Heartless

“So it’s decided?” Alexia looked at the three supernatural gentlemen.

They all nodded at her.

“Excellent. I shall have Floote make the arrangements. Professor, can you leak our relocation to the papers so that the vampires find out? Lord Akeldama, if you would use your very own special distribution methods as well?”

“Of course, my little dewdrop.”

“At once, my lady.”

“You and I”—Lady Maccon grinned up at her husband, immersing herself, albeit briefly, in his tawny eyes —“have packing to do.”

He sighed, no doubt contemplating the pack’s reaction to the fact that their Alpha was about to reside, at least part of the time, in town. The Woolsey Pack was not exactly renowned for its interest in high society. No pack was. “How do you manage to drag me into such situations, wife?”

“Oh”—Alexia stood on tiptoe and leaned in to kiss the tip of his nose, balancing her belly against his strong frame—“you love it. Just think how terribly dull your life was before I came into it.”

The earl gave her a dour look but ceded the point.

Alexia nestled against him, enjoying the tingles his massive body still engendered in her own.

Lord Akeldama sighed. “You lovebirds, how will I endure such flirtations constantly in my company? How déclassé, Lord Maccon, to love your own wife.” He led the way out of his drawing room and into the long arched front hallway.

Inside the carriage, Lord Maccon scooped his wife against him and planted a buzzing kiss on the side of her neck.

Lady Maccon had initially thought Conall’s amorous attentions would diminish as her pregnancy progressed, but she was happily mistaken. He was intrigued by the alterations of her body—a spirit of scientific inquiry that took the form of her being unclothed as often as he could arrange it. It was a good thing this was the season for such activities; London was experiencing quite the nicest summer in an age.

Alexia settled against her husband and, grabbing his face in both hands, directed his kissing toward her mouth for a long moment. He gave a little growl that was almost a purr and hauled her closer. Her stomach got in the way, but the earl didn’t seem bothered.

They spent a half hour or so thus pleasantly occupied until Alexia said, “You really don’t mind?”

“Mind?”

“Living in Lord Akeldama’s closet?”

“I’ve done more foolish things for love in the past,” he answered, rather unguardedly, before nibbling on her ear.

Alexia shifted against him. “You have? What?”

“Well, there was this—”

The carriage bucked and the window above the door shattered.

The earl immediately shielded his wife from the flying glass with his own body. Even fully mortal, his reactions were fast and military sharp.

“Oh, doesn’t that just take the sticky pudding?” said Alexia. “Why is it always when I’m in a carriage?”

The horses screamed and the coach lurched, coming to a rattling halt. Something had definitely spooked the beasts into rearing against their traces.

In classic werewolf fashion, Lord Maccon didn’t wait to see what it was but burst out the door, changing form at the same time to land in the road a raging wolf.

He’s brash, thought his wife, but terribly handsome about it.

They were outside of London proper, following one of the many country lanes toward Barking that would eventually branch off to Woolsey Castle. Whatever had startled the horses seemed to be giving Lord Maccon a bit of stick. Alexia poked her head out to see.

Hedgehogs. Hundreds of them.

Lady Maccon frowned and then looked closer. The moon was only half full, and though it was a clear summer night, it was challenging to make out the particulars. She reassessed her first impression of the roly-poly attackers. These were far bigger than hedgehogs, with long gray spines. They reminded her of a series of etchings she’d once seen in a book on Darkest Africa. What had that creature been named? Something to do with pig products? Ah, yes, a porcupine. These looked like porcupines. To her utter amazement, they also seemed to be able to eject their spines at her husband, embedding them into his fur-covered flesh.

As each wickedly barbed spine hit, Conall howled in distress and bent to yank the projectile out with his teeth.

Then he seemed to partly lose control of his back legs.

Numbing agent? wondered Alexia. Are they mechanical? She grabbed her parasol and stuck the tip of it out the broken window. Firming her grip with one hand, she activated the magnetic disruption emitter with the other by pulling down on the appropriate lotus leaf in the handle.

The animals continued to attack Conall with no slowing or reaction to the invisible blast. Either the parasol was broken, which Alexia doubted, or the creatures had no magnetic parts. Perhaps they were as biological as they initially appeared.

Well, if they are biological… Lady Maccon took out her gun.

The earl had objected to his wife carrying firearms, until the vampires orchestrated the gravy-boat attack. After that, he took Alexia out behind Woolsey Castle, ordered two members of his pack to run about holding trenchers over their heads, and showed her how to shoot. Then he’d gifted her with a small but elegant gun, American made and delectably deadly. It was a .28 caliber Colt Paterson revolver, customized with a shorter barrel and a pearl handle—the former for ease of concealment and the latter to match Lady Maccon’s hair accessories.

Alexia named the gun Ethel.

She could hit the Woolsey pot shed at six paces if she concentrated, but anything smaller or farther away was rather beyond her skill level. This didn’t stop her from carrying Ethel, usually inside a reticule made to match her gown. However, it did stop her from pointing Ethel at any of the creatures near her husband. She could just as easily damage him as them.

Conall had managed to pull out most of the spines embedded in his body, but new and freshly equipped porcupines only fired at him again. Alexia tried to stop herself from panicking, as those projectiles might, just possibly, be silver tipped. However, while he seemed a tad overwhelmed and groggy, none had managed to hit him in any vital organs. Not yet. He was snapping and snarling, trying to get his deadly jaws about the creatures, but they seemed to move remarkably quickly for such pudgy animals.

In the interest of scientific experimentation, Alexia fired Ethel out the carriage window at a porcupine nearer to the edge of the undulating herd. Proximity and density combined to result in her actually hitting one. Not the one she’d aimed at, but . . . The animal in question fell heavily to one side and began to slowly bleed, thick black blood, the kind of blood emitted by vampires. Alexia wrinkled her nose in disgust. Once in her past, a certain wax-faced automaton had also oozed such blood.

Another shot rang out. The coachman, a newer claviger, was also firing on their attackers.

Lady Maccon frowned. Were these porcupines already dead? Zombie porcupines? She snorted at her own flight of fancy. Surely not. Necromancy had long since been disproved as mere superstitious folderol. She squinted. They did seem to have oddly shiny quills. Wax perhaps? Or glass?

Alexia’s gun was outfitted with sundowner bullets, although no one had authorized her to carry them. Conall had positively insisted, and Alexia was not one to stand against him on matters of munitions. Undead or not, the porcupine she had shot stayed down. That was something to note. Although, truth be told, sundowner bullets would work just as well on any normal porcupine. Still, there were positively masses, and Conall had fallen once more to his side, writhing and howling under the swarm of quills.