Capitulum Septimum Decimum

Jolie, like Eric, sat alone in a small room with only one door, but she did not see Giles enter. She had glanced at the door and looked away, and when she looked back, he was there, leaning against the closed door, darkly savage eyes looking out from a feverishly pale face.

Their eyes locked and held. Then Jolie said, "What are you going to do with Eric?"

Giles shrugged. "He is no longer your concern." And Jolie looked away.

There was silence for what must have been several minutes, after which Giles said, "You leave me with an interesting conundrum. What shall I do with you, I wonder?"

Without looking up, Jolie said, "What I wonder is why you haven't killed me yet."

"That is an interesting question," Giles replied. "Is there any reason to kill you?" He slid down the door until he was sitting, his eyes never leaving her. "Elsbietka, perhaps. You should not have killed her. She had such colors in her; the moon never entirely bleached them out. That was deserving of death, perhaps."

She turned her head and looked directly at him. "You know as well as I that if I had not killed her, she would have killed me."

"True enough. In a way, it was my fault, for underestimating the animus between you. She always could hold a grudge; I should have taken that more seriously. Still it is not reason enough to kill you, and what other reason could I possibly have?"

Jolie narrowed her eyes. "I tried to undermine you and have you killed."

Giles shrugged. "I began preparing for that the day I met you, as I did with Aveline, and with Seneca, and with every Wolf who is worth my time. Actually, in some ways I admire the approach. Most Wolves who try to take me on make the mistake of going directly for me; this turns it into a direct battle, and I am the Invincible Wolf: the moon guarantees my victory in any direct battle. To work indirectly was exactly the right strategy, and by doing it you managed to drag it out longer than most do. But in the end it is futile either way. Whether the play is three acts or five, I am the deus ex machina, and can still guarantee one ending. Our lives are governed by a nightmare-logic in which nothing matters but what you know. I know more." He reflected a moment, then said, "I would be interested in knowing what the hurry was. You could have given yourself more time to prepare."

It was Jolie's turn to shrug. "The longer the preparation, the greater the likelihood you would have been able to stop me, no? And I was tired. Tired of sitting on a balcony doing nothing, tired of hunting down and slapping a wayward Wolf back in line here and there, just tired. Particularly when we could do so much more; we could break this little world into pieces, and instead we read books over breakfast, muzzled."

"It is the way things must be."

"Why? Because you say so, because it is your will?"

"Yes!" The word came out with a savage snap. "Because I say so, because it is my will! Because I want order, I want civilization, I want reading over breakfast and sitting on a balcony, I want the muzzling of the Wolf. Because even damnation cannot take away reason, I want all the reason I can get...." He checked himself and closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them again his tone was more calm. "You are too young to remember what it was like, in the days of Lykaios and the warlords. Every Wolf against every Wolf and every Pack against every Pack, with no order but what force and violence could make. You have never had the Will of Lykaios pounding in your brain, driving you into ever greater abysses of savagery. Be more Wolf, it said, be more Wolf, kill, maim, destroy. You do not know. All of your life you have known the Will of Aegidius, a whisper in the back of your head so steady you never notice it, telling you to be more human. The day you kill me, it will begin to vanish all away, and you will find that your allies turn treacherous and your enemies savage, and that all the order you have known will drift away like smoke into a civil war of Wolves. I've no doubt you could handle it; but right now you have no idea. Vsesalevitch and I felt the savagery,and fought it, and after the death of Lykaios began to chain it. Elsbietka came on the scene when we were already more than halfway through, and Aveline can just remember the last days of the last Warlords, and helped us finally kill that slippery devil Oleg." He looked at his hands, then with wry smile shrugged. "It does not matter. There is no point in killing you, because I need Primes who can get things done, and you've always been one of the best at that. And with Elsbietka gone, there will be far more work to do. So instead I give you the choice of joining forces with me again."

He rose and Jolie looked up at him. "How do you know that you can trust me?" she said.

"Seneca will no doubt be keeping one eye on you from here on out. Besides, I have never really trusted anyone for as long as I have been a Wolf," he replied, opening the door, and stood beside it expectantly.

"And what if I refused?"

"The only refusals I accept are my own," he said. "Besides, we both know you will take it because it is the only way you will have a chance to kill me and take over in a couple more centuries."

He looked at her; she looked at him. Then suddenly she threw her hands up with something like a surrender and rose from her chair. She walked out the door, not looking back, and he followed behind her.

Capitulum Sextum Decimum

Giles was standing pensively beside the window when Aveline entered the office.

"How are things going with the hunt?" he said without turning.

"Marcos seems to be pleased with it. There are still more than a few to track down, though."

"Make sure he doesn't stretch himself too far and get himself killed."

"Of course."

There was silence a moment. Then Aveline said, "Seneca is waiting for you in the basement. They have not changed."

"Of course not." He finally turned and looked at her. "I will be doing some redistributing in the near future; probably temporary, but perhaps not. I will need you to stay for a while so you can help Seneca." She nodded, and then he said, "Tell Seneca I will be down in a moment." And he turned back to the window.

***

It was a long, dim, and slightly damp corridor with steel doors that had . When Giles entered, Seneca, who was leaning against the wall, said, "They are beginning to get restless."

"Good," said Giles. "I will take Eric first."

"Before you go in, tell me how you did it. The door, I mean."

Giles looked at him a long while, then said, "I argued with the moon until I convinced her that the door was weak and easy to open; and her madness overwhelmed the sanity of the world."

"I have no idea what that means."

"So it seems." And he opened one of the steel doors in the corridor and went in.

Eric was chained down, sitting in a chair in the middle of a room with white walls and nothing else but another chair. When Giles entered, he looked up but then looked away.

Giles smiled a cold and enigmatic smile. "That oother of hem is newliche chaunged into a wolf, and howleth whan he wolde wepe," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means you have been ravenous for wealth that is not yours," Giles replied, sitting down in the other chair, still wearing the cold smile. He adjusted his tie slightly, which was striped reddish-gold and the only thing of color in the room. It made him seem even more feverishly pale than usual. "How are you, Eric?"

Eric at first merely looked at him sullenly without, however, quite meeting his eyes. But since Giles continued to gaze at him with that savage and unsettling glance and that cold and enigmatic smile, he squirmed, then said, "You will learn nothing from me."

"You have nothing to teach me, Eric. For every day you have been a Wolf I have been one a decade and more. So you can teach me nothing about being a Wolf. Do you think I could have so easily crushed Jolie's little game of rebellion if I had not known every single move she made? And I have Jolie herself. So you can teach me nothing about that. What do you think you could possibly teach me? About yourself, perhaps. No doubt there are things I do not know there; but I can count on one finger all the things in your life I could possibly need to know, and I know it. I do not need to learn anything from you."

"So are you here just to kill me?"

The smile grew slightly broader. "Is there any reason I should not?"

Eric merely shrugged.

"But, in fact, Eric, no, I am not here just to kill you. You have not shown yourself to be colorful enough to be worthy of my personal attention in that regard. If your death were all I wanted, I would throw you to some minor Wolf for practice."

"I helped Jolie rebel against your out-of-date medieval regime."

There was a twitch at the corner of Giles's mouth. "Yes, I suppose in some weak sense you did," he said carelessly. "But I do not kill people for such things, unless I have to do so. Every Wolf rebels; it is the nature of the beast. To crave power forever is to seek it at least sometimes. Whatever you may think, you have never been a threat to me, and killing you would not be a noticeable example for anyone. Had you been the one who killed Bitka, that would be reason, but we both know that Jolie did that, and daring to devour the heart of a Wolf who was your better ten times over was impudent but not a reason for your death."

"If you are not here to kill me, why are you here?"

Giles leaned forward. "What I said was that I am not here just to kill you. You will be dead before I leave this room. But I hope that you can give me something I want."

Eric turned away in contempt. "If you are going to kill me, I have no reason to give you anything."

Giles shrugged. "We are not at an impasse here," he said coolly and quietly. "I can easily supply reasons for you to give me absolutely anything I want. And I assure you, before I leave you will be glad to do so. There are ways of dying. And then there are other ways of dying. How cooperative you are will determine which I select. And what I am asking of you is not very difficult."

"What do you want?"

