Blameless

With two bolts gone, the two werewolves wedged their bodies into the opening and began to physical y push, muscles screaming, tearing the sphere apart bodily. The metal buckled, glass broke, and water fil ed the smal compartment.



Even in al the chaos, Professor Lyal heard several out-of-context noises and, moments later, saw from the corner of his eye as the earl popped out of the sphere and began wildly thrashing about. But Lyal maintained his focus on Biffy. Pushing forward with both legs off the edge of the sphere, he dove for the drone, grabbed him around the waist, and with another tremendous push, shot upward toward the surface.



He emerged, panting, Biffy clutched against him. The young man was suspiciously limp, and Professor Lyal could think of nothing but the need to get him to shore as quickly as possible. Drawing on every last iota of his werewolf strength to give him the necessary speed, he plowed through the water, reaching the Westminster side of the Thames in record time and dragging the drone out onto the bottom of a filthy set of stone steps.



Professor Lyal was no medical doctor, but he could say with confidence that the best thing for Biffy at that moment would be to get the water out and the air into his lungs. So the werewolf stood, lifting the young man up by his feet. Lyal had to dangle him off the side of the steps; Biffy was tal er than he. Then the Beta proceeded to shake the limp drone vigorously.



As he was shaking, Professor Lyal looked over at the midpoint of the river. The moon was only a few days past ful , and it had risen enough for his werewolf eyes to see everything clearly. His Alpha was engaged in a splashy battle with three assailants. Much frothing of the water, yel ing, and growling was involved. Lord Maccon was in his Anubis Form, his head that of a wolf but his body stil human. This al owed him to tread water but stil apply the trademark werewolf savaging. It seemed to be working. His opponents were human, and, while they were armed with silver knives, they were not so adept at striking and swimming as Lord Maccon.



Professor Lyal returned to his task. As the shaking was proving to be ineffective, he positioned the young man careful y on a higher step and bent over him.



He was at a loss. Werewolves breathed, but not so deeply, nor so frequently as mortals. He wasn’t convinced his next idea would even work. But, blushing furiously



—after al , he and Biffy had only met casual y a few times; they were hardly on terms of any intimacy—he bent forward and sealed the young man’s mouth with his. Breathing out in a powerful blast, he attempted to physical y force air into the drone’s lungs. Nothing happened. So he did it again. And again.



A loud cry caused him to look up, although not stop in his attentions to young Biffy’s survival. The figure of a man, a gentleman by his top hat and tails, ran along the rail bridge, faster than was humanly possible. The figure stopped and, in one impossibly quick and smooth movement, drew a gun and fired down into the churning mass of combatants.



Professor Lyal ’s protective instincts reared up. He had no doubt that the vampire, for that is what the newcomer must be, was firing silver bul ets at his Alpha. Desperately, he breathed harder, hoping against hope that Biffy would revive so that he could go to his Alpha’s aid.



Behind him, Lord Maccon behaved in an unexpectedly sensible manner. Abandoning his roughhousing, the Alpha dove under the surface of the Thames and began swimming toward the steps and his Beta. He stuck his muzzle up for air only once and briefly.



Unfortunately, with his first target underwater, the vampire simply moved on to the second best option. He fired at Professor Lyal and his charge as they hunched unprotected against the embankment. The bul et whizzed by perilously close to Lyal ’s head and struck the stone wal , causing fragments of rock to pel et downward. Lyal curled himself over the drone’s body, shielding it with his own.



Then Biffy began to cough and sputter, spewing out Thames river water in a manner that Professor Lyal felt, while inelegant, was most prudent of him. The drone’s eyes opened, and he stared up into the werewolf’s sympathetic face.



“Do I know you?” Biffy asked between coughs.



Lord Maccon reached the steps at that point and hauled himself up, stil in Anubis Form. He reached for his neck, unclasping the leather case safely fastened there, and pul ed out his gun. The case had served its purpose, for the Tue Tue was stil dry. He took aim at the vampire silhouetted against the moon and fired.



