alike than either race preferred to admit.
“I shall look into this myself, personally, as soon as our meeting is concluded,” said the potentate, but he was clearly relieved. It had to be a product of his human condition; normally his emotions were not so obvious.
The dewan sneered at him. “You will be able to move that endangered queen of yours, should you deem it necessary.”
“Do we have any further business to address?” asked the potentate, ignoring the comment.
Alexia reached forward to tap at the harmonic auditory resonance disruptor with the butt end of her stylographic pen, getting it vibrating once more. Then she looked to the dewan. “Why have so many regiments returned home recently?”
“Indeed, I had noticed something of an overabundance of the military roaming the streets as I left my house this evening.” The potentate looked curious.
The dewan shrugged, trying for casualness and failing. “Blame Cardwell and his blasted reforms.”
Alexia sniffed pointedly. She approved of the reforms, far more humane to cut out flogging and change enlistment tactics. But the dewan was an old-timer; he liked his soldiers disciplined, poor, and mildly bloody.
He continued as though she hadn’t sniffed. “We had that steamer in from West Africa several months ago crying that the Ashantis were giving us hell. The Secretary of War pulled everyone we could spare out of the east and back here for rotation.”
“Do we still have that many troops in India? I thought the region was pacified.”
“Not hardly. But we have the numbers to pull several regiments out and leave the East India Company and its mercenaries to take the brunt of it. The empire should stay sound. The duke wants proper regiments with werewolf attachments down in West Africa, and I can’t say I blame him. It’s a nasty business down there. These incoming regiments you see around London are to reconfigure as two separate battalions and ship back out within a month. It’s causing a moon’s worth of mess. Most had to be routed through Egypt in order to get back here fast enough, and I still don’t know how we are going to stretch to fill the orders. Still, they’re here now, clogging up the London taverns. Best get them fighting again right quick.”
He rounded on Lady Maccon. “Which reminds me. Get your husband to keep his ruddy packs under control, would you?”
“Packs? There was only the one last time I checked, and let me inform you, it is not my husband who has to discipline them. Constantly.”
The dewan grinned, causing his massive mustache to wiggle. “I am guessing you met Major Channing?” There were just few enough werewolves in England that, as Alexia had come to learn, they all seemed to know one another. And gracious did they enjoy a good gossip.
“You would be guessing correctly.” Lady Maccon made a sour face.
“Well, I was referring to the earl’s other pack, the Highland one, Kingair,” said the dewan. “They were running with the Black Watch regiment, and there’s been a bit of a dust-up. I thought your husband might stick a paw in.”
Lady Maccon frowned. “I doubt it.”
“Lost their Alpha out there, the Kingair Pack, you do realize? Niall something-or-other, a full colonel, nasty business. The pack was ambushed during high noon, when they were at their weakest and couldn’t change shape. Threw the whole regiment over for a while there. Losing a ranking officer like that, werewolf Alpha or not, caused quite a fuss.”
Alexia’s frown deepened. “No, I was not aware.” She wondered if her husband knew of this. She tapped her lip with the back of her pen. It was highly unusual for a former Alpha to survive the loss of his pack, and she had never managed to extract from Conall the whys and wherefores of his abandonment of the Highlands. But Alexia was pretty darn certain that a leadership void placed him under some sort of obligation to his former pack, even if it had been decades.
The discussion moved on to speculation as to who might be responsible for the weapon: various not-as- secret-as-they-wanted societies, foreign nations, or factions within the government. Lady Maccon was convinced it was Hypocras Club style scientists and held firm on her stance over deregulation. This frustrated the potentate, who wanted the surviving Hypocras Club members released to his tender mercies. The dewan sided with the muhjah. He wasn’t particularly interested in scientific research of this kind, but he wasn’t about to see it fall wholly into vampire hands. This derailed the conversation onto distribution of Hypocras goods. Alexia suggested they go to BUR, and despite her husband’s charge of the institution, the potentate agreed so long as a vampire agent was attached.
By the time Queen Victoria arrived to confer with her council, they had come to several decisions. They informed her of the plague of humanization and their theory that it was some kind of secret weapon. The queen was appropriately worried. She knew perfectly well that the strength of her empire rested on the backs of her vampire advisors and her werewolf fighters. If they were at risk, so was Britain. She was particularly insistent that Alexia look into the mystery. After all, exorcism was supposed to be under the muhjah’s jurisdiction.
Since she would have gone out of her way to investigate regardless, Lady Maccon was happy to have official sanction. She left the Shadow Council meeting with a feeling of unexpected accomplishment. She desperately wanted to pigeonhole her husband in his BUR den, but, knowing that would only end in a row, she headed home to Floote and the library instead.
Lady Alexia Maccon’s father’s collection of books, normally an excellent, or at least distracting, source of information, proved a disappointment on the matter of large-scale negation of the supernatural. Nor did it have anything to say on the potentate’s tantalizing comment concerning a threat to vampires worse than soul-suckers. After hours of flipping through the worn leather-covered books, ancient scrolls, and personal journals, Lady Maccon and Floote had uncovered absolutely nothing. There were no further notes in her little leather book and no further insight into the mystery.
Floote’s silence was eloquent.
Alexia nibbled a light breakfast of toast with potted ham and kippered salmon and went to bed just before dawn, defeated and frustrated.
She was awakened in the early morning by her husband, in an entirely dissimilar state of frustration. His big rough hands were insistent, and she was not unwilling to awaken thus, especially as she had some very pressing questions that needed answers. Still, it was daylight, and most respectable supernatural folk ought to be asleep. Fortunately, Conall Maccon was a strong enough Alpha to be awake several days running without the ill effects younger members of a pack would sustain from such solar contamination.
His approach was unique this time. He was squirming his way up under the covers from the foot of the bed toward where she lay. Alexia’s newly opened eyes met the ludicrous sight of an enormous lump of bedclothes, swaying back and forth like some sort of encumbered jellyfish, laboring toward her. She was lying on her side, and his chest hair tickled the backs of her legs. He was lifting up her nightgown as he went. A little kiss whiskered just behind one knee, and Alexia jerked her leg in reaction. It tickled something dreadful.
She flipped the blankets and glared down at him. “What are you doing, you ridiculous man? You are acting like some sort of deranged mole.”
“Being stealthy, my little terror. Do I not
“Why?”
He looked a little bashful, which was a categorically absurd expression for an enormous Scotsman to wear. “I was after the romanticism of an undercover approach, wife. The BUR agent mystique. Even if this BUR agent is disgracefully late home.”
His wife propped herself up on one elbow and raised both eyebrows, clearly trying to suppress laughter but still look intimidating.
“No?”
The eyebrows went, if possible, higher.
“Humor me.”
Alexia swallowed down a bubble of mirth and pretended a gravity suitable to a Lady Maccon. “If you insist, husband.” She placed a hand to her heart and sank back into the pillows with a sigh of the type she imagined emitted by the heroine of a Rosa Carey novel.
Lord Maccon’s eyes were halfway between caramel and yellow, and he smelled of open fields. Alexia
