God Save the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (38 page)

“Fucking hell!” I cried, clenching my eyelids shut. Light continued to pulse and dance behind them, even though it was dark inside my head. It hurt – those glowing orbs smashing off the sides of my skull.

“You okay, Xandy?”

I didn’t open my eyes again. “What is this, Dede?”

I heard her come closer – felt her presence hovering nearby. More goblin genes kicking in, I suppose.

Fang me. I was a goblin. They ate
children
, for Christ’s sake! They were practically animals. And yet they’d been good to me. I had never witnessed a goblin acting like a monster. In fact, aside from Vex, the prince had treated me with more respect and kindness than members of my own family. What did that mean?

“We needed to make sure you wouldn’t fly off the handle when you woke up,” she explained. “The light was my idea.”

“Turn it off.”

“Can’t. Sorry, but you hurt Fee pretty bad.”

Shit. Ophelia. “Is she all right?” The words stuck in my throat.

“She will be. Fang me, Xandy, you could have killed her.”

Instead of making me contrite, the censure in her tone had the opposite effect. “I wanted to kill her.”

“Oh.” Disappointment dripped from her tone. “I guess that’s what goblins do.”

I snorted, pressing a hand over my eyes to create a comforting shade of black beneath my lids. “I’ve always been a goblin, Dee.” My tongue tripped over the words. Admitting it out loud was … difficult. “I’ve never killed anyone before – not with my teeth, at any rate.” I could still taste my half-sister’s blood on my tongue, faint but agonisingly delicious. I should feel sick about it. I didn’t.

Blood was blood. Meat was meat. It was all good, right?

“I’ve never seen you like that before. I’ve never been as afraid of you as I was when I saw your face covered in Ophelia’s blood.”

My stomach turned ever so slightly. I reckoned I felt a little guilty after all. The thought was strangely comforting. “So you smashed me over the head and carried me down to the cells.”

I could almost imagine her frown. “How do you know we’re in the cells?”

“I can smell it, hear it.” Now I knew what I was, it was so much easier to tap into these awakening senses. I’d dampened my hearing and sense of smell a long time ago. It was just a matter of paying attention now. “We’re below ground. It’s the worst place you could have brought a goblin. Anyone would know that.” I’d wager she stiffened at that jibe.

“I reckon it will hold you well enough.”

“Turn off the light, Dede.”

“No.”

I sighed. “My head hurts” – that was almost a lie, as it was healing rapidly – “I’m calm, and I’m sure you have a weapon loaded with lovely silver bullets, so turn off the light.”

“Juliet said …”

As she spoke, I reached up to where I knew the light was, and crushed the bulb with my bare hand. It burned like a bastard, and I caught little bits of hot glass in the face, but at least it was reasonably dark.

Dede gasped. I sat up, pushing the now useless object of torture out of my way. I shook off the splinters of glass before opening my eyes. There was a dim lamp in the far corner, giving off just enough light that I could see perfectly and my eyeballs didn’t feel like they were being skewered.

“What time is it?” I demanded.

My sister sat as far back as she could in a rickety chair, her knees drawn up in front of her like a shield. Protection from me. As though her thin little legs could stop me. She didn’t even have her gun pointed at me. Her fear awakened the goblin in me, but it sickened the part that was still her big sister. “It’s ten o’clock in the evening.”

So I’d been out for a while. “I’m leaving.” Avery would wonder where I was. Vex too. There were probably messages from both on my rotary.

“You can’t leave.” She jumped to her feet, tried to position herself between me and the door as I stood.

I stopped. “Are you telling me I’m a prisoner, Dede? Are you choosing Bedlam over me?”

Her wide jade eyes filled with tears, but she kept her chin up, bless her poor fucked-up heart. “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me.”

“Move, dearest.” Being locked up in Bedlam was a cut too close to the vein for me. I had to get out of there. Ophelia was going to be all right and I was grateful for that, but I couldn’t stay here after what I’d done, knowing what I was. I had to go home, to my last scrap of normality.

