He emerged, panting, Biffy clutched against him. The young man was suspiciously limp, and Professor Lyall could think of nothing but the need to get him to shore as quickly as possible. Drawing on every last iota of his werewolf strength to give him the necessary speed, he plowed through the water, reaching the Westminster side of the Thames in record time and dragging the drone out onto the bottom of a filthy set of stone steps.
Professor Lyall was no medical doctor, but he could say with confidence that the best thing for Biffy at that moment would be to get the water out and the air into his lungs. So the werewolf stood, lifting the young man up by his feet. Lyall had to dangle him off the side of the steps; Biffy was taller than he. Then the Beta proceeded to shake the limp drone vigorously.
As he was shaking, Professor Lyall looked over at the midpoint of the river. The moon was only a few days past full, and it had risen enough for his werewolf eyes to see everything clearly. His Alpha was engaged in a splashy battle with three assailants. Much frothing of the water, yelling, and growling was involved. Lord Maccon was in his Anubis Form, his head that of a wolf but his body still human. This allowed him to tread water but still apply the trademark werewolf savaging. It seemed to be working. His opponents were human, and, while they were armed with silver knives, they were not so adept at striking and swimming as Lord Maccon.
Professor Lyall returned to his task. As the shaking was proving to be ineffective, he positioned the young man carefully on a higher step and bent over him.
He was at a loss. Werewolves breathed, but not so deeply, nor so frequently as mortals. He wasn’t convinced his next idea would even work. But, blushing furiously—after all, he and Biffy had only met casually a few times; they were hardly on terms of any intimacy—he bent forward and sealed the young man’s mouth with his. Breathing out in a powerful blast, he attempted to physically force air into the drone’s lungs. Nothing happened. So he did it again. And again.
A loud cry caused him to look up, although not stop in his attentions to young Biffy’s survival. The figure of a man, a gentleman by his top hat and tails, ran along the rail bridge, faster than was humanly possible. The figure stopped and, in one impossibly quick and smooth movement, drew a gun and fired down into the churning mass of combatants.
Professor Lyall’s protective instincts reared up. He had no doubt that the vampire, for that is what the newcomer must be, was firing silver bullets at his Alpha. Desperately, he breathed harder, hoping against hope that Biffy would revive so that he could go to his Alpha’s aid.
Behind him, Lord Maccon behaved in an unexpectedly sensible manner. Abandoning his roughhousing, the Alpha dove under the surface of the Thames and began swimming toward the steps and his Beta. He stuck his muzzle up for air only once and briefly.
Unfortunately, with his first target underwater, the vampire simply moved on to the second best option. He fired at Professor Lyall and his charge as they hunched unprotected against the embankment. The bullet whizzed by perilously close to Lyall’s head and struck the stone wall, causing fragments of rock to pellet downward. Lyall curled himself over the drone’s body, shielding it with his own.
Then Biffy began to cough and sputter, spewing out Thames river water in a manner that Professor Lyall felt, while inelegant, was most prudent of him. The drone’s eyes opened, and he stared up into the werewolf’s sympathetic face.
“Do I know you?” Biffy asked between coughs.
Lord Maccon reached the steps at that point and hauled himself up, still in Anubis Form. He reached for his neck, unclasping the leather case safely fastened there, and pulled out his gun. The case had served its purpose, for the Tue Tue was still dry. He took aim at the vampire silhouetted against the moon and fired.
He missed.
“I’m Professor Lyall. We have met before. Remember the aethographor and the tea? How do you do?”
“Where’s—?” But Biffy did not get to finish his thought, for the vampire’s return shot scooted right past both Lord Maccon and his Beta, striking the poor drone in the stomach. Biffy’s sentence stopped midquestion with a cry, as his body, emaciated from weeks in confinement, convulsed and writhed.
Lord Maccon’s second shot back at the vampire did not miss. It was a lucky one, for at such a distance, even his trusty Tue Tue was unreliable. Nevertheless, the bullet struck home.
