Roulet’s eyes brightened with a thoughtful smile. “I would like to be the Rougarou here, then. There’s an Irish legend about a faoladh, a man who could change into a wolf and protect his people or bring them food in times of need. I always wanted to be that kind of werewolf.”
Settling onto the cold bricks of a half-built wall, Colonel Roulet stared at the blurs of stonework that peaked through the trees. Wesley cautiously came alongside him and sat close enough to listen but not to touch. He couldn’t tell if the man was upset or tired from all of the shifting or if he merely wanted to talk. For a long moment, they sat in companionable silence until finally the colonel spoke.
“Do you know why I built this house?”
Wesley shook his head.
“After I became a— a werewolf, I decided to learn all I could about them. You can imagine there were many very hard nights. Most things about us are not particularly flattering, and even in the army, I was never a bloodthirsty killer. I’m not a monster who feeds on the flesh of children or lusts for battle.”
“And you aren’t now,” Wesley said softly.
The colonel ran a hand along his beard. “I know that now, but all I knew then were the stories meant to scare children. Until I found the legend of Saint Herve. He was blind and supposedly could speak to animals or had a wolf who could speak. My interpretation was that Herve had a werewolf companion, so I looked into it deeper and found this place. It’s a house now, but it used to be a monastery after the Cull. Apparently it also supported a small village at one time. Your ancestors and mine lived here after the Cull. The remaining werewolves of England built a tiny fortress in the woods where they could live in peace for a time. I built the house around the old crypt and what remained to protect it. I don’t want their memory blotted from history, and I don’t want ours to be ignored now. But I’m one man, and they think we’re monsters.”
His lip trembled, and without thinking, Wesley rose and put his arm around his shoulders. Resting his chin atop his head as he had in wolf form, he felt Roulet relax a fraction. It was what his father would have done for him.
“You’re never alone in this. You have an extended pack of people who would support you. Les Meutes will have something to say about what is going on here, and I will do everything in my power to get them to put pressure on the Interceptors.” Squatting in front of him, Wesley met Roulet’s crestfallen features. “More than anything, I want you to know that you never have to be alone. I’m certain there are others out there like you who are hiding, desperate for someone else to call to them and find them. If you step from the shadows, so will others.”
“That’s what I was trying to do with this party, find more werewolves, but I fear I have gone about it wrong. Those young men aren’t like you. I don’t know what they think they are, but I don’t think they’re werewolves.”
“How do you know?” Wesley asked cautiously, watching the man’s features.
Roulet opened his mouth to speak and closed it, keeping his hand balled over his heart. “I don’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t feel right. I wish I could parse out what I mean, but everything’s knotted up with smells and feelings and… and…”
“Instinct?”
“Yes! I felt the wrongness the second I met Elsworth and Lord Bourgot, and I thought it was nerves. After spending time with you, as a wolf and as a man, that feeling is so much starker. I know they will only be here one more day, but I fear I have missed something very important and that I have been played the fool.”
Wesley paused. He wanted to confess it all. That he had been played a fool, that a man had been murdered on his property under his nose because he was so focused on the perceived monster inside him that he hadn’t noticed the monsters at his door. But decisions made in haste wouldn’t serve them well now.
“Colonel, if there is trouble with them, I will help you. Should something amiss happen as you suspect, I want you to demure to me.”
When Roulet gave him an odd look, Wesley continued, “I know you’re a soldier and capable of holding your own, but I’ve dealt with con artists and men who are far more monstrous than we are. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Roulet drew in a slow breath and nodded. “I understand. Do you think we have enough time for one more lesson? My wolf has spent enough time locked away, and I would like to make amends.”
***
Sweat and snow still clung to Wesley’s skin and hair as he raked his fingers across his scalp to untangle his curls. Flicking a hunk of snow from his head, he looked up to find Emmeline Jardine staring him down from the shadows of the house. Beside her, her ever faithful companion gave him an appraising look, which was ended with an elbow to his ribs. The wolf stirred at the fear brimming in his chest. Were they waiting for him because someone else had been killed while he was with Colonel Roulet? Emmeline looked tense, but not scared, not as she had when she had woken him up that morning.
