A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

In any case, the lady was entirely blameless and in mortal peril. But the killer had made a mistake. In taking a young woman who would be reported missing immediately—and in a manner further guaranteed to be noticed, he had made the trail that much fresher.

  And tonight was the full moon.

  This time there would be no delays. This time he would get to Jones as soon as he changed, and they would get to the girl before it was too late.

  He sent a message to Cat.

  Dearest Catherine,

  Can Dr. Foster find out the schedule of a certain Constable Jones? It is urgent that I speak with him privately.

  Her sealed reply came by return courier.

  I will see what I can do. But remember that constables work in pairs. What you are proposing is dangerous, love.

  His injured foot was not the only thing that had kept him from balls and picnics in the weeks after his hunt with Jones. Now that he was healed enough to attend social functions without having to explain a bandaged hand, he found it hard to commit himself with the same level of light-hearted frivolity.

  Unlike most of his peers, Richard had always known that life was not just an endless run of balls and dinner parties. The scar on his shoulder reminded him every time he undressed. Then he had nearly lost Cat to the Ladykiller and had tasted a man’s lifeblood hot in his wolf jaws. In that moment his wolf nature had gone from a private shame to both a blessing and a more frightening curse.

  Until recently, he had been able to push that one horrible night aside as an aberration that had nothing to do with everyday life.

  What he had sensed at the warehouse taught him that evil was alive and ongoing and the suffering it caused was real. Men like Jones risked their lives every day to combat it, risked their lives with little thanks while he and his friends frittered away their time with balls and picnics and parlor games.

  Knowing what he knew, how could he not let the wolf out to help Jones stop the killer? Catherine would worry, but Catherine would also understand. She pursued alchemy and engineering to prove her intellect, yes, but also to make more of a contribution to society than she would as a mere drawing room ornament.

  As the day faded into dusk, Richard thought more about Catherine’s caution than her support. Jones would have a partner with him. That partner was an unknown quantity. He would be in wolf form. There was no way for anyone to connect his wolf form to his human life. But if the partner started asking questions, pressuring Jones for information. . .

  Jones was clever. He’d find a way to answer without incriminating Richard.

  Could he really be so sure of the man, on so short an acquaintance?

  He had no choice. Memories of that night at the warehouse, the scent of death and fear and pain haunted him and compelled him.

  The instant that moonrise brought the shift of form he shot from his house like a bullet, racing through the darkness toward the wharf that was Jones' new beat.

  Thirteen

  Richard padded through the shadows of the wharf, wishing that he had acquired a wolf’s sensibilities with a wolf’s sensitivities. The Thames stank.

  He flicked his ears back and forth, cataloguing sounds. One of the less fortunate of his own kind was bolting down the rotting rejects from some fisherman’s catch. (Richard silently vowed to make a larger donation to werewolf relief.) A cat scuffled with a rat half its size. A sailor argued with a prostitute. Richard paused in his stride. The argument did not seem to be escalating toward violence, so he moved on. He had a mission.

  There, the voice he was listening for. Jones, sharing complaints regarding the lot of a constable’s life with the man who was no doubt his partner. Heading toward the sound, he trotted forward.

  “And to top it all off, it’s a full moon,” the partner was saying. “Bloody werewolves everywhere.”

  Richard stopped and crouched deeper into shadow. If the partner was a werewolf hater. . .

  “Remember, Parker, werewolves were first victims. Most of them are just trying to survive, and society isn’t making that easy for them.”

  “Heard that there’s them that choose it,” Parker said.

  “A small percentage. Usually wives joining husbands, husbands joining wives. With this stupid new law about werewolf marriage, I suspect we’ll see even more of that.”

  “Heard there’s whole packs of ‘em wandering the countryside.”

  “The ‘wolf Rover clans take in children who have been abandoned by their families. Some of them were already bitten by rogue werewolves, and cast out because of that. Others were just one more mouth to feed than the parents could cope with. Those are given a choice when they come of age. They can turn, they can leave, or they can stay as human liaisons for the ’wolves.”

