Blameless

CHAPTER NINE


How Not to Cross an Alpine Pass
Upon reflection, Alexia decided it was perhaps safer to press on toward Italy during daylight, anyway. It was becoming painfully obvious that should she expect any answers as to her current condition and situation, she would have to extract said answers from either the Templars or the vampires. And of the two, only one was likely to talk to her before they tried to kill her.
Another thing had also become apparent. As driven as she might be to prove Conall wrong, the fate of the infant-inconvenience was now at stake. Alexia might be frustrated with the tiny parasite, but she decided, after contemplation, that she did not, exactly, wish it dead. They’d been through a lot together so far. Just you allow me to eat regularly, she told it silently, and I’ll think about trying to grow a mothering instinct. Won’t be easy, mind you. I wasn’t ever expecting to have one. But I’ll try.
On the run from the murderous hordes, cashiered by an eccentric German, Alexia was nonplussed to find they did what anyone might have done under more mundane circumstances—they caught a cab. Hired transport, as it turned out, was much the same in France as it was in England, only more limited. Madame Lefoux had a brief but intense conversation with the driver of a fly, after which a good deal of money exchanged hands. Then the inventor sat down next to Floote, and the handsom took off at a terrific pace, heading for the coast through the streets of Nice, which were crowded with invalids and wet-weather refugees. Alexia supposed it was a sensible mode of transport when one was on the run, but the fly was a tight fit for three passengers.
The driver, up high and behind them, encouraged the horse into a fast trot with a long whip. The creature surged forward, taking turns and racketing down alleyways at quite the breakneck velocity.
In no time whatsoever, they had left Nice behind and were headed along the dirt road that wound along the cliffs and beaches of the Riviera. It was a drive Alexia might ordinarily have enjoyed. It was a crisp winter day, the Mediterranean a sparkling turquoise blue to their right. There was very little traffic, and their driver cut loose along the long slow turns and straight stretches, allowing his horse a distance-covering canter.
“He said he would take us all the way to the border,” Madame Lefoux spoke into the rushing wind. “Standing me up a pretty penny for the favor, but he is making very good time.”
“I should say so! Will we reach Italy before dark, do you think?” Alexia tucked her dispatch case more firmly beneath her legs and skirts, and placed her parasol across her lap, trying to get comfortable while wedged tightly between Madame Lefoux and Floote. The seat really was only meant for two, and while none of them was overly large, Alexia had cause to be grateful she was currently without her ubiquitous bustle. It was by no means an ideal arrangement.
The driver slowed.
Taking advantage of the more relaxed pace, Alexia stood, turning precariously backward so she could look over the roof and the driver’s box to the road behind them. When she sat back down again, she was frowning.
“What is it?” Madame Lefoux demanded.
“I do not mean to concern you, but I do believe we are being followed.”
Madame Lefoux stood in her turn, holding her top hat firmly to her head with one hand and grasping the edge of the hansom’s roof with the other. When she sat back down, she, too, sported a crease between her perfectly arched eyebrows.
Alexia looked to her valet. “Floote, how are you fixed for projectiles?”
Floote reached into his inner jacket pocket and presented the two tiny guns. He cracked each open in turn. They were both loaded. He’d obviously taken the time to reload the single shots after their spot of vampire bother. He fished about further in his coat and produced a small quantity of gunpowder in a twist of paper and eight more bullets.
Madame Lefoux reached across Alexia and picked up one of the bullets, examining it with interest. Alexia looked on as well. They were made of some kind of hard wood, tipped in silver and filled with lead.
“Old-style sundowner bullets. Not that we will need such as these at this time of day. Any followers would have to be drones. Still, Mr. Floote, what are you doing with such things? You cannot possibly be certified to terminate supernaturals.”
“Ah.” Floote put the bullets back in his jacket pocket. “Let us say I inherited them, madam.”
“Mr. Tarabotti?” Madame Lefoux nodded. “That explains the age of the guns. You want to get yourself one of those newfangled Colt revolvers, Mr. Floote, much more efficient.”
Floote looked with a certain degree of fondness down at the two tiny guns before tucking them back out of sight. “Perhaps.”
Alexia was intrigued. “Father was an official sundowner, was he?”
“Not as such, my lady.” Floote was always cagey, but he seemed to reach new heights of tight-lippedness whenever the subject of Alessandro Tarabotti came up. Half the time Alexia felt he did it out of obstinacy; the other half of the time she felt he might be trying to shield her from something. Although with vampire drones on their tail, she could hardly imagine what she might still need protection from.
Madame Lefoux pushed back the sleeve of her jacket and checked her own little wrist-emitter device. “I have only three shots left. Alexia?”
Alexia shook her head. “I used up all my darts in the clock shop, remember? And I haven’t anything else left in the parasol but the lapis lunearis mist for werewolves and the magnetic disruption emitter.”
