Capitulum Octavum

It was later that day that I met Giles Scott for the first time. I was shown by Marcos into a small office. It was not Giles's usual office, but a more cheerful one, apparently for guests, and I was the only one there for several minutes. There was a wooden desk in front of a large window, and also some chairs, and two walls were lined with books, some very old, but not so old as the books that lined his main office. In one corner of the room was a large standing globe; but the globe was not of the earth but of the moon. The wall that had neither books nor window was lined with cabinets and tables of matching mahogany, mostly filled with stones and curious knick-knacks from all over the world.

I bent down and looked at one of the stones on the table nearest to me. It was a pinkish stone, as big as large hen's egg. I say 'pinkish', but in fact it seemed to shift somewhat in hue depending on how exactly you looked at it.

"Opal," a quiet voice right next to me suddenly said, causing me to jump. "'It seems to blush and turn pale as if it had a soul.'"

It was Giles himself, of course, his dark eyes looking at me from his feverishly pale face with a disconcerting stare. His pallor somehow made both his slightly curly hair and his eyes seem darker than any hair and eyes should be. He wore a custom-tailored suit with a silver-striped tie and a black vest.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't hear you come in."

He seemed amused. "People rarely do. Won't you have a seat?"

As I sat down in the chair he indicated, he said, "Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you," I said. "I don't drink."

"I rarely drink myself," he said, sitting in the chair across the desk from me. "In general, I only drink to calm myself when I am in a state of excitement; and things excite me very rarely. Do you smoke?" He pulled a cigar case out of a drawer.

"No, sorry."

"No apology needed. I only keep them around for others, since I am not a smoker myself. No drinking, no smoking, no gambling." He smiled a smile that was marvellously ambiguous between pleasantness and sarcasm. "I am a man of very few vices."

He leaned back in his chair and regarded me for a moment with one of his unsettling gazes. Then he said, "You are a journalist?"

I hesitated. "In the strict sense, no. I am a historian."

"A much more respectable trade. In what do you specialize?"

"Superstitious practices in Greater Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

"That must be a very large field of study."

I do not know what I had expected him to say, but it was not that. "Well, yes," I replied lamely.

"But I take it that it is not in your role as a historian that you are here today?"

I hesitated again. "Well, yes and no."

"The envelope suggested you had information on the recent murder of that girl out in the park."

"I do."

He waited patiently. At least, I suppose it was patience; his eyes seemed to bore into me.

"Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning," I felt myself blurt out.

"That is often the best way to begin," Giles agreed, with a slow nod of the head that managed again to achieve that remarkable borderline between affability and sarcasm.

"I first met Joanne in college; she was a journalism student and I, of course, was a history student. We became fast friends, and throughout our undergraduate years we were largely inseparable. After college, however, we went separate ways. We did keep in touch, with occasional correspondence, and we saw each other about once every other year, but that's about it.

"A few years back, however, Joanne came to me saying that she had uncovered something extraordinary, but that it needed to be investigated carefully before she did anything with it. She couldn't trust it with anyone else, she said, so she had come to me. Also, it had some relationship to my field of study. She had discovered, she said, a secret Wolf-cult with roots going back to medieval Germany. The members of this cult thought of themselves as werewolves." I paused here and waited for him to respond, but he said nothing, simply looking at me with the same patient but disconcerting look.

"How she came across it originally, I do not know. I also didn't make much of it at the time. But what she had was interesting from a historian's perspective: symbols, old names, fragments of stories. I promised to look into them and get back to her. And I did. Some of them I couldn't trace, some of them I could. But it was always very sketchy. I sent what I could find to her, and largely set it aside, except that part of me kept a look-out for anything in fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Germany that might indicate an interest in wolves. Whenever I did, I would mark it in case she would happen to need it, and when I had a fair stack of such things, I sent them to her. It didn't happen often.

"Then a little over a year ago she came to me in great agitation, saying she had stumbled on something even larger than she had thought. She brought me copies of everything she had gathered, which by this point was a quite considerable stack. She also had video footage that was somewhat startling: people vanishing suddenly into shadows, and the like. I didn't know what to make of it, but she said she did: there was indeed a cult of the Wolf, and its members did not merely think they were werewolves, but actually were."

I stopped and reflected. "If it had been anyone else," I said, "I would have laughed at it. But Joanne was no flighty individual, nor was she gullible. She had sense. I promised at least that I would look over what she had brought me and do some research on my own. She said that she had some leads that needed to be followed, and that she would be incommunicando for some time. I got two small packages from her after that, with additional materials; they had no return address, and the postmark was different in each case. That was all until I read the news report about her death, mauled by an animal 'while camping alone in the park'. In the meantime, though, I kept my promise. I went through everything she had gathered and did further research on my own. And I became convinced that she was right, at least in general. There were werewolves among them. And chief among them was Aegidius, sometimes Gide, sometimes Egidio, sometimes Gilles, sometimes Giles, called the Scot. You are he. But more than this, the day after she died I received a last package from her, with a full letter. I know about Eric, I know it all."

He smiled. "Oh, not all, I think. But you are right, I am Aegidius, and master of the Wolves."

"You admit it all?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't I? Seeing the mind of a mere human is not as easy for me as seeing the mind of a Wolf; it is full of shadows, not lit by the moon. But I have moonlight enough in me for the both of us. And it is enough for me to see that nothing I could say could convince you otherwise, and that you know enough that there is no use pretending. But still I would pretend, and still I would deny, were it not for one thing: you knew quite well that coming here would be the death of you. I would inevitably find out eventually, but you would have had more time; instead you willingly ran toward the end. Why was that?"

"I came here to ask a favor from you."

He smiled. It was cold, having nothing of the affability of his previous smile, but it still was sarcastic. "The prey asking the predator for a promise? And what would this be?"

"That you not kill me before you give Joanne the justice she deserves. That Eric, or whoever it was that killed her, die in turn."

His eyes locked mine, and he rose something. He still was somewhat boyish in appearance, and still sickly-pale, but somehow he was also a thing of majesty and terror. I had a sense of vertigo. It seemed as if I saw spread before me an extraordinarily vast panorama of centuries of night, filled with wars and destruction; with plagues and famines; with great Gothic churches, and monks in choir, and friars preaching crusade; with uprisings and revolts and revolutions; with great sailing ships and conquistador armies; with the rising and falling of civilizations. It all seemed too real, too sharp, too clear; for it was lit with the light of a vast and unwaning moon. He stepped around the desk and looked down at me as I, unable to break the gaze, began to tremble, knowing that this was an angel of death come for me.

But after holding me gaze for so long it seemed unbearable, he looked away, gazing as if at something very far off. "Non potest," he said softly to someone or something that was not me. "Non potest ab homine tolli quod sit rationalis, non totaliter; etiam in damnatis manet conscientia."

He looked down at me again; but his gaze, while as unsettling as ever, was no longer terrible. "You do not know," he said. "You do not know what it is to bear this quasi-morbus animorum, this second languor of nature. The moon-wolf in me recognizes you as a threat, and his strength is mingled with the madness of the moon. I cannot outlast him, and no matter how much I tried to prevent it, there would one day come a day in which my strength would give out, and you would die. But I promise you this: you will not die before I have killed the Wolf who killed Joanne." He looked away again. "Go now, before I waver in the decision."

And so I walked out. As I did, Seneca passed me, and he found Giles in a contemplative pose, looking down on the globe of the moon. "I was expecting for the interview, Sen," Giles said abstractedly, reaching out his hand to set the globe spinning.

"I apologize," said Seneca. "But it is Elsbietka. She has something important to tell you. She is in your study."

Giles nodded and Seneca left.

It was about ten minutes later when Giles entered his study to find Seneca sitting beside an agitated Elsbietka. She was holding an already opened envelope.

"Well," said Giles, "What is it?"

She said nothing, merely handing him the envelope. He pulled out a piece of paper and looked at it briefly. "This is written in blood," he said.

"Yes," Elsbietka said.

"And there is moonlight in it. One of yours?"

She nodded. "An acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk."

"The acquaintance in Krasnoyarsk?"

She nodded again. He turned back to the letter.

"'As one Scion of Lykaios to another, I felt obliged to inform you that something of yours was unfortunately destroyed. Ivan.'"

"You do know what this means?" said Seneca. "If he can convince others that he is a Scion of Lykaios -- well, you know what the legends say about the Scions of Lykaios."

Giles cast a sarcastic glance at him. "Yes, I know what the legends say; I made up half of them."

"Could it be true?"

"That he is a Scion of Lykaios?" Giles looked thoughtful. "It is impossible to rule out. Vsesalevich and I hunted down all the ones that were known, but Lykaios was ancient. How remarkable it would be to find out after all this time that I am still not the only one! But it is unlikely."

"Regardless, if he can get enough people to believe him -- and who in the age of Aegidius would dare claim it if he did not think he could get people to believe it?--it will be a problem."

