“Touch it!” yel ed the preceptor at Alexia. “Touch it so I can kil it.”
The preceptor was an excel ent fighter, for he was single-minded in his attempt to drive his wooden weapon into the creature’s heart or some other vital organ. But he was simply not fast enough, even when Madame Lefoux came to his aid. Madame Lefoux got in a couple of wicked strikes to the vampire’s face with her cravat pin, but the cuts began to heal almost as soon as she had delivered them. With the air of one swatting at an irritating bug, the vampire casual y backhanded the inventor with a closed fist. She fel hard against the inside of the carriage and then slumped inelegantly to the floor, eyes closed, mouth slack, and mustache fal en entirely off.
Before Alexia had a chance to react, the vampire managed to heave the Templar up and forward. He hurled the preceptor against the driver so that both fel out of the carriage into the country lane below.
The horses, spooked into screams of panic, took off in a crazed gal op, surging forward, straining against their traces in a most alarming manner. Alexia tried to maintain her footing in the wildly pitching carriage. The four cavalry Templars, who had almost caught up to the ruckus, were left behind in a cloud of swirling dust kicked up by frantic hooves.
The vampire lunged toward Alexia again. Alexia took a firm grip on her parasol and gritted her teeth. Real y, she was getting very tired of these constant bouts of fisticuffs.
One would think she was a boxer down at Whites! The vampire lunged. Alexia swung.
But he batted the parasol away and was upon her, hands wrapped around her neck.
He sneezed. Aha, thought Alexia, the garlic!
When he touched her, his fangs vanished and his strength became that of an ordinary human. She saw in his beautiful brown eyes a look of surprise. He may have known what she was intel ectual y but had clearly not experienced the sensation of preternatural touch before. Yet his fingers tightened inexorably around Alexia’s throat. He might be mortal but he was stil strong enough to strangle her, no matter how she kicked and struggled.
I’m not ready to die, thought Alexia. I haven’t yelled at Conall yet. And then she thought about the baby real y as a baby and not an inconvenience for the very first time.
We’re not ready to die.
She heaved upward, pushing the vampire up and off.
And just then, something white hit the vampire crosswise so hard that Alexia heard bones breaking—after al , the vampire was currently quite mortal and lacking any supernatural defenses. The vampire screamed in surprise and pain.
The hit broke his hold around her neck, and Alexia stumbled back, panting hard, eyes fixed on her former attacker.
The white thing resolved itself into the frenzied figure of a massive wolf, growling and thrashing against the vampire in a whirlwind of teeth and claws and blood. The two supernatural creatures scrabbled together, werewolf strength against vampire speed, while Alexia pushed herself and her parasol back into one corner of the seat, protectively shielding Madame Lefoux’s fal en form from claws, teeth, and fangs.
The wolf had the advantage, having attacked while the vampire was rendered vulnerable through preternatural contact, and he never lost it. In very short order, he wrapped his powerful jaws about the vampire’s neck, sinking his teeth into the man’s throat. The vampire gave a gurgling howl, and the smel of rotten blood fil ed the fresh country air.
Alexia caught a flash of ice-blue eyes as the wolf gave her one meaningful look before he hurled both himself and the vampire out of the moving carriage, hitting the ground with a tremendous thud. The sound of their battle continued but was rapidly lost in the clattering of hooves as the horses raced onward.
Alexia realized it must have been the scent of the wolf that initial y panicked the horses. It was now up to her to slow them down before the terrified creatures broke their traces or overturned the carriage, or worse.
She scrambled up onto the driver’s box, only to find that the reins had fal en forward and were hanging down near the shackle, perilously close to the kicking hind legs of the horses. She lay, bel y down over the box, holding on with one hand and desperately reaching with the other. No luck. Seized with an inspiration, she retrieved her parasol. It stil had the two spikes sticking out from its tip, and she managed to use those to catch the dangling reins and pul them sufficiently close to grasp. Victorious, she only then remembered she had never actual y driven a carriage before. Figuring it couldn’t be too difficult, she tried a gentle tug backward on the reins.
Absolutely nothing changed. The horses continued their mad dash.
Alexia took a firmer grip with both hands and yanked backward, leaning back and applying al her weight. She was not as strong as a gentleman of the Corinthian set might be, but she probably weighed about the same. The sudden pressure caused the animals to slow, first to a canter and then to trot, sides heaving and flanks lathered with sweat.
Alexia decided there was no point in stopping entirely and kept the horses headed back into the city. It was probably better to attain the relative safety of the temple as quickly as possible in case the rest of that vampire’s hive were also after her.
Two of the mounted Templars, white nightgowns floating becomingly in the breeze about them, final y caught up. They took up position, one to either side of the carriage, and without acknowledging or even looking at her, proceeded to act as escort.