He missed.



“I’m Professor Lyal . We have met before. Remember the aethographor and the tea?



How do you do?”



“Where’s—?” But Biffy did not get to finish his thought, for the vampire’s return shot scooted right past both Lord Maccon and his Beta, striking the poor drone in the stomach. Biffy’s sentence stopped midquestion with a cry, as his body, emaciated from weeks in confinement, convulsed and writhed.



Lord Maccon’s second shot back at the vampire did not miss. It was a lucky one, for at such a distance, even his trusty Tue Tue was unreliable. Nevertheless, the bul et struck home.



The vampire fel from the bridge with a shout, hitting the Thames with a loud splash.



Immediately his agents—or were they drones?—ceased paddling about, recovering from their altercation with the earl, and swam over to him. From the resulting cries of distress, what they discovered was not to their liking.



Lord Maccon’s attention remained fixed on the tableau in the water, but Professor Lyal was once more focused on Biffy. The blood leaking from the young man’s injury smel ed divine, of course, but Lyal was no pup to be diverted by the scent of fresh meat.



The drone was dying. No doctor in Britain could patch up a damaged gut like that. There was real y only one solution and no one, in the end, was going to be happy with it.



Taking a deep breath, the Beta reached into the wound, fishing about for the bul et with no care for Biffy’s finer feelings. The young man conveniently fainted from the pain.



Lord Maccon came to kneel on the step below them.



He gave a confused whine, unable to talk, as his head was stil that of a wolf.



“I’m trying to get out the bul et,” Professor Lyal explained.



Another whine.



“It’s silver. It must come out.”



The earl began violently shaking his shaggy brindled head and backing slightly away.



“He is dying, my lord. You have no other choice. You’re already in Anubis Form. You might as well make the attempt.”



Lord Maccon continued to shake his wolf head. Professor Lyal fished out the offensive bul et, hissing in pain as the vile silver thing burned his fingertips.



“Don’t you think Lord Akeldama would rather have him stil alive, or at least partly alive, than dead? I am aware that it is not done. Unheard of, even, for a werewolf to poach a drone, but what else can we do? You have to at least try.”



The Alpha cocked his head to one side, ears drooping. Professor Lyal knew what he was thinking. If this failed, Biffy would be found dead, savaged by a werewolf. How could they possibly explain that to anyone?



“You metamorphosed a female recently. You can do this, my lord.”



With a smal shrug that said as clearly as any words that if this didn’t work, he would never forgive himself, the Alpha bent over the boy’s neck and bit.



Normal y, metamorphosis was a violent savaging of flesh, an infliction of a curse as much as a conversion to immortality, but Biffy was so very weak and had lost so much blood already that Lord Maccon took it slowly. He was able to. Conal Maccon had more self-control than any other Alpha Lyal had ever met, for al his Scottish heritage and grumpy temper. Lyal could only imagine how sweet the boy’s blood must taste. In answer to that thought, Lord Maccon stopped biting and bent to lap at the bul et wound. Then he went back to biting. The idea of metamorphosis, most scientists believed, was to get the werewolf saliva, carrier of the curse, into the petitioner and to get sufficient human blood out. This would break mortal ties and tether the remnant soul. Supposing there was, of course, excess soul present.



It seemed to take a very long time. But Biffy kept breathing, and so long as Biffy kept breathing, Lord Maccon resolutely continued his repetitive action: bite, lick, bite, lick. He was not to be distracted even by the sloshing arrival of their opponents.



Professor Lyal stood to defend their position, prepared to change form if needed, the moon well overhead and the smel of human blood giving him added strength. But the three young men emerging from the water were obviously uninterested in any further hostility. They hauled themselves out onto the bottom step and held up empty hands at Professor Lyal ’s threatening stance. Their faces were lined with distress—one was crying openly, and another was keening softly at the limp form cradled in his arms. The third, a grim-faced boy holding one mostly gnawed hand against his chest, spoke.



