The Moonlight Mistress

by Victoria Janssen

  Meyer interrupted her thoughts. “Be careful. Both of you.”

  Daglish said, “I, for one, don’t intend to be killed. Hailey, you ready?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  After that it was the usual sort of running and dodging and flinging oneself into cover, except the sniper gear was uncomfortable and she had to do everything more carefully because of the grenades, and normally, she wouldn’t be given grenades, even jam tins, because her job was to carry messages. In front of Meyer, she’d pretended she didn’t mind, but in truth the grenades made her nervous enough that her palms were sweating inside her gloves. She was good at staying concealed, though.

  Daglish had taken platoons out on raids, so he knew what he was about. When they reached the stand of trees that was their midpoint, he settled in among the leaf litter and silently began to lay out his grenades in an arc around his feet. Bob did the same, then slipped the lit pipe from its loop on her webbing. She could still see a red-orange glow within the pipe’s bowl. She stirred up the embers just a bit with a stick and murmured, “Ready.”

  Daglish rose slowly, stretching his arm and rotating it to make sure his sleeves—uniform beneath, sniper tunic above—wouldn’t catch and land a grenade on top of them. He scooped up a tin in each gloved hand and held them out to Bob, who held the pipe bowl to the fuses until they caught. Together, they counted, then Daglish threw, strong clean arcs that nearly made her whistle in admiration.

  He’d easily cleared the tall fence. She counted another second, then two explosions ripped the air, one after the other. Sound rushed in on her, and she realized she hadn’t been breathing, but she was already lighting the next grenade, holding the fuse steady in the bowl of the pipe until sparks crackled, slowly eating their way up the fuse toward the tight-packed guncotton. The explosion would fling free the nails and other bits of metal rubbish they’d packed into the tin. The sharp odor of gunpowder singed her nostrils, or was it smoke from the laboratory compound? She held the grenade up to Daglish without looking at him, shook burning ash off her leather glove, then began to light the next fuse.

  Daglish had thrown perhaps half the grenades before she heard the gate rattle open and the pop-pop of rifle shots. “Run?” she asked. She risked a glance; three guards had ventured out, staying close to the fence.

  “Two more,” Daglish said, heaving the grenades he held. They landed on a roof, and the resulting explosion resulted in a tower of flame as dry wood caught fire. He hissed with satisfaction as the flame leaped to another roof, which caught fire with a roar. “Meyer’s killed one.” He unbuttoned his holster and yanked out his pistol. “Take this, in case.”

  Bob shoved the pistol through her webbing and lit the next grenade. Daglish threw it toward the open gate. The two remaining guards scrambled to be out of range before it exploded, and Meyer picked off another. “Here,” she said, shoving another lit grenade into Daglish’s hand.

  The last guard retreated into the laboratory complex, scrambling over the rubble of the gate. Daglish tossed a last grenade after him. “Now we go,” he said. “He’ll no doubt be calling for reinforcements.”

  “Got to collect Meyer,” Bob said.

  Daglish faltered for a moment, then patted her shoulder and together they retraced their steps. An hour later, they were on their way back to Paris.

  Lucilla felt like laughing as she hurried through the laboratory’s deserted underground corridors, a rucksack of chemicals on her back and a wolf trotting at her side like a gundog. The situation wasn’t funny, not in the least—the stinking room full of cages had dispersed that notion immediately—but she felt the same euphoria as when she and Pascal had stolen Kauz’s motor. Her vision was unnaturally clear, her heart pumping blood until her fingers and toes tingled, and her thoughts were sharp as needles.

  She stopped at a crossroads in the corridors and shoved one of her bottles into a convenient spot made by the junction of two crossbeams, feeling a distinct satisfaction as the bottle fit snugly into the narrow space. She didn’t bother digging into the corridor’s dirt wall, as she doubted it was flammable.

  Miss Claes stalked up the left corridor, head lifted to catch any scent of Kauz. Having grown used to this, Lucilla ignored her while she fixed a new rubber cap to the bottle, one she precisely pierced to allow a slow but steady drip onto the wood. Eventually, the acid would eat through the rubber and the remains would spill out, but by then discretion wouldn’t matter. She placed one more bottle, stuffed guncotton at several key points, wound in fuses and hurried after Miss Claes. She’d prepared every one of the corridor branchings for collapse; now all that remained was to set the fires and hope Pascal had calculated correctly, and the flames would follow the path they’d set instead of flickering into nothing for lack of air.

