The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (38 page)

He frowned and rubbed at the crease between his green eyes with the tip of one white finger. It was an oddly human gesture.
“I will consult the edict keepers on the subject, but, no, I do not think so.”

Alexia looked to the dewan. He shook his head.

“So the question is, what could someone hope to gain by this?”

Her supernatural colleagues looked at her blankly.

A tap came on the closed door. The dewan went to answer it. He spoke softly for a moment through the crack and then returned
with an expression transformed from scared to bemused.

“The effects would appear to be negated just outside the afflicted zone we discussed earlier. Werewolves, at least, revert
back to fully supernatural. The ghosts, of course, cannot relocate to take advantage of this fact. And I cannot speak for
the vampires.”

What he did not say was that what changed werewolves was also likely to change vampires—they were more alike than either race
preferred to admit.

“I shall look into this myself, personally, as soon as our meeting is concluded,” said the potentate, but he was clearly relieved.
It had to be a product of his human condition; normally his emotions were not so obvious.

The dewan sneered at him. “You will be able to move that endangered queen of yours, should you deem it necessary.”

“Do we have any further business to address?” asked the potentate, ignoring the comment.

Alexia reached forward to tap at the harmonic auditory resonance disruptor with the butt end of her stylographic pen, getting
it vibrating once more. Then she looked to the dewan. “Why have so many regiments returned home recently?”

“Indeed, I had noticed something of an overabundance of the military roaming the streets as I left my house this evening.”
The potentate looked curious.

The dewan shrugged, trying for casualness and failing. “Blame Cardwell and his blasted reforms.”

Alexia sniffed pointedly. She approved of the reforms, far more humane to cut out flogging and change enlistment tactics.
But the dewan was an old-timer; he liked his soldiers disciplined, poor, and mildly bloody.

He continued as though she hadn't sniffed. “We had that steamer in from West Africa several months ago crying that the Ashantis
were giving us hell. The Secretary of War pulled everyone we could spare out of the east and back here for rotation.”

“Do we still have that many troops in India? I thought the region was pacified.”

“Not hardly. But we have the numbers to pull several regiments out and leave the East India Company and its mercenaries to
take the brunt of it. The empire should stay sound. The duke wants proper regiments with werewolf attachments down in West
Africa, and I can't say I blame him. It's a nasty business down there. These incoming regiments you see around London are
to reconfigure as two separate battalions and ship back out within a month. It's causing a moon's worth of mess. Most had
to be routed through Egypt in order to get back here fast enough, and I still don't know how we are going to stretch to fill
the orders. Still, they're here now, clogging up the London taverns. Best get them fighting again right quick.”

He rounded on Lady Maccon. “Which reminds me. Get your husband to keep his ruddy packs under control, would you?”

“Packs? There was only the one last time I checked, and let me inform you, it is not my husband who has to discipline them.
Constantly.”

The dewan grinned, causing his massive mustache to wiggle. “I am guessing you met Major Channing?” There were just few enough
werewolves in England that, as Alexia had come to learn, they all seemed to know one another. And gracious did they enjoy
a good gossip.

“You would be guessing correctly.” Lady Maccon made a sour face.

“Well, I was referring to the earl's other pack, the Highland one, Kingair,” said the dewan. “They were running with the Black
Watch regiment, and there's been a bit of a dust-up. I thought your husband might stick a paw in.”

Lady Maccon frowned. “I doubt it.”

“Lost their Alpha out there, the Kingair Pack, you do realize? Niall something-or-other, a full colonel, nasty business. The
pack was ambushed during high noon, when they were at their weakest and couldn't change shape. Threw the whole regiment over
for a while there. Losing a ranking officer like that, werewolf Alpha or not, caused quite a fuss.”

Alexia's frown deepened. “No, I was not aware.” She wondered if her husband knew of this. She tapped her lip with the back
of her pen. It was highly unusual for a former Alpha to survive the loss of his pack, and she had never managed to extract
from Conall the whys and wherefores of his abandonment of the Highlands. But Alexia was pretty darn certain that a leadership
void placed him under some sort of obligation to his former pack, even if it had been decades.

