Heartless

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Where Dirigibles Fear to Tread

Lord Akeldama had arranged for a dirigible landing green to be built on the roof of his town house. It was shifted off to one side, allowing room for his aethographor’s cuspidor-like receiver. Lady Maccon wondered that she had not noticed this before, but then she didn’t spend much time investigating rooftops as part of her daily routine.

The dirigible touched down as light as a meringue. Given that bipedal motion hadn’t been doing her many favors that evening, Alexia reluctantly clambered to her feet. Much to her delight, Lord Akeldama had made allowances for a dignified exit from the transport here at its home base. A drone bustled over with a specially designed peaked step ladder that flipped over the side of the gondola basket and then telescoped out to the required height on each side. This permitted one to climb up one side and down the other with great solemnity and aplomb.

“Why,” wondered Alexia, “don’t you float around already carrying that little ladder?”

“We thought nobody would be disembarking before we returned home.”

Felicity climbed out after her sister and stood in haughty disapproval to one side. “What a way to travel! One can hardly countenance how acceptable floating has become. So unnaturally high up. And to land on a roof! Why, Alexia, I can see the tops of buildings. They are not landscaped properly!” All the while complaining, Felicity patted at her hair to ensure it hadn’t been disturbed by air travel or her near-death experience.

“Oh, Felicity, do be quiet. I have had quite enough of your prattle for one evening.”

Summoned by that secret instinct possessed only by the very best of servants, who always know when the mistress is in residence, Floote appeared at Alexia’s elbow.

“Oh, Floote!”

“Madam.”

“How did you know I would be here?”

Floote arched a brow as though to say, Where else would you possibly end up on full-moon night but on Lord Akeldama’s rooftop?

“Yes, of course. Would you please take Felicity here back to our house and lock her in a room somewhere? The back parlor. Or possibly the newly configured wine cellar.”

Felicity shrieked, “What?”

Floote looked at Felicity with an expression that was as close to a smile as Alexia had ever seen on his face—a tiny little crinkle at one corner of his mouth. “Consider it done, madam.”

“Thank you, Floote.”

The butler took a very firm grip on Felicity’s arm and began leading her off.

“Oh, and, Floote, please send someone to check around the rubble of the Westminster Hive house right away, before the scavengers get there. I believe I accidentally dropped my parasol. And there might be some nice bits of art lying about.”

Floote didn’t even flinch at the knowledge that one of the most respected residences in London was now in ruins. “Of course, madam. I assume it is now permitted to give out the address?”

Lady Maccon gave it to him.

He moved smoothly off, dragging the protesting Felicity behind him.

“Sister, really, this is uncalled for. Is it the tooth marks? Is that what has you overset? There are only a few.”

“Miss Felicity,” Alexia heard Floote say, “do try to behave.”

Boots, finished mooring down the dirigible, came up next to Alexia and offered her his arm. “Lady Maccon?”

She took it gratefully. The infant-inconvenience really was being quite troublesome at the moment. She felt as though she’d swallowed a fighting ferret.

“Perhaps you could take me to the, uh, closet, Mr. Bootbottle-Fipps? I feel I ought to lie down. Just for a moment, mind you. There is still a loose hive to deal with. I suppose I should try to determine where Countess Nadasdy has gone. And Madame Lefoux, of course. She should not be allowed to rampage.”

“Certainly not, my lady,” agreed Boots. Who clearly felt, as Alexia did, that rampaging under any circumstances was uncalled for.

They had barely made it off the roof and down the staircases toward Lord Akeldama’s second best closet when a panting drone appeared before them. He was a tall and comely fellow with an affable face, a mop of curly hair, and a loose, floppy way of walking. He also had the most poorly tied cravat Alexia had ever seen within walking distance of Lord Akeldama. She looked with shock at Boots.

“New drone,” Boots explained to Lady Maccon before turning amicably to face the young man.

“What ho, Boots!”

“Chip chip, Shabumpkin. Looking for me?”

“Rather!”