"In fact," said Giles, handing the paper and envelope back to Elsbietka, "it changes nothing essential. But it does give some questions to ask." He looked at them both a moment, then said, "Elsbietka, please do me the honor of staying the night here" -- despite the 'please' it was not a request -- and we will talk more over breakfast tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I will take a walk alone in the garden."

Capitulum Septimum

The Aegidian Building had been made to look innocuous and nondescript, and, as it sat on the edge of a small financial district, this meant that it was four stories of blank glass facade with nothing but its address above the door. A small fountain that stood out front was adorned with a statue that was a jumble of streaks and spheres. I have never learned what it represented; incoherence, perhaps. In any case, it was exactly like any number of modern sculptures adorning any number of financial buildings with sheer glassy walls in any number of financial districts in any number of cities across the world.

If you enter by the front door, you will find a small lobby with a marble floor, a security desk, and two elevator doors at the end; and that is as far as you will ever get. It is even possible that the elevator doors do not open at all. If you inquire about the Aegidian Corporation, you will be given a brochure that talks vaguely about what it calls 'international investment consultancy'. You will then be firmly told that you must leave.

As many such buildings do, however, it has a small parking garage, which also has a set of elevators. These elevators do not have buttons for floors, only a single keypad on the outside to open the door and another inside to operate the elevator; each floor has its own keycode combination. Up you go to whichever floor you choose, there to find a new security desk. The Aegidian Building is a very secure building.

On one of these secure floors is a conference room, and it was there that a meeting of Primes was held at about the time Giles, Seneca, and Jolie would usually have been sitting down to breakfast. There were several of them already there when the three entered. Giles went immediately to one of them, a dark-haired woman with a narrow, girlish face.

"Elsbietka," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "It is good that you have come; we will need your counsel. How are things out east?"

"As good as ever," she replied. Her voice was deep and slightly husky, but still a woman's voice.

Jolie, who was immediately behind, followed suit, and the two kissed each other on the cheek; but it was a very coolly perfunctory kiss on the part of both of them.

"It is good to see you," said Jolie with a tight smile.

"Jolie Corday! It is, indeed," said Elsbietka with an equally tight smile.

"We should have these meetings more often," said Giles cheerfully. "It is always good seeing friends." He sought out Seneca, who had moved to another small cluster of people on the other side of the room, and, catching his eye, gave him a look.

Seneca immediately stepped to the center of the room and cleared his throat. "We have a great deal discuss, so perhaps it is best if we get seated and begin."

The conference table was a long one with curved sides. Looking to the left of Giles we see Seneca, in a wine-colored sweater-vest and a matching bowtie. To his left is Elsbietka, her dark hair somewhat disordered. The delicate-looking woman who looks in her thirties, the one with the short blond hair, is Charlotte; she is actually a distant relative of Jolie. The square-jawed older-looking man to her left is Alexander. Across from Alexander, the woman with the very short curly hair, is Sarah. Next to her is her fraternal twin, Simon. The large, ruddy-faced man with small eyes is Cotton. And next to him, of course, is Jolie, looking perfect as always, which brings us back to Giles, still pale with the pallor the mind associates with terrible sickness.

For me to transcribe the early part of the meeting would be pointless, for it consisted simply of Seneca summarizing what you already know, with Jolie occasionally interjecting a comment and a question occasionally coming from one of the others. Through it all Giles spoke not a single word; he merely turned an attentive gaze to each Wolf in turn. And each Wolf, when those dark eyes rested on him or her, was unsettled by it.

"The major problem we face," said Seneca, summing up, "is our lack of information. Vsesalevich, as far as we know, is dead. Our sources in Yakutsk have gone silent, whether because they are dead or have thrown in their lot with the new regime, we do not know. And we still do not know what happened."

"Yakutsk was always of mostly symbolic importance, anyway," said Elsbietka. "Vsesalevich was most likely to be there, if he was anywhere. If my advice had been followed a few years ago" -- and here she shot a dark look at Jolie -- "we would have worked harder to get insiders in some of the fringe Packs."

"Past policies are under review," said Seneca drily. "At present our focus should be on plans."

"We will need to send people to investigate," said Alexander. "Dangerous work. And there are so many places to start -- Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk...."

"I would recommend Krasnoyarsk," Elsbietka said. "The Packs of Krasnoyarsk Krai are quite large, relatively speaking, and notoriously restless."

Simon leaned forward. "And what do your sources say?"

She looked sharply at him. "What do you mean?"

"Come now," Sarah said. "We all know that you're not the kind to let things be; you've probably been working on getting information about the fringe Packs for years now."

"Agents in Krasnoyarsk, I wouldn't doubt," said Simon.

Giles looked with interest at Elsbietka, and she broke under the glance. "They have gone silent, too."

"I find it more and more disturbing that this could have all happened without our knowing anything of it," said Seneca.

"Wait," said Alexander, "don't we have one of their agents? The fellow in England?"

"No," said Giles quietly, the first word he had spoken since the meeting began. "We do not have him."

"Why?" asked Cotton with outrage. "Surely he didn't escape?"

"No," said Giles, "he didn't escape. I killed him."

The silence at the table was very deep; the quiet matter-of-factness of the way in which Giles had stated it had, I think, as much to do with its impact as the statement itself. After a few minutes, Cotton said, "But it was full moon." He perhaps meant it to sound incredulous; but it came out as little more than a broken whisper.

"Yes," said Giles, suddenly amused. "It was full moon." He leaned forward and looked around the table, amusement still on his face. "He was a Prime, and it was full moon, and I ripped the moonlight out of his soul, and I tore his heart out of his chest, and he died." He leaned back suddenly. "You are all young," he said, "very young. What, after all, do you know of Lykaios? He was dead long before you received the Bite, long before any of you were born. And thus I can see how it would be tempted to think that all the stories about how Lykaios was called the Invincible, and how I killed him under full moon, were just tall tales, or maybe stores with some grain of truth that grew in the telling over centuries. Particularly since it must seem so very long ago, a legend from out of the hazy mists of time. But I did beat the unbeatable Wolf, the one who had lived so long that he could not even remember his original name, the one every Wolf of the day feared; and the moon was full and bright that night. And I killed this one, too, during full moon.

"Or perhaps you believed the story, but thought that it was so long ago that I had forgotten how I did it, or that it was a unique happening resulting from some freak of fortune. After all, the stories all say that only one Prime has ever been killed at full moon. But there have been others; Lykaios was just the only one worth mentioning. But in this case you can confirm it, if any doubt lingers. Ask Aveline, or Roysa, or this newly minted Wolf, Eric, who comes to us courtesy of some no-name renegade. They left me alone in a room with him, and he was alive; they returned, and he was dead."

The others at the table shifted uneasily in their seats. After an uncomfortable minute or two, Cotton cleared his throat and tried again. "Perhaps it would have been better to have kept him alive; we could have extracted further information from him."

Everyone in the room knew that the event was a sign of the yawning chasm between Giles on the one hand and all the other Primes on the other; everyone knew that Giles had raised it as a banner of his superiority, an emblem of the Wolf-King, a reminder of their place. And thus to everyone's ears this attempt to treat an almost unthinkable action expressing almost unthinkable power as a mere prudential miscalculation sounded as limp as his previous protest. But Giles simply shook his head.

"I stole the moonlight inside of him; I extracted everything he had to tell. It is good, however, that the point has been raised. For I am Aegidius, Death at Full Moon, Scion and Slayer of the Invincible Wolf, the Wolf who can do what no other Wolf has ever found possible, and I assure you," putting his hand on his heart, "that in the conflict to come I will win. I want to be very clear about that. I do not promise comfort and ease, but I promise you that I will not be outmaneuvered or outpowered by any Prime now living. I am beyond mere Primacy. Some of you are young enough, or came to know me late enough, that you only know this by rumor. But there are Wolves who know it. Jolie, for instance." He turned and looked at her; she was looking at her hands.

"Do you remember, Jolie, the time when we hunted down that rebel Pack in the Franche-Comté? You know, the one led by the Wolf who killed Charles Louis outside Saint-Nizier -- what was his name? Hugh, I think?"

"No," said Jolie, still looking at her hands, "it was Alain; Hugh was his brother."

"We made them pay with terror before they died, didn't we?"

"Yes," said Jolie, still looking at her hands.

He leaned back, his face still full of amusement. "But this is no time for old war stories." He rose to his feet. "As Seneca noted, information is our primary concern. Get me information about the Pack of Krasnoyarsk Krai, or anything else that might be of use!" He looked down at Jolie. "Will you be returning to the Manor with us?"

She finally looked up from her hands. "No," she said, "Cotton and I have business to discuss on this renegade Wolf problem."

Giles nodded and smiled and took his leave.

