Long Live the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (11 page)

William’s hand brushed my hair. “Good-hearted. Too much.”

That was a laugh. I was too selfish, that was what I was. Too cocky and reckless by far. And right now I was heartily ashamed of myself. “Everyone get some rest, we’ve got a big night ahead of us.”

“Hunting the abomination, lady?” William asked, a little gleefully.

I nodded. “We’re going to need help on this one, my friends.”

“You’ve got the pack,” Vex said.

“And Special Branch,” Val offered, holding up his rotary.
“Tactical teams are being called out to search for her now. I’m going to join them.”

I took Vex’s hand and rose to my feet, holding my injured arm against my chest. “Good. I’m going to need Ophelia and her… friends.” Val didn’t know about the insurgent hideout at Bedlam, and I wasn’t going to tell him. The longer he believed that place was nothing more than an asylum for damaged halfies, the better. “She has human connections.”

“And the leeches?” William asked, lip curled.

I gave him a grim smile. “Leave the vampires to me.” One of them owed me a favour – a big one.

My father.

If he’d been fully healed and topped up on blood, Vex could have braved the dawn and joined the search for Ali. Instead, he chose to sleep with me. I didn’t allow it to go straight to my ego, however. I reminded myself that my place was the most logical should Ali return. It would keep her from the pack and give us the added backup of the goblins. Although I had to admit that strategical advantage aside, I wanted him to stay with me, and I think he wanted to stay as well.

And since I’d been ordered to stay out of Special Branch’s way while they conducted their search, I had nothing else to do. I’d rather be out there looking for my daughter – for all my protesting that’s what she was – but Val thought it would make things worse, and then there was the chance I might get shot by someone thinking I was her. Good point, I guess.

Ali was a monster, but she was mine, and I’d always got
abnormally attached to things I thought of as mine. I couldn’t get attached to her. I couldn’t save her, and I doubted there was much I could do to help her, but I could stop her.

“You should take some of my blood,” Vex suggested as we took the lift back to my place. “It will help you heal.”

My arm was beginning to itch, signifying that it was already on the mend. “I’m fine. I have steaks in the ice box.”

His stomach growled at the same time mine did, and we shared a smile.

He touched my hair. “Are you certain she didn’t hurt you worse?”

I shook my head as the metal gate of the lift rattled open. “Just the bite to my arm. She would have got my throat if I hadn’t anticipated where she was going to strike.” I stepped into the vestibule that led to my door. “She’s strong, Vex.”

He shot me a glance. “Yeah, I found that out first hand. Or did you think I let her use me as a chew toy?”

I opened my mouth to make a smart-arse reply, and stopped. He’d been mauled, had seen his dead son’s face on someone else’s body, and had just watched me bleed. And then the person responsible for all three had got away from us. Of course he was in a foul state. So was I.

Instead of saying something, I turned to him, put my arms around his waist and pressed myself against him, my head resting on his shoulder. The feel and the warmth of him did more for my mood than any drug could have. His arms closed over my back.

“Tell me you don’t blame me for this.” Knowing it in my heart and hearing it from him were two different things.

“You’re not to blame for any of it,” he replied. I could feel the rumble of his voice in his chest. “You were born an exception
to the rule and have been exploited for most of your life. The only difference now is that you’re aware of it.”

That was true. If this kind of rubbish had been going on and I didn’t know I was a goblin, I’d be as confused as hell, but it would still go on, because the aristos behind these labs had known about me since before I was born.

When that were attacked my mother while she was pregnant with me, he couldn’t have known what his bite would do to her unborn child. He changed my plague-carrying mother into a wolf like himself because she was susceptible to the Prometheus protein, and when those genes got up close and personal with the vampire ones I’d inherited from my father, I became a goblin. As far as I know, I’m the first one to ever walk in the daylight and have no fur or snout. I had heard a rumour about another queen before me, however. And there was that odd and ancient-looking crown in the plague den.

Speaking of queens… “How much of this do we have to tell Victoria?”

Vex chuckled, and directed me towards the darkened kitchen – insulated blinds kept my flat fairly lightless. “She probably knows as much as we do by now. She’s got eyes everywhere, the news on the box, and Special Branch on rapid-dial.”

I should have known. “Brilliant.” I sighed and began pulling ingredients out of the ice box and cupboards for a meal before bed. The steaks were thick and beautifully marbled. They were beef, but had been marinating in a mixture of garlic, human blood, herbs and spices for almost twenty-four hours. The blood made the meat taste practically human, though there was nothing quite like the real thing.

“At least she won’t be able to accuse you of harbouring a murderer.”

“Not any more.” I began cutting up cold potatoes to fry as he took care of the meat. I paused. “She’s a rutting mess, isn’t she? Ali, I mean.”

Vex smiled slightly as he popped some butter into the frying pan for the potatoes. “I know who you meant. I’m afraid so. Although it would help if we knew for exactly what purpose she was created. I’m still inclined to see her as a weapon.”

“Against humans?” I dumped the slices into the crackling butter. “Bit of overkill, don’t you think?”

“No.” His tone was soft. “Not against humans.”

If glances could be sharp, he’d be bleeding all over my sideboard. “Against me?” The fact that I hadn’t already gone there in a paranoid rush was unsettling.

“Most likely – and any other freak, goblin or were who gets in their way.”

I didn’t bristle at his use of the word “freak”. I knew how he meant it, even if modern connotations were more insulting. His son was included under that term, so it wasn’t a slur, and I was too tired to correct him.

“They’d be taking a huge risk thinking they can control her.”

“She wouldn’t be alive if they couldn’t, and she certainly wouldn’t have been kept where anyone could find her.”