  “Seeing what we’ve seen of what happens to abandoned kids,” Parker said. “I guess I can see why they’d want to join the ’wolves.”

  So he wasn’t one of the raging bigots. Still, it was riskier than Richard liked.

  But there was the scent-memory of blood and terror and pain, and the knowledge that another girl was in the killer’s grasp. He trotted forward out of the shadow and sat down in front of Jones.

  “What the—” Parker said. “Bold as brass. Off with you.”

  Richard ignored Parker and met Jones' eyes steadily. He twitched his tail.

  “No use begging from us, you…“ Parker started.

  Jones shushed him. “It’s all right, I know this ’wolf. He’s a. . .source.” Then he turned to Richard. “I appreciate your coming, but it’s no use. I’m not on the case anymore.”

  Incapable of verbal disagreement, Richard merely continued to stare.

  “It’s not that I don’t care anymore, but I’m assigned here. The other, that’s not my job anymore.”

  Richard gave an impatient huff. It hadn’t been his job, either, when Jones had dragged him into the mess. Now he couldn’t walk away from it, and he didn’t think Jones would be able to, either. Not if he was the man Richard thought he was.

  Parker looked from Richard to Jones. “This is how you found the warehouse. You used a tracking dog. A tracking ’wolf.”

  Richard surged to his feet and started to back away. Jones’ partner was apparently not an idiot. If Jones had traced his identity, so might this man. The damage might already be done, but the sooner he disappeared back into the shadows, the sooner the man could start forgetting about him.

  “No, stay!” Jones called after him. “Please, just… Give me a minute, here, would you? Please.”

  Richard took another step back, and stopped.

  Jones turned to his partner. “I can’t explain everything, but please, if you have any faith in me, just please don’t say anything about this. There are secrets here that aren’t mine to keep or reveal, and I’ve given my word. I promise you that I’m hiding nothing that has any bearing on any open case.”

  Well worded. Blackpoole’s case was as closed as his coffin.

  “Like I said, sir, you’re a good man. If you say to keep mum, then mum’s the word. I know the higher-ups always frowned on your collection of tramps and ragamuffins, but the information you get from them is usually solid. So what’s the plan? We follow the ’wolf?”

  Jones shook his head. “I’m disobeying orders and abandoning my beat for a reason that I cannot fully explain to my superiors to pursue a case I’ve been taken off of. I can’t ask you to come with me.”

  “You can’t make me stay behind, neither.”

  Richard whined briefly and danced on his forepaws. He only had until sunrise, and he wanted to make the best of it.

  Jones shook his head at Parker. “Fine. Though I’d rather not be responsible for you losing your job.”

  “You won’t be, sir. I’m a man as can make his own decisions,” Parker said with a proud lift to his chin, a squaring of his shoulders.

  The constable had more courage and honor than any gentlemen that Richard had met.

  Richard knew from the papers the general area wher
e the abduction had taken place. He took off in that direction in an easy wolf-lope, leaving Jones and his partner to sprint after him. The restaurant where Browne had eaten with his lady was closed for the evening as were the upscale shops that surrounded it. Fortunate. Less explanation.

  “From what I heard, the attacker came out of an alley,” Parker said.

  His words were mere distraction. Richard was already casting back and forth, nose working until. . . A man’s scent, one among many who had used this street and that alley. Tradesmen, delivery boys, and street urchins, and one man whose scent Richard could never forget. One man whose scent linked indelibly with the reek of terror and pain. The killer.

  A low growl escaped his throat.

  The scent pooled here, spreading out. The killer had waited here some time. Richard crisscrossed the alley, nose snuffling as he took in as many scents as he could and disregarded the irrelevant. Cat urine, cigarette butts, rotting apple core and—there. The sharp sweat of violence, a small amount of blood spilled. The killer’s scent intermingled with another man’s—possibly the unfortunate Inspector Browne—and then with the victim’s. The too-sweet scent of chloroform that took him back to a winter garden, his lady in danger, and the blood-red haze of killing rage. No. Focus on here, now. His lady was not in danger, but another innocent was.