Madam Lefoux sucked her teeth in frustration. “I knew I should have given it a greater carrying capacity.”
“You cannot very well have done much more,” consoled Alexia. “The darn thing already weighs twice as much as any ordinary parasol.”
Floote stood and checked behind them.
“Will they catch us before we cross the border?” Alexia had no clear grasp on the distance from Nice to the Italian frontier.
“Most likely.” Madame Lefoux, however, did.
Floote sat back down, looking quite worried.
They clattered through a small fishing town and out the other side, improved paving on the road allowing them a fresh burst of speed.
“We will have to try to lose them in Monaco.” Madame Lefoux stood, leaned across the roof, and engaged in a protracted conversation with the driver. Rapid-fire French scattered on the wind.
Guessing the gist of it, Alexia unclipped the ruby and gold brooch from the neck of her traveling gown and pressed it into the inventor’s small hand. “See if that will encourage him.”
The brooch vanished across the roof of the hansom. The whip flashed. The horse surged forward. Bribery, apparently, worked no matter what the language.
They kept a good pace and steady distance from their pursuers right up and into the town of Monaco, a decent-sized vacation destination of some questionable repute.
The driver undertook the most impressive series of twists and turns, breaking off from the main road and dodging through some truly tiny alleys. They ran pell-mell into a line of laundry stretched across the street, taking a pair of trousers and a gentleman’s shirtfront with them, in addition to a string of French curses. They ended their obstacle run, clattering out of an upper section of the town away from the ocean, heading toward the Alpine Mountains. The horse tossed off the pair of scarlet bloomers he had been wearing about his ears with a snort of disgust.
“Will we be able to cross through the mountains at this time of year?” Alexia was dubious. It was winter, and while the Italian Alps hadn’t the reputation of their larger, more inland brethren, they were still respectably mountainous, with white-capped peaks.
“I think so. Regardless, it is better to stay off the main road.”
The road narrowed as they began to climb upward. The horse slowed to a walk, his sides heaving. It was a good thing, too, for soon enough the track became lined with trees and a steep embankment to one side and a treacherous drop to the other. They clattered through a herd of unimpressed brown goats, complete with large bells and irate goat girl, and seemed to have shaken off pursuit.
Out the left side window of the hansom, Alexia caught sight of a peculiar-looking contraption above the embankment and trees. She tugged Madame Lefoux’s arm. “What’s that, Genevieve?”
The inventor cocked her head. “Ah, good. The sky-rail system. I had hoped it was operational.”
“Well?”
“Oh, yes. It is a novelty freight and passenger transport. I had a small hand in designing the control mechanisms. We should be able to see it in full presently, just there.”
They rounded a bend in the road and began climbing ever more steeply. Before and above them stood the contraption in all its glory. To Alexia it looked like two massive laundry lines strung parallel across the tops of pylons. It became clear, however, that the lines were more like sky-high train tracks. Straddled atop them, crawling along in a rhythmic, lurching, buglike manner on large wheels threaded with moving treads, marched a series of cabins, similar in size and shape to stagecoaches. Each cabin emitted billowing gouts of white steam from underneath. Hanging from the cabin, down below the cables, each supported a swaying metal net on long cords, loaded with lumber. Like a spider with an egg sac or a trapeze train trolley.
“Goodness!” Alexia was impressed. “Are they unidirectional?”
“Well, most are going downhill with freight, but they are designed to go up as well. Unlike trains, those cable rails require no switchbacks. One car can simply climb over the other, so long as it is not carrying a net, of course. See the way the cabling goes over each side of the cabin roof?”
Alexia was enough impressed by the invention to be distracted from her current predicament. She’d never seen or heard of anything like it—a railway in the sky!
Floote kept popping up and looking back over the cab roof like a jack-in-the-box. Alexia became quite sensitive to the pattern of his movements and so noticed when his legs became suddenly tense and he spent longer than usual standing. Madame Lefoux did as well and bounced up to lean next to him, much to the driver’s annoyance. Scared of further upsetting the fly’s center of balance, Alexia stayed seated, her view filled with trouser-clad legs.
She heard a faint yelling behind them and could only imagine that there were drones following. On the next switchback, she caught sight of their enemy. Out the right side window of the cab, she could see a four-in-hand coach loaded down with intense-looking young men in hot pursuit. There was some kind of firearm equipage mounted atop the carriage roof.
Just wonderful, thought Alexia. They have a ruddy great gun.
She heard the pop of Floote firing off one of the tiny derringers and the sharp hiss of Madame Lefoux doing the same with one of her darts.
Floote popped back down to change guns and reload. “Madam, I regret to inform you, they have a Nordenfelt.”
“A what?”
Madame Lefoux sat down to reload while Floote stood back up and fired again.
“I have no doubt we shall witness it in action shortly.”
They reached the snow line.
A whole fleet of bullets of ridiculously large size hissed by the cab and embedded themselves in an unsuspecting tree. A gun that could fire multiple bullets at once, imagine that!