“Ah! Need a mo’ to see her ladyship squared away properly.”

“Oh, no, not just you, my dear chap. Looking for Lady Maccon as well. Care to follow?”

Alexia looked at the young man as though he had crawled from somewhere smelly. “Must I?”

“ ’Fraid so, your ladyship. Himself has called an emergency meeting of the Shadow Council,” explained the drone.

“But it’s full moon—the dewan can’t attend.”

“Several of us pointed this out to him. Niggling detail, said he.”

“Oh, dear. Not at Buckingham, I hope?” Alexia clutched at her stomach, appalled at the very idea of any further travel.

The dandy grinned. “In his drawing room, madam. Where else?”

“Oh, thank goodness. Have Floote follow me there, would you, please? Once he’s finished with his current line of business.”

“ ’Course, Lady Maccon. My pleasure.”

“Thank you, Mr., uh, Shabumpkin.”

At which Boots straightened his spine, took a firmer grip on Alexia’s arm, and guided her carefully down the next few sets of stairs and into Lord Akeldama’s infamous drawing room. Once there, Shabumpkin nodded to them amiably and gangled off.

Lord Akeldama was waiting for her. Alexia was unsurprised to note that while she’d been dashing about London tracking an octomaton, the vampire had engaged in nothing more stressful than a change of clothing. He was wearing the most remarkable suit of tails and britches she had ever seen, candy-striped satin in cream and wine. This he had paired with a pink waistcoat of watered silk, pink hose, and pink top hat. His cravat, a waterfall of wine satin, was pinned with a gold and ruby pin, and matching rubies glittered about his fingers, monocle, and boutonniere.

“Can I get you anything, Lady Maccon?” offered Boots after seeing her safely ensconced in a chair, obviously concerned over her evident physical discomfort.

“Tea?” Alexia named the only thing she could think of that universally cured all ills.

“Of course.” He vanished after a quick exchange of glances with his master.

However, when the tea was brought in some five minutes later, it was Floote who brought it, not Boots. The butler left quickly but Alexia was in no doubt he’d taken up residence very close to the outside of the door.

Lord Akeldama, in some distress, did not produce his harmonic auditory resonance disruptor, and Alexia did not remind him. She figured she might need Floote’s advice on whatever occured next.

“So, my lord?” said she to the vampire, not at all up for dillydallying.

Lord Akeldama got straight to the point. Which was, in and of itself, a marker of his distress.

“My precious plum blossom, do you have any idea who is sitting in the back alleyway behind the kitchen right this very moment?”

Since Alexia was pretty darned convinced she would have spotted the octomaton from the roof, she took her second best guess.

“Countess Nadasdy?”

“Behind the kitchen! By my longest fang! I—” He interrupted himself. “Gracious me, buttercup, but how did you know?”

Even coping with the violent kicking and squirming in her tummy, Alexia couldn’t help but smile. “Now you know how I always feel.”

“She swarmed.”

“Yes, finally. You wouldn’t believe what it took to chivy her out of that place. You’d think she was a ghost, so tightly tethered as to never be separated from her fixing point.”

Lord Akeldama sat down, took a deep breath, and composed himself. “Darling marigold, please don’t tell me you’re responsible for . . . you know.” He fluttered one perfectly white hand in the air, like a dying handkerchief.

“Oh, no, silly. Not me. Madame Lefoux.”

“Oh. Of course. Madame Lefoux.” The vampire’s expression was arrested, deadpan at this latest bit of information.

Lady Maccon swore she could see the cogs and wheels of his massive intellect whirring away behind that effete painted face.

“Because of the little French maid?” He finally hazarded a guess.

Lady Maccon was enjoying having the upper hand for once. She had never dared to hope that someday she would have more information in a crisis than Lord Akeldama.

“Ah, no—Quesnel.”

“Her son?”

“Not exactly hers.”

Lord Akeldama stood up from his casual lounging posture. “The little towheaded lad the countess has with her? The one who ripped my jacket?”

“That sounds like Quesnel.”

