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 Lyal stood to defend their position, prepared to change form if needed, the moon well overhead and the smel 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 Lyal ’s threatening stance. Their faces were lined with distress—one was crying openly, and another was keening 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 Lyal sniffed, trying to catch the scent of the vampire over the smel 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 Lyal smel ed 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. Lyal 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, Lyal 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 hel 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 stil form. Even in their grief, they winced away from the sight of an Anubis feeding. As they passed, Professor Lyal noticed that Lord Maccon’s bul et 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 Lyal 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 fil . 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, soul ess, 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 Lyal , 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 al his labor would be lost to the sun, Biffy’s eyes opened, as yel ow 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 Lyal 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 Lyal 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.
Lyal 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 purposeful y north toward Charing Cross Station, he noticed his Alpha wasn’t fol owing him.
“Now where are you going, my lord?” he hol ered after Lord Maccon’s rapidly retreating back.
The earl yel ed over his shoulder without breaking stride. “I have a boat to catch and a wife to find. You can carry on from here.”
Lyal would have rubbed his face with his hands, except his arms were ful . “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 recal them at the moment.”
“I am sure you wil 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 Lyal decided not to remind him that he was completely nak*d.
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 tel anyone anything, do you, Floote? Even me. Stil , 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.”
“Wel , 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 al costs. We cannot risk them figuring out the truth behind the God-Breaker Plague.”
“I see your reasoning, madam.”
“You wil 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 Lyal . He wil 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 crystal ine 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 shal 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 shal be perfectly fine.”
Floote did not look convinced.
“If it wil help al ay your fears, give me one of your guns and some of the spare bul ets you purchased yesterday.”
Floote did not seem at al mol ified. “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, especial y 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 Lyal 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 Tunstel s’ apartments, in al their pastel glory.
While midnight was considered quite an acceptable hour for cal ing 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 cal upon anyone else, with the possible exception of groups of hardy fishermen in the backwaters of Portsmouth.
But Lyal 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, Lyal saw a head stick out of a bedroom far down the hal —Mrs.
Tunstel 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 Lyal , stil carrying Biffy in wolf form, muscled his way past the astonished maid and into the house. “You might put it like that, Mrs. Tunstel .”
“My goodness, Professor Lyal ! What do you have there?” The head disappeared.
“Tunny! Tunny! Wake up. Professor Lyal is here with a dead dog. Arise at once. Tunny!”
She came bustling down the hal way wrapped in a voluminous robe of eye-searing pink satin. “Oh, the poor lamb, bring him in here.”
“Please do forgive me for the presumption, Mrs. Tunstel , but yours was the nearest house.” He lay Biffy down on the smal lavender couch and quickly reached behind it to draw the curtains over the window, just as the sun’s first rays peeked above the horizon.
Biffy’s previously stil form stiffened and then began to shudder and convulse.
Throwing al decorum to the winds, Professor Lyal rushed at Ivy, got one arm firmly about her waist, and hustled her to the door. “Best you not be here for this, Mrs. Tunstel .