To my surprise, Dede stepped out of my way, and I crossed the worn Morris-print carpet to the door.

There was no handle or knob, just a smooth length of titanium-reinforced steel.

“Told you there was no leaving.”

She sounded a little too smug for my liking. Obviously she thought she was right, but I remembered looking at these cells last time I was here. I stepped back, lifted my leg and sent the door flying with one good kick. The bones in my foot and shin shuddered in pain, but it faded to a dull ebb in half a second.

I shot my stunned sibling a triumphant glance. “You put me in a cage designed to hold halvies, but I’m not a halvie, Dede.” With that perfect bit of melodramatic dialogue delivered, I walked out, carefully stepping over the fallen door. In the corridor I could hear the growing agitation of the halvies kept down here. I had scared them, all these pitiful creatures.

I paused in front of the door of the cell where the girl who had been raped by goblins was kept. Was I just another of “their” halvie experiments? Just who the bloody hell were they? Aristos?

Yes. If ever there was a time for me to wake up and smell the tea brewing, it was this moment. No more excuses or blindfolds. I was a goblin and my father knew it, or at least had suspicions that his child was a mutant, a monstrous birth defect.

But I didn’t look like one. That was why I had been allowed to live as I had. Watched. Studied. Simon had been killed to protect the secret. It would be such a scandal if the truth got out.

I was like Duncan MacLaughlin after all, only I had my father’s rank to protect me. And Churchill. He had kept me close. No need to lock me in a cage when they could just take my blood and watch every move I made.

Dede chased after me, and caught me at the lift. “I really don’t think you should go home right now.”

“Worried I’ll hurt someone else? Relax, I’m in total control of myself.” And I had things to do. People to see, such as Churchill.

“I am worried, but you also have blood all over you.”

I paused. “Fine. I know you have at least one shirt in your cupboard that belongs to me.”

We got into the ancient lift together and rode up to the first floor. There were a few halvies and humans milling about. They all looked at me as though they’d cheerfully slit my throat but were terrified to try. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, and I felt for the dagger in my corset. It was still there. Thankfully no one had the bollocks to take me on, or perhaps they’d been ordered to give me a wide berth. I didn’t care. I had a reputation as a skilled scrapper before this. That made sense now too. As did the blood the prince had given me. It wasn’t vampire or werewolf – it had been goblin blood. It hadn’t made me sick because it – or a mutated flavour of it – ran through my own veins. I was a goblin, but unlike any other goblins I knew of.

Just what was I capable of?

Gobbing out had put everything in clear, cold perspective. Little
things from the past tallied up – my strength, speed, senses … I was a freak who shouldn’t have made it outside of the womb. If I didn’t do something, and word of that got out, someone was going to kill me.

Dede’s room was almost exactly above my mother’s office. She gave me a clean shirt – one of mine, just as I suspected – and I used her loo to clean up. No wonder her insurgent mates had looked at me that way. My hair was a wild tangle of vivid red, and my pale face was covered in the rust of dried blood from the nose down. Similar stains marked the front of my kit.

I removed my corset – which was thankfully reversible – and then ran water in the sink to wash with. Once reasonably clean, I put on the fresh shirt and turned my corset round the other way. I borrowed some of Dede’s make-up and a hairbrush. I exited the toilet to find her sitting on her bed, sending a digigram on her portable logic engine. About me? Unfortunately, goblins couldn’t read minds.

“Ophelia’s going to be fine,” she informed me. “Luckily, you didn’t rip her open when you bit her.”

I swallowed hard at the bitter taste rising in the back of my mouth. I’d attacked my sister and liked it – not hurting her, but the blood. I didn’t want to talk about it. “Good. Look, I’m sorry.”

She arched a brow. If not for that terrible black hair, it would be like looking in a mirror. “Tell that to Ophelia.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I tossed my bloodstained shirt into the rubbish bin by her dressing table. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe it when you told me what happened to your baby. I should have been there for you and I wasn’t. If you choose this place and its people over your family, I don’t blame you.”

