A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  “Why, then?”

  “You can’t figure it out?”

  Royston shook his head, a stalling tactic and more. He wanted to understand what went wrong, how Willie, the happy-go-lucky charmer, could turn into a conscienceless killer.

  “The Yard was stupid enough to sack me. Me, their brightest and best, over some silly pretense.”

  “Willie, you were drunk on the job.”

  “Bah. I’m better drunk than half the force sober.”

  “You killed those girls, those innocent girls, just to get back at the Yard?”

  “Whores. London has too many of them, anyway. Isn’t that what they say in the papers? Spreading disease and seducing upright men into sin.”

  “What about Molly?” The name caught a little in his throat.

  “The fish-and-chips girl? What of her? There’s dozens, hundreds like her all over the city. Easily replaced. Did you think you were the only one she flirted with? She was leading you on, Roy-boy. She was leading you on and would have abandoned you just as Miss Chatham did.”

  She had just been very friendly, and neither of them had been serious about it. Had Willie targeted her because of her association with him?

  He heard a low, rumbling growl behind him. Bandon, too, was remembering what they had found in the warehouse.

  Royston sympathized, but he wished the ‘wolf would shut it. All of his half-formed plans depended on Willie’s attention being on him and not the ’wolf.

  “Oh, poor Royston. Unlucky in love again. I could find you a prettier one. I’ve dozens buzzing around. I could easily nudge one your way.”

  Behind him, Miss Chatham choked on indignation and offence. Royston needed her to be quiet, too. Needed Willie to be focused on him.

  “I don't suppose we can continue our association.” Willie’s regret sounded almost genuine. “Although that’s your fault as well as mine. You're a bit too much like Lancelot. He, too, betrayed his Arthur for a girl. If you had saved your best friend instead of the chit, you would never have found out. We could have gone off to America together. It’s a brave new world there, Roy-boy. The sort of place that appreciates bright young mavericks such as ourselves.” He smiled wistfully at his own fantasy.

  “And you could go on killing.”

  “Nope. I’m done here. No need for more, I’ve made my point. Figure I’d slip off and leave them all with a nice untidy mystery to haunt their nights. The killer they couldn’t catch. Leave them waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, wondering when I’ll be back.”

  Willie might even believe his own assertion. But whatever he’d told himself about his own motives, the way he’d killed those girls evidenced a deep sickness of the mind. Those sorts of things didn’t just go away.

  “So now I’ve just to finish off Miss Chatham. And you. Don’t worry, I’ve left them enough clues that my dear old father will prove your innocence. Eventually. Oh, there will always be a stain on your reputation, a small shadow of doubt. But the Commissioner and that puppy Browne will be made to look like even bigger fools for accusing an innocent Inspector hard at work on the track of a killer.”

  Royston stayed silent, aware of the soft sound of movement behind him. Bandon creeping closer?

  “Too bad I can’t be around to watch my father’s face when he realizes how much he missed. I’d love to see him agonizing over what he could have done to stop all those senseless deaths.” Willie sighed theatrically. “But by then I’ll be in another country, under another name.”

  Now, or never. Royston charged forward.

  Bandon was faster.

  The gun’s report echoed through the emptiness of the warehouse and the ’wolf let out a snarl-yip of pain but held his charge. Willie fell backwards under the ’wolf’s weight, losing the gun when he hit the floor. The weapon skittered across the concrete. Royston grabbed it, but Bandon and Willie grappled too closely for him to get a clean shot.

  Willie’s left arm protected his throat. Clearly hampered by some injury, Bandon’s attack seemed weak, awkward. Willie’s right hand slid down, grasped the knife he always kept in his boot. He had a good angle, he’d gut the ’wolf in a second.

  In that second, Royston pressed the nose of the pistol to the back of Willie’s head, checked his angles and pulled the trigger.

  The shot reverberated through the warehouse, loud as the end of the world, and Willie’s blood and brain tissue blew back, staining Royston’s hand and sleeve like the mark of Cain. But not all of the blood drenching Willie’s white shirt was his own. That one shot he’d gotten off before Bandon took him down had done its damage.

