was, by and large, a woman of subtlety in both life and art. Why was she heading north and not due east to Buckingham? Queen Victoria never left the safety of her palace on full moon—it was simply too wild a night for her staid sensibilities. If Madame Lefoux had designs on the queen, she was going in the wrong direction. Alexia frowned. I am clearly missing something. Either something Genevieve said, or did not say, or something Formerly Lefoux said or did not say. Or…
Lady Alexia Maccon stopped in her very solid tracks and hit her forehead with the butt of her hand. Fortunately, it was the hand that held Ethel, not the hand that held her parasol, or she might have done herself damage.
“Of course! How could I be so silly? I have the wrong queen.”
Then she started walking again, her mind now calculating in a steel-traplike fashion—that is, if the trap were of the spring-loaded, not-very-sensitive variety. Lady Maccon was not one to do too many things at once, especially not right now, but she was tolerably convinced she could handle bipedal motion and thought at the same time.
The original ghostly messenger had never specified Queen Victoria, and neither had Formerly Lefoux. Genevieve Lefoux and her octomaton weren’t after the monarch of the empire; oh, no, they were after a hive queen. That made far more sense. Genevieve had never liked the vampires, not since they corrupted Angelique (although she was always content enough to take their money). Given their rocky history, again over that troublesome violet-eyed French maid, Alexia would wager good money Genevieve was after Countess Nadasdy. This made sense given the northward direction of her tentacleing, toward Mayfair. Somehow, Madame Lefoux had deduced the whereabouts of the Westminster Hive.
Another mystery. The location of a hive was a guarded secret. Lady Maccon herself knew of it, of course, but that was only because…
“Oh, Alexia, you idiot!” The burglary at Woolsey! Madame Lefoux must have been the thief, stealing those old missives because among them was Alexia’s original invitation from Countess Nadasdy to visit the hive. It had been delivered to her by Mabel Dair in Hyde Park the afternoon after Alexia killed her first vampire. It contained the address of the hive house, and Alexia had foolishly never thought to destroy it. When did I tell Genevieve that story?
Lady Maccon cast desperately about the empty street. She had to reach the Westminster Hive, and fast. Never before had she resented the infant-inconvenience more than at this moment, not to mention her dependence on horse-drawn transport. She even had an invitation that would get her in the door, but no way to get there in time to warn them of imminent tentacled doom. She was stranded in the wilds of Belgravia!
She waddled faster.
The fire was spreading and whooshing behind her. The once-dim alley was alight with a flickering orange and yellow glow. The din of collapsing buildings and roaring flames was added to by the loud clanging bell of an approaching fire engine. One of the dirigibles must have spotted the blaze and drop-messaged the appropriate authorities. If anything, this made Alexia move faster. The last thing she needed was to be detained trying to explain her presence at the Pantechnicon. It also reminded her to look up to see if she could spot a dirigible.
Sure enough, there were several headed sedately in her direction, having caught sight of the fire and redirected their lazy circling toward an intriguing new attraction. They were safely above the conflagration, not yet in the aether but high enough to avoid any risk associated with even the most massive of ground fires.
Lady Maccon waved her parasol commandingly and yelled, but she was a mere speck far below, unless someone had a pair of Shersky and Droop’s latest long-distance binoculars. Since her marriage, Alexia had adopted a more respectable and somber color palette than that of the pastel-inclined unattached young lady. This made her even less visible in the flickering shadows of Motcomb Street.
It was then that Alexia noticed that the Giffard symbol (a shaping of the name that turned the G into a massive red and black balloon) on a nearby warehouse was modified with a kind of starburst pattern at its end and a phrase underneath that read PYROTECHNIC DIVISION LTD. She stopped, turned on her heel, and headed for a nearby lamppost. With barely a pause for consideration, she hauled off, took careful aim, and threw her parasol hard at the torch section. The parasol, spearlike, crashed into the lamp and brought both it and the hot coals inside down to the ground with a clang.
Lady Maccon huffed her way over to the coals, retrieved her now-slightly-scorched and sooty accessory by its tip, and, holding it like a mallet, used the chubby handle to hit one particularly nice-looking coal along the street toward the Giffard pyrotechnic warehouse. It was a excellent thing, reflected Alexia at that juncture, that she was good at croquet. At a nice distance, she took careful aim and, with a kind of scooping action, struck the wedge of coal hard. It arced splendidly upward, crashing through the window of the war
ehouse in a most satisfactory manner.
