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.
