The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (37 page)

The funeral was the next night. I didn’t want to go, but there was no getting out of it. It was my duty, and I’d been taught that appearance was more important than reality. I had to act the dedicated child, else it looked bad for my father and for me. Wouldn’t be seemly of me to embarrass the family.

So I decked myself out in a proper black gown with a skirt of feathers, and hat complete with veil, and let Vex drive me to the church, where I sat and listened to people blatantly lie about how wonderful the duchess was. Then we went to the Vardan crypt in Kensal Green.

I went inside afterwards, but not to pay my respects to the duchess.

There was a fine layer of dust on Dede’s coffin. I wiped away as much of it as I could, soiling my gloves. I didn’t speak–there was nothing to say. I just stood there and stared at the box that held what was left of my sister until I couldn’t stand to look at it any longer.

Vex was waiting when I came out. I let Avery and Val take our father home and didn’t try to invite myself along. I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a fork than spend another minute watching him mourn, or listen to him speculate as to what his wife might have planned to do to me.

Earlier today I’d gone to a gynae doctor Ophelia had suggested for an exam. Apparently everything looked normal, but I was becoming increasingly aware of just what a relative term that was. At least I knew they hadn’t left anything in there.

If the duchess and her butchers had taken eggs from me, they were still in the laboratory, which was now being ripped into by Special Branch. Whatever embarrassment might be caused by the thought of Val or one of his cronies seeing my harvested bits was mitigated by relief that the duchess wouldn’t be able to do anything with them.

Of course the duchess wouldn’t be doing anything at all–not any more.

“Okay?” Vex asked as I approached.

I nodded, and we left the cemetery hand in hand.

Vex drove. The press had cleared out, no doubt chasing my father like a flock of vultures after a zombie. The duchess’s death had been all over today’s tabloids, which of course was all the prompting they needed to dredge up Dede’s death as well. And my being a goblin. One paper even speculated that the duchess’s death was related to Churchill’s disappearance.

The Human League had been in the news as well. Someone
had dumped a lorryful of dead rats in front of the gates of Buckingham Palace. I had no idea how they’d managed it, but they’d done it at night, when the guards would be less diligent. No one expected humans to be brazen enough to attack in the dark, when there was more chance of immediate retribution.

It was little more than a student prank, but it sent a message.

So did the press vehicles, lights and picketers outside my house.

“What the bloody hell?” I asked.

Vex slowed down. The narrow drive that led behind my place was blocked. I was tempted to tell him to turn around, but that wasn’t really an option. He parked the Panther and I stepped out.

“There she is!”

Bright lights swung in my direction as I approached. I held up a hand to shield my eyes. This would be the perfect time for some fanatic to plug me full of silver and tetracycline.

“Lady Xandra, how do you respond to recent allegations that you were among the full-bloods found conducting experiments on half-bloods and humans at the Tower of London?”

I squinted at the woman holding a microphone in my face. She was of Indian descent, polished and impeccably put together in a peplum suit. “I beg your pardon?”

“Witnesses say that both you and the Lord Alpha were at the scene.”

I frowned. “And because I was there, I automatically have to be a villain, right?”

The reporter looked confused. “You’re saying you rescued those poor creatures?”

Creatures? “No. I’m saying that the MacLaughlin and the prince rescued them.”

She obviously wasn’t interested in hearing about that. “What about reports that you attacked human boys at the local Southern Fried Chicken shack?”

I actually had to think about that–so much had happened since. “Those boys were harassing a teenage girl.”

“Don’t you think it’s rather unfair of someone with your strength and speed to pick on a young boy?”

“No more unfair than for a group of young men to pick on a lone girl.” I met her gaze, daring her to challenge me.

She gave me a chiding look. “Really? I wager you could have thrashed each and every one of them.”

She was not going to get me with this. “What do you reckon they were going to do to her if they had a chance?”

“Nothing like what a goblin could do.”

Someone in the background yelled, “Go home, freak!”

I looked into the camera. “Those boys walked out of the restaurant. I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Not even Lord Churchill?”

I forced myself to remain calm. “Not even.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

“Didn’t you recently kill a man outside the club called Freak Show?”

Vex cut in. “This interview is over. Her Majesty has nothing more to say.”

People started shouting at me as we approached the building. A rock sailed by my head, so close I could feel the breeze. Another smashed the front window. A cheer went up.

“Look out for pitchforks,” I told Vex drily.

He didn’t look amused. “Get inside. Now. This is going to turn ugly.”

“Monster!” a man shouted.

“Killer!” This time a woman. “Get out of our neighbourhood!”

Something struck me hard on the temple, knocking my head to the side. I looked down, and through the stars blurring my vision saw a brick, glistening with blood, fall to the pavement. Wetness trickled down the side of my face.

I didn’t think. I gave into instinct and my goblin came rushing to the surface with a growl that tore through the noise of the crowd and brought silence raining down.

Lights burned my sensitive eyes. Blood ran down my neck from the gash by my eye, and I stood my ground, waiting for the first one to come at me. I was ready for them, and I would fight, even as the knowledge that it was futile washed over me.

