God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (6 page)

She shrugged. “Val and I thought it was for the best not to tell you about it.”

“Val knew too?” I could believe Avery keeping this from me, because she thought I stuck my nose too far into her business – Dede’s too – but Val? My brother was only a year older than me and we were usually unified when it came to family.

“He was the arresting officer.”

My shoulders sagged. “Bollocks.” Val was Special Branch, a division of Scotland Yard that dealt with aristo- and half-blood-related crimes. Of course they would have been called. “It must have killed him to take her in.”

Avery made a scoffing noise just before slugging back the rest of her drink. “Not to mention how humiliating it must have been for a chief inspector to have his sister behave in such a manner.”

I bristled. “I doubt that was foremost in Val’s mind.”

My sister shrugged. “You can bet he thought it later. It’s an embarrassment for all of us.” Then she sighed, and it was as though all the anger drained out of her. “I never thought she’d end up in Bedlam.”

There was something in the way she said it that made my jaw clench. “No. Of all of us, I’m the one you’d expect to go hatters.”

She shifted uncomfortably, even as she rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid.”

It was no secret that my mother had been hauled off to Bedlam when I was ten. I’d grown up knowing that insanity ran in my blood. Sometimes I felt as though it nipped at my heels. So maybe I was overly sensitive to the subject, but not this time.

I pushed back my chair. “I’m going to bed.” I didn’t wish her a good day, or even take my dishes to the sink. Sod her.

“Xandy!” Avery called after me. “Xandy, come on. I didn’t mean it!”

I waved her off, but didn’t stop, didn’t speak. I just kept walking. Of course she meant it – she just hadn’t meant for me to realise it.

The Wellington Academy, the school where all half-bloods were trained and educated, was located in the St James’s sector, not far from the gates of Buckingham Palace. Some of the old-timers still referred to it as the Old Admiralty, but it hadn’t been used as such for almost eighty years. A statue of the great man stood high on a pedestal in the courtyard, flanked by the Academy and the Royal Guard House.

I stood a moment before this statue, peering up at it from beneath the brim of my brolly. Wellington was a legend not only for his victory over Napoleon, and his tragic death during the Great Insurrection, but for being one of the few human nobles to be turned into an aristocrat. Not just any human can be turned – a fact that continues to elude many of the betties running around the city. Being “made” takes a great deal of physical and psychological strength, not to mention a genetic inclination towards the aristocracy on the part of the plaguee. Only a powerful full-blood can do it. Noble crypts are filled with the dusty remains of those who failed to survive the change.

I wished I had known him. Hell, just to see him in the flesh would have been amazing. Church used to tell me stories of Wellington and his bravery during the Insurrection. Those stories were what so many of us aspired to.

I knew halvies who had gone on to do amazing things. I wasn’t one of them. My father was disappointed that his only child to make the Royal Guard had yet to earn a commendation – not that he’d ever come out and be so cruel, but he couldn’t hide it from me. I was very strong, and one of the best fighters to ever emerge from the Academy, but I had yet to distinguish myself. We lived in a time of relative peace, so the chances of me doing so were slim.

But thinking about it only served to make me pouty and disagreeable, so I stopped staring at the likeness of a long-dead vampire and walked the short distant to the Academy entrance.

James, the yellow-haired guard at the desk, smiled when he looked up and saw me. “Hello, Miss Alexandra. What brings you by this gloriously wet Wednesday?”

“It is lovely, isn’t it?” Unlike aristos, half-bloods could stand in the sun and not get fried, but most preferred a grey day to a sunny one. Lucky were those of us who lived in Britain. “I’m here for the old man. Do you know where I can find him?”

He consulted his computer. “You’re in luck. He’s got a group in the gymnasium. Do you recall the way?”

“Unless you’ve moved it,” I replied with a grin. I’d spent fourteen years of my life at this place; I’d know my way blindfolded. “Best to the wife and offspring, James.”

The gymnasium was on the ground floor. All teaching rooms and the cafeteria were on the first two floors – the floors that didn’t have windows, but were illuminated with artificial daylight. When the building was renovated in 1933, it was decided to make the basement, ground and first floors light-tight as a safeguard should
the humans ever attack again. This not only protected the few aristo professors on the staff, but in the event of an emergency could provide shelter for London’s entire nobility.

That absence of daylight was the only reason Church, being fully plagued, could teach here. On days that he taught, he arrived via the school’s private underground railway just before sunrise. He was yelling at a couple of wrestling young halvies when I entered the gymnasium. The place smelled of sweat and blood, both fresh and old. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant scent, but it was a familiar one that awakened many good memories – like the first time I bested Rye in a fight. Thinking of Rye was bittersweet, though not nearly as painful as it once had been. He had been my friend, my mentor and my first love, and then he’d been taken away from me by a mob of murderous humans. But thinking of him hurt, so I pushed thoughts of him out of my head, and approached the ginger-haired dictator barking out orders to his students.

The first time I’d seen Churchill I’d been a little girl, and he had seemed a giant to me. In reality he and I were about the same height. He had a strong, unyielding face that was as quick to grin as it was to scowl, and though he was of a fairly lean build, he was the deadliest aristocrat I’d ever met. His only weakness was a slight speech impediment that one daft Year 8 kid always seemed to mention within the first three days of class.

