Lou swirled back through the keyhole and out into the corridor. She wanted to make certain that Dacia and Theo were all right. But just outside the door to the king’s bedchamber, she was stricken with the most horrifying pain she had ever endured. Each smoky particle of her body was on fire, and with a scream that was first silent, and then shockingly loud, she fell to the floor with a thud that was all too bruising, as she now found herself in human form again, in agony, and unable to move.
GAZETA DE TRANSILVANIA
18 JUNE 1897
All Romania is holding its breath, waiting for news from Peles Castle this morning after fighting broke out in the palace gardens at midnight last night. It seems that earlier in the day, King Carol had summoned the nearby regiment to patrol the gardens, but no official comment was made on the nature of the threat. There is no news as to who would dare to attack our beloved king and queen at their own home.
Two mortuary wagons were summoned in the early hours of the morning, and there is still no word on the safety of the royal family. The Gazette will post a special edition as soon as there is word.
THE GARDENS AT PELES
“Come, my darling,” Mihai taunted. “Come here to me!”
He was standing behind a large urn in the palace gardens. Dacia had tracked him there after he’d jumped out the window of the king’s bedchamber. She knew that he had a pistol in one hand, and a knife in the other. She could smell the steel of them both, along with the reek of fear and something else coming from the would-be king. It wasn’t a bad thing, that other emotion he was feeling, and that’s why it worried her. It was fear, mixed with . . . elation? Could that possibly be? Was he completely mad?
She slunk closer and got ready to pounce. And then she smelled the other scent, the one that was pure terror, and coming from a source far more familiar than Mihai.
The prince stepped out from behind the urn, holding Will Carver by that fashionable young man’s shirt collar. The prince’s smile was white and charming in the moonlight. Will Carver’s teeth were just as white, but they were bared in a grimace of fear. Mihai pushed Will to his knees and placed his pistol to Will’s temple.
“Your dashing suitor came to my home to scold me,” Mihai said. “Came into my very parlor to tell me that I—I—was an abomination! He said that he knew my secret and that I must leave Romania or he would call down the authorities on my head.” Mihai laughed. “What a handsome fool! My uncle had him tied up and tossed in the back of a coach before he could straighten his tie!”
Will, for his part, seemed more frightened of Dacia than he was of the gun at his head.
“Call off your dog,” he gasped to Prince Mihai as Dacia slowly advanced, her hackles raised.
“It isn’t my dog, but it soon will be,” Mihai said silkily. “Won’t you, my love? You will be mine, and you will kill King Carol for me.”
Dacia growled.
“Tell your dog to get back!” Will Carver cowered against Mihai’s legs. “My father will pay whatever ransom you ask!”
If she hadn’t been concentrating so fully on Mihai, trying to guess his next move, Dacia would have taken a moment to be utterly disgusted by her former beau’s behavior.
“Don’t worry about my dog,” Mihai said, his eyes on Dacia and his voice still rich with self-satisfaction. “She won’t hurt you, will you, my pet? You wouldn’t do something like that; not to your beloved American dandy! No, it’s the king you’re going to tear with your fangs . . . or you’ll watch Carver and everyone else you care about die.”
The trouble with being a wolf was that Dacia could not tell Mihai that she would do no such thing, and that the only person in danger of being torn by her fangs was himself. She could not tell Will Carver to be a man and stop huddling there, staring at her with that horrified expression, either. But if she transformed so that she could speak with them, her nudity would probably shock Will into insensibility.
“You’re a barbarian,” Will Carver shrieked. “I’ll have you arrested!”
Dacia and Mihai ignored him.
“Make your decision, Dacia,” Mihai ordered. “Life with me, as my queen—my very biddable queen—or the deaths of everyone you love.”
“Dacia? You named your dog Dacia?” Will Carver straightened in indignation
The wind had changed, bringing with it a potpourri of odors that lifted her spirits as they filtered through her nose. She knew these scents, and knew that they would change the tide of this battle. Dacia tensed and got ready to pounce, a surge of savage joy running through her. When she felt that all was ready, Dacia yipped.
