Timeless

CHAPTER FIFTEEN In Which We Learn Why Werewolves Don’t Float

There were no more trains to Cairo that day, which meant Lady Maccon and her husband were forced to return to the dock and hire river transport. It was easier said than done. Despite the fact that they were now familiar with Lady Maccon and her autocratic demands, the captains did not want to set out until the following morning. Then there was the price to negotiate. Very few dahabiyas carried any kind of modern conveniences—augmented small-craft outboard steam propellers or tea kettles, for example—making them mere pleasure vessels designed to be pulled slowly up the river by mule or, worse, human power!

“It’s all so very primitive!” huffed Alexia, who might ordinarily have enjoyed such a leisurely mode of transport.

Her excuse for such bad behavior must be that she was, at this juncture, exhausted, dusty, worried about Primrose, and tired of carrying Prudence. It was after sunset and the toddler was entirely in her charge. Under such circumstances, everyone’s tempers were fraying, even Prudence, who was hungry. The quintessential Egyptian lack of urgency and insistence on haggling and negotiation was driving the efficient Lady Maccon slowly insane.

It was almost midnight and they were talking with the eighth captain in a row when a tap came on Alexia’s shoulder. She turned around to find herself face-to-face with an extraordinarily handsome man, his features familiar, his beard cut neat and sharp—their Drifter rescuer from the bazaar.

“Lady? You are ready now, to right the wrong of the father?” His voice was deep and resonant, his words clipped by an Arabic accent and limited English.

Alexia looked him over. “If I say yes, will that get me any closer to Luxor?”

“Follow.” The man turned and walked away, his dark blue robe a swirl of purpose behind him.

Alexia said to her husband, “Conall, I believe we may have to follow that gentleman.”

“But, Alexia… what?”

“It has worked in my favor before.”

“But who on God’s green earth is the man?”

“He’s a Drifter.”

“Can’t be—they don’t fraternize with foreigners.”

“Well, this one does. He rescued us at the bazaar when we were attacked.”

“What? You were what? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were busy yelling at me about Professor Lyall’s manipulations.”

“Oh. So tell me now.”

“Never mind, we have to follow him. Do come on.” Alexia firmed up her grip on Prudence and dashed after the rapidly disappearing balloon nomad.

“Oh, blast.” Conall, bless his supernatural strength, hoisted all of their luggage easily and trundled after.

The man led them toward the Porte de Rosette. Eventually he veered off and, rounding a corner in the street, came upon a medium-sized obelisk carved of red rock that glittered in the moonlight. He was using it as a mooring, a heavy rope wrapped about the base, and his balloon hovered above like—Alexia tilted her head back—well, like a big balloon. The man stopped and made a move to take Prudence from Alexia. She jerked back but when he gestured at a rope ladder significantly, she nodded.

“Very well, but my husband goes first.”

Conall was looking with white-faced horror at the swinging ladder. Werewolves do not float. “No, really. I’d prefer not, if you don’t mind.”

Alexia tried to be reasonable. “We must get to Luxor somehow.”

“My dear wife, you have seen nothing in your life so pathetic as a werewolf with airsickness.”

“Do we have a choice? Besides, with any luck we’ll be flying into the God-Breaker Plague zone soon. At which point you should be fine and human once more.”

“Oh, you think that, do you? What if the plague doesn’t extend upward?”

“Where’s your spirit of scientific inquiry, husband? This is our opportunity to find just such a thing out. I promise to take lots of notes.”

“That’s very reassuring.” The earl did not look convinced. He eyed the ladder with even greater suspicion.

“Up you go, Conall. Stop dawdling. If it’s that bad, I can simply touch you.”

Her husband grumbled but began to climb.

“There’s my brave boy,” said his wife condescendingly.

Being supernatural, he heard her but pretended not to, eventually making it over the edge and into the balloon basket.

Alexia noticed that the balloon was much lower than the first time she had seen it, during the day. She was grateful for this—less ladder to climb.

The Drifter shimmied up, Prudence strapped to his back in a sling. The toddler squealed in delight. She, unlike her father, was very excited by the prospect of floating.

After a moment’s hesitation, Alexia followed suit.

A little street urchin, all unobserved until that moment, darted forth and unwound the rope from the obelisk mooring. Alexia found herself unexpectedly climbing a free-floating ladder drifting down the street. This was not quite so easily done as one might think, particularly not in a full skirt and bustle, but no one had ever called Lady Maccon a spiritless weakling. She hung on for dear life and continued to make her way up by slow degrees, even as the ladder on which she clung headed for a very large building at a rate rather more alarming than reassuringly dignified.