  Killer’s scent and victim’s intermingled led him down the alley where it then disappeared. He cast back and forth without luck. Before the killer had used a cart with a team; he must have done so once again. But last time there had been only one team of horses with a scent of the right staleness. This alley took many deliveries by horse cart, and many horse teams had left their scent. He lowered his nose to the ground and sniffed hard, then raised it and sniffed again, testing all the scent layers. Something tickled at his memory. There. Animal blood. He circled the area slowly.

  Jones and Parker were talking in the background, but Richard refused to be distracted. The killer’s scent, mingled with horses’ scent. He just had to follow the scent of those horses. Through an area of the city where dray horses were as common as social-climbing debutants at a ball held by an unattached viscount. Without confusing the trail.

  He started forward slowly and carefully not daring to hurry lest he find himself following the wrong team. Past restaurants, past shops, sharp left down an alley that seemed almost too narrow for a cart. At the end of the alley, he checked and returned, brushing between Parker and Jones who had been following closely.

  Parker jumped away with a startled cry as though a werewolf’s touch was as poisonous as his bite, but Jones turned to match the new direction without missing a stride.

  “What is it,” Jones asked. “Have you found something?”

  The words buzzed in his ears, an annoyance, a distraction as he looked for. . .

  Yes. The horses had stopped here and been kept standing for some time. The scent was heavier and spread out like a pool of water.

  He snuffled harder, muzzle now higher, now low to the ground. There, the killer’s scent. Sniff, sniff. And the girl’s higher, mingled with his, not touching the ground. He’d been carrying her, carrying her to. . .

  Slanted wooden door nearly flush to the ground, the sort that covered the entrance to stairs that descended to a cellar. Richard scratched at the wood as though it were earth he could tunnel through, whining. A hand in his ruff pulled him back. Jones’ scent registered before he could turn and snap, and then Jones’ words penetrated his wolf instinct to find his human mind.

  “We’ll find a way in, all right? We’ll find a better way in. You’ll tear your paws before you dig through that door. I don’t want to send you home bandaged again.”

  Parker ran a hand down the door. “Looks like a simple latch, a lock to discourage the less ambitious. Probable cause?”

  “In fact, yes. In law, we followed a werewolf I will not identify to pursue a case I’ve been removed from.”

  Parker grinned up at him. “Well in keeping with the evening’s work, then, innit?”

  Jones sighed and took a set of long, thin tools from a case in an inner pocket of his constable’s uniform. “Godwin showed me how, said sometimes a good Peeler couldn’t wait around for a locksmith.”

  “Taught Willie, too, I heard,” Parker said. “Though I guess he came to regret that.”

  Richard didn’t know who this Willie was, nor did he care. All he cared about was getting through that door. He whined impatiently. The girl had been taken down there, he was sure of it. And there was no awful blood-fear-death scent yet. This time, they might not be too late. This time, they might actually have done some good.

  After a moment or two of fumbling, Jones opened the lock and pulled free the latch that it held. Parker swung the door open, and Richard restrained himself from vaulting past the constables and down into the dark cellar. The last thing the traumatized girl needed was a huge, frenzied ’wolf bursting in on her.

  Richard hovered anxiously at the top of the stairs as the constables descended, ready to lend aid with fang and jaw if needed. The cool air that came from the open maw of the cellar smelled of something chemical. Turpentine. And oil paints.

  “I can barely see anything.” Royston’s voice came up from the depths. “Parker, is that a lamp on the shelf?”

  The brief flare of a match was followed by the brighter light of a lamp. Richard turned his head away to give his eyes time to adjust. He heard Jones curse softly.

  “You may as well come down here,” Jones called up to him. “See if you can figure something out.”

  The girl wasn’t there? But he’d been so sure.