“What’s the hive queen doing with a French inventor’s son?”

“Ah, apparently, Angelique left a will.”

Lord Akeldama tapped one fang with the edge of his gold and ruby monocle, pulling all the threads together right before Alexia’s eyes. “Angelique is the boy’s real mother, and she left him to the tender care of the hive? Silly bint.”

“And the countess stole him from Genevieve. So Genevieve built an octomaton and destroyed the hive house trying to get him back.”

“Upon my word, that’s escalating things rather much.”

“I daresay it is.”

Lord Akeldama stopped tapping and began swinging his monocle back and forth while he took up a slow pace about the room. His white brow creased in one perfect line between the eyebrows.

Lady Maccon rubbed her protesting belly with one hand and sipped tea with the other. For once, the magic liquid was unable to disseminate any beneficial effects. The child was not happy, and tea was not going to pacify the beast.

The monocle stilled.

Alexia straightened up in her chair expectantly.

“The question remains, what is to be done with an entire hive skulking in my back alley?”

“Have them in for tea?” suggested Lady Maccon.

“No, no, not possible, little cream puff. They can’t come in here.”

Vampires were peculiar about etiquette. “Buckingham Palace? That should be relatively secure.”

“No, no. Political nightmare. Vampire queen in the palace? Trust me, darling, it is never a good idea to have too many queens in one place, let alone one palace.”

“To be really safe and buy us some extra time, we really ought to get her out of London.”

“She won’t like that at all, but there is sense to the suggestion, bluebell.”

“How long do we have? I mean to say, how long does a swarming usually last?”

Lord Akeldama frowned. Concerned over whether he should give her this information, she suspected, rather than over any possibility of his not having it. “A newly made queen has months to settle, but an old queen has only a few hours.”

Lady Maccon shrugged. Only one solution readily presented itself. It was the safest place she knew of—defensible and secure.

“I will have to take her to Woolsey.”

Lord Akeldama sat down. “If you say so, Lady Alpha.”

There was something in his tone that gave Alexia pause. He sounded like that when he had recently purchased a particularly nice waistcoat. She couldn’t understand why he should be so self-satisfied with this predicament. As her benighted husband would say, vampires!

Someone had to do something. They couldn’t let the Westminster queen simply cool her heels in an alleyway behind Lord Akeldama’s and Lord Maccon’s respective houses. What a scandal if the papers ever found that out! Alexia very much hoped Felicity was locked away. “It will only be until we can determine what’s to be done with her. And how to resolve this situation with Quesnel. Hopefully without destroying any other perfectly innocent buildings.” Lady Maccon tilted back her head and yelled, “Floote!”

The rapidity of Floote’s appearance suggested he had, indeed, been waiting just outside the door.

“Floote, how many carriages do we have in town?”

“Just the one, madam. Just arrived back in.”

“Well, that’ll have to do. Hitch up the goers and have it brought round to the back, please. I shall meet you there.”

“A journey? But, madam, you are unwell.”

“Can’t be helped, Floote. I cannot justifiably send a hive of vampires into a den of werewolves alone and without diplomatic assistance. The clavigers would never allow it. No, someone has to go with them, and that someone has to be me. The staff at the castle won’t listen to anyone else, not on full moon.”

Floote vanished, and Lady Maccon stood and began to make her way with stilted awkwardness out of the drawing room and through Lord Akeldama’s house. The vampire followed. About halfway, however, she held up a finger at her host.

The baby inside of her had shifted. It felt a little lighter somehow. Well, who was she to question such a helpful adjustment? She patted her belly approvingly. However, she also rocked from one foot to the other. The infant-inconvenience had come to rest on a certain portion of her anatomy.

“Uh, oh, dear. How embarrassing. I really must visit your . . . uh . . . that is . . . um.”

If he could have blushed, Lord Akeldama would have. Instead, he took out a red lace fan from the inside pocket of his jacket and fanned himself vigorously with it while Alexia tottered off to see to the necessary business. She returned several long moments later, feeling better about all aspects of life.

