Blameless

Then they heard a horrible noise, a rumbling, growling sound and the crunch of flesh between large, unforgiving jaws. The banging on the barricade stopped as something sharp-toothed and vicious distracted the vampires. A new sound of fighting commenced as the vampires engaged whatever it was that was hunting them.

The little group of refugees reached the end of the hal way. Madame Lefoux leaped up, grabbing at what looked to be a gas lamp fixture but what turned out to be a pul lever that activated a smal hydraulic pump. A section of the ceiling flipped down at them, and a rickety ladder, clearly spring loaded, shot down, hitting the hal way floor with an audible thump.

Madame Lefoux scampered up. With considerable difficulty, hampered by dress and parasol, Alexia climbed after her, emerging into a crowded attic richly carpeted in dust and dead spiders. The gentlemen fol owed and Floote helped Monsieur Trouvé winch the ladder back up, disguising their retreat. With any luck, the vampires would be stal ed trying to determine where and how their quarry had attained roof access.

Alexia wondered what had attacked the vampires on the stair: a savior, a protector, or some new form of monster that wanted her for itself? She didn’t have time to contemplate for long. The two inventors were fussing about a machine of some kind, running around loosening tether ropes, checking safety features, tightening screws, and lubricating cogs. This seemed to involve a phenomenal quantity of banging and cursing.

The ornithopter, for that is what it must be, looked like a most incommodious mode of transport. Passengers—there was room for three in addition to the pilot—were suspended in nappylike leather seats the top of which strapped about the waist.

Alexia dashed over, stumbling against an inappropriately placed gargoyle.

Monsieur Trouvé ignited a smal steam engine. The craft lurched upward and then tilted to one side, sputtering and coughing.

“I told you: stabilizers!” he said to Madame Lefoux.

“I cannot believe you don’t have strapping wire on hand, Gustave. What kind of inventor are you?”

“Did you miss the sign above the shop door, my dear? Clocks! Clocks are my specialty. No stabilizers needed!”

Alexia intervened. “Wire, is that al you require?”

Madame Lefoux held her fingers a short width apart. “Yes, about so thick.”

Alexia, before she could be shocked by her own audacity, lifted her overskirts and undid the tapes to her bustle. The undergarment dropped to the ground, and she kicked it in Madame Lefoux’s direction. “That do?”

“Perfect!” the Frenchwoman crowed, attacking the canvas and extracting the metal boning, which she passed to Monsieur Trouvé.

While the clockmaker went to work threading the wire through some kind of piping about the contraption’s nose, Alexia climbed inside. Only to discover, to her abject embarrassment, that the nappy-seat design caused one’s skirts to hike up into one’s armpits and one’s legs to dangle below the enormous wings of the aircraft with bloomers exposed for al the world to see. They were her best bloomers, thank goodness, red flannel with three layers of lace at the hem, but stil not a garment a lady ought to show to anyone except her maid or her husband, a pox on him, anyway.

Floote settled comfortably in behind her, and Madame Lefoux slid into the pilot’s nappy. Monsieur Trouvé returned to the engine, situated behind Floote and under the tail of the craft, and cranked it up once more. The ornithopter wiggled, but then held steady and stabilized. Victory to the bustle, thought Alexia.

The clockmaker stepped back, looking pleased with himself.

“Are you not coming with us?” Alexia felt a strange kind of panic.

Gustave Trouvé shook his head. “Glide as much as you can, Genevieve, and you should be able to make it to Nice.” He had to yel in order to be heard over the grumbling engine. He passed Madame Lefoux a pair of magnification goggles and a long scarf, which she used to wrap about her face, neck, and top hat.

Alexia, clutching parasol and dispatch case firmly to her ample chest, prepared for the worst.

“That far?” Madame Lefoux did not raise her head, busy checking on an array of dials and bobbing valves. “You have made modifications, Gustave.”

The clockmaker winked.