“We’ve no reason to fight you further, werewolf. Our master is dead.”



Drones, then, and not hired muscle.



Professor Lyal sniffed, trying to catch the scent of the vampire over the smel of human blood and putrid water. The horror of it hit him broadside, and he stumbled back against the stone of the embankment. It was there, the faint odor of old blood and decay that meant vampire, mixed with almost alcoholic overtones that, like the subtle difference between fine wines, indicated lineage. And Lyal smel ed an old lineage, with a film of pine resin to the wine, and no ties to the modern hives. It was a scent long since lost and no longer emitted except by this one man. Lyal could have guessed the identity of the vampire from that scent, even were he not already familiar with its owner—the potentate.



Or, as the vampire was dead and no longer a denizen of the Shadow Council, Lyal supposed he must be remembered now under his old name, Sir Francis Walsingham.



“Queen Victoria,” he said to his Alpha, “is not going to be happy about this. Why the hel didn’t he send someone else to do his dirty work?”



Lord Maccon did not look up from his self-prescribed penance: bite, lick, bite, lick.



Together, the three drones hefted their dead master and made their way slowly up the stairs around the earl and Biffy’s stil form. Even in their grief, they winced away from the sight of an Anubis feeding. As they passed, Professor Lyal noticed that Lord Maccon’s bul et had hit Walsingham directly in the heart—a lucky shot, indeed.



A vampire was dead. There weren’t enough of them around to forgive a transgression like that, even from BUR’s chief sundowner. The potentate was a rove, with no major hive connections, and for that Professor Lyal was grateful. But there would be blood payment due to the greater community regardless, and it was the potentate’s relationship with Buckingham Palace that was the real stickler. Even if, by his actions, this vampire had shown himself a traitor to his own kind, kidnapping another’s drone, his absence left a gap Queen Victoria would find hard to fil . He had served as advisor to the throne since Queen Elizabeth’s day. It was his knowledge of Roman strategy and supply management that drove the expansion of the British Empire. For someone like that to die because he had made a mistake, because Alexia Maccon, soul ess, had become pregnant by a werewolf and he panicked, was a loss to every British citizen. Even the werewolves would mourn him, in their way.



Professor Lyal , who was cultured and not given to profanity, watched the drones cart the disanimated potentate away and said curtly, “What a bloody awful mess.”



After which he stood, silent and waiting, wary and alert, for five long hours while Lord Maccon, stubborn to the last, held Anubis Form and worked over the dying drone.



The earl’s stubbornness was rewarded when, just before dawn, before al his labor would be lost to the sun, Biffy’s eyes opened, as yel ow as buttercups. He howled out his pain and confusion and fear as his form shifted, and he lay there, shuddering but whole, a lovely chocolate-brown wolf with oxblood-red stomach fur.



Lord Maccon changed out of Anubis Form and grinned hugely at his Beta. “And there’s another one for the howlers to sing about.”



“What is it with you, my lord? Can you only metamorphose the difficult cases?”



Professor Lyal was impressed despite himself.



“Yes, well , he is your charge now.” Lord Maccon stood and stretched, his spine popping as it realigned. His tawny eyes turned with surprise toward the rapidly lightening sky.



“Best get him indoors right quick.”



Professor Lyal nodded and bent to pick up the newly made wolf. Biffy struggled halfheartedly before sagging weakly into the Beta’s strong arms. Metamorphosis took even the best of them like that.



Lyal made his way silently up the steps to the top of the embankment, thinking hard.



They would have to find shelter nearby. A new pup couldn’t take direct sunlight without considerable damage, and poor Biffy had been through more than enough for one night.



Just as he figured out a destination and headed purposeful y north toward Charing Cross Station, he noticed his Alpha wasn’t fol owing him.