In the elevator, Seneca asked, "Did you discover anything?"

"Of course," said Giles cheerfully. "There is nothing so effective as getting people who hate each other in one room and then having them threatened by a notorious killer. Cotton certainly, and Charlotte probably, are with Jolie; Elsbietka doesn't have any inkling because Jolie wouldn't trust her to keep quiet, and rightly so, she would gladly prefer a chance of killing Jolie to joining with her any day of the week. The rest are various shades of in-between, waiting to see how things tip."

"Does Jolie have any idea that we know? That last bit was heavy-handed."

"Does it matter? If she has any sense -- and she does -- she has been taking that possibility into account from the beginning. But you are quite right; I overdid it. Even after centuries I still can't resist giving that last little jab."

Capitulum Sextum

Giles stood beside his desk, lost in thought, when Seneca entered the room with a briefcase in hand.

"I don't know what happened to Eric, but he is not at all communicative," Seneca said, setting the briefcase beside his customary chair.

The great Wolf seemed not to hear. After a moment he shook himself and said, "Brandy?"

"Please," said Seneca as he sat down. Giles filled two glasses and handed him one, downing the other all at once, still apparently wrapped up in his thoughts. Seneca contemplated him for a moment. "So, I take it that this turn of events means Vsesalevich is dead?"

"If so," said Giles, "that would almost be a pity. He was older even than I, by perhaps as many as three centuries, and unless there are any hiding out in obscure corners of the world, he and I were the last of the old great Wolves, those who
had achieved Primacy in the bad old days of the Warlords, who had held our own amidst the terrors of the age of Lykaios. But it is always difficult to tell with Vsesalevich; he has faked his death before. Many of my early memories as a Wolf under a Lykaios were of endless searching for Vsesalevich, who had supposedly died but of whom Lykaios had heard rumors that he was still alive. And, of course, they were true, although Lykaios never found him. I did, after Lykaios's death, and, having put the fear of Aegidius into him, I offered him a deal. Together we hunted down all the other Scions of Lykaios, every rival Prime who did not bend the knee; it was the beginning of the order of things under which you have lived your entire life. You cannot imagine the change that it wrought; he and I alone were left to know how much order and civilization we had created out of chaos and destruction. We brought an end to the warring of little Packs and welded them together with terror and death and force of will. So much has changed."

He poured himself another brandy and downed it again. "No, you can never tell with Vsesalevich. But we do know that he is no longer in control, whether it is because he is dead or because he is hiding."

"You are thinking of the fact that they attacked you at full moon?"

"Among other things. They knew full well that they could not seriously harm me. Only two possible motives present themselves: they did it simply to declare war in a showy way, or they were attempting to test the legend of Aegidius, to see how dangerous I really am. Vsesalevich would never be so incautious as to declare war, even if he had grown so mad as to wage it; he would have begun it at once by trying to assassinate me at new moon, quickly and in a surprise attack. I had always prepared for such an eventuality, in fact. And Vsesalevich, of all people, needed no tests to know what I could do. It is a distinctive style; a new player is playing the game of life and death among the Primes. And he wants me to know it. Silver bullets! Can there be any more showy and gaudy attempt to make a statement? The Island is practically littered from one end to another with rowan; a quickenbeam spear or stake would do at least as much damage a little silver bullet, with none of the hassle of going around Britain with distinctive and thus traceable weaponry and ammunition. But the silver bullet catches the attention; it is not a stealth assassin's weapon but a flaunting of one's intent to kill in a language that cannot be mistaken.

"And four relatively inexperienced, relatively weak Primes! They had no way of knowing beforehand that there would only be two Primes, not three, and yet they went four against three in a frontal assault on our own territory. It was a test, to make sure that I am really what the legends say, the Wolf of Wolves, the Full Moon Killer, the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf. It was a boast and a test; it was a challenge to me." He leaned against the desk and folded his arms, and, cocking his head, looked at Seneca.

"It goes to show," said Seneca with a smile, "that you should perhaps have listened to my advice and taken someone with a bit more experience than Eric. Four you could handle, but what if they had managed more?"

"Hmmm," Giles said, looking down at the floor with a peculiarly thoughtful expression on his face. "Hic lupus nuper additus flere dum parat ululat," he said. He suddenly turned an unsettling gaze on the other Wolf. "Tell me, Sen, what happens when the Bite is given to someone who is already a Wolf?"

Seneca was startled by the question. "I suppose I don't know," he said. "Nothing, I would guess."

"I have known it to happen. It provides no greater share of lunacy or lupinity, but it does give one the delirious and feverish symptoms of the original Bite. They dissipate much more quickly than the original symptoms, though."

Seneca steepled his fingers. "You are certain that he was already a Wolf?"

"Certainly certain. Indeed, even before the quick recovery it was a likely possibility. Surely you recall the anomalies in his original story?"

"I remember it being quite incoherent in parts. To be sure, the behavior of the Wolf was odd, but you know that the shock and trauma of the Bite can disorient memory as everything else."

"To be sure; that was a slim possibility of that -- until the swift recovery. But it was always slim, I think. The story we were told certainly had true elements, but the actual behavior of the Wolf was incomprehensible, even allowing for distortion of memory. Any Wolf experienced and clever enough that neither you nor Jolie could track it down would have to be quite impressive. But the Wolf of the story was more cinematic beast than real-life Wolf, all cat-and-mouse gameplaying and horror-movie stereotype, and nothing that one would expect from any kind of impressive Prime. It simply made no sense. Surely, setting aside all speculation, however well-founded, you have suspicions that there is something not quite right with him?"

"I have better than suspicions," said Seneca with a small smile, reaching for the briefcase. As he opened it, he said, "We have several times in the past few weeks been approached by a reporter who wanted an interview with Giles Scott; we put him off, in accordance with the usual policy. But the day after you had left for England, he showed up at Aegidian headquarters again, this time with a package that he insisted be given to me or to you." He pulled a large manila envelope out of the briefcase and handed it to Giles, who took it and opened it.

Inside there was a note and a folder of documents. The folder was marked, in a neat and cautious hand, "JOANNE SOMMERS." Giles leafed through some of the papers and photographs inside and frowned. Then he looked at the note.

"I have information of considerable importance, and request an audience with Aegidius himself." He put the folder and note back into the manila envelope and carefully put the envelope on the desk. "You know how I feel about reporters," he said, "but your reporter may need some reward for his perseverance."

"I already took the liberty of scheduling a tentative appointment tomorrow." Seneca put the briefcase back on the floor beside the chair and leaned back, steepling his fingers again. After a thoughtful silence he said, "The man has always made me uneasy for some reason, but seeing the content of that folder simply floored me. Can it really be the case that Eric is a Sakhan plant?"

Giles shook his head. "That possibility had to be ruled out, but I think we can, in fact, rule it out. For the longest time I was baffled by one question with regard to Pretty Puppy: was he stupid or was he merely pretending to be stupid? After having spent time with him, I think we can safely say that the answer is both." He smiled wolfishly. "What is more, even though he was a Wolf before the night his supposed Bite, he still bears all the unmistakeable features of the newly minted. We both know that it would be foolish to think the Siberians would plant as a spy someone with no experience and no ability to do play the game. Even the amateurs in Sakha and Krosnayarsk Krai play a cunning game."

"Are you absolutely sure that he is not, though? The Siberians have always been good at hiding their minds."

"Not from me. Moon speaks to moon for the Wolf with the mind to hear. I cannot read the heart, but sooner or later anything in the heart comes to the surface, and in all my experience there have only been four Wolves with the ability to hide even the surface of their minds from me for any serious length of time: Lykaios, and Vsesalevich, and Jolie, and you. Maybe Aveline on her best day. Lykaios, and perhaps Vsesalevich, is dead, and neither Vsesalevich, nor you, nor Jolie, nor Aveline could conceivably do it for the extended length of time our hapless Actaeon, our Pretty Puppy, would have had to do it on the plane rides to the Island and back. If Pretty Puppy is such a cunning and powerful Wolf that he can jaunt in here without a care, outmatch you, Jolie, and Vsesalevich, but do it so cleverly as to hide behind a flawless facade of Pretty-Puppiness for endless hours despite my provocations of him, then I will eat my tie and surrender. No, no, no! I would not believe it if Cato insisted on it, or if it were spoken with lightning and thunder by the Sybil herself. At the same time, however, and for the same reason, he cannot be working alone. Which brings us to the most serious problem that faces us, far more serious than this Siberian kerfuffle has yet shown itself to be. What was Jolie doing while I was away?"

Seneca narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. "Nothing much beyond talking to a number of people. Officially she was still investigating this renegade Wolf situation."

Giles nodded. "It is a good excuse to talk to people. I would not be surprised if that were the reason behind this whole renegade Wolf story."

"You do realize what this means?"