The Wolf-King rose. "Let us have a conversation a moment, Eric. Let us go back to the beginning; start over, so to speak. When you first met me, you lied to me. I don't really take offense at that. The daring of it is actually almost admirable; and the Spirit of the Wolf likes a bit of daring. The first time I met Lykaios I shoved a crucifix in his face; it amused him. The lie, we can regard it as an amusing jeu d'esprit. But it is in the way of what I want, because I want a confession."

"You will get nothing out of me," said Eric with a shake of his head.

"Come now, Eric," said Giles. "We have already been through this. I already know everything I need to know. I just want your confession. And not even about everything. I have no interest in whatever shenanigans made Jolie decide to give you the Bite. I never realized it was that bad, but her taste has always been a little off. No, all I want is one simple confession. I want you to say what we both know to be true. That you killed Joanne Sommers."

Eric looked at him with a slightly baffled, slightly wary look, but said nothing.

"I will hear you say it. You had already received the Bite. You lost control of yourself. And you killed her. Say it."

Eric said nothing, and Giles looked down at him with dark gaze and cold smile. Finally Giles said, "Tell me, Eric, do you know what torture is? I mean, I assume that even you know the meaning of the word, but do you know what it is to be tortured?"

"You are going to torture and kill me because you think I killed Joanne."

Something about this made Giles pause, and he sat down, although his smile stayed the same. He steepled his index fingers and touched them to his lips and looked at Eric a while. "You were quite right when you said I was medieval," he said finally. "Although we, of course, called ourselves modern; history is just one long succession of modern ages. Even after all this time something sticks. It was a great age. In some ways you would call it savage or primitive, but we did more with less, and if we did not get as far it is because we did not have ourselves to start with. We built a civilization out of wreckage and ruin, often under terrible conditions. Our failings were endless, but we were really and truly human; nothing like you today, all of you bland and limp souls on the edge of damnation, colorless and afraid to die -- no, that would be more human a characterization than you deserve -- afraid even to think about dying. It is pathetic. How many of you are there, and if it weren't for your sheer numbers, you would accomplish hardly anything; the Age of Distraction, a world of ostriches with their heads in the sand. The progress not of the great-minded but of mediocre bits and pieces. And so self-righteous, and what is the foundation of it all but that you've set the bar so low even you can achieve it? I will be glad to see the era end. Then perhaps I will get Wolves worth my time.

"But something of the old days sticks. When I was young it was thought...less than optimal...to punish someone for something to which he did not confess, at least if the punishmen"t were very severe, like death. It happened. But it was felt to be barbaric. There is always some barbarism in being a Wolf, but unless I am forced to do so, I will not put you to death without your confession. And from there it all follows with perfect rationality. Since I know you killed Joanne, with more certainty than you can imagine, and since I will be putting you to death for it, I must have your confession. It follows from this that I must punish you if you do not confess, and do so until you do confess. Tullius tells us that there are eight major kinds of punishment. Death and retaliation will not do here, for different reasons. Prison, exile, and slavery all would take too long. Indemnity would have no effect, and there is no adequate form of public disgrace that would work. So that leaves, by straightforward inductive elimination, stripes. Ordinarily that means flogging, but a Wolf can be far more creative, especially with another Wolf. Claw after claw after claw, furrows so deep that they would kill an ordinary man. And worse. Unlike you I have known what torment is. And the Wolf in me just aches to communicate it to everyone else, and is leaping at the chance to teach you.

"And there is no use in not confessing. It was clear enough from the circumstances, and I have seen it in your dreams, and it is there on the surface of your mind for any Wolf with the mind to see. But it is your choice."

This was all said in such a calm, cold, matter-of-fact manner that I do not know if anyone could have resisted it. Certainly Eric did not. He wavered a moment and broke down.

"Yes, but it wasn't my fault," he said. "I couldn't stop it." His eyes were pleading for mercy.

"I doubt that is really true," Giles replied, "since after the Bite we are as much the Wolf as the man. But fault is really not at issue. If fault were what mattered, how could I lift a finger? De profundis. In the days of Lykaios I murdered entire villages, men, women, and infants. You will die not because you were at fault but because I promised someone that I would kill the Wolf who killed Joanne Sommers. And you are that Wolf."

"Please," said Eric. "I couldn't help it."

"Shh," said the Wolf-King, standing up and walking around to Eric's side. He bent low and whispered in his ear. "You cannot avoid it. But because you have confessed, I give you what mercy my promise allows. You will not even know the moment."

And he pressed his palm against Eric's forehead.

Capitulum Quintum Decimum

Seneca wasted no time. Charlotte and her Wolves were, of course, in hiding with Jolie, and of the other Primes who had sat at the table in the Aegidian Building that day, Elsbietka and Cotton were dead, and Seneca was leading the pro-Aegidius faction. The others had certainly been playing both sides, hoping for Giles to make some mistake, but, well aware of the dangers of direct rebellion against the Wolf King, had not committed themselves to Jolie's rebellion, either. This equivocation was brought to a forceful end, however, when Seneca sent Marcos with the Wild Hunt against them. Alexander surrendered, throwing in his lot with the Wolves at his door. Simon resisted and was torn apart, his Wolves co-opted; Sarah fled.

"Shall we hunt her out?" Marcos asked.

"No," said Seneca. "She is of little consequence right now, and there will be time enough later. We must bring all our force against Jolie."

And this they did, with blitzing speed. Safehouse after safehouse was raided and closed down in rapid succession, all in one night. Wolves in Jolie's faction began to be caught in attempting to desert and flee; they were killed. And in hardly any time at all word came that Jolie, having given up any idea of eliminating Seneca or Giles, was gathering the remnants of her forces in one last attempt to flee. Seneca sent word to Giles: "We may have her pinned down." Then the Wolf-King, who had remained aloof from all else, came in person.

The last safehouse was a well-built old house, preserved for some obscure reason by a historical society; it was large without being particularly showy and in comparison to other houses in the area it did not stand out in any way. Tucked away on a small estate surrounded by a tall stone wall, one could almost miss it from the street, since the street was almost more of a lane lined with trees and hedges, and the estate was situated at a peculiar angle to this lane so that it presented nothing obvious to the street except for an iron gate of singularly uninteresting make. It certainly did not seem to be a lair of monsters.

It is also true, however, that from the street with the iron gate you would not have had any indication that forces were gathering to crush those within. That street was deserted, as were several streets over. The speed of the Wild Hunt is furious, like movement in a gale or a nightmare; on all sides it gathered quietly, unobtrusively, blocks away and out of sight. But perhaps not unsensed?

"There is certainly a large group of Wolves there," said Seneca. "Even I can feel them. Jolie is likely to be there."

Giles tilted his head, as if listening to some distant sound. "Jolie is definitely there," he said. He turned to Seneca. "I am pleased that you can sense them, but if you can sense them, there is a possibility that she can sense us. You can waste no time."

Seneca signalled the Wolves to begin moving in, and turned to follow, but stopped when Giles, who had tilted his head again, suddenly said, "Sen!"

"Yes?"

"They are certainly underground, and I imagine that Jolie has not been so foolish as to lock herself in a cellar. Look for tunnels."

Seneca nodded and was gone, leaving Giles standing alone, gazing quietly up at the burning stars. It was a dark night and the moon was new, so, despite the light from the city, the heavens seemed to be a vast congregation of tiny silver and gold fires. At first there was no sound, but as the wind began to pick up, the branches of the trees began to wave, great boughs creaking and little branches chittering, so excitedly that the shushing leaves began to join in.

"True," Giles said. He was no longer staring up at the sky, but out into the distance.

"No," he then said. "I have already told you. She is useful." There was a pause, and then he put his hand to his mouth as if considering something. Then he shook his head. "No, that is not the way. Everything must be done according to order -- pondus, numerum, et mensuram, to a nicety. You have your end. Leave the means to me." Then came a long sentence in a language I do not know, sternly spoken. Then he smiled and said, "Then we are in agreement." And he, too, was gone.

For such a prize as Jolie the Wild Hunt had left off all subtlety and stealth. The iron gate had been torn from its hinges, the door of the house ripped out and tossed aside, every window broken open, every room turned over. The prey, however, was not discovered. It took only a few seconds, however, to find the descending stairs behind the sliding panel off the pantry, on the other side of the wall from the ascending ones. At the bottom, however, they found themselves stymied by a door. It was not like any other door, but more like the door to a safe, solid steel, very thick, unbudgeable. Busting the wall on each side of it only discovered more steel. Seneca sent Wolves around to try to bust a hole through somewhere, but although they made a great ruckus tearing up the floor, they seemed to have no luck. It was at this point that Giles arrived.