  Royston’s hands shook; his fingertips felt numb. The scent of blood and gunpowder stung his nose.

  The ’wolf, panting in pain, tried to rise. His right foreleg refused to obey him, and he fell again. In the background, Miss Chatham sobbed, a high-pitched, hysterical sound. Royston skirted the remains of the man who had been his best friend to kneel beside Bandon. Blood drenched the black fur, too much blood, and white bone gleamed in sharp contrast.

  Years in service had taught him a thing or two about injuries, and so he whipped off his jacket and used it to apply pressure to the wound, ignoring the reflexive flash of teeth before Bandon turned his head away. He had seen men bleed to death or die of shock from equivalent wounds. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

  Even as Royston’s mind churned with the difficulties involved in finding a physician who would treat a ’wolf, Bandon shook his head.

  “Do you want to bleed out here?” Why on Earth would Bandon refuse help?

  The ’wolf looked at the windows, then to Royston, then back to the windows.

  Royston shook his head. “What? I don’t understa—Oh.”

  Though the reflection of gaslight made it hard to see out of the windows, Royston remembered the amount of time that had passed since moonrise. The long days and short nights of June might be a boon to farmers, but not for a werewolf trying to conceal his human identity.

  “At the very least we have to get you out of here.” He glanced at Miss Chatham, who might have social acquaintance with someone like Richard Bandon. “We can continue the discussion from there.”

  But that would leave a traumatized young lady alone at night in an unsavory neighborhood.

  Miss Chatham came and knelt by the panting ’wolf, smoothing a hand through the thick fur. “He saved us all, didn’t he?”

  Royston nodded. Bandon, whom he had once dismissed as a spoiled, self-centered toff like all the others, had taken a bullet for him. He had no doubt Bandon had seen Royston’s intent and acted first. Why?

  “How did you get here?” Miss Chatham asked.

  When Royston started to explain about notes and deductions, she shook her head. “I meant how did you arrive? You couldn’t have taken a cab.”

  “I borrowed a friend’s horseless carriage.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You know how to drive one of those contraptions?”

  “More or less. I got us here.”

  He’d never seen that sort of admiration in her eyes when they’d walked out together.

  “I’m not as empty-headed as father thinks I am,” Miss Chatham said. “I can tell that you and the ’wolf know each other, and I can tell that you are both concerned that his identity will be discovered. I don’t know why, and I don’t need to know.”

  Royston had never realized the extent of her intelligence, let alone her sense and discretion. He felt a deeper pang of regret that things between them had not worked out.

  “If we can get the ’wolf to the carriage, he can lie low in the back seat. Let me off near the Strand and go.” She took a deep, shaky breath and exhaled in a quivering laugh. “Dressed as I am, I’ll attract enough attention. Someone will send for a constable. I’ll be safe, and I’ll tell them all they need to know. And only what they need to know.”

  A gentleman did not leave a lady unescorted on a public street, even a relatively safe one. A gentleman did
not allow a lady to be subject to the humiliation of being seen in such a state of disarray, not to mention undress.

  But Bandon would be utterly ruined if Royston did not get him somewhere safe and private before sunrise.

  Twenty-six

  With great misgivings, Royston let Miss Chatham out on an empty corner at the Strand and drove off quickly as she approached a crowd just coming out of a theater performance. Steel lay under her sweetness; Browne didn’t deserve her. He tried to ignore the exclamations of shock coming from the crowd when they took in the girl and her state.

  When he could, he pulled over on a deserted street to check on the ’wolf hidden beneath a travelling rug. Bandon’s panting came too light and too fast, and though Royston was no veterinarian that couldn’t be a good thing. The white leather seats of Miss Fairchild’s horseless were stained crimson. Royston had rigged a pressure bandage, but he couldn’t swear it did much.

  “We need to get you to a doctor,” he said. He’d find a doctor to treat the ’wolf if he had to retrieve his trusty British Bulldog and force the man’s services at gunpoint.