"No, and neither do you. The single most important question for us right now is this: Is Jolie working with the Siberians, or is it just something that came up coincidentally?"

"It seems too convenient for coincidence."

"Come now, Sen. You know that if you were planning a coup, you would be able to make such excellent use of any coincidence that no one looking from the outside would be able to tell that you had not planned it that way. And, with all respect to you, Jolie is better at this than you are; her experience exceeds yours by a couple of centuries."

Seneca sat back again, discontentedly. "Unless you force it out of her, we will need time to get the answer to your question. And that ties our hands with regard to her."

Giles took Seneca's brandy glass and refilled it. "Precisely, he said as he handed it back. "Jolie is the more serious problem, but right now the game with her is one of patience and secrecy. Let her make the first slip, before she has any indication that we know what's happening. Keep a discreet eye on her, but I really think you should focus on the Siberian situation."

"We will need to reinforce Giuseppe," Seneca said, taking a sip. "He has always been the weak link in the triarchy, propped up on one side by us and on the other side by Vsaselevich. With Vsaselevich gone, he will lose control quickly; if any news of this has gotten out, half the Packs of Europe are probably already starting to break away. That's not the most important thing, but it is the most urgent. The most important thing is to find out what we can about what went on in Yakutsk to cause the problem. Perhaps it's time for the Aegidian Corporation to make an international tour of its overseas branches. They will need to be reminded of the importance of loyalty to the Aegidian mission. I'll head out for that in a few days. But we should send Giuseppe a back-up of Primes and reliable non-Primes immediately."

"I have already made the arrangements. The rest I leave in your capable hands." Giles moved around his desk to sit in his chair. As he sat back he said, "And Sen -- don't be too hard on Jolie; someday you, too, will find you have to scratch the itch and answer the question of whether you have grown enough to outmatch Aegidius."

Capitulum Quintum

"Move along," said Aveline. "There's a hidden door out by the tip in the back, but we need to move quickly."

Eric stumbled along, for although his heightened senses could make out more of the tunnel than yours or mine could, it lacked detail, and the floor was uneven. Aveline, on the other hand, smoothly bustled him along, without the slightest misstep, as if she were walking down an ordinary and well-lit hallway. Soon enough they reached an apparent dead-end, but Aveline touched a small, hidden switch in the wall; the wall swung out and she and Eric stepped out into the night air.

There was gravel under foot and the sky was dark with clouds above, with the moon peaking out here and there. The air was crisp. They had hardly taken a few steps when a noise made them freeze. Around the corner came a heavy-set man. He was carrying a gun.

What happened next happened at bewildering speed. Aveline pushed Eric behind her so hard that he fell to the ground, and stepped toward the man. Whatever she intended to do, however, she never had time to do it. Behind the man with the gun a low-slung shape moved. In the quickness of the moment it seemed to be shaped like a wolf, but that does not describe it in adequate terms. For it was very much like a wolf, but it was not like an animal at all.

Perhaps you, like I, have sometimes taken a walk after dark, away from the lights, with only glimmerings from the moon to guide you. At such times the shadows play tricks on you. That shadow looks like a dog or cat until you look again, this other shadow combined with some noise made by the wind makes you jump. What crept up behind the man with the gun was like a shifting of shadow in the moonlight, but far too deep, and far too dark, and far too substantial, as if night itself had been concentrated into solid form, into the shape of a wolf that was not flesh and blood but night and moonlight. It moved swiftly, and leaped up from wolf-shape to man-shape. It was as simple as that: as in a dream, in which one form shifts easily into another without warning, or like a trick of the eye, the wolf-shadow became a man-shadow standing close behind the man with the gun. The man-shadow reached out and grabbed the chin of the man with the gun, and wrenched it with extraordinary force to the right.

As the man with the gun fell, the moon came out in full from behind the clouds, and as swiftly as the wolf-shadow had become the man-shadow, the man-shadow became Giles, moonlight-pale in the pale moonlight. The heavyset man fell, I said, and as he did so, Giles seized his gun, and by the time the heavyset man had hit the ground, Giles had fired one bullet into his chest. It was all done in a single elegant motion, the flawless smoothness of a ballet dancer after a lifetime of performances. The whole event, from Aveline's first step forward to the gunshot, had taken only a few seconds.

Everything was still for one moment: Eric still on the ground, Aveline standing with her face to Giles and her gray hair shining in the moonlight, and Giles standing beside the body of the heavyset man, looking reflectively, almost abstractedly down at it. Then Aveline said, "It seems we did not have to take care of this one ourselves, after all."

Giles glanced briefly at her, then crouched by the body, looking closely at the man's face in the moonlight. "The other three were less of a challenge than I had hoped." Roysa came driving up in the car; its headlights were not lit and its tires made a low, harsh hushing noise on the gravel.

"What has happened to them?"

"I let them flee because I knew I would still have this one. And it seemed better to guarantee one than to risk losing them all, however unlikely it would be."

"Siberians?" asked Aveline, although it was only partly a question.

Giles, still crouching by the body, seemed reflective. "They were speaking Yakut, but not, I think, as native speakers, which is curious. But yes, they were Siberians. We are now in a state of war."

Eric, who had begun to feel self-conscious about sitting on the ground, rose to his feet. "What will we do with the body?"

"Prime at full moon," said Aveline.

"Prime at full moon," repeated Giles. "He is still alive. Already the moon has begun to repair the damage. But he will be unconscious a while longer, which gives us time to relocate before we begin the interrogations."

"I know just the place," said Aveline.

"Excellent." He looked up at her. "In situations like this I dislike playing Kingspiel, and it is difficult to say how much information we can get from this one alone. How well do you think you can track them down if he's unusually uncooperative?"

"We might be able to find out something about how they got in."

"They had guns with silver bullets. Surely that gives something to go on here on the Island; it's not as if you can simply stroll into the local gun store here and buy a revolver and silver ammunition."

"It might. But we don't have anything like the resources you do. There will likely be some mysteries we will never solve."

"I am fine with things remaining mysteries," said Giles. "Mysteries are acceptable; ignorance is not. I expect your best work on it. I do not like people scheming behind my back."

He rose to his feet and gestured at Eric. "Help me get this Wolf into the trunk of the car; I'd like to interrogate him tonight at some point, so would rather not risk damaging him much more."

He grabbed the man's shoulders and lightly lifted him up; Eric grabbed the legs. with some maneuvering they stuffed him in the car trunk, at which point the man gave a strange gurgling groan, proving that he was, in fact, still alive. Giles shut the trunk on him.

"It was impressive, what you did tonight," said Eric. "How long will it take before I can do the same?"

The moon had gone behind clouds again, so in the darkness nothing could be seen but Giles's dark eyes set in a barely visible pale face. He said nothing for what seemed a long time. Then: "You will ignore it, but allow me a moment of counsel. Be as human as you can for as long as you can, and don't grasp for more. Perpetual temptation is inevitable sin; driven by the wolfishness and the lunacy within, you will in a long life commit every evil of which you are capable. And if there is any sense in your brain, if you have any wits at all, you will at some point come to realize that for all practical purposes, the day you received the Bite was the day that you died. You have been judged and condemned to walk the earth as one of the living damned, and every power you have merely is another thing to damn you. And striving for hell merely proves that you deserve it. Now get in the car."

In the car, Aveline said, "Shall I do the honors with our guest, or will you?"

Giles seemed lost in thought a moment. Then he shook himself and said, "I will do it. Alone. Although--" and at this he looked back at Eric -- "I think our Actaeon here should see the first part, just so he can get a better sense of what I do to people who scheme behind my back." And he smiled angelically.

I will spare the reader any of the dull details of the interrogation. Suffice it to say that it occurred, and that as soon as was possible, Giles and Eric were again on a flight back. Giles was no more communicative than he had been on the flight there, but Eric was much less bothered by it this time. Indeed, he seemed ill for most of the flight.

As for Giles, he seemed more feverishly pale than usual; and when he opened his eyes, there seemed to be something very definitely wolfish about them.

Capitulum Quartum

Wherein a war begins

Seneca saw Giles and Eric off early in the morning. "You look like you are in an unusually good mood," he said to Giles, who was indeed smiling pleasantly.

"I dreamed this morning that I was dying of old age, having never become a Wolf," said Giles. "It was beautiful; the second-best dream I have had in centuries of dreaming."

Seneca looked doubtful at that, but said nothing. He handed a large manila envelope to Giles. "You should have everything you need. Aveline has called to say that she will meet you at the airport."

"Don't forget what we talked about," said Giles.

"I have already begun to take care of it."

In the car Eric tried to start a conversation, but Giles merely ignored him, looking out the window. Finally, in irritation, Eric said, "At least tell me where we are going."

"Aveline will meet us at London Gatwick; we'll then take a car to our final destination."

Eric coughed. "We are going to London? As in England? I don't have my passport or anything."