“You missed lunch,” she declared flatly when he reached her post.
Wesley reached for his pocket watch, then remembered he had left it in his room. “Is that a problem?”
“No, but I grew worried when you didn’t come back and neither did the hunting party.”
“You were worried?” he asked, raising a bemused brow.
“Yes, you have a penchant for getting in trouble. Runs in the family, I guess. I am relieved to see you whole. Our father wouldn’t be happy if I let you die on my watch.”
“I doubt he would blame you. Why are you really waiting for me? Has something happened?”
“Yes and no,” Nadir Talbot added unhelpfully.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the hunting party hasn’t fired a single shot.” Mr. Talbot hunkered deeper into his coat as the wind whipped into them. “That might not mean anything. They could be using bows and arrows or they might just be getting drunk in the woods.”
“Or disposing of a body,” Emmeline added.
“Either way, we haven’t heard them or seen Elsworth come back.”
Drawing in a long breath, Wesley could still discern the faint taste of carrion and the smell of ash. They had probably burnt the body, but he didn’t smell gunpowder. As the breeze picked up again, he swore he could taste the not-wolf lingering among the smell of Emmeline and Nadir’s perfumes and the earthy scent of Roulet’s wolf.
“I see.”
“And I found this letter slipped under my door,” Emmeline said, pulling a crisp envelope from her pocket. “‘The Sons of the Cull invite you to a meeting of like minds tonight at midnight in the great hall. Come alone and tell no one.’”
“Meanwhile, I received one that said, ‘Mr. Talbot, We know of your elicit,’ I think they meant to use illicit with an ‘i,’ ‘activities with men. Come to the carriage house at eleven-thirty alone, and perhaps we can come to an agreement where no one will have to know.’” Folding the letter and crisping the edge with his nail, Nadir Talbot’s jaw clenched as he defiantly met Wesley’s gaze. In one swift and sudden motion, he tore the letter in two and proceeded to shred it to bits. “I refuse to be intimidated by a handful of pricks, but it appears as if my head is now on the chopping block. If I go to this ridiculous meeting, I’ll end up like Mr. Doughty. Now the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“We don’t know if the letter Miss Jardine received is a trap or not.”
“That may be true, but there had to be a point to this sham of a party, and I’m fairly certain that meeting is it,” Emmeline whispered, hugging herself against the cold.
Wesley pressed his forehead at the pain forming between his eyes from the stress of repeatedly shifting. The flush of joy he had felt at freeing his wolf churned into wariness as the wolf paced within him.
“Look, go inside. I’m going to get dressed for dinner, and then we can talk. I need to see if I got an invitation, too.”
Chapter Seventeen
Scheming
Nadir couldn’t believe it. He si
multaneously wanted to laugh and cry, but more than anything, he wished he could take his steamer and get the hell back to civilization. The second the laugh escaped his lips, he clamped his hands over his mouth. God, he sounded hysterical and nothing had even happened yet. Not nothing, being threatened by a bunch of lunatics surely wasn’t nothing. He laughed again and felt Emmeline’s eyes on him as she dug through her trunk. Reaching deep into the corner, she leaned back with a bundle wrapped in a blanket. From across the room, it looked like a book or box, but she cradled it like it was a living thing. Tenderness and annoyance flickered across her features as she carefully set it aside to replace her belongings. Nadir was surprised to find a slight pang of jealousy when he watched her handle it.
Coming to his side, Emmeline stared down her nose at him, at least as far as she was able at her stature while he was seated. “You need to pull yourself together.”
“I don’t remember saying that to you when you nearly slipped on offal,” he replied bitterly with his head in his hands.
“I know, but now is not the time to fall to pieces.”