She made it up into the basket just in time, somewhat hampered by the restrictions proper dress imposed upon the British female. She thought, not for the first time, that Madame Lefoux might have the right of it. But then she simply could not get around the idea of wearing trousers, not as a female of her proportions. The Drifter met her at the top with a strong hand of assistance, quickly hauling the rope ladder up after her.

So it was that the Maccons found themselves floating low above the city of Alexandria in one of the famous nomadic balloons completely at the mercy of a man to whom they had not been formally introduced.

The earl, with a muttered oath, lurched to the basket edge and was promptly sick over the side. He continued to be so for a good long while. Alexia stood next to him rubbing his back solicitously. Her touch turned him human, but it seemed that he was a man ill suited to travel by air, immortal or no. Eventually, she respected his dignity and his mutters of “do shove off” and left him to his misery.

The Drifter unstrapped Prudence from his back and set her down. She began to toddle around investigating everything—she had her mother’s curiosity, bless her. The crew of the balloon, Alexia surmised after a short while, must be the man’s family. There was a wife, upon whom the harsh features of the desert were not quite so attractive but who seemed more ready to smile than her dour husband. This lent her an aura of beauty, as is often the case with the good-natured. The woman’s many scarves and colorful robes wafted in the slight breeze. There was also one strapping son of perhaps fourteen and a young daughter only slightly older than Prudence. The entire family was amazingly tolerant of Prudence’s curiosity and evident interest in trying to “help.” They pretended to let her steer with the many ropes that dangled in the center of the basket, and the boy held her up high so she could look out over the edge—an action that was met with peals of delighted laughter.

The balloon remained rather low, especially for a lady accustomed to dirigible travel. Alexia remembered Ivy’s comment about the Drifters ordinarily landing at night because of the cold and then rising up with the heat of the day. It made her wonder.

With the initial flurry of float-off past, Alexia left her self-imposed position of noninterference, checked once more on poor Conall, who was still expunging, and made her way slowly to their rescuer. It was difficult to walk for, while the sides of the basket were made of wicker, the floor was a grid of poles with animal skins stretched between—not the easiest thing for a woman of Alexia’s girth and shoe choice. Add to that the fact that her moving about shook the entire basket most alarmingly.

“Pardon me, sir. It’s not that I’m not grateful, but who are you?”

The man smiled, a flash of perfect white teeth from within that trimmed beard. “Ah, yes, of course, lady. I am Zayed.”

“How do you do, Mr. Zayed.”

The man bowed. Then he pointed in turn. “My son, Baddu; my wife, Noora; and my daughter, Anitra.”

Alexia made polite murmurs and curtsied in their direction. The family all nodded but did not leave their respective posts.

“It is very kind of you to offer us, a, er, lift.”

“A favor to a friend, lady.”

“Really? Who?”

“Goldenrod.”

“Who?”

“You do not know, lady?”

“Evidently not.”

“Then we will wait.”

“Oh, but…”

The man’s face closed down.

Alexia sighed and switched topics. “If you don’t think it interfering, may I ask? We are very low—how can we float at night?”

“Ah, lady. You know some of our ways. Let me show you.” He made his way over to the middle and threw several blankets off what looked to be a container of gas, of the kind used for lamp lighting back home in London. “For special, we have this.”

Alexia was instantly intrigued. “Will you show me?”

The man flashed a brief grin of excitement and began unhitching and hooking in various tubes and cords. He hoisted the canister so its mouth pointed into the massive balloon.

While he was busy fussing, Alexia took a moment to take in her surroundings.

The balloon was utterly unlike the British-made dirigibles Alexia had utilized in the past. She had traveled in both small pleasure-time floaters and the larger mail post and passenger transports—the company-owned monsters. This balloon was similar to neither. For one thing, the balloon part itself hadn’t the shape of a dirigible and was entirely made of cloth. It was guided by means of opening and closing flaps rather than by a propeller of any kind. For another, the basket was bigger than a personal jaunt dirigible but much smaller than one of the larger cross-country behemoths. It was twice the length of a rowboat but basically square. In the center was the mooring for the balloon and all the associated straps and contraptions required to see it float and directed properly. As the basket slowly spun with the balloon, there seemed to be no particular front or back. There was an area clearly used for sleeping, another for cooking, and one tented corner that Alexia could only assume was meant for doing one’s private business. She supposed that the family lived in the basket and that the various hanging sacks over the edge and from the base of the balloon—which she had assumed were ballasts—were probably goods and supplies.

Prudence went wobbling past, the Drifter girl on her tail, both of them giggling madly and having a grand old time. Alexia made her way to Conall, to defend him from possible contact with his daughter. The last thing they needed was an airsick werewolf pup dashing about the craft. Better to have a large airsick man instead.