Floote hurriedly sat back down.
“The Nordenfelt, madam.”
The horse squealed in fear, the driver swore, and they came to an abrupt halt.
Madame Lefoux didn’t even try to argue their case. She jumped down from the fly, followed by Floote and Alexia. Floote grabbed Alexia’s dispatch case. Alexia grabbed her parasol. Without waiting to see if they would follow, Alexia charged up the embankment, stabilizing herself with the parasol, and began slogging through the snow toward the cable lines.
Another burst of bullets churned up the snow just behind them. Alexia let out a most undignified squeak of alarm. What would Conall do? This kind of gunfire action was not exactly her cup of tea. Her husband was the trained soldier, not she. Nevertheless, she recovered enough to yell, “Perhaps we should spread out and make for that support pole.”
“Agreed,” said Madame Lefoux.
The next round of fire was not nearly so close.
Soon they were too high up to be seen from the road below, even by that deadly swiveling gun. Also, the four-in-hand was even less able than the fly to handle off-road terrain. There came a good deal of shouting, probably the drones and the cab driver yelling at each other, but Alexia knew it was only a matter of time before the young men left their precious Nordenfelt behind and took to the ground in pursuit. At which point, she was at a distinct disadvantage with her heavy unbustled skirts dragging through the snow.
As they neared the cable rail, one of the laden cars came heading downward toward them. Of course the darn thing was going in the wrong direction, back into France, but it still might provide some limited refuge. The three made it, finally, to the support pole. It was furnished with flimsy-looking metal rungs, intended to be used for emergency evacuation or repair.
Floote seemed to be taking stock of their situation like some extremely dapper Roman general. “Madame Lefoux’s dart emitter is the fastest weapon we have, madam.”
“Good point, Floote. Genevieve, please guard the base while Floote and I climb.”
The Frenchwoman nodded, looking fierce.
Alexia hated to leave her alone, but there was no other option. She hoisted her muddy skirts over one arm. Well, Paris had already seen them; she might as well show the rest of France her bloomers.
Floote and she climbed the post.
Floote paused on the small platform at the top, put down the dispatch case, and crouched to fire downward with a derringer, reloading and firing each gun in turn until he was out of ammunition, while Madame Lefoux climbed up behind them. Meanwhile, Alexia aimed her parasol at the approaching rail cabin. She could see the startled face of a driver in the window. She fully understood his confusion. She must present quite the lunatic picture—a statuesque Italian woman dressed English-style in a gown gone well beyond grubby, hair wild, and hat askew, pointing an ugly parasol at his large mechanical transport in a threatening manner.
Just as the front of the cabin drew level with the platform, Alexia pulled back on a protruding carved lotus petal in the handle of her parasol. The magnetic disruption emitter sent off its silent but deadly signal and the rail car jerked to a halt.
Inside the cable compartment, Alexia could see the engineer yelling at her in confusion. Behind her on the platform, she heard Madame Lefoux screaming obscenities in French, and the drones, now climbing up the support pole after them, were also shouting.
She turned to see if she could help her companions in any way. The infant-inconvenience kicked an objection to all her recent exertions, but Alexia disregarded it with an internal, Pack it in, proto-nuisance. Time for that later.
One of the drones now had Madame Lefoux by the boot. She was kicking at him while simultaneously attempting to climb the last handbreadth up onto the platform. Floote, finally out of bullets, was pulling at the Frenchwoman’s shoulders in an attempt to assist.
Alexia, thinking quickly, opened and flipped her parasol. As swiftly as possible, she turned the special inset dial in the parasol’s tip around to its alternate setting. Holding the parasol far out over the edge of the platform, Alexia rained a mixture of lapis lunearis and water down onto the young men climbing after them.
Dilute silver nitrate was designed for werewolves, not humans, and usually had no more disturbing a result on daylight folk than skin discoloration. But since the gentlemen in question were looking up, it had the beneficial effect of hitting the eyeballs and causing all to let go in startlement. The resulting screams may have been because they were falling, or perhaps they were the result of the chemical sting, but, as it ended with the drones writhing in the snow far below, Alexia considered the maneuver an unqualified success. Included among the writhers was the man who had had hold of Madame Lefoux’s boot. He still had her boot, but Madame Lefoux was able to attain the top of the platform with a look of profound relief on her pretty face.
The three of them dashed to the rail cabin. Floote overrode the driver’s objection to their presence by smashing in the front window with Alexia’s dispatch case, climbing inside, and punching the poor man hard in the jaw. He fell like a stone, and his stoker, a slight, reedy boy with wide, anxious eyes, meekly acquiesced to their demands.
No one else was on board.
Alexia ripped off her bustle fall, tore the length into strips, and handed them to Floote. He showed remarkable dexterity and mastery of knot work, trussing up the boy and his unconscious supervisor with ease.
