A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  Nonsense, Royston wanted to say. Willie loves you. Only he couldn’t speak the words. Godwin would know them for the lie they were.

  His mentor’s shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat. He looked older now, more worn. Or perhaps Royston was just seeing the man for the first time without the lens of childhood adoration.

  “Did Willie know that you are not his father by blood?” Royston asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Godwin replied. “I never told him. His mother might have when she was trying to take him away.”

  It should have surprised him that father and son had never had such a crucial conversation. It didn’t.

  “I tried,” Godwin said. “I tried to raise him up right. Maybe I tried too hard, looked too hard for his mother in him and for whatever shiftless man got her with child and abandoned her. In constantly looking for any hint of irresponsibility and dishonesty, I might have made him believe that such faults were inherent in his character. Maybe I’m to blame for what he’s become, maybe he did it all to spite me. Such a waste. He was such a brilliant, brilliant boy.”

  And Royston could hear the thought he would not voice, If Willie is the killer, perhaps that, too, is my fault.

  Royston swallowed hard and tried to think of something comforting to say. He loved Godwin like a father, but he loved Willie like a brother. Putting them together in a room was like lighting a match near a gas leak. Perhaps Willie’s less admirable qualities had been inherited. Or perhaps Willie would have failed less if Godwin hadn’t always expected him to fail. It was the only major difference he’d ever had with his mentor, and he’d never found courage to voice it. Would it have changed things if he had?

  He thought back to Bessie, his offer to marry her, the child she carried that might or might not be his. Would he have done any better, knowing or suspecting that he had a cuckoo in his nest?

  “Who else would know?” Miss Fairchild asked.

  She did a fine job asking the questions he was too numb to ask. If she weren’t so keen on alchemy, he’d recommend she take her glamoured self down to the Yard and apply for a job.

  “Any of my mates at the time or my superiors, for that matter. Or the neighbors. It wasn’t the sort of thing I could keep quiet. Anyone Willie might have complained to over drinks, I suppose. I’m not important enough for it to have ever hit the papers. Can’t imagine it reaching the circles Winchell or Downey travel in, but once gossip is out, who knows where the wind will take it?”

  “Still, we can’t be certain that the killer knew what you considered to be your greatest defeat, and even if he did, there isn’t a location associated with it.”

  Royston ignored the traitor voice in his head that chanted Willie would know Willie would know Willie would know.

  “What about the house you lived in with your wife?” Miss Fairchild asked. “Is it the same as your current residence?”

  “No, but it burned down about a year ago,” Godwin said. “Gas leak. Hasn’t been rebuilt.”

  “It might be worth taking, ah, the ’wolf over there once the moon rises,” Royston said. “Miss Chatham couldn’t be held there, but it’s possible the killer left another clue.”

  “It’s strange that he has changed from a straightforward serial killer to this kidnapping and game playing,” Godwin said. “Usually this kind develops a pattern and sticks to it. Are we sure it’s the same killer at all?”

  “The ’wolf would have noticed if the scents were different,” Royston said.

  Godwin shook his head. “The willingness to change patterns makes him unpredictable and harder to track down. You have your work cut out for you, my boy.”

  “It’s Browne’s job, now,” Royston said.

  Godwin frowned. “We both know that’s not true. Setting aside the fact that finding the real killer is the best way to clear your name, you have too much professional pride to let the case go once you’ve gotten your teeth into it. And too much concern for that poor girl. Browne won’t solve this in time.”

  Footsteps came running down the graveled path. Royston turned. It was one of the maidservants, her black skirt and white apron hiked up to free her strides.

  She reached them and dropped into an unsteady curtsy. “Pardon, sirs, ma’am. But this just came in the post. Addressed to Mr. Jones, and it says ‘urgent, life or death’ right on the envelope.”

  Royston took the envelope from the gasping girl’s hand. It was addressed as she said, in block letters, same as all the killer’s notes. He tore open the envelope.

  Tick, tock. Tick, tock. If you bring in the Yard, I’ll break her like a clock.