“Or maybe they’re getting too cocky.”

He shot me a look I couldn’t quite decipher. “You don’t want to think of her as a weapon, do you? Especially not one to be used against you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed, but my heart gave a hard thump in my chest. How could I tell him that she was my
daughter? And worse, that I feared the rest of her might have come from his son, who had been able to shift.

I couldn’t tell him she was his granddaughter – not until I had proof.

“You’ve become attached. Already.”

I scraped potato from the bottom of the pan with my spatula. Those crispy bits were the best part – and it kept me from having to look at him. “Of course I feel for her. Who wouldn’t?”

“Me. William. Valentine. Ophelia. Victoria. You want me to keep going?”

“No. That’s quite all right.” I sighed. “You’re right, of course, but when I’m standing right in front of her – and she’s not trying to kill me or someone I love – I do feel responsible for her.” Fang me, I felt ridiculous making that absurd statement.

Vex smiled gently. “You feel responsible for people you don’t even know. You take this queen business entirely too seriously.”

I chuckled at his teasing tone. “Since you included her in your list, I gather you don’t reckon V’s behind the labs?”

“No, she’s too smart for that – and probably too afraid of human retaliation to support something so overt. But vampires are involved, whether she knows it or not, and you know what I think of them.”

Indeed. The only thing worse than a vampire was an English vampire, according to my prejudiced wolf. I suppose he had reasons for his dislike; God knows, there were several vamps I wouldn’t trust with postage. But my father was one – an English one – so there was at least a very small part of me that wanted to insist they weren’t all bad.

But who would I be trying to kid?

I flipped the sizzling, golden potatoes. “There’s nothing we can do for her at all.” I had to say it out loud to make it stick.

“Not a bloody thing.” He stuck a fork in each steak he was pan-frying and turned them over. Perfect.

“I just hope she… is ended before too many people have to get hurt.” I knew it was a lame hope, though. She’d prob ably already killed again. Special Branch was out hunting her, so that was good. Val would make certain they had the sort of weapons that could take her down.

She’d torn into me like I was nothing. I couldn’t even stop her from taking a huge bite. Would my blood be toxic to her? Or did my DNA give her immunity, just like any other goblin?

“A creature like her can’t hide for ever,” Vex commented.

If I’d done the right thing earlier, instead of taking her to the den, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Or perhaps she would have eaten her way through most of Special Branch by this point. Maybe her makers would have tracked her down.

“Wait.” I pointed the pepper mill at Vex. “All halfies have trackers implanted in them, yeah?” It was a rhetorical question, because I’d had one of the devices under my own skin until just a few months ago.

He took the pepper and twisted it over the frying pan. “You reckon they put one in her too?”

“It would be smart, wouldn’t it? Regardless of what their intentions for her were.”

Vex set the mill aside and folded his arms over his chest. “Go on, Inspector.”

I smiled absently. “We know Church was involved in these labs, and we know he was behind the assassination attempt on Victoria.” But I saved her life that night. I ruined his plans.

He leaned his hip against the counter. “All right.”

“Let’s say you’re right about why they made her. They started out studying me because they wanted to increase the aristo birth rate, but Church took it in another direction. What’s the deadliest creature on the planet?”

“Goblin. Although your bunch kind of take all the wind out of that sail, you know. They’re a pretty tame lot.”

I stared at him. He hadn’t seen what they’d done to Church. What
I
’d done to Church. “There’s a difference between civilised and tamed. Listen, the one weakness goblins have is their sensitivity to sunlight, which I don’t have. More importantly, Ali doesn’t have it. What she does have is the ability to change her appearance to avoid detection.” As good as the aristo sense of smell was, most of us ignored it unless we had need of it. No one expecting me to show up on their doorstep would think of sniffing me when they saw me.

Fuck. I really hoped they’d put a tracker in her. We needed to find her, and soon.

Vex was frowning. “Woman, you talk a lot and say nothing.”

I would have laughed if I wasn’t so preoccupied with my shiny new theory. “You think she was meant to be used against me – us – but if that was the case I don’t think her default form would be to look so much like me. Really, if you want to make some drastic change in human and aristo relations, you don’t kill the freaky goblin. If you want to knob things up, you kill the one person whose death could incite fear and uncertainty.” This wasn’t about me – well, I reckoned they were going to pin the blame on me. It had never been about me, not in the way I’d thought.

Vex’s pale eyes widened. “They’re going to kill Victoria.”

I nodded grimly, turning off the burner. The potatoes were done. “And they’re going to make it look like I did it.”

After food – not even dastardly theories could hamper my appetite – Vex and I had a drink of that delicious Scotch of his and then off to bed. I was still thinking about Ali and my suspicions. I knew there were a lot of jumps in my logic, but it felt right.

Prince Albert had supported aristo – human brotherhood. Maybe Victoria had as well – at the time. Church himself had told me that his particular affiliations believed it was time for change – time for aristos to take over. That included increasing their numbers, and getting rid of Victoria, who wanted things to remain as they had been a century earlier, who was afraid.

Church would have succeeded with his plan if I hadn’t jumped in front of that bullet.

Vex and I slipped between the sheets with full bellies and heavy heads, too tired to do anything other than snog and snuggle. That was fine by me.

He pulled me close. “Tomorrow we start training. You have to be at your best. We both do.”

I nodded, stifling a yawn. “Right.”

“And you will
never
give sanctuary to someone who has hurt me or mine again. I don’t ask for much, Xandra, but I will have your complete loyalty.”

I went still, my eyes opening.
Shit
. “Vex, I never…”