His mother was American – one of the wealthy heiresses who had bought their way into the aristocracy in the late 1800s. There wasn’t a high population of plagued on the other side of the pond, but aristo men had a bit of a reputation for carousing, so that genetic material made its way into many human women over the centuries. The plague was strong, and could exist quietly for generations within a family, just waiting to be exposed to similar genes.

Many of the heiresses who came over didn’t survive the change – they hadn’t known about the biological factors necessary for it to take – and of the few who did turn, only a handful managed to carry full-term pregnancies. Of those, only two had been born alive.

Church obviously had been one of the healthy births, but Queen V decreed that ‘making’ aristos only muddied the bloodline, and that was the end of the American heiresses. He had the glowing pale skin of a vampire, the thick, shiny hair and bright eyes, but he wasn’t quite one of them because his mother hadn’t been born to the blood.

A small group of halvies watched their classmates fighting. It was a good-size class for a senior year – seven bright-haired, bright-eyed half-bloods full of piss and vinegar and ready to take on the world. They stood straight and eager in their training uniforms of loose trousers and tunics. The girls all wore flexible corsets that allowed them to move without restriction.

“Marlborough, you fight like a human,” Church growled, his rich voice reverberating through the gym as he berated the student. “Where’s your pride, man?”

“Still building strength through belittlement, I see,” I said as I drew close.

My mentor’s back stiffened beneath his dark green waistcoat and pristine linen shirt. His head slowly turned towards me. His charges watched me with open mouths – even Marlborough and his sparring partner had paused in their exercise to see who dared speak to the old man in such a way.

Churchill’s scowl turned to a grin when his gaze met mine. “Aren’t you a sight? Class, meet the best student I ever had the privilege of training – Leftenant Alexandra Vardan of the Royal Guard.” The way he said it made me sound like something special and I preened under the compliment.

I waved at the kids, who were staring with open awe now. I might not have a commendation, but I had broken records during my time at this place, and held them to this day. “Hullo.” Then to Church, “Sorry to interrupt your class, sir. I wonder if I might have a word?”

A twinkle lit his pale blue eyes. “Of course you may.”

“Thank—”

“Right after you help me show this lot how to really fight.”

That shut me up – for a second. Suddenly I was quite aware of myself. “Are you serious, sir?”

“Couldn’t be more so. Come on now, put your outerwear in the corner and help me demonstrate.”

He had no dominion over me any more. I was no longer his student, but I did what he told me without protest, and quickly. I draped my long leather coat over the back of a chair and rejoined the group. There was nothing special about my clothes – snug black and white striped bloomers with a vest-like black corset, and my usual arse-kicking boots, but the kids continued to stare. My hand went self-consciously to the fading bruises on my face that I’d tried to cover with make-up.

Churchill chuckled – not at the barely discernible marks, but at me. “I believe my students noticed your tattoo, Alexandra.”

When I graduated from the Academy, Rye had taken me out and we’d got matching tattoos of fanged skulls with crowns on the back of our right shoulders. We thought we looked so bad-ass.

“Did it hurt?” one of the girls asked, nodding at my shoulder.

I was an unfortunate victim of what Avery referred to as “spastic brow syndrome” but I managed to keep my amusement hidden despite raising a brow. The girl could survive being hit by a lorry and she wanted to know if a tattoo hurt?

“It was more annoying than painful,” I replied honestly. “I had to sit still for a long time.”

“Something Alexandra’s never been very good at,” Church informed them with a smile. “Enough stalling, Vardan. Let’s fight.”

Churchill was one of the few peers who didn’t use the Protectorate when he went out, although he sometimes had a halvie accompany him for show. It was considered gauche for an aristo to fight, which made it even stranger that Church taught halvies. What was the point of being so powerful when you couldn’t be bothered to defend yourself?

It didn’t really matter, I supposed. No amount of physical strength was going to do you any good against sunlight and silver. That was where halvies came in. We weren’t as strong, but neither sunlight nor antibiotics would kill us. The latter might make us sick and weak, but it wasn’t deadly.

I stepped on to the mat with Church, who had removed his cravat and rolled up his sleeves to reveal muscled arms dusted with ginger hair. I was still smarting from the fight with the betties the night before, and as an aristo, Churchill was a lot stronger than I was.

I was about to get my arse kicked well and good.

“Alexandra, show the class the correct way to bring someone down when they charge you,” he instructed before lowering his upper body to do just that.

I didn’t think of my training, I thought of fighting. Instead of trying to throw him or deflect, I pulled back my fist and jobbed him hard and fast between the eyes just before he could grab me. He went down like a stone.

The class gasped. So did I.

I moved to stand over him, lying on his back on the mat. “Are you all right, sir?”

Churchill grinned. “That was unexpected. Well done, Alexandra.”

I barely had time to enjoy my self-satisfaction. He grabbed my ankles and pulled my feet out from underneath me. I hit the mat with a loud “oomph”, the breath knocked right out of me. Served me right. I should have known better than to assume he wouldn’t retaliate or to believe I’d bested him.

Once he had me down, it was a pretty short fight. Grappling was not my strong point. Vampirism aside, my opponent was male, better trained and stronger than me. As a woman I had to be more than strong and skilled. I had to be fast and limber, both of which were much easier to achieve on my feet. On the floor, I was no match for Church.

I had to take pride in the fact that I had at least knocked him down. Once.

“You’ve improved.” He delivered the compliment with a bit of a frown. “I actually had to work for it.”