For the first time in my entire life I was suddenly aware of just why the full-bloods were so afraid of humans. They were many and we were few. I could take on a handful of them and win. With Vex by my side the odds went up, but there had to be at least fifty people gathered in front of my house, armed with lights and God only knew what else.

Strength in numbers. That was what they had that we didn’t. And the overwhelming arrogance that we were the monsters.

The woman reporter was there again, her companion shoving his camera in my face–a good close-up of the monster for the folks at home. I closed my fingers over the lens and squeezed until it shattered against my palm.

The reporter gasped. Vex grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the house. Another rock sailed by, followed by a bottle.

“Get her!” someone shouted.

The entire mob surged forward. Albert’s fangs, this was not how I thought I was going to die.

“Stop!” Suddenly a young man shoved in front of me, blocking the crowd’s path. It was David.

“Get out of the way, son,” said a man with a cricket bat. Seriously? Did he just walk about with the thing? Because it seemed to me that perhaps he’d come to my house
looking
for a fight. And weren’t there laws against this sort of thing? Where the hell were the police? Oh, there was one at the back of the crowd. Watching. I wasn’t in the West End. No one was going to come to my rescue here.

Except for a scrawny kid.

“She’s not a monster,” David yelled at them. I wished then that I hadn’t busted the camera–this was something I wouldn’t mind the good people of London seeing on the box tonight.

Fortunately, there was another camera. Joy. Why did they need lights that were brighter than the bloody sun?

“Shut up!” screamed the kid when the crowd disagreed with his assessment of my nature. They fell silent, shocked by the violence of his outburst. “She saved me,” he informed them, voice now harsh and dry. I watched his gaze dart around the crowd. “I got into trouble–the sort I couldn’t get m’self out of. She found me. If it weren’t for her I wouldn’t be alive right now, and those guys she were said to have roughed up? They would have done a lot worse to that girl. She”–his thumb jerked in my direction–“ain’t done nothing wrong.”

The mob didn’t seem to know what to do with this information. I watched them glance at each other in confusion. It was clear that they didn’t know how to react to a human kid singing the praises of one of the very monsters he’d been taught to fear his entire life.

It might have been coincidence, or perhaps he had simply
been waiting for the right time to assert himself, but that was when the copper at the back yelled, “All right, people, let’s break this up then! Time to get back to your homes.” He and a female partner that I hadn’t noticed earlier began herding the crowd away from the building. Reluctantly, the humans did as they were told.

I have to admit, I breathed a sigh of relief. Fear wasn’t an emotion I felt very often–especially not where my own personal safety was concerned–but I’d felt it too many times in the last few days.

I was not going to live my life like this. There was an old saying about dancing with the devil you knew. I was beginning to think I was better off taking my chances with the Marlborough House set, as the haughtiest of aristos had once been known.

“Thank you,” I said
to David.

He turned to face me. I noticed the reporter still had the camera on us as she backed away. I hoped she stepped out into the street and got clipped by a taxi.

“It’s not safe for you here any more,” he said, face pale and drawn. He had a black eye and I wondered if he’d got that from Ainsley or because he’d defended me to the wrong person.

“Looks like it’s not safe for you either.”

He shrugged. “I’ll be all right, but you… you should go. The League’s been around here lately stirring people up. If I was you, I’d get out.”

It was sound advice. I nodded, and offered him my hand. He accepted the handshake and then took off across the street. The reporter stopped him on the other side.

“Can you call some of the pack, do you think?” I asked Vex as we went into the house.

“It might be a good idea to have some extra bodies on guard duty tonight, just in case.”

I stared at the broken glass all over the floor of the bar area. I was going to owe my landlord for that. “I don’t want guards. I want them to help me move.” I glanced over my shoulder at him. “For once, I’m going to do the smart thing and get the hell out of here.”

I wasn’t joking. By dawn I’d packed up all my belongings and had them carted off to storage, thanks to a group of enthusiastic halvies who wanted to please their alpha. Fee was one of them. I was happy to hear that she and Rye were getting on okay, and that not only was there a room for him at Bedlam, but also a counsellor who would help overcome the trauma of having been a prisoner for so many years.

The thought of it made my chest hurt. If the duchess were alive I’d beat her senseless for the part she’d played in his torture–and would have played in mine. The field day the press was having with her suicide made it a little easier to stomach.

Of course, the press was also having a field day with me. By the time the morning papers hit–just as I was about to leave Leicester Square–my face was all over them. My
goblin
face. I didn’t even recognise myself at first.

Vex peered over my shoulder at the copy I held taut in my hands. “I think you look sexy,” he commented with a grin.

I tossed the rag on the step where I’d found it. “Thanks.” I thought I looked… horrifying. By this evening it would be my face human children–and some halvie–would think of when their parents warned them of the monsters lurking in the dark corners of London.

I shouldn’t care. I generally liked being thought of as scary and intimidating because it kept people out of my way, but last night I’d realised that fear was a powerful motivator for hate.