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CHAPTER TWENTY


I stood there, surrounded by dead vampires, trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t make me sound like an idiot, a traitor, or both. Moments passed. Tesla stared at me with the look of a man on the edge of technologically advanced violence.

“Well?” he asked finally.

“They were dead when I got here,” I answered.

“Dead when you got here? Is that all you have to say? That they were dead when you got here?” He marched down the stairs, avoiding the same pools of blood that I had, gesturing to the surrounding bodies. “A room full of dead steampunks. My God, these people had families. And you just let the vampires—”

“These are the vampires, actually. Dead vampires.” I pointed to the girl at my feet. “See? Fangs, pointy ears, general lack of skin tone. Vampires.”

“What? What the . . . what?” Tesla stopped dead in his tracks. “But we killed all of the vampires!”

“Yeah. About that.” I glanced at Chesa. The rest of Knight Watch gathered behind her, all pointedly looking anywhere but in my direction. “Esther spared a couple. I’d say about”—I did a quick count of the bodies—“six of them. No, eight. Jakub and his brother escaped.”

“There are a couple more in the fireplace,” Chesa pointed out.

“Right, so, ten. Let’s call it an even dozen, just to be safe,” I said. Tesla gaped at me. The rest of the Eccentrics weren’t that far behind. They spread out through the coven, examining bodies and furnishings, poking their heads through the smashed doors that lined the wall. I pressed on. “Though honestly we don’t know how many they’ve created since then. I’d rather not speculate on—”

“Esther MacRae, on her own, just decided to betray our confidence and rescued a coven of bloodsuckers, then hid them? Inside the Gestalt?” Tesla was yelling by now, his face red and bulging with veins. “And then when we uncovered this fact, you came under the pretense of helping us, and somehow stumbled on that very cabal?”

“I had a key.” I held up the display box Esther had given me. “Though clearly I didn’t need it.”

“We’re done,” Tesla snapped. “I’m dropping you off at the nearest faire. You can find your own way back to Mundane Actual. I don’t care how you do it—ride a unicorn, hitchhike through the Middle Ages, join a group of wandering sketch artists. And when you get home, you tell Esther MacRae that the next time she contacts me, I’m going to drop a bomb on her jumped-up Medieval Times franchise so big—”

“Boss,” Adelaide said sternly. I noticed that her arm was in a sling. Tesla whirled to face her, his mouth still working its way around the dimensions of this theoretical bomb. “Maybe take a look at this.”

Adelaide gazed up at the tapestry. With all the blood and carnage in the room, plus the presence of a vampire, I hadn’t given the artwork much of a look. The outside edges of the tapestry depicted your typical medieval scenes, tinged with gothic horror. Knights and peasants dying and killing by the sword. Crows with bloody beaks perched in dead trees, overlooking fields of corpses. Castles burning. Villages burning. Bodies burning.

Two figures dominated the center of the tapestry. On the right stood Jakub Everlasting, dressed in his characteristic white and crimson, though in the tapestry he wore enameled plate armor, trimmed in red, rather than a suit. He was reaching out to shake the hand of another man, whom I did not recognize. A fine Victorian gentleman in a gray evening coat and high-buttoned vest, with one foot resting comfortably on a skull. His only distinguishing feature was a scar on his right cheek that bisected his eye. He was also reaching out to shake Jakub’s hand. In the space between them hung a clock with too many numerals. The air around the clock twisted like a heat mirage.

“I take it you recognize him?” I asked Tesla.

He nodded. “That is Claude Lumiere. I would recognize that scar anywhere. From his early experiments, before he earned a place in the Gestalt.” Tesla grimaced. “What does it all mean?”

“It seems like the Lumieres were familiar with the vampires, at the very least. Why else would the bloodsuckers keep this tapestry around?” Adelaide asked. “Oh, look here.”

She pointed at the image. Tucked behind his back, Claude Lumiere held a knife in his left hand. The point already dripped with black blood.

“What do you make of that?” I asked.

“The symbolism is apparent throughout the tapestry,” Tembo said. He and the rest of Knight Watch gathered behind me. “A foot on the skull, conquering death. A hidden knife indicates betrayal. As for the clock . . .” He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“That’s the scarab,” Ida whispered. She moved close to the tapestry, producing a telescoping loupe from one of her many pockets. As soon as she extended the lens, it fell out and shattered on the floor.

“Looks like we’re still in the Unreal,” Tesla muttered. “Cassius stayed upstairs, just to be safe. Lady Adelaide, how is your arm faring?”

“Holding together, but only barely.” I realized the sling was bound tightly to her clockwork arm. “Can we figure out what’s going on and get out of here?”

“You can leave it to us, if you want,” I said.

