The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (33 page)

That I might be turning Penny on was not something I wanted to contemplate.

I took about half a pint, chugging the sweet, coppery stuff like a uni student with a cheap bottle of wine. Then I let her go, despite the desire to drink until she ran dry, and went to Val. I didn’t have to ask. My brother offered his arm willingly. I took a bit less from him, because he was already weak.

The blood gave me strength and energy, overpowering the remaining drugs in my system. I walked over to the sliding iron door and gripped the bars in both hands.

“They’re too strong,” Val said. “Even if you could escape your cell, they’d see you.” He nodded behind me.

I looked, and saw a security camera in the corner of the corridor ceiling. From the angle of it, I reckoned it kept tabs on the entire length of the cell block.

Correction–it was trained on thetrathe floor and the cell doors of the entire block. What it didn’t watch was the ceiling and the back half of the cells.

I let go of the bars and walked to the back of my prison, then over to the bars separating me and Val. I ran for the opposite wall as fast as I could and leaped into the air, catching the bars near the top and bringing my feet up so the soles of my boots could catch against the metal.

“What the sweet bloody hell are you doing?” Penny asked.

I glanced down at her. “Hopefully getting us out of here.” I knew from sneaking into Bedlam after Dede that I could climb like a spider. My strength and agility had increased since going off the supplements I’d been made to take to keep up the ruse that I was just a half-blood, so it was fairly easy for me to support my weight and creep sideways towards the front of the cell.

When I was close enough, I pressed my feet against one of the bars, so that I was holding my body parallel to the floor. I pushed, and the bar bent. It took a couple of tries, but it finally bowed. I repeated this process with the bar next to it, pushing it in the opposite direction, until I had a space just big enough for me to crawl through.

“Girl, you are one freaky-arsed bitch,” Penny said. I might have imagined the awe I heard in her voice.

I grinned. Outside the cell, I clung to the beams and metal bits that ran along the ceiling, and crept towards the security camera. I hung above it like an insect, my right hand and knees keeping me suspended as I reached down and grabbed the electrical wires running into the camera. I pulled.

Sparks flew, but I succeeded in not getting burned or electrocuted. As soon as the red light on the device went out, I dropped to the floor, landing in a crouch. If I was lucky, the security folks would assume the issue was a short, or a logic engine error. They would attempt to fix it from their work-station rather than come down here.

If I was unlucky, I had a precious few moments to do… something.

I ran down the corridor. Halvies shouted at me as I passed, all crying out for me to release them. The one goblin barked–as though it had forgotten how to speak.

There had to be a control panel for the doors. If I could find it, I could set them all free.

My focus jumped track when I reached the last cell. His scent overpowered me–not just because he smelled terrible, but because underneath the stench, he smelled of a sweet memory from years ago.

I stopped, practically tripping over my feet. The shouts of my fellow prisoners echoed around me, but I ignored them all. I stood close to the bars, peering in at the man crouched in the darkened corner.

“Rye?”

His head lifted. His bronze hair was way too long, and matted. His face was covered with stubble, and his clothes were nothing more than hospital scrubs. His feet were bare and dirty, but his eyes gleamed gold.

He growled at me.

“Rye, it’s me. Xandra.”

He tilted his head back and sniffed the air, then stared at me with those lupine eyes once more. This time the growl started lower in his chest. Slowly, he leaned forward, moving towards me on his fingertips and toes like a four-legged creature. Then he was at the bars, and only that iron separated us.

Did he even recognise me? Had they succeeded in ruining him?

"-1"izethat ironXandra?” His voice was hoarse–rusty–but so very much as I remembered. My throat clenched at the wonder with which he said my name. And when he reached out to touch his dirty fingers to my cheek, I didn’t flinch.

“It’s me,” I said, hot, embarrassing tears stinging the backs of my eyes. I reached up and wrapped my hand around his, holding both against my cheek. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“There’s no escape,” he whispered. “No getting out.”

At that moment the door to my left slid open, and the Duchess Vardan walked in. I couldn’t remember her Christian name. I’m sure I’d heard it once, but my father never referred to her by name, only by her title or as his wife.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, but I already knew. As soon as she walked through that door it all fell into place inside my head, like some kind of terrible jigsaw puzzle. Of course she was involved. Who else besides my father could know so much about his children? Who could make certain he didn’t know anything other than what he was supposed to?

Who else would take pleasure in torturing his bastards?

“Alexandra,” she said
with that cruel smile as she pointed a
pistol at my chest. “Look at you, out of your cell and looking positively feral. You gave them quite a scare earlier, but fortunately you were easy to subdue once more. In the future we’ll have to remember how quickly you metabolise substances. No harm done, we got what we wanted from you.”

From
me. Did that mean they hadn’t left something inside?

“I’m going to kill you,” I promised her.

Her smile turned mocking. With her perfect blonde hair and painted red lips she looked like the model of nobility, but there was nothing noble about her. “That’s sweet. However, I really don’t think it’s a realistic goal for you to set at this point, or ever for that matter.”

As she spoke, a red light began to flash on the wall behind her head. She glanced at it with a frown. Then a voice crackled from a speaker in the back of my cell. “Attention, there has been a security breach in sectors C and F. The facility is on immediate lock—Arghhhhhh!” I winced, my eardrums cringing under the scream, but over the top of it I’d heard a familiar growl.

Goblins.

The duchess looked worried now, as she ought.

Her distraction was my advantage. I wrapped my fingers around the pistol in her hand and bent the barrel just enough to ensure the thing wouldn’t shoot. She looked at me, then at it in shock.

