by DG Wood
Darkly needed to figure out quickly who Cassandra knew in London, and which one of them was throwing a party. And how did she know it had already not taken place? There were no wolf mugs on the morning covers of the tabloids. That was a hopeful sign.
Geraldine awoke in a bed of crisp white sheets that felt warm from the heat of the bright autumn sun streaming through the French doors at the end of the bed, and from the body of her consort, Sean. The man sleeping next to her was a middle-aged, divorced, and quite successful stock broker in the city. She knew their cause needed money, and if she was to be queen, she needed a consort who could fund it. He owned a home in the south of France, which would also prove useful as a continental base. As her loyal soldier, Gus, was fluent in French, albeit Quebecois French, he would be the advance guard on the continent when that expansion began.
The shock of truth Sean experienced at the beginning had transformed into a new lease on life. He now viewed himself as a predator, and the world for his taking. Quite right too. In the time that he and Geraldine had been together, his personal income had doubled. As a thank you, he purchased an estate in the remote Highlands of Scotland for he and Geraldine to run together with the moon as God intended. A personal sanctuary only he and the Queen of Wolves were allowed to escape to.
Buck was the general of the army Geraldine was building. Without him, her prime order would never be fulfilled. That order was to procreate. London was the drainpipe of an old empire that still drew every nationality of human to it. It had become not just the world’s financial capital, but a city-state wielding power most countries only dreamed of. Geraldine’s subjects would infect the visitors from distant lands, who would then carry the disease back with them to their own countries.
After the infection, the new wolf was shepherded through their transformation on the heath. Thanks to Buck, it was a tightly controlled operation. Geraldine’s reign would be a hundred years, regardless of how long she lived. In that time, the new wolves would be carefully chosen. Upper middle class, well-educated and well-traveled. The future establishment. In one hundred years, when the entire world was run by werewolves, then the next queen would decide her move from a position of power never before known by wolf kind.
Buck thought of his son, Trey. Somewhere in the middle of North America with Geraldine’s daughter by his side. Calgary maybe? Was he following in Buck’s and his sister’s footsteps and going into law enforcement? Did they have a child yet? It’s true he was not Trey’s blood father. But, he liked to think he had a granddaughter or grandson out there. That his family was continuing. That the love he had given his son would be passed on. It gave Buck some solace. He knew he would likely never see Trey again.
Though Wikipedia and search engines have not solved the mystery of who was Jack the Ripper, they sure answered a lot of questions for Darkly. She learned that Cassandra attended St. Agnes the Blessed School for Girls in Shropshire from the age of eleven until seventeen. During her gap year, that year between the end of childhood’s formal education and the beginning of university, she spent a year traveling with the son of the UK Ambassador to the United States. They began in Cape Town, and made their way to Sydney, and then Christchurch. After the Antipodean tour, they each entered the London School of Economics together, where their relationship continued.
Oliver Edward Samuel Rathscowl did not need Cassandra’s family money. His was an old merchant family who survived comfortably the end of the aristocratic supremacy. He had even decided to marry Cassandra, once he was finished with his degree and placed in a diplomatic post. But, then, Cassandra’s world was blown apart by a bullet to her father’s head.
The great man had been discovered in bed with his housekeeper’s teenage son, whom he had been paying handsomely for sexual favors. Unable to live with the scandal, he ended his life, creating a whole new scandal. It was all too much for a young man who saw marriage as a useful tool in navigating one’s career, and he called it off with Cassandra. Six months later, he was married to Cassandra’s best female friend, Bunny. Her only female friend. As the tabloids reported her comment to a gossip prone friend, she felt emotionally raped by a stranger who should have been the foundation of her life and then raped again by the two people who had replaced family, yet turned out to be nothing more than strangers.
Darkly delved deeper into the life of Oliver Rathscowl. Several consul generals under his belt, now an undersecretary position at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and two daughters, twins, about to turn eighteen. Tomorrow night. Was this the private party, wondered Darkly? A coming of age party? Was this the moment Cassandra could finally capitalize on to take her revenge? Were the betrayals decades before the reasons behind the woman who has it all choosing a life on all fours? Darkly would bet her life on it that it was.
A quick email to Vincetti secured an address for Oliver and wife Bunny. The Victorian detached house in Highgate was neighbors to the famous neo-gothic Victorian cemetery of the same name. Tall iron gates blocked access to a circular driveway in front of the rather austere brick home. The gates were open today, as delivery vans were unloading folding tables and chairs and tentpoles. The equipment was carried down the side of the house to what Darkly was certain was a larger than normal, for England, back garden. She walked right past the vans and up to the front door and placed her hand on the large brass knocker, striking it twice. She had a plan.
Within a few seconds, an attractive woman fast approaching fifty answered the door with a pleasant smile. Bunny, no doubt.
“Yes?”
“Oh, hello,” replied Darkly. “My name is Lucy Hiller. I was taking a tour of your beautiful cemetery. I’m an American tourist, you see. Actually, I’m in London to sign a number of up-and-coming bands to my agency in New York. We’re branching out across the pond. Anyway, I couldn’t help but notice you’re throwing a party, and I wondered if I might be able to interest you in one of my new clients?”
