CHAPTER NINETEEN
How to Retire to the Countryside
Chancellor Neshi nodded, once, to the ancient queen. At his signal, Matakara bent forward, opening her mouth wide. Unlike Countess Nadasdy, she didn’t appear to need any kind of drinking cup for preparation. Her fangs, Alexia noted, were particularly long—her makers even longer than her feeders. Perhaps it was a factor of her age. Perhaps when queens got too old, all they could do was try to make a replacement queen. Perhaps that was the problem: Matakara needed to breed more than she needed to eat. She had been kept alive long past that time. Her hive should have been doing nothing but giving her girls to try to change over, thought Alexia. Then again, she probably would have gone through a large number of girls that way. Local authorities wouldn’t have been too chuffed.
The ancient vampire sank both sets of fangs deep into the flesh of Ivy’s already-lacerated neck. Matakara could not move her arms to hold Ivy. She kept herself attached by the strength of her jaw and with the aid of the straps that held Ivy against her. The queen’s dark eyes, visible over the fall of Ivy’s black hair, had lost a little of their eternal sorrow and looked almost contemplative. She moved not one muscle as she sucked, except that like Countess Nadasdy, there was a strange up-and-down fluttering in her emaciated neck.
Ivy Tunstell remained limp for a very long time. Everyone in that room held their breath, waiting. Except Conall, of course, who paced around growling at people. The earl had very little sense of gravity in any given situation.
Then Ivy’s whole body jerked and her eyes popped open, wide, startled, looking directly at Alexia. She began to scream. Tunstell made a lunge toward her but one of the other vampires grabbed him and held him back. Ivy’s pupils dilated, darkening and extending outward until both her eyeballs were a deep bloodred.
Alexia knew what came next. Ivy’s eyes would begin to bleed, and she would continue to scream until those screams became garbled by the blood pouring from her mouth. Of course Ivy doesn’t have excess soul! Stupid of me to even think it.
Except that Ivy’s eyes did not start to drip blood. Instead, the darkness in them began to recede, until eventually they were the velvety brown of her true self. Ivy stopped screaming, closed her eyes, and began to jerk violently from side to side as though undergoing a kind of fit. Her copious dark ringlets bobbed about her face and her tiny admiral’s cap gave up its grip upon her hair—after enduring so much during the battle—and tumbled to the floor, its white plume sagging sadly.
Ivy opened her mouth once more, but not to scream this time. Oh, there was blood dripping out, but it was blood from the fangs, four of them, as they broke through her gums and extended forth, shining in the candlelight. Ivy’s face, already fashionably pale, became ashen white. Her hair took on an even bouncier and glossier sheen, and she opened her eyes once more. With a tiny shrug, she threw off the thick leather and metal straps, snapping them easily as if they were no more than gossamer silk. She leaped down from the throne to land, light and easy on the floor of the chamber.
She lisped around her new teeth, “What an odd sethathion. Tunny dathling, did I faint? Oh, my hath!” Bending, she retrieved her admiral’s hat and popped it firmly back upon her head.
Behind her, Queen Matakara looked even more sunken and bloodless than ever before. She slumped forward, only the artifice of the chair keeping her upright.
Chancellor Neshi said to Alexia, “Your promise, Soulless?”
Alexia nodded and moved forward, this time unhindered by any vampires. She climbed upon the dais and pressed her hand to the ancient vampire’s arm in one small spot where the skin was free of straps and tubes.
Queen Matakara, King Hatshepsut, last of the Great Pharaohs, Oldest Vampire, died right then and there at Alexia’s touch. There was no fanfare, no screaming in pain. She let out a tiny sigh and slipped out of her immortal cage at last. It was both the worst thing Alexia’s preternatural state had forced her to do and the best, for the expression in those dark eyes was, for the very first time, one of absolute peace.
In the silent stillness of wonder that followed, while drones and vampires adjusted themselves and their tethers to a new queen, Chancellor Neshi picked up Prudence. Prudence turned, yet again, into a vampire, and before anyone could stop him, the chancellor dashed on chubby legs out the window to the balcony and jumped over the edge, falling to his death in the street below.
The moment he died, Prudence turned back into a normal baby. Or as normal as she got. Alexia filed that little fact away; apparently something else canceled out her daughter’s powers besides her mother, sunlight, and distance—death.
There was a good deal of cleanup to be done, a number of explanations and arrangements to be made, and discussions to be had. Not to mention several formal introductions and a few broken bones and bloody necks to medicate. The five remaining vampires looked at one another and then, as a body, rushed to surround their new queen, chattering at her in Arabic and gesticulating excitedly.
Ivy, confused—head bobbling back and forth between them, white feather puffing about—finally raised her voice in a most un-Ivy-like way and ordered silence. She looked to her husband—who was standing, crying, clutching Primrose to his breast—and then turned to Lady Maccon for assistance.
“Alexia, pleath ethplain whath ith going on?”
Lady Maccon did, to the best of her ability. The pretty female drone who spoke English translated the explanation for the benefit of the vampires. Soon it became clear to everyone that Ivy had both a husband and children, which caused much consternation, as such a thing was taboo among those seeking metamorphosis. At which Ivy protested she hadn’t sought it, so she couldn’t possibly be blamed. Alexia stated categorically that what was changed was changed, and like spilled blood, there was no point going on about it. Mrs. Tunstell was a vampire queen now and they had all better make the best of the husband and twins that came with the package.
Ivy said she felt remarkably restless and wanted to know if she had to stay in Alexandria for the rest of her life.
Alexia remembered Lord Akeldama once mentioning something about new queens having several months to resettle. How else would vampires have spread over the world? Ivy said, good, in that case she wished to return to London immediately.
The Egyptian vampires protested. Alexandria was their home, had been for hundreds of years! Ivy would have none of it. London was her home, and if she had to spend eternity anywhere, it was going to be in the place where one could get a decent hat! She batted her eyelashes and lisped out girlish pleas, her character clearly not so much metamorphosed as her soul. Yet her tactic worked despite her lack of autocratic tendencies. In remarkably short order, everyone was dispersing. Those drones who wished to ally with a new queen and relocate were to pack and meet at the departure dock for the steamer the next morning. The vampires, looking slightly panicked, dashed off to gather belongings and then, sticking close to Ivy, escorted her, her husband, her daughter, and her acting troupe back to the hotel.
Alexia was left in the hive house with Matakara’s dead body, Madame Lefoux, Prudence, and Lord Maccon. Her daughter was exhausted beyond her childish capacities and was sitting in a sobbing heap. Her husband was still a wolf. During Ivy’s metamorphosis, Floote had disappeared.
Madame Lefoux gave Alexia a long look and then climbed up to examine the vampire queen’s body and chair with studied interest, pointedly leaving Alexia to work out her family affairs on her own.
Alexia went over and scooped up Prudence, cuddling the sobbing baby close. She simply stood like that, glaring at her husband, tapping one foot.