  In the cellar, the paint and turpentine smells were even stronger, burning in his sensitive wolf nose. Stacks of canvases leaned against the walls. Where he could make out images in the shadows, the paintings depicted women in various states of undress, all arched in unnatural, painful-looking poses. In the center of the room a dressmaker’s dummy held a woman’s overdress. Striped pale green. Just like the description in the papers of the clothes the victim was last seen wearing.

  There was a note pinned to the dress.

  “He addressed the note to me, personally,” Jones said. “By my Christian name, as though we were the most intimate of friends.” Jones hand shook as he reached out, not quite touching the paper. “The first layer,” he quoted. “I will take her apart piece by piece until I reach her heart. Try and catch me.”

  Even by the dim lamplight, Richard could see the pallor of Jones’ face, accented by high color on his cheeks. Shock and horror and rage intermingled. Jones’ chest rose and fell in a deep breath as he clearly struggled to master himself.

  Jones continued to read. “If you are reading this, you have found the first clue. Congratulations. You always were a clever little bastard.”

  Jones’ voice ground on that last word. Richard flattened his ears in sympathy.

  “Damn the man,” Parker whispered.

  Jones ignored him and read on. “Now it’s time to go back to the beginning.”

  “Back to the beginning?” Parker echoed. “What the deuce does he mean by that?”

  “To the beginning of the trail?” Jones mused. “No, too obvious, I think. He’s, dear god, he’s trying to show how clever he is. Playing a game with a girl’s life at stake.” He addressed Richard. “Can you pick up anything else?”

  Richard sniffed around the dress, but he could catch only brief whiffs of the killer and the girl beneath the overwhelming blaze of oil and turpentine. Either the artist was extremely careless, or someone had deliberately spilled the stuff. The harder he tried, the deeper he breathed, the deeper the chemical burned into his nasal passages. It was hopeless.

  He sat down, wrinkling his nose and rubbing his muzzle with a paw.

  “You can’t smell anything but paint, can you? I was afraid of that. Why don’t you go out and get some air while we search the room?”

  Richard gave an apologetic wag of his tail and climbed out of the cellar.
The night air soothed his burning nasal passages, but it would be a while before he would be any use as a tracker. Had the killer somehow known that Jones was using a ’wolf to track him, or were the nose-dulling artist supplies coincidence? If it was not coincidence. . .Jones had worked out who he was, and this killer must be as clever as the detective to have avoided capture for so long.

  What was he doing here? He should be home in his study enjoying a good brandy by the fire, the miracle of Catherine’s alchemy flowing in his veins and holding him to human form. Home, safe. . .and useless, while evil stalked the city. That life had ended the day Jones sat down to tea at Catherine’s table. No, it had ended when a killer threatened Catherine and the wolf inside him was the only thing that could save her.

  Jones and Parker came back up the stairs, their heavy working boots beating the slow tread of discouragement.

  “There’s no other way in or out of the basement,” Jones said.

  The killer must have laid the scent, then followed his own backtrail. He had to know that Jones was using some kind of scent-tracking animal, or else why leave the taunt where it would not be found any other way. Unless he expected the basement’s owner to find the clue and forward it to the Yard.

  “There was a postscript on the letter,” Jones said. “‘It takes a bastard to catch a bastard, but the smart bastard comes out on top.’"

  Richard stared at him, feeling every bit the uncomprehending beast that he looked.

  “My very first week as a constable,” Jones said. “We were patrolling outside a theater. They were doing a Faust revival. I saw a pair of well-dressed toffs, but something looked . . .off about them. So I went up to them, bid them a good evening, and asked how they had liked the play. They said that they had liked it exceedingly well. And then they agreed with me that Marlowe was the greatest comedic writer of all time.”

  “Not half of us would know Marlowe from a match girl,” Parker cut in with great admiration. “So Jones here watched them right close, and sure enough they weren’t toffs at all, but pickpockets. Caught ‘em in the act, didn’t he? One of ‘em, as it turned out, was the Earl of Suffolk’s bastard by a common whore.”