“Right. Well, that sounds lovely. But, I’m afraid my husband and I have already booked a band for our daughters’ birthdays tomorrow night.”
“Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying. Can I ask what the name of the band is?”
“Of course. Just a minute,” Bunny said without any sense of being put out.
Bunny walked to an exquisite desk in the entranceway and picked up a leather-bound diary and returned to the door.
“Moonkill,” Bunny read from the diary. “Dreadful name, don’t you think? An old friend of my husband’s and mine is now managing the band. We reconnected after many years and agreed to hire the band as a favor to her more than anything. Oh, I do hope they’re decent.”
With that, Darkly said her goodbyes and made her way to the nearest tube station. She did not have reason to suspect she was being followed. But, Highgate Cemetery was a favorite stop for the more affluent and educated tourist, and so it was one of the spots that Gus spent time looking for the right candidates. The last person he expected to see among the tombstones was his old Mountie buddy, Darkly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You’ll arrest her, sheriff,” said Geraldine, betraying a hint of pleasure.
“And then?” asked Buck.
“I’m queen,” Geraldine asserted.
“I know. I was there.”
Geraldine took one final drag on her cigarette and tossed it over the edge of the Cow. The wind blew Buck’s hair, which was almost as long as Geraldine’s now. He and Geraldine had adapted their appearances to the fashions of the outside world to not unpleasant effect. The sun was almost gone, but the bright lines cut into the rock below Buck’s feet still gleamed bright. Teddy was here. 1979. Below the Cow outcrop, was the much smaller Calf boulder. The queen’s sheriff looked behind him out over Ilkley Moor.
“Half an hour by train from a major metropolitan city, with almost 700 square miles of Yorkshire dales to run. We’re taking too many chances in London, Geraldine.”
“Fine,” she agreed. “But, I’m serious abo
ut Darkly. Whatever she’s doing in London, it ends tomorrow night. She’s hunting us, Buck. She’s chosen sides. You’ll kill her if you have to.”
Geraldine walked past Buck to a waiting Land Rover. Buck peered over the edge of the outcrop and watched Geraldine’s glowing red cigarette butt burn itself out.
Darkly could look like anyone. Unusual for a beautiful girl. Beautiful by anyone’s standards. But, do her hair up in a bun, apply a little too much eye make-up, wrap a black bow tie around her neck, and she transforms into a cater-waiter who is desperate to be noticed, and would thus be met with glances downward by guests eager not to engage the help. She was confident she could serve Bunny Rathscowl a canape and not be recognized as the talent manager from the day before.
Darkly walked right through the gates of the Highgate home, up to the caterer’s utility van and picked up a blue rack of trayed sandwiches. She followed the other waiters down the side of the house to the back garden, which was covered in a white tent and lit by chandeliers.
In the center of the tent, was a rectangular koi pond. Rose bushes lined the edges of the tent, and at the rear of the structure, a one-foot platform backed up to a hedgerow. At the other end, were French doors that led into the kitchen. Darkly walked through and placed the rack of sandwiches on the center island. She turned to go, and was stopped by a loud, brash voice.
“Oi. I am absolutely fucking certain I told you in particular that nothing, I mean nothing, is to be left on kitchen surfaces. I’m going to have to sanitize that all over again.”
The wiry chef glared at Darkly. He had that nervous energy about him that indicated to Darkly he would need to pop into the loo shortly to feed his coke habit.
“Do I need to send you home?” asked the chef.
“No, chef,” Darkly replied and picked up the rack.
“The walk-in’s that way,” said the chef, pointing to a short corridor beyond a breakfast nook.
Darkly carried the rack past a pantry and into a walk-in refrigerator, whose door was wide open. Two girls with tightly bound buns of dark hair were opening boxes of champagne and cold drinks, separating items out for a kids and an adult bar. Darkly placed the rack on top of the stack of blue racks already in the refrigerator.
After several trips back and forth from the front drive, Darkly had built another stack of blue racks. With the last rack in place, Darkly walked down the short corridor to find something else to keep herself busy while waiting for the party to begin. As she was about to emerge into the kitchen, she heard a voice she had been anticipating.
“Bunny! So good to see you.”
Darkly slipped into the pantry at the sound of the two women kissing each other on each cheek and walked right into the chef, holding cans of condensed milk. He opened his mouth to yell, and Darkly closed it with her own mouth. She began kissing him, parting his mouth with her tongue, while she reached down to feel around under his apron. He smelled of grease, garlic and cigarettes, but Darkly was a fine actress.
“Don’t drop the cans,” she ordered, and the chef kissed her back, while Darkly listened to the conversation in the kitchen. Then the pain set in. The chef’s tongue felt like sandpaper against her own. Then her mouth felt like she had just chugged a jar of sriracha. She was kissing a killer.
“Olly’s keeping the girls occupied in town. It’s not a surprise, but we want them to be amazed when they arrive.”
“It’s going to be a night they won’t forget, Bunny. I promise. My band has just arrived. I’m going to help them get situated.”
“I’ll have the chef whip something up for them before they play, Cassandra.”