At Dacia’s signal, Radu leaped from one side, Aunt Kate from the other. Radu knocked Mihai down with the weight of his body, and his teeth fastened on the forearm that had held the pistol, forcing it down and away from Will and Dacia. Aunt Kate hit Will from the other side, bearing him to the ground and relative safety. The garden was filled with wolves, her wolves, but Dacia did not have time to revel in her power.
She ran for Mihai and Radu, struggling at the base of the urn. Radu move back, releasing the prince’s arm so that Dacia could put her front paws on Mihai’s chest. The prince looked around for his pistol, which Radu’s teeth had convinced him to drop. It was almost within reach, but a little snarl from Dacia sent one of her cousins padding over to sweep it aside with a paw. Dacia looked at the little gray-and-black wolf—her cousin Stefan, she thought it was—and he lowered his head with a whine of subservience.
As he should, Dacia thought severely. She would have to think of a suitable punishment for them all, once this mess was over. The Florescus would be led from the darkness into the light by force if need be.
But first there was Mihai to deal with.
She looked down at the prince, and he stared up at her. He reeked of something Dacia could not place, some noxious scent that mingled with the blood seeping from the bite Radu had given him, but his face showed only triumph. He was clearly not going to surrender.
“You see?” he shouted. “You see what a great queen you will be? Together, we will expand Romania’s borders across Europe! We will crush Hungary, take Paris as our new capital, build an empire the envy of Rome!”
The noxious odor oozing from Mihai had grown stronger, and Dacia knew it now. It was the stench of madness. And if she had any doubt as to her nose’s abilities, it was swept away by his eyes. They were ablaze in the moonlight with the utter conviction that he would one day rule the world.
I am already a queen, Dacia told herself. And it’s time that I selected a new role for my people. They will be the protectors of the royal family, yes, but the real royal family.
And as such, they must get rid of Mihai. His madness and his ambition would only continue to create strife. No, Mihai could not be suffered to live.
She looked at Radu, and expressed her conviction with a few low noises. Radu yipped, offering to do the job for her, but she curled her lip in refusal. A good queen would not hesitate to perform any duty she might ask of her people, she thought. She had read that somewhere, perhaps in a speech by Queen Elizabeth of England. One of her governesses had been quite obsessed with the ancient monarch.
Dacia realized that she was stalling, and that Mihai was starting to laugh, thinking that her continued hesitation meant that she was considering his words. She looked down at him, and whatever he saw in her eyes convinced him that she had rejected his suit once and for all. Mihai began to curse, but Dacia’s teeth came down and silenced him. Forever.
And then the battle began.
Soldiers in nondescript coats—mercenaries, most likely—ran forward, shouting, and opened fire on Dacia and Radu. She leaped for cover, while Radu set up a howl that Aunt Kate joined, summoning the Claw to the fight.
Dacia, crouched behind an urn, waited for her cousins to take up the call, but the rest of the Claw were silent. Dacia knew that they waited for her, their queen. She leaped to the top of the urn, straddling it with her four strong legs, and howled to shatter the moon. From the gard
ens and within the palace the answer came immediately: howls, and the sound of gunfire.
A mercenary rose up in front of the urn and took aim at Dacia. She leaped off the urn, knocking him to the ground, and bit deep into his throat as wolves and men boiled out of the palace and into the gardens. The green coats of the royal guard mingled with the darker clothing of Mihai’s hirelings. The Claw turned on the mercenaries at Dacia’s order, but the royal guards, confused and frightened, fired on them all the same.
At last Dacia heard Radu shouting with his human throat, “Stop it, you fools! We fight for King Carol now!” She looked up from the man she had just killed to see her cousin standing naked in the moonlight, and then he shifted into wolf form once more.
Bullets sang in the night air, and Dacia twisted and danced, trying to avoid them. Around her were the bodies of wolves and men, some dead, some merely injured, and she was filled with rage at the losses her pack was suffering, and that rage allowed her to keep killing Mihai’s men.