“You do that quite efficiently, don’t you, Floote?” commented Alexia.
“Well, madam, being valet to Mr. Tarabotti had its advantages.”
“Genevieve, can you drive this contraption?” Alexia asked.
“I only worked on the initial schematics, but if you can stoke the boiler, I will figure it out.”
“Done!” Alexia thought stoking couldn’t be that difficult.
Soon enough, the effects of the magnetic disruption emitter wore off, and the massive steam engine in the center of the cabin rumbled back to life. The cabin was designed with a windowed steering area at either end so that the car did not itself turn around. Instead, the engineer merely shifted position in order to drive in the opposite direction.
Madame Lefoux, after a quick review of the controls, pulled down on a massive lever at one end of the lurching cabin and then dashed to the other end, pulling a similar lever up.
An alarmingly loud horn sounded, and the contraption, cabin, and massive hanging net of lumber down below began moving backward in the direction it had come, up the mountain once again.
Alexia let out a little cheer of encouragement.
Floote finished trussing up their two prisoners. “I do apologize, sirs,” he said to them in English, which they probably didn’t understand.
Alexia smiled to herself and kept stoking. Poor Floote, this whole escape was rather beneath his dignity.
Stoking was hot work, and Alexia was beginning to feel the strain of having dashed across rough terrain and then climbed a pylon. She was, as Ivy had once scornfully pointed out, a bit of a sporting young lady. But one would have to be positively Olympian to survive the past three days without some physical taxation. She supposed the infant-inconvenience might also have something to do with her exhaustion. But never having run while pregnant, she did not know quite who to blame—embryo or vampires.
Madame Lefoux was leaping about the end of the cable cabin, pulling levers and twisting dials maniacally, and the rail contraption lurched forward in response to her ministrations, moving from a sedate step-by-step crawl to a kind of swaying shambling run.
“Are you certain this thing can take this kind of speed with a load?” Alexia yelled from her self-prescribed stoker’s post.
“No!” Madame Lefoux hollered cheerfully back. “I am attempting to deduce how to set loose the cargo straps and net, but there seems to be a safety override preventing a drop while in motion. Give me a moment.”
Floote pointed out the front window. “I do not think we have that long, madam.”
Alexia and Madame Lefoux both looked up from what they were doing.
Madame Lefoux swore.
Another loaded cart was coming down the cables toward them. It was crawling along at a sedate pace, but it seemed to be looming very fast. While one cabin could climb over another, they were not designed to do so while still lugging a net full of lumber.
“Now would be a very good time to figure out a drop,” suggested Alexia.
Madame Lefoux looked frantically underneath the control board.
Alexia thought of a different tactic. She ran over to the other end of the cabin.
“How do I cut the cargo free?” she spoke in French and leaned close in to the frightened young stoker boy. “Quickly!”
The boy pointed in silent fear at a lever off to one side of the steam engine, separated from both sets of steering controls.
“I think I have it!” Alexia dove for the knob.
At the same time, Madame Lefoux began an even more frantic dance about the steering area, employing a complex series of dial-cycling and handle-pulling that Alexia could only assume would allow their cabin to climb over the other heading toward them.
They were close enough now that they could see the frightened gesticulations of the driver through the window of the other cable cabin.
Alexia pulled down on the freight-release lever with all her might.
The overrides screamed in protest.
Floote came over to help her, and together they managed to muscle it down.
Their rail car shuddered once, and seconds later they heard a loud crash and multiple thuds as the load of lumber fell down to the mountain below. Mere moments after that, there was a lurch as their cabin climbed its buglike way over the oncoming coach, swaying in a most alarming fashion from side to side, ending with one additional shudder as it settled back onto the rails on the other side.
They did not have much time to appreciate their victory, for the pinging sound of bullets on metal heralded the return of their pursuers.
Floote ran to look out a side window. “Revolvers, madam. They’re pacing us by foot.”
“Doesn’t this thing go any faster?” Alexia asked Madame Lefoux.
“Not that I can make it.” The Frenchwoman issued Alexia a demonic dimpled grin. “We shall just have to take the cable as far as it goes and then run for the border.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
The grin only widened. Alexia was beginning to suspect Madame Lefoux of being a rather reckless young woman.
“Italy makes for a strange refuge, madam.” Floote sounded almost philosophical. He began a stately tour of the interior of the carrier, looking for any loose objects that might serve as projectile weaponry.
“You do not like Italy, do you, Floote?”
“Beautiful country, madam.”
“Oh?”
“It took Mr. Tarabotti quite a bit of bother to extract himself. He had to marry an Englishwoman in the end.”
“My mother? I can’t think of a worse fate.”
“Precisely, madam.” Floote used a large wrench to break one of the side windows and stuck his head out. He received a near miss from a bullet for his pains.
“What exactly was he extracting himself from, Floote?”