Then she led the way onward through Lord Akeldama’s house, behind the grand staircase and past the servants’ stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Lord Akeldama minced along solicitously after her.

Behind the house, past such shockingly vulgar objects as dustbins and a clothesline, the hive waited. Much to Lady Maccon’s shock, there were gentlemen’s undergarments on that clothesline! She closed her eyes and took a deep and fortifying breath. When she opened them again, she looked past the necessities into the delivery alley where a clot of vampires paced restlessly.

Countess Nadasdy was there with Dr. Caedes, Lord Ambrose, the Duke of Hematol, and two other vampires Alexia did not know by name. The hive queen was not in any condition to converse on any topic, mundane or otherwise. She was in obvious mental distress, her movements frenzied and her nerves overset. She paced to and fro, muttering and jerking at any noise. A startled vampire can leap to amazing heights and move at incredible speeds; this ability made the soft, round queen grasshopper-like. Sometimes she fought against one of her male counterparts as though trying to escape from the loose circle they formed around her. Occasionally, she would lash out at one of them, clawing at his face or biting hard into an exposed body part. The male vampire would only gentle her back into the center of the group, his wounds healed by the time she resumed her twitching.

Lady Maccon noted with relief that Quesnel had been transferred to Dr. Caedes’s care. It was clearly not safe for a mortal to be near the queen. Alexia caught the young scamp’s violet eye under his floppy thatch of yellow hair. He looked terrified. She gave him a wink and he brightened almost instantly. Theirs was not a long acquaintance, but she had once supported him in the matter of an exploding boiler, and he had trusted her implicitly ever since.

Alexia moved forward, only to pause, finding herself alone and Lord Akeldama left standing in a dramatic pose on the stoop behind her. Frankly, she had been surprised he even considered walking through the kitchen. He’d probably never even seen that part of his house before.

She turned back. “You aren’t facilitating this conversation?” Never had she known Lord Akeldama to step aside when something significant was afoot.

The rove vampire chuckled. “My little dumpling, the countess would not tolerate my presence in her current condition. And I could hardly stand to endure such waistcoats as Dr. Caedes seems to favor these days. Not to mention the universal lack of headgear.”

Alexia looked over the vampires with new eyes. It was true; the gentlemen seemed to have misplaced their top hats during the kerfuffle.

“No, no, my cream puff, this is yours to play now.” He spared her a worried glance. She had not stopped clutching her protruding belly since she first reappeared in his drawing room. “If you are certain you can handle it with sufficient dexterity.”

Lady Maccon took a fortifying breath, almost overbalancing. Responsibility was responsibility and no baby was going to prevent her from seeing everything right. Her world, currently, was in disarray. If Alexia Maccon was good at nothing else, she was good at putting things to rights and bringing order to the universe. Right now the Westminster Hive needed her managerial talents. She could hardly shirk her duty for so mere a trifle as pregnancy.

Without a backward glance at Lord Akeldama, she strode forward into the midst of the panicking hive. Or she would like to say she strode; it was more a gimpy kind of shuffle.

“Wait, Alexia! Where is your parasol?” Lord Akeldama sounded more concerned than she had ever heard him, devoid of both italics and pet names.

Lady Maccon gesticulated in an expressive way and yelled back to him, “Underneath what’s left of the hive house, I suspect.” Then she faced her muhjah duties full-on. “Right, you lot. I’ve had about enough of this waggish behavior.”

Countess Nadasdy turned and hissed at her. Actually hissed.

“Oh, really.” Lady Maccon was revolted. She looked at the Duke of Hematol. “Would you like me to sober her up?” She twiddled her naked fingers at him.

Lord Ambrose snarled and leaped, in one of those fantastic supernatural feats of athleticism, to place himself between Lady Maccon and his queen.

“Apparently not. Have you a better solution?”

The duke said, “We could not have her mortal and vulnerable, not in such an unprotected state.”

