The Woolsey Castle dungeon was full of snarling, slathering occupants. The youngest pups of Lord Maccon's pack could not resist change for several nights leading up to the full moon, let alone the moon itself. These had been in residence for days. The rest went with the sun as soon as it set on the actual night. Only Lord Maccon was strong enough to still be outside of confinement so late in the evening.
Professor Lyall was sitting suavely on a small three-legged footstool in one corner of his cell, wearing only his ridiculous glassicals and reading the evening paper. He was struggling to slow the change. Most of the pack simply let themselves be taken, but Lyall always resisted as long as he could, testing his will against the inevitability of the moon. Through the heavy iron bars of his Beta's cell, Lord Maccon could see that Lyall's spine was curled forward inhumanly far, and he boasted considerably more hair than was acceptable for any more social occasion than reading the evening paper in the privacy of one's own... prison.
The professor gave his Alpha a long look from yellow eyes over the tops of his spectacles. Lord Maccon, holding his manacled hands stiffly in front of him, ignored his Beta in a very pronounced manner. He suspected Lyall would have said something embarrassing about Alexia if his Beta's jaw were not already changed well beyond human speech.
The earl continued down the passageway. His pack settled down as he passed. As each wolf caught sight and scent of the Alpha, he instinctively quieted. Several flattened down their forelegs in a kind of bow, and one or two rolled over, presenting their stomachs. Even in the thrall of full moon, they acknowledged his dominance. None wished to even hint at a challenge. He would brook no disobedience, on this of all nights, and they knew it.
The earl stepped inside his own waiting cell. It was the largest but also the most secure, empty except for chains and bolts. Nothing was safe when he changed. No footstool or periodical was in residence, just stone and iron and emptiness. He sighed heavily.
His clavigers slammed and triple bolted the iron door behind him. They stationed themselves outside it but across the passageway, so as to be entirely out of reach. In this, at least, they followed his orders impeccably.
The moon rose above the horizon. Several youngsters of the pack began to howl.
Lord Maccon felt his bones completely breaking and reforming, his skin stretching and shrinking, his tendons realigning, his hair shifting downward and becoming fur. His sense of smell sharpened. He caught a faint whiff of some familiar scent riding an air current down from the castle above.
Those few older members of the pack still partly human completed their final changes with him. The air was rent with growls and whines as the dregs of daylight disappeared. Bodies always resisted the cursed change, making the pain ever more excruciating. With flesh held together only by the threads of what remained of their souls, all sensibility converted to frenzy. The noise they made was the rampaging death-lust cry of the damned.
Any who heard those particular howls felt nothing but fear: vampire, ghost, human, or animal, it mattered not. Nor would it, in the end, for any werewolf freed of his fetters would kill indiscriminately. On full-moon night, the blood moon, it was not a matter of choice or necessity. It simply was.
However, when Lord Maccon raised his muzzle up to howl, his was not a mindless cry of wrath. The low tones of the Alpha's voice were immeasurably mournful. For he had finally recognized the smell wafting down into the dungeon. Too late to say anything in human tongue. Too late to warn his clavigers.
Conall Maccon, Earl of Woolsey, crashed up against the bars of his cell, the last vestiges of his human side crying out: not to kill, not to be free, but to protect.
Too late.
For that little whiff bore the scent of sweet turpentine, and it was getting stronger.
The sign above the door to the Hypocras Club read PROTEGO RES PUBLICA, engraved into white Italian marble. Miss Alexia Tarabotti, gagged, trussed, bound, and carried by two men—one holding her shoulders, the other her feet—read the words upside down. She had a screaming headache, and it took her a moment to translate the phrase through the nauseating aftereffects of chloroform exposure.
Finally she deduced its meaning: to protect the commonwealth.
Huh, she thought. / do not buy it. I definitely do not feel protected.
There also appeared to be the emblem of some kind bracketing either side of the words. A symbol or some sort of excitable invertebrate? Was it a brass octopus?
Miss Tarabotti was strangely unsurprised to be brought to the Hypocras Club. She remembered Felicity reading out the Post's proclamation detailing the “inception of an innovative social establishment catering to gentlemen of a scientific inclination.” Of course, she realized, now that it made perfect sense. After all, it was at the duchess's ball, right next door to the new club, that she had killed that first mysterious vampire who started it all. This made for a rather tidy full circle. And, with all that chloroform, there would have to be scientists involved.
Had Lord Maccon discovered this as well? she wondered. Did he suspect just the club, or was the Royal Society itself implicated? Alexia doubted even the earl's suspicious nature would stretch as far as that.
Her captors carried her into a small boxlike room with a concertina-style grating for a door. She could turn her head just enough to see the violet-clad form of Lord Akeldama being treated with equal disrespect: slung over someone's shoulder like a side of beef and crammed into the tiny room with her.
Well, Miss Tarabotti reasoned, at least we are still together.
The wax-faced man, unfortunately still with them, was not engaged directly in Tarabotti/Akeldama transport. He closed the grated door and then cranked some sort of pulley device inset into one wall of the chamber. The most peculiar thing resulted. The whole of the tiny room began to move listlessly downward, carrying everyone inside with it. It was like falling slowly, and Alexia's stomach, combining this with the added bonus of chloroform exposure, was not particularly thrilled by the experience.
She choked down a convulsive gag.
“This one does not like our ascension room,” snickered the man who held her feet, jiggling her rudely. One of the other men grunted his agreement.
Through the grating, a flabbergasted Alexia watched as the first floor of the club vanished, and the ground itself appeared, then the foundations of the building, then a new ceiling, and, finally, the furniture and floor of underground chambers. It was really quite a remarkable experience.
The tiny room jolted to a stop. Miss Tarabotti's stomach joined up with them shortly thereafter. The human transport flunkies slid back the grating, carried her and Lord Akeldama out, and laid them side by side on a plush Oriental carpet in the middle of a respectably sized receiving room. One of them took the precautionary measure of sitting on Lord Akeldama's legs, although he was still asleep. They did not seem to feel Alexia warranted the same level of consideration.
A man, sitting in a comfortable brown leather armchair with silver studs and smoking a large ivory pipe, stood up at their arrival and walked over to look down at the two prisoners.
“Excellent work, gentlemen!” He bit down on his pipe and rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “Akeldama, according to the BUR records, is one of the oldest vampires in London. Next to one of their queens, his blood should be the most potent we have yet analyzed. We are in the middle of a transverse-sanguinity procedure at the moment, so put him into storage for now. And what is this?” He turned to look down at Alexia.
There was something familiar about the set of his face, although at that particular angle it was almost completely in shadow. That shadow was also familiar. The man from the carriage! Miss Tarabotti had almost forgotten about him in the horror of her recent encounters with the wax-faced monster.