Page 9 of Master Wolf

“It matters,” Marguerite said reasonably. “It is evidence of us, and if there is one thing I have learned over my centuries on this earth, it is that we allow such evidence to exist at our peril. There are wolf-hunters out there, Drew. People who have dedicated their whole lives to finding us.”

Drew was not unaware that there were dangers—Francis had warned him from the very first of the need for discretion and secrecy above all else—but he had never met such a person himself, and so it had always seemed a distant threat to him.

“What do these hunters want?” he asked.

Marguerite eyed him for several beats. At length she said, “Lindsay’s letter mentions the papers he acquired from Cruikshank for me back in ’88—the Naismith papers—do you remember?”

“Vaguely,” Drew said, frowning. “I remember when I first met Lindsay he was trying to acquire something from Cruikshank. Much later Francis mentioned it was a set of papers you had wanted.” He glanced at Marguerite warily. “Something to do with Alys.”

Alys, Marguerite’s beloved maker, had vanished a long, long time ago, and Marguerite had been searching for her ever since.

“Yes,” Marguerite said calmly. “Alys disappeared around the time of some witch trials Naismith was conducting in Northumberland. The papers Lindsay got from Cruikshank related to those trials. And they did indeed show that someone meeting Alys’s description was arrested there—an incomer to one of the villages who openly opposed Naismith—but there is no record of any trial or execution. Only a brief note of the woman being transported to a prison.”

“What happened to her?”

Marguerite’s dark gaze was bleak. She shook her head. “She never arrived. The trail goes cold as to her whereabouts. The papers do contain something else of interest though.”

“What’s that?”

“Naismith was one of the founders of a secret society—the Order of the White Ravens.”

Drew blinked. “That’s not a secret society. When I was a boy the House of the White Ravens was a popular gentleman’s society. My uncle was a member—so was Cruikshank.” His eyes widened as realisation struck.

Marguerite nodded. “Quite so. Cruikshank was the most senior member of the Scottish branch of the Order when you knew him. And yes, the Order created that popular society, which they called the House of the White Ravens. Its purpose was to present a benevolent, seemingly harmless face to the world. They recruited quite large numbers with the usual promises of social and professional benefits, but for the rank and file members, it was no more than a standard fraternal society. Behind that façade though, a small elite—the Masters of the Order, who included Cruikshank—were pursuing more esoteric interests.”

“Such as?”

“As I said, the founders were all witchfinders. They shared a common interest in witchcraft, magic and the occult, and they corresponded extensively on a wide range of such subjects. However, from the papers I have studied there is one particular interest they were all passionate about.”

“And that was?”

“Immortality,” Marguerite said, and a shiver ran down the back of Drew’s neck.

“There are references to it in dozens of documents and letters I’ve studied,” she went on. “They were searching for the secret of eternal life. Alchemists to a man, obsessed with finding the elixir of life and the Philosopher’s Stone—neither of which were ever discovered. But something else was. Something extraordinary. A creature who could shift into wolf form and live for centuries.”

“They captured Alys?”

Marguerite’s gaze was bleak. “I do not know,” she said. “I hope to find out one day. But it was clear from some of these letters that, yes, at least at some point they held one of our kind.”

Drew stared at her, horrified.

Marguerite continued. “The other thing we know is that, sometime in the 1780s, Cruikshank tracked down Duncan MacCormaic, and they made a pact—one that Cruikshank had hoped would grant him immortality: he would help Duncan capture Lindsay, in return for a bite.”

“How did Cruikshank know that Duncan was a wolf?”

“That is not something I have been able to discover,” Marguerite said. “But Cruikshank was very learned and Duncan very reckless—he has left many traces of himself over the centuries. My guess is that Cruikshank pieced together enough evidence to lead him to the conclusion that Duncan MacCormaic had already lived many lifetimes. He knew about the werewolf the Order had captured and he realised Duncan was the same kind of creature, so he approached him and offered to come to an agreement—something Duncan wanted in return for a bite. Critically, he did not tell any of his fellow Order members what he had discovered. He was not prepared to risk someone else profiting from his labours.”

“But he didn’t know as much as he thought,” Drew mused. “He didn’t know that Duncan couldn’t transform him into a werewolf at will, not without the Urge.”

The Urge was an overpowering desire that sometimes—very rarely—arose in a wolf. It was only when a wolf was possessed by the Urge that a transformative bite could be given, turning the person bitten into a werewolf. Drew had seen it happen precisely once: when Lindsay had bitten him. In thirty years as a wolf he’d not heard of another instance.

“But Duncandidmanage to engineer something,” Marguerite pointed out. “When he ordered his servant to bite Cruikshank, Cruikshank did turn into something.”

Duncan’s servant, Mercer—the one who had nearly killed Drew all those years ago—had been Duncan’s other made wolf, bound to obey his master. When Duncan had commanded Mercer to transform Cruikshank, he had created a need and desire in Mercer that had, perhaps, mimicked the Urge. Enough to transform Cruikshank into something, albeit not a werewolf but a monstrous, half-shifted thing.

“These wolf-hunters still exist then?” Drew said.

“Yes,” Marguerite said. “It seems the fraternity—the House of the White Ravens—has fallen out of favour, but the secret Order continues. Its members often turn up showing interest in occult artefacts that come up for sale.”