Imprudence (11 page)

No
,
Rue realised,
Mother had done the calming and the balancing, as much as she was able.

“You're an Alpha.” Quesnel sounded as shocked as Rue felt.

Uncle Rabiffano inclined his wolf head slightly, so as not to disturb his collar points.

Out of the corner of one eye, Rue saw her mother do something awful. She stepped towards Uncle Rabiffano, establishing alliance.

“It's time, Conall. He's right. No more waiting. I can't handle it, literally. And it's too much to ask of our daughter.”

Rue felt Quesnel's hand lift as everyone's attention focused on her. The top of her head, despite the fur, felt cold.

Uncle Rabiffano spoke again, through his lupine mouth. Rue supposed that with the rest of him still human, speech was possible. It was peculiar-sounding, though, echoing and deep, not like his normal voice at all. “Conall, look at what this is doing to your family. To your pack. I don't want to cry challenge, but I will if you can't leave on your own.”

Paw seemed confused, indignant, and frustrated all at once. And betrayed, because his wife was standing against him. Rue had known her parents to argue – in fact, they seemed to enjoy it – but they had never in her life failed to present a unified front to the rest of the world.

Rue couldn't decide what to do. Should she rush her mother, make skin contact with a preternatural to break the tether? That would give her father his supernatural abilities back and a fighting chance, as erratic and dangerous as that would make him.

“Oh, for goodness' sake!” Uncle Rabiffano stepped in and, swinging from the shoulder with all his force, punched Paw in the jaw.

Paw fell back like a stone, senseless.

Everyone else remained motionless.

Uncle Rabiffano shifted back to normal. The fur of his face crawled up to the top of his head, chocolatey and thick, slightly less styled than before Anubis.

Rue growled and leapt at him, teeth going for the neck.

Only to find herself shifting back to human.

Her mother was gripping her hard. Preternatural forced change, exactly as if she were a misbehaving child.

“No, infant.” Lady Maccon sounded brittle.

“But, Mother!” Rue, starkers and uncaring, could only protest.

“Go and sit with your father. We might need you to touch him once more.”

“It's not fair. You can't use me as a weapon against my own Paw!”

“Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama, I am not going to tell you again.”

“You're asking me to choose between you,” wailed Rue.

Quesnel pulled off his frock coat and helped Rue into it.

Lady Maccon glared at her daughter. “No, I am ordering you to take care of him. Child of mine, ponder what he has become. We've tried every which way to get him to Egypt. He agreed. Twenty-odd years ago this all looked to be so easy. But none of us knew how Alpha's curse would take him, or when. And the plan has failed.”

Uncle Rabiffano's voice held no hostility. “We shouldn't have waited for Lyall.”

Rue couldn't comprehend that. “The Kingair Pack Beta? Why on earth should he matter?”

Rabiffano gave the oddest huff of a laugh. “He's actually
my
Beta; they've had him on loan.”

This was all too much. And Paw was stirring. Rue would have to choose and she couldn't face it. It felt like treason. If Uncle Rabiffano wanted the London Pack, if he was really meant to become its Alpha, shouldn't he challenge for it? Except that meant one of them would die. When Alphas fought for pack leadership, one of them
always
died.

“The God-Breaker Plague. You're going to take him into the plague zone?” Quesnel sounded oddly hopeful. Didn't he understand how awful all of this was?

“Yes. Exactly.” Lady Maccon was pleased by his understanding.

“Where he'll
die
!” Rue did not care how bitter she sounded.

Lady Maccon hauled her off and slapped her, hard across the face. “Stop it.”

It stung, but certainly didn't hurt as much as werewolf shift. Still it surprised her into shocked silence.

So did the fact that Quesnel turned and stepped up against her mother in an entirely ungentlemanly way. “I wouldn't do that again, Lady Maccon, if I were you.”

Mother blinked at him. “Oh. That's the way of it? I didn't realise.”

Rue clutched at her cheek and tried very hard not to cry.

“Prudence, little one.” Uncle Rabiffano's voice was smooth as black treacle. He was so sure of himself. “This is not betrayal.”

Rue nodded. How long had it been since she had heard that kind of confidence in Paw's voice? The slap seemed to have recharged her brain. They were right. The God-Breaker Plague would make her father an exiled mortal for the rest of his life, but he would
have
a rest of his life. Mother would surely go with him. Hadn't Rue already acknowledged to herself that Paw's time was running out?

It was a lot of realisations all at once.

“It's only that I love him. He's my Paw.” Rue didn't know to whom she spoke, or why. Maybe it was for herself. She looked to Quesnel for reassurance. He was outside this. Outside her whole messy family with all its uncles and tethers and malingering life spans. “What do you think?”

“Oh,
mon petite chou
, it isn't my place.”

“Please?”

“I think it's romantic, to live together in an ancient land.”

“To die together there.”

“Not many Alphas get a retirement,
chérie
. And the weather is reputed to be very nice in Egypt.”

Rue gave a watery chuckle. Although she'd asked for his opinion, she did question his judgement. He'd no father and a dead birth mother. And, despite her indenture to a vampire hive, Madame Lefoux had never requested the bite. So his other mother would die too. He was accustomed to mortality.

“You do own one of the world's fastest dirigibles.” Quesnel came to stand before her, not touching but there. And she adored –
oh dear
– the slight dimples when he smiled.

He was kind. “We could visit anytime you liked.”

Rue took a breath and struggled for something she could do to help. “So, how do we get him to Egypt? Will
The
Spotted Custard
do?”

“Werewolves can't float,” said Mother sadly.

Quesnel frowned. “It's not the intent, but my tank might help there. The one Aggie's hovering over in engineering.”

