Blameless

“Did I say we needed proof?” Several of the swords shinked out of their sheaths.

Alexia peeked around the side of the Italian hulking in front of her. The drones, silhouetted against the rising moon, were stalled in confusion. Finally they turned, perhaps calculating the better part of valor, shoulders hunched in disappointment, and began walking away back down the French side of the mountain.

The lead nightgowner turned inward to face the three refugees. Dismissing Madame Lefoux and Floote with a contemptuous glance, he turned his hook-nosed gaze onto Alexia. Who could see quite unsatisfactorily far up his nostrils.

Alexia spared a small frown for Floote. He was pinch-faced and white-lipped, looking more upset by their current stationary position than he had been when they were running around under gunfire.

“What is it, Floote?” she hissed at him.

Floote shook his head slightly.

Alexia sighed and turned big bland innocent eyes on the Italians.

The leader spoke, his English impossibly perfect. “Alexia Maccon, daughter of Alessandro Tarabotti, how wonderful. We have been waiting a very long time for you to return to us.” With that, he gave a little nod and Alexia felt a prick on the side of her neck.

Return?

She heard Floote shout something, but he was yelling from a very long way away, and then the moon and the shadowed trees all swirled together and she collapsed backward into the waiting arms of the Pope’s holiest of holy antisupernatural elite, the Knights Templars.

Professor Randolph Lyall generally kept to a nighttime schedule, but he had spent the afternoon prior to full moon awake in order to conduct some last-minute research. Unfortunately, Ivy Tunstell’s revelation had served only to complicate matters. The preponderance of mysteries was beginning to aggravate. Despite a day spent tapping all his various sources and investigating every possible related document BUR might have, Lord Akeldama and his drones were still missing, Alexia’s pregnancy remained theoretically impossible, and Lord Conall Maccon was still out of commission. The Alpha was, most likely, no longer drunk, but, given the impending full moon, Professor Lyall had seen him safely back behind bars with strict instructions that this time no one was to let him out or there would be uncomfortable consequences.

He himself was so involved in his inquiries as to be quite behind schedule for his own lunar confinement. His personal clavigers—his valet and one of the footmen—awaited him in the Woolsey vestibule wearing expressions of mild panic. They were accustomed to Woolsey’s Beta, tamest and most cultured of all the pack, arriving several hours ahead of moonrise.

“I do apologize, boys.”

“Very good, sir, but you understand we must take the proper precautions.”

Professor Lyall, who could already feel the strain of the moon even though it had not yet peeked above the horizon, held out his wrists obediently.

His valet clapped silver manacles about them with an air of embarrassment. Never during all his years of service had he had to bind Professor Lyall.

The Beta gave him a little half smile. “Not to worry, dear boy. It happens to the best of us.” Then he followed both young men docilely down the staircase and into the pack dungeon, where the others were already behind bars. He gave absolutely no hint of the discipline it took for him to remain calm. Simply out of obstinacy and pride, he fought the change as long as possible. Long after his two clavigers had reached through the bars and unlocked his manacles, and he had stripped himself of all his carefully tailored clothing, he continued to fight it. He did it for their sake, as they went to stand with the first shift of watchers against the far wall. Poor young things, compelled to witness powerful men become slaves to bestial urges, forced to understand what their desire for immortality would require them to become. Lyall was never entirely certain whom he pitied more at this time of the month, them or him. It was the age-old question: who suffers more, the gentleman in the badly tied cravat or those who must look upon him?

Which was Professor Lyall’s last thought before the pain and noise and madness of full moon took him away.

He awoke to the sound of Lord Maccon yelling. For Professor Lyall, this was so commonplace as to be almost restful. It had the pleasant singsong of regularity and custom about it.

“And who, might I ask, is Alpha of this bloody pack?” The roar carried even through the thick stone of the dungeon walls.

“You, sir,” said a timid voice.

“And who is currently giving you a direct order to be released from this damned prison?”

“That would be you, sir.”

“And yet, who is still locked away?”

“That would still be you, sir.”

“Yet somehow you do not see my difficulty.”

“Professor Lyall said—”

“Professor Lyall, my ruddy arse!”

“Very good, sir.”

Lyall yawned and stretched. Full moon always left a man slightly stiff, all that running about the cell and crashing into things and howling. No permanent damage, of course, but there was a certain muscle memory of deeds done and humiliating acts performed that even a full day of sleep could not erase. It was not unlike waking after a long night of being very, very drunk.

His clavigers noticed he was awake and immediately unlocked his cell and came inside. The footman carried a nice cup of hot tea with milk and a dish of raw fish with chopped mint on top. Professor Lyall was unusual in his preference for fish, but the staff had quickly learned to accommodate this eccentricity. The mint, of course, was to help deal with recalcitrant wolf breath. He snacked while his valet dressed him: nice soft tweed trousers, sip of tea, crisp white shirt, nibble of fish, chocolate brocade waistcoat, more tea, and so on.

By the time Lyall had finished his ablutions, Lord Maccon had almost, but not quite, convinced his own clavigers to let him out. The young men were looking harassed, and had, apparently, deemed it safe to pass some clothing through to Lord Maccon, if nothing else. What the Alpha had done with said clothing only faintly resembled dressing, but at least he wasn’t striding around hollering at them naked anymore.

Professor Lyall wandered over to his lordship’s cell, fixing the cuffs of his shirt and looking unruffled.

“Randolph,” barked the earl, “let me out this instant.”

Professor Lyall ignored him. He took the key and sent the clavigers off to see to the rest of the pack, who were all now starting to awaken.

“Do you remember, my lord, what the Woolsey Pack was like when you first came to challenge for it?”

Lord Maccon paused in his yelling and his pacing to look up in surprise. “Of course I do. It was not so long ago as all that.”

“Not a nice piece of work, the previous Earl of Woolsey, was he? Excellent fighter, of course, but he had gone a little funny about the head—one too many live snacks. ‘Crackers’ some called him.” Professor Lyall shook his head. He loathed talking about his previous Alpha. “An embarrassing thing for a carnivore to be compared to a biscuit, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”

“Your point, Randolph.” Lord Maccon could only be surprised out of his impatience for a brief length of time.

“You are becoming, shall we say, of the biscuit inclination, my lord.”

Lord Maccon took a deep breath and then sucked on his teeth. “Gone loopy, have I?”

“Perhaps just a little bit noodled.”

Lord Maccon looked shamefacedly down at the floor of his cell.

“It is time for you to face up to your responsibilities, my lord. Three weeks is enough time to wallow in your own colossal mistake.”

“Pardon me?”

Professor Lyall had had more than enough of his Alpha’s nonsensical behavior, and he was a master of perfect timing. Unless he was wrong, and Professor Lyall was rarely wrong about an Alpha, Lord Maccon was ready to admit the truth. And even if Lyall was, by some stretch of the imagination, incorrect in his assessment, the earl