Romancing the Werewolf

by Gail Carriger

  The werewolves around the table all agreed.

  Channing, who’d remained uncharacteristically silent throughout breakfast, finished his meal and stood.

  Biffy gave him a look that he hoped was full of enigmatic wisdom but probably looked more anemic.

  Fortunately, Channing tilted his head slightly in supplication. “Yes, I’ll stop by on my way to BUR and make inquiries at the Home Office. But this preacher is not registered – I would have known already if he were. I cleared this area before we relocated. He’s not official, but I’ll ask around to be certain. There are always rabble-rousers and anarchists and the like – Home Office keeps an eye on the known elements.”

  Biffy nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

  Channing’s lip curled. “Of course, Alpha.” Without another word, he left the table.

  Lyall watched him go. “Such a charmer.”

  Biffy turned back. He couldn’t keep all pack from their normal jobs and duties a second night running. Since they’d been relieved of military service overseas, they weren’t on strict schedules for tangential military duties, instead working for BUR, serving with Her Majesty’s Growlers, or helping out the War Office. Pack business always took priority, but even an American preacher and four squalling babies couldn’t be furnished as an excuse for more than one day.

  Still, it wasn’t all of them. Rafe hadn’t any official obligations at the moment. Hemming wanted to stay home and help Mrs Whybrew. She was eminently capable, but four children under a year old was enough to drive anyone spare. Adelphus did everything he could not to work. As a matter of fact, he worked awfully hard at it. And Ulric, who liked to remind them that he had once been a European prince, preferred papers and aetherographic transmission processing. When not required to fight, Ulric actually preferred to fool about with the pack accounts, investments, and correspondences. For his part, Biffy could afford to leave the hat shop in Cyril’s capable hands. His head shop-keep might not have the best stylistic eye where millinery was concerned, but the man could sell last week’s bread as this week’s pudding for three times the price, and make you feel lucky to get it while it was hot. Biffy had watched a young lady wearing dubious amounts of lace walk in looking for gloves and leave carrying three new hats, a fichu, two parasols, and a pair of hair muffs.

  So it was that Biffy, Lyall, Rafe, Ulric, and Adelphus took the first half of the night’s watch over the warehouse. He instructed his pack-mates to observe only. Then, right about eight at night, early for most gatherings, people began to arrive. They seemed to represent all walks of laboring life, including full families among their ranks, and were all dressed in Sunday best.

  With a start, Biffy realized it was Sunday.

  Biffy himself wished he’d dressed down, but he hadn’t, which meant he far outclassed everyone there (Sunday best or not). He signaled for Lyall and Rafe to join the modest throng entering the warehouse. They did, lurking to the back and fitting in well enough to pass cursory inspection.

  He, Ulric, and Adelphus stayed to the outside, hidden in the shadows, regretting their pretty suits and fine ways.

  * * *

  Professor Lyall had learned over the years never to expect very much. If one didn’t cherish high expectations, one was never disappointed and, occasionally, one might even be pleasantly surprised.

  Sadly, Lyall would never have called this surprise pleasant.

  He skulked at the back of the massive room, hidden in plain sight as was his wont. No one noticed him at the best of times – it was his gift. A dubious thing, to be constantly overlooked. After four hundred years, however, he’d learned to appreciate it rather than resent it. Well, most of the time.

  Rafe, who had a less easy time of skulking, still managed to lurk with enough subtlety on the other side of the room to pass as human. Rafe was still obviously a predator, large and fierce and deadly. But there were humans like that too, and he’d found a group of them in a corner. Rough, ready, angry men, cracked like leather beneath the weight of the world’s use. Standing with them, Rafe could still be one of the things that went bump in the night, just closer to home. The world hid all kinds of monsters – some had too many teeth and some had too much gin.

  The gathering rustled in an anticipatory manner, as people murmured and moved about one another. It was much as Lyall expected from a church gathering, except that there were no pews and everyone stood about in a pickling warehouse.