  Hysterical laughter bubbled up within him. Clearly this man was no great poet, to so blatantly sacrifice sense to force a rhyme. But he’d been right about time being a clue, and now the killer had underlined it for him as well as reminding him that Miss Chatham’s time could soon run out.

  Enclosed in the envelope was a lock of long chestnut hair.

  Twenty-three

  Royston clenched the letter and the lock of hair in a shaking fist. He wanted to be doing something, anything rather than sitting around in this pretty, ordered, useless garden while Miss Chatham was terrorized by the worst monster the human race had ever spawned. And he could do nothing, because he knew nothing, despite the taunting clues.

  Miss Fairchild gently opened his fingers and took the letter. He was peripherally aware of her reading the letter, frowning, and handing it off to Godwin.

  Time. Time and clocks. “The man Willie’s mother ran off with,” Royston said to Godwin. “What did you say he did?”

  Godwin frowned. “This and that. Always some new scheme, from all I’ve heard. At the time Lily left, I think he was supposed to be working on a cheap way to mass-produce. . .oh." His eyes narrowed. "He was working on a cheap way to mass-produce clocks.”

  Royston shivered with a sudden epiphany. “Did he have a workshop somewhere? A warehouse?”

  Godwin took out his pipe and looked at it, though it contained no tobacco and he would not smoke in the presence of a lady. “I’m sure he did, though if I ever knew where it was, I can’t recall it now. I tried to know as little as possible of the man and to forget all I could of the whole sordid affair.”

  “What was his name?” Miss Fairchild asked.

  Godwin tapped the stem of the pipe against his teeth a few times before answering. “It began with a ‘J’. Not John, something Old Testament. Jeremiah. No. Jonas. Jonas Gray.”

  “I shall send a telegram to my solicitor,” Miss Fairchild said. “With all the clerks at his disposal, he should be able to discover if there were any workshops or warehouses owned or leased by Jonas Gray approximately. . .how long ago would you say this have been?”

  Godwin gave a sigh heavy with remembered pain. “Twenty-odd years ago now.”

  Miss Fairchild stood. “If you will excuse me, then.”

  Royston and Godwin stood as well. There was a shadow in the man’s eyes, and he looked as if he had aged about a decade in the last hour. Royston knew that Godwin, too, had to be thinking about Willie. About how his scent was the only one, besides the lawyer’s, that had not been eliminated.

  “Thank you for tea,” Godwin said to Miss Fairchild. “And for taking care of Jones, here. Though I still suspect that there is more to the story than I’m getting, I’ll not pry. I trust to Jones' honor. And to your own, of course.”

  Miss Fairchild nodded and offered her gloved hand, which Godwin bowed over.

  “My own coachman will see you home.”

  “Should you send a message to B—ah, to the ’wolf?” Royston asked. “To let him know he’s needed?”

  It was, thankfully, one of those rare months in which there was a fourth full moon. The Yard tracked such moons, and most constables dreaded them. For those who blamed werewolves for causing trouble, it was one more night of ’wolves prowling the streets of London and getting into mischief. Regardless of a man’s view on werewolves, it was one more night for ’wol
ves and full humans to interact and conflict. But for once, this fourth full moon night was one of the few strokes of fortune in this whole mess.

  “I did so before tea,” Miss Fairchild said. “Although I’m certain he would have come in suitable condition, regardless.”

  ***

  Bandon paced his chambers, his lady’s letter in his hand, his lady’s remedy sitting in a vial on his bureau. Catherine had asked him to come to her, to come in his wolf form. How could he refuse with so much at stake? Justice for those dead girls, the safety of those that might be taken next. The liberty and the reputation, if not the life, of a good and honorable man.

  More, it was Catherine who asked it of him. But could she understand what she truly asked? She had seen the wolf form, yes. Had seen him kill in that form. Had known and studied others of his kind. She knew more about his kind than any other full human and probably more than many werewolves. And still, it was not the same as living through the change, not the same as battling for three nights a month with instincts and senses of an animal that fought for supremacy over his human mind and conscience.

