Send in your husband, would you, once he awakens?”
Ivy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times like an affronted poodle, and then whirled to do as he had bidden. There was a woman, Lyal thought, forced into efficiency through prolonged exposure to Alexia Tarabotti.
“Tunny!” she cal ed, trotting back down the hal way, and then with far greater sharpness, “Ormond Tunstel , wake up. Do!”
Professor Lyal closed the door and turned back to his charge. He reached into his waistcoat for one of his trusty handkerchiefs, only then remembering he was wearing no more than a greatcoat, retrieved from the shore, having dressed for change, not company. Wincing at his own temerity, he grabbed one of Ivy’s pastel throw pil ows and wedged a corner of it into the new werewolf’s mouth, giving Biffy something to bite down upon and also muffling his whimpering. Then Lyal bent low, bracing the shuddering form of the wolf with his own body, curling about him tenderly. It was partly Beta instinct, to protect a new member of the pack, but it was also sympathy. The first time was always the worst, not because it got any better, but because it was so unfamiliar an experience.
Tunstel let himself into the room.
“God’s teeth, Professor, what is going on?”
“Too much to explain ful y right now, I’m afraid. Can that wait until later? I’ve got a new pup on my hands and no Alpha to handle him. Do you have any raw meat in the house?”
“The wife ordered steak, delivered only yesterday.” Tunstel left without needing to be pressed further.
Lyal smiled. The redhead fel so easily back into his old role of claviger, doing what needed to be done for the werewolves around him.
Biffy’s chocolate fur was beginning to retreat up to the top of his head, showing skin now pale with immortality. His eyes were losing their yel ow hue in favor of blue. Clutching that writhing form, Lyal could feel as well as hear Biffy’s bones breaking and re-forming.
It was a long and agonizing shift. It would take the young man decades to master any level of competency. Rapidity and smoothness were markers of both dominance and age.
Lyal held Biffy the entire time. Held him while Tunstel returned with a large raw steak and fussed about with varying degrees of helpfulness. Held him until, eventually, he was left with an armful of nothing but nak*d Biffy, shivering and looking most forlorn.
“What? Where?” The young dandy pushed weakly against the Beta’s arms. His nose was twitching as though he needed to sneeze. “What is going on?”
Professor Lyal relaxed his embrace and sat back on his heels next to the couch.
Tunstel came over with a blanket and a concerned expression. Just before he covered the young man over, Lyal was pleased to notice that Biffy appeared to be entirely healed from the bul et wound, a true supernatural, indeed.
“Who are you?” Biffy focused fuzzily on Tunstel ’s bright red hair.
“I’m Tunstel . Used to be a claviger to Lord Maccon. Now I’m mostly just an actor.”
“He is our host and a friend. We wil be safe here for the day.” Professor Lyal kept his voice low and calm, tucking the blanket about the stil -shivering young man.
“Is there some reason we need to be? Safe, I mean.”
“How much do you remember?” Lyal swept a lock of brown hair back behind Biffy’s ear in a motherly fashion. Despite al his transformations, his nudity, and his beard, the young man stil looked every inch the dandy. He would make an odd addition to the gruff soldiering masculinity of the Woolsey Pack.
Biffy jerked and fear flooded into his eyes. “Extermination mandate! I found out that there is a… Oh, dear God, I was supposed to report in! I missed the appointment with my lord.” He made as if to try and rise.
Lyal held him back easily.
Biffy turned on him frantical y. “You don’t understand—he’l swarm if I don’t make it back. He knew I was going after the potentate. How could I have gotten caught? I’m such an imbecile. I know better than that. Why, he’l …” He trailed off. “How long was I down there?”
Lyal sighed. “He did swarm.”
“Oh, no.” Biffy’s face fel . “Al that work, al those agents pul ed out of covert placement. It’l take years to reintegrate them. He’s going to be so very disappointed in me.”
Lyal tried to distract him. “So, what do you remember?”
“I remember being trapped under the Thames and thinking I would never escape.”
Biffy brushed one hand over his face. “And that I real y needed a shave. Then I remember water flooding in and waking in the darkness to shouting and gunshots. And then I remember a lot of pain.”
“You were dying.” Lyal paused, searching for the right words. Here he was, hundreds of years old, and he could not explain to one boy why he had been changed against his wil .
“Was I? well , good thing that didn’t take. My lord would never forgive me if I up and died without asking permission first.” Biffy sniffed, suddenly distracted. “Something smel s amazing.”
Professor Lyal gestured to the plate of raw steak sitting nearby.
Biffy tilted his head to see, then looked back at Lyal in confusion. “But it’s not cooked. Why does it smel so good?”
Lyal cleared his throat. As a Beta, he’d never had to perform this particular task. It was the Alpha’s job to acclimatize the newly turned, the Alpha’s job to explain and be there and be strong and be, well , Alphaish for a new pup. But Lord Maccon was halfway to Dover by now, and Lyal was left to deal with this mess without him.
“You know that dying issue I just mentioned? well , it did take, in its way.”