Tesla shook his head sharply. “You have betrayed us once. I’m keeping you close until this is resolved,” he said. Then he pulled a table close to the tapestry and clambered up to get closer to the clock. Ida followed, leaning precariously against the wall. “Ida, my dear genius, you are correct. The threadwork is imprecise, but this definitely depicts the inner workings of the scarabs you retrieved from the bakery. What do you think it means?”

“I’m not sure, but maybe we can ask her?” Chesa knelt beside one of the dead vampires. It looked like a young woman, dressed in leather armor, lying on her side.

“None of us are necromancers, Ches. Unless . . .” I cocked a brow at Tembo. He shook his head. “No. So we’ll have to stick with interviewing the living.”

“Pay attention, John.” She turned the vampire onto her face. There was a brass scarab clutched to the base of the vampire’s neck, twitching slightly.

“Careful!” Ida hopped down from the table. “The last couple you smashed. Let’s see if we can get this one intact.”

“Double careful,” I said, standing over Chesa. “That’s a vampire you’re reviving.”

With Knight Watch clustered around one side of her, and the Eccentrics standing guard on the other, Ida bent over the scarab and began tinkering. She muttered a lot, trying various tools until she found one simple enough that the Unreal wouldn’t interfere with its functionality. It took a few minutes, but she finally released the scarab from the dead vampire’s neck.

Let me amend that. Formerly dead. Currently undead. However that works.

“There we go,” Ida said, sitting up and proudly displaying the scarab. “Just a little scratching along the cowling, but we’ve got one fully functional, soul-sucking scarab. Now I just need to—”

“Death to mortal flesh!” the vampire shrieked, vaulting to her feet and grabbing Ida around the neck. She bounded off the table, onto the wall, and through the air with such grace I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Ida flapped behind her like a human flag. She finally came down on top of the hearth, perched like a gargoyle on the stone mantel. With one arm, she held our startled mechanic tight to her chest. With the other, the vampire pressed a silver dagger into Ida’s neck.

“Squawk,” Ida said through her lolling tongue. Her face was turning a worrying shade of purple, and her feet kicked weakly against the hearth. We rushed forward in a wave of steel and concerned expressions.

“Don’t move!” the vampire shouted, shaking Ida for emphasis.

“Do the math, lady. Maybe you don’t move,” I said, drawing my sword. Gregory posed heroically next to me, and both Tembo and Chesa readied their attacks. The Eccentrics, robbed of their technological doodads, merely glowered.

“We don’t actually need to threaten her,” Adelaide said. “We just saved her life, after all.”

“Ha! As though simpering mortals could save the life of Zofia Zinzadelle, queen of the night!”

“Zofia? Zinzadelle?” I asked.

“Yes. You have heard tale of my hunts, and tremble?”

“No. But it’s a lot of Zees. Are you actually a vampire, or just a mundane who made the jump into the Unreal?” When she didn’t immediately answer, I sighed. “Look, Zapf Dingbats, let our friend go. She saved your life. Without her, you’d still be twitching on the floor in a coma with that bug thing on your neck, sucking your soul into a little glass jar.”

For a second, I thought she was going to tear Ida’s head off, just to prove a point. But slowly she loosened her grip. Ida went from struggling to escape to scrambling to not fall the twenty feet to the stone floor. Tembo barked an arcane word, and purple light surrounded the frantic mechanic. She floated harmlessly to the floor.

“That was cool. Can you do that again, but up?” Ida asked.

“So I take it you’re Knight Watch,” Zapf said glumly. “And this is your vengeance.”

“Yes to the former, no to the latter. We’re here to help,” I said.

“Maybe,” Tesla interjected.

“No, we’re definitely here to help.” I sheathed my sword then extended my hand. “Come down here and we’ll talk about it. Starting with how you know Claude Lumiere.”

Just then, Bethany appeared out of the shadows of the ceiling. She dropped behind the vampire and struck. ZeeZeeZapf never saw it coming. Bee cludged her in the back of the head with a black sap. The vampire went limp, falling gracelessly off the hearth to tumble onto the bearskin rug with a meaty thump. We ran forward. Ida grimaced at the vampire’s misshapen limbs and cracked skull.

“That’s gonna leave a scar,” she whispered.

“Bee!” I shouted in frustration. “You’ve got to stop doing that!”

“What?” Our rogue looked around the room. “I can’t hear anything in shadow form. I’m guessing she was declaring our deaths and the endless reign of the nightbreed, right? Right?”

I shook my head, then toed the previously dead, briefly undead, and now questionably alive vampire.

“Well. I suppose it’s a good thing that she’s immortal.”