Behind them, clattering through the alley behind the long row of town houses, the Woolsey carriage drew to a stop, the chestnut travelers hitched up rather than the parade bays. The countess leaped toward it as though it were some fearsome foe. Lord Ambrose held her back by snaking both arms around her from behind in an embarrassingly intimate gesture. It was only an old-fashioned gingerbread coach with a massive crest on its side and just that kind of superfluous decadence that would appeal to Lord Akeldama but that Lady Maccon had always felt was ever so slightly embarrassing for Woolsey. It was built to make an impression, not for speed or nimbleness. But Alexia hardly thought even such grandiose ugliness warranted a vampire attack.

“Well, then, as Lord Akeldama will not invite you in for tea and a sit-down, I was thinking I might suggest we retreat to Woolsey for the time being. Take refuge there.”

All the assembled vampires, even the countess, who seemed to have only a limited ability to follow what was going on around her, paused to look at Lady Maccon as though she had just donned Grecian robes and begun hurling peeled grapes at them.

“Are you certain, Lady Maccon?” asked one of them, almost timidly for a vampire.

The doctor stepped forward, elongated and frail-looking, for all he held the struggling Quesnel as though the boy weighed no more than one of Madame Lefoux’s automated feather dusters. “You are inviting us to stay, Lady Maccon? At Woolsey?”

Alexia did not see the source of their persistent confusion. “Well, yes. But I’ve only the one carriage, so you and the boy and the countess had best come with me. The others can run behind. Try to keep up.”

Lord Ambrose looked at Dr. Caedes. “It is unprecedented.”

Dr. Caedes looked at the Duke of Hematol. “There is no edict for this.”

The duke looked at Lady Maccon, rolling his head from one side to the other. “The marriage was unprecedented, and so is the forthcoming child. She but maintains her brand of tradition.” The duke moved toward his mistress. Cautiously, careful not to make any sudden movements.

“My Queen, we have an option.” He spoke precisely, careful to enunciate each and every word.

Countess Nadasdy shook herself. “We have?” Her voice sounded hollow and very far away, as though emanating from the bottom of a mine. It reminded Alexia of something, but with the child inside her creating a fuss and the prospect of a long drive ahead, she couldn’t remember what.

The countess looked to Lord Ambrose. “Who must we kill?”

“It is an offer freely given. An invitation.”

For a moment, Countess Nadasdy seemed to return to herself, focusing completely on the faces of her three most treasured hive members. Her supports. Her tentacles. “Well, let us take it, then. No time to spare.” She looked around, cornflower-blue eyes suddenly sharp. “Is that laundry? Where have you brought me?”

With a nod to Lady Maccon, Lord Ambrose hustled his queen into the Woolsey carriage. Quicker than the mortal eye could follow, he ducked back out again, his movements made smoother without the need to monitor a hat. He leaped to the driver’s box, unceremoniously dismissing the perfectly respectable coachman who sat there and taking up the reins himself. Lady Maccon arched a brow at him.

“Pardon me?”

“I once raced chariots,” he explained with a grin that showed off his fangs to perfection.

“I do not think it is quite the same thing, Lord Ambrose,” remonstrated Alexia.

Dr. Caedes and Quesnel climbed inside next. And then, reluctantly, Lady Maccon. She struggled a bit with the steps, and no vampire was willing to offer her any kind of assistance, no touching, not even for politeness’ sake. Once inside, she was unsurprised to find that the vampires were seated together on one bench so that she must sit alone on the other.

Lord Ambrose whipped the horses up and they took off at a canter, far too fast for the crowded streets of London. The clattering on the cobbles was awfully loud, and the carriage seemed to gyrate around the turns far more than Alexia had noticed before. Her belly protested the swaying.

It ordinarily took just under two hours to reach Woolsey from central London, less time for a werewolf in full fur, of course. The Count of Trizdale once claimed to have run it in his highflyer coach in only an hour and a quarter. Lord Ambrose, it seemed, was intent on trying to break that record.