"Stand aside," he said, descending the stairs. "And be quiet."

He closed his eyes and set his fingertips lightly on the door. A moment went by, then another, and then he murmured quietly -- only Seneca was near enough to hear him -- "Yes, the very same, as you are the very same." And at that he opened his eyes and hit the door hard with his palm.

There was a great metallic tearing sound as the door fell inward. Giles and Seneca stepped into the room as the Wolves streamed in behind them. This was no cellar, but simply a little annex room of steel and thick concrete, with four tunnels heading off in various directions. Giles tilted his head as if listening. Then he pointed to one of the tunnels, and said to Seneca, "You will need most of your forces through there, but a good minority went through there." He pointed to another tunnel. Then to another. "Don't bother with that one. And the last one is for me alone. Don't forget that I want Charlotte and Eric alive." And, without waiting for any response, he was in Wolf form, moving swiftly down the last tunnel.

The Jolie-wolf had a head start, and she moved swiftly, but somehow it was not swiftly enough. It came through the darkness, clear and ruthlessly cold, a single inexorable command: "Be human." You have yourself no doubt experienced, or can imagine, how a comment spoken out of the darkness seems to come from every side and pierce you sharply, especially when you are tense or stressed. So here. But there was more to it. When you are dreaming and suddenly forced awake, one reality sweeps away another. The dream may cling, may resist, in an attempt to endure, but the waking world simply pushes it aside like curtain. Perhaps, too, it sometimes happens that within a dream, one dream shoves another aside, so that a mild dream becomes a nightmare, or a nightmare becomes suddenly peaceful. What happened at the command was much like this. It was not merely a command to be obeyed, it was a reality of its own, sweeping aside the reality of Jolie-as-Wolf as completely and cleanly as one dream might sweep aside another, or the waking world might sweep aside the world of dreams. It was not merely a command to be obeyed: it was a command that could not be disobeyed.

So it was that Jolie found herself lying on the ground, inexorably, inevitably human, as Giles, in human form, stepped out of the shadows into what, incomprehensibly, given that they were underground, seemed to be full moonlight. So it was that her light eyes looked defiantly up into his dark ones. What she was thinking, I do not know. Perhaps she was thinking about how swiftly it had all fallen, like a house of cards. Perhaps she was puzzling over how he had caught up with her. Perhaps she was wondering what it would be like to die. I do not know. What I do know is that the Wolf-King, smiling cheerfully, and standing over her with all the nonchalance of a friend meeting a friend in the park, spoke:

"Jolie, I am glad to see you again. We have much to talk about, you and I."

Capitulum Quartum Decimum

"Aveline!" said Giles cheerfully as he greeted her at the door of the mansion. "A delight to see you. I trust your flight went well."

"Exceptionally," Aveline said. She was dressed in black with a large brooch sparkling like fire just below her neck, all quite expensive.

"Normally such an important visitor would be driven by Marcos, but we are in a bit of disarray preparing." Giles waved her inside. "Which reminds me, before I forget, that Marcos has been pulled off his normal duties, so, alas, you will not eat as well as you normally would. But he prepared a sideboard for you, and insists that you try the crepes. Also, he has put out two bottles of wine, and insists that you enjoy both, but save him a glass; the best from the DRC. I refuse to remember the year, but he insists it is a good one."

Aveline laughed. "He is a funny thing. I am sure the wine will be excellent."

"Of course, it will; his choice in wine is always flawless. He grew up on a vineyard, you know, and has had a little more experience with wines than most people manage. You should have seen him when the region he grew up in received the Denominación de Origen; it is fortunate for him that I was in a good humor that week, since I had to listen to him bring it up in every single conversation."

They walked down a hallway in silence for a moment, then Giles turned serious. "You have heard about Elsbietka, of course?"

"Yes," said Aveline. "Frankly, I will not miss her. But I can understand that it would leave you less flexibility than you would usually have."

"Exactly. I have plenty of Wolves, but there are things that I can only trust to my most dangerous Wolves. Hence Marcos; I need someone to play the beater to Seneca's hunter, should the game play hide-and-seek. No one is as good at that as Elsbietka was, but Marcos will do. And it will give him experience. But in the meantime, I need someone to watch the fort, which would normally fall to him. And that is where you come in."

"How long until they are brought down?"

"Difficult to say," said Giles. "We know all her major hiding places, so we could force the issue, but the best thing would be for Jolie to play her hand. She has been moving very quietly and slowly, though, mostly attempting to build forces, making alliances, pick off stragglers, that sort of thing."

"Strange."

"No," Giles said with a distracted shake of his head, "it is the right thing to do, whether or not she fully understands why. And she is not like you, with a taste for jugular assault; she favors bluffs and feints until she finally comes at the prey from an unexpected side. But we have been closing off her options. She is at the point where she needs some clear victory; the allies she does have are pressing for it, and without one she cannot gain more. And 'clear victory' can only mean the capture or death of Seneca or myself."

Aveline stopped suddenly. "Tell me you are not planning to be the bait in the trap."

"Of course. Seneca is too methodical ever to make convincing bait. But she thinks I am arrogant and hubristic."

"It is hubristic to go on your own when Jolie is out to kill you. She is out to kill you, I am sure you are aware; she would not risk the dangers of merely capturing you." She resumed walking.

"Of course," said Giles. "That simply makes it better. She knows that I think I am the Invincible Wolf, and so she intends to exploit that weakness. As it happens to be true that I am the Invincible Wolf, however, it is no weakness at all, and therefore she will initiate her own destruction."

"It is too dangerous. Better Jolie than Elsbietka, but God help us all if she manages to kill you by accident. The girl is insufferable; she will want to change things."

"Ye of little faith. You are just like Seneca. But I forget that even you have not seen me in full rampage; when you received the Bite we were already finishing up. There has been so little need for me to unfold for so long, and with Vseselavich vanished and Bitka dead, Giuseppe may be the only one left who remembers what I am like when I do not hold back. You will see. In the meantime, we must be patient and vigilant. If we begin this last push, there is a danger of accidentally killing her. If she begins it, I can manage things to a finer degree of precision."

Aveline stopped again. "You are planning on letting them all live?"

"Do not be so harsh a judge. I recall having let you live on a certain occasion."

She blushed, but said, "Jolie is rather more a danger to you now than I was then."

"True," Giles said. "But you will recall that I did the same with Bitka, who was hardly bunnies and rainbows. Twice, in fact. But you both overestimate and underestimate Jolie. She cannot beat me, and we can come to an agreement, as I did with Vsesalevich, and Giuseppe, and Charles-Louis, and Bitka, and you, and as I will someday have to do with Seneca and Marcos. So turns the wheel of Fortune. Besides, I would prefer not to lose yet another one of my best Wolves; my collection is looking a bit thin, and good quality is rare in the breed, and seems more rare as time passes. When Wolf eats Wolf, it is a hard winter. Of course, there is a possibility that she will give us no option, but we will give her the chance to let us be merciful. As for the others...." He smiled pleasantly, but he shrugged.

***

It was two at night, a very dark night, when Jolie sprang. A gang of ten Wolves cornered Giles walking alone in some God-forsaken part of the city; becoming Wolf, a great night-black mass with eyes of silver flame, he slipped through and fled, but they chased him down, cornering him again in a blind alley, dim with indirect light from the street. His back against the wall, he simply sat down and watched them advance with some amusement.

The first Wolf leaped at him, but something when very long in the split second of flight, because he did not leap very far, and ended up sprawling on the ground, no longer Wolf but man. Then another Wolf became human, and another, and another, until it was no longer ten Wolves against one Wolf but ten human beings who had unfortunately cornered a Wolf. In confusion they fled, but, leaping ahead of them, he blocked their way, and now it was ten human beings cornered by a Wolf. And in a short time, there was only Giles Scott, human again, a pale-and-black form in a dim alley, dusting some invisible hair or speck of dust off of an immaculate suit, strolling back to the street, as nonchalantly as if he were early for a bus and not a killer ten times over.

A black sedan turned the corner and stopped by him. He opened the door and climbed in to face Seneca, who had a disapproving expression on his face. "We are in motion," Giles said pleasantly.

"You look like you are enjoying yourself." And indeed Giles was practically a-glow, his pale face looking even more feverish than usual, a broad smile on his face, and his eyes, darkly savage, radiated what can only be called cheer.