The discussion moved on to speculation as to who might be responsible for the weapon: various not-as-secret-as-they-wanted
societies, foreign nations, or factions within the government. Lady Maccon was convinced it was Hypocras Club style scientists
and held firm on her stance over deregulation. This frustrated the potentate, who wanted the surviving Hypocras Club members
released to his tender mercies. The dewan sided with the muhjah. He wasn't particularly interested in scientific research
of this kind, but he wasn't about to see it fall wholly into vampire hands. This derailed the conversation onto distribution
of Hypocras goods. Alexia suggested they go to BUR, and despite her husband's charge of the institution, the potentate agreed
so long as a vampire agent was attached.

By the time Queen Victoria arrived to confer with her council, they had come to several decisions. They informed her of the
plague of humanization and their theory that it was some kind of secret weapon. The queen was appropriately worried. She knew
perfectly well that the strength of her empire rested on the backs of her vampire advisors and her werewolf fighters. If they
were at risk, so was Britain. She was particularly insistent that Alexia look into the mystery. After all, exorcism was supposed
to be under the muhjah's jurisdiction.

Since she would have gone out of her way to investigate regardless, Lady Maccon was happy to have official sanction. She left
the Shadow Council meeting with a feeling of unexpected accomplishment. She desperately wanted to pigeonhole her husband in
his BUR den, but, knowing that would only end in a row, she headed home to Floote and the library instead.

Lady Alexia Maccon's father's collection of books, normally an excellent, or at least distracting, source of information,
proved a disappointment on the matter of large-scale negation of the supernatural. Nor did it have anything to say on the
potentate's tantalizing comment concerning a threat to vampires worse than soul-suckers. After hours of flipping through the
worn leather-covered books, ancient scrolls, and personal journals, Lady Maccon and Floote had uncovered absolutely nothing.
There were no further notes in her little leather book and no further insight into the mystery.

Floote's silence was eloquent.

Alexia nibbled a light breakfast of toast with potted ham and kippered salmon and went to bed just before dawn, defeated and
frustrated.

She was awakened in the early morning by her husband, in an entirely dissimilar state of frustration. His big rough hands
were insistent, and she was not unwilling to awaken thus, especially as she had some very pressing questions that needed answers.
Still, it was daylight, and most respectable supernatural folk ought to be asleep. Fortunately, Conall Maccon was a strong
enough Alpha to be awake several days running without the ill effects younger members of a pack would sustain from such solar
contamination.

His approach was unique this time. He was squirming his way up under the covers from the foot of the bed toward where she
lay. Alexia's newly opened eyes met the ludicrous sight of an enormous lump of bedclothes, swaying back and forth like some
sort of encumbered jellyfish, laboring toward her. She was lying on her side, and his chest hair tickled the backs of her
legs. He was lifting up her nightgown as he went. A little kiss whiskered just behind one knee, and Alexia jerked her leg
in reaction. It tickled something dreadful.

She flipped the blankets and glared down at him. “What are you doing, you ridiculous man? You are acting like some sort of
deranged mole.”

“Being stealthy, my little terror. Do I not
seem
stealthy?” He spoke with mock affront.

“Why?”

He looked a little bashful, which was a categorically absurd expression for an enormous Scotsman to wear. “I was after the
romanticism of an undercover approach, wife. The BUR agent mystique. Even if this BUR agent is disgracefully late home.”

His wife propped herself up on one elbow and raised both eyebrows, clearly trying to suppress laughter but still look intimidating.

“No?”

The eyebrows went, if possible, higher.

“Humor me.”

Alexia swallowed down a bubble of mirth and pretended a gravity suitable to a Lady Maccon. “If you insist, husband.” She placed
a hand to her heart and sank back into the pillows with a sigh of the type she imagined emitted by the heroine of a Rosa Carey
novel.

Lord Maccon's eyes were halfway between caramel and yellow, and he smelled of open fields. Alexia wondered if he had traveled
home in wolf form.

“Husband, we must talk.”

“Aye, but later,” he muttered. He began hiking her nightgown up farther, turning his attention to less ticklish but no-less-sensitive
areas of her body.

“I loathe this article of clothing.” He pulled the offending garment off and tossed it to its customary repose on the floor.

Lady Maccon went almost cross-eyed in her attempt to watch him as he moved predatorily the rest of the way up her body.

“You purchased it.” She squirmed down to bring herself in greater contact with his body, her excuse being that it was cold
and he had yet to replace the covers.

“So I did. Remind me to stick to parasols from now on.”

His tawny eyes turned almost completely yellow; they tended to do that at this stage in the proceedings. Alexia loved it.
Before she could protest, had she thought to, he swooped in for a full, all-absorbing kiss of the kind that, when they were
standing, tended to make her knees go wobbly.

