God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (28 page)

But what if they were right?

My mother must have seen my confusion, because she chose that moment to take pity on me. “Go a few days without the supplements and see how you feel.”

“I feel like tearing someone’s throat out when I don’t take them.”

The corners of her lips tucked in a grim parody of a smile. “That will go away. It’s withdrawal. It may get worse before it gets better, but you’ll be all right. You won’t be a wreck for long.”

Speaking of wrecked … “I almost forgot.” I smiled brightly at Dede and Ophelia as I stuck my hand into my coat pocket. “Next time you want to search my house, just ask.”

They both protested, but I tossed Dede the earring Avery had found. Her cheeks flushed dark red as she caught it and realised what it was. “Sloppy,” I told her.

She looked me dead in the eye. “You would have done the same.”

“Sure I would have, but I would have made certain I didn’t leave any trace of myself behind.” I glanced at Ophelia. “And I wouldn’t send in a distraction.”

She stiffened and met my gaze but remained silent. She wasn’t sorry either. I tried to remember that she had just lost someone she loved, but even that didn’t make me feel charitable towards her.

“What were you looking for anyway?”

“Information on what happened to Raj,” Dede replied.

“Right, because I turned him over to the … the what exactly? A secret organisation of aristos that I’m somehow privy to?”

Dede lifted her chin. “To Church.”

I’d come close to turning her over to Church. “Why would I do that?”

She shrugged. “Everyone always thought there was something between you two. You worship him and its plain he has a thing for you. He always gave you good grades.”

I stepped forward, temper raised to a point that it threatened to blow the top of my fool head off. “I earned those grades, you selfish cow. I am not fucking Church.”

“No,” Ophelia jumped in. “Why settle for a low-level vampire when you can fuck the alpha.”

My fist whipped out and caught her in the jaw – opposite the bruised side. “Now you can have a matched set,” I snarled. My mother stepped forward and wrapped strong fingers around my wrist, forcing my fist down. “I wish the three of you would stop acting like feral cats tossed into a sack. And I wish you wouldn’t talk like you were born in a gutter. Did you not learn any decorum at Courtesan House?”

The three of us each lowered our eyes in shame. Juliet continued, “Trust has to be earned and rightfully given by all of us. Alexandra has reasons to be wary of our cause just as we will be wary of her, but the lies and subterfuge stop here.”

I arched a brow. “Is that so?”

Her expression was fierce as she sharply dipped her head. “You need to sort out for yourself which side you’re on. All I ask is that you be as careful in the company of aristos as you are with us, and extend to us the same discretion you offer them. Find out for yourself what they’re keeping from you and why. Meanwhile, give us a chance to prove ourselves.”

I couldn’t really argue with that. If this insurrectionary lot proved to be full of shit, I could always turn them in, or at least set Special Branch on to them. There was a part of me that wanted it to end that way, and another part that hoped for all the wrong reasons that Dede wasn’t a traitor.

“Agreed,” I said, rising to my feet. “Anything else?”

Ophelia stepped up – big surprise. “You really don’t know anything about Raj’s murder?”

I shook my head. “I wish I did.” I meant it. “Either you’ve got a traitor in your ranks” – what did one call a traitor amongst traitors? – “or someone’s on to you. Whichever, you’re not safe.” I might not like what they were up to, but I didn’t want to see any of them killed, especially not Dede.

And not myself.

I turned to my mother. Now I knew why she looked more like an older sister. “You’ll let me know when you get the results of the blood work?” If it had just been the two of us, I would have told her what Simon had said about the vial, but I wasn’t keen on giving Ophelia more “freak” ammunition to use on me. And I didn’t want them to see how responsible I felt for Simon’s disappearance.

She nodded, her expression soft but honest. “I will.” And then she gave me her rotary number – which I memorised because she wouldn’t write it down. “As soon as you get a new one, let me know so I’ll be able to contact you.”

I shouldn’t have done it. If I was caught … but it didn’t matter. I had to follow this through. No turning back now. For better or for worse the traitors were all I had.

Amazingly, the next two days passed quietly as I tried to distract myself from wondering if there was indeed something drastically wrong with me thanks to my mother’s metamorphosis – didn’t Bedlam have their own laboratory? – and if poor Simon was alive. I considered calling Val, but my brother was likely to ask questions I didn’t want to answer. Plus, I didn’t want him to get into any trouble because of me.

Fortunately, Vex was back from Scotland and proved to be a delightful diversion. I’d given up the supplements and Ophelia was right – it was hard. I kept to home because I could smell the blood all around me, and wanted to punch anything that got in my way. It was like a horrid case of PMS but I wanted to eat people instead of chocolate. No wonder they gave us the supplements. It would be bloody hard to concentrate without them. How did aristos do it?

The night before, while in bed with Vex, I bit him – with fang.
He seemed to like it, and God knows I did. We were both a little like animals at that moment and he tasted like heaven on my tongue – warm and alive.

“I’m sorry,” I told him afterwards, wiping a spot of blood from his neck. The wounds had already begun to heal, thanks to his metabolism. Normally the vamp enzymes in my saliva would cause blood to thin rather than clot – not dangerously so, but just enough to make feeding easier.

Broad shoulders shrugged as he grinned at me. “Didn’t hear me complaining, did you?”

No, I hadn’t. Still, didn’t he find it weird? He had to know most halvies didn’t go around biting people. He must wonder why I’d stopped taking the pills all halvies were prescribed and mandated to take.

“Ah,” Vex said. “There you go.”

I glanced up at him. “What?”

He shook his head. “I thought I had you this time, but you just slipped away on me again.”

I really was a shit. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so distracted lately.”

He merely nodded and pulled me close, so that my head nestled against his warm chest. “You miss your sister.”

