Long Live the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (7 page)

There were vehicles with flashing lights – red and blue and amber. Both coppers and paparazzi. Reporters were set up with their microphones and camera crews. Others took photos for their scandal rags. The authorities tried to keep it from getting out of hand.

Shouts rose as we were spotted exiting the palace. Voices shouted questions – almost incoherent as they tried to talk over one another. We ignored them, even as the odd word got through: “Freak!” “Monster!” “Murderers!”

Then someone yelled something about tonight’s incident. They already knew about it. Fuck. There wouldn’t be any covering it up. This was going to be so very, very bad. The Human
League was going to love it – not that someone had died, but that the aristocracy could be blamed for it.

Right now, I didn’t care. Vex was more important than any of this. If humans wanted my head, let them try to take it. They’d either succeed or they wouldn’t.

We opened a partially concealed door on the north wall of the palace and leaped down the stairs to the dusty floor below. All I could think about was Vex. If she hurt him again, I wouldn’t rest until I’d ripped her apart myself or died trying, which was the likely outcome.

What had they been thinking, creating a creature so strong? How had they planned to control it? She had to be an accident – a deadly one.

Ethan’s normally ruddy cheeks were pale. “If that thing is headed for the keep, I have to get back there.”

I opened my mouth to say something sharp, but words failed me as I watched him shift effortlessly into wolf form, his clothes dropping to the dirt around his paws. He howled once and took off.

Weres might look like fairly normal wolves, but there was nothing normal about them. My two legs, regardless of how incredibly fast they could move, could not keep up with four preternaturally fast limbs.

“Lady!” William called, his voice sharp with bark.

I stopped and turned to see him remove his coat. “William, there’s no time.”

What he did then I knew I would never forget. I watched as he went from bipedal to all fours, his body changing, morphing, until he stood before me as a huge dog-like creature with a thick chest and long limbs. Bigger than any werewolf I’d ever seen.

“On my back,” he growled.

I somehow managed enough thought to pick up his coat – let Ethan come back for his own kit – and climbed on to his broad back. He didn’t have to tell me to lean low, gripping the fur at his neck. I bent my legs and lifted my feet so the tops of my boots rested on his haunches. Once I was secure, he bolted.

Albert’s fangs, but he was fast! The tunnels were nothing but a blur of grey and graffiti as we raced through them. We passed Down Street and the den, onward to the exit nearest Vex’s house. When we reached it, I jumped off William’s back. The goblin was back in his normal form and shrugging into his coat before my foot hit the second rung of the rusty ladder.

We came out cobbleside a block away from Vex’s. I ran as fast as I could with William right beside me, boots pounding hard on the street, breath rushing in and out of my lungs. When we reached the house, our goblins were already there.

Stephen Argyle, Vex’s secretary, met us. “Ethan told us what’s going on.”

I glanced behind him at the other pack members gathered in front of the house. Vex’s second stood with them, still in his wolf form. “No sign of her yet?”

“None, but we’ve got the house surrounded and lookouts on the roof.”

“And the alpha?” I asked.

Argyle smiled. I hadn’t noticed before how much he looked like Vex. Were they related? And why in the bloody hell was I wondering that
now
? “He’s surly and pissed off because I refused to let him come down.”

That was undoubtedly an understatement. “How did you stop him?”

“I told him MacGreggor wasn’t ready to be alpha, and that you weren’t ready to be a widow.”

I swallowed. No, I certainly wasn’t. And I didn’t think Ethan was itching to take over. “Good job.”

“How did you know it’s coming here?”

My gaze drifted around the property as I strained my ears. No sound or sight of her yet. “She appeared to be tracking something on the footage we saw. I assumed, given the direction she was headed, that she was coming to Mayfair. Coming to finish what she’d started.”

The Scot’s mouth thinned. “She’ll not get the opportunity.”

“No, she won’t.”

A noise above made me lift my head so fast it felt as though something had snapped in my neck. Vex stood on the balcony in his black robe. He looked a little bit better than he had earlier, but he was still pretty rough. His expression was stern as his gaze met mine, but I read the message in his eyes loud and clear. He didn’t like being left out, and he really wasn’t keen on me being in the thick of things while he wasn’t.