  Bandon lifted his head weakly, shook no and laid it back down. With blood loss like this, every minute brought the injured closer to death. Godwin had drilled that into him when he first became a constable, and he’d seen evidence enough since. He knew bullet wounds, and this was a bad one.

  “I understand, but there’s really no choice. If it comes down to a choice between your reputation and your life…”

  Bandon growled low.

  “Damn you, you toff! You have too much to live for. You’re to be married next month.”

  The ’wolf opened his eyes slowly and stared at him.

  “Oh, hell, that new law.”

  Bandon closed his eye with a sigh.

  “You can’t marry if you’re dead, either.”

  Bandon flicked an ear, but otherwise ignored him.

  If Bandon died or if Bandon’s secret were discovered, it would be his fault for dragging him into it. And he would have ruined two lives. Miss Fairchild would be devastated. He wished he could believe in God, wished he could bargain. His own life, his own future for Bandon’s. He’d seen enough in his life to forsake any belief in a God who could be bargained with, a God who saw justice done.

  “Listen, Bandon. I know this mess is all my fault.” Not only had he dragged the unwilling werewolf into danger, but he’d allowed himself to be blinded by friendship, had failed to see Willie for what he was. “I’m not going to just let you lie there and bleed to death.”

  Bandon growled, clearly saying yes, you bloody well will, or at least until I change.

  The ’wolf was too weak to escape, and Royston did not believe he would bite. Still, what right did he have to force a decision on Bandon? “Please. Given my profession, I know as much about the lawless side of life as any dipper or breaker. I know what doctors can be bribed to silence and which of those will stay bought.”

  In a gesture weak but definite, Bandon lifted his great furry head and snarled, wicked curved fangs gleaming white in the darkness. Then he dropped limply back to the stained leather.

  “You win. We’ll wait until you change. But in the meantime, we’re heading toward an alley I know near where Doctor Maxfield has his rooms. It’s secluded enough for you to change, at least as best as we’ll find short of going to one of those disreputable places that rents by the hour, and I’m sure neither of us want to be seen leaving one of those places together at sunrise.”

  Bandon didn’t respond, which Royston took as assent. In the sky, black had yielded to indigo shading toward a brighter blue. Sunrise would break the moon’s influence soon, even before true moonset. The wolf wheezed, struggling against a cough that would be agony with his injuries, spattering blood-darkened phlegm over the white leather.

  Oh, hell. Oh buggering, bleeding hell. If Bandon’s lung had been hit, getting him to a doctor soon, getting him to a doctor now might not be enough. He listened carefully, but heard nothing of the gurgling, sucking sound he remembered from his first year as a constable, when his partner had been stabbed in the chest and died in his arms in the half-hour it took for a doctor to arrive.

  He started driving back over the bridge toward Lambeth, glad that the ‘wolf wasn’t conscious enough to ask questions. The doctor they were going to was qualified but not licensed, having had his license stripped before serving his sentence for performing an abortion on a twelve-year-old pregnant by rape. The girl’s preacher father found out. He declared that the girl must have brought the rape on herself, being a daughter of Eve, and by terminating her pregnancy the doctor had interfered in God’s just punishment.

  If Royston had been a judge, the doctor would have been given a commendation and the preacher sent swiftly to the hell he prattled about. As it was, the best he could do was look the other way as Maxfield ministered without a license and very often without pay to people who could afford no other care.

  Or those, like Bandon, who didn’t want their injuries to come to official attention.

  The sky paled to a dull gray-blue, and the weary ladies of the evening had already begun limping across the bridge toward Lambeth in their impractical shoes and their drooping feathers. Workmen and women with more respectable jobs were trudging in the opposite direction. Behind him, Bandon wheeze-coughed, and Royston winced.

  “Do you think Miss Fairchild will be more angry with you or with me?” If possible, he wanted Bandon conscious. Hard to gauge his success, since the wolf could not reply. He would just have to keep up the conversation himself, then.