Madame Lefoux looked at him suspiciously and then gave a curt nod.

Monsieur Trouvé marched back around to the rear of the ornithopter and spun up a guidance propel er attached to the steam engine.

Madame Lefoux pressed some kind of button and, with a massive whoosh, the wings of the craft began flapping up and down with amazing strength. “You have made modifications!”

The ornithopter jerked into the air with a burst of power.

“Didn’t I tel you?” Monsieur Trouvé was grinning like a little boy. He had a good pair of lungs in that wide chest of his, so he continued to yel after them. “I replaced our original model with one of Eugène’s bourdon tubes, activated by gunpowder charges. I did say I had taken a keen interest recently.”

“What? Gunpowder!”

The clockmaker waved at them cheerful y as they flapped upward and forward, now a good few yards above the rooftop. Alexia could see much of Paris laid out below her wildly waving kid-boots.

Monsieur Trouvé bracketed his mouth with his hands. “I’l send your things on to the Florence dirigible station.”

A great crash sounded, and two of the vampires burst out onto the roof.

Monsieur Trouvé’s grin vanished into the depths of his impressive beard, and he turned to face the supernatural threat.

One of the vampires leapt up after them, hands stretched to grab. He got close enough for Alexia to see that he had an impressive col ection of jagged bite marks now about his head and neck. His hand just missed Alexia’s ankle. A huge white beast appeared behind him. Limping and bleeding, the creature charged the airborne vampire, hamstringing him and bringing him back to the rooftop with a crash.

The clockmaker yel ed in fear.

Madame Lefoux did something to the controls, and the ornithopter flapped two mighty strokes and surged up. Then it shifted suddenly sideways in a gust of wind, tilting precariously. Alexia lost sight of the action on the rooftop behind one massive wing. It was presently to become irrelevant, for the ornithopter reached ever-greater heights, and Paris became lost under a layer of cloud.

“Magnifique!” yel ed Madame Lefoux into the wind.

Sooner than Alexia would have believed possible, they attained the first of the aether atmospheres, the breezes there cool and slightly tingly against Alexia’s inexcusably indecent legs. The ornithopter caught one of the southeasterly currents and began to ride it with, blessedly, a long smooth glide and much less flapping.

Professor Lyal had plenty he ought to be doing that night: BUR investigations, pack business, and Madame Lefoux’s contrivance chamber to check up on. Natural y, he ended up doing none of those things. Because what he real y wanted to find out was the current location of one Lord Akeldama—vampire, fashion icon, and very stylish thorn in everyone’s side.

The thing about Lord Akeldama was—and in Lyal ’s experience, there was always a thing—that where he himself was not a fixture, his drones were. Despite supernatural speed and flawless taste in neckwear, Lord Akeldama could not, in fact, attend every social event of note every single evening. But he did seem to have a col ection of drones and associates of drones who could and did. The thing that was bothering Lyal at the moment was that they weren’t. Not only was the vampire himself missing, but so were al of his drones, assorted sycophants, and poodle-fakers. Usual y, any major social event in London could be relied upon to temporarily house some young dandy whose col ar points were too high, mannerisms too elegant, and interest too keen to adequately complement his otherwise frivolous appearance. These ubiquitous young men, regardless of how sil y they might act, how much gambling they might engage in, and how much fine champagne they might swil , reported back to their master with such an immense amount of information as to put any of Her Majesty’s espionage operations to shame.

And they had al vanished.

Professor Lyal couldn’t identify most of them by face or name, but as he made the rounds of London’s various routs, card parties, and gentleman’s clubs that evening, he became painful y aware of their col ective absence. He himself was welcome at most establishments but was not expected, for he was thought to be rather shy. Yet he was familiar enough with high society to mark the difference one vampire’s disappearance had wrought. His careful y polite inquiries yielded up neither destination nor explanation.

So it was that, in the end, he left the drawing rooms of the wealthy and headed down toward dockside and the blood brothels.