Turns out immortality takes about twenty minutes to kick in. In the meantime, we searched the rest of the coven, arranging the bodies of the fallen vampires as neatly as we could against the wall. I explained what Jakub had said about their souls, that it was a different sort of death. There was nothing we could do for the bodies in the fire. The dozen or so rooms on the side were lavishly decorated, each with its own coffin. We did find several other exits from the main room, hidden in the ceiling or behind tapestries. One even branched off the chimney, though its iron door was too hot to open.

When ZeeZee came around, we poured her a glass of something viscous from one of the bottles behind the bar and Tembo cast Globe of Frost into a steel helm, which we then pressed over the knot on her head. She sat on the couch, glaring at the bodies of her family and sipping bloodwine from a pewter goblet.

And then she told us what happened.

Apparently the Lumieres had made contact with the vampires through Lady Lumiere’s séances. Thinking he was dealing with spirits, Claude made promises in exchange for knowledge. And the knowledge that he sought was the secret to immortality.

“I think he fell into the wrong timeline,” ZeeZee said. “He would have been better off in the Unreal. But his mind didn’t work that way. He wanted to build a machine that would extend his life. We laughed. Then, one day, he stepped through the aether directly into Jakub’s demesne. That got our attention.”

She took a long drink, then sat back. “He made promises. Threats. Compromises. Jakub thought he could cure us, whatever that means. I never wanted to be cured. But here we are. When it became clear that Claude’s intentions had nothing to do with helping us, and everything to do with his own power, Jakub cut off contact.

“You know what happened after that. The Lumieres came after us. Tried to force their way into our demesne. So we hit back.”

“I can’t believe the Lumieres would do that. Claude was a man of peace. Of Science!” Tesla said. “Your attack was completely unprovoked.”

“And it wasn’t just Lumieres who died at that party,” Adelaide said. “Dozens of citizens of the Gestalt were slaughtered. Innocent men and women!”

“And how many survived?” ZeeZee asked.

“None,” Tesla answered. “Only their daughter, Evelyn.”

“So you have only Evelyn’s word for what happened. But what if I told you that Claude Lumiere was trying to open a portal into the Unreal? A powerful spell.” She stood up and strolled to the hearth, where the bones of some of her kin still crackled in the flames. “A spell that required sacrifices to power it. Human sacrifices.”

“What? That’s preposterous!” Tesla shook his fist at ZeeZee. “Why are we supposed to believe you, an actual monster, over a woman I have fought beside for decades?”

In answer, she leaned against the hearth, gestured to the bones resting in the fire.

“Which of us is the monster? Truly?”

Tesla’s face fell. Blinking, he looked around at the Eccentrics.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I don’t know who to believe.”

“You don’t have to believe me. Ask Claude, or Evelyn. The proof will be among her father’s papers, or in that lab of his.” She smiled at us. “Surely you’ve secured the lab?”

Tesla went white. He grabbed Ida. “Get upstairs and get the Silverhawk ready to fly. We need to get back to the Lumiere Estate as soon as possible.”

Ida, obviously glad to be escaping the Unreal and getting back into the skies, scampered up the stairs.

“What I don’t understand is how she overcame so many of you,” I said. “She’s not a very big lady. Sure, those hounds look rough, but—”

ZeeZee laughed. “Evelyn Lumiere is the archetype of the vampire slayer. Her father founded the class around her. Esther MacRae knows all about it. She helped him do it. Together she and Evelyn created the perfect domain, for one purpose. Slaying vampires.”

“Gods. It’s so hard to believe. Why would Esther not tell us?” Chesa asked.

“That woman has more secrets than you would believe, and more sins,” Tesla said quietly. “Here’s one more.”

“Yes. But for all her power, Evelyn couldn’t reach us. Esther saw to that. Tucked away in the Gestalt, Evelyn couldn’t use her Slayer powers.” The vampire shook her delicate head. “I still don’t know how she managed to penetrate the veil of our obfuscations. It should have been beyond mortal ken.”

“I think I do,” I said. I grimaced at Chesa. “We brought the Unreal with us. She brought us here, just to get to you.”

“So. Twice betrayed by mortals. I shouldn’t be surprised.” ZeeZee stood and rubbed her neck where it had broken in the fall. There was a thin purple line, but otherwise her flesh was unmarked. “Here is what I will tell you. The father had plans for his daughter. Plans that we disrupted when we interrupted his ritual. She blamed us for their death, as rightly she should. Her vengeance was terrible.” She gestured to the room. “And now it is complete.”

“Come with us. We could use your guidance in this fight,” Tembo said.

“No. My father still lives, and my uncle. We will rebuild our world.” Like Jakub before her, ZeeZee blurred in form and body. When she was finished, a sleek black cat perched on the hearth. “Without mortal help this time,” that cat said. Then it leapt across the hearth and up the stairs, disappearing quickly.

“What was that about her father?” Tesla asked.

“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Let’s get into the air. Before Evelyn can surprise us again.”


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