Then she waited, long, slow counts, hoping the coal had managed to hit upon something reliably explosive.
It had. A popping, cracking noise came first, then some whizzing and whirling sounds, and finally a series of loud gunshots. The doors and windows of the warehouse exploded outward, pushing Alexia backward. Instinctively, she popped open her parasol to shield herself as the world around her turned into a smoking cornucopia of brightly flashing lights and loud noises. The entire stockpile of what she imagined must be a very expensive collection of gunpowder display sparkles and sky-lighters exploded, shimmering and flashing in an ever-increasing series of flares.
Lady Maccon cowered in the road—there was really no other way of putting it—behind her open parasol, trusting in the durability of Madame Lefoux’s design to protect her from the worst of it.
Eventually, the popping detonations slowed, and she began to register the heat of the real fire as it crept down Motcomb Street toward her. She coughed and waved her parasol. The moonlight made the residual smoke silvery white, as if a thousand ghosts were collected around her.
Alexia, eyes watering, blinked and tried to take shallow, steady breaths. Then, through the dispersing smoke, a massive upside-down shepherdess-style bonnet appeared, hovering some two stories above the ground and heading toward her. As the smoke vanished, the cumbersome form of a small private dirigible bobbed into view above the bonnet, proving that it was, in fact, not a hat at all but the gondola portion of the air conveyance. The pilot, some miracle worker of the first order, navigated the small craft down toward Lady Maccon, lowering it carefully between the rows of buildings while battling to keep it away from the flames of the burning Pantechnicon.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Octopus Stalks at Moonlight
It was Giffard’s smallest craft, short-range and generally hired only for classified recognizance or personal pleasure jaunting. The gondola portion, even more strongly resembling a shepherdess’s hat upon close inspection, was big enough for only five people. The model was based off of Blanchard’s original balloon. It had four dragonfly-like wing rudders, sprouting below the passenger section. There was a small steam engine and propeller at the back, but the captain had to steer by means of multiple levers and tillers, making him perform a frantic dance. In usefulness, it resembled those small Thames crossing barges so favored by the criminally minded. Giffard had come out with a whole fleet recently, at luxury prices, so the affluent could invest in private air transport. Alexia found them undignified, not the least because there was no door. One had to actually clamber over the edge of the gondola to get inside. Imagine that, fully grown adults clambering! But when one was stranded in an alley with a burning Pantechnicon and a rampaging octomaton, one really couldn’t afford to be picky.
Two of the figures inside the hat leaned over the edge, pointing at her.
“Yoo-hoo!” yodeled one of them jovially.
“Over here! Quickly, gentlemen, please, this way!” replied Alexia at full volume, waving her parasol madly.
One of the gentlemen touched the brim of his top hat at her (no tipping was possible with a hat tied down for air travel). “Lady Maccon.”
“By George, Boots! How the deuce can you possibly tell that there is Lady Maccon?” queried the other top-hated gentleman.
“Who else would be standing in the middle of a street on full-moon night with a raging ruddy fire behind her, waving a parasol about?”
“Good point, good point.”
“Lady Maccon,” came the yell. “Would you like a lift?”
“Mr. Bootbottle-Fipps,” said Alexia in exasperation, “ask a silly question…”
The dirigible gondola bumped softly down, and she toddled over to it.
Boots and the second young dandy, who proved to be Viscount Trizdale, hopped nimbly out and came to assist her. Tizzy was a slight, effete young blond with an aristocratic nose and a partiality for the color yellow. Boots had a bit more substance in physicality and taste, but not much.
Lady Maccon looked from one to the other of the two gentlemen and then at the side of the gondola that she must now scale. With great reluctance and knowing she had no other choice, she put herself into their well-manicured hands.
No one, later that evening, nor ever again so long as any of them lived, mentioned what had to be done in order to get a very pregnant Lady Maccon into that passenger basket. There was some heaving, and a good deal of squeaking (both from Alexia and Tizzy), and hands might have had to be placed upon portions of the anatomy pleasing to neither Alexia nor her rescuers. Suffice it to say that Lady Maccon had cause to be grateful Lord Akeldama insisted that his drones undertake some sporting activity, for all their fashionable proclivities.
