“Under mine firsh,” objected Lord Maccon mildly. Then he warbled out, “For you’ll be left behind us, you’ll be safe and sound.”
Professor Lyall attempted to part pull, part lift his Alpha out of the bathtub. But he lost his grip and Lord Maccon slipped and went falling back into it with a tremendous splash. The massive tub, with its small steam-heating attachment, was extremely well constructed and had been imported from the Americas at great expense because there they knew steel. But it still wobbled dangerously on its four clawed feet under Lord Maccon’s weight.
“If a bullet’s billet, you are doomed to fall,” sang out the drenched werewolf, skipping several of the words.
“You gave Channing a direct order? In this state?” Professor Lyall tried once more to extract the earl from the tub. “And he obeyed you?”
For one brief second, Lord Maccon’s eyes sharpened and he looked quite sober. “I am still his Alpha; he had better obey me.”
Professor Lyall finally managed to get his Alpha out of the water and into the robe in a desultory kind of way. The thin material stuck indecently close in places, but the earl, never one to suffer the strain of modesty under any circumstances, clearly didn’t give a fig, or a fig leaf.
Professor Lyall was used to it.
Lord Maccon began swaying back and forth in time with his singing. “Take your glass and fill it, laugh and drink with all!”
“Where did you send him?” Professor Lyall, supporting the brunt of his Alpha’s weight, blessed his own supernatural strength, which made the massive man merely awkward rather than hopeless to maneuver. Lord Maccon was built like a brick outhouse, with opinions twice as unmoving and often equally full of crap.
“Aha, wouldna you like ta know tha?” The Alpha did not do coy well, and Professor Lyall was not amused at the lack of a direct answer.
“Did you send him after Lord Akeldama?”
Lord Maccon came over slightly sober once more. “That pansy. Missing, is he? Good. He reminds me of limp custard filling, all cream and no crust. Never could understand what Alexia saw in that pointy-toothed ninnyhammer. My wife! Cavorting about with a crustless vampire. Least I know he isna the father.” The Alpha’s yellow eyes squinted, as if he were trying to keep from thinking about that.
Suddenly, he flopped downward with all his weight, slipped out of Professor Lyall’s hold, and landed in a cross-legged heap in the middle of the floor. His eyes were starting to go completely yellow, and he was looking altogether too hairy for Professor Lyall’s liking. Full moon wasn’t for a couple more nights, and Lord Maccon, by Alpha rights and strength, ought to be able to resist the change easily. Apparently, he wasn’t bothering to try.
The earl continued to sing even as his slurring from the drink gave way to slurring from his jawbones breaking and re-forming into those of a wolf’s muzzle. “Drink and sing a ditty, good-bye to the past, all the more’s the pity, if this cup’s our last!”
Professor Lyall was Woolsey Pack Beta for many reasons, one of them being that he knew perfectly well when he needed to ask for assistance. A quick run to the door and one loud yell had four of Woolsey’s strongest clavigers in to help him navigate his lordship, now a very drunken wolf, down into the cellar lockup. Four legs offered no improvement in the matter of the earl’s wobbling, and instead of singing, he merely took to letting forth with a mournful howl or two. An aggravating day was looking to become an equally aggravating night. With Major Channing vanished, Professor Lyall really had only one recourse left to him: he called for a pack meeting.
CHAPTER SIX
Under the Name Tarabotti
It was early evening, the sun just setting, when three unlikely-looking companions boarded the last dirigible for Calais, leaving from its mooring atop the white cliffs of Dover. No reporters managed to capture the departure of the notorious Lady Maccon. This may have had something to do with the swiftness of her response to the publication of her alleged indiscretion, or it may have been the fact that the lady in question was traveling incognito by means of being outrageous in entirely new ways. Instead of her fashionable but severely practical garb, Alexia sported a black floating dress with chiffon ruffles, yellow modesty straps dangling about the skirt, and a hideous yellow hat. She bore, as a result, some passing resemblance to