Her face fell. Surprise? Anguish? A combination, probably. Now might not have been the best time for me to play the big-sister card, but I didn’t know if I’d get the opportunity later. There
was a good chance that I wasn’t long for this world – a risk all Royal Guard and Peerage Protectorate accepted with the job; I just never thought I’d actually find myself facing the prospect of being hunted into an early grave.

I didn’t want to die, but I’d prefer that to being someone’s lab rat, or ending up like one of the halvies in Bedlam’s basement.

“Thank you,” Dede whispered, wiping at her eyes, mobile forgotten. I went to her, gathered her against my stomach and held her for a moment, stroking her hair as she cried. From this angle, I could see a little root growth, and the true copper of her hair peeked through the dull black. It made me smile for some reason, even though everything was pretty much shit.

“What are you going to do?” she asked me a few moments later. Her voice was thick and nasal.

“Eventually I’ll have to try to make it right with Ophelia.” I might not like her much, but she didn’t deserve what I’d done. “But for now, I’m going home.” It was an outrageous lie, and she believed it.

“Be careful, Xandy.”

“I will,” I lied again, and kissed her on the forehead. “I love you.” I hugged her tightly, and was hugged back. There was a finality to it that unsettled me. It would be a long time before I came back to Bedlam, if ever. My mother might run the place, but I’d proven myself … unstable. And they had proven themselves untrustworthy. They were afraid of me, and that meant they would immediately make arrangements to protect themselves from me. Just in case, of course.

And really, weren’t traitors the last thing I needed right now, what with everything else?

Leaving Dede was difficult, but I did it. She walked me out so no one would attempt retribution for what I’d done to Ophelia. Seemed my big sis was a tad popular in the asylum. In a fair
fight I had no doubt that I could take a handful of them, but there were too many to face alone, no matter how tough I might think I was.

I walked past the glares without a sideways glance or flicker of expression. I deserved their hatred and fear. I’d done a horrible thing, and my only consolation was that I hadn’t killed Ophelia. My attack on her hadn’t been provoked; it had been the behavior of an animal.

That was as far as I could think about it. My head was swimming, trying to figure out what to do next. Confront Church? My father? Run to Vex? Go home and hide under my bed?

It was dark when I stepped outside – good and dark. My eyes seemed to prefer that to the brightness of Bedlam. I could see better than before, my sight sharper than a cat’s. It was as though Ophelia’s blood had awakened more of the goblin in me. Fucking brilliant.

The Butler was where I left it, and I climbed on. I pulled on my goggles, turned the key in the ignition and drove towards Mayfair, my mind churning over events with an eerie calm that I knew would eventually dissolve. Shock never lasted as long as you wished it might.

There was rain in the air as I drove. The moisture clung to my face and hair, dampened my clothes. It felt good – soothing. By the time I arrived at the walls of the Mayfair district, I was wet all the way to the skin and my hair hung in damp clumps around my face. The guards at the main gates didn’t even blink at the sight of me. I had to swipe my badge, leaving a computer log of my visit, but that was the very least of my worries. I didn’t even care that they patted me down.

I drove to Down Street and parked in front of the old station. It didn’t feel so foreboding or frightening now. It was almost like coming home. I liked that it was dark, and quiet. Neglected.

How long before people started to avoid me? I wouldn’t be able to keep my … condition a secret for long, would I? If the papers got wind of me attacking someone … well, details like traitors hiding in Bedlam might be omitted without difficulty, especially by a sympathetic human. Who would care about the source when the story involved the daughter of a duke?

I glanced up at the sign above the door. I wasn’t about to abandon all hope, not yet. The heavy door creaked as I pushed it open. I crossed the threshold and let the door slowly obliterate what little light slipped in from outside as it closed. I gave my eyes a second to adjust before jogging down the debris-dusted stairs.