  Outside his window, the sun slipped below the horizon. He had just moments now to make a decision.

  He drew the curtains and started to strip. Waistcoat, shirt, trousers, smallclothes, until he waited naked for the transformation.

  ***

  It was just after sunset when the telegram came. Jonas Gray had leased two properties in the relevant years. A small set of rooms in the tradesmen’s section of town was currently let by a young family, and there was also a warehouse near the docks where he had received and stored clock parts and conducted some failed experiments in automated manufacturing.

  “I’ll need to borrow a horse and cart, if I may,” Royston said.

  “The horseless carriage would be faster,” Miss Fairchild pointed out.

  “It would be if I knew how to drive the thing.”

  “I’m not so sure you can drive my horses. They’re rather high-spirited. Generally no one but myself, Bob the coachman, or Jeff the groom handles them, and Jeff never drives them.”

  Damn. And he had trouble with even relatively placid rental hacks.

  “There’s no choice,” Miss Fairchild said. “I’ll have to drive you. As soon as Richard arrives. We may as well take the horseless, it’s faster.”

  “Impossible. I can’t bring a lady into the sort of thing we’re likely to find. It’s too dangerous, for one. And there are some things a lady, even a courageous lady such as yourself, should not see.”

  Miss Fairchild tilted he chin stubbornly. “I’ll come as Mr. Foster then.”

  “Glamoured or not, you would still be a lady. And a civilian.”

  “And Richard isn’t a civilian? Or is it that he doesn’t matter because he’s a ’wolf?”

  Jones glanced at the door, left open as a last nod to propriety, though it was still, strictly speaking, not quite proper for the two of them to be alone in this room without even a servant as witness.

  “Relax,” she said. “There’s no reason for a servant to be in this wing at the moment. My servants are quite regular in their duties.”

  “It’s not that he doesn’t matter, it’s that he’s better equipped to take care of himself than most constables. I’d take wolf speed and fangs over a constable’s baton any day.” Jones owned a pistol, privately acquired. But it was locked up in a secret box at the back of his wardrobe, and he hadn’t had a chance to retrieve it after his arrest. “You’re braver than many men I know,” Royston conceded. “And smarter than most, myself included. But even if I was willing to expose you to the dangers of confronting a man who targets women just like you, and the horrors of what we might come across when we find Miss Chatham—“

  “Don’t you think that should be my choice to make?”

  “Even if I was willing to take that risk, you, through no fault of your own, have neither resources nor training to face a situation like this. Put bluntly, you’d be one more thing for Bandon and me to worry about, and a point of vulnerability.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned.

  “Look,” he said. “When this is all over, assuming I’m not incarcerated or hanged, I’ll teach you to shoot a pistol. Always thought London would be a more polite city if more women went armed. I’ll even teach you hand-to-hand combat if you like. But right now, please, just let me do my job. What used to be my job.”

  She frowned, and he braced himself for another argument.

  “All right,” she said at last. “I guess we’d better teach you to drive the horseless before Richard arrives.”

  He felt a brief moment’s relief at his victory before the second part of her statement sank in.

  Twenty-four

  Richard had long ago had the doors of his house fitted with lever handles that could be worked with a downward press of a paw. As soon as he was in wolf form, he let himself out. The night air was sweet with a thousand scents, and his ears swiveled to catch the myriad sounds, from a mouse rustling through the grass to one of the carriage horses stirring in his sleep in the barn across the courtyard.

  He leaped into a ground-eating run, thrilling at his speed in this form, his exhilaration tainted only a little by the dark, unsettling horror that reminded him of what else this form could do. At a commotion on the street ahead, he checked his stride with a wild thing’s wariness of noise and activity, automatically considering alternate routes. But the houses looked familiar, and not just because he’d run this way last night on the way to Catherine.

  A picture on the cover of the newspaper. Winchell’s home.