  This area was silent but for her booted footsteps and the faint click of Miss Claes’s claws on the roughly laid wood floor; it smelled dank and dusty. She’d left Pascal waiting at the underground room they’d identified as Kauz’s office, hurriedly sorting through messy piles of laboratory notebooks while Ashby stood guard with both rifle and pistol. Ashby had assured them, his voice uncharacteristically flat, that he would smell Kauz arriving. Though Miss Claes couldn’t speak in her current form, Lucilla had the distinct sense that she’d agreed vehemently.

  She had a clear idea that Miss Claes wasn’t entirely happy with what they’d found in the facility. Anger and anxiety both seemed to boil off the wolf and into the stuffy air. Without really intending it, Lucilla’s footsteps sped up. Within a few moments, she was nearly running to keep up with the wolf’s steady lope. At times, she lost sight of the blond brush of tail and knew which direction the wolf had passed only by the fresh scratches on the flooring, made by claws skidding around a corner.

  Surely she would know if something had gone wrong. She would have heard guns, shouts—

  Growls.

  Many growls, more than Miss Claes could produce alone. Lucilla hesitated only a moment before shifting her rucksack onto the floor. Bracing her back against a dirt wall, she extracted two bottles, one for each hand. If she threw them with enough force, they would break. Pulse pounding, she edged around the corner.

  The door to Kauz’s office stood open, and guarding the door were four wolves, fully as large as Miss Claes, their pelages dark and unkempt over cruelly tight collars, their lips threateningly curled. Two faced outward, and two inward. Lucilla lifted her arm, then lowered it. Miss Claes was too close. Lucilla wouldn’t risk harming her and perhaps damaging her ability to fight. She eased to the side, hoping to remain unnoticed as well as see inside the office. When she did, her heart began to race and the blood sang in her ears. Kauz was there, his back to what must have been a hidden door, for she could think of no other way he might have bypassed Ashby, who blocked the open door into the corridor.

  Kauz held a shotgun to Pascal’s shoulder, the sort used for hunting birds, but with the end of the barrel crudely sawn off. One twitch of his bony finger to the trigger could easily blow Pascal’s head from his shoulders, or rip open his jugular, or pulp a mass of flesh including major blood vessels and nerves. Clear images of what would remain after such a close shotgun blast flashed through her head like lantern slides. Only a lack of air caused by horror kept her from screaming aloud.

  “Who is there?” Kauz said in German.

  Lucilla drew a steadying breath. “Miss Daglish,” she said.

  “Are you the Frenchman’s whore, or the wolf’s?”

  “Neither,” she said. “Who are these wolves?”

  “My children,” he said with patent falseness.

  Ashby growled, “They’re not yours.”

  “On the contrary, creature. I have raised them to be mine. You will see, when they tear you limb from limb. But not the bitch. I have need of her. My lads are lacking a mate, you see.”

  “I’ll shoot them first,” Ashby said.

  “You won’t, you know,” Kauz said. “You forget, creature, that I have
observed you carefully. You will not slaughter your own kind.” He raised his voice, commanding, “Kurt! Immanuel! A step closer.”

  Ashby did not retreat when the wolves paced closer. Lucilla weighed the bottles of acid in her hand, wondering if she could be accurate enough to break the bottles on the door frame itself. Though now, she would only damage two of the enemy wolves.

  Pascal said, “If you kill me, Kauz, these others will kill you. I imagine you wish to live, to see the end of your experiments.”

  Kauz said, “The creature will not be able to shoot me, for Kurt and Immanuel will take him down like a deer, and I will be free to leave here. Emil and Friedrich will easily defeat your bitch, and the whore is of no consequence.”

  “Would you like to eat one of these bottles?” Lucilla inquired. She wondered if she could fit one between Kauz’s jaws.

  Kauz ignored her. “Kill him! You know what will happen if you don’t!”

  Lucilla couldn’t take her eyes off Pascal. His expression burned with rage and frustration. His pistol still rested at his hip, but both of his hands were full of notebooks.