Lady Maccon looked thoughtful. “Prudence mentioned something about a tank.”

Rue nodded, numb. “Let's give it a try? You'll have to supervise, Quesnel. I'll be indisposed.”

Then Rue took off the frock coat and walked to Paw.

He was moving, sluggishly returning to consciousness. She placed a hand gently to his dear wrinkled forehead. Rue shifted back to wolf, bones breaking and reforming and hair crawling from her head to cover her entire body. For once, she relished the pain. It was a punishment she richly deserved for her treachery.

Paw, please forgive me.

She tried not to be grateful for the relief on Uncle Rabiffano's – and Mother's and even Quesnel's – faces.

Lord Maccon sat up, groggy.

And Uncle Rabiffano was hit full in his middle by a large vicious white wolf.

“Oh, for goodness' sake, Channing,” Rue heard Uncle Rabiffano say just prior to shifting form. “I love this suit.”

The suit was ripped beyond repair and among the tatters of perfectly lovely and very expensive grey cashmere and crisp white lawn, stood a dark chocolate wolf with an oxblood red chest.

The two wolves met on a leap and began fighting. This was not how the pack had been tussling earlier with vampires, but
really
fighting. Trying to kill and maim one another. It was sickening in its ferocity.

Rue wanted to look away.

Channing went straight for Rabiffano's neck. Rabiffano twisted so that Channing only got his shoulder. Blood dripped from deep puncture wounds as the white wolf bit down. They struggled with such force it was as though Channing were lifting and balancing the younger wolf on his nose. Rabiffano scrabbled at Channing's belly with his hind legs, claws out, decorating the white with red gashes. He chomped down on Channing's ear, fairly taking it off.

Rue came over queasy. She wasn't usually squeamish, but she had never before witnessed two men she adored trying to brutally murder one another.

The wolves reared up, biting and slashing with their front paws and generally turning themselves into a fur-flying fray of white, chocolate, and red in the moonlight. Channing yipped in pain. What looked to have been his battle to win suddenly wasn't any more. Rabiffano was braced in such a way as to give superior leverage against the white wolf, biting hard into the neck, applying a brutal pressure forwards and down. He was fighting smart, something very few werewolves could do, usually only the oldest or the most Alpha.

Rue leaned against her Paw, turned her wet nose into his leg, pressing her furred face against him helplessly.

There was no dramatic final moment; the fighters seemed likely to go on until dawn or exhaustion or death forced a separation. Except that, without apparent reason, they both stopped.

They backed away from each other, panting.

The pack leaned in, eyes gleaming.

So slowly that at first Rue wasn't sure it was happening, the white wolf stretched out his front legs and sank over them. Then he flipped to his back, stomach up.

The rest of the pack threw back their heads and howled in victory and acceptance.

Rue felt absolutely no urge to join in such vocal nonsense.

The chocolate wolf's tale swished once and then Rabiffano shifted back to human. For a dandy who wore his suits like armour against the world, Uncle Rabiffano was oddly comfortable wearing nothing but moonlight and the gaze of his pack.

His pack. Not Paw's.

Uncle Rabiffano addressed Rue's parents, uncompromising. “It is time for you to leave.”

Lord Maccon twitched. Rue could feel it in the muscles of his leg against her cheek.

Mother hadn't watched the fight; her gaze stayed on her husband the entire time. Without acknowledging Uncle Rabiffano's order, she turned her indomitable focus onto Quesnel. “I assume it's a preservation tank you have, Mr Lefoux?”

Quesnel, slightly green about the gills from the battle, took a few seconds to react. “Modified from my mother's original design. It's not intended for werewolf transport, although the theory holds. If Rue thinks we should try, I'm game.”

“Would he be in danger?”

Quesnel shrugged. “If it turns out the tank doesn't work on werewolves, he'll likely go mad with aether, break it, and jump overboard.”

“Not an ideal outcome.”

Quesnel arched an eyebrow in agreement and continued. “Otherwise he'll appear asleep or dead the whole time.”

Lady Maccon paled considerably. “So how would we know it's working?”

Quesnel donned his delighted academic smile. Percy had the same smile. “Initially, if we stick him in and Rue here returns to normal, then we can presume the tank is at least preserving his tether.”

“And after that?” Mother was a great deal more careful with Paw's well-being than she was with her own.

“We'd know when we arrive and he wakes up again.” Quesnel would not sugarcoat the reality of science.

“
He
is standing right here!” Lord Maccon gave an aggrieved rumble. His voice sounded worn and shaken, as if he'd been recently crying.

“Quite right, your risk, Conall. Do we try?”

“I am at your disposal, Wife. I've no other duties now but to attend your whims.”

“God help us all,” said Lady Maccon with real feeling. She turned towards
The
Spotted Custard
. It had floated down for a better view of the Alpha challenge.

Rue stayed behind and watched the pack.

One at a time, each werewolf was approaching Uncle Rabiffano. Each knelt low over his forelegs and then flipped to present the soft underside of throat and stomach. There seemed a prescribed order of rank, or was it age? Rue found herself trying to guess whose turn would be next. Somehow she always got it right. She wondered if she had some latent pack instinct after all.

Her parents and Quesnel were up the gangplank now, chatting almost companionably to one another.

“Infant,” called Lady Maccon, “do come along.”

But while her parents were apparently willing to lose everything, Rue was not.

The last wolf, Rafe, rolled to stand after his abeyance.

Rue approached the new Alpha. She slunk, chest low, neck cocked slightly to show her throat. She bowed over her forelegs.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh…
And went to flip, to expose her belly to her pack.

Her
former
pack as it turned out.