At which juncture, Professor Lyal had to watch those beautiful blue eyes turn from dazed confusion to horrified realization. It was one of the saddest things he had ever seen in al his long life.
At a loss, Lyal handed Biffy the plate of raw steak.
Unable to control himself, the young dandy tore into the meat, gulping it down in elegant, but very rapid, bites.
For the sake of his dignity, both Professor Lyal and Tunstel pretended not to notice that Biffy was crying the entire time. Tears dribbled down his nose and onto the steak while he chewed, and swal owed, and chewed, and sobbed.
The preceptor’s picnic, as it turned out, was a little more elaborate than Alexia and Madame Lefoux had been led to believe. They trundled a sizable distance into the countryside, away from Florence in the direction of Borgo San Lorenzo, arriving eventually at an archaeological excavation. While the antiquated carriage attempted to park on a hil ock, their Templar host announced with much pride that they would be engaging in an Etruscan tomb picnic.
The site was lovely, shaded with trees of various bushy Mediterranean inclinations that took being leafy and green quite seriously. Alexia stood up while the carriage maneuvered around, the better to take in her surroundings.
“Do sit down, Alexia! You shal fal , and then how wil I explain to Floote that you had—” Madame Lefoux stopped herself before she inadvertently mentioned Alexia’s unfortunate condition in front of the preceptor, but it was clear her worry was largely for the child’s safety.
Alexia ignored her.
They were surrounded by a series of tombs: low, circular, and grass covered, almost organic in appearance, quite unlike anything Alexia had ever seen or read about. Never having visited anything more stimulating than a Roman bathhouse, Alexia was practical y bouncing with excitement—if a lady once more corseted and trussed up to the height of proper British fashion and encumbered by both parasol and pregnancy could be described as “bouncing.” She sat down abruptly when their carriage went over a bump.
Alexia refused, on principle, to admit that her new high spirits were on account of Conal ’s printed apology, but the world certainly seemed a far more fascinating place today than it had yesterday.
“Do you know anything of these Etruscans?” she whispered to Madame Lefoux.
“Only that they came before the Romans.”
“Were they supernatural y based or a daylight exclusive society?” Alexia asked the next most important question.
The preceptor overheard her.
“Ah, My Soul ess One, you ask one of the most troublesome questions of the great Etruscan mystery. Our historians, they continue to investigate this matter. I did think, however, that given your peculiar skil set, you might…” He trailed off meaningful y as though intentional y leaving the thought unfinished.
“Wel , my dear Mr. Templar, I fail to see how I could possibly be of assistance. I am no trained antiquarian. The only thing I can identify with any consistency is my own kind.
I—” It was Alexia’s turn to leave a thought unfinished, as she realized the implications of his statement. “You believe there might be a preternatural focus to this culture? How remarkable.”
The Templar only shrugged. “We have seen the rise and fal of many great empires in the past, some run by vampires, others by werewolves.”
“And some that have been founded upon the persecution of both.” Alexia was thinking of the Catholic Inquisition, an expurgation movement the Templars were rumored to have taken a keen and active interest in promoting.
“But never yet have we found evidence of a civilization built to incorporate your kind.”
“As difficult as that kind of proximity might be?” Alexia was puzzled.
“Why do you think the Etruscans might be the exception?” Madame Lefoux asked.
The coach stopped and the preceptor stepped down. He did not offer Alexia a hand, al owing Madame Lefoux to jump out and take over that dubious honor. Some distance away, the Templar cavalry dismounted as well and stood about as though waiting for orders. The preceptor gave them one of those hand signals, and the men relaxed into a casual mil ing group. The silent efficiency was unsettling, to say the least.
“Don’t say much, do they?”
The preceptor turned his emotionless eyes on Alexia. “Would you ladies prefer to explore or eat first?”
“Explore,” said Alexia promptly. She was wildly curious to see the inside of the strange round tombs.
The preceptor led them down into the dry, dim interior of the already cracked tomb.
The underground wal s were lined with limestone. Steps led into a single chamber, not much bigger than Alexia’s drawing room back at Woolsey Castle. The limestone was elaborately carved to look like the inside of a house, with nooks, stone columns, and even ceiling beams picked out in the sandy, porous rock. It was the interior of a home, frozen in stone. Alexia was reminded of the elaborate jel y sculptures she had eaten at fancy dinner parties, made of aspic and formed with the aid of a mold.
There was no furniture, nor any other artifacts inside the tomb, the sole object being an extremely large sarcophagus in the center of the room. On the top lay two ful -sized clay figures: a man lounging on his side and leaning up on one elbow behind a woman doing the same, his free arm draped affectionately over her shoulder.
It was a lovely sculpture, but despite what the preceptor had said, Alexia experienced no sense of repulsion, no feeling about the place that she would have expected when in the presence of a preserved preternatural body. Either there was none present, or the remains had long since decomposed beyond effectiveness. The Templar was staring at her, monitoring her reactions closely. Face impassive, she walked about, self-conscious under his dead-eyed scrutiny, examining some painted images on the wal s.