“The past.” Hoisting some kind of large metal tool, Floote chucked it hopefully out the window. There was a cry of alarm from below, and the young men drew slightly back, out of detritus range.
“Shame we did not eliminate any of them when we dropped the lumber.”
“Indeed, madam.”
“What past, Floote?” Alexia pressed.
“A not very nice one, madam.”
Alexia huffed in frustration. “Did anyone ever tell you, you are entirely insufferable?” Alexia went to shove more coal into the stoke hole.
“Frequently, madam.” Floote waited for the men to gain courage and catch up again, and then threw a few more items out the window. Floote and the drones proceeded in this vein for about a half hour while the sun set slowly, turning the trees to long shadows and the snow to gray. A full moon rose up above the mountaintops.
“End of the cable just ahead.” Madame Lefoux gestured briefly with one hand before returning it to the controls.
Alexia left off stoking and went to the front to see what their dismount looked like.
The ending area was a wide U of platforms atop multiple poles, with cables running down to the ground, presumably used for the lumber. There was also some kind of passenger-unloading arrangement, built to accommodate the anticipated tourists. It was a basic pulley system with a couple of windlass machines.
“Think those will work to get us down?”
Madame Lefoux glanced over. “We had better hope so.”
Alexia nodded and went to devise a means of strapping her dispatch case and her parasol on to her body; she’d need both hands free.
The rail cabin came to a bumpy halt, and Alexia, Floote, and Madame Lefoux climbed out the broken window as fast as possible. Madame Lefoux went first, grabbing one of the pulley straps and dropping with it over to the edge of the platform without a second thought. Definitely reckless.
The pulley emitted a loud ticking noise but carried her down the cable at a pace only mildly dangerous. The inventor landed at the bottom in a graceful forward roll, bouncing out of it onto her stockinged feet with a shout of well-being.
With a deep breath of resignation, Alexia followed. She clutched the heavy leather strap in both hands and eased off the edge of the platform, zipping down the line far faster than the lean Frenchwoman. She landed at the bottom with a terrific jolt, ankles screaming, and collapsed into a graceless heap, taking a wicked hit to the shoulder from the corner of her dispatch case. She rolled to her side and looked down; the parasol seemed to have survived better than she.
Madame Lefoux helped her up and out of the way just as Floote let go of a strap and landed gracefully, stopping his own forward momentum by bending one knee, managing to make his dismount look like a bow. Show-off.
They heard shouts behind them from the oncoming drones.
It was getting dark but they could still make out a track heading farther up the mountain toward what they could only hope was a customhouse and the Italian border.
They took off running again.
Alexia figured she might be getting enough exercise to last a lifetime in the space of one afternoon. She was actually sweating—so very improper.
Something whizzed by her shoulder. The drones were firing their guns once more. Their aim was, of course, affected detrimentally by their pace and the rough terrain, but they were gaining ground.
Up ahead, Alexia could make out a square structure among the dark trees to one side of the road—a shed, really—but there was a large sign on the other side of the road that appeared to have something threatening written on it in Italian. There was no other gate or barrier, nothing on the track to mark that they were about to go from one country to another, just a little mounded hillock of dirt.
So it was that they crossed the border into Italy.
The drones were still following them.
“Wonderful. Now what do we do?” panted Alexia. Somehow she had thought once they entered Italy, everything would change.
“Keep running,” advised Madame Lefoux unhelpfully.
As if in answer to her question, the deserted pass, now heading down the other side of the mountain, suddenly was not quite so deserted after all.
Out of the shadows of the trees to either side materialized a whole host of men. Alexia only had time to register the utter absurdity of their dress before she, Madame Lefoux, and Floote found themselves surrounded. A single, rapidly lyrical utterance revealed that these were, in fact, Italians.
Each man wore what appeared to be entirely pedestrian country dress—bowler, jacket, and knickerbockers—but over this, each had also donned what looked like female sleeping attire with a massive red cross embroidered across the front. It greatly resembled an expensive silk nightgown Conall had purchased for Alexia shortly after their marriage. The comedic effect of this outfit was moderated by the fact that each man also wore a belt that housed a large sword with medieval inclinations and carried a chubby revolver. Alexia had seen that type of gun before—a Galand Tue Tue—probably the sundowner model. It is a strange world, she ruminated, wherein one finds oneself surrounded by Italians in nightgowns carrying French guns modified by the English to kill supernaturals.
The outlandishly garbed group seemed unflustered by Alexia’s party, closing in around them in a manner that managed to be both protective and threatening. They then turned to face down the panting gaggle of drones who drew to a surprised stop just on the other side of the border.
One of the white-clad men spoke in French. “I would not cross into our territory if I were you. In Italy, drones are considered vampires by choice and are treated as such.”
“And how would you prove we are drones?” yelled one of the young men.
“Did I say we needed proof?” Several of the swords shinked out of their sheaths.
