The Beta’s expression did not alter.
Lord Akeldama smiled fully, his fangs sharp and bright and fierce, as pearly as the cravat pin about his neck. “I don’t trust serendipity, Professor Lyall. I don’t trust it at all.” No one missed the fact that the vampire was, for once, using someone’s proper name.
Biffy’s wolf head swayed back and forth between the combatants, wondering at all the unspoken undercurrents.
“I never underestimate the same man twice,” said Lord Akeldama, fiddling with his cravat pin with one hand while he surreptitiously tucked the bit of paper with the aethographic message away with the other.
“You give me too much credit, my lord, if you thought I could anticipate this.” Professor Lyall nodded at Biffy’s altered state.
“Well, Biffy, what do you have to say on the subject?” The vampire regarded his former drone, his expression friendly, if a little distant.
“He’s stuck, my lord.” Lyall came to Biffy’s rescue.
“Goodness, how unnerving.”
“Indeed. Imagine how Biffy must feel.”
“That, my dear Dolly, is beyond even my capacities. And now, how may I help you gentlemen? Do you require garments, perhaps?”
Professor Lyall rolled his eyes slightly. “Shortly. We were hoping if first we might ascertain the condition and state of your lordship’s dirigible.”
“Buffety? I believe she’s moored up top. Haven’t sent her out in many a moon. No need with my dear Alexia right here, I suppose. Why?”
“We believe she might have been used for nefarious purposes.”
“Really? How wonderfully salacious! I can’t believe I wasn’t invited.”
Professor Lyall said nothing.
“Ah, are you perhaps here in your BUR capacity, Dolly, my pet?”
Professor Lyall knew better than to give Lord Akeldama any more information than strictly necessary.
“No? Pack business, then? Has my little Buffety something to do with that unfortunate incident concerning the other Beta?” The vampire tsked around his fangs. “So sad.”
With still no response from Professor Lyall and none possible from Biffy, the vampire waved an aqua-gloved hand magnanimously at the ladderlike staircase that led up onto his roof. “By all means.”
The three gentlemen climbed up to find that the Dandelion Fluff Upon a Spoon was, indeed, no longer in residence. They could see it, some distance away, floating high in the aether stream heading in a southwesterly direction. Lyall and Biffy were unsurprised. Lord Akeldama pretended outrage, although he was surely warned there might be something amiss.
“Why, I do declare! How unsporting, to purloin a man’s dirigible without asking! I suppose you two have a very good idea who borrowed my beauty?”
The werewolves exchanged looks.
“Floote.” Lyall no doubt figured Lord Akeldama would discover the truth soon enough.
“Ah, well, at least I know he’ll take good care of it and return it in first-rate condition. Butlers are like that, you know? But where’s he taken it? Not too far I trust—my little darling isn’t made for long distances.”
“Probably to try to make an in-air transfer to one of the postal dirigibles.”
“Going after my darlingist of Alexias, is he? To Gyppie?”
“Most likely.”
“Well, well, well.”
“So you say.”
“She’ll be cast adrift, poor thing. I had better alert the authorities, let them know she’s gone missing, so as I’m not held responsible if she drifts into anything important. Unless you, my dear Dolly, being BUR might count as…”
The Beta shook his head.
“Ah, well, so I shall send Boots to the local constabulary. Our beautiful boys with the silver pins.”
Professor Lyall nodded. “That is probably a good plan. Although, I shouldn’t think they need know who took it. Not just yet. Right now all we have is coincidence and speculation.”
The vampire regarded Lyall up and down in a very considering sort of way. “Look at you, Dolly, controlling information like an old intelligencer. One would almost think you vampiric. And, of course, my darling Alexia wouldn’t like it, not her butler with a police record.”
“Exactly. We must take into account Lady Maccon’s feelings on the matter.”
“I suppose… Lady Kingair?” Lord Akeldama twiddled his fingers casually in the air.
The Beta only lowered his eyes.
“Indeed, werewolf business. Just so. Well, Dolly my love, I do wish your werewolf business hadn’t absconded with my dirigible.”
“I do apologize about that, Lord Akeldama.”
“Well, never you mind. Nice to have something for my boys to do. London has been awfully quiet without Lady Maccon. And now I see the sun will be rising soon, if you gentlemen will excuse me?” The vampire made a little bow at Professor Lyall. “Beta,” and then to Biffy, pointedly, “Alpha.”
Biffy and Lyall stayed, naked, on the roof of Lord Akeldama’s town house watching the sunrise. As the sun eased itself up over the horizon, Biffy found himself inching closer and closer to Lyall’s slight frame, until they stood, shoulders touching. When the first rays peeked over the horizon, he knew Lyall could feel the shudder of change that wrenched him back from Anubis to fully human.
The sunlight felt harsh, causing the sensation of dry and stretched skin. It was a condition, Biffy had learned, that was the price werewolves paid for being out during the day. But it was a relief to experience it once more, pulling at his nose and eyes. He reached up a tentative hand to feel, finding his own face instead of the wolf’s.
“I do not want to be an Alpha,” was the first thing he said, testing out his vocal cords for functionality.
Lyall bumped closer against his shoulder. “No, the best ones never do.”
They continued to stand, not looking at one another, staring out over the awakening city, as though trying to see a small dirigible long since gone.
“Do you think he made it to the post?” Biffy asked at long last.
“It’s Floote. Of course he made it.”
“Poor Lady Maccon, a butler who murders, a father who betrays, and a husband who wants to die.”