The vampire fell from the bridge with a shout, hitting the Thames with a loud splash. Immediately his agents—or were they drones?—ceased paddling about, recovering from their altercation with the earl, and swam over to him. From the resulting cries of distress, what they discovered was not to their liking.
Lord Maccon’s attention remained fixed on the tableau in the water, but Professor Lyall was once more focused on Biffy. The blood leaking from the young man’s injury smelled divine, of course, but Lyall was no pup to be diverted by the scent of fresh meat. The drone was dying. No doctor in Britain could patch up a damaged gut like that. There was really only one solution and no one, in the end, was going to be happy with it.
Taking a deep breath, the Beta reached into the wound, fishing about for the bullet with no care for Biffy’s finer feelings. The young man conveniently fainted from the pain.
Lord Maccon came to kneel on the step below them.
He gave a confused whine, unable to talk, as his head was still that of a wolf.
“I’m trying to get out the bullet,” Professor Lyall explained.
Another whine.
“It’s silver. It must come out.”
The earl began violently shaking his shaggy brindled head and backing slightly away.
“He is dying, my lord. You have no other choice. You’re already in Anubis Form. You might as well make the attempt.”
Lord Maccon continued to shake his wolf head. Professor Lyall fished out the offensive bullet, hissing in pain as the vile silver thing burned his fingertips.
“Don’t you think Lord Akeldama would rather have him still alive, or at least partly alive, than dead? I am aware that it is not done. Unheard of, even, for a werewolf to poach a drone, but what else can we do? You have to at least try.”
The Alpha cocked his head to one side, ears drooping. Professor Lyall knew what he was thinking. If this failed, Biffy would be found dead, savaged by a werewolf. How could they possibly explain that to anyone?
“You metamorphosed a female recently. You can do this, my lord.”
With a small shrug that said as clearly as any words that if this didn’t work, he would never forgive himself, the Alpha bent over the boy’s neck and bit.
Normally, metamorphosis was a violent savaging of flesh, an infliction of a curse as much as a conversion to immortality, but Biffy was so very weak and had lost so much blood already that Lord Maccon took it slowly. He was able to. Conall Maccon had more self-control than any other Alpha Lyall had ever met, for all his Scottish heritage and grumpy temper. Lyall could only imagine how sweet the boy’s blood must taste. In answer to that thought, Lord Maccon stopped biting and bent to lap at the bullet wound. Then he went back to biting. The idea of metamorphosis, most scientists believed, was to get the werewolf saliva, carrier of the curse, into the petitioner and to get sufficient human blood out. This would break mortal ties and tether the remnant soul. Supposing there was, of course, excess soul present.
It seemed to take a very long time. But Biffy kept breathing, and so long as Biffy kept breathing, Lord Maccon resolutely continued his repetitive action: bite, lick, bite, lick. He was not to be distracted even by the sloshing arrival of their opponents.
Professor Lyall stood to defend their position, prepared to change form if needed, the moon well overhead and the smell of human blood giving him added strength. But the three young men emerging from the water were obviously uninterested in any further hostility. They hauled themselves out onto the bottom step and held up empty hands at Professor Lyall’s threatening stance. Their faces were lined with distress—one was crying openly, and another was keen
ing softly at the limp form cradled in his arms. The third, a grim-faced boy holding one mostly gnawed hand against his chest, spoke.
“We’ve no reason to fight you further, werewolf. Our master is dead.”
Drones, then, and not hired muscle.
Professor Lyall sniffed, trying to catch the scent of the vampire over the smell of human blood and putrid water. The horror of it hit him broadside, and he stumbled back against the stone of the embankment. It was there, the faint odor of old blood and decay that meant vampire, mixed with almost alcoholic overtones that, like the subtle difference between fine wines, indicated lineage. And Lyall smelled an old lineage, with a film of pine resin to the wine, and no ties to the modern hives. It was a scent long since lost and no longer emitted except by this one man. Lyall could have guessed the identity of the vampire from that scent, even were he not already familiar with its owner—the potentate. Or, as the vampire was dead and no longer a denizen of the Shadow Council, Lyall supposed he must be remembered now under his old name, Sir Francis Walsingham.
