The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (61 page)

She looked suspiciously at Lady Kingair. “Are there no others?”

“Only the entertainment mummy we unwrapped, still upstairs.”

Lady Maccon frowned. “Did they all come from the same seller? Were they all looted from the same tomb? Did he say?”

Lady Kingair took offense. “They are
all
legal. I have the paperwork.”

Alexia sucked her teeth. “I am certain you do. But I understand very well how the antiquities system works in Egypt these
days.”

Sidheag looked like she would like to take umbrage at that, but Alexia continued. “Regardless, their origins?”

Frowning, Lady Kingair said, “All different places.”

Lady Maccon sighed. “I will want to see the other mummy again in just a moment, but first…” Her stomach went queasy at the
very idea. It was so uncomfortable, to be in the same room with that thing. She turned to look at the rest of the Kingair
Pack, who were milling about looking unsure of themselves, large men in skirts with scruffy faces and lost expressions. For
a moment Alexia softened. Then she remembered her husband, comatose in another room. “None of you purchased anything privately
that you are not telling me about? Things will go dreadfully ill for you if you did”—she looked directly at Dubh—“and I find
out later.”

No one stepped forward.

Lady Maccon turned back to Sidheag. “Very well, then, I shall take one more look at that mummy. Now, if you would be so kind.”

Lady Kingair led the way up the stairs, but once there, Alexia did not follow her into the room. Instead she stood at the
door, looking intently at the thing. It pushed against her, so that she had to fight a strange urge to turn and run. But she
resisted, staring at the withered dark brown skin, almost black, shrunken down to hug those old bones. Its mouth was slightly
open, bottom teeth visible, gray and worn. She could even see its eyelids, half-lidded, over the empty eye sockets. Its arms
were crossed over its chest as though it were trying to hold itself together against death, clutching its soul inward.

Its soul.

“Of course,” Alexia gasped. “How could I have been so blind?”

Lady Kingair looked to her sharply.

“I have been thinking all along that it was an ancient weapon, and Conall that it was some plague your pack caught and brought
back with you from Egypt. But, no, it is simply
this
mummy.”

“What? How could a mummy do such a thing?”

Resisting the terrible pushing sensation, Lady Maccon strode into the room and picked up a piece of the mummy's discarded
bandage, pointing to the image depicted on it. An ankh, broken in half. Like the circle on top of a cross in Lord Akeldama's
aethographic message, only fractured.

“This is not a symbol of death, nor of the afterlife. That is the name”—she paused—“or perhaps the title, of the person the
mummy was in life. Do you not see? The ankh is the symbol for eternal life, and here it is shown broken. Only one creature
can end eternal life.”

Sidheag gasped, one hand to her lips, and then she slowly lowered it and pointed to Lady Maccon. “A curse-breaker. You.”

Alexia smiled a tight little smile. She looked to the dead thing sadly. “Some long-ago ancestor, perhaps?” Despite herself
she began to back away from it once more, the very air about the creature driving her away.

She looked to Lady Kingair, already knowing her answer. “Do you feel that?”

“Do I feel what, Lady Maccon?”

“I thought as much. Only I
would
notice.” She frowned again, mind racing. “Lady Kingair, do you know anything about preternaturals?”

“Only the basics. I should know more, were I a werewolf, for the howlers would have told me the stories that, as a human,
I am not allowed to hear.”

Alexia ignored the bitterness in the older woman's voice. “Who, then, is the oldest of the Kingair Pack?” She had never missed
Professor Lyall more. He would have known. Of course he would. He was probably the one who told Lord Akeldama.

“Lachlan,” Lady Kingair answered promptly.

“I must speak with him directly.” Alexia whirled away, almost bumping into her maid, who stood behind her in the hallway.

“Madame.” Angelique's eyes were wide and her cheeks pink. “Your room, what haz 'appened?”

“Not again!”

Lady Maccon dashed to her bedchamber, but it looked the same as when she had last left it. “Oh, this is nothing, Angelique.
I simply forgot to tell you about it. Please see it is tidied.”

Angelique stood forlornly among the carnage and watched her mistress rush back downstairs. Lady Kingair followed sedately
after.

“Mr. Lachlan,” Alexia called, and that earnest gentleman appeared in the vestibule, a look of concern on his pleasant face.
“A private word if you would be so kind.”

She led the Gamma and Lady Kingair across the hall into a tight huddle away from the other pack members.

“This may come as a strange question, but please answer to the best of your knowledge.”

“Of course, Lady Maccon. Your wish is my command.”

“I am muhjah.” She grinned. “My command is your command.”

“Just so.” He inclined his head.

“What happens to us when we die?”