Alexia peeked around the side of the Italian hulking in front of her. The drones, silhouetted against the rising moon, were stalled in confusion. Finally they turned, perhaps calculating the better part of valor, shoulders hunched in disappointment, and began walking away back down the French side of the mountain.
The lead nightgowner turned inward to face the three refugees. Dismissing Madame Lefoux and Floote with a contemptuous glance, he turned his hook-nosed gaze onto Alexia. Who could see quite unsatisfactorily far up his nostrils.
Alexia spared a small frown for Floote. He was pinch-faced and white-lipped, looking more upset by their current stationary position than he had been when they were running around under gunfire.
“What is it, Floote?” she hissed at him.
Floote shook his head slightly.
Alexia sighed and turned big bland innocent eyes on the Italians.
The leader spoke, his English impossibly perfect. “Alexia Maccon, daughter of Alessandro Tarabotti, how wonderful. We have been waiting a very long time for you to return to us.” With that, he gave a little nod and Alexia felt a prick on the side of her neck.
Return?
She heard Floote shout something, but he was yelling from a very long way away, and then the moon and the shadowed trees all swirled together and she collapsed backward into the waiting arms of the Pope’s holiest of holy antisupernatural elite, the Knights Templars.
Professor Randolph Lyall generally kept to a nighttime schedule, but he had spent the afternoon prior to full moon awake in order to conduct some last-minute research. Unfortunately, Ivy Tunstell’s revelation had served only to complicate matters. The preponderance of mysteries was beginning to aggravate. Despite a day spent tapping all his various sources and investigating every possible related document BUR might have, Lord Akeldama and his drones were still missing, Alexia’s pregnancy remained theoretically impossible, and Lord Conall Maccon was still out of commission. The Alpha was, most likely, no longer drunk, but, given the impending full moon, Professor Lyall had seen him safely back behind bars with strict instructions that this time no one was to let him out or there would be uncomfortable consequences.
He himself was so involved in his inquiries as to be quite behind schedule for his own lunar confinement. His personal clavigers—his valet and one of the footmen—awaited him in the Woolsey vestibule wearing expressions of mild panic. They were accustomed to Woolsey’s Beta, tamest and most cultured of all the pack, arriving several hours ahead of moonrise.
“I do apologize, boys.”
“Very good, sir, but you understand we must take the proper precautions.”
Professor Lyall, who could already feel the strain of the moon even though it had not yet peeked above the horizon, held out his wrists obediently.
His valet clapped silver manacles about them with an air of embarrassment. Never during all his years of service had he had to bind Professor Lyall.
The Beta gave him a little half smile. “Not to worry, dear boy. It happens to the best of us.” Then he followed both young men docilely down the staircase and into the pack dungeon, where the others were already behind bars. He gave absolutely no hint of the discipline it took for him to remain calm. Simply out of obstinacy and pride, he fought the change as long as possible. Long after his two clavigers had reached through the bars and unlocked his manacles, and he had stripped himself of all his carefully tailored clothing, he continued to fight it. He did it for their sake, as they went to stand with the first shift of watchers against the far wall. Poor young things, compelled to witness powerful men become slaves to bestial urges, forced to understand what their desire for immortality would require them to become. Lyall was never entirely certain whom he pitied more at this time of the month, them or him. It was the age-old question: who suffers more, the gentleman in the badly tied cravat or those who must look upon him?
Which was Professor Lyall’s last thought before the pain and noise and madness of full moon took him away.
He awoke to the sound of Lord Maccon yelling. For Professor Lyall, this was so commonplace as to be almost restful. It had the pleasant singsong of regularity and custom about it.
“And who, might I ask, is Alpha of this bloody pack?” The roar carried even through the thick stone of the dungeon walls.
“You, sir,” said a timid voice.
“And who is currently giving you a direct order to be released from this damned prison?”
“That would be you, sir.”
“And yet, who is still locked away?”
“That would still be you, sir.”
“Yet somehow you do not see my difficulty.”
“Professor Lyall said—”
“Professor Lyall, my ruddy arse!”
“Very good, sir.”
Lyall yawned and stretched. Full moon always left a man slightly stiff, all that running about the cell and crashing into things and howling. No permanent damage, of course, but there was a certain muscle memory of deeds done and humiliating acts performed that even a full day of sleep could not erase. It was not unlike waking after a long night of being very, very drunk.
His clavigers noticed he was awake and immediately unlocked his cell and came inside. The footman carried a nice cup of hot tea with milk and a dish of raw fish with chopped mint on top. Professor Lyall was unusual in his preference for fish, but the staff had quickly learned to accommodate this eccentricity. The mint, of course, was to help deal with recalcitrant wolf breath. He snacked while his valet dressed him: nice soft tweed trousers, sip of tea, crisp white shirt, nibble of fish, chocolate brocade waistcoat, more tea, and so on.