But they were not standing, and Alexia was now fully awake and unwilling to give in to the persuasions of her knees, her husband's
mouth, or any other area of the body for that matter.

“Husband, I am very angry with you.” She panted slightly as she made the accusation and tried to remember why.

He bit down softly at the meaty place between her shoulder and neck. Alexia let out a small moan.

“What have I done this time?” he paused to ask before continuing with his oral expedition about her body: her husband, the
intrepid explorer.

Alexia writhed, attempting to get away.

But her movements only caused him to groan and become more insistent.

“You left me with an entire regiment encamping on my front lawn,” she finally remembered to accuse.

“Mmm.” Warm kisses littered her torso.

“And there was a certain Major Channing Channing of the Chesterfield Channings to boot.”

He husband left off his nibbling to say, “You make him sound like some sort of disease.”

“You
have
met him, I assume?”

The earl snorted softly and then began kissing her again, moving down toward her stomach.

“You knew they were coming, and you did not see fit to inform me.”

He sighed, a puff of breath across her bare belly. “Lyall.”

Alexia pinched his shoulder. He returned his amorous attentions to her lower body. “Yes! Lyall had to introduce me to my own
pack. I've never met the soldier element before. Remember?”

“I am given to understand, from my Beta, that you handled a particularly hard situation perfectly adequately,” he said between
kisses and little licks. “Care to handle something else hard?”

Alexia thought maybe she might care to. After all, why should she be the only one panting? She pulled him up for a proper
kiss and reached downward.

“And what about this mass exorcism in London? You did not see fit to tell me about that either?” she grumbled, squeezing softly.

“Um, well, that…” He huffed against her hair. Persuasive mouth. Mutter mutter. “… ended.” He nibbled her neck, his attentions
becoming even more insistent.

“Wait,” Alexia squeaked. “Were we not having a conversation?”

“I believe
you
were having a conversation,” replied Conall before remembering there was only one surefire way to shut his wife up. He bent
forward and sealed her mouth with his.

A
lexia lay staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling, feeling about as wet and as limp as a half-cooked omelet. Suddenly she stiffened.
“
What
did you say had ended?”

A soft snore greeted her question. Unlike vampires, werewolves did not appear dead during the day. They simply slept very,
very heavily.

Well, not
this
werewolf. Not if Lady Maccon had anything to say about it. She poked her husband hard in the ribs with a thumb.

It might have been the poke or it might have been the preternatural contact, but he awoke with a soft snuffle.

“What ended?”

With his wife's imperious face peering down at him, Lord Maccon took a moment to wonder why he had thought to crave such a
woman in his life. Alexia bent over and nibbled at his chest. Ah, yes, initiative and ingenuity.

The nibbles stopped. “Well?”

And manipulation.

His bleary tawny eyes narrowed. “Does that brain of yours never stop?”

Alexia gave him an arch, “Well, yes.” She looked at the angle of the sunlight creeping in around the edge of one heavy velvet
drape. “You do seem to be able to give it pause for a good two hours or so.”

“Was that all? What do you say, Lady Maccon—shall we try for three?”

Alexia batted at him without any real annoyance. “Aren't you supposed to be too old for this kind of continuous exercise?”

“What a thing to say, my love,” snorted the earl, offended. “I am only just over two hundred, a veritable cub in the woods.”

But Lady Maccon was not to be so easily distracted a second time. “So, what ended?”

He sighed. “That strange mass preternatural effect ceased at about three a.m. this morning. Everyone who should have returned
to supernatural normal did, except for the ghosts. Any ghost tethered in the Thames embankment area seems to have been permanently
exorcised. We brought in a volunteer ghost with a body about an hour after normality returned. He remained perfectly fine
and tethered, so any new ghosts should establish in the area without difficulty, but all the old ones are gone for good.”

“So that is it? Crisis averted?” Lady Maccon was disappointed. She must remember to jot this all down in her little investigation
notebook.

“Oh, I think not. This isn't something that can be swept under the proverbial carpet. We must determine what exactly occurred.
Everyone knows of the incident, even the daylight folk. Although they are, admittedly, much less upset about it than the supernatural
set. Everybody wants to know what happened.”

“Including Queen Victoria,” interjected Alexia.

“I lost several excellent ghost agents in that mass exorcism. So did the Crown. I also had office visits from the
Times
, the
Nightly Aethograph
, and the
Evening Leader
, not to mention a very angry Lord Ambrose.”

