The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (32 page)

Too late.

The dart pierced my neck. I pulled it out just as another struck me in the chest. A third bit into my thigh. I managed to grab the betty around the neck with my arm, taking her down
with me and sliding the dagger between her ribs as we fell. Her eyes widened in shock and she squeezed the trigger again.

This one got me in the stomach. The betty and I stared into each other’s eyes as we crumpled to the floor in each other’s embrace. Every muscle in my body seized and seemed to turn to lead. My vision blurred as the betty’s eyes went dead. Then the world grew black.

Fuck.

My mouth tasted of aluminium, and my skin felt like a plague of bugs had burrowed in through my feet and out the top of my skull.

I’d been drugged. Hard. Probably tetracycline-laced laudanum; it was a common method of disabling halvies and aristos that didn’t do any lasting damage, but took us out of commission for varying lengths of time. I’d obviously been out long enough to be transported somewhere, because I could tell without opening my eyes that I was no longer at Freak Show.

I was on a cot–a narrow, hard one–somewhere that smelled of dirt, antiseptic, blood and fear.

And Val, I realised with a leap of my heart. This place smelled of Val.

I sat up faster than I ought and my brain rewarded me by spinning wildly against the inside of my skull. For a moment I thought I might vomit, but then the spinning slowed, and my vision cleared.

The cell I was in was the type often seen in old pirate films–a solid stone wall behind me and bars on the other three sides where my prison connected to neighbouring cells. Beyond that was a dirt-floor dungeon sort of arrangement–dimly lit and damp.

Penny was on my left, still unconscious, and on my right, standing with his hands around the bars, watching me, was Val. “Fang me,” I cried, leaping to my feet. I lurched across the floor on shaking legs, practically falling into the bars to cover his hands with mine.

“Are you all right?” I demanded.

My brother was paler than usual, dirty and perhaps a little thinner, but otherwise he appeared healthy. He nodded. “As well as can be expected. Xandy, how did they get you and Penny?”

“They told her they’d kill you if she didn’t get me to come to Freak Show.”

“Stupid brat,” he muttered. He didn’t mean it. He loved Penny, and no doubt felt responsible for her being locked up with us. I reckoned he felt responsible for me as well.

“They’d set up a meet for tomorrow night,” I told him. “I expect they thought they’d catch me by surprise.” But they hadn’t, and I wasn’t going to assume my captors were stupid enough to believe they had either. They’d got me because I’d gone in alone, thinking I could handle whatever they threw at me.

I was well aware of just how wrong an assumption that had been.

Still, I wasn’t a complete dolt. That digigram I’d sent before going into the club was to Vex and William. If I’d told Vex earlier that it was a trap, he would have tried to stop me, or
come with me. I couldn’t let him put himself in danger, and I couldn’t let him jeopardise my one chance to find Val.

So, now that I’d found him, what the hell did I do next?

“Have they hurt you?” I asked.

My brother shook his head, indigo locks falling over his forehead. He needed a shampoo–and a shower. “No. They’ve taken a lot of my blood. Made me toss off into a cup. I think I’ve been a bit of a disappointment to them really.” His dry tone almost made me smile. They hadn’t broken him.

“I got a bit of a thrashing the couple of times I tried to escape.” He eyed me carefully. “They shocked me good. Drugged me when they first nabbed me.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

“Put me out for hours. Reckon your being a gob is why you’re awake already.”

“That’s as good a guess as any.” I glanced around the dimly lit cell. “Any idea where we are?”

“None. I hear water occasionally.”

I strained my ears, searching. I could hear moaning, breathing. I could hear muffled voices, clangs and thunks–people going about their business. I could hear water, but I couldn’t hear the city.

“We’re underside. Deep.” Somewhere along the Thames, or close to one of London’s underground waterways that hadn’t dried up. Could be a sewer for all I knew. The stink of shit hung heavy in this place, but it was the kind generated within rather than without. My cell was equipped with a lovely-looking bucket designed for just that sort of thing. I was not going to shit in a bucket.

“I’m going to get us out of here,” I assured Val, but before I could ask him any more questions, the door to the dungeon
opened, and several people walked in. Human. Halvie. Aristo. Each race was represented, an unsettling fact. It seemed the one thing we all had in common was a streak of immorality.

“I told you she was awake,” said one of the human women. Like the rest of them, she wore a laboratory jacket.

“Fascinating,” remarked a halvie man. He looked to be in his forties, which meant he was probably closer to seventy. I didn’t recognise him. “Based on my calculations, she should have been out for at least another fifteen minutes.”

One of the aristos stepped forward to peer at me through the bars. It took me a moment to recognise her. It was Lady Gadling. I remembered seeing her with Church. “You cannot apply expectations to this one. She’s extremely unpredictable. And troublesome. Little more than an animal.”

I lunged at the bars. They gave slightly under the force of my body. Fangs erupted in my mouth as I snarled at her, my goblin screaming to the surface.

Lady Gadling merely backed away from my cage. She smiled, a cold twist of her pale lips. Everything about her was pale–her eyes, her hair, her skin. She had been a reputed beauty in her day, but the bitterness of her soul crept out–like the picture of Dorian Grey, except the decrepit canvas was her actual face.

“Really, Xandra. Is that any way for the daughter of a duke to behave?”

“You fucking bitch,” I snarled. “Does he know?”

A frown pulled at her smooth brow. “Vardan? Of course not. I wouldn’t trust that idiot to organise a game of whist, let alone something of this magnitude.”

