Alexia had never told Madame Lefoux about the mummy nor the broken ankh symbol. But in her experience, it was the hieroglyphic sign of a preternatural.
So she quickly moved on. “I think the terra-cotta man in the tomb was a preternatural, and the woman was a vampire, and the offering of meat was for the werewolves.”
“A harmonious culture? Is that possible?”
“It would be terribly arrogant of us British to think England was the first and only progressive society.” Alexia was worried. If the Templars comprehended the significance of the ankh, she was in more danger than she had thought. They would find a way to turn her into a tool, living or dead.
“I do hope Floote managed to send that message to BUR.”
“Love note to your werewolf?” Madame Lefoux sounded wistful. Then she looked about the empty hil side, suddenly nervous. “I think, my dear Alexia, we should head back to the carriage.”
Alexia, enjoying the countryside and the intel ectual advantages afforded by their ancient surroundings, had not registered the lateness of the hour. “Ah, yes, you may be correct.”
It was, unfortunately, well into nighttime before they were even halfway back to Florence. Alexia felt awful y exposed in the open-topped carriage. She kept her parasol close and began to wonder if this whole excursion was not an attempt by the Templars to use her as some kind of bait. After al , they fancied themselves great supernatural hunters and might very well risk her safety simply to draw local vampires out. Especial y if the Templars had enough foolish pride in their own abilities to believe there was little true peril. The moon was just rising, no longer entirely ful but stil quite bright. In its silvery light, Alexia could make out a gleam of anticipation in the preceptor’s normal y emotionless eyes. You rotten sod, this was all a setup, she was about to say, but too late.
The vampire appeared out of nowhere, leaping with exceptional speed from the dirt road into the carriage. He was single-minded in his attack, heading straight for Alexia, the only apparent female of the group. Madame Lefoux gave a yel of warning, but Alexia had already thrown herself forward onto the open seat opposite her own, next to the preceptor. The vampire ended up where she had just been sitting. Alexia fumbled with her parasol, twisting the handle so that the two sharp spikes, one wood and one silver, sprang out from its tip.
The preceptor, suddenly brandishing a long, evil-looking wooden knife, gave a yel of pleasure and attacked. Madame Lefoux had her trusty cravat pin already out and in play.
Alexia swung her parasol, but al were merely normal humans pitted against superhuman strength, and even fighting off multiple bodies in the awkwardly tiny venue of an open-topped carriage, the vampire was holding his own.
The preceptor dove forward. He was grinning—a real smile for the first time.
Maniacal, but real.
Alexia took a firm grip on her parasol with both hands and used a hacking blow to stab with the wooden spike at any part of the vampire that emerged from the wrestling match long enough for her to pin it down. It was a little like trying to hit the heads of ground moles as they appeared out of their holes. But soon enough, Alexia was getting quite into the game of it.
“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.”