Their leader gone, surrounded by royal guards and wolves with blood-flecked muzzles, the mercenaries had finally broken and were fleeing into the forest when the Wing at last descended on the battle. Dacia hated Lady Ioana all the more for holding back.
Was she waiting to see if they were even needed, before she dirtied her claws? Dacia wondered. Or did she always prefer to hover above the fight and merely watch, like a voyeur? And the rest of the Wing . . . Would none of them defy Lady Ioana and join the Claw?
“Cowards!” Dacia howled at the bats that darted now among the Claw and the royal guards, gouging at their eyes with the sharpened claws at the top of their wings, squealing their nearly inaudible cries and biting at ears and noses with their needlelike teeth.
Dacia gave the order for her people to hide themselves. Mihai’s men were gone, the royal guard was rounding up those left standing, and Radu led a pair of their cousins into the woods to herd those who had fled back to the garden. There was no sense in any of the wolves losing an eye to Lady Ioana. Dacia crouched under a stone bench, and watched as the Wing swirled overheard, looking for more victims.
“An excellent battle,” yipped Aunt Kate, slipping beneath the bench as well. “You have proven yourself to be a powerful warrior.”
“We shall not speak of it again,” Dacia snarled.
Aunt Kate bowed her head in deference to her queen.
THE DIARY OF MISS MARIA LOUISA NEULANDER
18 June 1897
From darkness, into light.
THE FOREST OF SINAIA
“Be still, my houri.”
Lou didn’t know how she could be anything other than “still.” Her limbs were so heavy that she was afraid that she was now permanently paralyzed. She also thought it more than a bit forward of Theo to call her a houri again, and more specifically, his houri, but she couldn’t speak, either.
But she did hate to split hairs over matters of decorum, since she was currently wearing nothing but his coat. Whatever drug Lou had been given had worn off at last, and she’d fallen heavily to the floor. Theo had found her and scooped her up, carrying her to the gardens, where there was a great deal of fuss and bother going on.
The terrible urgency of before was fading now: the king was injured, but it was not serious, and he had been taken to a safe room to be tended by his physician. Mihai’s men had been captured, and more loyal soldiers had arrived to search for any hidden in the surrounding countryside. The Claw, too, had turned on Mihai’s men, and were in the garden under Dacia’s command, while the Wing had disappeared.
As they went out to join the wolves, Theo told Lou that the royal physician had deduced that she had been drugged but not poisoned . . . though it was nothing he had ever seen before. He assumed that she would recover, though he could not say exactly how long it would take.
The cool breeze on Lou’s bare legs told her that they reached the gardens. She realized that her eyes were closed and opened them. She had that much control. Then she found that she could look around. The sky was beautiful, sprinkled with stars, and the breeze on her legs and cheeks carried a fresh scent of flowers . . . and a less welcome odor of blood.
Lou managed to turn her head, and then wished that she hadn’t. Prince Mihai was lying at the base of a large decorative urn, and he was most certainly dead. Piled around him were soldiers in royal uniforms, and others in the dark coats of the prince’s mercenary force. Wolves, too, lay in broken shapes among the statuary, and Uncle Horia, in human form and wearing only a pair of dark trousers, was directing the palace guard to gather their bodies.
Dacia stood beside Mihai’s corpse in her wolf form, and blood was drying on her sleek fur.
“Oh, Dacia,” Lou whispered, and it hurt to speak because her throat was so stiff still.
Dacia transformed, an unsettling sight rendered all the more unsettling by seeing her standing, proud and naked in the moonlight, the blood now smeared across her pale skin. Though she was no less magnificent, standing there like some ancient warrior queen. Some of the blood, Lou saw, was Dacia’s own: a long gouge across one shoulder, and small, fine scratches on her pale face.
“LouLou, are you all right?” Dacia put out her hand, pushing back the sleeve of Theo’s coat so that she could find Lou’s cold fingers. Lou managed a faint pressure in reply.
“The drug seems to be wearing off,” Theo told Dacia, with genuine relief in his voice.