“Is that why you think Lord Maccon was so eager to visit Egypt?”
“Don’t you? What man wants to go mad. It seems to me the God-Breaker Plague is an excellent solution to the problem of Alpha immortality.” Biffy was, of course, thinking of his own future now.
“An interesting way of putting it.”
“I cannot believe no werewolf has thought to use it so before.”
“How do you know they have not? Who do you think gathered that data you were so interested in, on the extent of the plague?”
“Ah.”
“Ah, indeed. Are you reassured by this?” The Beta turned to face him. Biffy could feel those concerned hazel eyes fixed on his profile. He kept resolutely facing the far horizon. At least I have a good profile, he consoled himself.
“You mean now that we know I am an Alpha?” Biffy considered the question. To be reassured that he had a safe place to die as a werewolf when once, an age ago now, he had thought to live forever as a vampire? He gave a tiny sigh. “Yes, I suppose I am.” He paused. “How long do I have?”
Professor Lyall gave a little huff of amusement. “Oh, a few hundred years at least, possibly more, if you settle well. You still have to do military service, of course. That’s always a risk.”
“Learn to fight?”
“Learn to fight. I shouldn’t worry, my dandy. Lord Maccon will make an excellent teacher.”
“You think he’s coming back?”
“Yes, I do. If only to yell at me over the sins of the past.”
“Optimistic.”
“I think, in this matter, young pup, I know our Alpha better than you.”
“He will tolerate my presence, even with…?” Biffy gestured at his head.
“Of course. You are young yet and certainly no challenge to an Alpha of his standing.”
“Funny, I was beginning to feel rather old.”
Professor Lyall gave a tiny smile. “Come on, then, to bed with us, and I will remind you, in the best possible way, how young you really are.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Ah, Biffy, I rather think that now that is my line.”
Biffy laughed and straightened his spine, grabbing the Beta by the hand. “Right’o, come along, then.”
“Very good, sir.” Professor Lyall managed, somehow, to make his reply sound like a change in rank, a promise of wickedness, and the approval of a favorite teacher, all in one simple phrase.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Curative Properties of Nile Bathing
Alexia, Conall, and Prudence were five days with the balloon nomads of Egypt floating south. Five days drifting at speed above the long rope of the Nile River, a deep, dark blue-green during the day and a silvered strand at night. During those five days, the full moon came and went, with Conall, for the first time in hundreds of years, unaltered by its presence. The earl could freely play with and, much to Lady Maccon’s delight, take care of his daughter any time of the day or night without repercussions. He also grew a very large and scruffy beard, with which she was far less delighted.
“A man’s virility is in his beard,” he insisted.
To which Alexia replied, “And a woman’s is in her décolletage. Yet you don’t see me allowing mine to get out of control, now, do you?”
“If wishes were balloons,” was his only response.
Drifting was, thought Alexia, a most agreeable pastime. True, the accommodations on board left something to be desired and were rather cramped, but there were some wonderful moments that could only be experienced on a trip by way of balloon. For two days they linked up with what appeared to be most of Zayed’s extended family. They, too, sported bright balloons, mostly of a purple color, which drifted up close to Zayed’s, then floated a short distance off and hitched in to the same aether current. Zayed cast out a massive circular net, and as each new balloon arrived, they would pick up a section of net, until there they were, all linked together, with a kind of immense hammock dangling under and between them. This became the walkway by which certain matters of business were conducted and a playground for the children. Conall, still mostly uncomfortable with being up high at all, refused point-blank to even test it, but Alexia was never one to shirk a new experience when it presented itself with such appeal. She set forth, even knowing that should anyone on the ground have binoculars they might very well see up her skirts. Soon enough, she found herself bouncing and tumbling across the wide net. It was not so easy to traverse as it looked. She was entirely unable to effect the smooth bobbing walk of the Drifter women, who managed to go from basket to basket, in an odd reflection of the British housewife paying a social call, with great mounds of food balanced atop their heads.
Prudence, of course, took to the new sky-high transport like a newly minted vampire to blood, springing about with little Anitra, who was her new favorite person in the world. Alexia was tolerably assured that Anitra, who had been raised on such folderol as nets in the aether, knew more than the average child about falling. Alexia also noticed that there always seemed to be older children or mothers about with a watchful eye to the net’s edge, and so she relaxed some of her own vigilance. Not so Conall, whose eyes stayed fixed in horrified terror on first his daughter and then his wife. Each of whom he would yell to in turn. “Now, Prudence, don’t jump so high!” “Alexia, if you fall off, I shall kill you!” “Wife, look to our daughter!” Prudence, blissfully uncaring of her father’s concern, continued to bounce. Alexia ignored his rantings as those of a man whose feet, two or four, ought to always be on the ground.
During their five days of travel, they landed only once, on the evening in which they were linked to the other balloons. Zayed insisted that they needed to rest and restock both fuel and water. They drifted down slowly after the sun had set, pulling the net in as they went and coming to ground by a little oasis. The tingly feeling of the God-Breaker Plague was much stronger in the desert. It was almost uncomfortable for Alexia, as it had not been while floating. She felt the beginnings of that odd little push, that physical repulsion she had first experienced in the presence of one very small mummy, decorated with a broken ankh. Prudence, too, wasn’t happy grounded. “Up,” she kept saying. “Mama, up!” Only Conall was pleased, rolling about in the sand like a puppy before stripping down to bathe in the oasis. Alexia supposed not even the God-Breaker Plague could really get the wolf out of Lord Conall Maccon.