“Queen Victoria,” he said to his Alpha, “is not going to be happy about this. Why the hell didn’t he send someone else to do his dirty work?”
Lord Maccon did not look up from his self-prescribed penance: bite, lick, bite, lick.
Together, the three drones hefted their dead master and made their way slowly up the stairs around the earl and Biffy’s still form. Even in their grief, they winced away from the sight of an Anubis feeding. As they passed, Professor Lyall noticed that Lord Maccon’s bullet had hit Walsingham directly in the heart—a lucky shot, indeed.
A vampire was dead. There weren’t enough of them around to forgive a transgression like that, even from BUR’s chief sundowner. The potentate was a rove, with no major hive connections, and for that Professor Lyall was grateful. But there would be blood payment due to the greater community regardless, and it was the potentate’s relationship with Buckingham Palace that was the real stickler. Even if, by his actions, this vampire had shown himself a traitor to his own kind, kidnapping another’s drone, his absence left a gap Queen Victoria would find hard to fill. He had served as advisor to the throne since Queen Elizabeth’s day. It was his knowledge of Roman strategy and supply management that drove the expansion of the British Empire. For someone like that to die because he had made a mistake, because Alexia Maccon, soulless, had become pregnant by a werewolf and he panicked, was a loss to every British citizen. Even the werewolves would mourn him, in their way.
Professor Lyall, who was cultured and not given to profanity, watched the drones cart the disanimated potentate away and said curtly, “What a bloody awful mess.”
After which he stood, silent and waiting, wary and alert, for five long hours while Lord Maccon, stubborn to the last, held Anubis Form and worked over the dying drone.
The earl’s stubbornness was rewarded when, just before dawn, before all his labor would be lost to the sun, Biffy’s eyes opened, as yellow as buttercups. He howled out his pain and confusion and fear as his form shifted, and he lay there, shuddering but whole, a lovely chocolate-brown wolf with oxblood-red stomach fur.
Lord Maccon changed out of Anubis Form and grinned hugely at his Beta. “And there’s another one for the howlers to sing about.”
“What is it with you, my lord? Can you only metamorphose the difficult cases?” Professor Lyall was impressed despite himself.
“Yes, well, he is your charge now.” Lord Maccon stood and stretched, his spine popping as it realigned. His tawny eyes turned with surprise toward the rapidly lightening sky.
“Best get him indoors right quick.”
Professor Lyall nodded and bent to pick up the newly made wolf. Biffy struggled halfheartedly before sagging weakly into the Beta’s strong arms. Metamorphosis took even the best of them like that.
Lyall made his way silently up the steps to the top of the embankment, thinking hard. They would have to find shelter nearby. A new pup couldn’t take direct sunlight without considerable damage, and poor Biffy had been through more than enough for one night. Just as he figured out a destination and headed purposefully north toward Charing Cross Station, he noticed his Alpha wasn’t following him.
“Now where are you going, my lord?” he hollered after Lord Maccon’s rapidly retreating back.
The earl yelled over his shoulder without breaking stride. “I have a boat to catch and a wife to find. You can carry on from here.”
Lyall would have rubbed his face with his hands, except his arms were full. “Oh, yes, certainly, feel free to depart. And me with a drone changed into a werewolf and a dead potentate. I am certain I have had Alphas leave me with worse messes to tidy up, but I cannot recall them at the moment.”
“I am sure you will do very well.”
“Wonderful, my lord. Thank you for your confidence.”
“Toodles.” And with that, Lord Maccon wiggled his fingers in the air in the most insulting way and disappeared around the side of a building. Presumably, he was heading for a busier part of London where he might stand a better chance of hailing a hackney posthaste for Dover.
Professor Lyall decided not to remind him that he was completely naked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Picnicking with Templars
Alexia took a moment before breakfast to drag Floote into a secluded corner.
