“Pardon me?”

“I once raced chariots,” he explained with a grin that showed off his fangs to perfection.

“I do not think it is quite the same thing, Lord Ambrose,” remonstrated Alexia.

Dr. Caedes and Quesnel climbed inside next. And then, reluctantly, Lady Maccon. She struggled a bit with the steps, and no vampire was willing to offer her any kind of assistance, no touching, not even for politeness’ sake. Once inside, she was unsurprised to find that the vampires were seated together on one bench so that she must sit alone on the other.

Lord Ambrose whipped the horses up and they took off at a canter, far too fast for the crowded streets of London. The clattering on the cobbles was awfully loud, and the carriage seemed to gyrate around the turns far more than Alexia had noticed before. Her belly protested the swaying.

It ordinarily took just under two hours to reach Woolsey from central London, less time for a werewolf in full fur, of course. The Count of Trizdale once claimed to have run it in his highflyer coach in only an hour and a quarter. Lord Ambrose, it seemed, was intent on trying to break that record.

Within London, the streets were worn enough into ruts for relatively smooth travel, and even though he had been tethered to Mayfair for hundreds of years, Lord Ambrose knew the way. Plenty of time to study maps, Alexia supposed. They took the lesser used road toward West Ham. However, upon exiting the city, everything went awry.

Not that the evening’s events prior to that moment had been all sugared violet petals. But still.

First, and worst, so far as Lady Maccon was concerned, they hit the dirt road of the countryside. It had never bothered her overmuch before, and the carriage was well sprung and padded inside. But the fast pace combined with more-than-was-normal jiggling did not amuse the infant-inconvenience. Fifteen minutes of that and Alexia felt a new bodily sensation commence—a dull ache in the small of her back. She wondered if she had damaged herself during one of the evening’s many bustle-crushing dismounts.

Then they heard Lord Ambrose yell and smelled acrid smoke. Here, away from looming shadows of the city buildings and under the full moon’s light, everything was much easier to see. Alexia watched through the window as one of their vampire escorts put on a burst of speed, drew alongside the carriage, and leaped. The coach lurched but did not slow, and there came the sound of the roof above them being beaten viciously.

“Are we on fire?” Lady Maccon shifted herself into a better position, drew down the window sash, and stuck her head out into the rushing air, trying to see behind them.

It might have been difficult for her to make out their enemy, had there been a man on horseback or another carriage behind them, but the thing skittering after them over the fields and between the hedgerows was doing so on eight massive tentacles. Well, seven massive tentacles—it had the eighth in front of it spurting fire at the carriage. It was also several stories high.