Giles pulled a smaller envelope out of the large envelope and handed it over. When Eric opened it, he found a number of documents, one of which was a passport. He opened it.

"David Actaeon," he read aloud. Then: "How did you get my real passport photo?"

But Giles was back to ignoring him, and Eric had a dull car ride.

The flight, on an Aegidian private jet, was equally dull, but much longer. Giles spent most of the trip with his eyes closed, but obviously not sleeping. Eric seethed.

Aveline, as it turned out, was a stout]woman with gray hair; her face was broad and cheerful, and might have been mistaken for stupid by anyone who did not notice her eyes, which had a clever, almost cunning, set to them.

"I hope your flight went well," she said cheerfully.

"It was wonderful," Giles replied with equal cheer. Eric seethed. But he put on a good face when Giles gestured at him and said, "This is my colleague, David Actaeon."

"Nice to meet you," he said.

"You are a sweet thing, aren't you," she said with cheerful irrelevance. "Roysa and the car are this way."

In the car the clever eyes took on an even more clever look. "Giuseppe has arrived," she said, "and will join us at the retreat tomorrow. We have heard nothing from Vsesalevich. Have you spoken to him?"

"No," said Giles, "everything was through intermediary. That's not uncommon, you know; communication is through Yakutsk, and he is hardly ever there in person." But he looked thoughtful. Then he said, "Do you know Giuseppe's two?"

She shook her head. "I've seen neither of them before. Should I look deeper?"

"It wouldn't hurt, but I don't think it will matter; Giuseppe's not the problem and he knows perfectly well that he can't even manage his figurehead status without my help. That you've heard nothing from Vsesalevich is more worrisome; he should have sent some message by now."

"I'll look into it anyway. As for the Siberians, what should we do?"

"Hmmm," said Giles. He looked out the window and did not answer for a moment. "At present there is nothing to be done," he said finally.

"I don't like playing things by ear," said Aveline.

"Everything is played by ear," Giles replied.

Aveline turned her shrewd eyes on Eric. "So, David," she said, "I don't seem to recall having heard of you."

"We are trying David out for some new responsibilities," said Giles with that air of abstracted indifference which seemed to be his default mood, before Eric could say anything. "He is a young one."

"And you said the name was Actaeon," said Aveline. "An interesting name."

Giles merely smiled and turned the discussion to other things. They talked about the state of things in Britain. Aveline seemed cheerfully pessimistic about everything, and said that she was hoping in a few decades to turn things over to her lieutenant, Roysa, and spend some time in Spain.

"Somehow I have difficulty imagining you lying around the beaches of Ibiza," Giles said. And this started Aveline off on an enthusiastic discussion of the merits and demerits of different locales in Spain. Somehow this branched off into a discussion of various Wolves they both knew -- this one had disappeared, that one was living in Swansea, this other one had committed suicide.

"A great loss, too," said Aveline, still in her cheerful way, "as there were days when I actually liked him."

At times Giles would fall silent, and in those periods Aveline would turn and talk to Eric about arts -- movies, songs, plays, painters -- or politics. She tended to talk about old classics as if they had just come out and politicians who had died long ago and whose names Eric had never heard. Eric began to regard her as somewhat harmless and senile until he had the sudden realization, as the car-ride was beginning to come to an end, that the whole point of her conversation had not been to talk art and politics but to gain a good estimate of how long he had been a Wolf.

It was dark as they drove up the driveway to the retreat house. A little sign in front had the Aegidian silver-A-on-black and the words 'Semele Seminar Centre,' also in silver on black background. The building itself looked much like a house, but a high-end modern house, the kind which has nothing built square but always at angles. As they passed through the entry hall, Eric pointed at a painting hanging above a small table, in which a man in brown was holding the paw of a wolf. "Another one of your Dominicans?" he asked.

Giles gave him a look of irritation mingled with pity and contempt, as if in the middle of annoyance he had had the sudden insight that Eric was the world's most stupid man. "Franciscan," he said shortly. "If he were Dominican he would be wearing black and white. In fact, he is the Franciscan; the painting is of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio." He said this as if he were explaining things to a very small child who should know better, causing Eric to flush with anger again. Seeing this, Giles smiled angelically and continued into the main conference room which occupied most of the first floor.

"There are bedrooms upstairs and to the right," said Aveline to Eric in her usual cheerful tone, "as well as a sitting room. So you should be well-set." She opened her mouth to say something but stopped.

Giles had walked into the center of the room, slowly sliding his hand along the large wooden table, when he had stopped suddenly, frozen in an attitude much like that of a man listening to distant music. He turned to Aveline.

"Where is the car? And is the secret exit still here?" he asked quietly.

"Roysa should be taking it to the garage on the outer perimeter," said Aveline. "And it is. Are we going out that way?"

"You and Eric are."

Aveline pulled out her phone and called Roysa back. Giles pointed at Eric. "He is currently the most vulnerable; at present I have no wish for him to die. There are three for me, but there may be one you will have to take care of yourself. Go."

"Well, then, David Actaeon," Aveline said briskly, grabbing his wrist and dragging him with prodigious speed and strength out of the room, "we are about to have an adventure."

Eric looked back and through the doorway saw Giles calmly adjust his tie and put his hands in his pockets, an expectant look on his face. Aveline turned a corner and Giles was lost to view.

"Come along, come along," said Aveline, as if Eric had had any choice given that her hand was gripped like a steel manacle around his wrist. She stopped only to press a hidden lever or button on the side of the frame of a man-sized mirror, which swung open to reveal a stair and tunnel.

Behind them they heard a loud crash, the breaking of glass, and a scream of pain.

"In you go," said Aveline, shoving him in so that he almost fell flat on his face. She stepped down behind him, closed the mirror-door, and continued to hurry him through the dark tunnel.

Capitulum Tertium

Wherein a plan is made

When Eric, tuxedo-clad, arrived at the party that night, his eye was drawn immediately to the figure of Jolie, standing off to the side, beneath two large paintings, entirely by herself. Anyone's eyes would be, and, at some point in the night or other, everyone's eyes were. The sunglasses were gone and her hair was up, and in her left hand a glass of champagne. She wore a shiny dress of many shades of blue, finely done so that the exact color of the shades seemed to shift as she moved; as it splashed down from her neck it brought out, to startling effect, the light blue of her eyes. She had diamonds around her neck, and in her ears, and in her hair, and around both wrists. No one of these gempieces was massive, but the combined effect was impressive. She seemed like some bright waterfall-goddess, beautiful, haughty, and unapproachable.

Or almost unapproachable, since Eric, after obtaining a glass of champagne himself, approached her immediately. As he drew near, he gestured at the paintings behind her.

"For some reason, Giles doesn't strike me as a religious man."

She turned and looked up at them. They were of equal size, side-by-side and painted in a similar style. Each was an icon of a different man dressed in black and white and holding a book. One of these men was an older man with a bishop's mitre and a crozier in the other hand; the other was an immense hulk of a man, somewhat younger, with a sun-symbol on his chest, who held a church in the other hand.

"They are not here for their religious value," Jolie said, "but for their sentimental value. He once told me that he picked these two out because they were the ones that were most like the originals. He knew them both."

"Another time, and another life," a quiet voice suddenly said right between them, causing them both to jump and spill their champagne. As Jolie had been drinking her glass longer, she fared better in the splash. The voice, of course, was Giles himself, also in a tuxedo, and also with a glass of champagne. The black of the tuxedo make him look even more deathly pale than he had before.

"Jolie, my dear," he said, reaching over and kissing her, "you have outdone yourself tonight. You look splendid." Then, turning to Eric, he said, gesturing at the painting to the left, "That is Albert," and, gestruing to the painting at the right, "That is Thomas." He took a sip from his champagne. "Before I received the Bite I was a Dominican; Albert was my teacher, and there was a time we knew each other well. As you can see, he did well for himself. But it was so long ago, and such a small percentage of all the life that I have led, that I really remember nothing more than fragments. Of Thomas I remember very little at all, and of Albert my most vivid memory is of helping him corner an ostrich." He shook his head. "Such a peculiar thing to remember.

He turned away from the paintings so resolutely that the other two felt compelled to turn as well. "But it was another life. At one point I was entrusted with a message of some importance to an eastern city whose name I do not even recall. The message never made it; the group I was with was waylaid by Lykaios and his followers. Every single one of them was slaughtered, except for me. I was given the Bite and spent the next century or so as a slave, and later assassin, of Lykaios, helping him fight some eastern squabble with some other Wolf warlord. He had a cruel sense of humor, the mighty Lykaios. I suppose it was some sort of private joke to take a Dog of the Lord and make him a Wolf of Lykaios. It must have seemed less funny when I killed him."

He took another sip from his champagne. "I have decided that Eric and I will go on a little trip together tomorrow," he said. "I have arranged to meet Vsesalevich and Giuseppe in a couple of days, with each allowed two Wolves accompanying as a bodyguard. I'll be taking Eric."