"Of course," said Giles. "It was not quite old times, but a light holiday re-enactment always has its nostalgic pleasures. Mehercle!" he said, leaning back. "I had almost forgotten how good it feels to have enemies bloodied and broken at one's feet. I have not enjoyed myself as much since that time we went down to Germany."

Seneca's disapproving expression had not changed, although there was perhaps a quirk at the corner of the mouth at this last sentence. "At least we have this out of the way. I don't know what good it was to wait, or put yourself in such danger for such a small result."

"Hardly a small result, Sen. As long as she did nothing directly against me, Jolie could at least hope for stalemate. But that slight possibility is gone, and she will be checkmated."

Seneca merely looked out the window, while Giles looked at him with considerable amusement. "Tell me, Sen. Who is the Scion of Lykaios?"

"You are."

"And what was Lykaios?"

"The Invincible Wolf."

"And who is the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf?"

"You are."

"But you are thinking that since Lykaios the Invincible Wolf was conquered that he was not so invincible at all? You would be wrong. He won every fight, every battle, every war against any Wolf who attacked him first, and he survived every one, whether he began it or not. I do not know how he gained the privilege; he himself did not know, so lost was it in the depths of his memory, but the moon favored him. Regardless of the circumstances, no matter what the conditions were, the moon in her madness took him to be immortal, and her madness is stronger than anything else. To kill him I had to convince the moon that I was just like Lykaios, that I too was the Invincible Wolf. Thus when I killed him it was still true that the Invincible Wolf always survived and always won."

"You know as well as I that I have no patience for riddles."

Giles's smile deepened and he pointed his index finger at Sen like a gun and played at shooting him. "And that, my friend," he said, "is why neither you nor Jolie, nor anyone else at present, can topple me, and why I have already won before anyone else has even made a move. For anything as ancient as I am, all the most important things are riddles. But cheer up, Sen! Unleash the flood. Take down her allies, break open her safehouses. Bring Jolie and Charlotte to me. And, much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy, because I have unfinished business with him. Better yet, pin them down, and I will bring in Jolie myself."

"And everyone else?"

Giles Scott looked out the window at the passing street scene. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "It has become increasingly clear that people need to be reminded that the Will of Aegidius must be obeyed. If they cannot understand that on its own, they must be given an example whose point they can understand. Tear their hearts out."

Capitulum Tertium Decimum

I woke with a start, as from a terrible nightmare, with my heart beating wildly in my ears and with sweat on my skin. Despite the fact that the curtains were drawn, the whole room seemed flooded with moonlight. Giles Scott sat in the chair across the room, staring at me with that disconcerting gaze.

"Are you here to kill me?" I asked.

He did not answer for a moment, then said slowly, in the way people do when their thoughts are far away, "No, I am still in the process of fulfilling my promise."

Perhaps a minute passed while he continued staring at me -- in actuality it seemed more like he was staring through me. "Why are you here?" I finally asked.

He continued to stare for a moment, then smiled briefly and looked off to the side. "I am hunting for Joanne's killer. When hunting through dreams it helps to start with dreams that have certain similarities, and you also knew Joanne." The gaze returned to me. "Do not worry, your time will come soon enough."

Having so much of his stare on me made me finally realize why it was so disconcerting. It is easy enough to imagine a stare that is both savage and cold, as with some inhuman creature. One can also easily imagine one that is cold yet still definitely human, coolly indifferent and mocking. And one can easily imagine one that is savage and definitely human, like someone in the grip of a slowly building rage. But a gaze that is savage, cold, and human all at once is unnatural; the mixture of the three should be inconsistent. How can anyone look out from eyes that are simultaneously human and inhuman? How can anyone feel coolly indifferent rage? It is an impossibility. And yet there he was.

"Perhaps you could just not kill me," I said.

"Oh, that is not a possibility," he said. "You know far too much, and the wolfish side of me is sufficiently suspicious of you that it is a marvel I have not done it already."

"Have you no human sympathy?"

He considered this, his hand softly stroking the arm of the armchair. "I distinguish. Something certainly remains. Manet conscientia, manet rationalitas, the worm of remorse dieth not. The husk, the shell." Then he shook his head. "But only the husk and shell. The pure light of the moon is too harsh for human life; it burns it out, leaving only the frame. Very little remains by now."

He looked down at his hand. "I think I had a sister once," he said suddenly. "But I do not know for sure. The human mind does not stretch very well across the centuries, and I remember only shreds of most of my life. The moon does not forget, but she does not remember anything about me that occurred before I became a Wolf. Conceivably at some point long ago I remembered my sister, and could therefore find it again by searching the moonlight for the moon's memory of my remembering it, but if so it would take me decades to come across it. There was a time when I was fluent in Latin. Now mostly fragments remain, things my mind keeps repeating, or little sparks suddenly darting out. Quotations. Given time I could remember it all again, but time is scarce even for those of us who live for centuries. My predecessor, Lykaios, was so old he could not remember his original name, or his place of birth, or even how he had become a Wolf. He claimed he was the First, and for all anyone knew, including himself, perhaps he was. But if a man can become completely different in a few decades, how different will he be when he has been inhuman for hundreds of years? Lykaios could look like a man, but he was all beast and devil inside, with nothing genuinely human left. Conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae; rightly so, since in endless years corruption becomes endless. The human heart cannot resist temptations that never cease. And to be a Wolf is worse: human cravings come and go, but the moon burns constantly and the spirit of the wolf never sleeps."

"But if you can still feel remorse...."

"The damned feel remorse more intensely than the living, my friend, but they mean it not at all. It is the distinguishing mark, how you know that you are damned: when you can look at your life, however long you have lived, and feel remorse for nothing you have done, but only for what has happened to you. I have done things, many things, for which a man would feel remorse; but I do not feel remorse. Hence I am not a man. I am just the quotation of a man.Do not let the outer form fool you. Once I was a man, but it has been eaten away by morbid desires; now I am a monster, and what is more, I am the monster monsters fear."

"And there is nothing I can do?"

He seemed to consider this. Then he said, "Are you Catholic?"

"No."

"Orthodox? Anything similar?"

"No."

"Unfortunate. I would have recommended that you pray to the Virgin to take away my thirst for your death." He stared at me. "You have no notion of how much it hurts to stay my hand, with you so close and so easy to kill." He rose suddenly and I shrank back against the bedstead. But he did not come towards me, but simiply walked to the door.

At the threshold of the door he paused and turned. "Ah, and lest I forget. Seneca has had you watched since you first approached us, and we have intercepted a package with notes and a partial manuscript that you have tried to send someone else." His voice became icy. "Let us have none of that. You are given the time you are given simply as a boon, so that you may know that Joanne's death will be avenged. Set your affairs in order; your clock approaches midnight, when this world will fall away, and after the last stroke all will be quiet. You cannot outmaneuver me, nor is there anywhere you can run from a predator who can hunt you in your dreams. I have given you what time you have because I was impressed by your willingness to die for your friend's vindication. But if you make me regret my decision to give you additional time, you will learn what remorse really is."

And he was gone.

I did not fall back to sleep for a very long time.

****

Eric woke with a start, sweating, as from a terrible nightmare. The room was dark, but his sharp eyes could see Jolie clearly; she was sitting by the window, looking out. He got out of bed.

"Having difficulty sleeping?" he said, trying to put the nightmare out of his head.

"He is hunting tonight," she said. "Every time I close my eyes I feel him getting inside my head."

"It's just in your head. You've just been under stress; that's all. What you should do...."

Jolie, however, never heard what she should do, because she silenced him with a sharp glance. "You do not know how dangerous he is."

"So everyone keeps telling me. But in the end, he's just an old lapsed Dominican who sits around reading books."

Jolie was quiet for a while. Then she said, still looking out the window, "I had only known him for a few decades when there was a crisis among the Wolves -- a rebellion, like the one we're in now. One of his favorites, Charles-Louis, was sent as an emissary to the leaders of the rebellion, Alain and Hugh, who we knew were somewhere in the Franche-Comté and managed to find Alain, the elder of the two. Alain killed Charles-Louis and simply left the body in a narrow passage somewhere around Saint-Nizier -- throat torn out, heart torn out, a silver dagger in his temple. Quite the terror in the area. Gilles, when he heard what had happened, went cold, and called up the entire Pack, everyone who was near enough to call, and led the Wild Hunt. We hunted for weeks, systematically eliminated every rebel we could find. And finally we found Hugh, who led us to Alain.

