Page 71 of Master Wolf
Instead he forced himself to keep talking.
“How long does this change take?” he asked. He was acutely aware of how vulnerable Alys was just now, and that Bainbridge was equally aware of it. If Drew moved on him, knowing he had to keep him alive, Bainbridge might be able to take advantage of that. It was best to keep him talking for now.
“Quarter an hour or so,” Bainbridge said, his tone clinical. “Though sometimes as long as half an hour when the creature is very weak, as it is now.”
“My God,” Drew said faintly. He considered his own shift slow, butquarter an hour? Longer even? Alys’s face contorted into a pained rictus and he ached to take her pain from her.
“I know,” Bainbridge said, misunderstanding him. “It’s an extraordinary sight, is it not? I remember the first time I witnessed this—it must be all of seventeen years ago. Back then, I never imagined that one day I would become the creature’s master myself.”
Seventeen years. Christ above.
“How long—” Drew began. He paused, swallowing back another wave of nausea to pass. “That is, how long have the Order had her—it.”
“The creature was captured by a witchfinder named William Cargill in fifteen hundred and ninety-three with the aid of an accused witch”—Bainbridge paused meaningfully—“so you see why the Order considers the creature so important. It is at least two and a half centuries old, and perhaps far older than that. I am the creature’s nineteenth master and each master has made a careful study of it in hopes of discovering the secrets of its seeming immortality and ability to heal itself.”
Over two hundred years in captivity—would Alys even be sane now? Drew glanced at her. She was still on her hands and knees, though she looked ready to drop to her belly with exhaustion as another whole-body contraction racked her frail form. Inside him, his wolf whined and paced. He closed his eyes briefly, gathering himself, forcing himself to be patient.
“You say the capture was achieved with the aid of a witch?”
Bainbridge nodded. “In return for her freedom, the witch imparted secrets to Cargill regarding the binding of werewolves with silver. Cargill had a silver yoke made before the ambush took place. Over time, her bonds have been adapted according to the preferred method of her various masters. The present arrangements were my predecessor’s invention. I may revisit them in time.”
Alys’s scent intensified, swirling so powerfully that Drew wondered that even a human like Bainbridge could not seem to detect it. And then, above their heads, came a crash and a muffled scream. With his enhanced hearing, Drew had heard it distinctly, but he could see from Bainbridge’s uncertain expression that he had only heard a faint echo.
“Did you hear something?” Bainbridge asked, brows furrowed.
“No,” Drew said. “Did you?”
“I thought—perhaps not.”
Another thud came then—but this one was softer and Bainbridge didn’t notice. He began to talk about his work with the creature, but Drew wasn’t listening now. He was tuned into the sounds from upstairs—and the scents. Scents of blood and panic and fear, and of deadly Marguerite getting closer as she moved down through the house, floor by floor, in a sweet haze of violets.
He saw the moment that Alys scented her. Her head, which had been hanging low, came sharply up. Her jaw had begun to lengthen and to human eyes she would appear truly terrifying, a misshapen monster. But to Drew she was one of them—one of their pack—and all he could see was her pain and her need. And briefly, for a moment as Marguerite’s scent reached her—her joy.
She threw her head back, throat arching, and howled. Brokenly, painfully, but still she howled and Drew saw from Bainbridge’s reaction—falling silent and staring at her, eyes wide—that this was not something she usually did.
And then Marguerite answered her.
Marguerite’s howl was angry and vengeful.
“What was that?” Bainbridge cried. “Who—what—?”
A man screamed—the second servant, Drew surmised—a bloodcurdling sound that abruptly ended. Bainbridge certainly heard that—since that slaying had taken place much closer to the cellar.
“I think,” Drew said gently, “that is my wife.”
A figure began to descend the cellar steps.
Drew stepped back, putting himself between Bainbridge and Alys, deciding that he would make protecting the injured wolf his priority and leave the rest to Marguerite.
It was not, however, Marguerite, who appeared at the bottom of the steps. At least not immediately. Wynne preceded her, his face set in a grave, faraway expression.
He raised his arm and pointed at Bainbridge. “Witch killer,” he said softly. “I would slay you myself if my mistress did not wish to do it.”
Bainbridge stared at him in horror. “How do you know I-I—” He stuttered to a halt as Wynne moved aside and a new figure descended.
Drew had thought she might arrive in her wolf form but she had shifted back after slaying Bainbridge’s servants. Her clothes were gone though. She descended the stairs, naked and bloody as a maenad. Her mouth was covered in blood, her chest and shoulders spattered with it. She was terrible and beautiful at once.
Her eyes were wolf eyes.