Ophelia was above him on the roof, a rifle in her hands. It was a huge thing – double-barrelled and long. She held it pointing downward, hands loose and relaxed, but I knew she would have the butt against her shoulder and a deadly shot off before I could blink.

My sister nodded at me. I saluted her. She had my back, and I felt a little bit safer knowing she was up there with a rifle full of silver shot tipped with tetracycline.

I just hoped my twin had the same weaknesses as the rest of us.

“She’s coming!” a voice called out – another rooftop sentinel.

I turned to look up the street. In the distance, I saw someone with hair the same candy red as mine. My heart gave a little thump. It was her, the creature that had single-handedly taken on not only Vex but some of his pack, and got away victorious. A monster that could tear through metal like tissue paper.

Since finding out that I was a goblin, I hadn’t worried too much about my own safety, but when I saw her coming towards me… Was this it? Was I going to die tonight?

I didn’t want to die.

Above my head, I heard Ophelia with her rifle. I didn’t have to look to know that she had raised it and was following the doppelgänger as she drew closer.

“Everyone at the ready!” Ethan shouted, his voice a rough growl in his wolf form.

“She’s coming,” Ophelia announced.

I nodded. “She is. Goblins up front.” As soon as I spoke, my furry followers came forward, putting themselves between the doppelgänger and the pack.

“This is our fight,” Ethan informed me. Fang me, was he all bent out of joint because the gobs were going to be what she hit first? Was he hatters? It was the smart move to make, regardless of what his fragile ego might think.

“She looks exactly like me,” I reminded him. “She almost killed the man I love. I’d say the fight is mine, but I don’t mind sharing.”

“Fair enough,” he replied, and then, “Full bloods behind the goblins. Halfies in the back.”

I looked up. Vex was still on the balcony. We stared at each other a moment before I looked away and went to stand beside William, slightly in front of the six goblins we had with us.
They all wore dark glasses, but I had no doubt they could see perfectly.

My twin reached the gate. She stopped at the wrought iron and wrapped her fingers around the rungs as she peered inside at us. She looked curious – young. Even though our physical forms were almost exactly the same, she had a naïve quality that I was pretty certain I’d lost a long time ago, if I’d ever had it at all.

She glanced up at Vex and Fee, cocking her head to one side in an oddly canine gesture. Had she no concept of danger? No understanding of behavioural cause and effect? I suspected that she didn’t know much at all outside of instinct.

Then her gaze landed on me.

Her eyes were greener than mine – more like mine used to be before my goblin nature fully took hold – and I watched them widen to a size I thought somewhat impossible. But if my face could change when I gobbed out, then I supposed hers could as well.

After that, it all went tits up. She ripped the gate right off its hinges and tossed it aside like it was cardboard. The electrical defence kicked in then, but she seemed unfazed as she came up the path, bolts of electrical energy nipping at her heels.

I wasn’t surprised. I knew she had to be incredibly, stupidly strong to have even made it this far. She stared at me in much the same way I imagined I looked at her – as though she couldn’t believe there was another version of herself in the world.

Her strides lengthened and quickened. I pulled the dagger from my corset. She might be unbelievably strong, but a knife to the heart was not a pleasant experience, and immortal or not, there was no guarantee that she’d heal from it before I
dealt the killing blow. I wasn’t unsympathetic to her plight: being constructed for whatever purpose, treated like a lab rat. I got it that she was ill equipped to handle the world.

But she’d hurt Vex.

I altered my stance for a fight, fingers gripped tight around the dagger. She ran straight at me. I braced myself for impact, for the fight I was sure to lose if someone didn’t back me up.

My doppelgänger made a strange noise as she grabbed me. It was laughter. “Found you!” she cried.

Ophelia opened fire.

Instinct had me take her to ground as soon as I heard the shot. I covered her dirty, sinewy body with my own. Shouts filled the air.

“Be still,” I whispered in her ear. “They won’t hurt you.”

