“Are you implying that you understand the nature of my child?” Alexia was prepared to get equally excited. Finally!
“No, but I can say with the absolute confidence that I am very, very close.”
“Funny, but I do not find that at all reassuring.”
Lord Akeldama stood in the doorway of Professor Lyall’s office, dressed for riding. It was hard to read his face at the best of times and, under such circumstances as these, nigh on impossible.
“How do you do this evening, my lord?”
“La, my dear, tolerably well. Tolerably well. And you?”
They had, of course, met on more than one occasion in the past. Lyall had spent centuries nibbling about the great layer cake that was polite society while Lord Akeldama acted the part of the frosting on its top. Lyall knew a man was smart who kept a weather eye on the state of the frosting, even if most of his time was spent cleaning up crumbs. The supernatural set was small enough to keep track of most members, whether they skulked about BUR offices and the soldier’s barracks or the best drawing rooms the ton had to offer.
“I must admit to having had better evenings. Welcome to BUR headquarters, Lord Akeldama. Do come in.”
The vampire paused for a moment on the threshold, catching sight of Biffy’s sleeping form. He made a slight gesture with one hand. “May I?”
Professor Lyall nodded. The question was a veiled insult, reminding them both of what had been taken from the vampire unjustly. That he must now ask to look upon what had once been his. Lyall let him get away with it. Currently the vampire held all the cards, but Professor Lyall was reasonably convinced that if he just gave Lord Akeldama enough cravat material, he might be able to fashion it into a bow pleasing enough for all parties. Of course, the vampire might also turn it into a noose; it depended entirely on the outcome of this conversation.
Professor Lyall knew that vampires had a limited sense of smell and no clear method of sensing right away that Biffy was now a werewolf. But Lord Akeldama seemed to realize it, anyway. He did not try to touch the young man.
“That is quite the quantity of facial hair. I didn’t know he had it in him. I suppose that fuzzy is more appropriate given the current situation.” Lord Akeldama raised one long, slim white hand to the base of his own throat, pinching at the skin there. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and looking down on his former drone once more. “He looks so young when he is sleeping. I have always thought so.” He swallowed audibly. Then he turned and came back to stand in front of Lyall.
“You have been riding, my lord?”
Lord Akeldama looked down at his clothing and winced. “Necessity sometimes demands a sacrifice, young Randolph. Can I call you Randy? Or would you prefer, Dolphy? Dolly, perhaps?” Professor Lyall flinched noticeably. “Anyway, as I was saying, Dolly, I cannot abide riding the horses are never happy to seat a vampire, and it plays havoc with one’s hair. The only thing more vulgar is an open carriage.”
Professor Lyall decided on a more direct approach. “Where have you been this past week, my lord?”
Lord Akeldama looked once more down at himself. “Chasing ghosts while pursued by daemons, as it were, Dolly darling. I am convinced you must be aware of how it 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.”