clothing and winced. “Necessity sometimes demands a sacrifice, young Randolph. Can I call you Randy? Or would you prefer, Dolphy? Dolly, perhaps?” Professor Lyall flinched noticeably. “Anyway, as I was saying, Dolly, I cannot abide riding—the horses are never happy to seat a vampire, and it plays havoc with one’s hair. The only thing more vulgar is an open carriage.”
Professor Lyall decided on a more direct approach. “Where have you been this past week, my lord?”
Lord Akeldama looked once more down at himself. “Chasing ghosts while pursued by daemons, as it were, Dolly darling. I am convinced you must be aware of how it goes.”
Professor Lyall decided on a push, just to see if he might elicit a more genuine reaction. “How could you disappear like that, just when Lady Maccon needed you most?”
Lord Akeldama’s lip curled slightly, and then he gave a humorless little laugh. “Interesting query, coming from Lord Maccon’s Beta. You will forgive me if I am inclined to see it as my right to ask the questions under such circumstances.” He gestured with his head in Biffy’s direction, just a little jerk of controlled displeasure.
Lord Akeldama was a man who hid his real feelings, not with an absence of emotions but with an excess of false ones. However, Professor Lyall was pretty certain that there, lurking under the clipped civility, was real, deeply rooted, and undeniably justified anger.
Lord Akeldama took a seat, lounging back into it, for all the world as relaxed and untroubled as a man at his club. “So, I take it, Lord Maccon has gone after my dear Alexia?”
Lyall nodded.
“Then he knows?”
“That she is in grave danger and the potentate responsible? Yes.”
“Ah, was that Wally’s game? No wonder he wanted me swarming out of London. No, I mean to ask, Dolly dear, if the estimable earl knows what kind of child he has sired.”
“No. But he has accepted that it is his. I think he always knew Lady Maccon would not play him false. He was just being ridiculous about it.”
“Normally, I am all in favor of the ridiculous, but under such circumstances, you must understand, I believe it quite a pity he could not have come to that realization sooner. Lady Maccon would never have lost the protection of the pack, and none of this would have happened.”
“You think not? Yet your kind tried to kill her on the way to Scotland when she was still very much under Woolsey’s protection. Admittedly, that was done more discreetly and, I now believe, without the support of the hives. But they would all still have wanted her dead the moment they knew of her condition. The interesting thing is that you, apparently, do not want her dead.”
“Alexia Maccon is my friend.”
“Are your friends so infrequent, my lord, that you betray the clearly unanimous wishes of your own kind?”
Lord Akeldama lost some slight element of his composure at that. “Listen to me carefully, Beta. I am a rove so that I might make my own decisions: who to love, who to watch, and, most importantly, what to wear.”
“So, Lord Akeldama, what is Lady Maccon’s child going to be?”
“No. You will explain this first.” The vampire gestured at Biffy. “I am forced to swarm because my most precious little drone-y-poo is ruthlessly stolen from me—betrayed, as it turns out, by my own kind—only to return and find him stolen by your kind instead. I believe even Lord Maccon would acknowledge I am entitled to an explanation.”
Professor Lyall fully agreed with him in this, so he told the vampire the whole truth, every detail of it.
“So it was death or the curse of a werewolf?”
Professor Lyall nodded. “It was something to see, my lord. No metamorphosis I have ever witnessed took so long, nor was conducted with so much gentleness. To do what Lord Maccon did and not savage the boy in the heat of the need for blood, it was extraordinary. There are not many werewolves who possess such self-control. Biffy was very lucky.”
“Lucky?” Lord Akeldama fairly spat the word, jumping to his feet. “Lucky! To be cursed by the moon into a slathering beast? You would have done better to let him die. My poor boy.” Lord Akeldama was not a big man, certainly not by werewolf standards, but he moved so quickly that he was around Professor Lyall’s desk, slim hands about the werewolf’s throat, faster than Lyall’s eyes could follow. There was the anger Professor Lyall had been waiting for and, with it,