“You new, gov’na? Like a li’le sip, would ya? Only cost ya a penny.” The young man propping up the shadows of a scummy brick wal was pale and drawn. The dirty scarf wrapped around his neck no doubt already covered a goodly number of bite marks.

“Looks like you’ve given enough already.”

“Not a chance of it.” The blood-whore’s dirty face split with a sudden smile, brown with rotting teeth. He was of the type vampires rather crudely referred to as snacky-bites.

Professor Lyal bared his own teeth at the youngster, showing the boy that he did not, in fact, have the requisite fangs for the job.

“Ah, right you are, gov. No offense meant.”

“None taken. There is a penny for you, however, if you provide me with some information.”

The young man’s pale face became stil and drawn. “I don’t grass, gov.”

“I do not require the names of your clientele. I am looking for a man, a vampire.

Name of Akeldama.”

The blood-whore straightened away from the wal . “Won’t find ’im ’ere, gov; ’e’s got enough of ’is own ta slurp from.”

“Yes, I am well aware of that fact. But I am wondering if you might know his current whereabouts.”

The man bit his lip.

Professor Lyal handed him a penny. There weren’t a lot of vampires in London, and blood-whores, who made it their livelihood to service them, tended to know a good deal about the local hives and loners as a matter of survival.

The lip was nibbled on slightly more.

Professor Lyal handed him another penny.

“Word on the street is ’e’s left town.”

“Go on.”

“An’ how. Didn’t suss a master could be mobile like that.”

Professor Lyal frowned. “Any idea as to where?”

A shake of the head was al Lyal got in answer.

“Or why?”

Another shake.

“One more penny if you can direct me to someone who does.”

“Ya ain’t gunna like me answer, gov.”

Professor Lyal handed him another copper.

The blood-whore shrugged. “You’d be wantin’ the other queen, then.”

Professor Lyal groaned inwardly. Of course it would turn out to be a matter of internal vampire politics. “Countess Nadasdy?”

The young man nodded.

Professor Lyal thanked the blood-whore for his help and flagged down a seedy-looking hansom, directing the driver toward Westminster. About halfway there, he changed his mind. It wouldn’t do for the vampires to know so soon that Lord Akeldama’s absence was of interest to either BUR or the Woolsey Pack. Banging on the box with his fist, he redirected the driver toward Soho, intending to cal upon a certain redhead.

* * *

Professor Lyal alighted from the hansom at Piccadil y Circus, paid the driver, and walked a block north. Even at midnight, it was a pleasant little corner of the city, swimming in young people of artistic propensities, if perhaps a bit dingy and lowbrow.

Professor Lyal had a good memory, and he recal ed the cholera outbreak of twenty years earlier as though it had happened only yesterday. Sometimes he thought he could stil smel the sickness in the air. As a result, Soho always caused him to sneeze.

The apartment, when he knocked and was duly admitted by a very young maid, proved to be neat and tidy if a tad gleeful y decorated. Ivy Tunstel bustled forward to greet him in the hal way, her dark curls bobbing out from under a large lace cap. The cap had blue silk roses clustered above her left ear, which gave her an oddly rakish appearance. She was wearing a pink walking dress, and Lyal was pleased to see he had not disturbed her at rest.

“Mrs. Tunstel , how do you do? I do apologize for cal ing at such a late hour.”

“Professor Lyal , welcome. Delighted to see you. Not at al . We keep to a sunset schedule. After he left your service, my dear Tunny never could manage to break the habit, and it does suit his chosen profession.”

“Ah, yes. How is Tunstel ?”

“Auditioning as we speak.” Ivy led her guest into an absolutely tiny receiving room, with barely enough space to house a settee, two chairs, and a tea table. The decor seemed to have been chosen with only one theme in mind—pastel. It was a resplendent col ection of pink, pale yel ow, sky blue, and lilac. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">