By the time Lyall had finished his ablutions, Lord Maccon had almost, but not quite, convinced his own clavigers to let him out. The young men were looking harassed, and had, apparently, deemed it safe to pass some clothing through to Lord Maccon, if nothing else. What the Alpha had done with said clothing only faintly resembled dressing, but at least he wasn’t striding around hollering at them naked anymore.
Professor Lyall wandered over to his lordship’s cell, fixing the cuffs of his shirt and looking unruffled.
“Randolph,” barked the earl, “let me out this instant.”
Professor Lyall ignored him. He took the key and sent the clavigers off to see to the rest of the pack, who were all now starting to awaken.
“Do you remember, my lord, what the Woolsey Pack was like when you first came to challenge for it?”
Lord Maccon paused in his yelling and his pacing to look up in surprise. “Of course I do. It was not so long ago as all that.”
“Not a nice piece of work, the previous Earl of Woolsey, was he? Excellent fighter, of course, but he had gone a little funny about the head—one too many live snacks. ‘Crackers’ some called him.” Professor Lyall shook his head. He loathed talking about his previous Alpha. “An embarrassing thing for a carnivore to be compared to a biscuit, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”
“Your point, Randolph.” Lord Maccon could only be surprised out of his impatience for a brief length of time.
“You are becoming, shall we say, of the biscuit inclination, my lord.”
Lord Maccon took a deep breath and then sucked on his teeth. “Gone loopy, have I?”
“Perhaps just a little bit noodled.”
Lord Maccon looked shamefacedly down at the floor of his cell.
“It is time for you to face up to your responsibilities, my lord. Three weeks is enough time to wallow in your own colossal mistake.”
“Pardon me?”
Professor Lyall had had more than enough of his Alpha’s nonsensical behavior, and he was a master of perfect timing. Unless he was wrong, and Professor Lyall was rarely wrong about an Alpha, Lord Maccon was ready to admit the truth. And even if Lyall was, by some stretch of the imagination, incorrect in his assessment, the earl could not be allowed to continue to be ridiculous out of mere stubbornness.
“You aren’t fooling any of us.”
Lord Maccon resisted admission of guilt even as he crumbled like the metaphorical cracker. “But I turned her out.”
“Yes, you did, and wasn’t that an idiotic thing to do?”
“Possibly.”
“Because?” Professor Lyall crossed his arms and dangled the key to his Alpha’s cell temptingly from one fingertip.
“Because there is no way she would have canoodled with another man, not my Alexia.”
“And?”
“And the child must be mine.” The earl paused. “Good gracious me, can you imagine that, becoming a father at my age?” This was followed by another much longer pause. “She is never going to forgive me for this, is she?”
Professor Lyall had no mercy. “I wouldn’t. But then I have never precisely been in her situation before.”
“I should hope not, or there’s a prodigious deal regarding your personage about which I was previously unaware.”
“Now is not the time for jocularity, my lord.”
Lord Maccon sobered. “Insufferable woman. Couldn’t she have at least stayed around and argued with me more on the subject? Did she have to cut and run like that?”
“You do recall what you said to her? What you called her?”
Lord Maccon’s wide, pleasant face became painfully white and drawn as he went mentally back to a certain castle in Scotland. “I’d just as soon not remember, thank you.”
“Are you going to behave yourself now?” Professor Lyall continued to wave the key. “Stay off the formaldehyde?”
“I suppose I must. I’ve drunk it all, anyway.”
Professor Lyall let his Alpha out of the cell and then spent a few minutes fussing about the earl’s shirt and cravat, tidying up the mauling Lord Maccon had inflicted while attempting to clothe himself.
The earl withstood the grooming manfully, knowing it for what it was: Lyall’s unspoken sympathy. Then he batted his Beta away. Lord Maccon was, when all was said and done, a wolf of action.
“So, what do I have to do to win her back? How do I convince her to come home?”
“You are forgetting that, given your treatment of her, she may not want to come home.”
“Then I shall make her forgive me!” Lord Maccon’s voice, while commanding, was also anguished.
“I do not believe that is quite how forgiveness works, my lord.”
“Well?”
“You remember that groveling business we once discussed during your initial courtship of the young lady?”
“Not that again.”
“Oh, no, not precisely. I was thinking, given her flight from London and the generally slanderous gossip that has resulted and permeated the society papers ever since, that public groveling is called for under such circumstances.”
“What? No, I absolutely refuse.”
“Oh, I don’t believe you have a choice, my lord. A letter to the Morning Post would be best, a retraction of sorts. In it you should explain that this was all a horrible misunderstanding. Hail the child as a modern miracle. Claim you had the help of some scientist or other in its conception. How about using that MacDougall fellow? He owes us a favor, doesn’t he, from that incident with the automaton? And he is an American; he won’t protest the resulting attention.”
“You have given this much thought, haven’t you, Randolph?”
“Someone had to. You, apparently, were not putting thought very high up on your list of priorities for the past few weeks.”