“Then when is, Emmeline! Someone wants me dead, and I don’t want to end up as someone’s dinner like Doughty. Don’t you understand? This is the third time someone has tried to kill me, and it doesn’t get any easier knowing your safety hangs by a shoe-string.”
“‘Tried to kill you’? How many enemies do you have?”
“I’ve had angry husbands or jilted lovers who thought I deserved a thrashing, but this is my third murder attempt by a stranger.” Nadir rubbed his face and shook his head. “Given, two were by the same person, but still. I really don’t like feeling as if I’m the hero of one of my godawful novels.”
“I read about your brush with death in the papers during the trial. As someone who has been nearly killed a few times, you have my sympathies.”
Nadir raised his eyes to look for any sign of sarcasm in Emmeline’s face but found none. She was barely more than eighteen, yet she suddenly seemed older. One of the things that drew him to her in Europe was that slightly haunted look. She could be devil-may-care in her fancy gowns, but he had seen her façade slip. Sometimes it seemed by the set of her jaw and the length of her gaze that she was staring down the abyss, preparing for whatever may come. Other times he would see her body clench, and he would follow her eyes to find her watching a mother and daughter or sometimes nothing at all. She spoke in stillness.
There was so much about her he didn’t know, so much he wanted to know. From what he heard, she had lost her mother fairly recently and had lost her father as a baby, only to find out her real father had been alive the whole time. That alone was enough to weigh on her, but there was more. She spoke to the dead, and while Nadir was typically a skeptic who found most otherworldly events should be reserved for the page, he knew she was for real. It was an unexplainable bone-deep knowledge. That day when he had seen her give Leona a reading at the London Spiritualist Society, he had felt it. That ripple in his core that whispered there was magic at work, whether he believed it or not.
What are you?
He had asked her once before, but as he watched her face harden and her posture stiffen, he wondered once more what this formidable woman was.
Demi goddess. Witch. Queen.
The words flashed through Nadir’s mind at the sight of her as she paced the length of the room. A few tendrils of her nearly black hair had sprung from her coiffure and hung along the curves of her cheek and neck. Bathed in the snow-reflected light, her skin looked deathly pale and her hair black as night. In that moment, Nadir wished he could describe her adequately and capture how a woman so small and so young could look so powerful. The same part of him that tried to flee from Wesley Bisclavret’s wolf form alerted he was in danger beneath Emmeline’s hardened gaze. Perhaps he was, but under the fear was something far less levelheaded and it wouldn’t part from her company for anything.
“Why are you staring at me? Please tell me you aren’t about to swoon again.”
“No, nothing like that,” he said with a coughed laugh. “I was just thinking how you deserve a really special bouquet when we get back to town. Perhaps white carnations, daisies, and red rosebuds.”
Emmeline scoffed. “If you brought me that bouquet, I would think you were dropped on your head. You must have really taken a fright to concoct that banal mix.”
A smile crept across Nadir’s features. “You’re right. That wouldn’t do at all. It’s strange. I was thinking of what we could do, and suddenly I looked at you and all sense left me.”
Pausing mid step, Emmeline regarded him strangely. She searched his features. “Don’t joke.”
“I wasn’t.”
Heat flushed Emmeline’s cheeks as she clamped her jaw shut and watched him through narrowed eyes. Before she could say anything more, the door yawned open to reveal Wesley Bisclavret gingerly carrying a book nearly as wide as his chest. He looked between Emmeline and Nadir and rolled his eyes as he kicked the door shut behind him.
“Is now really the time to make eyes at each other?” Wesley asked with a huff, setting the book on the dresser.
Emmeline bristled and looked to Nadir for back-up, but he was too busy laughing. She dealt him a death glare before turning to the book her brother had brought. The leather spine had cracked and peeled with age and arced off the binding at both ends. The front cover had once been embossed with a design, but with time and the wear of many hands, it had been worn nearly smooth. The only places where a hint of the original decoration peeked through were the dark brown blotches littering the face. Nadir’s first thought was that it was blood, but he tried to keep his morbid thoughts at bay.