  The door of the house stood open, and uniformed constables milled about, lamps flooding the area with light. Richard hugged the shadows and approached step by cautious step, nose twitching, ears pricked to catch scraps of conversation.

  Something about a burglary. No forced entry, but the maid’s throat was slit. Manservant claimed to have not heard anything from upstairs. A missing wolf.

  If there were another werewolf crime, the newspapers would have a feeding frenzy.

  But no. The wolf was apparently what was taken? It made no sense.

  More wolves, someone said. Wolves in cages in a subbasement. A constable used the word ‘dungeon’ and was corrected for fanciful speech by a superior.

  Richard took a step forward, then another. There was a debate going on about how to tell if the caged creatures were real wolves or werewolves.

  “Oh, bloody hell, just talk to ‘em and see if they understand the Queen’s English,” a constable groused.

  Good to know that there was at least one man of sense on the force.

  “Hey, you! ’Wolf!”

  The constable with a brain had seen him. He bellied down into a submissive crouch. Running would do no good if any of them carried firearms.

  The constable approached, one hand on his club. “What are you doing h—Oh wait, it’s you, isn’t it?”

  The man’s scent identified him before Richard even recognized his face. Parker. Richard thumped his tail in greeting.

  Parker lowered his voice. “Look, you’d best get out of here. We still don’t know the full story, but this is a bad place to be a ’wolf.”

  Richard rose to his feet slowly—although Parker knew he wasn’t a threat, his watching colleagues might misinterpret any sudden moves. He wagged agreement and turned to leave.

  “Hey, ’wolf!” Parker called softly.

  Richard stopped and glanced back.

  “You see Jones, you tell him he still has friends in the ranks. Some of us don’t believe he could do what they’re saying.”

  Richard gave a soft woof of agreement and loped off toward his original destination.

  When he arrived at the glass doors of Catherine’s study, Jones was pacing back and forth. Catherine’s face was tight with tension when she arose to let him in.

  “We have a lead on where the killer might have Miss Chatham,” Jones said. “Miss Foster is loaning m
e the horseless carriage, but I could use someone at my back. And if Miss Chatham isn’t there, I’ll need your special search abilities. Will you come?”

  Richard gave a sharp affirmative bark. Whatever was going on with Winchell would have to wait. It would take way too long to communicate in this form.

  When they reached the garage, it occurred to him to wonder if Jones had ever driven a horseless carriage before. Catherine’s last-minute instructions to the detective as she stoked the boiler and waited for the steam to rise did not inspire his confidence. He flattened his ears and whined an inquiry.

  “It’ll be fine.” Catherine assured both of them. “I gave him a quick lesson. It’s either this, or my red team.”

  Richard hopped into the car.

  Jones glanced over at him. “I really don’t want to meet those horses, do I?”

  “Oh, with a good hand on the reins, they’re fine.”

  Richard huffed his opinion; Catherine pretended not to notice.

  The horseless started off in a series of jerks. Richard nearly jumped out, but Jones seemed to get the thing under control, though Richard caught the scent of fear and did not think it was from Jones’ reaction to the potential for an encounter with the killer. No, that he read in the darker under-notes, the closest any human scent would come to that of a wolf in full blood-lust.

  Perhaps George had been right; ’wolves and humans were not so different in their reactions. He remembered what he had sensed in the warehouse. Richard would testify to Jones’ self-defense even if the killer were unconscious and Jones slit his throat from behind. Or he’d happily dig the grave to hide the body.

  They drove over the Waterloo Bridge and into Lambeth, where gaudily-dressed women, seeing wealth in the horseless carriage, called out in voices meant to promise merriment and lustful games, though Richard smelled only hunger and desperation on the wind. They drove past wharfs that stunk of fish and the waste of breweries. Even if Richard hadn’t preferred brandy and wine to begin with, that stench was enough to put him off ale forever. They drove past empty factories and warehouses, the graveyards of commerce moved southwards over the river, the hulking skeletons of industrial dreams.