He clearly had not forgotten about her. “Well, what do you know? This one simply keeps turning up, does she not?” He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “First visiting the Westminster hive, now found in the august presence of specimen Akeldama. How does she fit into the picture?”
“We do not know yet, sir. We will have to consult the records. She is no vamp: has neither the teeth nor queen-level protection. Though she did have two vampire guards tailing her. “
“Ah, so, and...?”
“We eliminated them, of course. Could be BUR agents; difficult to tell these days. What do you want done in the meantime?”
Puff, puff, puff. “Put her into storage as well. If we cannot find anything out about how she fits into our investigations, we will have to force it out of her. Terribly gauche thing to do to a lady, of course, but she is clearly fraternizing with the enemy, and sometimes sacrifices must be made.”
Miss Tarabotti was confused by the players in this little game. These men did not seem to know who or, more precisely, what she was. Yet, clearly they were the ones who wanted her. They had sent the wax-faced man to her house in the middle of the night only recently. Unless there existed two wax-faced men in London, both of them after her. Alexia shuddered at the very idea. They must have gotten her home address from her BUR records. Yet, now they did not seem to know who she was. It was as though they were thinking of her as two separate persons. The one who kept interfering with their plans, and the Miss Alexia Tarabotti, preternatural, of BUR's records.
Then Alexia recalled that BUR did not keep sketches on file, for safety reasons. Her record contained only words, notes, and brief descriptive details, and most of that in code. These men had not made the connection to the fact that she was Alexia Tarabotti, because they did not know what Alexia Tarabotti looked like. Excepting only the wax-faced man, who would have seen her face in her bedroom window. She wondered why he had not revealed her secret.
Her question remained unanswered. The thugs lifted her up, in response to the shadowed man's order, and carried her after Lord Akeldama out of the plush reception room.
“And, now, where is my precious baby?” she heard the shadowed man ask as they departed. “Ah, there he is! And how did he behave on this outing? Good? Of course he did, my darling.” Then his words degenerated into Latin.
Miss Tarabotti was carried through a long narrow corridor, painted white and lined with institutional-looking doors. It was lit with white ceramic oil lamps atop short marble pedestals dispersed between the doors. It all looked very ritualistic, like some sort of ancient place of worship. Oddly, the door handles were made to look like octopuses and so, upon closer inspection, were the lamps.
Miss Tarabotti was maneuvered down a long flight of stairs and into another corridor with more doors and lamps, exactly the same as the first.
“Where shall we put them?” asked one of the men. “Space is scarce, since we have vamped up operations, so to speak.”
The other three snickered at the terrible pun.
“Just put them in the cell at the end. It does not matter much if they are left together; the doctors will be taking Akeldama off soon enough for processing. The gray coats have been waiting to get their hands on him a good long while now. “
One of the others licked his fatty lips. “We ought to be getting quite large bonuses for this little collection venture.”
Murmurs of agreement met that statement.
They reached the last door in the corridor and slid aside the body section of its brass octopus handle, revealing a large keyhole. Opening the door, they unceremoniously deposited Miss Tarabotti and the supine form of Lord Akeldama inside the room. Alexia landed hard on her side and attempted not to cry out in pain. They slammed the door shut, and Alexia heard them chatting as they walked away. “Bodes well for a success in the experiments, eh?”
“Hardly.”
“What do we care so long as the pay is good?”
“Too true.”
“You know what I think? I think... “
And then their voices became faint and faded to silence.
Miss Tarabotti lay wide-eyed, staring about at the chamber in which she now found herself. Her pupils took a while to adjust to the blackness, for there were no oil lamps here and no other source of illumination. The cell did not have bars, just a seamless door with no inside handle, and felt more like a closet than a prison. Nevertheless, she knew instinctively that it was a prison. It had no windows, no furniture, no rug, and no other decoration of any kind—just herself and Lord Akeldama.
Someone cleared his throat.
With difficulty, her limbs being tightly bound and her physical dexterity further impeded by her dratted corset and bustle, Miss Tarabotti wiggled from lying on her back to lying on her side, facing Lord Akeldama.
The vampire's eyes were open, and he was staring at her intently. It was as though he were trying to speak to her with simply the power of a glare.
Alexia did not speak glare-ish.
Lord Akeldama began undulating toward her. He managed to writhe his way across the floor, like some sort of purple snake, the velvet of his beautiful coat slippery enough to aid his progress. Eventually he reached her. Then he flipped about and twiddled his bound hands until Miss Tarabotti understood what he was after.
Alexia flipped back over, inched down, and pressed the back of her head to his hand. The vampire was able to undo the gag tied over her mouth with his fingertips. Her wrists and legs, unfortunately, were manacled with steel bonds, as were his. Such cuffs were beyond even a vampire's ability to break.