And then she hit me in the face with it. My head snapped back, but I didn’t stagger. She was strong, but she knew nothing about how to throw a punch.

It was my honour to instruct her, and I hit her hard enough that I felt her front teeth give beneath my knuckles. She fell back against the door, but didn’t stay there. She came at me snarling and spitting blood. I ducked her fist and hit her again–this time in the nose.

I don’t know which of us was more surprised when there was a buzzing noise and the doors to all the cells slid ope1"izose.n. But she was the one who took off at a dead run, through the door she’d come through moments earlier. I would have
gone after her, but I wasn’t going anywhere without Val, and Penny.

And Rye, who was staring at the open cell like he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

I held my hand out to him. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

At the same time, the door to the cell block burst open and in ran two of the most gorgeous creatures I’d ever seen–a huge wolf-man and a lean, snarling goblin–Vex and William. They were bloodied, snarling and beautiful.

I dropped my hand and ran to my wolf. Vex grabbed me and hugged me so tight I thought I might break. I didn’t care that he was covered in blood, because none of it was his. “We have to get out, now,” he told me. “The alarm triggered a security protocol.”

“What kind?” By this time Penny and Val had joined us–other prisoners as well. God, there were so many, and that was only in this block. When I saw the old female goblin limp out into the corridor, something tightened in my chest. My own goblin responded by rushing to the surface so fast I couldn’t even prepare for it. Some of the prisoners drew back in fear, but that old goblin came right for me and placed her paws on either side of my head, rasping something in a language I didn’t understand. Gaelic, maybe? And how old did she have to be to look so ancient? Given the timeline of the plague mutations, she couldn’t be more than a couple of hundred years old, but she looked much more than that, especially when compared to William.

“Lady of the Light, she calls you,” William informed me proudly. “Great honour she bestows.”

I could have asked who she was or how he knew this, but Vex began herding us towards the exit. “Out, all of you. Pretty
soon this place will fill with a mixture of poisonous gases and tetracycline. If we don’t get out now, we might never.”

He grabbed my arm and I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of Rye. No sign of bronze hair, no familiar green eyes. I tugged free. “Vex, I can’t.”

I was met with a fierce scowl, made even more ferocious by his lupine countenance. “Why the hell not?”

Bodies pushed past me as Val leaped into copper mode and began taking charge of the evacuation. William handed the matron goblin to a younger one who had appeared to help lead the prisoners out. The young one draped a cloak over the old woman, and offered her a pair of dark glasses to protect her squinting eyes.

“Rye is here,” I said in a low voice.

Vex’s mouth tightened. “Where?”

“Last cell down.”

“Come on.” He grabbed my hand and started in that direction. His hand felt huge around mine, and slightly furry. He wore a large black shirt that hadn’t ripped at the seams during transformation. I wondered if he’d planned for that. And then I wondered why the hell I was wondering. This place had mucked me up.

William flanked me. Apparently neither he nor Vex was about to let me out of their sight.

“Took you both long enough to get here,” I commented drily.

The prince licked blood from his muzzle. “Saw the lady taken on security screen. Got licence of vehicle. Called for the MacLaughlin and tracked our lady with the wolves and city cameras.”

A smile I had no inclination to fight curved my lips. “I knew you’dI kghlin an come.”

A halvie wearing a laboratory jacket came through the door at the end of the corridor. He had an axe taken from the fire station raised above his head, and screamed as though he were an ancient Celt tearing across the battlefield. William slapped him with the back of his hand and sent the stupid tosser flying into the wall, where he landed in a twisted heap.

Rye was still there–crouched inside his cell. He looked bewildered and afraid. The sight was enough to bring tears to my eyes, but we hadn’t time for that.

“Rye? I need you to come with me, love. I’m taking you home.”

He turned his face towards me, pale and wide-eyed. “Really?”

“Really, but you have to come with us now. Can you walk?”

He laughed–a bitter, dry sound. “Dunno, but I can crawl. They made me do it enough.”

A sob built in my throat, but I swallowed it down. I hadn’t lost it yet and I wasn’t about to now, not when it mattered most. I didn’t have to say a word. Vex came into the cell and put an arm around Rye’s back. Rye’s own arm went around Vex’s shoulders. “Come on, son. Let’s get you home.”

Rye teetered when his bare feet hit the ground. When his knees buckled, Vex gave up on pretence and picked him up in his arms. “We have to go. Now.”

William led the way back through the cell block and out of the door. We ran up a flight of stairs, red lights strobing in the corners. A recorded voice announced that the primary defence system would commence in four minutes. That must be the murderous cocktail Vex had mentioned.

As we reached the next floor, I realised where we were. The
bloody Tower. The Tower of London. There was something strangely poetic yet incredibly twisted about that fact.

Four goblins and five weres ran towards us from the opposite direction, carrying bits of electronics and logic engines. Two vampires swept down behind them. One of them was the Earl of Stoke. The other was my father’s duchess. Stoke raised a crossbow and pointed at the back of one of the goblins–it was Elsbeth.

What happened next was like something out of a film. William let loose a terrible roar, and dropped to all fours, shifting into something that was still goblin but much more terrifying. It was a creature made of muscle, tooth and claw, and it moved faster than anything I’d ever seen. One moment he was at my side; the next he was on Stoke in a snarling frenzy. Blood sprayed as the earl screamed. The duchess bolted for the exit along with the others. I lunged after her, catching her just at the threshold in a chokehold.

“Let me go!” she shouted. I squeezed her throat between my forearm and bicep, heedless of how she clawed at my arm, drawing blood.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” I warned. “Or I give you to the prince.” That shut her up.