  A frenzy of growls yanked her gaze to a tangle of bodies on the floor: two, no, three of Kauz’s wolves, and Ashby, whose naked flesh flashed as he attempted to get out of his clothing and change form.

  Miss Claes grappled with the fourth wolf and, a moment later, pinned him to the floor, her teeth flashing at his throat in warning. The wolf fell limp, and she hurdled his body, toward Kauz.

  The shotgun roared and Lucilla screamed.

  She ran forward, her legs tangling with the fourth wolf, who had bounded to his feet and blocked her advance. She staggered, grabbed for the wall and fell. “No!” Pascal shouted.

  Lucilla scrambled to her knees and saw Pascal, sprawled on the floor, his hand lifted, seemingly unhurt. Her breath exploded outward and, unbidden, tears of relief flooded her cheeks.

  Tanneken crouched over Kauz’s fallen form, her teeth buried in the shredded remains of his throat, a geyser of blood spattering her face.

  Ashby lay naked on the floor in a pool of blood, one leg twisted unnaturally beneath him, and three wolves slowly shrinking back from his weak but steady cursing.

  The fourth wolf licked Lucilla’s arm and then, before her eyes, shifted into the form of a barely adolescent boy, wearing a collar.

  23

  THE HOTEL’S LOBBY WAS COLD AS THE GRAVE AND was giving him the shakes. Gabriel wrapped his arms around himself and shifted from foot to foot. Hailey, damn her, was sprawled at her ease in a once-plush red armchair and flipping through an abandoned fashion magazine, studying the drawings.

  “No word yet,” Crispin said, rehanging the telephone receiver and stepping out of the booth. He pulled the folding glass doors shut behind him. “Mrs. Vlyminck said to call again in a few hours. She doubted she would have news before suppertime, and she informed me there were more important matters afoot than Major Fournier’s little mission.”

  “If Noel’s gotten himself killed, I’ll fucking kill him again,” Gabriel said under his breath. He winced away from the memory that he had in fact killed someone else, several someones, only hours before.

  “Upstairs,” Hailey suggested.

  “A good plan,” Crispin said. “I don’t know what I did without a batman. Come along, Meyer.”

  On the stairs, Gabriel said, “Wouldn’t the two of you rather go out? We could see the sights.”

  “Sleeting,” Hailey reminded him.

  “I’m for another bath,” Crispin said. “It’s too bad I can’t wash enough to last me through the next few months on the front.”

  Gabriel’s mind presented him with the image of Crispin’s sturdy, nude body, slick with soap, bubbles clinging enticingly to the curls on his chest. He remembered the tight clench of Crispin’s arse on his cock. His body’s surge of desire resonated with his desperate fear for Noel’s safety and his usual post-battle shakiness. He had to stop climbing, and press his hands against the flocked wallpaper to prevent himself from seizing Crispin then and there. “Good idea,” he said, then had to swallow, his throat felt so thick.

  Hailey pushed past him, and he closed his eyes at her accidental brush against his chest. He wouldn’t mind her soft warmth curled around him, either. He wanted to burrow deep in her heat and sweet womanly smell.

  He wanted both of them pressed to his bare skin, their mouths and hands roaming over him until he forgot even his own name.

  He was a cad and a lecher and half a dozen other shameful things. Ashby had been with two women at one time, he knew, but this was different. Neither one of his companions had invited him to do anything like what he was imagining. Well, Crispin likely would, once he’d had his bath, but Hailey—he’d not pleased Hailey, by treating her too much as a woman and not a soldier. And he hadn’t mentioned their tryst to Crispin, and it would likely horrify him; it would likely horrify him even more if he knew Hailey was a woman.

  If Hailey wasn’t interested, that would be all right. He supposed. She could stay alone in her room, and—

  “You coming?” she asked.

  Hailey and Crispin both were standing in the corridor, while he still stood a couple of stairs below them. He moved toward them, mentally shaking himself. “I need a drink,” he said, striving for lightness.

  “Could do with one,” Hailey said, peering at him from beneath the brim of her cap.

  “Brandy,” Crispin said with satisfaction.

