The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (128 page)

“Do I have to keep reminding everyone? I had an invitation!”

“Alexia, you have a gun!” exclaimed Felicity, horrified.

“Yes.” Lady Maccon relaxed back into the settee and allowed the gun to waver slightly over toward the countess. “I should
warn you, Lord Ambrose, my aim is not very accurate.”

“And is that gun loaded with…?” He did not finish the sentence. He did not need to.

“I should never, of course, admit to the fact that Ethel here is equipped with sundowner bullets. But a few may have
accidentally
made it from my husband's stock into my own. Can't imagine how.”

Lord Ambrose backed farther away.

Alexia looked with annoyance at her sister. “Get off the tea trolley, Felicity, do. What a place for a young lady to be sitting.
Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you are in?”

Felicity sniffed. “You sound just like Mama.”

“Yes, well,
you
are beginning to
act
like Mama!”

Felicity gasped.

Lord Ambrose made a move forward, thinking Lady Maccon's attention distracted.

Ethel swung once more toward the countess. Alexia's hand was remarkably steady. “Ah, ah, ah.”

The vampire backed away again.

“Now,” said Alexia, “I do so hate to do this to you all. But really, our safest bet would be to get out of here. And quickly.”

The countess shook her head. “You may leave, of course, Lady Maccon, but—”

“No, no, both of us, I insist.”

“Foolish child,” said the Duke of Hematol, coming back into the room. “How can anyone know so little of vampire edict and
sit the Shadow Council? Our queen cannot leave this house. It is not a matter of choice—it is a matter of physiology.”

“She could swarm.” Lady Maccon swung her gun once more toward the vampire queen.

Lord Ambrose hissed.

Lady Maccon said, “Go on, Countess, swarm. There's a good vampire.”

The duke let out an annoyed sigh. “Save us all from the practicality of soul-suckers. She can't swarm on command, woman. Queens
don't just up and swarm when told they have to. Swarming is a biological imperative. You might as well tell someone to spontaneously
combust.”

Alexia looked at Lord Ambrose. “Really? Would that work on him?”

At which juncture the most tremendous crash reverberated through the house, and guests at the party below started screaming.

The octomaton had arrived.

Lady Maccon gestured with her gun in an arbitrary manner. “
Now
will you swarm?”

T
he countess jumped to her feet. So, too, did Felicity. Lord Ambrose decided Lady Maccon was no longer the greatest threat
in his world and turned toward the racket.

“Now would be an excellent time,” prodded Alexia.

The countess shook her head in exasperation. “Swarming is not something one chooses. I know this is difficult for you to understand,
soul-sucker, but not everything is the result of conscious thought. Swarming is instinct. I have to know, deep down in my
soul on a supernatural level, that my hive is no longer safe. Then I would have to source a new hive, never to return to this
one. Now is not that time.”

The house fairly rattled on its foundations as another mighty crash rent the air.

“Are you convinced of that?” wondered Alexia.

Something was literally tearing its way through the
building, as a child will rip paper twists to get at the sugar candy inside.
Tasty vampire candy. Mmm.

Felicity started to scream.

“Where did you stash Quesnel, Countess Nadasdy?” Lady Maccon raised her voice to carry over the din.

The countess was distracted by the commotion. “What?”

“I was simply suggesting you might want to retrieve him. Have him with you, and soon.”

“Oh, yes, excellent plan. Hematol, would you fetch the boy?”

“Yes, my queen.” The duke, having only just appeared, looked reluctant to obey; no vampire wishes to leave the side of his
queen when she is in danger. But a direct order was a direct order, so he bowed perfunctorily and scurried off.

Yet another crash sounded. The door burst open. Dr. Caedes, a number of the footman-drones, and several other hive vampires
ran into the room. Mabel Dair was the last inside, slamming the door behind her. The actress's beautiful gold gown was ripped,
and her hair had fallen down about her face. She looked as though she were just about to perform Ophelia's death scene to
a packed audience.

“My queen, you would not believe the monster down there! It is horrible! It ripped right through the wall, the one with the
Titian. And it broke the bust of Demeter.”

The countess was obligingly sympathetic to the trauma. “Come to me, my dear.”

Mabel Dair ran to her mistress, knelt at her feet, and buried her face in the vampire's full skirts. Her hands were trembling
where they gripped the fine taffeta material.

Alexia was tempted to clap.
Spectacular performance
!

The queen set one perfect white hand atop Miss Dair's
cascading blond curls and looked to her hive. “Dr. Caedes, report! What is the octomaton's armament? Is it standard to the
earlier model?”