Lord Johnny came up, a bruise on one cheekbone and his tie wrapped around one hand for a makeshift bandage. He took off his coat and laid it around Dacia’s shoulders, and she gave him a look of gratitude through the mask of blood as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.
To avoid looking at the blood drying on her cousin’s beautiful face, Lou tilted her head to look back at the sky. The stars were moving . . . no, something was moving across them.
“The Wing,” she croaked.
“Let them go,” Dacia said fiercely. “Let them hide in caves!”
Aunt Kate joined them, lithe and beautiful as a nymph in the moonlight, and as unconcerned about her state of undress.
“It’s not as simple as that,” she chided Dacia, her eyes on the sky. “Lady Ioana leads them, and she is not someone to be trifled with.”
“I’ll go,” Lou mumbled. No one looked at her. She cleared her throat. “I’ll go,” she said, a bit louder this time. She could feel the Smoke beneath her skin, taste it on her tongue. Her power was returning to her as the paralysis faded.
“Lou, don’t be silly,” Dacia began.
But it was too late. Lou flowed out of Theo’s coat and into the sky, arcing after the Wing like an arrow.
She soon caught up to them; the taste of them in the air guided Lou, and they were flying against the wind, which didn’t bother Lou at all. She went straight for the front of the cluster of bats, where she knew she would find Lady Ioana. Her grandmother was distinctive in both her scent and the gray down her back, and in a heartbeat Lou surrounded her with Smoke and began to squeeze.
As much as she dared, Lou became dense. She tried to see how close she could come without actually reverting to her human shape, pinning Lady Ioana’s wings to her side. The aging matriarch began to sink toward the earth, and Lou with her. She fought to hold herself together without becoming fully human and falling to her death. She concentrated so hard on this that she didn’t notice how close they were getting to the trees below until they suddenly crashed through branches and landed in the crook of a beech’s limbs.
Lady Ioana transformed to her human form, clinging precariously to the branches and forcing Lou’s smoky hold to dissolve. Lou positioned herself on a branch a little ways away and changed as well. She had a thing or two to say to her grandmother, and she wanted a mouth to speak with, to make certain that the old woman understood her.
“You have betrayed a king, and forced our family to share your shame,” Lou hissed, the hate in her voice surprising her, but not Lady Ioana, who merely gave her a haughty look. Before the
old woman could say anything in her defense (or spread more poison, since Lou knew it was unlikely that her grandmother would see the need to defend herself), Lou continued on.
“You had me drugged! I could have died! And so could Dacia, fighting with Mihai! And now she’s killed him—you made a murderer of your own granddaughter!”
“I did nothing of the sort,” Lady Ioana snapped. “Dacia chose her own fate, just as you chose yours. We are Florescus, we have great power!”
“Which you have chosen to use for evil!”
“It is not evil to use one’s power the way God intended it to be used!” The old woman clenched a gnarled fist in Lou’s face, and Lou did her best not to flinch away. “Mihai could have made us great! Mihai would have risen to the highest heights, with our family surrounding him!”
“Well, he’s dead now,” Lou shot back, ignoring the sickening lurch she felt in her stomach at saying it again. She wondered if it would ever be easier to think about Mihai . . . and Dacia . . .
“You have destroyed the future of this family, and our country,” Lady Ioana said. “If I could strip you of your powers, I would! You, Dacia, Radu, and all the Claw! They are traitors, and they will be made to pay!”
“You are an unnatural creature,” Lou sputtered. Lady Ioana began to sneer, but Lou cut her off. “Not because of your powers, but because of the blackness of your heart! Murderer!”
“I am a murderer, Dacia is a murderer, in your eyes we are all murderers,” Lady Ioana said in a taunting voice. “What does it matter anymore?”
“It matters,” Lou said. “It matters that you killed your own granddaughters! Mihai deserved to die, but did they?”
“They would have taken my power from me,” Lady Ioana said as though it were obvious. “They would have taken all that I have fought for! Katarina weakly let you live, and see how much destruction you have brought!”
“I haven’t destroyed anything,” Lou protested.