lined it with fur from its own coat, and padded it with bits of grass and dried leaves. But that wasn’t what was so shocking. Between the matted fur and leaves were other scratch marks carved into the chalk floor, only these were much smaller, though just as distinct. “Oh my,” said the earl as he knelt beside Alfred and ran a hand along one of the smaller grooves. “Our hellhound’s had pups.”

THE PHOTO

I an gasped. If the beast had given birth to pups, it meant that she had a mate that might also be loose about the countryside. And, he thought with a lead feeling in the pit of his stomach, if she had a mate nearby, was it even larger and more terrifying than she was? Ian shuddered at the thought of facing not one hellhound but two. And what if they didn’t find the she-beast and her litter soon? What if it took months to track her, her mate, and their offspring? That could mean that a whole pack of wild beasts would soon be terrorizing the area.

Perry knelt beside the earl. “How many do you think she’s had?”

“Four,” said the earl, his face grim and hard. “And I’d say they were at least a few weeks old by the look of these marks. You can see here in the center of her nest where they began, rather small compared to the ones out at the edge over here.” Ian leaned in to get a better look. Even the pups’ claw marks looked large to him.

“And look there,” said Ciaran as he pointed his torch outward from the nest. “They’ve been digging in other parts of the cave as well.”

“So, where are they?” asked Perry. “Where are the mother and her litter?”

The earl stood and looked toward where the wind was whistling in from an opening at the other end of the cavern. “I suspect she’s moved them,” he said. “And I think that her fury with Ian was instigated by her natural instinct to protect her litter. You entered her territory, and she might have considered you a threat that needed to be hunted down and eliminated.”

“But we … er … I didn’t come anywhere near this side of the tunnel,” insisted Ian. “Plus there was that sealed wall to separate us,” he added.

“Doesn’t matter,” said the earl, standing up and wiping the white dust from his trousers. “You must have come close enough for her to feel threatened. And in the wild there is nothing more dangerous or unpredictable than a mother predator protecting her young.”

“There’s dried blood over here,” said Alfred, calling everyone’s attention away from the nest.

Ian and the earl walked over to where Ciaran’s son stood pointing his torch beam down on the cavern floor. “Yes,” said the earl, kneeling again beside several drops of blood on the ground. “We managed to get a bullet or two into her last night. Although it doesn’t seem to have slowed her down much.”

“What do we do now?” asked Henry.

“We keep hunting,” the earl said simply, standing. “We know that the she-beast has moved her litter somewhere else in the hours between yesterday afternoon and this morning. We also know that she’s injured, so it’s likely that she hasn’t gone far. If we can find her new lair, we might be able to catch her by surprise and kill the whole despicable bunch. I tell you, I’ll feel a great deal better when I’ve got that beast’s ugly head mounted on my trophy wall.”

“You’re forgetting one thing, my lord,” said Ian glumly.

“What’s that, lad?” asked Ciaran.

“Her mate,” he said. “If she had pups, she would have needed a mate.”

The men stared in shock at Ian and around at each other for a long moment. It was quite evident that none of them had thought of that.

Finally, the earl said, “A very good point, Master Wigby Let’s start with the she-beast and that frightful litter, then work around to her mate after she’s been dealt with, all agreed?”

“Agreed,” said the group.

The earl gave Ian a pat on the back and looked down at him with a reassuring smile. But Ian hardly felt comforted. He noted that many of the other men looked even more determined and were gripping their rifles firmly, but Ian was terribly unsettled. He hated being in the beast’s lair, even though it was clearly abandoned. It still held a nasty energy that made him shudder.

“Are you cold, Master Wigby?” Perry asked him.

“A