  Finally, a man came marching in. Big, confident strides took him up to the small raised platform at the front of the room to the stage that smelled of vinegar. He wore a suit that defied the term, a waistcoat that did no one any favors, least of all him, and a scarf about his neck instead of a cravat. Professor Lyall was the type to make allowances, but really. He worried for Biffy’s health should the Alpha catch sight of the offending garments.

  Lyall wrinkled his nose involuntarily.

  The man – he had to assume he was the preacher, nothing less than abject devotion to the almighty could lead anyone to neglect his attire like that – reeked of vinegar, so much so that it brought tears to Lyall’s eyes. He wasn’t dripping wet, but he clearly bathed in the stuff. Yech.

  The preacher stood, clapping his hands together, and then began to stride about the small stage, yelling the holy word in a highly aggressive manner. His rhetoric boarded on abusive and was certainly enthusiastic. It was almost theatrical.

  He had a big voice and big presence. Not ill formed, possibly even handsome, except that his mouth never stopped moving and his teeth were very... square. His lips were thin, and in speaking, he exposed a great deal of his gums. He was strapping, in a cricket-playing kind of way, with a square jaw – but the noise that emanated from his mouth! It could hardly be called talking. He was brutish towards the English language, harsh with sharp constants and nasal inflections. His vowels were positively abused! Lyall suspected the man’s first name was something ridiculously penitent and American like Obadiah or Abner.

  The preacher punctuated his sermon with lots of hand gestures and facial grimaces, raising his arms up to heaven, then sweeping them about. He even twirled once or twice and stomped his feet.

  “And the Lord came unto you and he said, you are the weak and the meek and the prey. And you shall not inherit, oh no! You shall be food for the lords of our holy and true nature. You shall be fodder for the great beasts of the castles. Your children shall be as mere snacks to the supernatural!”

  Oh, dear, thought Lyall. This is not at all what I was expecting. It seems this new cult is quite the opposite of what we feared.

  Instead of preaching the gospel of hating the supernatural set, this man was preaching the gospel of worship. Which, quite frankly, was almost as bad. Thousands of years before Lyall’s time, the ancient Egyptians had worshiped werewolves, and everyone knew how badly that turned out. The God-Breaker Plague. Well, maybe not everyone, but everyone that mattered knew.

  Still, Lyall was mildly fascinated. The man was a powerful speaker – potent and charismatic. Almost as if he himself had some sort of supernatural ability, drawing all the eyes in the room. A big, commanding presence. A focus point. A tug on the tethers. Riveting and faintly grotesque.

  A werewolf Alpha.

  That would explain the vinegar smell. If a werewolf wished to disguise his scent, vinegar was a good option. Even I can’t pick up wolf smell through that kind of pong.

  “Make your sacrifices or you too will be called upon to feed the beasts of heaven of your own flesh! Bring forth the next possible candidate!”

  An eager (or perhaps nervous) rustle went throughout the room and a young woman was shoved forward. She was dirty and unkempt, her face-paint tear-stained. A lady of the night, no doubt. She clutched to her breast a squalling infant.

  Lyall tensed.

  “He’s a good lad, he is. Never gave me a spot of trouble. Please don’t make me—”

  “You will burn in the fiery bogs of hell and dam
nation. Brimstone and soot will rain down upon your head! Steam will scald, and oil will...” yelled the preacher at her. Rather stumbling for good vocabulary, Lyall felt.

  The girl trembled.

  “Your sacrifice is the only thing that can possibly save you. The beast must be pacified! You think God is kind and merciful? You have not looked into the face of the hellhound at his back!”

  The preacher grabbed up the child and set it at his feet. Then he continued to stride around, yelling words at the crowd. Occasionally, he would leap over the child in a kind of wild ritual hopping. This went on for a good half hour, eventually culminating in the man picking up the infant, lifting him high into the air, and the crowd all howling at it.

  Lyall exchanged amused glances with Rafe. Nothing is more droll than humans trying to howl, poor little monkeys.

  No doubt the three others outside were having a good chuckle at the assembled’s expense.

  Lyall gestured with his head and Rafe followed him out the door in one of those swift dodges only the supernatural could execute unnoticed.

