Moon over London
Werewolves are disappearing from the gaslit streets of
London. Are they being murdered? Kidnapped?
Few beyond the ’wolves’ own families notice they’re
missing, and fewer still care. With the aid of a clandestine toff werewolf and
a lady alchemist with attitude, Inspector Royston Jones is determined to protect
all those who dwell in his city. But
his superiors are indifferent, the werewolf community suspicious, and he has too
few leads and too many suspects—including his estranged uncle. Only one thing
is certain; unless he can solve the mystery, more ’wolves will be taken every
time the full moon rises.
Another gripping novel by the award-winning author of
A Hunt by Moonlight!
And now an excerpt from the gripping new novel!
Richard raised his long
snout to the night breeze, nostrils quivering as he sampled all the scents; the
distinctive, pleasant smell of horse and hay from the stables across the
courtyard, the dampness of the air that spoke of rain by morning, the slight
smell of decay from the compost heap behind the garden shed. He focused harder.
Yes, he could catch the solid, familiar scent of Jones, yards and yards away,
comingled with the oil and gasoline that hurt his nose every time he ventured
into the garage-cum-workshop. He’d begged Catherine to stick to the
less-dangerous coal to fire her experimental steam engines, but it didn’t burn
quick enough or hot enough to satisfy her.
He trotted over to the
garage, slowing to a walk as he passed through the door. Jones stood by the
front passenger door of the gleaming, champagne-colored horseless carriage. Bandon
brushed against his legs in wolfish greeting. The horseless was already
steaming gently, which meant Catherine must have slipped out to start it
sometime in the evening. He had thought
she’d been gone an unusually long time when she’d slipped out to powder her
nose between courses. At least they wouldn’t lose time waiting the nearly
half-hour the metal beast took to build up enough steam to be useful. He loped
a half-circle, turning back to the car with enough momentum to make a graceful
leap into the back seat. It was a jump he’d easily make flat-footed, but after
the one time he’d slipped a little
and scratched the paint, he’d learned to be extra-careful where Catherine’s
precious horseless was concerned.
Jones looked at his
pocket watch, and then at the front door of the house. “What on Earth is taking
her so long to—oh, no.”
Richard followed the
detective’s gaze to see his wife slipping out of the servant’s entrance wearing
her men’s clothing but without her Charles Foster glamour. With her hair tucked
neatly up into a tweed cap, Catherine made quite a fetching young man. Richard
was once again surprised by how enticing he found the sight. He’d never had
more than a platonic appreciation for the male form, but somehow the knowledge
that it was his wife under the mannish garb—well. Some evening he’d have to see
if he could persuade her to wear the clothes in their private quarters, when it
was just the two of them.
Jones signed deeply. “I
suppose it’s better than if someone happened along and wondered what I was
doing out driving alone at night with a lady and a werewolf—so long as she
keeps that cap pulled down!”
Technically, a woman
running about in men’s clothes could be arrested for public indecency, although
the punishments were generally less severe than if a man was caught in ladies’
things outside of a pantomime. Poor Jones. This just wasn’t his night.
As Catherine took her
place behind the wheel, he caught a scent he usually associated with Jones more
than Catherine, a sharp, almost metallic smell. Gun oil. Gunpowder. His eyes were less keen than his nose when it
came to fine details, so it took him a moment to see the small bulge at the
small of her back, beneath the waistcoat. His love was armed, as capable of
protecting herself this night as he was. The wave of relief came with a frisson
of excitement that he refused to examine too closely, not while they were
heading into possible danger and certainly not while in his current form.
Jones climbed into the
passenger seat, his movements exhibiting far less enthusiasm than his
companions at the prospect of a ride in the horseless carriage. Though Jones
had ridden in the horseless before, even driven it on one occasion, the good
Inspector had never gotten over his fear of the metal, steam-breathing
contraptions with their speed and the boiler just waiting to explode beneath
the hood. Now was probably not the best time to warn him that Catherine had
been making modifications to the engine in preparation for an exhibition race
at next spring’s Inventors’ and Alchemists’ Grand Fair and Symposium.
Fortunately, he had an excuse to hold his silence—in this form, neither his
mouth nor his throat was shaped for human speech.
And then they were off,
the horseless steaming and chuffing obediently down the road. Richard raised
his nose to catch all the scents that rode the swift wind of their
passing—badger, rabbit, the slightly musky scent of a dog fox. So lost was he
in reading the air, in reveling in the way the wind ruffled through his fur,
that he was confused when the horseless slowed to a stop at the edge of the
road.
Jones got out of the vehicle.
“Come on then, mutt.”
Richard gave a short
growl at the new nickname, though, if no better than ‘ridiculous toff of a
werewolf’ it was at least shorter. Then he sighed and hopped out of the horseless
to pace at the Inspector’s side as he hiked the rest of the way to his
ancestral home.
