She bit back a scream of horror, no longer fascinated by the battle below. It was a visage she had seen before: the wax-faced man from her botched abduction. In the light of the moon, his skin had a dull metallic sheen like pewter, so smooth and lifeless she shuddered in abject revulsion. The letters still marked his forehead, sootlike, VIXI. He saw her, pale nightgown against the darkened interior of the slumbering house, and grinned. As before, it was like no grin she had ever seen, a slashed unnatural opening full of perfect square white teeth, splitting across his head as a tomato will split when it is dropped into boiling water.
He ran toward her. A smooth three stories of brick lay between them, yet somehow Alexia knew there was no safety in that.
One of the other men broke away from the fighting group and sprinted after her attacker. Alexia doubted he would arrive in time. The wax-faced man moved with utter efficiency and economy of motion, less a man running than a water snake slithering.
But his pursuer clearly was a vampire, and as Miss Tarabotti watched, she realized she had never before seen a vampire run at full speed. He was all liquid grace, his fine Hessian boots making only a buzzlike whispering on the cobblestones.
The wax-faced man reached the Loontwills' house and began to climb up the brick side. Unhindered, spider like, he oozed up the wall. That utterly expressionless face of his remained tilted up at Alexia. It was as though he were hypnotized by her face, fixated on her and only her. VIXI. She read the letters over and over and over again. VIXI. I do not want to die, thought Alexia. I have not yet yelled at Lord Maccon for his most recent crass behavior! Thrown into a panic, she was just reaching to slam her shutters closed, knowing they were but flimsy protection from such a creature, when the vampire struck.
Her supernatural protector leaped up and forward, landing on the wax-faced man's back. He grabbed the creature's head and yanked it around, hard. Either the added weight or the yank caused the wax-faced man to let go of the brick wall. They both fell, landing with a horrendous bone-crunching crash in the alley below. Neither screamed nor spoke, even after such a fall. Their companions continued their equally silent battle behind them, without pausing to observe the tumble.
Miss Tarabotti was certain the wax-faced man must be dead. He had fallen nearly an entire story, and only supernatural folk could survive such an experience unscathed. As no werewolf or vampire would ever look the way the wax-faced man looked, he must, perforce, be some kind of normal human.
Her supposition was in error, for the wax-faced man rolled about on top of the vampire's fallen form and then sprang once more to his feet, turned, and single-mindedly headed back toward the house. And Alexia.
The vampire, hurt but not incapacitated, anticipated this move and had an iron grip with both hands on one of the wax-faced man's legs. Instead of trying to fight off the vampire, the man behaved in an entirely illogical manner. He simply kept jerking in Alexia's direction, like a child denied a treat and incapable of being distracted by anything else. He dragged the vampire behind him by slow degrees. Every time he surged toward her, Alexia flinched, even though she was high above him in her third-story room.
Impasse reigned. The fight in the alley beyond seemed evenly matched, and the wax-faced man could not get to Alexia so long as the vampire held on to his leg.
The sound of heavy-booted footsteps and a sharp, high-pitched whistle rent the night air. Running around the corner of the back street came two constables. Rows of protective silver and wooden straight pins decorated the front of their uniforms, gleaming in the moonlight. One of them held an Adam's cross pistol, cocked and loaded with a deadly sharp wooden stake. The other held a Colt Lupis revolver, the silver-bullet-slinger out of America—only the best from that most superstitious of countries. Upon seeing the nature of the participants, he put the Colt away and pulled out a large wooden policeman's baton stake instead.
One of the men fighting in the alley yelled something sharp and commanding in Latin. Then he and his companion ran off, presumably leaving only BUR agents behind. The wax-faced man stopped jerking toward Alexia's window. Instead, he turned on the hapless fallen vampire and lashed out at the supernatural man's face. There was a scrunch of breaking bone. Still, the vampire would not let go. The wax-faced man stepped inward, put all his weight on his trapped leg, and then shifted downward with his free foot, slamming the vampire's wrists with all his might. Alexia heard another ghastly wet crunching sound. With both wrists shattered, the vampire was forced to relax his grip. With one final, emotionless grin up at Alexia, the wax-faced man turned and raced away, battering through the two policemen as though they were not even there. The one with the cross pistol got off an excellent shot, but the wooden bullet did not even cause the wax man to stumble.
Alexia's vampire protector stood, shaky. His nose was broken, and his wrists hung limply, but when he looked up at Miss Tarabotti, his face was full of satisfaction. Alexia winced in sympathy at the blood spattered over his cheeks and chin. She knew he would heal quickly enough, especially if they could get him to fresh blood soon, but she could not help feeling empathy for his current pain, which must be acute.
A stranger, Alexia realized, a vampire, had just saved her from she knew not what unpleasantness. Saved her, a preternatural. She put her hands together and raised her fingertips to her lips, bowing forward in a silent prayer of thanks. The vampire nodded acknowledgment and then motioned her to step back inside the bedroom.
Miss Tarabotti nodded and retreated into the shadows of her sleeping chamber. “What's going on here, then, me lad?” she heard one constable ask as she closed the shutters firmly behind her.
