"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.