The mansion was a dark
and foreboding shape against the moon-silvered sky. Lights burned in only a few
of the windows, and those high up on the top-most floor. That should make this
easier. In this form, Richard could be as silent as the fog if he chose, but
Jones was loud as a cart horse to Richard’s sensitive ears. He reminded himself
that the occupants of the house had merely human senses, but still the muscles
along his back twitched with every scuffed stone and crunched leaf.
If Jones were caught out
here, it would be easy enough for him to explain away in light of his position.
But if his superiors demanded the identity of the werewolf as part of the
explanation, as indeed they might, given the werewolf connection to the
kidnapping? Jones would protect him, he was certain of that, even at the cost
of his job. But Richard was no longer so sure that he could let him make the
sacrifice.
“Here we are,” Jones
said, stopping beneath the window. “The boy’s window is just above. There were
footprints, of course, but it was all a muddle. The servants washed the lower
windows the morning before the boy disappeared, so their footprints were all
over the place, and then, with the search, everyone was running everywhere
before anyone from the Yard arrived to preserve the scene.”
Just wonderful. And how
was he supposed to pick scents out of that mess, with no idea which scent he
was looking for? Before he could figure out how to express his complaint to
Jones without the benefit of human speech, Jones was digging something out of
his pocket.
“Here.” Jones held a
small piece of cloth out to him. “It was on the boy’s nightstand, so I presume
it belongs to him.”
A handkerchief, Richard
realized. A neat little square of linen that no well-dressed lord’s son would
be without. He snuffled at it, drawing the scent deep into his nostrils,
letting it imprint on his brain. The cloth was clean, thank God, but it must
have been carried in the boy’s pocket for quite some time to be so well-imbued
with his scent. Then he dropped his nose to just above the ground where scent
tended to pool. Many people had passed this way, their scents as well-mingled
as their footprints had been, but it only took a moment to sort out the tangle
and find the boy’s scent, and then he was off, following the trail across the
yard and over the bridge that crossed the duck pond, wrinkling his nose at the
foul poultry-yard stench.
The trail did not waiver,
going straight for the tree-line of the private park that lay beyond the wide,
gently sloping lawn. The boy had not just been dawdling; he’d had a goal in
mind. Another scent trail paralleled the boy’s, and it had been, as close as he
could tell, laid at about the same time. The second trail carried a hint of
horses and hay, and, for reasons his wolf-senses couldn’t translate into words,
Richard knew it was the scent of a man, not a boy. Someone walking with the
child, or someone trailing him, unseen by his quarry? Richard couldn’t tell,
and wished he could share the information with the inspector at his side, but
that consultation would have to wait until the morning when Richard could speak
as a man once more.
He slowed down just a
bit, intent on parsing out any clues from the two scent trails. He caught no
whiff of fear, anger, or pain, at least not so far. Yet the trails were too
close in time, location, and direction to be a coincidence, and no one had
reported a second victim. He glanced over at Jones, who was taking advantage of
the slowed pace to catch his breath. The inspector was fit, but few men found
it easy to keep up with a tracking wolf, even at what for Richard was a steady
trot. The presence of a second, unknown trail increased the possibility that
the trail would lead them into danger, and Richard had no way to warn his human
companion.
No choice, though, but to
move on. It was what Jones would want to do, regardless. A boy’s life was at
stake.
He slowed further,
though, as they entered the woods. Too many places here to lay an ambush. He
flipped his ears back and forth, alert for any out-of-place sound, and he
divided his attention now between the scent trail and the other ambient scents,
wary of potential attackers.
Deeper into the woods, in
a clearing with a substantial old stump, both scent trails pooled. Both the boy
and his companion or pursuer had stopped here for a period of time. The trails
crossed and tangled, but never seemed to lead out of the clearing. Richard
zig-zagged back and forth, moving slowly, sniffing, trying to puzzle out what
had happened from the story the scents had left. Royston waited at the edge of
the clearing, staying out of his way as Richard worked the scents.
He thought back to when
he’d lost a trail before. What had helped? Ah, yes.
In following the trail,
he’d filtered out the millions of extraneous scents—wildlife, the mingled
scents of new life and decay omnipresent in any woods. Many horses had come and
gone this way over many days, weeks, months, leaving their own distinct scents,
which he’d counted only as a distraction. Now he focused on them, found a pair
of horse scents laid about the same time as the scent trail he had been
following. Sure enough, when he found the path the horses had taken to leave
the clearing, he found traces of Nicky and the mysterious other mingled with
their scent.
Eager to make up the time
he’d wasted in the clearing, he sprang off again at a run, trusting Jones to
follow. Though the nights were long this time of year, they just didn’t seem
long enough for something like this. Time seemed different in this form,
somehow, and so he couldn’t tell how much time had passed before he noticed
three key details. He was now following the scent trails of three horses, not
two. The scent of the boy and the other were no longer mingled with the scent
of the horses, though there was a new other he hadn’t noticed before. And he’d
lost Jones.
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