Her green gaze turned to mine, wild and full of panic. Trusting. I didn’t know what had happened, what made me suddenly decide to protect her, but I had changed my mind.

She… wasn’t
right
. She seemed more child than adult, more animal than person. More dangerous than I’d originally thought. She wasn’t ruled by right or wrong, conscience or morality. She was ruled by instinct, and instinct was little more than self-preservation.

She’d do whatever was necessary to survive. Something else we had in common.

And now that I’d seen her up close and personal for myself,
I wanted to know how they’d done it, and just what the bloody hell she really was.

She clung to me like a child to its mother.
Found you!
Was that why she hadn’t killed Vex, because she had smelled me on him?

I couldn’t dismiss it as a foolish leap in logic. It was as certain to me as my own name, because her scent was familiar to me as well. She had tracked Vex to find me. Had the circumstances been reversed, I would have gone looking for her too. Whatever she was, why ever she’d been born/created, she and I were linked. There were no coincidences, and the same thing that made me suddenly protective of a creature I’d vowed to destroy was what had made her look for me in the first place.

Maybe I was full of shit, but that was what my gut told me, and since she had yet to take a bite out of me, or disembowel me with her claws, it was the best theory I had.

“It’s going to be okay,” I told her, not sure if it was a promise I could keep.

Shouts rang out around us. Footsteps thundered closer, voices rose in an incoherent babble. One cut through.

“Xandra!” It was Vex. I tore my gaze away from my doppelgänger to look up at my wolf running towards me on bare feet, robe flapping around his knees. He had lovely legs when they weren’t covered in fur, as they were now. He was changing.

Beneath me, my twin growled.

“Stop!” I cried to Vex. He did. I watched as he regained control of his feral half, and returned to looking how I preferred him. The partial transformation appeared to have aided his healing, and the injuries to his face were less angry than before.

“She’s afraid.” I looked around at the assembled creatures
in various states of feral and human form, all ready to kill for me. “I need everyone to back off.”

Vex didn’t like it, but he didn’t question me. That was one of the very many reasons I loved him. He either trusted my judgement or he was willing to let me dig my own grave – it didn’t matter which. When I needed him, he’d come to my rescue – no questions and no recriminations.

I met his gaze. “She was scared at the lab and she’s afraid now. If she feels threatened, she’ll fight.”

He understood. I think it helped that he knew I’d be the first one she’d try to rip apart.

“Stand down,” he commanded his pack, and they did. No one argued, disagreed or grumbled. He was alpha. His word was law, and all obeyed.

Except for Fee, who stood on the roof of the mansion with the rifle butt against her shoulder – just in case. Her first shot had missed by millimetres. Her second one wouldn’t miss at all.

I glanced down at that face that was so like my own. I didn’t think I’d ever looked so frightened, though. Or quite so unhinged. “You’re safe,” I told her as I slowly lifted myself off her. Her grip on me tightened, hauling me close once more – so tight and close that I thought she might snap my ribs.

“You’re hurting me, sweetie.”
Sweetie?
What the fuck? “You have to let go. It’s all right. No one is going to harm you. I’ve got you. We have to get up.” The smell of blood on her made my stomach growl despite the other less pleasant odours clinging to her skin and awful clothes.

She laughed at the gurgle, and I had to smile. Her joy reminded me of childhood in Courtesan House, playing with
all the halfie kids. It was the unbridled emotion of a kid with no idea how knobbed-up the world really was.

This time when I got up, she let me go. I rose to my knees and offered her my hand. Dirty fingers entwined with mine. Even our hands were practically identical. Only hers felt stronger.

She didn’t need my help to rise, but she held tight to my hand. We stood up together, her so close to me I could feel her trembling. She was terrified. This creature I’d seen rip the roof off a motor carriage and eviscerate its driver – who had terribly wounded the UK alpha – was terrified.

This was not good. I was right to liken her to an animal, and I did not want her going feral any time soon. God only knew the damage she could do – and the damage that would be done in kind. Vex would be ready for her this time. We all would. We would not allow her to walk away.

And I realised that I did not want her to be killed. No more than I would wish it on someone I loved, which made this situation even more ridiculous.