  “Did you catch it all, Alpha?” Rafe grinned at Biffy, who was looking poised and quietly diverted by the melodramatics within. The warehouse walls were by no means sufficient to stopper supernatural hearing.

  “They’re worshiping us.” Biffy’s tone showed more discomfort than the situation warranted, but it could simply be that he’d caught sight of the preacher’s outfit when he first entered.

  “It would appear so.” Lyall supported the assessment of his Alpha.

  Adelphus snorted. “And the infants they keep leaving on our doorstep are what, offerings?”

  “Or sacrifices,” Lyall shrugged.

  “Charming.” Ulric curled his lip and turned to peer back into the warehouse, where the congregation still milled and chatted about the excitement of the oratory performance.

  Lyall tilted his head. “I think the preacher is himself a werewolf.”

  “Hardly possible – he’s an American.” Adelphus frowned at him.

  Lyall quirked a brow. “American werewolves do happen.”

  “He’ll be funny about the head, then, if he is one.” Rafe looked thoughtful. “I mean to say, funnier even than what we just heard.”

  “Most likely.” Lyall nodded.

  “Well, well, well, how fun is this?” Biffy did not look pleased. “An American werewolf in Greenwich preaching the gospel of supernatural worship and infant-sacrifice. Exactly what I always wanted for Christmas.”

  Lyall sighed. “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “He smacks of Alpha.”

  Rafe flinched but agreed. “Didn’t get a sniff, but he has that charm, you know? Can’t stop looking at him. For all he’s got no neckcloth.”

  Lyall shuddered. “That waistcoat.”

  “Horrid” – Rafe was morose – “and I don’t think he had a shirt on under it. At all.” Rafe wasn’t particularly fashionable, but this defied all reason.

  Biffy gave one of his most winning smiles, almost like one from the bad old days when he was a clever little drone running Lord Akeldama’s house and heart. “Oh, well, I can’t think of a better reason to fight a man.”

  “The child-sacrifice thing not bad enough?” Ulric grinned as well.

  “We didn’t actually kill the infants, even if we were meant to,” objected Adelphus. “Don’t think sacrifice is the right word.”

  “I think,” said Rafe, “we were supposed to eat them.”

  Adelphus looked properly horrified. “Eat babies? What a preposterous notion. They’re almost entirely made of fat, quite detrimental to the digestion. Not to mention the waistline.”

  Biffy looked approving. “Exactly.”

  “And they never hold still! So messy.” Ulric joined in the spirit of the thing.

  “Not to mention the gritty feeling of powdered talc on one’s teeth. Yech.” Adelphus shuddered.

  “Good. Are we agreed, then, no eating babies?” Biffy looked about, and the other four werewolves nodded. “Very good, gentlemen.”

  Lyall hid his smile. At least the Alpha was using flippancy to disguise his fear over having to actually challenge another werewolf.

  While they huddled in conversation in the shadows, the doors to the warehouse creaked open and the congregation began to file out in a mildly cheerful and bubbly mass.

  Lyall pushed his Alpha, gently, towards the correct decision. “So, what do we do now?”

  “About him?” asked Biffy.

  “About him.”

  Biffy sighed. He removed his hat and twirled it on one hand. “Bah! Confrontation, I suppose. I do hate it so. But going about shirtless with only a waistcoat really cannot be condoned.”

  “Agreed, Alpha,” said Lyall with feeling.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Fight for Your Right to Pulpit

  Biffy sighed. Really, this had to be the worst part about being a werewolf. He could tame his hair (which had taken a decade to get right and caused him to invest, rather lucratively, in werewolf-strength pomade called Parfumé Contrôle du Citron) and he could tame his temper (which was mild by Alpha standards already, and really didn’t take much doing) but he could not tame the way other werewolves behaved – hair or temper. The result was that, in the end, disagreements were settled with claws and teeth. So very undignified.

  Biffy was a man of words, not fur. He’d far rather argue, persuade, flatter, or insult an enemy into submission. Fighting simply seemed rather gauche. Still, a man dressed like that pulpit jockey could hardly be expected to obey the social niceties of any society, be it werewolf, English, or even (heaven forfend) American.