“A philosophical conversation, Lady Maccon? Is now the time?”

She shook her head, impatient. “No, not us here. I mean to say we as in preternaturals. What happens to preternaturals when
we die?”

Lachlan frowned. “I have not known very many of your kind, rare as they fortunately are.”

Alexia bit her lip. Lord Akeldama's message said preternaturals were cremated. What would happen if one was not? What would
happen if the body was never allowed to decompose? Ghosts displayed, in their very nature, the fact that excess soul was tethered
to the body. As long as the body could be preserved, the ghost would stick around—undead and progressively more insane, but
around. Surely the ancient Egyptians would have discovered this for themselves through the process of mummification? It might
even be the reason they mummified. Was there something about
not
having a soul that was also connected to the body? Perhaps soul-sucking abilities were coupled to a preternatural's skin.
After all, it was through her touch that Alexia managed to negate supernatural power.

She gasped and, for the first time in her stalwart life, actually felt near to fainting. The implications were endless and
terrifying. The dead bodies of preternaturals could be turned into weapons against the supernatural. Preternatural mummies,
like the one below, could be divided up and transported about the empire, or even turned into a powder and made into a poison!
A
humanity
poison. She frowned. Such a drug might pass through the body after digestive processing, but still, for a time, a werewolf
or vampire would be mortal.

Lachlan and Lady Kingair remained silent, staring at Alexia. It was almost as though they could see the gears and cogs in
her head moving. Only one question remained to be answered: why was she repelled by the mummy? She asked Lachlan, “What happens
when two preternaturals meet?”

“Oh, they dinna. Not even their own bairns. You never met your father?” Lachlan paused. “Course, he wouldna been the type.
But, regardless, they simply dinna. Preternaturals canna stand to share the same air as one another. 'Tis naught personal,
simply unbearable, so they tend to avoid the same social circles.” He paused. “Are you saying somehow yon dead mummy is doing
all this?”

“Maybe death expands our soulless abilities so they no longer require touch. Just as a ghost's excess soul can move outward
from its body to the limits of its tether.” Alexia looked at them both. “It would explain the mass exorcism within a specific
radius.”

“And the fact that this pack cannot change.” Lady Kingair was nodding.

“Mass curse-breaking.” Lachlan frowned.

Just then they heard the murmur of voices from behind the locked door near them. The parlor door clicked open, and Tunstell
stuck his red head out. He started back upon seeing the three of them standing so close.

“Mistress,” he said, “Madame Lefoux has awakened.”

Alexia followed him inside, turning to Lady Kingair and Lachlan before shutting the door. “I need hardly tell you how dangerous
the information we just discussed.”

Both looked appropriately grave. Behind them, the rest of the pack emerged from the artifact room, curious at Tunstell's appearance.

“Please do not tell the rest of your pack,” Alexia asked, but it sounded like a command.

They nodded and she shut the door.

T
unstell was bent over the inventor, helping her to sit upright on the small settee, when Alexia entered. Madame Lefoux was
looking groggy, but her eyes were open. They focused on Alexia as she walked into the room, and the Frenchwoman gave a slow
smile—there were the dimples.

“My husband,” asked Lady Maccon, issuing forth her own brief upturn of the lips, “has his condition changed also?” She went
to Conall's side, a mountain of a man on the tiny little couch. Its bowed, claw-foot legs looked like they were buckling under
his weight. She reached down to touch his face: slightly scruffy. She had
told
him he needed a shave. But his eyelids remained closed, ridiculously long eyelashes flat against his cheek. Such a waste
of good eyelashes. She'd said only last month how much she resented him for them. He'd laughed and tickled her neck with them.

Her reminiscences were interrupted, not by Tunstell's voice answering her question, but by Madame Lefoux's slightly accented
musical one. It was a little dry and croaky from lack of water.

“He will not regain his senses for some time, I am afraid. Not if he was disabled by one of the new sleeping darts.”

Lady Maccon went over to her. “What was it, Madame Lefoux? What happened? What were you trying to tell us this morning? Who
shot at you?” Her voice became very cold. “Who shot my husband?” She was confident she knew the answer, but she wanted Madame
Lefoux to be the one to tell her. It was time the inventor chose a side.

The inventor swallowed. “Please do not be angry with her, Lady Maccon. She does not do it intentionally, you understand? I
am convinced she doesn't. She is simply a little thoughtless—that is all. She has a good heart, under it all. I know she has.