“Where did you get the tome from?” Nadir asked.
“I kept thinking about the word you mentioned before, Emmeline, heoruwearh, so I asked Colonel Roulet if he had any books in his collection that might have something on it. He didn’t recognize the word either, but he gave me this. It’s a bestiary of werewolf-like creatures.”
“‘Werewolf-like’?”
“According to the colonel, not long before the cull of werewolves from England, a few people tried to talk some sense into the king by reminding him there were other types of monsters that were similar to werewolves. They were the ones who caused trouble while the werewolves remained loyal.”
“Sounds like them trying to save themselves by passing the blame to others,” Emmeline said flatly, tucking her own book into her trunk while Wesley was occupied.
“Possibly, but there may be something useful in it. Pa says there were more creatures in the past than there are now. Things we think are just legends walked among us. Some still do. Others lurk in the shadows, and we blame others for what they do because we see what we want to see. And sometimes facing the monsters is far harder than clinging to ignorance. Then, there are far darker things biding their time.”
“That isn’t exactly comforting,” Nadir murmured.
“It isn’t supposed to be. But wouldn’t you rather be prepared for what’s to come? I don’t know about in England, but back home, I have seen some wild things. I swear it’s gotten worse since I was a child. It’s so bad Les Meutes sent me here to check on the werewolf situation. Apparently, it isn’t werewolves. It’s something darker.”
Dark forces are heading for London. The letter that had originally accompanied Emmeline’s grimoire had spoken of a shift in the balance. The book had been sent on for its protection. Somehow it had ended up in her care and had been sent back to her again. She imagined it calling to whoever retrieved it, working the world like a spider weaves its threads. She had bonded to it, and now it wouldn’t give her up. But was she prepared to face whatever malevolent forces were at work? No matter what she did to subvert the path, somehow she always ended up back on that road.
As Wesley flipped past a drawing of a woman morphing into a seal, Emmeline’s hand shot out to stop him. On the next page was a woman dancing with a wolf. The face she had seen in her mind’
s eye during her ancestors’ visitation flashed before her eyes, mouth curved in mirth, eyes sharp and in control. The wolf witch.
“What does it say?” she asked, pointing to the block of Anglo-Saxon letters cut into the page with a square nib.
“You can’t expect him to read that,” Nadir added under his breath.
“I can. Father made us learn. I can read some Anglo-Norman, too. My brother, Theo, is better at languages than I am, especially ones that aren’t standardized, but I can give you the gist.” Squinting at the words, Wesley’s mouth worked silently. “Of some witch born, it is said they can charm wolves into doing their bidding. With a song, they lull or a dance they stoke the fire of blood lust. To her whims, the wolves fall prey. There’s other stuff about burning witches, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.”
“No, but thank you. Keep going.”
Flipping halfway through the book, Wesley paused. A massive wolf drawn with startling ferocity stared back at them. Its fur was black and its teeth dripping with the blood of the man crushed beneath its paws. Emmeline looked between Wesley and the beast.
“What is it?”
“I’ve seen this word before,” he said, pointing to the word wearg. “It’s a monster of fairytales. Pa would tell us stories about the Old World where weargs wreaked havoc in the countryside. Knights and heroes would slay them in battle. They were always monsters though, not men.”
“Whatever got its claws on Doughty certainly was more monster than man,” Nadir added, regarding the beast over Emmeline’s shoulder. “Is that what we’re dealing with? Weargs?”
“Let me read it.” Wesley’s finger traced the script, but as he reached the second paragraph, his face blanched. “This sounds right, but—”
Emmeline had never seen him look so scared. “But?”
“They’re far worse than a rogue werewolf. I thought they had just been hot-housed or made the Old World way, which makes them more violent. This is man-made and malevolent. It’s the corruption of a werewolf with bad magic.”
The Wolf Witch Page 18