The Beta rubbed at his eyes and looked up from his desk. He wouldn’t be able to keep the earl in England much longer. He’d managed a series of investigative distractions and manipulations, but Alpha was Alpha, and Lord Maccon was restless knowing Alexia was out in the world being disappointed in him.
Keeping the earl active meant that Professor Lyall was stuck with the stationary work. He checked every day after sunset for a possible aethograph from Lady Maccon and spent much of the rest of his time reading through the oldest of BUR’s records. He’d had them extracted with much tribulation from the deep stacks, needing six forms signed in triplicate, a box of Turkish delights to bribe the clerk, and a direct order from Lord Maccon. The accounts stretched back to when Queen Elizabeth first formed BUR, but he’d been scanning through them most of the night, and there were few references to preternaturals, even less about any female examples of such, and nothing at all about their progeny.
He sighed and looked up, resting his eyes. Dawn was imminent, and if Lord Maccon didn’t arrive back presently, he’d be arriving back naked.
The door to the office creaked open, as though activated by that thought, but the man who walked in wasn’t Lord Maccon. He was almost as big as the Woolsey Alpha and walked with the same air of self assurance, but he was fully clothed and clearly in disguise. However, when Lyall sniffed the air, there was no doubt as to his identity werewolves had an excellent sense of smell.
“Good morning, Lord Slaughter. How do you do?”
The Earl of Upper Slaughter commander in chief of the Royal Lupine Guard, also known as Her Majesty’s Growlers; sometime field marshal; holder of a seat on Queen Victoria’s Shadow Council and most commonly known as the dewan pushed his hood back and glared at Professor Lyall.
“Not so loudly, little Beta. No need to broadcast my presence here.”
“Ah, not an official visit, is it? You haven’t come to challenge for Woolsey, have you? Lord Maccon is currently out.” The dewan was one of the few werewolves in England who could give Lord Maccon a fight for his fur and had reputedly done so, over a game of bridge.
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
Professor Lyall gave an elegant little shrug.
“The trouble with you pack types is you always assume us loners want what you’ve got.”
“Tell that to the challengers.”
“Yes, well, the last thing I need is the additional responsibility of a pack.” The dewan fussed with the hood about his neck, arranging it to suit his taste.
The dewan was a man who had taken the curse later in life, resulting in a permanently jowly face, lined about the nose and mouth, with bags under the eyes. He sported a full head of dark hair, with a touch of gray at the temple, and fiercely bushy brows over deep set eyes. He was handsome enough to have broken hearts in his day, but Lyall had always found the man’s mouth a little full and his mustache and muttonchops quite beyond the limits of acceptable bushiness.
“To what, then, do I owe the honor of your visit at such an early hour?”
“I have something for you, little Beta. It is a delicate matter, and it goes without saying that it cannot be known that I am involved.”
“Oh, it does, does it?” But Lyall nodded.
The werewolf pulled forth a rolled piece of metal from his cloak. Professor Lyall recognized it at once a slate for the aethographic transmitter. He reached into his desk for a special little cranking device and used it to carefully unroll the metal. What was revealed was the fact that a message had been burned through already transmitted. The note was short and to the point, each letter printed neatly in its segment of the grid, and, rather indiscreetly, it had been signed.
“A vampire extermination mandate. Ordering a death bite on Lady Maccon’s neck. Amusing, considering she cannot be bitten, but I suppose it is the thought that counts.”
“I understand it is just their turn of phrase.”
“As you say. A death order is a death order, and it is signed by the potentate, no less.” Professor Lyall let out a deep sigh, placed the metal down with a tinny sound on the top of his desk, and pinched the bridge of his nose above his spectacles.
“So you understand the nature of my difficulty?” The dewan looked equally resigned.
“Was he acting under the authority of Queen Victoria?”
“Oh, no, no. But he did use the Crown’s aethographor to send the order to Paris.”
“How remarkably sloppy of him. And you caught him in the act?”
“Let us say, I have a friend on the transmitter operating team. He swapped out the slates so that our sender there destroyed the wrong one.”
“Why bring it to BUR’s attention?”
The dewan looked a little offended by the question. “I am not bringing it to BUR; I am bringing it to the Woolsey Pack. Lady Maccon, regardless of the gossip, is still married to a werewolf. And I am still the dewan. The vampires simply cannot be allowed to indiscriminately kill one of our own. It’s not on. Why, that is practically as bad as poaching clavigers and cannot be allowed, or all standards of supernatural decency will be lost.”
“And it cannot be known that the information came from you, my lord?”
“Well, I do have to still work with the man.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Professor Lyall was a tad surprised; it was rare for the dewan to involve himself in pack business. He and Lord Maccon had never exactly liked each other ever since that fateful game of bridge. Lord Maccon had, in fact, given up cards as a result.
With his usual inappropriate timing, Lord Maccon returned from his jaunt at that very moment. He marched in, clad only in a cloak, which he removed in a sweeping motion and flung carelessly in the vicinity of a nearby hat stand, clearly intent on striding on to the small changing room to don his clothes.
He stilled, naked, sniffing the air. “Oh, hello, Fluffy. What are you doing out of your Buckingham penitentiary?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Professor Lyall, frustrated. “Do hush up, my lord.”
“Lord Maccon, indecent as always, I see,” snapped the dewan, ignoring the earl’s pet name for him.
Now, bound and determined to remain nude, the earl marched around Lyall’s desk to see what he was reading, as it clearly had some connection with the unexpected presence of the second most powerful werewolf in all of Britain.
The dewan, showing considerable self restraint, ignored Lord Maccon and continued his conversation with Professor Lyall as though the earl had not interrupted them. “I am under the impression the gentleman in question may have also managed to persuade the Westminster Hive to his line of thinking, or he would not have sent that order.”
Professor Lyall frowned. “Ah, well, given ”
“Official extermination mandate! On my wife!”
One would think, after twenty odd years, Professor Lyall would be used to his Alpha’s yelling, but he still winced when it was conducted with such vigor so close to his ear.
“That lily livered, bloodsucking sack of rotten meat! I shall drag his sorry carcass out at high noon you see if I don’t!”
The dewan and Professor Lyall continued their conversation as if Lord Maccon weren’t boiling over next to them like a particularly maltreated porridge.
“Really, by rights, preternaturals,” Lyall spoke coldly, “are BUR’s jurisdiction.”
The dewan tilted his head from side to side in mild agreement. “Yes, well, the fact remains that the vampires seem to think they have a right to take matters onto their own fangs. Clearly, so far as the potentate is concerned, what that woman is carrying is not preternatural and thus no longer BUR’s jurisdiction.”
“That woman is my wife! And they are trying to kill her!” A sudden deep suspicion and sense of betrayal caused the Alpha to turn upon his Beta in accusation. “Randolph Lyall, were you aware of this and yet didna tell me?” He clearly didn’t require an answer. “That’s it; I’m leaving.”
“Yes, yes, well, never mind that.” Professor Lyall tried unsuccessfully to calm his Alpha down. “The question is, what do they think she is carrying?”