“I found the aethographor, all those beautiful valves smashed to bits. How could she do such a thing? How could anyone?” There
were tears now leaking out of those green eyes. “She went too far with that, and then when I came to tell you, instead I found
her searching your room. That was when I knew it had gotten out of hand. She must have been looking for your crystalline valve,
the one she knew you had, the one for Lord Akeldama's transmitter. To destroy it as well. Such destruction. I never knew she
was capable. To push someone off a ship is one thing, but to destroy such perfectly functional beauty as a crystalline valve
frequensor—what kind of monster does that?”

Well, that certainly told Alexia where Madame Lefoux's priorities lay.

“Who is Angelique working for? The vampires?”

Madame Lefoux, having talked herself out, nodded.

Lady Maccon swore, using words her husband would have been proud of.

Tunstell was shocked. He blushed.

“I suspected she was a spy, of course, but I did not think she would become an active agent. She did such lovely things with
my hair.”

Madame Lefoux tilted her head as though she could understand perfectly.

“What is she after? Why has she been doing this?”

The Frenchwoman shook her head. With her top hat off and her cravat untied, she looked almost feminine, most unlike herself.
Softer. Alexia was not certain she liked it. “I can only suggest—the same thing you are after, muhjah. The humanization weapon.”

Lady Maccon swore again. “And, of course, Angelique was standing just there. Right behind me in the hallway when I figured
out what it was.”

Madame Lefoux's eyes widened.

But it was Tunstell who said, voice full of awe, “You figured it out?”

“Of course I did. Where have you been?” Lady Maccon immediately headed toward the door. “Tunstell, my orders stand.”

“But, mistress, you need—”

“They stand!”

“I do not think she wants to kill anyone but me,” Madame Lefoux called after her. “I really do not. Please, my lady, do not
do anything… terminal.”

Lady Maccon whirled back at the door and bared her teeth, looking for all the world like a bit of a werewolf herself.

“She shot my husband, madame,” she said.

Outside, where the Kingair Pack should have still stood, was only silence. Silence and a whole mess of plaid-skirted, large,
sleeping bodies—quite the grand collapse.

Lady Maccon closed her eyes and took a long, annoyed breath. Really, must she do everything herself?

Gripping her parasol firmly, she armed the numbing spike, her finger hovering over the dart-ejection button, and charged up
the stairs toward the mummy room. Unless she missed her guess, Angelique would try to get the creature out and on the road,
probably by carriage, and back to her masters.

She missed her guess. The moment she opened the door to the room, it became patently clear the mummy was still in residence
and Angelique was not.

Lady Maccon frowned. “What?”

She tapped the tip of her parasol on the floor in annoyance. Of course! A vampire spy's priority would be the transfer of
information. It was the thing vampires valued most. Alexia changed her grip on the parasol and hurtled up too many staircases
for her corset-clad self, arriving, panting, at the aethographic transmitter room.

Without even bothering to see if it was in use, she aimed her parasol and pulled down on the appropriate lotus leaf in the
handle, activating the magnetic disruptor emitter. For just one moment everything stopped.

Then Alexia rushed forward and into the transmitting room of the apparatus.

Angelique was already standing up from the station. The little arms of the spark emitters were stopped midmessage. The French
maid looked directly at Lady Maccon and, without pause, dashed toward her.

Alexia deflected the charge, but the girl's intention obviously had not been to attack, for she simply shoved Alexia to one
side and leaped from the room. Lady Maccon fell back against a tangle of gadgetry on one wall of the chamber, lost her balance,
and hit the floor hard, landing on her side.

She floundered among skirts, bustle, and petticoats, trying to regain her footing. As soon as she had, she raced to the transmitter
cradle and grabbed out the metal scroll. Only three-quarters had burned through. Was it enough? Had her blast stopped the
transmission, or did the vampires now have access to possibly the most dangerous information both about and to preternaturals?

With no time to check, Lady Maccon thrust the slate to one side, whirled about, and dashed after Angelique, convinced that
now the young woman would be after the mummy.

This time she was correct.

“Angelique, stop!”

Alexia saw her from the landing above, struggling with the corpse of the long-dead preternatural, half carrying, half dragging
the gruesome thing down the first set of stairs toward the front door of the castle.

“Alexia? What is going on?” Ivy Hisselpenny emerged from her room, cheeks blotchy and tearstained.

Lady Maccon took aim with her parasol, through the mahogany railing of the banister, and fired a numbing dart at her maid.

The French girl twisted, holding the mummy up as a shield. The dart hit and hung half inside of wrinkled brown skin thousands
of years old. Alexia pounded down the next set of stairs.

Angelique pulled the mummy across her back so that it could protect her as she ran, but her progress was hampered by the awkwardness
of having to carry the creature.

Lady Maccon paused on the staircase and took aim once more.

Miss Hisselpenny appeared in Alexia's line of view, standing on the landing above the first staircase, looking down at Angelique,
entirely blocking Alexia's chance at a second shot.

