Penny stepped boldly forward and took aim at a crouching werewolf. The bullet shattered the tombstone beside its skull. Yellow eyes flashed in fear and it scrambled aside wildly before springing toward the young woman. It was twice her height. Wide claws extended, ready to rip into her. Penny didn’t flinch; she stood steady as stone against the charge and fired directly into the animal’s face. A shorn-off fang flew into the air, indicating a headshot. Penny tried to get out of the way as the beast fell to the ground and, carried by its momentum, rolled madly toward her. Kate grabbed Penny’s arm and yanked her aside as the monster tumbled past. The engineer came up on one knee, already breaking her pistol at the breech to reload.
The leader, the last of the pack, wrenched free from the mire of tar and roared. Gathering itself, the werewolf barreled toward Kate. She turned with her bloody sword, tossing her spent pistol aside, auburn hair falling a bit over her face, eyes darting toward the beast. She threw a final vial. A hairy hand slapped the vial out of the air in an attempt to deflect it, but it smashed from the impact, spewing toxic gas. The monster held his breath and came on. Kate dodged a swipe of his massive clawed hand and shoved her sword into his shaggy breast. This enraged the maddened creature. Penny suddenly stepped up beside Kate and emptied her pistol into the great beast. The werewolf shuddered just as it was lunging one last time for Kate, and fell. Its great head flopped to the ground, its massive canines, each six inches long, drove into the dirt.
Kate stood, chest heaving, waiting for new attacks. There were none, merely dead and quivering beasts lying around them. She brushed the hair from her eyes and glanced at Penny, who was turning in a slow circle with her pistol extended.
Kate asked, “Are you loaded with silver shot?”
“Damn right. We found too many werewolves a few months ago for me to go about without some killing silver on me ever again.”
Kate pointed at the small four-barreled pistol that Penny carried. “Perhaps we should all have those as well.”
“No. They’re temperamental. If you don’t handle them just right, they’ll blow up in your face. That’s why Malcolm is always fiddling with his.” Penny jammed the pistol in her holster. “However, when I get the chance, I can fix you up with cartridges so you don’t have to worry about reloading with powder and ball. Faster and more reliable.”
“Always prepared. Just like an engineer. Just like father.” Kate dropped to her knee and wiped a sleeve across her perspiring forehead. “What were you saying about how it could always be more exciting?”
Penny looked about at all the dead werewolves. “I need to keep my big trap shut.”
Chapter 5
“How are the zoas coming?” Kate asked from her worktable in her laboratory at Hartley Hall.
“Oh, I’ve moved on from them.” With the gold key in his hand, Simon indicated the several sets of William Blake folios on the table next to where he sat near the window. The library had a surprisingly complete collection of Blake’s work, or perhaps not so surprising if the poet had some mystical nature. “I read the works Malcolm indicated, and despite his criticism, the language is quite lovely. However, it is difficult to pull much from them over the basic concept that this being Albion once existed and was rendered into four spirits, or zoas. And I think those zoas were, in turn, reflected by spirits called emanations. And perhaps, one day Albion will return. Resurrection myth. Every culture has one. Nothing terribly momentous.”
“Do you think Blake was a practitioner?”
“A true magician? I’ve never heard tell of it. I think he may have been a sensitive, from what little I know. The poet had visions, but that’s not terribly unique.” Aethelred was trying to convince Simon to play, and the man distractedly complied by balancing the book in his lap while holding one end of a piece of rope so the jaws of the large wolfhound could wrestle the other end.
“What do his visions mean? And would they influence someone to kill?”
“That, I don’t know.” Simon held up the heavy tome that sat in his lap. “So I’ve moved on to hieroglyphics and your excellent source of spells from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”
“And?”
“The symbols we saw appear to be Old Kingdom stuff, even Heliopolitan. I can make out a bit of it, but we may need to call in an expert on the texts.”
“Egyptian hieroglyphics are difficult. I may know someone who can help us with the translation.” Kate then indicated a pot that boiled on a flame and said with a voice hovering between fascination and horror, “Did you know you can hear the ghostbloom mushrooms?”
“Hear them?”
“The legend is that they have the voice of the person in the grave where they were growing. Come here. Listen to them.” Kate’s hair was swept back from her face into a knot that struggled to make order from the curling chaos. She was bent over the worktable, her clothes covered by a thick apron of tough leather.
Simon tucked the book under his arm, leaving the dog to exalt in triumph over the toy for a few seconds. The whitish mushrooms tumbled in boiling water. Kate lifted one of the fleshy objects from a tray of dirt and held it over the steaming pot. She released the mushroom into the water.
Simon thought he heard a faint scream. He straightened with a look of skepticism. “No. That must be steam escaping.”
“If you say so.”