“My poor darling.” Lady Maccon petted his head sympathetically. The earl hated dealing with the press, and he could barely
tolerate being in the same room as Lord Ambrose. “I take it Countess Nadasdy was in a tizzy over the matter.”

“To say nothing of the rest of her hive. After all, it has been thousands of years since a queen was in such danger.”

Alexia sniffed. “It probably did them all some good.” It was no secret she bore little love for and had absolutely no trust
in the Westminster Hive queen. Lady Maccon and Countess Nadasdy were carefully polite to each other. The countess
always
invited Lord and Lady Maccon to her rare and coveted soirees, and Lord and Lady Maccon pointedly
always
attended.

“You know, Lord Ambrose had the audacity to threaten me? Me!” The earl was practically growling. “As though it were my fault!”

“I would have suspected he thought it was mine,” suggested his wife.

Lord Maccon became even more angry. “Aye, well, he and his whole hive are deuced ignorant arses, and their opinion is of little
consequence.”

“Husband, language please. Besides, the potentate and the dewan felt the same.”

“Did they threaten you?” The earl reared upright and grumbled several dockside phrases.

His wife interrupted his tirade by saying, “I completely see their point.”

“What?”

“Be reasonable, Conall. I am the only soulless in this area, and so far as anyone knows, only preternaturals have this kind
of effect on supernaturals. It is a logical causal leap to take.”

“Except that we both know it was not you.”

“Exactly! So who was it? Or what was it? What really did happen? I am certain you have some theory or other.”

At that her husband chuckled. He had, after all, attached himself to a woman without a soul. He should not be surprised by
her consistent pragmatism. Amazed by how quickly his wife could improve his mood by simply being herself, he said, “You first,
woman.”

Alexia tugged him down to lie next to her and pillowed her head in the crook between his chest and shoulder. “The Shadow Council
has informed the queen that we believe it to be a newly developed scientific weapon of some kind.”

“Do you agree?” His voice was a rumble under her ear.

“It is a possibility in this modern age, but it is only, at best, a working hypothesis. It might be that Darwin is right,
and we have attained a new age of preternatural evolution. It might be that the Templars are somehow involved. It might be
that we are missing something vital.” She directed a sharp glare at her silent spouse. “Well, what has BUR uncovered?”

Alexia had a private theory that this was part of her role as muhjah. Queen Victoria had taken an unexpectedly favorable interest
in seeing Alexia Tarabotti married to Conall Maccon, prior to Alexia's assumption of the post. Lady Maccon often wondered
if that wasn't a wish to see greater lines of communication open between BUR and the Shadow Council. Although, Queen Victoria
probably did not think such communication would take place quite so carnally.

“How much do you know about Ancient Egypt, wife?” Conall dislodged her and leaned up on one arm, idly rubbing the curve of
her side with his free hand.

Alexia tucked a pillow under her head and shrugged. Her father's library included a large collection of papyrus scrolls. He
had had some fondness for Egypt, but Alexia had always been more interested in the classical world. There was something unfortunately
fierce and passionate about the Nile and its environs. She was much too practical for Arabic with its flowery scrawl when
Latin, with all its mathematic precision, made for such an attractive alternative.

Lord Maccon pursed his lips. “It was ours, you know? The werewolves'. Way back, four thousand years or more, lunar calendar
and everything. Long before the daylight folk built up Greece and before the vampires extruded Rome, we werewolves had Egypt.
You have seen how I can keep my body and turn only my head into wolf shape?”

“The thing that only true Alphas can do?” Alexia remembered it well from the one time she had seen him do it. It was unsettling
and mildly revolting.

He nodded. “To the present day, we still call it the Anubis Form. Howlers say that, for a time, we were worshipped as gods
in Ancient Egypt. And that was our downfall. For there are legends of a disease, a massive epidemic that struck only the supernatural:
the God-Breaker Plague, a pestilence of unmaking. They say it swept the Nile clean of blood and bite, of werewolves and vampires
alike, all of them dying as mortals within the space of a generation, and no metamorphosis came again to the Nile for a thousand
years.”

“And now?”

“Now in all of Egypt, there exists just one hive, near Alexandria, as north as it can get and still be delta. They represent
what remains of the Ptolemy Hive. Just that one, and it came in with the Greeks, and is only six vampires strong. A few mangy
packs roam the desert far up the Nile, way to the south. But they say the plague still dwells in the Valley of the Kings,
and no supernatural has ever practiced any form of archaeology. It is our one forbidden science, even now.”