“We must get a message to the queen on this relic business. Or at least to BUR. I cannot believe you knew about it and never told anyone. Then again, I suppose, you never tell anyone anything, do you, Floote? Even me. Still, I know now and so should the British government. Imagine using preternatural body parts as weapons. Just think what they could do if they knew how to mummify.”
“You are no longer muhjah, madam. The supernatural security of the empire is not your concern.”
Alexia shrugged. “What can I say? I cannot help myself. I meddle.”
“Yes, madam. And on a grand scale.”
“Well, my mama always said, one should do what one is best at on as large a scale as possible. Of course, she was referring to shopping at the time, but I have always felt it was the only sensible sentence she ever uttered in her life.”
“Madam?”
“We have managed to keep the mummy business mum, even from Madame Lefoux. The point being, we cannot let anyone know that mummies are useful as a weapon. There would be a terrible run on Egypt. If the Templars are using dead preternatural body parts and they figure out the mummification process, I am in real trouble. Right now it is only natural decomposition, and the fact that they have to preserve tissue in formaldehyde, that keeps preternatural-as-weapon limited to special use.” Alexia wrinkled her nose. “This is a matter of supernatural security. Italy and the other conservative countries must be kept from excavating in Egypt at all costs. We cannot risk them figuring out the truth behind the God-Breaker Plague.”
“I see your reasoning, madam.”
“You will need to develop a sudden malaise that prevents you from attending this picnic the preceptor is dragging me on. Get to the Florentine aethographic transmitter by sunset and send a message to Professor Lyall. He will know what to do with the information.” Alexia rummaged about in the ruffle of her parasol until she located the secret pocket and extracted the crystalline valve, which she handed to Floote.
“But, madam, the danger of you traveling about Italy without me.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks. Madame Lefoux has entirely refitted my parasol with the necessary armaments. I shall have the preceptor and a cadre of Templars with me, and they’re bound to protect me even if they cannot look at me. I even purchased this.” Alexia exhibited a clove of garlic dangling from a long ribbon about her neck. “I shall be perfectly fine.”
Floote did not look convinced.
“If it will help allay your fears, give me one of your guns and some of the spare bullets you purchased yesterday.”
Floote did not seem at all mollified. “Madam, you do not know how to shoot.”
“How difficult can it be?”
Floote ought to have known after a quarter century of association with Alexia that he could not hope to win any argument, especially as a gentleman of few words and even less inclination to use them. With a faint sigh of disapproval, he accepted the responsibility of sending the transmission and left the room, without giving Alexia one of his guns.
Professor Lyall spent the last hour before dawn coping with the consequences of Biffy’s sudden change into a werewolf and the potentate’s sudden change into a corpse. He began by seeking out the closest safe house, where no one else would think to look for him and his new charge. And since Charing Cross Station was just south of Soho, he headed north toward the Tunstells’ apartments, in all their pastel glory.
While midnight was considered quite an acceptable hour for calling among members of the supernatural set and among the younger, more dashing mortal crowd—drivers of phaetons and the like—dawn was not. In fact, dawn might be considered the rudest time for anyone to call upon anyone else, with the possible exception of groups of hardy fishermen in the backwaters of Portsmouth.
But Lyall felt he had no choice. As it was, he had to bang on the door a good five minutes or so before a bleary young maid opened it cautiously.
“Yes?”
Beyond the maid, Lyall saw a head stick out of a bedroom far down the hall—Mrs. Tunstell in an outrageous sleeping cap that resembled nothing so much as a frothy lace-covered mushroom. “What has happened? Are we on fire? Has someone died?”
Professor Lyall, still carrying Biffy in wolf form, muscled his way past the astonished maid and into the house. “You might put it like that, Mrs. Tunstell.”
“My goodness, Professor Lyall! What do you have there?” The head disappeared. “Tunny! Tunny! Wake up. Professor Lyall is here with a dead dog. Arise at once. Tunny!” She came bustling down the hallway wrapped in a voluminous robe of eye-searing pink satin. “Oh, the poor lamb, bring him in here.”
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