Alexia landed upon her bustle, legs slightly in the air. Gravity being even more forthright than Lady Maccon, she flailed about before managing to roll to one side and climb laboriously to her feet. She had a rather severe stitch in her side, a few bruises on her nether regions, and she was flushed with heat and exertion, but everything else, including the child, seemed to be in working order. The two young men jumped back inside after her.
“What are you doing here?” Lady Maccon demanded, still in shock that her plan to signal for help had actually worked. “Did my husband put a tail on me? What is it with werewolves and tails?”
Tizzy and Boots looked at each other.
Finally Boots said, “It wasn’t entirely the earl, Lady Maccon. Our lord asked us to keep an eye on you this evening as well. He indicated things might come to pass on full moon that required additional recognizance in this part of London, if you take my meaning.”
“How on earth would he know to do a thing like that? Oh, forget I asked. How does Lord Akeldama know anything?” Logic returned along with dignity, and Alexia took stock of her change in circumstances.
Boots shrugged. “Things always come to pass on full moon.”
Without having to be directed, the pilot was already taking the small craft back up, away from fire and smoke. He was a diminutive man, clean-shaven, with a snubbed nose and a mercurial expression. His cravat was very well tied and it coordinated perfectly with his waistcoat.
“Don’t tell me.” Alexia looked him up and down. “This dirigible happens to be owned by Lord Akeldama?”
“If that’s what you desire, my lady, we won’t tell you.” Boots looked guilty, as though he were somehow failing her in this request.
Lady Maccon twisted her lips together in thought. The infant-inconvenience kicked at her mightily, and she clutched reflexively at her stomach. “I hate to do this to you, gentlemen, but I find myself in desperate need to call upon Westminster Hive, as quickly as possible. How fast does this contraption go?”
The pilot gave her a cheeky grin. “Oh, you’d be surprised, my lady. Very surprised. Lord Akeldama had this little beauty retrofitted by Madame Lefoux. That he did.”
“I didn’t know they had professional dealings with each other.” Lady Maccon arched an eyebrow.
“I understand this was a first commission. The very first. Lord Akeldama was delighted with her work. Quite delighted. As, indeed, am I. Can’t try floating himself, poor man.” The pilot looked as though he really felt genuinely sorry for the vampire’s inability. “But he’s had this beauty put through her paces around the green, and I assure you, that Frenchwoman is a miracle worker. A miracle worker, I say. The things she can do with aeronautics.”
“She did comment once that it was her specialty at university. And, of course, there’s always Monsieur Trouvé and the ornithopter.”
The pilot looked up from his activities with a gleam of interest. “Ornithopter you say? I’d heard the French were branching out. My goodness, what a sight that must be.”
“Yes.” Lady Maccon’s voice was low. “Better to see in action than to use oneself, if you ask me.” She raised her voice. “About this dirigible going faster? It’s very important that I put in an appearanc
e within the next few minutes. Why don’t you show me the full extent of this lovely craft’s paces?”
Another grin met that request. “Just point me in the appropriate direction, my lady!”
Alexia did so, gesturing north. They were already above the rooftops, the fire well behind them. She toddled to the edge and looked down: Hyde Park was to their left and a little ahead, while Green Park and the Palace Garden lay spread behind them and to the right. Even so high, she could hear the howling of Queen Victoria’s personal werewolf guard, the Growlers, locked away in one special wing of Buckingham below.
She indicated a point ahead and slightly to the right, between the two parks—the center of Mayfair. The pilot pulled down hard on a doorknob-ended lever, and the craft lurched in that direction, faster than Alexia had thought dirigibles could go. Madame Lefoux’s touch, indeed.
“Does she have a name, Captain?” she yelled into the rushing air.
Both the interest and the title earned Lady Maccon a great deal of loyalty from the young pilot. “’Course she does, my lady. Himself calls her Buffety, for the rocking motion, I suspect. She’s on the registry as Dandelion Fluff Upon a Spoon. Don’t know as I can rightly explain that one.”
Tizzy tittered knowingly. Lady Maccon and the pilot looked at him, but the young lordling seemed disinclined to elaborate.
Lady Maccon shrugged. “I suppose Lord Akeldama names in mysterious ways.”
Boots, his eyes on Alexia’s other hand, which was still wrapped protectively about her swollen belly, inquired solicitously, “Is it the child, Lady Maccon?”
“The reason for our urgency? Oh, no. I have an invitation to attend Countess Nadasdy’s full-moon party, and I am late.”
Boots and Tizzy nodded their full understanding of this grave social necessity. All speed was indeed called for.
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