A blast of flame and a whoop of delight from the boy, Baddu, and the balloon began a stately rise upward, fuel from the gas giving them a boost of speed high toward the aethersphere. There was no lurching sensation; in fact, the movement hardly registered except that the ground retreated below them and Alexia’s ears popped.

Alexia knew in principle what the Drifters were aiming for. If they could get the balloon up and into an aether stream, they could hook into a current that would carry them south, up the Nile. It was a tricky maneuver, for should the balloon rise too much into the aether, there was a possibility of it getting torn apart, or caving with the sheer of crosscurrents, or the gas flame blowing out, causing them to drop out and down toward the desert.

Alexia tried not to think about it, instead looking down as Alexandria fell away under them.

Poor Conall, at this point reduced to dry heaving and little whimpers of distress, had his eyes tightly shut and his big hands white-knuckled about the side of the basket. Alexia wondered if she shouldn’t get Prudence to take on wolf form. Perhaps they could trap her as a pup in the corner? Prudence didn’t seem to feel the pain of werewolf shift, so perhaps she didn’t get airsick either? She certainly wasn’t suffering from the affliction now. She was having a wonderful time. And, Alexia noted with pleasure, always stopping politely should any of their hosts wish to show her the correct anchoring of a cord or explain to her the thermodynamics of floating—in Arabic, mind you. If Lord Akeldama did nothing else, he was instilling in his adopted daughter the very best manners.

Soon they had risen high enough to turn Alexandria into a spot of faint torchlight. Below and ahead, Alexia could see only the dark of the desert, here and there a lonely fire, and, glinting under the moonlight, the hundreds of long silver snakes that made up the Nile Delta. A sudden flurry of activity in the basket, and Alexia looked over to see Zayed hauling hard on one of the ropes while Baddu offloaded some weight. Then there came a jerk and a woof noise, and the top of the balloon caught an aether stream. Zayed turned up the gas and angled the canister toward the cave-in and the balloon rose up fully into the aether stream. It immediately began to float, with much greater speed, due south. Despite this change in pace, Alexia felt almost nothing. Unlike a dirigible, there were no breezes; the balloon was moving with the currents.

Conall straightened, looking markedly better and less green.

Alexia patted him sympathetically. “Human?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t do much good. I think I simply got everything, well, out. If you know what I mean?”

Alexia nodded. “Could it be our current proximity to the aether?”

“Could be. Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Are you going to make a note of it, wife? Seems that the God-Breaker Plague reaches all the way up to the aether.”

“Either that, or the aethersphere itself counteracts your supernatural abilities.”

“Well, if that were the case, scientists would have figured that out by now, wouldn’t they?”

Lady Maccon took out a tiny notebook from one of the secret pockets of her parasol and a stylographic pen from another. “Oh, yes? And how would they have done that? Vampires can’t float up that high, because they are tethered too short. And werewolves don’t float at all, because they get sick.”

“You can’t tell me no one has transported a ghost and body via float before?”

Alexia frowned. “I don’t know, but it’s worth researching. I wonder if Genevieve and her deceased aunt came via float or ferry when they left Paris for London.”

“You’ll have to ask her when we catch up.” They paused in their conversation, awkward for a moment; then Conall asked, “Can you feel the plague?”

“You mean that odd tingly sensation I felt at the edge of Alexandria?”

He nodded.

“Difficult to tell, since the feeling was already similar to that of aether breezes.” Alexia closed her eyes and leaned her arms out of the balloon basket, embracing the air.

The earl immediately grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backward. “Don’t do that, Alexia!” He was looking green again, this time with fear.

Alexia sighed. “Can’t tell. Could be the plague, could be proximity to the aethersphere. We’ll simply have to wait and see what happens as we move farther toward the epicenter.”

“Did no one ever tell you, wife, that it’s rather dangerous to do scientific experiments on oneself?”

“Now, dear, don’t fuss. To be fair, I’m doing them on you as well.”

“How verra reassuring.”

Biffy knocked politely on Lyall’s office door. He sniffed the air while he waited to be bidden entrance. He smelled the usual odors of BUR—sweat and cologne, leather and boot polish, gun oil and weaponry. In the end it was most similar to a soldier’s barracks. He did not scent another pack. Wherever she was at the moment, Lady Kingair was not there.

“Enter,” came Lyall’s mild bidding.

Biffy was shocked by how warm simply the sound of that voice made him feel. Almost reassured. Whatever they were building together, Biffy decided at that moment that it was good and worth fighting for. Which, being a werewolf, he supposed might actually be more of a literal than figurative way of putting matters.