“Enough. I still outrank you.”
Professor Lyall reflected he may have, just possibly, pushed his Alpha a little much with that last statement, but he held his ground.
“Now, where is my greatcoat? And where is Rumpet?” Lord Maccon threw his head back. “Rumpet!” he roared, bounding up the steps.
“Sir?” The butler met him at the top of the staircase. “You yelled?”
“Send a man into town to book passage on the next possible channel crossing. It’s probably first thing in the morning. And from there a French train to the Italian border.” He turned to look at Lyall, who made his own more sedate way up the stairs from the dungeon. “That is where she has gone, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but how did you—?”
“Because that is where I would have gone.” He turned back to the butler. “Should take me a little over a day to cross France. I shall run the border tomorrow night in wolf skin and hang the consequences. Oh, and—”
This time it was Professor Lyall’s turn to interrupt. “Belay that order, Rumpet.”
Lord Maccon turned around to growl at his Beta. “Now what? I shall go by the Post on my way out of town, get them to print a public apology. She is very likely in danger, Randolph, not to mention pregnant. I cannot possibly win her back by dawdling around London.”
Professor Lyall took a deep breath. He should have known having Lord Maccon in full possession of his faculties might result in rash action. “It is more than just the regular papers. The vampires have been mudslinging and slandering your wife’s character in the popular press, accusing her of all manner of indiscretions, and unless I miss my guess, it all has to do with Alexia’s pregnancy. The vampires are not happy about it, my lord, not happy at all.”
“Nasty little bloodsuckers. I shall set them to rights. Why haven’t Lord Akeldama and his boys been able to counteract the gossip? And why hasn’t Lord Akeldama explained away my wife’s pregnancy, for that matter? I bet he knows. He is quite the little know-it-all. May even be Edict Keeper, unless I miss my guess.”
“That is the other problem: he has disappeared along with all of his drones. Apparently, they are off searching for something the potentate stole. I have been trying to find out what and why and where, but it has been a tad hectic recently. Both BUR and the pack keep interfering. Not to mention the fact that the vampires really aren’t saying anything of interest. Why, if it weren’t for Mrs. Tunstell and the hat shop, I might not even know the little I do.”
“Hat shop? Mrs. Tunstell?” Lord Maccon blinked at this diatribe from his normally quietly competent Beta. “You mean Ivy Hisselpenny? That Mrs. Tunstell? What hat shop?”
But his Beta was on a verbal flyaway and unwilling to pause. “What with you constantly sloshed and Channing gone, I am at my wit’s end. I really am. You, my lord, cannot simply dash off to Italy. You have responsibilities here.”
Lord Maccon frowned. “Ah, yes, Channing. I forgot about him.”
“Oh, yes? I didn’t think that was possible. Some people have all the luck.”
Lord Maccon caved. Truth be told he was rather worried to see his unflappable Randolph so, well, flapped. “Oh, very well, I shall give you three nights help sorting out this mess you have gotten us into, and then I’m off.”
Professor Lyall emitted the sigh of the long-suffering but knew it was the closest he was likely to get to victory with Lord Maccon and counted his blessings. Then he gently but firmly put his Alpha to work.
“Rumpet,” he addressed the frozen and confused butler, “call the carriage. We are going into the city for the night.”
Lord Maccon turned to Professor Lyall as the two made their way through the hallway, collecting their greatcoats on the way.
“Any other news I should be made aware of, Randolph?”
Professor Lyall frowned. “Only that Miss Wibbley has become engaged.”
“Should that information mean something to me?”
“I believe you were once fond of Miss Wibbley, my lord.”
“I was?” A frown. “How astonishing of me. Ah, yes, skinny little thing? You misconstrued—I was simply using her to needle Alexia at the time. Engaged, did you say? Who’s the unfortunate fellow?”
“Captain Featherstonehaugh.”
“Ah, now that name does sound familiar. Didn’t we serve with a Captain Featherstonehaugh on our last tour in India?”
“Ah, no, sir, I believe that was this one’s grandfather.”
“Really? How time flies. Poor man. Not much to hold on to with that chit. That’s what I like about my lass—she’s got a bit of meat on her bones.”
Professor Lyall could do nothing but say, “Yes, my lord.” Although he did shake his head over the obtuseness of his Alpha. Who, having decided all would once more be blissful in his marriage, already referred to Alexia as his again. Unless Lyall was wrong, and circumstances had already proved how improbable that outcome, Lady Maccon was unlikely to see the situation in the same light.
They swung themselves up easily into the grand crested coach and four that served as Woolsey’s main mode of transport when the wolves weren’t running.
“Now, what is this about Mrs. Tunstell and a hat shop?” Lord Maccon wanted to know, adding before Professor Lyall could answer, “Sorry about drinking your specimen collection, by the way, Randolph. I wasn’t quite myself.”
Lyall grunted softly. “I shall hide it better next time.”
“See that you do.”