I did, but Dede took up less and less of my thoughts as of late. I didn’t want to be a freak, didn’t want to lie to people I cared about – or worse, suspect them of conspiring against me. The more I thought about the things I’d seen and heard at Bedlam, the more I doubted my own perceptions of right and wrong. I needed an anchor.

“I gave someone a sample of my blood to analyse and now he’s missing,” I blurted, hesitantly raising my head.

Vex went still. “Who?”

“Simon Halstead.”

“The kid the Yard’s looking for?”

I nodded. “He disappeared after he rang me to say he had the results of my blood work.”

Storm-blue eyes locked with mine. “What did he say?”

“Nothing.” I wasn’t about to reveal everything. I wasn’t that mental. “I went to meet him and he was gone. There was blood on the wall.”

A deep scowl cleaved his brow. “Xandra, I want you to be careful. Very careful. Do you understand?”

“Not in the least,” I replied honestly. “I don’t understand much of anything any more, so you’re going to have to give me a bit more than that.”

Vex lifted himself up on his elbow. I shifted so I could better look at him. “You remember how I told you that there were certain parties interested in other halvies – including you?” When I nodded, he continued, “There are seven that I know of. Three out of those seven half-bloods are missing. Disappeared without a trace.”

Cold raced down my spine, chilling each vertebra. “And the other four?”

“One’s in Bedlam, one’s dead, one is going about his business as usual and the last one is you.”

Fang me. “Is the dead one my sister Dede?” I don’t know why I asked, only that I had to ask it.

His expression changed. Resignation flashed in his eyes. He didn’t want to trust me any more than I thought I should trust him, but for some reason we did trust one another. “I think we both know Dede is the one in Bedlam.”

If he’d confessed to wanting to wear my underwear I couldn’t have been more shocked. “You knew?”

He nodded. “Fee told me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I knew he had been keeping things, but I hadn’t expected this. It … hurt. And it irritated me.

“Because I didn’t think it was a good idea. I’m still not sure it was.”

“You could have told me.” I couldn’t help wondering if maybe I’d been used after all.

“The dead one is my son,” he said suddenly, effectively punching my anger in the face.

I sat up. “Your son? But you’ve never … Have you?” Everyone always talked about the fact that Vex had yet to get married, had yet to produce any halvie offspring.

“She wasn’t a courtesan,” he replied, voice low and rough. “She was part of a family who had worked for mine for decades.”

“She had plagued blood.” I was master of the obvious, because that was the only way this sort of thing happened. Somewhere in that woman’s family tree was a noble bastard – probably more than one. “What happened to her?” I really didn’t want to know. She might still be out there. Fuck. Vex had a kid.

“I don’t know. Her family abandoned her for having a half-blood. She left the boy with me and then fled the country. Duncan – my son – never forgave me for the fact that he was an outcast.”

Halvies without registered courtesan mothers were considered odd, but they were hardly outcasts. My brain took a leap: the hospital records Ophelia stole. Whoever ‘they’ were, they were interested in us because we aren’t the same as other halvies. “He was different?”

Vex nodded. “He looked like a half-blood, and had all the markers of one, but he could transform into a wolf.”

“Albert’s fangs.” I gaped at him. “That’s incredible.” And up until recently I would have said it was impossible.

“He was.” He smiled – it was both sad and sweet, and it broke my heart. “He disappeared shortly before his eighteenth birthday. Three weeks later his body was found in an alley in Whitechapel. They’d used silver on him. They’d … done things.”

I thought of the halvies in Bedlam. “Experiments?”

“Aye. He must have put up a fight. The wounds that killed him weren’t medical, they were defensive. They shot him full of silver and cut off his head.”

Oh fuck
. The thought of Vex having to see that made my stomach heave. I put my hand on his arm. This revelation made up for not telling me he knew about Dede and then some. I’d been making this whole mess just about me, and it was about so much more. Realising that made me feel as though I wasn’t so alone. “I’m so sorry.”

He nodded, the sadness in his eyes gone in a blink, replaced by something hard and cold. “I swore I’d find the bastards who took him. I’d been told it was humans, but something didn’t smell right. I let it go because I felt guilty, but then I’d catch wind of halvies disappearing. I saw some of the ones in Bedlam. When Ophelia told me about your sister’s situation, I let her steal Duncan’s file. She took a stack so it wouldn’t be so obvious what we were after. I wasn’t surprised to discover yours was one of the flimsy ones.”

“My sister?” One thing at a time. My brain couldn’t keep up. “Dede?”

Another nod. “She believes the child she had with Ainsley is similar to Duncan.”

I closed my eyes.
Oh Dede. You poor demented …
Wait. My default with Dede was to assume she was hatters, but what if she really wasn’t? What if she was right? That in itself sounded completely mental, but so far the world was spinning backwards on its axis, so why not entertain the notion? That I could think of, Vex had no reason to lie. I couldn’t keep telling myself that everyone telling me these things were hatters and go ignorantly on my way.

Fang me. What if Dede had been telling the truth and we all treated her like a demented idiot?

I’d think about that later. “Why weren’t you surprised to find my files missing?”

“Because you’re different. You’re not quite a half-blood. You’re not aristo, though. Your scent is a combination of wolf and vampire, and something wild. I don’t know what you are.”

Well that made two of us, only he didn’t seem all that worried about it. I was. His son was dead, and he knew Dede wasn’t. He knew more than I ever could have imagined.

“You know about my mother.”

He nodded. “I’m not with you because of her – or any of this.”

I wanted to believe him. I really did. Time would tell. I didn’t think I was in any danger from him – not physically – and it seemed we had a fledgling trust going on. I had confided in him more than I had even in Church. I didn’t want to be wrong about him, but I wouldn’t put all of my faith into him just yet. Still, he’d told me things I never could have found out on my own, and that was reason to keep him close.