The young dandy took a breath and entered the room, his pleasure subdued under the weight of the information he had to impart. The burden of a spy, Lord Akeldama always said, was not in the knowing of things but in knowing when to tell such things to others. That and the fact that creeping around could be dusty work, terrible on the knees of one’s trousers.

Biffy felt that there was no point in barking about the dell. “I know who killed Dubh, and no one is going to like it.” He moved across the room, pausing only to remove his hat and place it on the stand near the door. The poor hat stand was already overloaded with coats and wraps and chapeaus as well as a number of less savory items—leather collars with gun compartments, Gatling straps, and what looked to be a plucked goose made of straw.

Once he stood across the cluttered desk from Lyall, Biffy removed the bullet from his waistcoat pocket and slapped it down on the dark mahogany.

Professor Lyall put aside the papers he had been studying and picked up the bullet. After a moment of close examination, he tipped a pair of glassicals down from where they perched atop his head and studied the bullet even more carefully through the magnification lens.

He looked up after a long moment, the glassicals distorting one hazel eye out of all proportion.

Biffy winced at the asymmetry.

Lyall took the glassicals off, set them aside, and handed the bullet back to Biffy. “Sundowner ammunition. Old-fashioned. Of the kind that shot Dubh.”

Biffy nodded, face grave. “You’ll never guess who from.”

Professor Lyall sat back, vulpine face impassive, and raised one dark blond eyebrow patiently.

“Floote.” Biffy waited for a reaction, wanted one.

Nothing. Lyall was good.

“It was all Floote. He had opportunity. He was free at the time of the initial attack at the train station. He had access to Lord Akeldama’s dirigible, which he could fly back, setting part of London on fire to delay Lady Maccon. Do you recall, Dubh mentioned something to her ladyship about not wanting to go with her home? He said it wasn’t safe. I believe that was because he knew Floote would be there. Then when Lady Maccon brought the wounded Beta back, who did she leave him alone with in the sickroom for those few minutes?”

“Floote.”

“And what happened?”

“Dubh died.”

“Exactly.”

“But opportunity is not motive, my dear boy.” Professor Lyall, for all his passivity, was unwilling to believe.

“I confronted him, but you know Floote. He claimed it was something to do with Alessandro Tarabotti, orders left behind when he died. Something wasn’t supposed to get out. Lady Maccon wasn’t supposed to know. Of course, she left for Egypt anyway. You know what I think? I think Alessandro Tarabotti somehow set the God-Breaker Plague into motion, and Floote has been seeing that it continues to expand. Those were the orders Mr. Tarabotti left, and Floote’s been secretly conducting a long-distance supernatural extermination mandate ever since. I think Dubh simply got in the way and Floote had no other choice.”

“Ambitious, but what do you—” Lyall paused and sniffed the air. “Oh, dear,” he said succinctly.

Biffy sniffed as well. He caught a whiff of open fields and country air, although not of the kind he might be familiar with from his own pack. This was a damp, lush, impossibly green field leagues to the north—Scotland.

Biffy whirled and ran to the door, throwing it open, only to see Lady Kingair’s graying tail tip disappear out the front entrance of BUR and into the night, at speed.

He felt Lyall’s presence next to him. “What did you do with Floote, my dandy?”

“Locked him in the wine cellar, of course.”

“This is not good. Given half a chance, she’ll kill him before we extract any additional information out of him.”

“Not to mention that it’s a bad idea to eat one’s domestic staff.”

The two men looked at one another and then, by mutual accord, began to strip out of their clothes. At least, Biffy consoled himself, BUR agents were accustomed to such eccentricities.

Professor Lyall gave up about halfway through and simply sacrificed his wardrobe to the cause. Biffy watched him run after the Alpha. He hoped fervently they weren’t in for another fight with the she-wolf; he didn’t think he had it in him. However, Biffy did spare a few moments to divest himself of his favorite waistcoat and cravat before shifting form. The trousers and shirt could be replaced, but not that waistcoat; it was a real pip.

Biffy took off after Lyall, pushing himself hard, so hard he caught up to the slighter wolf just before they reached the pack’s town house. Professor Lyall was reputed to be one of the fastest fighters in England, but Biffy still had enough muscle mass on him to catch up in a straight race. He was inordinately proud of himself.

They pushed in the open door to the Maccon’s town house to find Lady Kingair snuffling about, dashing frantically from room to room, evidently having started her hunt for the butler on the top floor in the servants’ quarters. Luckily, she had not yet reached the wine cellar. Floote’s scent was so prevalent throughout the house it must be throwing her off.

Biffy and Lyall looked at one another, yellow eyes to yellow eyes. Then they both leaped toward the angry Alpha and backed her into the front parlor by dint of surprise, rather than power.

Biffy lashed out with his tail, slamming the door closed behind them.