“Ivy, move!”

“Goodness, Alexia, what is your maid up to? Is she
wearing
a mummy?”

“Yes, it is the latest Paris fashion, didn't you know?” replied Lady Maccon before, quite rudely, shoving her friend out of
the way.

Miss Hisselpenny squeaked in outrage.

Alexia took aim and shot again. This time the dart missed entirely. She swore. She would have to get in some target practice
if she were to continue this line of work. The parasol carried only a two-dart armament, so she increased her speed and went
for the old-fashioned option.

“Really, Alexia, language. You sound like a fishmonger's wife!” said Miss Hisselpenny. “What is going on? Did your parasol
just
emit
something? How untoward of it. I must be seeing things. It must be my deep love for Mr. Tunstell clouding my vision.”

Lady Maccon entirely ignored her dear friend. The power of the mummy to repel her notwithstanding, she charged down the staircase,
parasol at the ready. “Stay out of the way, Ivy,” she ordered.

Angelique stumbled over the fallen form of one of the pack members.

“Just you stop right there,” yelled Lady Maccon in her best muhjah voice.

French maid and mummy were almost at the door when Lady Maccon pounced, prodding Angelique viciously with the tip of the parasol.

Angelique froze, turning her head toward her former mistress. Her big violet eyes were wide.

Lady Maccon gave her a tight little smile. “Now, then, my dear, one lump or two?” Before the girl could answer her, she hauled
her arm back and bashed Angelique as hard as she could over the head.

The maid and the mummy both fell.

“Apparently, just one is sufficient.”

At the top of the stairs, Miss Hisselpenny gave a little cry of alarm and then clapped her hand to her mouth. “Alexia,” she
hissed, “how could you possibly behave so forcefully? With a parasol! To your own maid. It simply is not the thing to discipline
one's staff so barbarically! I mean to say, your hair always looked perfectly well done to me.”

Lady Maccon ignored her and kicked the mummy out of the way.

Ivy gasped again. “What are you doing? That is an ancient artifact. You love those old things!”

Lady Maccon could have done without the commentary. She had no time for historical scruples. The blasted mummy was causing
too many problems and, if left intact, would become a logistical nightmare. There was no way it could be allowed to exist.
Hang the scientific consequences.

She checked Angelique's breathing. The spy was still alive.

The best thing to do, Lady Maccon decided, was eliminate the mummy. Everything else could be dealt with subsequently.

Resisting the intense pushing sensation that urged her to get as far away from the awful thing as possible, Alexia dragged
the mummy out onto the massive stone blocks that formed the front stoop of the castle. No sense in putting anyone else in
danger.

Madame Lefoux had not designed the parasol to emit anything particularly toxic to preternaturals, if there existed such a
substance, but Alexia was confident sufficient application of acid could destroy most anything.

She opened the parasol and flipped it so she was holding the spike. Just to be on the safe side, she turned the tiny dial
above the magnetic disruption emitter all the way to the third click. The parasol's six ribs opened, and a fine mist clouded
over the mummy, drenching dehydrated skin and old bone. She swayed the parasol back and forth, to be sure the liquid covered
the entire body, and then propped it over the mummy's torso and backed away, leaving mummy and parasol alone together. The
pungent aroma of burning acid permeated the air, and Alexia moved even farther away. Then came an odor like nothing she had
ever smelled before: the final death of ancient bones, a mix of musty attic, and coppery blood.

The repelling sensation emitted by the mummy began to decrease. The creature itself was gradually disintegrating, turning
into a lumpy puddle of brown mush, irregular bits of bone and skin sticking out. It was no longer recognizable as human.

The parasol kept spraying, the stone steps becoming pitted.

Behind Alexia, inside Kingair Castle, at the top of the grand staircase, Ivy Hisselpenny screamed.

On the other side of the British isle, in a hired, unmarked cab outside what looked to be a quite innocent, if expensive,
town house in a discreetly fashionable neighborhood near Regent's Park, Professor Randolph Lyall and Major Channing Channing
of the Chesterfield Channings sat and waited. It was a dangerous place for two werewolves to be, just outside the Westminster
Hive. Doubly dangerous in that they were not there in any official capacity. If this got back to BUR, Lyall was tolerably
certain he would be out of a job and the major cashiered.

They both practically jumped out of their skins, a true skill for a werewolf, when the cab door crashed open and a body tumbled
inside.

“Drive!”

Major Channing banged on the roof of the cab with his pistol and the hack jumped forward. The horse's hooves emitted a shockingly
loud clatter in the London night air.

“Well?” questioned Channing, impatient.

Lyall reached down to help the young man regain his feet and his dignity.