“Attempted burglary, I believe, sir,” the vampire replied.
A sigh came from the constable. “Well, let me see your registration papers, please.” To the other vampires, “And yours as well, please, gentlemen.”
Miss Tarabotti had an understandably difficult time getting back to sleep after that, and when she finally managed it, her dreams were full of vampires with lifeless faces and shattered wrists who kept turning multiple Lord Maccons into wax statues tattooed with the word VIXI over and over again.
***
Miss Tarabotti's family was unexpectedly en masse and entirely in an uproar when she arose for breakfast the next morning. Usually this was the calmest time of day, with Squire Loontwill up first, Alexia second, and the remainder of the household a distant third. But, due to the excitement of the night, Miss Tarabotti was the last to awaken. She deduced she must be uncommonly late indeed, for when she went down the stairs, it was to find that her nearest and dearest were crowded in the hallway rather than the breakfast room.
Her mother came toward her, wringing her hands and looking more than usually dippy. “Fix your hair, Alexia, do, dear, do. Hurry! He has been waiting for nearly an hour. He is in the front parlor. Of course the front; nowhere else would do at all. He would not let us wake you. Lord knows why he wants to see you, but no one else will do. I hope it is not official business. You have not been up to anything, have you, Alexia?” Mrs. Loontwill left off wringing her hands to flutter them about her head like a herd of excited butterflies.
“He ate three cold roast chickens,” said Felicity in a shocked voice. “Three, at breakfast time!” She spoke as though she was not certain which to be more offended by, the quantity or the hour.
“And he still does not look happy,” added Evylin, big blue eyes even bigger and bluer than usual in awe.
“He arrived unfashionably early and did not even want to talk with Papa, and Papa was willing to visit with him.” Felicity was impressed.
Alexia peeked in the hallway mirror and patted her hair into place. Today she had dealt with the bruises on her neck by donning a teal paisley shawl over her black and silver day dress. The shawl's pattern clashed with the geometric design trimming the fold of the dress, and it covered over the flattering square neckline of the bodice, but some things could not be helped.
Seeing nothing at all wrong with her hair, except that perhaps the simple knot was a bit old-fashioned, she turned to her mother. “Please calm yourself, Mama. Who exactly is waiting in the parlor?”
Mrs. Loontwill ignored the question, hustling her eldest daughter down the hall as though she were a blue frilly sheepdog and Alexia a reluctant black sheep.
Alexia opened the door to the parlor and, when her mother and sisters would have followed her inside, shut it firmly and unceremoniously in their faces.
The Earl of Woolsey was sitting in stony silence on the sofa farthest from the window, with the carcasses of three chickens on silver platters before him.
Before she could prevent herself, Miss Tarabotti grinned at him. He simply looked so bashful, with all those chickens, like poultry skeleton sentries, standing guard before him.
“Ah,” said the earl, raising one hand as though to ward off her smile. “None of that, Miss Tarabotti. Business first.”
Miss Tarabotti would have been crestfallen, except for the “first.” She also remembered Professor Lyall's words. She was supposed to make the next move in this little dance of theirs. So, instead of taking offense, she lowered her eyelashes, filed her smile away for later, and took a seat near to him but not too near.
“Well, what brings you to call on me this morning, then, my lord? You certainly have thrown the Loontwill household into a tizzy.” She tilted her head to one side and strove for cool politeness.
“Um, aye, apologies for that.” He looked abashedly at the chicken carcasses. “Your family, they are a bit, well”—he paused, hunting for the right word and then appearing to have come up with a new one of his own— “fibberty-jibbitus, are they not?”
Alexia's dark eyes twinkled at him. “You noticed? Imagine having to live with them all the time.”
“I'd as soon not, thank you. Though it certainly speaks highly of your strength of character,” he said, smiling unexpectedly. The expression suffused his normally cross face.
Miss Tarabotti's breath caught. Until that moment, she had not actually thought of the earl as pretty. But when he smiled. Oh dear, it was most inconvenient to deal with. Particularly before breakfast. She wondered what exactly was entailed in her making a first move.
She removed her paisley shawl.
Lord Maccon, who had been about to speak, paused, arrested midthought by the low neckline of the dress. The stark silver and black coloration of the material brought out the creamy undertones of her Mediterranean skin. “That dress will make your complexion come over all tan,” Mrs. Loontwill had criticized when she ordered it. But Lord Maccon liked that. It was delightfully exotic: the contrast of that stylish dress and the foreign tones of her complexion.
“It is unseasonably warm this morning, wouldn't you say?” said Miss Tarabotti, putting her wrap to one side in a way that caused her torso to dip forward slightly.
Lord Maccon cleared his throat and managed to track down what he had been about to say. “Yesterday afternoon, while you and I were... otherwise engaged, someone broke into BUR headquarters.”
Miss Tarabotti's mouth fell open. “This cannot possibly be good. Was anyone grievously injured? Have you caught the culprits? Was anything of value stolen?”