Giles did not look at Jolie at all, but her expression was stunned. Then her eyes narrowed. "What are you thinking, Gilles? Eric barely knows anything at all about being a Wolf; you'll need an experienced bodyguard."

This was dismissed with a contemptuous flick of Giles's fingers. "It will be full moon; the bodyguard is a formality. At full moon they could no more kill me than they could kill the moon itself. I could go alone and would not need to fear."

"There are other worries," Jolie insisted. "You could be detained, or...."

"Not in the least," said Giles, shaking his head. "It's on my Island; Aveline will be there. I have all the advantages. Besides," he said with an enigmatic smile, gesturing at Eric, "It will do him good to get out a bit. And meeting with Vsesalevich we might learn something relevant to this renegade Wolf, and I am sure Eric would want to know that immediately."

"He could also be damaged badly if things go wrong."

Giles rounded on Eric suddenly. "How about it, Eric? Do you feel brave enough to handle the risk? Or would you like to stay here where Jolie can protect you?" The tone and face were serious, but the dark eyes were mocking, and Eric flushed with anger.

"I can take care of myself," he said.

"I agree," said Giles. "So let's have no more of this, Jolie. I'll take Eric; just promise me that you and Seneca will keep things orderly while I'm away."

"I don't like it, Gilles. This isn't like you."

The response was a shrug. "My joyless eye finds no object worth its constancy," he said cryptically, and wandered off to talk to others who had attended the party. As Giles had said, it was an Aegidian affair, having nothing to do with Wolves, and thus his conversation was all of investments and policies the rest of the party.

After the party, however, he met with Seneca in his study.

"I don't like it," said Seneca after having heard over brandy of Giles's intention to take Eric -- or "Pretty Puppy" as Giles contemptuously called him -- to the summit. "There are too many things that could go wrong."

"There are always too many things that could go wrong," said Giles, "which is why one should always plan on things going wrong. And I have, to the extent that ordinary ingenuity can manage it. But things are quite favorable in this case. It will be full moon. And it is on my Island, so Aveline will be there."

"Aveline is solid," Seneca said reluctantly. "But I would hate to have her alone to depend on."

"Perhaps, but as I said: full moon. And at full moon I am a more-than-sufficient bodyguard for myself. It will work splendidly."

Seneca leaned back in his chair and looked searchingly at Giles's pallid face; Giles's great, dark eyes looked back unfathomably. Finally Seneca said, "What are you playing at? This is too whimsical for the Wolf who is always a step ahead. What are you really trying to do? I can understand the meeting -- Vsesalevich needs to be confronted with our knowledge of these unauthorized incursions and made to see that, whatever game he is playing, he cannot win it. But taking Eric just to get some training in is too arbitrary."

Giles smiled. "You should know better than to treat me as predictable, Sen. But Pretty Puppy can do me no harm, and possibly some good, I assure you." He took Seneca's glass and poured him another brandy -- Giles himself rarely drank except over dinner, and had no glass himself. As he handed the glass back, Giles said, "Do promise me one thing, Sen. Be discreet about it, but keep a close eye on Jolie while I'm away."

Seneca frowned. "Do you think she will try something while you are gone?"

"She's Jolie; of course she will try something. The real question is whether she will try something that you or I need to worry about. As to that -- I don't think so. Jolie, however, plays the game as if it were poker; bluffs and counterbluffs, smoke and mirrors. One should never go on an estimate of her intentions, but on the objective tendency of her actions given the probabilities on the table. Whatever she actually does while I'm away, it's always worth knowing what she does."

"I can't imagine her doing anything. It just seems reckless."

Giles laughed shortly. "You would say that. It is not reckless. It is Wolfish, at least Wolfish in Jolie's style. But you don't see it because you play the game differently. She may play it like poker, but you play it like chess: few gambles, much maneuvering. You are both extraordinarily talented, but it is why neither of you could really take my place if I were to vanish tomorrow: you play the wrong game."

"What game should we play?" asked Seneca drily. "Badminton? What do you play?"

"Easy to answer, Sen," said Giles. "The game I play is life and death with every breath. Life and death with every breath."

Capitulum Secundum

Wherein we learn something of Wolves

The mansion of Giles Scott is not a showy building, but there are a few noticeable flourishes. The first flourish that one meets is the gate, which bears the silver A on a black shield which also serves as the logo of the Aegidian Corporation, of which he is chief executive officer. Passing through the gates takes you along a meandering lane over manicured grounds, much as you respect, until you reach the front of the house itself, large but unremarkable in appearance. It is not made to impress, either by its beauty or its ugliness, and one gets the impression that even its size is mostly utilitarian. If you circle the house, however, you find that the back is far more impressive than the front, with a large verandah, tiled with black and white that stretches over most of the back and overlooks an extensive garden stretching out to woods on one side and to a pond on the other. The central portion of the verandah is a large semicircle, and as the tile approaches it, its pattern starts swirling in to create a kind of whirlwind of black and white. On days that are sunny but not hot, they set out a table and chairs there for a late breakfast -- breakfasts are always late, for Giles Scott has notoriously made millions while never working before noon -- and afterward simply take in the view at leisure, or read, or talk.

Such a table was set out this day with four chairs, three of which were occupied, by Giles, Seneca, and a young woman wearing sunglasses. It was apparently not a day for talking; Giles was reading with a large book on his lap, and Seneca mostly stared out at the garden, while the young woman, who seemed hungover, still had not finished her meal. The silence was broken by Giles saying, without looking up from his book, "It seems that the cub is up and about." Seneca glanced over at him, then back to the garden; the young woman showed no indication of even having heard. It was several minutes later that Eric walked out and joined them. He looked much healthier than he had the day before, in an All-American-but-recovering-from-a-light-flu sort of way. His sandy hair was carefully combed.

"How are you feeling today?" Seneca asked him as he pulled up the remaining chair.

"Much better," Eric said. "But everything still seems too vivid."

"Your senses are bringing in much more information than your brain is used to interpreting," said Seneca. "But you seem to be recovering quickly. When I received the Bite I was in a delirium that lasted for days."

Giles finally looked up from his book and thoughtfully contemplated Eric, a forefinger lightly tapping his bottom lip. Finally he said, indicating the young woman but not taking his eyes off Eric, "You have not met Jolie yet."

Jolie took time enough from pushing the food around her plate to look at him without a sign of interest.

"Good to meet you," said Eric.

"Hmmm," she replied, and turned her attention back to her plate. Giles turned his eyes back to the book, but seemed to be lost in thought.

"You'll have to forgive her," said Seneca. "She has spent day and night tracking the Wolf that gave you the Bite."

"Any luck?" Eric asked, looking at Jolie again. She did not return the look.

"No," said Seneca."He seems a slippery one."

"Yes," said Giles in a neutral tone. "Remarkably so. It is not really acceptable to have such a wraith still running about." Jolie glanced sharply at him, but he was still looking at his book.

"It still seems unreal to be talking about werewolves," said Eric. "I don't really know what it means. Do I turn into a wolf every full moon? Could I turn into a wolf at will? What's involved in being a werewolf?"

Giles looked up again, the thoughtful look still on his face. Then he smiled, but it was an enigmatic smile. "Don't try it; in your state it will be weeks before we manage to get you back. But yes, if you have the strength you can take the form of a wolf, or anything intermediate between human and wolf form. You have preternatural senses; it's just a matter of practice before you will be able to use them."

"It is like being in a dream," said Seneca, "where you can take control of it, and shape yourself as you will, if you have the presence of mind."

"Yes," said Giles, "like a dream. The strength of your abilities wax and wane with the moon, and are stronger at night than during the day, but they never go away, because the moon that matters is inside you."

"What does that mean?" asked Eric.

"There are many stories, but the one that I think makes the most sense of everything as long as you don't try to understand what really lies behind it is one I heard many years ago. Originally the moon was brighter than it is now, pure and splendid, full of infinite and formless possibility. But when the human race began to look up at it, it was too much, too bright, too formless, and it drove them mad. So the face of the moon was marred, and a veil was put over it, and the strength of its light was linked to the sun and earth.

"But before that happened, the story goes, some of the pure light of that primal moon escaped, and wherever it enters, men go insane, because the human mind cannot grasp infinite possibility of form, and they die, because its primal splendor burns them away from the inside. But the wolf is more a creature of the moon than man is,and can bear it more easily, and at some point the moonlight became entangled with the wolfishness of the wolf. The spirit of the wolf filters it, restrains it, takes its infinite possibilities and confines it to a range of forms, and therefore makes it more manageable to the human mind. You, and I, and Jolie, and Seneca, and all other Wolves -- we were infected with the madness of the moon, which is too bright to bear, but it is cloaked in the spirit of the wolf, which the human mind, if it is strong enough, can master. This is why we are not natural wolves, but preternatural ones: it is the dream-wolf, the moon-wolf, that possesses us."

