Heartless

followed by what could only be a whoop of exhilaration.

Alexia and Felicity tottered to the edge after them and looked down. Three stories. There was no way they could jump and survive, and there was no other apparent way to get down.

However, they did have an excellent perspective on the carnage and could watch the countess and her vampires race between the tentacles of the octomaton and dash away into the moonlit city, swarming at last. The drones followed a little more judiciously, climbing down out of what was left of the house by degrees and then running after, unable to keep up with the supernatural speed of their mistress.

The octomaton screamed, or Madame Lefoux did, and set its flaming tentacle to burn away the tablecloth that obscured its vision. As soon as it was gone, it took the inventor only a moment to realize that her quarry had escaped. Only Alexia and her sister still stood in the swaying building—a structure that was clearly about to come tumbling down.

The monster turned to track the fleeing vampires. Then it crashed off through the streets, heedless of who or what it crushed. Madame Lefoux either hadn’t seen Alexia’s plight or didn’t care to help her. Alexia hoped fervently it was the former, or her friend was indeed more heartless than she had ever thought possible.

“Bugger,” said Lady Maccon succinctly.

Felicity gasped at her language, even under such trying circumstances.

Alexia looked at her sister and said, fully knowing that Felicity wouldn’t understand what she was talking about, “I’m going to have to arrest her, in the end.”

The hive house yielded to gravity, tilting forward in a slow, reluctant creak.

The two women slid toward the edge. Felicity shrieked, and Alexia, in classic fashion given the tenor of her evening, lost her balance and tumbled forward, also yielding to gravity. She went right over, scraping and scrabbling at the splintered floorboards.

She managed to just hang on. Her parasol fell, landing among wall fragments, bits of art, and torn carpet far below. Alexia dangled, desperately holding on to the side of a wooden beam that stuck slightly out above the abyss.

Felicity had hysterics.

Lady Maccon wondered how long her grip was going to hold, grateful she’d removed her gloves. She was rather strong, but it had been a very long week and she wasn’t up to her prepregnancy standards. Plus she was carrying a sizable amount of extra weight.

Well, she thought philosophically, this is a very romantic way to die. Madame Lefoux would certainly feel cut up about it. So that’s something. Guilt can be very useful.

And then, just when she thought all was lost, she felt a puff of air behind her neck and a tingling stirring of the aether.

“What ho!” said Boots. “Can I be of any assistance, Lady Maccon?”

The basket-shaped gondola of Lord Akeldama’s private dirigible came down out of the sky like some kind of fat and benevolent savior.

Alexia looked over her shoulder at him from where she dangled. “Not especially. I thought I might simply hang about here for a while, see what transpired.”

“Oh, don’t fuss about her,” yelled Felicity. “Help me! I’m far more important.”

Boots ignored Miss Loontwill and directed the pilot to float in until the gondola section of the basket was just under Lady Maccon.

The building lurched at exactly that moment, and Alexia, with a cry, lost her purchase on the beam.

She landed with a thud inside the basket. Her feet failed her and she went backward, once more onto the bustle, which had very little resilience left after the evening’s extensive abuse. After a moment’s consideration, Alexia just flopped right there on her back. Enough was enough.

“Now me, now meee!” shrieked Felicity, and she seemed to have good cause, for the structure was indeed falling.

Boots looked the young woman up and down, no doubt taking in the bite marks on her white neck. The remains of the house might well be tumbling down that very moment, but he hesitated.

“Lady Maccon?” Boots was a very well-trained drone.

Alexia sucked at her teeth and looked up at her sister. “If we must.”

The pilot gave the balloon some lift and it rose. Tizzy put out his arm politely, as though escorting Miss Loontwill in to dinner, and Felicity stepped off the ledge and into the dirigible with all the dignity of a terrified kitten.

The building crumbled behind her. The pilot pulled one of his propeller levers hard, and the airship let out a great puff of steam and surged forward, just in time to escape a large chunk of roof as the last of the hive house crumbled to the ground.

“Where to, Lady Maccon?”

Alexia looked up at Boots, who was crouched over her in evident concern. The child inside her was continuing to express its distress with the night’s events. Lady Maccon could think of but one place to go, with her husband out of commission and the moon still high and bright above them. All of her normal hidey-holes were inaccessible: Madame Lefoux’s contrivance chamber was out of the picture, and the Tunstells were still in Scotland.

BUR, she was confident, would already be investigating the scene of the destruction below or chasing the octomaton as it crashed through the city. BUR had an arsenal of weaponry at its disposal—their own aethertronic Gatling guns, mini-magnatronic cannons, not to mention Mandalson custard probes. Let them try to stop Madame Lefoux for a while. They probably wouldn’t be any more successful than she, given the inventor’s intellectual skills and mechanical abilities, but they might slow her down. Alexia, after all, had only a parasol. Then she swore, realizing that she didn’t even have that anymore. It was lying below, probably buried under half a collapsed building. Ethel was secured in the reticule tied at her waist, but her precious parasol was gone.

“I’m certain you gentlemen would agree with me. It’s at times like this that what a girl needs is some serious council on her attire.”

Boots and Tizzy looked with deep concern at Alexia’s sorry state of dress, her bustle flattened, her hem filthy, her lacy trim soot-covered and burned.

“Bond Street?” suggested Tizzy seriously.

Alexia arched a brow. “Oh, no, this is a profound clothing emergency. Please, take me to Lord Akeldama.”

“At once, Lady Maccon, at once.” Boots’s face was suitably grave behind the muttonchops. The dirigible floated up a little higher and, with another violent puff of steam, set a brisk glide north toward Lord Akeldama’s town house.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Where Dirigibles Fear to Tread

Lord Akeldama had arranged for a dirigible landing green to be built on the roof of his town house. It was shifted off to one side, allowing room for his aethographor’s cuspidor-like receiver. Lady Maccon wondered that she had not noticed this before, but then she didn’t spend much time investigating rooftops as part of her daily routine.

The dirigible touched down as light as a meringue. Given that bipedal motion hadn’t been doing her many favors that evening, Alexia reluctantly clambered to her feet. Much to her delight, Lord Akeldama had made allowances for a dignified exit from the transport here at its home base. A drone bustled over with a specially designed peaked step ladder that flipped over the side of the gondola basket and then telescoped out to the required height on each side. This permitted one to climb up one side and down the other with great solemnity and aplomb.

“Why,” wondered Alexia, “don’t you float around already carrying that little ladder?”