Professor Lyall changed form, standing before the furious she-wolf. “Lady Kingair, don’t you think we might talk about this civilly, just this once?”

The rangy wolf sat back on her haunches, as though considering this proposition, and then, after a moment, the graying fur of her coat retreated, and she stood before Lyall.

Sidheag Kingair was a fine figure of a woman for all she had been converted later in life. She crossed her arms, utterly unself-conscious. “Professor, I dinna want tae be civil. If that man killed my Beta, ’tis my right tae take his blood.”

“If.”

She looked at Biffy, now sitting back on his haunches, tongue out and panting after such a run. “But I heard him say that—”

“You heard him speculate. Nothing has been proven.”

“That dinna sound like speculation tae me.”

Biffy wondered if he, too, should change his form, or if such a thing would be wasted on the Alpha’s rage. He wanted to have some input, however, aside from wagging his tail and twitching his ears, so he sought out his reserves of courage, faced the pain, and shifted.

“We need to act within the confines of British law, Lady Kingair, as well as pack protocol. The first thing to do is confront the man and inquire further.”

Lady Kingair’s lip curled. “Inquire? If you insist.”

Professor Lyall turned to Biffy. “If you would like to lead the way?”

Biffy would not like, but he did as he was told by his Beta, moving with a certain amount of embarrassed poise through the house in full view of half the servants.

Thus they trooped down to the wine cellar—to find the door slightly open with no sign of being forced and the cellar itself completely empty.

Floote was gone.

Lady Kingair erupted into immediate fury. “He’s escaped!”

Professor Lyall shook his head. “Not possible. We secured this room to hold werewolves.”

“Then someone must have let him out. Or not locked the room down properly.” She snarled at Biffy.

Biffy was affronted. “I assure you, it was securely locked, and I searched his person for tools.”

“You must have missed something, pup!”

“Perhaps I missed the utterly ridiculous idea that a butler could pick locks!”

“Perhaps you did, you little—”

Professor Lyall stepped in. “Now wait just a moment, Lady Kingair. Did you search Floote’s room just now when you were looking for him?”

The Alpha shrugged, the long fall of her thick hair shifting against her naked breasts. She still glared at Biffy.

Unashamed, knowing he had done all that could be asked of someone in his position, Biffy pretended to examine his manicure. For some reason, shifting forms played hell on the cuticles.

Lyall continued his questioning. “Had he taken his belongings?”

Lady Kingair wasn’t interested in figuring out the minutiae of Floote’s disappearance. She was interested in blaming someone for it—Biffy.

Biffy turned away to poke about the cellar, trying to find any clues that might represent Floote’s ability to escape a heretofore impenetrable wine cellar.

He did not see her shifting forms. The only warning he got was Lyall’s shout.

Afterward, Biffy was never quite certain what he did or why it happened. He reacted out of instinct, but there were two instincts in place—the werewolf one that wanted to shift forms out of self-preservation and the Biffy one that hated the pain of shifting more than anything, more than a badly cut jacket or a loose cravat. Those two instincts went to battle against each other as the great vicious she-wolf charged toward him.

He shifted.

He simply didn’t quite manage to shift everything.

Only his head went over.

That action stopped Lady Kingair in a way that nothing else possibly could. She halted her charge, stood on four legs stiffed in surprise, and stared at him.

Biffy didn’t understand what was going on. He still felt like himself, and there was very little pain, but his head felt swollen and heavy, as though he had caught a cold, and his senses were suddenly far more acute.

Professor Lyall moved forward, brushed past Lady Kingair, and stood quietly in front of him. The Beta’s mouth was open ever so slightly in shock, not an expression Biffy had ever thought to see on his lover’s face.

He tried to ask, “What’s going on?” But all he could manage was a bit of a whine and a small bark.

“Biffy,” said Professor Lyall softly. “Did you know you had an Anubis form?”

Biffy barked at him again. He was beginning to shake slightly. It was from the fear and the stress, not from being naked in a cellar. Werewolves rarely felt cold even in human skin. Or half-human skin.

Lady Kingair shifted back into her fully human guise. She was still looking angry and impatient, but she also seemed far less inclined to fight him than she had mere moments before.

“He dinna act like an Alpha.”

All Lyall’s attention was on Biffy; he barely glanced at the Kingair Alpha. “He does in some areas,” he replied.

Biffy argued he must look beyond ridiculous. The head of a wolf, all fuzzy and yellow-eyed, on the lean pale body of a dandy. I don’t want to be an Alpha, he cried out internally. I don’t want to spend half my time fighting challengers. I don’t want to have the responsibility of a pack. I don’t want to die early or go mad. Make it go away!

But again, all he could do was whine.