She closed her eyes. "Gilles had us take them to an abandoned farmhouse, leagues away from anyone else. They were to be tied up and closely guarded until he had completely uprooted what was left of the rebellion. They were almost finished as it was; there were only a few scattered strays left. None of them survived, and at the end of three days Gilles joined us.

"'What do you have to say for yourself, Alain?' he said. Alain spit at him, but Gilles simply stood there with that enigmatic smile on his face. 'You have done me a great favor, helping me to cull the useless. For that I might have spared your life. But Charles-Louis was useful to me, and for that you must pay.'

"'Do your worst,' said Alain. 'Torture us as you please, and you will never have our submission.'

"'Your submission is no longer of interest to me,' said Gilles. 'You have already failed to submit to the Will of Aegidius; and I, Aegidius, consider neither your submission nor your life of any value at all now.' And at that he simply touched both Alain and Hugh on the forehead and left.

"It started slowly. The first thing we noticed was the twitching and flinching. It grew worse and worse until, suddenly, they began to scream. They screamed about spiders, and about rats eating their flesh, and about snakes writhing inside them. They were insane, raving, and they screamed without stop for two full days. Had they not been Wolves, their hearts would have given out from terror long before that. At the end of the second day, Gilles returned and killed them both in the way Charles-Louis had been killed.

"Nobody knows how he drove them mad. Nobody knows how he does most things. He is old, yes, old enough to know things about being a Wolf none of us have yet had time to learn. And he is cruel, and he is ruthless, and there is nothing human in him except an impenetrable mask. If we fail, we can expect no better than Alain and Hugh."

"Oh," said Eric, "I know his brutality; I saw him torture that one Russian, remember? I'm not saying he'll be easy. But he's got his weaknesses as much as anyone else. And who can find them better than you?" He swooped down for a kiss, but when Jolie pushed him away impatiently, he shrugged and went back to bed.

Capitulum Duodecimum

Since the moon had been waning for some time, it was a dark night. A long, black limousine stopped at a lamplit street corner, and out of it stepped Charlotte and a rough-looking man. She looked around and saw another limousine slowly coming down the street, then nodded to the car she had stepped out of, which then drove off. When the second limousine pulled up, she got in and sat across from the ruddy-faced, beady-eyed Cotton.

"Are you sure you weren't followed?" he asked.

"Of course," she said contemptuously.

"One can never be too sure. And the Fifth Street safehouse was raided. You know that?"

"Of course," she said again, with the same note of contempt.

Cotton waited expectantly for her to say something else, but when she did not, he burst out, "Well, what is Jolie doing about this?"

"Does she need to do anything about it?"

"As long as He is breathing down our necks--my neck!--she had better be."

Charlotte looked idly at her fingernails as if they were a more interesting subject than Cotton's complaints. "She handled Elsbietka, didn't she?"

"Yes," said Cotton coldly. "After I had lost half a dozen Wolves. And all that did was shift our problem from Elsbietka to Seneca."

"And if we take Seneca out of the picture, he will just be replaced by Marcos, or Aveline, or someone else. So what would you have Jolie do?"

"There is only one thing to do," said Cotton, who was getting even more red-faced than usual. "What we set out to do in the first place."

Charlotte regarded him at length, her expression filled with as much contempt as her voice had been. Finally she spoke, "Jolie and I have been wondering when you will finally step up and do something yourself. We've made most of the arrangements to elude pursuit, we took care of Elsbietka, we seem to be expected to take Him out, and what have you done?"

"I've put all my Wolves at your disposal. I've bankrolled everything she's asked without question...."

"Yes, and did you think that we were somehow employees of yours, hired to carry out a revolution on your behalf, while you hunkered down to collect the benefits at the end?"

Cotton's expression went from angry to actively hostile, and he looked at Charlotte's bodyguard in the seat beside her as if measuring how much trouble the Wolf would be if Cotton reached over and strangled her. But he said, "What does our would-be Wolf-Queen want?"

"Not to be Wolf-Queen," Charlotte said. "But she is thinking that since you are expecting her to take care of Aegidius on her own, the least you could do is work harder to keep Seneca, Marcos, and all the others from interfering with that."

"Seneca, Marcos, and all the others? She doesn't ask much, does she?"

"If you wish, she'll take them and you can take Him," Charlotte said sweetly. "I think we would also find that a satisfactory arrangement. I certainly would prefer it; I saw what happened to Alain and Hugh. I'd rather risk your mind than my own. But Jolie is willing to make Him our special project, if only you will keep the others off for long enough that we can make some headway."

Cotton was silent for a moment as he looked out the window. "Very well," he said. "But I do not have the resources to do it for long."

"We know," said Charlotte maliciously. "But it will not take more than a couple of weeks. He will be in for a surprise or two, if Jolie can only get room to breathe."

The limousine returned to the corner at which it had picked her up; she looked down the street to see her own car waiting about a block away, and stepped out. The limousine pulled away, and as it did so she waited for her car to pull up. When it did not, she and her bodyguard exchanged frowning glances and cautiously approached it. The engine was running, but the car was empty and the doors were locked. There was a rustle behind them.

As Cotton's limousine pulled away, he was swearing under his breath. "Jolie will have to be taken care of before long," said Cotton.

His driver looked at him in the rearview mirror. "Do you want me to put someone on it now, or do you want to wait?"

"Wait," said Cotton. "If she really can do something about the Wolf-King, it will be better to have him out of the way first; and if Giles or Seneca puts an end to her, we can step up with clean hands." Then, suddenly: "What the hell is happening?"

A car had turned in front of the limousine and stopped at a stop sign, where it refused to move, while a car from the cross street had turned in to block the other lane. The driver threw the limousine into reverse, but the way behind had already been blocked. Cotton swore, and swore again when Seneca stepped out of one of the cars behind them.

What happened next happened very quickly. Cotton threw open the door and at the same time, there was no Cotton, only a great wolf-shaped darkness racing out into the night. A slight fraction of a blink after that there was no Seneca, only another wolf-like bit of night, more sleak, chasing after the first. There was no transition, no process; just as in a dream there are no fluid changes, but things become other things at once, so here. And the Wolves, too, were not like shaggy beasts. Standing still, you would have sworn them a trick of the night shadows, a darkness that fooled the eye into thinking a wolf or dog was there; perhaps you have had such an experience while out at night. But the Wolves, unlike those tricks of night, were really there, and this could be seen as they moved: too quick to be animal, they were too living to be shadow. They were darker than the night around them, but with eyes like cold red fire, and they moved smoothly in a quiet blur of darkness.

It could hardly, then, been more than a second after the opening of the door that the Cotton-wolf had dashed acrossed the street into a small alleyway, with the Seneca-wolf right at its heels. Down the alley they went and up the next street. To the right across that street was a large warehouse parking lot surrounded by chain-link, and the Cotton-wolf suddenly swerved and, with a great and impossible leap, was over the fence and rushing across the parking lot. The Seneca-wolf followed immediately, but the leap had gained Cotton a few yards, and as they crossed the parking lot and reached the warehouses and the great piles of crates surrounding them, Seneca began to move more cautiously. This gained Cotton a few feet more. Thus it was that Cotton turned a corner and, when Seneca turned it as well, although just a split second later, he had vanished.

Or had apparently vanished. Seneca continued stalking. Except for a little yellow lamp above an exit door down the way there was no light; everything was blackness and mazey piles of crates and debris looming in the faint light like great towers. Through this labyrinth the Seneca-wolf continued the silent hunt, moving more slowly, with smooth motions like a panther in the jungle, swinging its sleak head this way and that. Somewhere in the darkness Cotton waited, measuring each step of the other as he waited to spring. And spring he did. But whether he had made some prior noise too slight for human ear to hear, or had waited too long, or was not swift enough, the Seneca-wolf was ready for it, and instead of a swift and silent kill for the Cotton-wolf, the two rolled over, knocking over one of the towers of crates with a great crash. Over and over they turned, and when they stopped, Seneca was on top with his jaws locked onto Cotton's throat. The Cotton-wolf struggled, but the grip held. Seneca let go, and in another flicker of time, there were only two ordinary men there, one standing and looking down at the other, who lay on the ground staring upward with a pale, still face. Seneca took a small gun out of his pocket, fired repeatedly into Cotton's chest, and then walked away.

The whole chase had taken only a few minutes.