Alexia processed this information. “So you believe we may be facing down an epidemic? A disease like this God-Breaker Plague?”

“It is possible.”

“Then why would it simply disappear?”

Conall rubbed his face with his large callused hand. “I do not know. Werewolf legends are kept in the oral tradition, from
howler to howler. We have no written edicts. Thus, they shift through time. It is possible the plague of the past was not
so bad as we remember or that they simply did not know to leave the area. Or it is possible that what we have now is some
completely new form of the disease.”

Alexia shrugged. “It is at least as good a theory as our weapon hypothesis. I suppose there is only one way to find out.”

“The queen has placed you on the case, then?” The earl never liked the idea of Alexia undertaking field operations. When he
first recommended her for the job of muhjah, he thought it a nice, safe political position, full of paperwork and tabletop
debate. It had been so long since England had a muhjah, few remembered what the preternatural advisor to the queen actually
did. She was indeed meant to legislatively balance out the potentate's vampire agenda and the dewan's military obsession.
But she was also meant to take on the role of mobile information gatherer, since preternaturals were confined by neither place
nor pack. Lord Maccon had been spitting angry when he found out the truth of it. Werewolves, by and large, loathed espionage
as dishonorable—the vampire's game. He'd even accused Alexia of being a kind of drone to Queen Victoria. Alexia had retaliated
by wearing her most voluminous nightgown for a whole week.

“Can you think of someone better suited?”

“But, wife, this could become quite dangerous, if it is a weapon. If there is malice behind the action.”

Lady Maccon let out a huff of disgust. “For everyone but
me.
I am the only one who would not be adversely affected, and, so far as I can tell, I seem to be essentially unchanged. Well,
me and one other type of person. Which reminds me—the potentate said something interesting this evening.”

“Really. What an astonishingly unusual occurrence.”

“He said that according to the edicts, there exists a creature worse than a soul-sucker. Or perhaps it
used
to exist. You would not know anything about this, would you, husband?” She watched Conall's face quite closely.

There was a flicker of genuine surprise in his tawny eyes. In this, at least, he appeared to have no ready answer carefully
prepared.

“I have never heard talk of such a thing. But then again, we are different in our perceptions, the vampires and the werewolves.
We see you as a curse-breaker, not a soul-sucker and, as such, not so bad. So for werewolves, there are many things worse
than you. For the vampires? There are ancient myths from the dawn of time that tell of a horror native to both day and night.
The werewolves call this the
skin-stealer
. But it is only a myth.”

Alexia nodded.

A hand began gently stroking the curve of her side.

“Are we done talking now?” the earl asked plaintively.

Alexia gave in to his demanding touch, but only, of course, because he sounded so pathetic. It had nothing, whatsoever, to
do with her own quickening heartbeat.

She entirely failed to remember to tell Conall about his former pack's now-dead Alpha.

Alexia awakened slightly later than usual to find her husband already gone. She expected to encounter him at the supper table
so was not overly troubled. Her mind already plotting investigations, she did not bother to protest the outfit her maid chose,
replying only with, “That should do well enough, dear,” to Angelique's suggestion of the pale blue silk walking dress trimmed
in white lace.

The maid was astonished by her acquiescence, but her surprise was not sufficient to affect her efficiency. She had her mistress
smartly dressed, if a tad too de mode for Alexia's normal preferences, and down at the dining table in a scant half hour—a
noteworthy accomplishment by anyone's standards.

Everyone else was already seated at the supper table. In this particular case, “everyone else” included the pack, both residents
and returnees, half the clavigers, and the insufferable Major Channing—about thirty or so. “Everyone else” did not, however,
appear to include the master of the house. Lord Maccon made for a tangibly large absence, even in such a crowd.

Sans husband, Lady Maccon plonked herself down next to Professor Lyall. She gave him a little half-smile as a partial greeting.
The Beta had not yet commenced his meal, preferring to begin with a hot cup of tea and the evening paper.

Startled by her sudden appearance, the rest of the table scrambled to stand politely as she joined them. Alexia waved them
back to their seats, and they returned with much clattering. Only Professor Lyall managed a smooth stand, slight bow, and
reseat with the consummate grace of a dancer. And all that without losing his place in his newspaper.