“Not necessary. They already have plans to eat later tonight.”
Darkly listened to Cassandra walk out the French doors, and then broke off the kiss with the chef, taking a deep intake of breath and relief.
“I have that effect,” the chef gloated. “Let’s take up where we left off at the end of the party.”
The chef would be off her case for the rest of the night. She left him standing in the pantry still holding two cans of condensed milk and a doe-eyed expression on his face. She walked past Bunny, who was checking things off on a list. The two women smiled at each other, and the lady of the house, as Darky suspected, didn’t see anyone in Darkly’s face she had met before.
Darkly stepped up to the glass of the French doors and watched as Cassandra placed her hand on Toma’s shoulder. He brushed it away and stormed off. When Cassandra turned her back to the house, Darkly slipped out and followed Toma out of the tent.
Toma turned to look for who was following him, but Darkly had already pushed her way between two holy bushes, stifling the hundred pricks of pain brought about by the crowned plant. He pulled a pack of Dunhill cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit one.
“The great thing about being a wolf. The lungs heal themselves. We’re almost invincible. Gods, really. Well, demi-gods.”
Toma looked behind him to see Cassandra approaching.
“Wolves don’t seek revenge. They hunt for survival,” Toma countered.
Darkly was putting her calf muscles to good use, holding her crouch in complete silence.
“Did you ever hear the story about the Russian trapper? He brought down a male wolf that was stalking his mink traps. The wolf’s mate came for him. Followed him miles back to his cabin in the middle of bum-fuck Siberia. Killed him in the outhouse while he was going number two. They know this because the hunter that found his frozen body described it as covered in shite.”
“This has nothing to do with me,” insisted Toma.
“No? You don’t like the money? You don’t like playing your alright-at-best music in front of important people?”
Toma bristled at that, and Cassandra took his hand.
“Listen to me. You do have the potential to be an amazing talent. With my unwavering support. I just need you to show me your support. Come on, it’s not like we’re going to kill them. You’re going to give the girls a gift. A gift that will just happen to devastate their parents.”
Toma stepped away from Cassandra.
“Or get a real job.”
With that, Cassandra walked away. Toma begrudgingly followed, like a puppy with its tail between its legs, and Darkly had an idea of what the night held for two young women. The writhing.
Zoe and India entered the tent to the roar of their friends and beaming parents. Cassandra stood by them. The two people she had been closest to in her life. The man and woman who had been her family, when her own family was nothing more than a chequebook. The two people who betrayed her. She had no family.
As Darkly glided through the crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres, she watched Toma and his bad boy bass player seduce the two birthday girls. They serenaded them, rocked their world. Darkly knew there was something more hormonal and primal taking place. The writhing was the wolf word that described the sexual magnetism werewolves inflicted on non-weres. With the right ambience, the chances of no were nil. Introduce a guitar into the mix, and a hundred guests become the ghosts of peripheral vision.
So it was with the two birthday girls. They had eyes only for Toma and his bass player. Their giggles and bouncing evolved into a comatose swaying. Ignored, their friends drifted away into other groups. The golden calves were separated from the herd. Cassandra caught Toma’s eye and gave him a nod.
“Thank you very much. We’re going to take a little dinner break, and we’ll be back,” Toma announced to a round of applause.
Toma finished the set and stepped off the stage. He whispered something in Zoe’s ear, who grabbed her sister’s hand and walked back to the house. Toma nodded at his bass player. They ordered a drink at the bar and accepted a few compliments before walking into the house themselves.
Darkly observed the whole maneuver and knew exactly what to do. She tattled. She walked right up to Oliver Rathscowl and asked him for a word. His embarrassment at being pulled aside by staff was quickly forgotten.
“Uh. Alright.”
Oliver seemed unsure of what to do.
“They aren’t going upstairs to talk, sir,” Darkly continued. “I overheard one of your daughters telling the other that she was looking forward to losing her virginity tonight.”
Oliver’s face went pale.
“Thank you.”
Darkly nodded, and Oliver rushed off to grab his wife. He pulled her away from a conversation to whisper in her ear, and after the same widening of eyes, the two rushed into the house.
Cassandra noticed the alarm on the parents’ faces and looked in Darkly’s direction, finally seeing the waitress for who she was. Darkly beat Cassandra into the house. Both women ran past the confused chef for the front of the home and up the staircase to the second story, where they arrived in time to see both sisters, only wearing panties, thrown out of a bedroom. The bass player followed them out and bolted down the staircase. Darkly let him go. He wasn’t who she was after tonight.
“How dare you! In my home, no less.”
Oliver was laying into Toma, and Bunny slapped both of her daughters across their faces, not knowing what else she should do in such a situation.
“Olly!” Cassandra screamed at the top of her lungs. The girls stopped crying, and Oliver and a naked Toma stepped out of the room slowly.
“Yes, Cassandra?” Oliver asked, subdued by the scream.
“You ripped me in two.”
“Excuse me?”
“Both of you,” Cassandra said in Bunny’s direction. “You were my only family, and you cut out my heart and left nothing in its place. These girls could have been mine. Ours, Olly.”