Seneca rejoined the other Wolves, who had taken down Cotton's driver, and the cars in which they came dispersed. "To the mansion, Marcos," he told his driver; "we have good news to report."

They had hardly gone more than a few blocks, however, when Seneca suddenly said, "Stop the car!"

On the side of the street, all alone, an enigmatic smile on his face, stood Giles Scott.

Seneca opened the door for him. "Lovely evening, Sen," Giles said as he got in.

"You should not be out alone," Seneca replied sharply.

The dark eyes flashed at him with something like sarcastic amusement and then they closed, bringing the thick and almost feminine black lashes to rest against the pale cheeks. "Well?" he said. "

Cotton is no longer a problem," said Seneca.

"Good," Giles replied. "And Charlotte?"

Seneca, who was still looking at Giles with a sort of sharpness in his eye, shook his head slowly. "We think she was meeting him tonight, but we seem to have missed her entirely."

"Ah, well," said Giles quietly, no expression on his face. "We are still ahead."

"And what are you doing all the way out here in the middle of the night?"

"I came to join in the fun," said Giles, his eyes still closed. They opened suddenly with their usual disconcerting gaze, and there was a trace of a smile around his mouth. "It looks like your efficiency has robbed me of any chance to play. But it is still very good news."

The two said nothing again on the way home.

If it was good news for Giles, it was bad news for Jolie, but she learned nothing of it until the sun was rising and Charlotte came stumbling in. The blonde woman was in considerable pain.

"We were ambushed," she said. "Cotton is dead, and I barely escaped with my life."

"You've broken your arm."

"Oh, it was not I who broke it, I assure you," Charlotte replied. "But it is healing already. Jolie, we can't simply let them pick us off one by one. We need something substantial."

Jolie said nothing, lost in thought.

Capitulum Undecimum

After Jolie's departure, Elsbietka hunted her, prowling the city each night with a pack of Wolves. Unlike wolves of true nature, Wolves of the moon are preternatural, creatures of shadow. They hunt silently, with ruthless devotion to their pursuit. If you ever are walking at night and they pass you in their pursuit, it is precisely the silence you will hear. The whole world shrinks away from them, hoping not to be noticed, and all grows still. Perhaps a sound or two escapes -- a rustle in the grass, the snapping of a twig, a creaking of branches in some sapling or bush as they brush past. Nothing more. The shadows around you will seem to flicker, not between light and dark, but between dark and darker, very subtly, so that you might have difficulty distinguishing it from some trick of the eyes. Then like a sighing of the wind they will pass, leaving nothing behind them but a cold knot of instinctual fear in your heavily beating heart. If, that is, they paid no attention to you and your heart still beats. Their very ruthlessness, however, may perhaps be your salvation, for when they seek a prey they do not turn aside unnecessarily for anything else. Just stay quiet and small, and hope that you are too unimportant for the attention of the Wild Hunt.

However ruthlessly Elsbietka hunted, however, Jolie evaded capture, as did Cotton and Charlotte. Each trail followed was already cold, each clue a thread that had already been carefully snapped, every safe house uncovered already abandoned. The hunts were not exactly fruitless. Here and there a lesser Wolf fell prey to Elsbietka, lagging behind for whatever reason, and Jolie's little rebellious band was eroded by one member. The Wolves Elsbietka did capture were shown no mercy, for while Elsbietka was gifted with intelligence, and strength of will, and even a sort of natural good humor, she had nothing of forgiveness or mercy in her. Like all the chief Primes of Aegidius, she was an old Wolf, but she was much older than Jolie or Cotton or Charlotte, all of whom became Wolves in the modern era. She knew more savage times, had done more savage things, and the cold, moonlit wolfishness inside her had worked its way very deeply into her heart. The captured Wolves were tortured for every lead and clue they could provide, and then beyond, until finally killed by Elsbietka herself, not in mercy, but simply so that they would no longer be a matter of concern. Giles had known exactly what he was doing in setting her rather than Seneca on the trail; her efficiency was extraordinary. Had it been led by a Wolf less cunning and prepared than Jolie, she would have destroyed the rebellion in a week.

Seneca was gone for several weeks, taking a number of Wolves with him, as he attempted both to remind the European packs of the Will of Aegidius and to discover anything that could be discovered about the new Siberian regime.

As for Giles himself, he shut himself up so that while Seneca was away hardly anyone even saw him. Elsbietka did. Returning in the early morning hours from her hunts she would often find him sitting on the balcony, deep in thought, watching the waning moon or staring into the shadows. She would make her reports, and he would nod, sometimes warning her to be careful, and then dismiss her, going back to his meditation on the moon or on the shadows.

So it went. It all changed quite drastically, however, when Seneca returned from his trip.

"The Europeans are holding," he said cheerfully. The cheerfulness seemed accentuated by his brightly colored vest and an extraordinarily bright yellow bowtie, which he somehow managed to wear as debonairly as he wore all his ties. "I had to put a few people in their proper places, but not much more; the worst troublemakers will no longer be a problem at all, and the rest will remember which Scion of Lykaios they should obey for at least a little while. The Siberians seem not to be interfering directly; I think they are cleaning up their own house before moving outward. But Elsbietka's first guess seems to have been right. All indications are that it is Krasnoyarsk doing the consolidating."

"If they are just going to consolidate," Elsbietka replied, "why did they tip their hand so early?"

Seneca shrugged. "You know how these things are. It's unlikely that all the Wolves are happy with the deposing of Vsesalevitch."

Giles, who had been gazing at the ceiling, brought his dark eyes down to bear on them both. "They will strike here first. The time to take over the European packs has passed. Nothing much can be gained from them at this point. They intended from the first either to move directly against me, or else to lure us onto their own turf."

"That seems risky," said Seneca.

"It was a likely course all along," said Giles, "but it is good to get confirmation. A war of Wolves is most efficiently fought as a war of assassination."

All three were quiet a moment. Then Seneca said, "How is the situation with Jolie coming along?"

"Not well," said Elsbietka, looking away. "I have been unable even to get close."

"I didn't expect you to," said Giles."It is fine. Jolie will always be a step ahead" -- at this Elsbietka set her jaw, but if Giles noticed it he did not show it -- "but the important thing now is to keep her moving until she makes the crucial mistake. It will be soon, I think." And at that he dismissed them both.

It was very late that night when Seneca called the mansion and got Marcos alone in the kitchen. "Tell Giles that he will want to see this himself." And he gave an address.

Marcos hung up the phone, turned, and was startled to find Giles leaning beside him with his elbow on the counter, as if he had been there for ages. "It's a dark night tonight, Marcos. Was that Bitka or Sen?"

"Seneca," said Marcos. "He said you would want to see this in person."

Giles sighed. "I was hoping it would be Bitka. It is a very dark night indeed. Make the car ready."

They both met up with Seneca outside a warehouse tucked away in a sort of large industrial park. A few of Seneca's Wolves kept watch on the entrances. "How badly will I not like this?" Giles asked.

"There is nothing about it to like," said Seneca, his face grim, as he threw open a door. The three stepped inside to see a warehouse floor littered with bodies.

"Fifteen," said Seneca, his face still grim. Marcos's face had taken on a similar expression.

Only Giles seemed unfazed; his pale, boyish face seemed as calm as ever it had as he strolled out among the bodies, his hands in his pockets. "Some of these were useful Wolves, " he said after a moment. "It is almost a pity to have lost them."

"It is worse," said Seneca, pointing to a body in the corner. Giles walked over, with Seneca and Marcos right behind him.

Giles looked down at the body a moment, then sighed, and crouched down beside. "Bitka," he said, "I told you not to underestimate her." He looked her over carefully, taking her hand and looking underneath the fingernails. "Very definitely Jolie's work, but Bitka caused some damage in return."

"And no heart," said Seneca, his voice and face still grim.

"Yes," said Giles. "It makes sense. These aren't the old days, when anyone could peel off with just any Wolves; to oppose the Will of Aegidius one needs Primes. And the easiest way for a Wolf to become Prime is to eat the heart of a Prime." He shook his head. "Jolie-cherie, that is cheating; they are supposed to do the killing themselves. Otherwise you get incompetent Primes."

"Eric has no doubt joined the ranks," Seneca said.

For the first time, Giles's expression changed, becoming very hard and cold. "If she killed Bitka simply so that Pretty Puppy could pretend at being important, she will learn to regret it in every cell of her body." The expression relaxed back into his usual calm. "But it would make more sense to share it out. She caught the most powerful Prime she had any chance of catching. She wouldn't waste such a rare opportunity."