  Far be it for Biffy not to try civility first, however. Everyone deserved at least one opportunity to run away.

  He entered the warehouse, four of his pack at his back. No one made a fuss about them. The werewolves nodded politely to the remaining supplicants as they passed through the cavernous space. Hats were tipped to the ladies. Even Biffy issued all proper courtesies, although given his superior rank, he wasn’t required to be nice. Still, he was newly minted nobility, and newly moved to the area – no need to come off as condescending with the locals.

  Even if they were members of a cult.

  Even if none of them seemed to know who he was.

  Given the meat of the sermon, he supposed, if they did, they might have run screaming, or cast themselves at his feet bowing and scraping. Not for the first time, Biffy was grateful he didn’t actually look the part of werewolf. Neither did the others, when all was said and done.

  Lyall looked, most of the time, like a county cleric, or possibly a banking clerk. Adelphus looked like a mildly dyspeptic toff, Ulric like a Byronic hero, and Rafe like the local pub’s ferret-legging champion. Of all of them, Rafe appeared the most wolfish when human, but even he projected a bashful lumbering that disguised his predator’s grace. Biffy could not have picked a more unthreatening group from his pack. He was pleased by this unintended subterfuge.

  A few sycophants and disciples remained collected about the preacher standing on his dais. Some were requesting private blessings or prayers, others begged for aid or solace. The squirming child-sacrifice was being held by a large brutish fellow off to one side. The child’s mother sat crumpled on the floor at the brute’s feet, perhaps having prostrated herself there in an excess of emotion.

  Lacking any other means of modulating the situation, Biffy fell onto classic societal strictures.

  He and his pack waited politely to one side while the man dealt with his flock.

  Finally, the preacher turned inquiring eyes upon them.

  Biffy inclined his head. “Good evening, sir. My name is Lord Falmouth.”

  “Welcome! Welcome, gentlemen. I’m Thaddeus Monday.”

  “Pastor Monday?” Biffy prodded for correct address.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m afraid this is a
rather delicate matter.”

  “I make no allowances for my speech tonight, boys. I come when summoned by the Lord and say the Word as it moves me. Can’t say I’m sorry if it disturbed your slumber.”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that.”

  “Then has one of your number turned to me and taken up the Following of the Beasts? Because you’ll find he has saved himself with righteousness. Nothing you or I can do will turn him back from the bright and snapping path.”

  “Not that, either.” Biffy was mildly amused to see where this was going.

  “Well then, well then, you seeking the Word yourselves, young gentlemen? You wish to establish a worship group, perhaps?”

  “No, actually. We find your subject matter a smidgen off-putting, to be perfectly honest.”

  “Hey now, hey now. I thought you Blighty types welcomed werewolves with open arms. That’s why I’ve come. This being the first step in the enlightened direction, I’m merely encouraging the savage truth to out itself.”

  “You advocate a belief in the superiority of the supernatural?” Biffy wanted verbal evidence to his face.

  “Exactly so. Exactly so. Why, I could tell you things that’d raise the hairs on the backs of your necks.”

  “Could you, indeed?”

  “For surely, I could.”

  “I find I’m well able to do that myself, to be quite frank with you.” Biffy edged closer to the man.

  How long? How long until the scent – five of them together – finally broke through the vinegar stench surrounding the interloping werewolf loner?

  Alpha in my territory.

  Biffy moved another step closer.

  Carefully, subtly, the others fanned out. Lyall to his right. Adelphus to his left. Rafe towards the brute with the baby. Ulric taking back position, ready to scoop up any leftovers.

  They hadn’t planned it. They hadn’t talked about it. But the pattern fell over them so naturally. Biffy knew well that the others had years together, shaping pack dynamics, but that they netted those years around him with such ease when he was so new to the front of that shape... Biffy glowed with the perfection of it. My pack. Tethered strong and sure and at his back. The missing link filled by his Beta brought that last vital element, calm and quiet and there and present. Waiting. All of them waiting, on him. For a movement. For a shift.