“Why are you doing this?”

She smiled then–serene and yet condescending. “For my
people, of course.” Then, to the others, “Drug her and take her to exam room three. She should be ripe.”

Ripe for what? One of the humans pointed a small pistol in my direction. There was a soft
pfft
and a dart came flying through the air at me. I jerked to the left, my hand whipping out. I caught the dart and threw it back. It hit him in the neck and he went down almost instantly–a boneless sack of meat.

My triumph was short-lived. I barely had time to enjoy the look on his face before I felt stinging in my chest and thigh. I glanced down and saw two identical darts sticking out of my body. They’d got me again.

Slowly, I sank to my knees. My face hit the bars, but I barely felt it. I couldn’t feel anything but the insistent tug of gravity. Even my brain felt as though it was being pulled down. My mouth opened, but only drool came out.

I could hear Val calling my name, but I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t respond as I toppled to the floor. My skull hit the hard stone but I felt nothing. My vision blurred. I was lifted, carried from the cell and tossed on to a gurney.

My brain struggled against the paralysis, but remained impotent. What the ruddy hell had they shot me with? It wasn’t the same stuff they’d used at Freak Show; this was nothing I’d ever experienced before or ever wanted to again. I was a prisoner in my own body.

“I cannot begin to tell you how fortunate we are to have you, Alexandra,” Gadling told me. Her voice echoed in my skull. “We’ve been studying your blood for years, but to actually have you… well, it’s incredibly exciting.”

“Fuck… you,” I managed to croak.

It was a mistake. I saw the alarm on her angular face and realised I should have kept my mouth shut. “Give her more.”

Something cold and sharp pierced my left arm, and then a flood of warmth rushed through my veins. They’d filled me with more of the paralysing drug.

At the end of the corridor they opened a large door and took me through. I stared at the stone ceiling and ancient lights, unable to even blink.

Finally I was taken to a room with white walls and bright lights that hurt my eyes. Hands roamed over me, removing my clothes. My legs were spread apart and something thin and cold slid inside me. What were they doing to me? I felt like I’d been slipped that rape drug I’d heard about, and was now being violated. I could hear them talking, but only certain words cut through the fog in my head.

“… only three… viable… good enough…”

My head rolled as I forced my lids open. Feeling slowly returned to my extremities, prickles of sensation. This time I did not mention it.

Across the room was a halvie male strapped to a similar table. I blinked. It couldn’t be. I tried to lift my head as the pounding of my heart cleared the haze from my eyes. “Rye?”

“She’s coming out of it!”

I pulled against the restraints pinning me to the table. I managed to snap one before I felt the bite of a syringe in the side of my neck. For one second I saw him clearly–thin and worn and not at all as I remembered, but I knew it was him. I would know him anywhere.

And then he was gone and so was everything else.

“Is she dead?” The question seemed to bounce off the inside of my skull like an echo through a cavern.

“No, I’m not fucking dead,” I muttered with a scowl. The words were thick in my mouth and my head throbbed with the effort it took to frown. Slowly–very slowly–I opened my eyes, blinking against the film across my vision. At least the lighting in my cell was blessedly dim. I turned away from the brightness in the corridor beyond, and felt my brain slide to the other side of my head.

Whatever they had drugged me with had been powerful stuff, but it was starting to wear off, just as it had in the operating theatre. A little blood would sort me out.

Wwidth="27">
Slowly, I pushed myself upright. They hadn’t even taken me to my bed, just dumped me on the cold floor of my cell. I hadn’t pissed myself, so that was good, but I needed to, badly. Looked like I was headed for the bucket after all.

I sat still for a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass before glancing to my right and then my left. Val and Penny watched me with almost identical expressions–only Penny had mascara and eyeliner running down her pale cheeks. Her wig was askew as well. I might have laughed at it if our situation was different.

They turned their backs while I used the bucket, bless them.

Hitching up my bloomers–which had thankfully been put back on me–I turned to Val. “How long was I out?”

“Ten minutes? Fifteen tops. Where did they take you?”

“I don’t know.” It was as distant as a dream, but the twinge in my abdomen was not–a slight cramping. “Fang me.” Bits of memory came flooding back. They’d put something inside me. What? And had they left something behind or taken something out? They’d mentioned something being viable.
And the duchess had called me ripe. That made me think of fertility.

Albert’s fangs. Had they tried to impregnate me?

I was
not
a fucking laboratory rat. And I was not about to let them use my body as a bloody incubator for Christ knows what.

I rose to my feet, weaving slightly, but regaining more and more of my equilibrium. Rage began to churn in my stomach, the heightened emotion gnawing at the lethargy forced into my blood. I went to Penny.

“Give me your arm.”

Her smudged eyes widened. “Why?”

“If I’m going to get us out of here, I need blood. You’re going to give me some.” It wasn’t the nicest way to ask, but I figured we were beyond worry about delicate sensibilities.

Fear wafted off her like the scent of vanilla from a warm cake. Saliva flooded my mouth and my fangs itched to slide free. I had to be careful or I’d tear into her.

“Please, Pen. I need your help.”

She slid her arm through the bars. I seized it and quickly sank my fangs into her wrist, ignoring her little cry. All those stories about vampire bites being pleasurable were based in reality. There is an enzyme in the saliva of all halvies, aristos and goblins that mingles with the blood when our fangs pierce flesh and turns what should be pain into sensual delight.