Within London, the streets were worn enough into ruts for relatively smooth travel, and even though he had been tethered to Mayfair for hundreds of years, Lord Ambrose knew the way. Plenty of time to study maps, Alexia supposed. They took the lesser used road toward West Ham. However, upon exiting the city, everything went awry.

Not that the evening’s events prior to that moment had been all sugared violet petals. But still.

First, and worst, so far as Lady Maccon was concerned, they hit the dirt road of the countryside. It had never bothered her overmuch before, and the carriage was well sprung and padded inside. But the fast pace combined with more-than-was-normal jiggling did not amuse the infant-inconvenience. Fifteen minutes of that and Alexia felt a new bodily sensation commence—a dull ache in the small of her back. She wondered if she had damaged herself during one of the evening’s many bustle-crushing dismounts.

Then they heard Lord Ambrose yell and smelled acrid smoke. Here, away from looming shadows of the city buildings and under the full moon’s light, everything was much easier to see. Alexia watched through the window as one of their vampire escorts put on a burst of speed, drew alongside the carriage, and leaped. The coach lurched but did not slow, and there came the sound of the roof above them being beaten viciously.

“Are we on fire?” Lady Maccon shifted herself into a better position, drew down the window sash, and stuck her head out into the rushing air, trying to see behind them.

It might have been difficult for her to make out their enemy, had there been a man on horseback or another carriage behind them, but the thing skittering after them over the fields and between the hedgerows was doing so on eight massive tentacles. Well, seven massive tentacles—it had the eighth in front of it spurting fire at the carriage. It was also several stories high.

Alexia pulled her head back inside. “Dr. Caedes, I suggest you have your charge there show himself. It might prevent Genevieve from actually killing us.”

The carriage lurched again and picked up speed. The vampire on the roof, having succeeded in beating out the flames, had jumped off. But they were moving nowhere near as fast as they had initially—the horses were tiring, if not becoming winded and destroyed by such cruel speed.

The octomaton was gaining on them, and Woolsey still a good distance away.

Dr. Caedes changed his grip on the boy and tried to force Quesnel to stick his head out of the carriage window. Quesnel was not at all inclined to do anything any of the vampires wanted. Alexia gave her friend’s son an almost imperceptible nod, at which point he did as directed. He stuck not only his head but also one skinny arm outside, waving madly at the creature behind them.

The ache in Lady Maccon’s back intensified and she felt her stomach lurch, wavelike. She’d never experienced such a sensation before. She let out a squeak of alarm and fell back against the padded wall of the coach. Then it was gone.

Alexia poked at her stomach with a finger. “Don’t you dare. Now is most inopportune! Besides, arriving early to a party is disrespectful.”

The octomaton fell back just far enough to allow the carriage to slow, but if Alexia knew Madame Lefoux, this was only giving the inventor time to come up with a new plan of attack. Genevieve must realize Alexia was also in the carriage and that they were headed to Woolsey. There was no other reason to be on that road at that time, for aside from everything else, no one traveled to Barking at night and no one ever traveled to Barking at speed.

“Oh, my goodness.” Lady Maccon had the most uncomfortable feeling that she had lost some of her legendary control, over the physical, if not the mental. A wet sensation in her lower area indicated that her bustle, and quite possibly the rest of her dress, really was not going to survive this night. Then came that wavelike feeling again, starting at the top of her stomach and working its way down.

Dr. Caedes, who wasn’t a real doctor, was nevertheless perceptive enough to see that the tenor of Lady Maccon’s distress had changed.

“Lady Maccon, have you commenced? That would be most unfortunate timing.”

Alexia frowned. “No, I absolutely forbid it. I will not—Oooh.” She ended on a groan.

“I believe you have.”

Quesnel perked up at this. “Bully! I’ve never seen a birth before.” He turned big lavender eyes onto the now-sweating Lady Maccon.

“You’re not going to tonight, either, young man,” Alexia reprimanded between puffs of breath.

The countess, who was still twitchy as all get out and only partly paying attention to any conversation, looked with bright suspicious eyes at Alexia. “You can’t. Not while I am here with you. What if it comes out and we have to touch it? Dr. Caedes, throw her out of the carriage at once.”

