Blameless

goes.”

Professor Lyall decided on a push, just to see if he might elicit a more genuine reaction. “How could you disappear like that, just when Lady Maccon needed you most?”

Lord Akeldama’s lip curled slightly, and then he gave a humorless little laugh. “Interesting query, coming from Lord Maccon’s Beta. You will forgive me if I am inclined to see it as my right to ask the questions under such circumstances.” He gestured with his head in Biffy’s direction, just a little jerk of controlled displeasure.

Lord Akeldama was a man who hid his real feelings, not with an absence of emotions but with an excess of false ones. However, Professor Lyall was pretty certain that there, lurking under the clipped civility, was real, deeply rooted, and undeniably justified anger.

Lord Akeldama took a seat, lounging back into it, for all the world as relaxed and untroubled as a man at his club. “So, I take it, Lord Maccon has gone after my dear Alexia?”

Lyall nodded.

“Then he knows?”

“That she is in grave danger and the potentate responsible? Yes.”

“Ah, was that Wally’s game? No wonder he wanted me swarming out of London. No, I mean to ask, Dolly dear, if the estimable earl knows what kind of child he has sired.”

“No. But he has accepted that it is his. I think he always knew Lady Maccon would not play him false. He was just being ridiculous about it.”

“Normally, I am all in favor of the ridiculous, but under such circumstances, you must understand, I believe it quite a pity he could not have come to that realization sooner. Lady Maccon would never have lost the protection of the pack, and none of this would have happened.”

“You think not? Yet your kind tried to kill her on the way to Scotland when she was still very much under Woolsey’s protection. Admittedly, that was done more discreetly and, I now believe, without the support of the hives. But they would all still have wanted her dead the moment they knew of her condition. The interesting thing is that you, apparently, do not want her dead.”

“Alexia Maccon is my friend.”

“Are your friends so infrequent, my lord, that you betray the clearly unanimous wishes of your own kind?”

Lord Akeldama lost some slight element of his composure at that. “Listen to me carefully, Beta. I am a rove so that I might make my own decisions: who to love, who to watch, and, most importantly, what to wear.”

“So, Lord Akeldama, what is Lady Maccon’s child going to be?”

“No. You will explain this first.” The vampire gestured at Biffy. “I am forced to swarm because my most precious little drone-y-poo is ruthlessly stolen from me— betrayed, as it turns out, by my own kind—only to return and find him stolen by your kind instead. I believe even Lord Maccon would acknowledge I am entitled to an explanation.”

Professor Lyall fully agreed with him in this, so he told the vampire the whole truth, every detail of it.

“So it was death or the curse of a werewolf?”

Professor Lyall nodded. “It was something to see, my lord. No metamorphosis I have ever witnessed took so long, nor was conducted with so much gentleness. To do what Lord Maccon did and not savage the boy in the heat of the need for blood, it was extraordinary. There are not many werewolves who possess such self-control. Biffy was very lucky.”

“Lucky?” Lord Akeldama fairly spat the word, jumping to his feet. “Lucky! To be cursed by the moon into a slathering beast? You would have done better to let him die. My poor boy.” Lord Akeldama was not a big man, certainly not by werewolf standards, but he moved so quickly that he was around Professor Lyall’s desk, slim hands about the werewolf’s throat, faster than Lyall’s eyes could follow. There was the anger Professor Lyall had been waiting for and, with it, a degree of pain and hurt he would never have expected from a vampire. Perhaps he had pushed a little harder than was strictly necessary. Lyall sat still and passive under the choking hold. A vampire could probably rip a werewolf’s head clean off, but Lord Akeldama was not the kind of man to do such a thing, even in the heat of anger. He was too controlled by age and etiquette to make more than a show of it.

“Master, stop. Please. It was not their fault.”

Biffy sat up slightly on the couch, eyes fixed in horror at the sight before him.

Lord Akeldama immediately let go of Professor Lyall and dashed over to kneel by the young man’s side.

Biffy spoke in a jumble of words and guilt. “I should not have allowed myself to be captured. I was careless. I did not suspect the potentate of such extremes of action. I was not playing the game as you taught me. I did not think he would use me like that to get to you.”

“Ah, my little cherry blossom, we were all playing blind. This is not your fault.”

“Do you really find me cursed and disgusting now?” Biffy’s voice was very small.

Driven beyond his instincts, the vampire pulled the newly made werewolf against him—one predator consoling another, as unnatural as a snake attempting to comfort a house cat.

Biffy rested his dark head on Lord Akeldama’s shoulder. The vampire twisted his perfect lips together and looked up at the ceiling, blinked, and then looked away. Through the fall of the vampire’s blond hair, Professor Lyall caught a glimpse of his face.

Ah, oh dear, he really did love him. The Beta pressed two fingers against his own eyes as though he might stopper up the tears in theirs. Curses.

Love, of all eccentricities among the supernatural set, was the most embarrassing and the least talked about or expected. But Lord Akeldama’s face, for all its icy beauty, was drawn with genuine loss into a kind of carved marble agony.

Professor Lyall was an immortal; he knew what it was to lose a loved one. He could not leave the room, not with so many important BUR documents scattered about, but he did turn away and put on a show of busily organizing stacks of paperwork, attempting to provide the two men some modicum of privacy.

He heard a rustle—Lord Akeldama sitting down upon the couch next to his former drone.

“My dearest boy, of course I do not find you disgusting—although, we must really have a serious discussion about this beard of yours. That was only a little turn of phrase, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. You see, I did so look forward to the possibility of having you by my side as one of us. Joined to the old fang-and-swill club and all that.”

A sniff from Biffy.

“If anything, this is my fault. I should have kept a better watch. I should not have fallen for his tricks or sent you in against him. I should not have allowed your disappearance to cause me to panic and swarm. I ought to have recognized the signs of a game in play against me and mine. But who would have believed my own kind—another vampire, another rove—would steal from me? Me! My sweet citron, I did not see the pattern. I did not see how desperate he was. I forgot that sometimes the information I carry in my own head is more valuable than the daily wonders you lovely boys unearth for me.”

At which point, when Professor Lyall really felt things couldn’t possibly get any worse, a bang came on the office door, which then opened without his bidding.

“What—?”

It was Professor Lyall’s turn to look up at the ceiling in an excess of emotion.

“Her most Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria, to see Lord Maccon.”

Queen Victoria marched through the door and spoke to Professor Lyall without breaking stride. “He is not here, is he? Wretched man.”

“Your Majesty!” Professor Lyall hurried from behind his desk and performed his lowest and best bow.

The Queen of England, a deceptively squat and brown personage, swept the room with an autocratic eye as though Lord Maccon, sizable specimen that he was, might manage to hide in a corner somewhere or under the rug. What her eye rested upon was the tableau of a tear-stained Biffy, clearly naked under his blanket, caught up in the arms of a peer of the realm.

“What is this? Sentiment! Who is that there? Lord Akeldama? Really, this will not do at all. Compose yourself this instant.”