“Do you think we might just pause and check on Madame Lefoux?” Alexia asked, but no verbal response was garnered. One of the men actual y looked at her, but then he turned aside and spat as if his mouth had been fil ed with something distasteful. Fear for her friend’s well -being notwithstanding, Alexia decided that getting to safety was probably most important. She glanced at her two stony-faced escorts once more.
Nothing. So she shrugged and clucked the horses into a more enthusiastic trot. There had been four Templars on horseback original y. She assumed that of the other two, one went back for the fal en preceptor and the other was off hunting the vampire and the werewolf.
With nothing else to occupy her but idle speculation, Alexia wondered if this white werewolf was the same as the white creature she had seen from the ornithopter, the one that had attacked the vampires on Monsieur Trouvé’s roof. There was something awful y familiar about those icy-blue eyes. With a start, she realized that the werewolf, the white beast, and the man in the mask at the customs station in Boboli Gardens were al the same person and that she knew him. Knew him and was, at the best of times, not particularly fond of him: her husband’s arrogant third in command, Woolsey Pack’s Gamma, Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings. She decided she’d been living too long with a werewolf pack if she could recognize him as a wolf in the middle of a battle when earlier, as the masked gentlemen, she had not been able to place him at al .
“He must have been fol owing and protecting me since Paris!” She said out loud to the uninterested Templars, her voice cutting into the night.
They ignored her.
“And, of course, he couldn’t help us that night on the Alpine pass because it was full moon!” Alexia wondered why her husband’s third, whom neither she nor Conal particularly liked, was risking his life inside the borders of Italy to protect her. No werewolf with half a brain would voluntarily enter the stronghold of antisupernatural sentiment. Then again, there was some question, so far as Alexia was concerned, as to the extent of Channing’s brains. There was real y only one good explanation: Channing would be guarding her only if Lord Conal Maccon had ordered it.
Of course, her husband was an unfeeling prat who should have come after her himself. And, of course, he was also an annoying git for meddling in her business when he had taken such pains to separate it from his own. But the timing meant he stil cared enough to bark out an order to see her safe, even before he had printed that apology.
He must stil love her. I think he might actually want us back, she told the infant-inconvenience with a giddy sense of elation.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In Which the Infant-Inconvenience Becomes
Considerably More Inconvenient
Eventualy Biffy slept and Professor Lyal could afford to do the same. They were safe under the watchful eye of Tunstel , and then Mrs. Tunstel , if such a thing was to be imagined. The two werewolves dozed throughout the day and well into early evening.
Eventually, Ivy went off to check on the hat shop, and Tunstel , who had rehearsals to attend, felt it safe enough to wake Lyal .
“I went to the butcher for more meat,” he explained as the Beta sawed off a chunk of raw steak and popped it into his mouth.
Professor Lyal chewed. “So I taste. What’s the word on the street, then?”
“It’s very simple and baldly put, and everyone is talking about it. And I do mean everyone. ”
“Go on.”
“The potentate is dead. You and the old wolf had a busy night last night, didn’t you, Professor?”
Lyal put down his utensils and rubbed at his eyes. “Oh, my giddy aunt. What a mess he has left me with.”
“One of Lord Maccon’s defining characteristics, as I recal —messiness.”
“Are the vampires very upset?”
“Why, Professor, are you trying to be sarcastic? That’s sweet.”
“Answer the question, Tunstel .”
“None of them are out yet. Nor their drones. But the rumor is they find the situation not ideal, sir. Not ideal at al .”
Professor Lyal stretched his neck to each side. “Wel , I have been hiding out here long enough, I suppose. Time to face the fangs.”
Tunstel struck a Shakespearean pose. “The fangs and canines of outrageous fortune!”
Professor Lyal gave him a dour look. “Something like.”
The Beta stood and stretched, looking down at Biffy. The rest was doing him good.
He looked if not healthier, at least less emaciated. His hair was matted with muck from the Thames, and his face was streaked with dirt and tears, but he stil managed an air of dandified gentility. Lyal respected that in a man. Lord Akeldama had done his work well .
Lyal respected that, too.
Without further ado, he swung the blanket-wrapped Biffy up into his arms and headed out into the busy London streets.
Floote was stil out when Alexia pul ed her panting horses to a stop at the door of the temple. Madame Lefoux was immediately whisked away to the infirmary, which left Alexia to make her way alone through the luxurious building. And, because she was Alexia, she made her way to the calm sanity of the library. Only in a library did she feel completely capable of col ecting her finer feelings and recuperating from such a wearying day. It was also the only room she could remember how to get to.
In a desperate bid to cope with the violence of the attack, her discovery of Channing’s presence in Italy, and her own unanticipated affection for the infant-inconvenience, Alexia extracted some of Ivy’s precious tea. Quite resourceful y, she felt, she managed to boil water over the hearth fire using an empty metal snuffbox. She had to do without milk, but it was a smal price to pay under the circumstances. She had no idea if the preceptor had yet returned, or even if he had survived, for as usual, no one spoke to her. With nothing else to do for the moment, Alexia sat in the library and sipped.