Even with the strange wave sensation and a burgeoning pain, Alexia was quick enough to reach into her reticule and pull out Ethel before Dr. Caedes could stop her.

Not that he tried. Instead, he attempted to reason with the countess. “We can’t, my queen. We need her to get us inside the house. She is our invitation.”

Lady Maccon felt compelled to add, “And this is my carriage! If anyone is getting out, it’s you!” She felt an additional downward pressure from the child inside her. “No, not you!” Then she looked wildly around. “This is not allowed,” she said in a blanket kind of way, including both the imminent baby, the vampires, Quesnel, and the octomaton. She looked down at her belly. “I will not begin our relationship with disobedience. I get enough of that from your father.”

The countess looked like she had eaten something foul, like a piece of fresh fruit. “I cannot be in proximity to an abomination! Do you know what might transpire?”

Now, this form of panic could be useful. “No, why don’t you enlighten me?”

Too late. A crushing, grinding noise came from behind them. Alexia had no idea what the octomaton was up to, but when she stuck her head out of the window, she saw it was no longer following them. The carriage had turned off the main track, into the long weaving roadway that wended through Woolsey’s grounds.

They were almost home.

Mere moments later, a tremendous crash came in front of them and the carriage slewed to one side and came to a rocking halt. Out of the window Alexia could see Woolsey just ahead atop its rise of ground, silvered under the moonlight, looking as though it had its own form of stone tentacles embodied in multiple flying buttresses.

It might as well have been a thousand leagues away, for the octomaton had felled a tree across the road before them. Lord Ambrose could not turn the carriage around, even if the high hedges permitted such a thing, for behind them the massive metal creature barred the way. The vampire escort, panting from their long run, instinctively formed a barrier before the coach, as though they could stop any attack by physically imposing themselves between the octomaton and their queen.

Alexia glanced around in desperation. She was among enemies, exhausted, and about to give birth. She was running out of options and would have to trust one of the vampires. Opening the carriage door, she yelled at the vanguard, “Your Grace, I have a proposition for you.”

The Duke of Hematol turned to face her.

“We need some help, and we need a distraction if we are to make our destination.”

“What do you suggest, Lady Maccon?”

“That we call out the hounds.”

“And how do we do that? You definitely can’t run to the castle from here, none of us can carry you to Woolsey, and no claviger will take the word of a vampire messenger.”

“Listen to me. You tell them that Lady Maccon says it is a matter of urgency. The Alpha female requires her pack to attend her, regardless of their current state.” I will have to change the secret phrase now.

“But—”

“It will work. You must trust me.” She wasn’t certain, of course. A matter of urgency was pack code for Lady Maccon acting as muhjah. She had rarely had to use the summons, and then only with a perfectly sane husband or Beta, never with only clavigers. Would the message even be understood?

The duke gave her one hard, long look. Then he whirled and ran, leaping the fallen tree with almost as much ease as a werewolf, heading directly for the castle, supernatural speed in full effect.

With one of their oldest and wisest gone and the great metal octopus looming above their unprotected queen, the vampires around Lady Maccon went ever so slightly insane themselves. Not as mad as the countess, but definitely wild. One of them charged the octomaton, only to be swept easily aside.

The metal creature raised up a tentacle to its eye slit, once more opening the tip and flipping out the bullhorn that allowed Madame Lefoux to speak.

“Give me Quesnel. You are out of options.” There came a short pause. “I can hardly believe it of you, Alexia, helping vampires. They tried to kill you!”

Alexia stuck her head out of the door-side window of the carriage and yelled back, “So? Recently, you also tried to kill me. In my experience, murder could almost be an expression of affection.” It took an enormous effort to yell, and she fell back into the carriage, moaning and clutching at her stomach. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but Alexia Maccon was afraid.

Then came the noise, an eerie blessing of a sound, one that Alexia had grown to love very much over the past year or so.

Wolves. Howling.