He looked at the body again, closed his eyes, and sighed. "It is almost a pity. She never had the full scope of potential that Jolie had, but she was in every way a creature of strong mind and forceful will. Her kind is only found once every few centuries. She joined me shortly after Vsesalevich and I hunted down the last few Scions of Lykaios. We rolled back the savagery, started a new age, enforced the Will of Aegidius. And in all those centuries, she only tried to betray me and rebel against the Will of Aegidius twice. Such a combination of loyalty and competence is nearly unique. Almost a pity."

He rose suddenly. "Marcos, you are in charge here; clean it all up." Marcos nodded and turned away.

"We cannot let this go unanswered," said Seneca.

"You are quite right," said Giles, thinking. Then: "Fifth and Broadmoor."

"What?"

"It is a safehouse Jolie thinks I do not know about."

Seneca stared at him. "You knew this all along and said nothing?"

Giles shrugged. "The point was never for Elsbietka to catch Jolie, but to harry her. And if only Bitka had taken more precautions all would have been well. But, as you say, now there needs to be an answer. It is unlikely that you will find Jolie there; but you will certainly find something."

Seneca did not look happy, but said, "I will look into it immediately."

"Good," said Giles. "I will walk about a bit until Marcos has finished making arrangements."

It was almost dawn when Seneca, back at the mansion, found Giles gazing thoughtfully at the painting of St. Albert.

"We did not find Jolie," said Seneca. "But I think we've learned enough to pin down Cotton."

Giles nodded without turning his head. Then he suddenly said, "Lykaios saved my life, you know."

"Excuse me?" Seneca said, startled at the change of subject.

"During my journey I became ill. I would certainly not have lasted very long. But then came the Bite. Perhaps part of his joke; take the bookish, sick youth and throw him in and watch the other Wolves tear him apart. He always underestimated me. But I survived, and became an assassin, and then later became Prime when I killed the Red Varulv of Shula, whom even Lykaios feared." He was quiet a moment. "They both became recognized as saints," he said nodding at both of the paintings of the two Dominicans. "I doubt I would have; too little done in too short a life. And nothing of the sort can be guaranteed, anyway. But Lykaios stole even the possibility of it."

He was quiet again and Seneca, who did not know what to say in response to this, took this as an implicit command to leave. But as he reached the door, Giles said, "Seneca." It was quiet, but the force of it carried.

Seneca turned to find Giles's dark eyes shining coldly at him like some dark and frosty night. "Yes?"

"Jolie I wish to question. And, as much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy as well. And Charlotte. But Cotton has not been useful to me for some time, and there is nothing of importance he can say to me."

Seneca nodded. "I understand," he said, and left.

Capitulum Decimum

In long researches, especially when the research is into an obscure or difficult subject, one always discovers bits and pieces that do not easily fit into the grand design -- suggestive, perhaps, but of unknown significance. And this is perhaps true of nothing and no one more than Aegidius, who eludes the eye of the ordinary historian, and appears and disappers in history like a flickering of shadow across the landscape.

(1) Take, for instance, an occurrence I have been able to piece together from various sources. The exact location is impossible to determine with any certainty, but I think it was in France; the time is equally uncertain, but if it occurred in France, the time was almost certainly the late 1930s. I imagine it to have happened in something like this way, and, while some of the precise details may have varied, I have confirmed the substance from several sources.

The first people to notice him were a handful of young men lolling around by a clump of trees. He stood out. While most people here were dark-haired and dark-eyed, as he was, they also had a dark complexion, while he was as pale as an invalid. But it was perhaps not this that made him stand out, but his immaculate, custom-tailored, and very expensive suit. He came toward them.

"I am looking for the Old Woman," he said. "Where may I find her?"

They looked him up and down a bit.

"That is a very nice suit," said one young man, who wore a brightly colored vest.

The stranger threw the vested man sarcastically. "And yet the Old Woman is not in my suit. I have business with her. Where is she?"

The vested young man caught sight of a gleam on the man's wrist. "That is a very nice watch," he said.

"Where is she?" The stranger did not raise his voice in the slightest; if anything it became softer and quieter. But there was an edge to it that gave it both the force of a command and the air of a threat. The young man tried to stare him down, but failed. Shrugging, he pointed towards a tent at the end of the makeshift path.

"Thank you," the stranger said, and continued on his way.

A young woman was weaving something outside the tent; she barely looked up at the stranger.

"I am here to see the Old Woman," he said.

She shouted something back toward the tent. When there was an answering shout, she nodded and gestured at the stranger to enter.

Inside an old woman was sitting on a makeshift chair drinking tea. When she saw the dark-eyed, pale-skinned man she froze, then slowly put down her cup and stared at him as he sat down across from here.

"You know who i am," he said with some mild amusement.

"Yes," the old woman said slowly. "My grandmother told me about you. 'He burns with the light of the full moon, even at new moon, even during the day,' she said. Until I saw you I did not know what she meant. But it is true. The moon itself blazes inside you, almost too bright to bear."

"Do not look too close at it," he said softly. "Those who do lose their way through the sane world. I looked at once, long ago, and I have never found my way back again."

She looked away. "You are the Wolf-King."

"'King' is such a very small word," the stranger said reflectively. "But yes. I am Aegidius, and I am the Invincible Wolf."

"Why are you here?" she asked. "We wish no dealings with you."

Giles smiled. "Your family has had dealings with me for time out of mind. One of your ancestresses performed a very great favor for me. That debt was repaid long ago. But there are dark times coming for your people, and it would be...displeasing to me...if your family were wholly swallowed up in them." He pulled two cards from his pocket and held it out to her. "If anyone in your family is in mortal danger in the years to come, these will help you."

She took the two. On one there was nothing but an address. On the there was printed an ornate white A on a black circle.

"If your family is in dire trouble, send someone to this address and show the people there the second card. They will help protect you."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"Because I still remember," he replied as he rose and left.

She never saw him again. But she did use the card. I have in my possession that card, or one exactly like it; it was sent to me by a colleague. It is well-worn and faded, but the A is still visible.

(2) A bit farther back, in the nineteenth century, there is evidence of small club in London called the Cynthia Club. It was very exclusive, but farther from Pall Mall than was quite fashionable. A hint of scandal always was associated with it, and rumors of decadence, but I believe this was chiefly because they were rumored to be lax about guests of members, even if the guests were women. Any trace of this club, beyond some occasional passing mentions, is gone now, but I believe it to have been a front for Wolves in London at the time. And, perhaps more importantly, I believe it was here that Seneca Lewis first met Giles Scott. Was it a chance meeting? Was Seneca summoned? I do not know.

Of Seneca himself I have been able to find very little; I do not know when he was born, or even where. I do have evidence that he came to London from Barbados, but whether this was his place of birth I do not know. He seems to have risen high in the ranks quite quickly; Giles after the American Civil War seems to have split his time between New York and London; when in New York, he seems to have left London in the hands of Aveline and Seneca. At some point, I do not know when, Seneca went over the Atlantic to help Giles in New York; Giles seems to have started splitting his time between East Coast and West Coast, eventually spending most of his time on the West Coast. The earliest record of the Aegidian Corporation is in New York in the late 1950s; in 1980 there is a legal record of transfer of controlling shares from Giles Scott, allegedly born in 1942, to Giles Scott, allegedly born in 1961. The first linking of Seneca with the company seems to have been at this time, first as Director or Vice-President of Eastern Operations and then as General Director or President; I have not been able to discover when the transition was made, although it was certainly made prior to 2001. That I was able to find even this much about it is due largely to the fact that the rise of Seneca in Aegidian seems closely linked to the increase of public action on the part of the corporation, and with the fame of Giles Scott as a savvy businessman. Most information available to the public about the business seems to be smokescreen -- some of it true but unimportant, some of it probably but unprovably false. At no point does Jolie seem to have been involved with Aegidian, although most of the other major players in this period are. Both Aveline and Elsbietka are names that occur on the small handful of company documents I have been able to find. But of Jolie there is no clear trace in history at all.