"There has to be a scientific explanation of it all."

"Of course there is," said Giles with sarcasm, "and when you are dealing with werewolves the scientific explanation is that they have been infected by the madness of the moon, and that that insanity is so powerful that it can express itself in real form. When you find you can turn into a wolf and do other things no ordinary human being can do, it is a little arbitrary to claim that insanity is an unlikely explanation."

Seneca laughed softly. Eric flushed angrily, but said nothing, merely making himself a plate. Giles looked thoughtful again, then shook himself and continued; but he still seemed distracted by his thoughts.

"You are factus maniacus per lunam maniacam. You do not feel it yet, but both the light and the wolfishness are powers man was not made to bear, one too high and one too low; in us they are moral toxins, stirring up intense desires and cravings of extraordinary kinds, dispositiones bestiales propter perniciosam naturam, things no human being was ever meant to feel. Desires to rule, to dominate, to hunt, to destroy. Reason can tame the wolf, as it can tame the man; but the wolf has the power of the moon on its side, and thus is far more difficult to keep in check. On their own most Wolves fail; the lone Wolf sooner or later succombs to self-destructive tendencies. But Wolf can impose order on Wolf: in a Pack, under the leadership of a strong enough Prime Wolf, they can be restrained, civilized."

"And you are a 'Prime Wolf'?"

"You are the only one at this table who is not."

Seneca interposed. "He is more than Prime; he is to Primes what Primes are to other Wolves. Once every Wolf was either alone or under the tyranny of some warlord. He changed that centuries ago, which is why you are here chatting over breakfast with him rather than enslaved or running mad across the fields until someone figured out how to kill you."

Eric jumped on one word: "Centuries? I'm immortal now?"

Giles said, "Nothing on this earth is immortal. But the moonlight inside you makes you largely invulnerable; you can recover from wounds that would be fatal to ordinary men, and your body resists aging. But only largely; you are more vulnerable at new moon, and just as the moon gives you power, what has affinity to the moon can potentially kill you. But it is not possible to define any exact limit: how far you can go, how much you can endure, what you can actually do, depends entirely on the strength of the madness within you and the strength of your will to control it."

"So not everyone has it to the same degree?"

"No." Giles returned abruptly to his book. Seneca, with a puzzled glance at him, continued for him.

"Some things, like the power of the Wolf that gave the Bite, can make a difference."

Eric looked at Giles. "And how powerful was the Wolf that bit you?"

Both Jolie and Seneca looked first at Eric, then at Giles, but Giles simply finished whatever he had been reading and looked up slowly to meet Eric's gaze calmly. It was Eric who looked away first.

"It is no secret," said Giles quietly but coldly. "Nor did I receive the Bite from some anonymous renegade. I am the Scion of Lykaios, a warlord and the Destroyer of Man and Wolf. For uncounted centuries he ravaged northern Asia, and Scandinavia, and into northern Germany. I received the Bite from him. I killed for him. I attained Primacy under him. And for all that he was rumored to be invincible, I killed him nearly seven centuries ago, and under circumstances that everyone before that day had thought impossible. And I am the only Scion of Lykaios, the only one who still survives, because I killed the others, one by one. Make no mistake, little puppy; others have assumed from my appearance that I was half-sick and weak, and none of them have survived, either. It is a very unlucky thing to think."

There was an awkward silence, during which Giles simply continued gazing at Eric, while Eric attempted to meet the gaze again and found he could not. Then Jolie turned to Eric and said, "You must not take Gilles too seriously," she said. Although she had no noticeable accent in general, her pronunciation of the name was clearly different from Seneca's, as if it were a French name. "He gets very intense about his ancient history. Do you not, Gilles?" She turned from the sandy-haired man to the black-haired one. Giles slowly turned toward her and smiled, although he seemed not to be smiling at her but in her direction.

"Quite right," said Giles. "But some kinds of history seem to call for it." He leaned back and looked at the sky, and said, "I have a number of meetings this afternoon, Eric, but I should be able to push forward with something to help us gather more information that may help us track down this renegade Wolf that killed Joanne." He suddenly brought his gaze down, disconcertingly. "We're having a party tonight; nothing to do with Wolves, just a small affair for the Aegidian Corporation. I hope you will attend? We can talk, perhaps, a bit then."

"Certainly."

"Excellent. We have no idea what this renegade Wolf is doing, and until we do, you are safest here. I insist on your staying with us for a while until we get this worked out. You are free to use any facilities, and I will have Marcos put out appropriate clothes for the party." He smiled. It was polite, the tone was pleasant, but the meaning was clear: Eric was to remain at the house and was dismissed from the table. Slowly, reluctantly, Eric obeyed and took his leave.

As he walked into the house and the door closed behind him, Seneca said, "Do you think he will try to make trouble?"

Giles returned to his book. "It doesn't matter whether he does or not."

"I find something unsettling about him," Seneca said thoughtfully.

"I think he shows some promise," said Jolie.

"Yes," said Giles drily, "he cuts a figure as a very pretty puppy."

Jolie looked at him sharply, but did not respond.

Capitulum Primum

Wherein we meet the Wolf of Wolves.

It was a bad-tempered September evening when Eric Masters received the Bite. When he had chosen the weekend for camping with his girlfriend Joanne it had seemed auspicious enough. The weather reports had all been excellent, promising sun and slight cloud, nothing worse. And those promises were fulfilled up to about noon on Friday, after which it grew cloudier and cloudier as evening approached until Masters began to prepare for a wet night. Since Joanne had pitched the tent and Eric could never quite bring himself to trust her on such matters, he double-checked that it was pitched correctly and, for good measure, used a tarp to put up a make-shift extra roof to prevent rain from beating directly down on the tent fabric. It did not take long, but it was wasted effort; it never rained that night and, if it had, I suppose it would no longer have been a matter of concern to him.

By this point it was getting dark quickly. He crawled into the tent, where Joanne sat beside a lantern and said to her, "Well, that's about as secure as we're going to get it."

Joanne, who had no illusions about Eric's real purpose in making one last check, said, "Aren't you lucky to have a girlfriend who can pitch a perfect tent?" They both heard a low rumble outside, like thunder in the distance.

"Absolutely," said Eric, kissing her with a feigned sincerity that fooled no one. Joanne laughed. It was a high-pitched laugh, but at the same time somewhat more like a donkey's bray than a human laugh should be. People hated Joanne's laugh. For that matter, Eric hated Joanne's laugh, too, and had spent most of their first year of dating making every effort to avoid it. Unfortunately, she was a cheerful person and her laughter came freely and easily. Eric had simply had to get used to the perpetual donkey bray, although it had been surprisingly easy once he had set out with a will to do it. And aside from that she had much to recommend her; she was somewhat pretty, very good-tempered, and liked the outdoors; and while Eric himself grew bored with them if exposed to them for long periods, he was, it must be said, quite taken with the general idea of a woman who liked the outdoors. The thunder rumbled again.

Eric leaned over to say something to Joanne but was interrupted with an intense thump against the side of the tent that made them both jump.

"It's the tarp," said Eric; "it must have come untied."

Joanne laughed. "Would you like me to go out and tie it right?"

"No," Eric said testily, moving to the tent door. "I'll fix it."

Outside it was dark, but still not pitch black: the kind of liminal darkness to which the eyes can barely adjust but which still allows you to see, in which everything is shades of black and gray. He went over to the flapping corner of the tarp and grabbed it, peering as best as he could at the cord that had held it and had been thumping against the tent. Something wasless than right about it.

"Joanne!" he shouted. "Light!"

She crawled out of the tent with the lantern and went over to stand by him.

"As I thought," he said to himself. Then to her: "Look at this. It's almost as if someone had cut it."

"If you tie something so that it rubs against something sharp in the wind, it will do that," she said drily.

"I did no such thing," he said coldly. "And this wind isn't that strong. Besides...."

The thunder sounded again, but outside the muffling walls of the tent, it was clear enough that it was no thunder. It had enough rumble to it, a low tone, deep and powerful, that seemed to pass through the air and resound inside one's head, but it was not the thunder. The sky itself was quiet; this sound seemed to come horizontally, or even through the ground, not from above. And while the volume of it was like distant thunder, its source was clearly very close. There was a rustling in the bushes off to their side.

"Give me the lantern and go back to the tent," he ordered. Joanne opened her mouth to say something, but then simply shut it and obeyed. Eric edged forward toward the bushes, but had hardly taken two steps When Joanne shrieked behind him. He turned and froze.