“It’s all right, pup,” soothed Lyall. “You simply shift it back. At least I think that’s how it works.” He frowned to himself. “I’ve served several Alphas and I never thought to ask if Anubis worked any differently than full wolf fur. Some professor I am.”

Biffy only whined again. He was trying. He was reaching for that place deep inside that could force the shift, that tingling pressure of bones re-forming. It wasn’t working. He couldn’t go either direction, couldn’t return to wolf or human. He was trapped in the in-between of Anubis state.

“Oh, dear. Are you stuck?” asked Lyall.

Smart man. Biffy nodded his shaggy head vigorously.

“Och, I’ve nae time for this! We must catch that blighter Floote.” Lady Kingair was at her limit. Clearly Biffy’s predicament was merely an added insult to her evening.

She went up the stairs. Preparing, no doubt, to chase after Floote into the night. “Where would he go?” she shouted back at the two werewolves.

With a shrug, Lyall and Biffy followed.

The Beta said, “If he was still working for Sandy, and if he was operating under that agenda all along, we must assume that it is an antisupernatural agenda. Sandy promised me…” The Beta winced slightly at this, an old lie only now uncovered. “Never mind what he promised. If the plan all along was to expand the plague, then it may be that even I couldn’t change his mind.”

Lady Kingair concurred. “I guess you weren’t as alluring as you thought, Beta. So where would he go?”

Biffy came to stand close behind Lyall, placing a supportive hand on the man’s shoulder. He wanted to reassure Lyall that he found him alluring, but he could only growl in annoyance.

Biffy knew what he would do were he in Floote’s situation. Were he a mortal man with werewolves on his tail, there was only one truly safe place—the air. And Floote, loyal to the last, would try to get to Lady Maccon to explain his actions to her. To see that she was safe, as that, too, was part of Alessandro Tarabotti’s mandate. Biffy might have said all these things, but he had no proper mouth and his neck was part wolf as well, including, apparently the voice box. Good Lord, he thought, what if I’m permanently stuck like this? I’ll never be able to carry off a pointed collar again! Then he realized with relief that Anubis was wolf form, at least in part, and wolf form would not survive the sunrise. Only a few more hours, then.

Lyall had reached the same conclusion as Biffy regarding Floote’s probable course of action. “He’ll head to the nearest dirigible.”

Lady Kingair dashed off.

Biffy whined and gestured with his wolf head at the stairs. The stairs that led to the second-story hallway that ended in a balcony that had a secret drawbridge to Lord Akeldama’s house. If Floote wanted to take to the air quickly, he’d go for Dandelion Fluff Upon a Spoon. After all, he’d used Lord Akeldama’s private dirigible before.

Lyall concurred, but he didn’t try to stop Lady Kingair. He allowed her to rush off into the night, presumably toward the ticket stations of the larger public dirigibles at the green. She was not a woman accustomed to London and its extravagances. It had not even occurred to her that there might be a private dirigible nearby.

The Beta began making his way upstairs to cross over into the vampire’s abode.

Biffy held back.

“Don’t you want to see if you’re correct? See if he did manage to steal Lord Akeldama’s dirigible a second time?” Lyall goaded him gently.

Biffy gestured down at his naked body and furry head with one fine white hand.

Professor Lyall understood perfectly. “You’re embarrassed?”

Biffy nodded.

“Don’t be foolish. This is something to be proud of—very few werewolves boast Anubis form, not even all Alphas. And it’s highly unusual in a pup so young as you. Generally, it takes a decade or more to manifest. This is brilliant.”

Biffy whined in a sarcastic manner.

“Don’t be silly. It really is.”

Biffy gave a huffy bark that he hoped sounded like a snort of derision.

“Trust me, my dandy, this is a good thing. Now, do come along.”

With a sigh, Biffy did as ordered and followed his Beta across the small drawbridge and into his former master’s house.

Only three years earlier, all would have been chaos at the sight of two naked men, one of them with a wolf head, wandering the halls of Lord Akeldama’s domicile. Several of the drones, possibly Biffy included, might even have had the vapors.

It was not that Lord Akeldama and his boys objected to nudity; in fact, all were coolly in favor of it—in the boxing ring, for example, or the bedroom. But wandering the hallways underdressed, let alone undressed, was frowned upon unless cursed by extreme inebriation or emotional instability. And a werewolf was not to be tolerated in the house of a vampire except when socially mandated. All that had shifted when Lady Maccon installed herself in Lord Akeldama’s closet. For where Lady Maccon went, Lord Maccon was soon to follow, and that good gentleman had somewhat improved the general outlook of Lord Akeldama’s household on the subject of nudity and wolves, particularly in combination.