  The room he shared with Crispin felt cozy and safe. The three of them took off their boots, sat on the rug and drank the brandy from coffee cups. Gabriel edged closer to the radiator and felt his inner trembling diminish with the warmth of it, and of the brandy, and of Crispin’s shoulder so near his own. Though he’d only drunk two swallows of the alcohol, he must have drifted, for the next he knew, Hailey was shaking him by the knee. “Sir?” she asked.

  He set down his cup before he could spill it. “Not tonight with all that rot,” he said. “Just my name, if you can do that for me.”

  Crispin eased closer but didn’t embrace him as Gabriel wished he would. Of course he wouldn’t do such a thing in front of anyone else. Gabriel shouldn’t be melancholy about it. It wasn’t as if this room wasn’t rife with secrets. His entire life had been like that. First his heritage, which he’d tried to conceal until he learned he couldn’t; then Ashby’s inhuman abilities; then their sexual relationship; and finally, the fact that as many women as he desired, there were just as many men. He had been hiding that knowledge even from himself. If he hadn’t been struck here and now with both desires at once, he might be hiding that knowledge from himself still.

  Crispin said, “Do you want us to leave? So you can get some sleep?”

  “I’ve a deck of cards in my room,” Hailey remarked.

  Don’t leave me. The words didn’t make it past his throat. Instead, Gabriel grabbed Crispin’s wrist, and Hailey’s, as well.

  Crispin turned his hand over and tangled his fingers with Gabriel’s. His smile was crooked. “Ashby will be fine,” he said. “He’s gotten himself out of worse scrapes than this, hasn’t he? Remember when Evans found that grenade that hadn’t gone off, and—”

  Gabriel was shaking his head. “I wasn’t thinking of him,” he admitted. “I was thinking of myself.”

  Hailey gently slipped her wrist free of Gabriel’s grip and poured a little more brandy into his cup. “You’re fine, sir.”

  “No. No, not really.” I’m not normal. Though if he thought about it a little more, Crispin wasn’t normal, either, nor Hailey. Isobel. Even now, knowing what he did, he could scarcely put her true name together in his mind with the person he knew. Perhaps for that reason alone they belonged together. Perhaps for that reason, they would not reject him. He said, “Will you stay here with me? Both of you?”

  “Long as you like,” Hailey said. She gave him a second, sharp look. “Sir, did you mean—”

  Gabriel flinched, unsure if her tone was meant to be censor
ious. He shouldn’t have suggested it. He wasn’t asking only for sex. If she accepted him, one way or another, Crispin would also know her secret.

  Crispin let go of Gabriel’s hand. “What did you two get up to?” he asked suspiciously. “Hailey, I never would have guessed it of you. And you, Gabriel—he’s under your command—”

  “It was only the once,” she said. “I asked him. When we thought Ashby was dead. And it’s not like you think, Daglish.”

  “I think I’ve been an idiot,” he said.

  Gabriel grabbed his shoulder and kissed him, rather uncomfortably because his spectacles dug into his face. Crispin made a sound in his throat, and Gabriel kissed him again, just under his jawline, until he felt Crispin’s hands gripping his shoulders. Only then did he pull back. “What do you think now?”

  Crispin looked befuddled.

  Hailey scooted closer and sat up on her knees. “Daglish,” she said in her soft, husky voice. “I like you, and I want it to be all right between us.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. He looked at Gabriel. “You didn’t make me any promises, not really. Nor did I. I was only—I haven’t had the best luck with, with…”

  “Lovers,” Hailey supplied.

  Gabriel said, “Is it all right with both of you? If we—” He swallowed the pleading words he wanted to say.

  Hailey turned to Crispin and said, “I’ve never done it before, with two other people. But I think I’d like to.”

  Crispin looked indecisive, but said, “I’ll give it a try.”

  Hailey touched his hand. “One more thing.”

  “It’s all right, Hailey,” Crispin said gently.

  “No—you might not like this.” She looked down at her lap, then into his face. “I’m a woman, Daglish. My real name’s Isobel, a friend just called me Bobs and Bob as a joke. I wear men’s clothes so I can be in the army, and—well, everything else you know about me is the truth. Except I don’t have a cock. Meyer might not think it matters, but I guess it matters to you.”