At the edge of the lantern-light, not far from where Joanne herself, frozen with fear, was some kind of great, hulking animal. It was difficult to make out in detail; mostly what one saw, or perhaps what one remembered seeing, were the eyes, glinting reddish gold in the light, great, inhuman eyes, bestially cruel but cunningly intelligent. But one also remembered the teeth, a row of sharp teeth, gleaming white, and snapping. If you suddenly saw a great dog, or any other fierce animal snapping out you, you would see the snapping almost before you saw the animal, and it is that which would stick in your mind. So it was here; it seemed to be almost nothing but glinting eyes and snapping teeth. The beast had a human-ish form, but its movements were too quick to make out anything with precision, and it stayed out of direct light, snapping in the barely enlightened darkness around Joanne without actually snapping at her. Or so it was for the first few seconds; it soon lunged directly at Joanne, who tripped and fell backward. It threw itself on her.

The speed at which this all happened was almost too fast for the mind to take in, and without any thought at all, Eric dropped the lantern and rushed at the beast and Joanne. It was too late, however; the beast in a great leap sprang over Eric's head in one smooth motion, and as Eric reached Joanne he saw in the light of the lantern that she was covered with blood. He crouched and cradled her head in his hands as she drew a last few gasping breaths, and as the living eye of Joanne took on the unseeing stare of the dead. When he pulled his hands away, they were wet with blood.

But things were still moving too quickly. Behind him there was a cracking sound and the lantern went out. Eric, again with no time to think, only to react, fled. In the ever-increasing dark he stumbled; but each time he rose and fled again. But it was futile, for he would hear the rustling and twig-cracking of the beast behind him, then ahead of him, then off to his right, then off to his left, as if it were somehow everywhere at once, or as if it were moving so swiftly that it was running circles around him as he ran. Now and again the rustling would transform into the snapping beast itself, and Eric would flee blindly in the opposite direction. All of this had taken just a few minutes, but it felt to Eric as if he had been running for hours when the beast tired of the sport, and suddenly appearing in front of him, threw him to the ground and bit him hard on the shoulder right at the base of the neck. He screamed. The world went red, then it went black. The last he remembered before he actually blacked out was the beast letting go and the shouts of human voices.

He drifted in and out of consciousness for some time, sometimes seeing faces or vague forms but mostly just dreaming strange dreams. The dreams were mostly feverish nightmares of rumbling man-beasts, or of Joanne's face with the staring, dead eyes, or of his hands covered with blood. But one recurring dream, although the simplest, was the worst of all. In it he saw the moon, shining so brightly that it seemed to pierce not just cloud but rock and earth. It simply radiated brilliance, shining and shining and shining until he felt that he would go mad looking at it.

At the end of about a day and a half, he woke as from a restless sleep and found himself in a beautifully furnished room he had never seen before, with gauzy curtains blowing in a pleasant breeze and the sun pouring through the window. Everything in the room seemed to stand out in feverish colors. There were birds raucously arguing somewhere outside the window, and the breeze carried in a deep scent of flowers. The sun was too bright. The walls were too straight. The flapping of the curtains in the breeze was too noisy. Everything seemed relentlessly distinct from everything else, as if it were shouting to be noticed.

The door opened and a man walked into the room. He was small and wiry, and his light sweater vest and bowtie, both apparently quite expensive, were brightly colored, standing out cheerfully against his dark skin. "I thought you might be awake," he said. his voice, though quiet, was strong and clear.

"Where am I?" Eric asked.

"You are in one of the guest rooms in the house of Giles Scott," replied the man. We found you suffering from the Bite and Giles had you brought here to recover."

Eric tried to clear his head, but everything was still pushing at him. "You are not Giles Scott?"

"No," the man said. "My name is Seneca Lewis. I am what you might call an associate of Mr. Scott." The man looked intently at Eric for a few moments. "It looks like you need more rest. Just relax. We will send for you this afternoon when you are more fully recovered, and we will talk through what happened." He left and Eric sank back into the pillows and tried to close his eyes against the pushiness of the room.

He woke with a start several hours later and found Seneca Lewis standing by the door as if he had just walked in. "Come along," he said. "Mr. Scott and I would like to talk with you."

They walked down a long hallway with paintings on the wall, both right and left, and many doors, then down a small stairway at the end, then down another long hallway to something like a waiting room, which they walked through. Seneca pushed through a large mahogany door into a large office or study. Old leatherbound books lined the wall; there was a plant in one corner and some statuary in another; and at one end of the room there was a desk, around which were gathered three chairs on one side and one chair on the far side. That chair was occupied by a man.

He was not an imposing figure, although there was something striking about him. He had black hair, slightly curly, and large, startlingly dark eyes with long lashes, and he was thin. He was dressed immaculately in a suit that probably would have cost most people half a year's salary or more. What was most noticeable about him, however, was his pallor. He was pale, so pale he seemed almost ill, especially given his thinness. He had no ravaged or sickly look about him, and indeed had a sort of youthful boyishness in his face, but he seemed too pale for health.

"Mr. Masters," he said, gesturing to the chair immediately in front of the desk, "please sit down." His voice was pleasant and precisely enunciated.

Eric did so, and Seneca Lewis took the chair to his right.

"You are Giles Scott?" Eric asked.

"I am."

"Why did you bring me here instead of taking me to a hospital?"

Giles seemed drily amused. "They would hardly have known what to do with you. Tell me, what happened last night?"

Eric found himself describing what had happened as best as he could; however, he was much less coherent in telling it than I was above. At several points during the telling Giles and Seneca exchanged glances. And when he was done Giles leaned back in his chair and gazed somewhat disquietingly at Eric for some moments.

"Do you have any inkling of what has happened to you?" he asked abruptly.

Eric was immediately angry. "I was bitten by an animal that killed my girlfriend. Yes, I am completely aware of what happened to me."

The man on the other side of the desk was unfazed. "Eric," he said, "you were bitten by a werewolf."

"A werewolf," Eric repeated dully.

"Yes."

"A werewolf," Eric repeated again.

"Yes. You have received the Bite."

"The Bite?"

"I quickly get annoyed with people who merely repeat what I say, Eric. Yes, the Bite, the Bite of the Wolf. Do you know what happens to people who receive the Bite?"

Eric simply stared at Giles, then looked at Seneca, who leaned forward and said, "You have become a werewolf yourself, Eric."

"And what are you? Werewolf hunters?" Eric said incredulously.

"No," said Seneca, "we are werewolves, too."

"You were the one who just told us you were bitten by a man-shaped beast-thing with sharp teeth," said Giles drily; "are you really trying to argue the point? And do you not feel it? Doesn't everything seem a little more real than it should, like it has a little too much in its muchness?" He smiled darkly. "Like a fever, or insanity."

Eric put his hand to his forehead. "Is it some kind of virus?"

Giles made a face and contemptuously dismissed the suggestion with a flick of his fingers. "Viruses cannot do what has been done to you. You are infected not with a virus but with the spirit of the Wolf and the power of the lunatic moon."

Eric remembered the nightmare about the moon and shuddered. He closed his eyes. "Why was I bitten?" He became angry again. "And why was Joanne killed?"

"Interesting questions," said Giles. "It is not supposed to happen. There is some renegade running around behind my back, and I have to tell you, Eric, that this does not please me. It will be necessary to track him down and destroy him."

"Do you know who it is?" asked Eric looking up suddenly.

Giles looked back with his dark, unfathomable eyes. "Know? But there are things happening that give us some threads to follow. There are a number of Packs of Wolves throughout the world; many of them are unaligned, but for the most part they tend to fall within three major alliances, one of which I lead. The leaders of these three alliances form a triarchy whose formal and informal agreements keep everyone else in line. Lately, however, the Siberian alliance has been somewhat restless, and we have found an increasing number of its spies about."

"And you think that one of these spies killed Joanne?"

The other man shrugged. "It is a matter that needs to be investigated."

"I want to help."

"Eventually."

"Now."

In response Giles simply picked up a large paperweight from the desk and threw it with extraordinary force and speed at Eric's head. Eric reflexively caught it, but barely.

"Good," said Giles, "but not good enough; had I thrown it just a little harder you would now have a dent in your head. Sen, I think, was a little too optimistic about how quickly you had recovered. There will be plenty of time for helping us when you have revived enough not to be a liability."

Eric put his hand to his head, which did ache somewhat, and at some invisible signal the door behind him opened.

"Marcus here will take you back to your room," Giles said. "If you require anything, simply ask the staff."

After Eric had left, Seneca turned to Giles and said, "Do you really think the Russians are behind it?"

Giles gave him a sarcastic look. "Siberian spies playing messy cat-and-mouse games with idiot campers in the middle of nowhere like in some bad horror movie, clever enough to give us the slip but stupid enough to leave someone with the Bite? You know better than that, Sen." He looked up at the ceiling. "No, there is something else going on here. But in the meantime there have been an unusual number of Siberian agents about, and truth will look after its own consistency better than any lie will, until we know how to proceed."