It was universally held among the drones that Lord Maccon had a particularly fine physique, and there had been quite the scuffle over who would be allowed to dress him in the evenings. After Floote assumed that role, it became a trickster’s challenge to ascertain who among the boys could arrange such little incidences as would cause the London Alpha to bluster out into the hallway in the altogether of an afternoon.

As a result, the entire Akeldama household was markedly tolerant of Lyall’s and Biffy’s unexpected appearance and absent attire, although they did give Biffy some odd looks. Many of them had never seen Anubis form. Biffy took great solace in the fact that, as his head was that of a wolf, none of them knew it was him. Until, of course, they ran smack dab into Lord Akeldama, coming out of his aethographor chamber as they were making their way up onto the roof.

The vampire was dressed in an outfit that most closely resembled the waters of some tropical island, varying shades of turquoise, teal, and blue, accessorized with pearls and white gold. His effeminate features were screwed up in concentration over some small scrap of paper on which was scribbled, no doubt, an aetheric message of grave political, social, or fashionable import.

Lord Akeldama took a long look at Professor Lyall’s physique and then gave him a little nod of academic approval. Then he directed an even longer look at Biffy.

Finally he said, “Biffy, my darling boy, what have you done to your hair? Something new for the evening?”

Biffy inclined his wolf head, dreadfully mortified. Of course, there was no chance of Lord Akeldama needing to see his face to recognize him; the vampire had a long, and somewhat inconvenient, memory for body parts.

Lord Akeldama smiled ever so slightly, the hint of a fang peeking out one corner of his mouth. “Now, my dear Dolly, did you know this would happen? You are a fortunate werewolf as well as a fortune man, now, are you not? Anubis form could be the solution to all your problems given some patience and a few well-placed suggestions.”

Professor Lyall only inclined his head.

“But of course, you would have known that the moment he manifested.”

The Beta’s expression did not alter.

Lord Akeldama smiled fully, his fangs sharp and bright and fierce, as pearly as the cravat pin about his neck. “I don’t trust serendipity, Professor Lyall. I don’t trust it at all.” No one missed the fact that the vampire was, for once, using someone’s proper name.

Biffy’s wolf head swayed back and forth between the combatants, wondering at all the unspoken undercurrents.

“I never underestimate the same man twice,” said Lord Akeldama, fiddling with his cravat pin with one hand while he surreptitiously tucked the bit of paper with the aethographic message away with the other.

“You give me too much credit, my lord, if you thought I could anticipate this.” Professor Lyall nodded at Biffy’s altered state.

“Well, Biffy, what do you have to say on the subject?” The vampire regarded his former drone, his expression friendly, if a little distant.

“He’s stuck, my lord.” Lyall came to Biffy’s rescue.

“Goodness, how unnerving.”

“Indeed. Imagine how Biffy must feel.”

“That, my dear Dolly, is beyond even my capacities. And now, how may I help you gentlemen? Do you require garments, perhaps?”

Professor Lyall rolled his eyes slightly. “Shortly. We were hoping if first we might ascertain the condition and state of your lordship’s dirigible.”

“Buffety? I believe she’s moored up top. Haven’t sent her out in many a moon. No need with my dear Alexia right here, I suppose. Why?”

“We believe she might have been used for nefarious purposes.”

“Really? How wonderfully salacious! I can’t believe I wasn’t invited.”

Professor Lyall said nothing.

“Ah, are you perhaps here in your BUR capacity, Dolly, my pet?”

Professor Lyall knew better than to give Lord Akeldama any more information than strictly necessary.

“No? Pack business, then? Has my little Buffety something to do with that unfortunate incident concerning the other Beta?” The vampire tsked around his fangs. “So sad.”

With still no response from Professor Lyall and none possible from Biffy, the vampire waved an aqua-gloved hand magnanimously at the ladderlike staircase that led up onto his roof. “By all means.”

The three gentlemen climbed up to find that the Dandelion Fluff Upon a Spoon was, indeed, no longer in residence. They could see it, some distance away, floating high in the aether stream heading in a southwesterly direction. Lyall and Biffy were unsurprised. Lord Akeldama pretended outrage, although he was surely warned there might be something amiss.

“Why, I do declare! How unsporting, to purloin a man’s dirigible without asking! I suppose you two have a very good idea who borrowed my beauty?”

The werewolves exchanged looks.

“Floote.” Lyall no doubt figured Lord Akeldama would discover the truth soon enough.

“Ah, well, at least I know he’ll take good care of it and return it in first-rate condition. Butlers are like that, you know? But where’s he taken it? Not too far I trust—my little darling isn’t made for long distances.”

“Probably to try to make an in-air transfer to one of the postal dirigibles.”