Historians, like everyone else, want to find the story. But in matters like this, most of the links are hidden, and all we have is a heap of facts, records of uncertain significance. That we have even this much is due to paper-based bureaucracy, which records its own doings with ceaseless self-regard; but it never tells us what we really want to know. In the end, every identifiable story is just a vein in an extraordinary bulk of uncertainty, and when we have no choice but to plunge our knives in at random, we are left with little more than a mess. Had I the time, perhaps more could be done; but my time is short, and the only goal I can afford is just to get the notable things down on the page.

Capitulum Nonum

The sun coming up next morning over the garden found Giles already sitting on the terrace, brooding over the world. He had a large leather-bound tome with him, for it was his custom to read before and during and after breakfast. But this day the book remained closed on the breakfast table. He was still there, and the book still closed, hours later when Jolie came to breakfast.

"Where is Seneca?" she asked as Marcos began setting the table.

"Seeing to business," said Giles in a vague way, scarcely stirring. "Elsbietka may be joining us at some point."

"Ah." It was very disdainful for a monosyllable. "I would have thought she had important things to do elsewhere."

"Everyone has important things to do elsewhere," said Giles, again in a vague way that made it clear his mind was elsewhere.

Jolie said nothing else as she filled her plate, and after several minutes of silence, Giles shook himself, turned away from the garden, and took his book in hand, without, however, opening it.

"A great deal on your mind?" Jolie said.

His eyes turned briefly toward her and he smiled slightly. "There is always a great deal on my mind," he said. "But yes, I have much to think about."

"This Siberian situation is getting serious, it seems."

"It is not," said Giles, "but it seems that however much I say it, no one believes it. This Ivan, whomever he may be, is hardly a matter of concern at all. It's merely a matter of timing."

"Perhaps, Gilles" said Jolie, raising a very lovely skeptical eyebrow, "but you cannot blame people for doubting when you sit and do nothing."

"Of course I can," said Giles. "I am Aegidius regardless of what anyone thinks I am doing. Do you remember back when I first came across you?"

Jolie put down her silverware and looked at him sidelong as though trying to guess his purpose in raising the question. "Of course I do," she said. "I was wolf-mad. You tracked me down and commanded me to be human, and then I was. And then you said you were Égide, or Gilles, or Giles...."

"...And you said I was English, and I said only in a sense. I wasn't speaking of the very beginning, though, but some of the conversations we used to have. I remember one in particular in which you said I only ruled because might makes right."

"As is still the case. As I recall you seemed displeased by the claim. But, as I said then, it is the way of things: force fait loi. The Age of Aegidius is built on the principle."

Giles shook his head vehemently. "No, Jolie, this is what you have never understood. I impose my will, mais force non fait pas loi; nécessité fait loi. I am merely necessity's executioner. If you had ever lived in the Age of Lykaios you would know the difference in your bones. What Lykaios did cannot be called law. It was something for which there is no word in civilized language. What I have accomplished is a different order of thing entirely. With the madness of the moon I have set limits to the madness of the moon; I have taken chaos and made it order. Now there is law."

"Yes," said Jolie, suddenly scornful. "Now there is law, and it is the will of Aegidius. Gilles commands and it is done. But what do you have us do? Eat breakfast on the terrace, play the businessman, talk and talk and talk, pretend we are the thing that we are not and pretend we are not the thing that we are. You call it order; it is imposed weakness. We are always stepping lightly; let a Wolf break a glass and Aegidius comes down on him. And why? Because you think of it as shameful, as if it were all some disease that must be quarantined. You are still the Dominican; you would have us all do penance for being Wolves."

"We are a disease, Jolie. We are morbid little cancer cells in the body of humanity; we have forgotten how to be human and have been seized by madness. But the time for penance seems to have passed us all by."

"And so we all sit around and do nothing."

"And what would you prefer? That we return to the days of Lykaios, with plunder and pillage?"

"Anything would be better than wasting away. I do nothing these days. Seneca does nothing. You do nothing." She looked at him angrily, then suddenly said, "Tell me, why have you not killed me yet?"

Giles smiled slightly and looked away. Jolie went on. "You know as well as I that have been undermining you for decades now, and that I am breaking away. I know you know it; you can never resist dropping hints. And yet you do nothing. Nothing except talk and drop hints. I knew a time when you killed Wolves for much less."

"Yes," said Giles, still smiling slightly and looking away into the distance. "But those were days when I was still putting necessity into place. Harsher deterrents were called for. And I was a weaker Wolf then, and did not know my strength as well as I do now."

"You are complacent. You simply sit and expect everyone to obey while you grow weak and they grow strong."

He turned his dark eyes back toward her, but the small, confident smile did not change. "I am the least complacent Wolf in the world, Jolie; much less complacent than you. Life and death with every breath."

"And yet here I am. And this Siberian situation. You are losing control of everything."

"Losing control to you?"

She shrugged. "It need not be so. I would not be averse to sharing the power.Together we could put this Ivan in his place. But I will take something, even if only by myself, over the nothing that you have been giving."

Giles laughed. "I admire your impertinence, Jolie-cherie, in generously offering me part of what is already mine. But I have no need for bargains with you. I have done nothing to you yet because you have done nothing to me yet. The most you have done is stir up some restlessness among your fellow Wolves, but that is their fault for being gullible. And perhaps I have also done nothing because I saw your potential on the very day we met. As I told Elsbietka then, you had untold promise. And you still do. Someday you may cast me down from the Throne of Wolves, Jolie, but, if so, that day is centuries away. You are clever, it is true, and have strength of will to sway Wolves and Primes of Wolves, but you are young and have only played the game under the benevolent rules of Aegidius. You do not know how to play when those rules are broken. To this point you have been at my side, however insubordinately. Walk away from me and you will be crushed."

"Words," said Jolie, "all words. I am tired of being bullied by boasts and coaxed by threats. They are just words." She rose and bent over the table to look him in the eye. "And you will find that I know how to play."

Giles simply smiled and looked back. There gazes were locked for several moments, but it was Jolie who looked away first. She straightened and walked back into the house. He watched her go, the small smile still on his face, and then, taking the book which had been in his hand through the entire conversation, opened it and began to read.

It was about half an hour later when Seneca and Elsbietka came out.

"Eric seems to have vanished," said Seneca as he sat down.

"I've no doubt," Giles said drily, and continued reading.

"I notice, too, that Jolie is not here."

Giles closed the book and looked at him sarcastically. "Your powers of observation are exceptional this morning, Sen," he said, also sarcastically. "Do you intend to go through the list of everyone you notice isn't here, or are you hinting at something?"

Seneca was unperturbed. "Is there a connection between the two?"

"For any two things, there is some connection between them. Are we now playing the game of vague questions?"

Elsbietka looked at Seneca and said, "If he's this sarcastic and uncooperative, it must be something important. What has Jolie been up to?"

Seneca glanced at Giles, who was still looking at the two of them sarcastically, then looked back at Elsbietka. "She has been planning a coup. So it has begun."

"Is this true?" she asked Giles sharply.

"Does Seneca have any reason to lie?"

"How long have you known?"

"That it was likely coming? A few decades now. But that she would go through with it more or less now -- a few days."

"And you did nothing?"

Giles put the book on the table forcefully enough that dishes rattled. "If another Wolf accuses me of doing nothing, it will be the last thing they say."

"What I do not understand," insisted Elsbietka, "is how she walked out of here alive if you knew what she was doing."

"She walked out of here alive because I knew what she was doing," said Giles. "The Wolves have known peace a bit too long. They are forgetting why it is necessary to obey me. And a regime of obedience is buit on the principle of the carefully selected deterrent. Jolie cannot harm me; let her have her little rebellion. At the right time we will crush it so spectacularly that Wolves will remember it for centuries."

"Ah," said Elsbietka. "That was why you brought up Charles Louis at the meeting. I wondered; it seemed somewhat excessive if you were simply putting Cotton in his place. Half the table was with us when we tracked Alain down, and they all saw Alain after you were done with him." She shook her head. "I never liked Jolie. It will be a pleasure to rip out her throat."

"I think Jolie might have some things to say about it first," Giles replied.

"So what is our plan?" Seneca asked. "I have difficulty believing you just intend to sit tight."

"I do intend just to sit tight," replied Giles. "Everything else I'll be doing by means of you; it's what I have you for. You will continue trying to uncover the whereabouts of this Ivan. Elsbietka will start preparing against Jolie."

"Gladly," said Elsbietka.

Giles shook his head at her. "Do not underestimate Jolie, Bitka. And do not move too quickly. Your task is to prepare. Jolie has her first moves already planned; do not let yourself be surprised by them."