“No, my queen, it seems to have been modified.”

“Fire?”

“Yes, but only one tentacle. And the customary wooden blades. But a third seems to be able to shoot stakes. And the fourth
has bullets.”

“Go on. That's only four.”

“It hasn't yet used any of the others yet.”

“If this is Madame Lefoux we are dealing with, she'll have armed every single tentacle with something deadly. That's how she
thinks.”

Alexia couldn't help but agree. Genevieve was like that about her gadgets—the more uses the better.

The wall on the opposite side of the room shook. They heard a horrible, wrenching, tearing, crashing noise. It was the sound
of metal and wood and brick colliding. The entire wall before them was ripped asunder. Once the dust settled, the domed head
of the octomaton became visible, balanced atop its many tentacles. The creature scrabbled for purchase within the rubble of
what had once been one of London's most stylish residences. The silver light of the moon and the bright gas of the streetlamps
lit up the gleaming metal hide of the mechanical creature. Alexia could just see the fleeing forms of the countess's party
guests in the street below.

Alexia raised her parasol and stood. She pointed the frilly accessory at the octomaton accusingly. “Genevieve, I do hope you
didn't kill anyone.”

But if Madame Lefoux was in there, guiding the creature, she did not acknowledge Lady Maccon. She had one intended target
and one target only—Countess Nadasdy.

A gigantic tentacle wormed its way up into the room and hit out at the vampire queen, trying to crush her. Alexia preferred
to lead with an airborne offensive, but Madame Lefoux was opting for hand-to-hand—or was that hand-to-tentacle?—combat. Possibly
to protect as many innocents as she could.

The queen, supernatural in speed and cunning, simply dodged out of the way of the massive metal thing. But she was well and
truly trapped, for there were no other doors out of that room, and half of her house was now destroyed.

Felicity let out another scream and then did the most sensible thing she could do under the circumstances—she fainted. At
which point, everyone else did an equally sensible thing and ignored her.

Lord Ambrose charged. Alexia had no idea what he intended to do or how he intended to do it, but he seemed bent on something.
He leaped, impossibly fast and high, landing atop the head of the creature, where he began trying to scrabble for a way inside.
Ah, going for the brains of the operation.

Lady Maccon figured that was a pretty intelligent plan, but the vampire was thwarted in his attempts to pull off the hatch
of the dome. He tried to punch through the helmetlike mantle, but Madame Lefoux was a master worker in such matters. The head
was practically seamless, with no possible way of getting in from the outside, not even for a vampire. She had given herself
slits to see out of, but those slits were just big enough to peer through; they were not sufficiently large for a vampire
to get his fingers inside and pry open the casing.

A tentacle whipped around and with a casual gesture brushed Lord Ambrose off as if he were a crumb. The
vampire fell past the edge of the floor where the wall once had stood, grabbing wildly and missing, and disappeared out of
sight. Only to reappear moments later, simply leaping up from one story to the next until he was back inside.

This time Lord Ambrose dove for the root of one of the tentacles, trying to tear it off the body. Relying on all his strength,
he attempted to forcibly rip away the ball bearings and pulleys that directed the thing's movements. Nothing. Madame Lefoux
always thought in terms of supernatural strength and designed her devices accordingly.

While Lord Ambrose was thus occupied with a direct attack, several of the more courageous drones also charged the octomaton.
These were swept aside with little more than the perfunctory wave of a free tentacle. Others made their way to their queen,
standing in a protective huddle between her and the mechanical beast. One of the vampires was loading the pickled herring,
which seemed to actually be some kind of ammunition, into an aethertronic Gatling gun. He cranked the belt through, and the
machine spat the shiny fish at the octomaton in a
rat-tat-tat
of automated fire. The fish sizzled and stuck where they hit, eating angry holes into the octomaton's protective plating.

Another tentacle crept into the room, which now seemed to be filled with writhing metal octopus arms. This one raised up slowly,
like a snake. Its tip opened with a snap, and it shot a blast of fire at the group surrounding Countess Nadasdy.

Drones screamed, and the countess, fleet and fast, leaped to the side, carrying two of them with her. She would try to rescue
any she could from the flames, much as Conall would do with his clavigers under similar circumstances.

Knowing it was probably futile, Alexia put her gun
back in her reticule and activated the magnetic disruption emitter in her parasol, aiming it at the octopus. As before, there
was no reaction to the invisible blast, although the Gatling gun seized up. The tentacle swung around, spraying fire over
the boudoir. The canopy over the handsome four-poster bed caught and flamed up to the ceiling. Alexia popped open her parasol
and raised it before her like a shield, protecting herself from the blast.