“Going after my darlingist of Alexias, is he? To Gyppie?”

“Most likely.”

“Well, well, well.”

“So you say.”

“She’ll be cast adrift, poor thing. I had better alert the authorities, let them know she’s gone missing, so as I’m not held responsible if she drifts into anything important. Unless you, my dear Dolly, being BUR might count as…”

The Beta shook his head.

“Ah, well, so I shall send Boots to the local constabulary. Our beautiful boys with the silver pins.”

Professor Lyall nodded. “That is probably a good plan. Although, I shouldn’t think they need know who took it. Not just yet. Right now all we have is coincidence and speculation.”

The vampire regarded Lyall up and down in a very considering sort of way. “Look at you, Dolly, controlling information like an old intelligencer. One would almost think you vampiric. And, of course, my darling Alexia wouldn’t like it, not her butler with a police record.”

“Exactly. We must take into account Lady Maccon’s feelings on the matter.”

“I suppose… Lady Kingair?” Lord Akeldama twiddled his fingers casually in the air.

The Beta only lowered his eyes.

“Indeed, werewolf business. Just so. Well, Dolly my love, I do wish your werewolf business hadn’t absconded with my dirigible.”

“I do apologize about that, Lord Akeldama.”

“Well, never you mind. Nice to have something for my boys to do. London has been awfully quiet without Lady Maccon. And now I see the sun will be rising soon, if you gentlemen will excuse me?” The vampire made a little bow at Professor Lyall. “Beta,” and then to Biffy, pointedly, “Alpha.”

Biffy and Lyall stayed, naked, on the roof of Lord Akeldama’s town house watching the sunrise. As the sun eased itself up over the horizon, Biffy found himself inching closer and closer to Lyall’s slight frame, until they stood, shoulders touching. When the first rays peeked over the horizon, he knew Lyall could feel the shudder of change that wrenched him back from Anubis to fully human.

The sunlight felt harsh, causing the sensation of dry and stretched skin. It was a condition, Biffy had learned, that was the price werewolves paid for being out during the day. But it was a relief to experience it once more, pulling at his nose and eyes. He reached up a tentative hand to feel, finding his own face instead of the wolf’s.

“I do not want to be an Alpha,” was the first thing he said, testing out his vocal cords for functionality.

Lyall bumped closer against his shoulder. “No, the best ones never do.”

They continued to stand, not looking at one another, staring out over the awakening city, as though trying to see a small dirigible long since gone.

“Do you think he made it to the post?” Biffy asked at long last.

“It’s Floote. Of course he made it.”

“Poor Lady Maccon, a butler who murders, a father who betrays, and a husband who wants to die.”

“Is that why you think Lord Maccon was so eager to visit Egypt?”

“Don’t you? What man wants to go mad. It seems to me the God-Breaker Plague is an excellent solution to the problem of Alpha immortality.” Biffy was, of course, thinking of his own future now.

“An interesting way of putting it.”

“I cannot believe no werewolf has thought to use it so before.”

“How do you know they have not? Who do you think gathered that data you were so interested in, on the extent of the plague?”

“Ah.”

“Ah, indeed. Are you reassured by this?” The Beta turned to face him. Biffy could feel those concerned hazel eyes fixed on his profile. He kept resolutely facing the far horizon. At least I have a good profile, he consoled himself.

“You mean now that we know I am an Alpha?” Biffy considered the question. To be reassured that he had a safe place to die as a werewolf when once, an age ago now, he had thought to live forever as a vampire? He gave a tiny sigh. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He paused. “How long do I have?”

Professor Lyall gave a little huff of amusement. “Oh, a few hundred years at least, possibly more, if you settle well. You still have to do military service, of course. That’s always a risk.”

“Learn to fight?”

“Learn to fight. I shouldn’t worry, my dandy. Lord Maccon will make an excellent teacher.”

“You think he’s coming back?”

“Yes, I do. If only to yell at me over the sins of the past.”

“Optimistic.”

“I think, in this matter, young pup, I know our Alpha better than you.”

“He will tolerate my presence, even with…?” Biffy gestured at his head.

“Of course. You are young yet and certainly no challenge to an Alpha of his standing.”

“Funny, I was beginning to feel rather old.”

Professor Lyall gave a tiny smile. “Come on, then, to bed with us, and I will remind you, in the best possible way, how young you really are.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Ah, Biffy, I rather think that now that is my line.”

Biffy laughed and straightened his spine, grabbing the Beta by the hand. “Right’o, come along, then.”

“Very good, sir.” Professor Lyall managed, somehow, to make his reply sound like a change in rank, a promise of wickedness, and the approval of a favorite teacher, all in one simple phrase.