  At some point, he would have to think about Willie lying dead in the warehouse. About how wrong he’d been about his friend. About the girls who might still be alive if he had been a better detective. Not now.

  The steering wheel of the horseless was sticky from the blood on his hands. The sin of ages was on him, Cain killing his brother, Lancelot betraying his king. He wished he were a churchgoing man, that he might find absolution or at least someone to make sense of it all. “Generally, when a lady worries about her man staying out all night and dragging in half-dead in the morning, the context is a bit different.”

  No growl of disapproval at his poor humor came from the back seat. Was Bandon conscious? Was he even alive? He pulled the horseless into a back alley behind an abandoned brewery that still smelled faintly of hops. Between buildings, a narrow slit of bright gold appeared on the horizon. With a wolfish cry of agony, the form beneath the travelling rug began to writhe and change.

  Was the transformation always this painful, or did the pain come from the wound? A glance at Bandon’s chalk-white human face warned him not to waste time satisfying his curiosity. “Hang on, Bandon. We’re just a few streets away.” He drove with reckless speed down the narrow, rutted streets, parking the horseless in a narrow lane and hoping no one needed to bring a wide horse cart though anytime soon.

  “Come on, Bandon, can you get to your feet? There’s a good fellow.” To preserve as much of Bandon’s dignity as he could, Royston wrapped the travel rug around the naked man.

  Bandon coughed again, blood staining his pale lips. Hell, oh, hell. He knocked on the door of the doctor’s rooms. Was he asleep? Out on a call? Bandon didn’t have time to wait. With desperation rising in his throat, he pounded on the once-painted wood.

  Footsteps, and a voice grumbling behind the door. “This had better be an emergency.”

  Oh, thank God. “It is, I swear. He doesn’t have much time.”

  The door opened, and the thin, white-haired man behind it looked at Bandon and opened the door wider. “I see, best waste no ti…” Then he caught sight of Royston and put an arm out to stop further progress. “Oh, no. No way, Inspector.” He made the title a curse. “Take your man to a doctor. You know I have no license.”

  “And you know I’m no longer an Inspector.” Damn it all, Bandon didn’t deserve to die for Royston’s mistakes. “I know you still practice. I’ve looked the other wa
y for years. You do good work for people that can’t get help anywhere else. I have no desire to interfere with that.” Bandon’s life ticked away with each passing second, and this man still quibbled? “He refuses to see a real doctor. He was in a part of town he had no reason being in except that he was helping a friend, and he was shot for it. I can’t explain all the details, but more than reputation is at stake.”

  At this point, Bandon might not survive long enough to make it to another doctor, even if Royston could think of another who might be trustworthy and more willing.

  “Yet you ask me to stake my reputation, and my freedom. My life, really. I’ll not survive another sentence like the last.”

  True regret in the doctor’s voice. At another time, Royston might have let himself see the man’s point of view.

  “He’s dying. I thought you were a man who cares about such things. I looked the other way for years because I thought you cared about such things.”

  “Caring is what got me into trouble the last time. Leave, or I swear I’ll make such a clamor that the neighbors send for a constable.”

  He could, too. The neighborhood had reason to protect this man. If they thought the men at his door threatened or harassed him, they’d go for help, no matter how they felt about the police. Involving his former colleagues at the moment would turn the situation from disaster to catastrophe.

  But if he left this man’s door, Bandon would surely die in Miss Fairchild’s fancy horseless. Oh, hell and damn. “You’re a doctor. You can’t be stupid. Even if I weren’t in trouble with the Yard myself, do you really think we’d use a man on the verge of death to trap you?” He pulled out his final card. “As a doctor—and I don’t give a damn that they took away your license; you’re still a doctor—as a doctor, if you refuse him treatment, his blood is on your hands.”

  Maxfield simply stared at him as though staring alone would make him disappear. Royston shifted his grip on Bandon’s shoulders for better support. They’d go back to Miss Fairchild. If they were lucky, they’d get there in enough time for Bandon to die in her arms. If they were unlucky, he’d be bringing Miss Fairchild the body of her love.