Upon lowering it, she found that all was chaos and dust, with the smell of burning and the sound of screaming around her.
Yet another tentacle slithered into the room. She had a sinking feeling that this one might actually be a real threat. Madame
Lefoux was done playing. Alexia knew what her parasol was capable of where vampires were concerned, and this particular tentacle
dripped an ominous liquid out of its tip—a liquid that sizzled when it hit the carpet and burned a hole where it landed.

Lapis solaris, unless Alexia missed her guess. It was one of the most deadly weapons in her parasol, and a favorite among
those who opposed vampires. The danger was that it had to be diluted in sulfuric acid, and that could kill most anyone else
as well as damage a vampire.

“Genevieve, don't! You could injure innocents!” Alexia was scared, not just for the hive but also for the drones and her sister,
who all seemed to be in the line of squirt.

“Countess, please, you must draw her away. People will die.” Lady Maccon turned her plea on the endangered vampire queen.

But Countess Nadasdy was beyond reason. All her efforts were now focused on protecting herself and her people from annihilation.

The Duke of Hematol reappeared, carrying an undersized
grubby boy child in his supernaturally strong arms. If possible, the duke moved even faster than the queen had, coming to
a stop before her and thrusting Quesnel's kicking form into her grasp. Everything stilled.

Quesnel was hollering and thrashing, but upon seeing the octomaton, he seemed more afraid of it than the vampires. He squealed
and clutched reflexively at Countess Nadasdy's neck with one skinny, smudged arm.

The octomaton could not fire without risk of injury to the boy. No modern science had yet devised a weapon, apart from sunlight,
that could harm a vampire without also harming a human. One of the tentacles, already falling with deadly force toward the
vampire queen, veered away at the last minute, landing with a crash on the laden tea trolley, which had managed to survive
the chaos until that moment. It crumpled in half under the blow, spinning fine china, treacle tart, and finger sandwiches
in all directions.

So far as Alexia was concerned, that was
the last straw.
The infant-inconvenience inside her beat a tattoo of encouragement as she strode forward and whacked at the metal tentacle
with her parasol and all her might. “Genevieve! Not the treacle tartlets!”

Whack, whack, whack. Twang!

It was, of course, a futile effort. But it made Alexia feel better.

The tentacle's tip flipped open, and a tube popped forward and out, becoming a bullhorn like those favored by circus ringmasters.
The octomaton raised this to one of the slits in its eye. Madame Lefoux spoke into it.

Or at least it sounded like Madame Lefoux. It was odd to hear her cultured, slightly accented, mellow feminine
voice coming out of such a big, bulbous creature. “Give me my son and I will leave you in peace, Countess.”

“Maman!” yelled Quesnel to the octomaton. Realizing it was his mother and not some nightmarish monster, he began struggling
in the vampire queen's arms. To absolutely no avail; she was much, much stronger than he would ever be. The countess merely
clutched the boy tighter.

Quesnel began yelling in French. “Stop, Maman. They haven't hurt me. I'm fine. They've been very kind. They feed me sweets!”
His pointy chin was set and his voice imperious.

Madame Lefoux said nothing more. It was clear they were at an impasse. The countess was not going to let go of the boy, and
Madame Lefoux was not going to let them go anywhere.

Alexia edged toward her sister, sensing that very soon the queen would have no recourse but flight. Leaving Felicity behind
in this building was, unfortunately, not really feasible, appealing as the idea might be.

The house swayed on its foundation. Over half of it was now gone, with only the back section still intact, and there was very
little holding that in place. The frame and supports were failing. Alexia had often thought London houses were built with
far less structural integrity than even her cheapest bustle.

She waddled closer to the vampire queen, careful not to touch her. “Countess, I know you said practicality wouldn't come into
it, but this would be an excellent time to swarm, if you could but try.”

The countess turned eyes upon Alexia that were dilated black with fear. She drew her lips back in a shriek of wrath, exposing
all four of her fangs: Feeders and Makers,
the second set being ones that only a queen had. Very little of the sense was left in the woman's face. In this particular
arena, clearly vampires could end up like werewolves, creatures of emotion, dependent only on the little that was left of
their soul to save them.

Lady Maccon was not normally an indecisive individual, but in that second she wondered if she might have chosen the wrong
side in this little battle. Even though Madame Lefoux was rampaging through London in a highly unlawful and destructive manner,
the countess was behaving like nothing more than a child snatcher. Alexia knew she had the capacity to end this. She could
reach out and touch the vampire, turn her human and utterly vulnerable and unable to hold on to the wiry and gyrating Quesnel.