Heartless

The octomaton, untroubled by Alexia’s cry or predicament, began to make its way up the street away from her, following the carriage. Lady Maccon raised her parasol and pulled at the special lotus leaf in the handle, activating the magnetic disruption emitter. Even aimed directly at the massive creature, it had absolutely no effect. Either Madame Lefoux also had access to the vampire’s porcupine technology, or she had installed some kind of defensive shield to protect her creation from Alexia’s armament. Alexia was not surprised; after all, the Frenchwoman was not so thickheaded as to build one weapon that could so easily be defeated by another of her own design. Especially if she knew Alexia was on the case and might very well find her out.

Alexia switched to Ethel, raising and firing the gun. The bullet bounced harmlessly off the octomaton’s metal exterior. It left behind a dent, but once again, the massive creature did not register her tiny efforts against it.

It proceeded down the street in a not-very-dignified manner. Madame Lefoux had not gotten the en pointe tentacle balance quite right. Windows rattled as it passed, and periodically it staggered slightly to one side, crashing into and partly destroying the sides of buildings. At last, rounding the corner away from the Pantechnicon, it lurched into one of the streetlamps, an old-fashioned brassier-style torch, tipping it onto the thatched roof of a storage shed. Almost immediately the shed caught fire, and the flames began to spread. Metal roof notwithstanding, it presently became apparent that even the Pantechnicon could not resist the blaze.

Alexia was at a loss. None of her parasol’s special abilities were designed to deal with fire. In her current state, she reckoned her best option was to beat an undignified retreat to safety. After all, she was practical enough to know when there was little even she could do to rectify such a situation. She turned south, toward the river.

As she limped along, Alexia’s mind whirled with confusion. Why would Madame Lefoux build such a creature? She was, by and large, a woman of subtlety in both life and art. Why was she heading north and not due east to Buckingham? Queen Victoria never left the safety of her palace on full moon—it was simply too wild a night for her staid sensibilities. If Madame Lefoux had designs on the queen, she was going in the wrong direction. Alexia frowned. I am clearly missing something. Either something Genevieve said, or did not say, or something Formerly Lefoux said or did not say. Or . . .

Lady Alexia Maccon stopped in her very solid tracks and hit her forehead with the butt of her hand. Fortunately, it was the hand that held Ethel, not the hand that held her parasol, or she might have done herself damage.

“Of course! How could I be so silly? I have the wrong queen.”

Then she started walking again, her mind now calculating in a steel-traplike fashion—that is, if the trap were of the spring-loaded, not-very-sensitive variety. Lady Maccon was not one to do too many things at once, especially not right now, but she was tolerably convinced she could handle bipedal motion and thought at the same time.

The original ghostly messenger had never specified Queen Victoria, and neither had Formerly Lefoux. Genevieve Lefoux and her octomaton weren’t after the monarch of the empire; oh, no, they were after a hive queen. That made far more sense. Genevieve had never liked the vampires, not since they corrupted Angelique (although she was always content enough to take their money). Given their rocky history, again over that troublesome violet- eyed French maid, Alexia would wager good money Genevieve was after Countess Nadasdy. This made sense given the northward direction of her tentacleing, toward Mayfair. Somehow, Madame Lefoux had deduced the whereabouts of the Westminster Hive.

Another mystery. The location of a hive was a guarded secret. Lady Maccon herself knew of it, of course, but that was only because . . .

“Oh, Alexia, you idiot!” The burglary at Woolsey! Madame Lefoux must have been the thief, stealing those old missives because among them was Alexia’s original invitation from Countess Nadasdy to visit the hive. It had been delivered to her by Mabel Dair in Hyde Park the afternoon after Alexia killed her first vampire. It contained the address of the hive house, and Alexia had foolishly never thought to destroy it. When did I tell Genevieve that story?

Lady Maccon cast desperately about the empty street. She had to reach the Westminster Hive, and fast. Never before had she resented the infant-inconvenience more than at this moment, not to mention her dependence on horse-drawn transport. She even had an invitation that would get her in the door, but no way to get there in time to warn them of imminent tentacled doom. She was stranded in the wilds of Belgravia!

She waddled faster.

The fire was spreading and whooshing behind her. The once-dim alley was alight with a flickering orange and yellow glow. The din of collapsing buildings and roaring flames was added to by the loud clanging bell of an approaching fire engine. One of the dirigibles must have spotted the blaze and drop-messaged the appropriate authorities. If anything, this made Alexia move faster. The last thing she needed was to be detained trying to explain her presence at the Pantechnicon. It also reminded her to look up to see if she could spot a dirigible.

Sure enough, there were several headed sedately in her direction, having caught sight of the fire and redirected their lazy circling toward an intriguing new attraction. They were safely above the conflagration, not yet in the aether but high enough to avoid any risk associated with even the most massive of ground fires.

Lady Maccon waved her parasol commandingly and yelled, but she was a mere speck far below, unless someone had a pair of Shersky and Droop’s latest long-distance binoculars. Since her marriage, Alexia had adopted a more respectable and somber color palette than that of the pastel-inclined unattached young lady. This made her even less visible in the flickering shadows of Motcomb Street.

It was then that Alexia noticed that the Giffard symbol (a shaping of the name that turned the G into a massive red and black balloon) on a nearby warehouse was modified with a kind of starburst pattern at its end and a phrase underneath that read PYROTECHNIC DIVISION LTD. She stopped, turned on her heel, and headed for a nearby lamppost. With barely a pause for consideration, she hauled off, took careful aim, and threw her parasol hard at the torch section. The parasol, spearlike, crashed into the lamp and brought both it and the hot coals inside down to the ground with a clang.

Lady Maccon huffed her way over to the coals, retrieved her now-slightly-scorched and sooty accessory by its tip, and, holding it like a mallet, used the chubby handle to hit one particularly nice-looking coal along the street toward the Giffard pyrotechnic warehouse. It was a excellent thing, reflected Alexia at that juncture, that she was good at croquet. At a nice distance, she took careful aim and, with a kind of scooping action, struck the wedge of coal hard. It arced splendidly upward, crashing through the window of the warehouse in a most satisfactory manner.

Then she waited, long, slow counts, hoping the coal had managed to hit upon something reliably explosive.

It had. A popping, cracking noise came first, then some whizzing and whirling sounds, and finally a series of loud gunshots. The doors and windows of the warehouse exploded outward, pushing Alexia backward. Instinctively, she popped open her parasol to shield herself as the world around her turned into a smoking cornucopia of brightly flashing lights and loud noises. The entire stockpile of what she imagined must be a very expensive collection of gunpowder display sparkles and sky-lighters exploded, shimmering and flashing in an ever-increasing series of flares.

Lady Maccon cowered in the road—there was really no other way of putting it—behind her open parasol, trusting in the durability of Madame Lefoux’s design to protect her from the worst of it.

Eventually, the popping detonations slowed, and she began to register the heat of the real fire as it crept down Motcomb Street toward her. She coughed and waved her parasol. The moonlight made the residual smoke silvery white, as if a thousand ghosts were collected around her.

Alexia, eyes watering, blinked and tried to take shallow, steady breaths. Then, through the dispersing smoke, a massive upside-down shepherdess-style bonnet appeared, hovering some two stories above the ground and heading toward her. As the smoke vanished, the cumbersome form of a small private dirigible bobbed into view above the bonnet, proving that it was, in fact, not a hat at all but the gondola portion of the air conveyance. The pilot, some miracle worker of the first order, navigated the small craft down toward Lady Maccon, lowering it carefully between the rows of buildings while battling to keep it away from the flames of the burning Pantechnicon.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN