Lucie told her story, then, and Chey was rapt with attention.

"Some things you already know. In nineteen seventeen Monty came to France as a soldier to the Great War, and there I met him. I was living at the time with my great-great-grand-niece elodie, whom you know only as the Baroness. We fell in love with Monty and made him like us so we could have him forever. But it was not to be.

"The story of what happened to elodie takes place in the year nineteen twenty-one, when we were still living in our castle, at Clichy-sous-Vallee. During the war we were a most happy family together, the three of us. After the peace, though, things became very difficult for us, and we were forced to leave France owing to a grave misunderstanding."

Powell grunted. "The locals didn't understand why wolves kept eating their pigs when real wolves had been extinct in France for centuries."

"Cher. I am telling this, no?"

Powell raised one hand in apology. "Alright," he said, "go on. But don't lie to her. If you think she needs to know this, then fine. But tell her all of it."

"I will endeavor to speak only truths. In nineteen twenty-one I had been changing for some hundreds of years. elodie and Monty were new to it. They had become loups-garou much at the same time-I had given to her the curse only days before I met him-and it was my duty to teach them all I knew of our ways. I taught them to hunt, and how to conceal their double nature when the moon was down. It was also my duty to introduce them to the society of the great families of Europe. When we closed down our castle at Clichy-sous-Vallee for the last time, it was a sad thing, but I knew we had many friends who would be kind enough to take us in as their guests. elodie and I were of noble blood, you see, and so we had many cousins in the grand houses of Europe. Many of those cousins had wolves living under their roofs, and would understand our plight, I thought.

"We traveled into lands that had been stricken by the war, places where refugees were common and a man and two women traveling together were not so strange a sight. We even had a big motor truck which was always breaking down in the wilderness, but which had room in the back for a silver cage, so that when the change found us we could contain ourselves, and hurt no one-"

"My idea," Powell insisted.

"-which was Monty's clever notion, I was just about to say that. You must understand that at this time things in Europe were very different. Now you can travel from Paris to Berlin, and along the way you will never be away from a superhighway, and there are people and their ugly little houses the whole way. Back then it was different, and still much of the country was wild. There were river valleys and whole mountains where no one ever went, and forests whose trees reached higher to heaven than the spires of cathedrals, with branches so thick and so woven together that it was always night beneath them. The roads were often as not unpaved, and always bumpy. When we saw people, it was always a little family on a farm very far from any town. So it was safe for us to travel and we were able to keep our secret close.

"Our cousins were always gracious, and took us in out of courtesy and compassion-"

"Or fear we would come back and kill them if they didn't," Powell chimed in.

"Cher! You do them too little credit. In Spain we stayed with a great man who was one like us, who lived in a house made all of silver built in the courtyard of his castle. In Venice-oh, Venice!-we had a house all our own, with a door that let onto the canal, and boats at our disposal day or night. It was in Prussia, though-that is part of Germany-that our story takes its tragic turn.

"At first it seemed a dream come true. I had a distant cousin there, the Graf von Krafft-Ebing, a very important man. Until nineteen nineteen he had been one of the most important men in Germany, and even then, during the Weimar Republic, he was influential. And quite wealthy, of course. He had a big estate out in the country that was quite a fashionable place to be invited to dine. Writers, artists, decadents of all stripes would come there to be seen, though always they must leave before the moon rose. The popular opinion was that the Graf had lost his mind and developed a phobia of the moon, but of course you will have guessed the real reason. He had a son named Gustav-though we always called him Tavin-upon whom he doted, and who was one like us.

"The Graf welcomed us into his home with open arms. He was a portly man with a red face and bright eyes. He was very glad to have us, as we represented good society for his son. He thought we would be of an improving nature for Tavin and we did our best to teach him what we had learned. We had a suite of rooms all our own, with two beds-though we only ever used one-and a bath to ourselves, and any food or drink we desired any time of day or night. Best of all, we were given a little iron key which opened a silver gate at the back of the castle. Beyond that gate was a stretch of forested land many hectares in size, walled all around with stone, that was the Graf's private hunting ground. It was his gift to Tavin, and made perfect for such as us. It was stocked well with game for us to chase and catch, and where our wolves could run and be free as nature had intended, without possibility of reproach. The six months we stayed there were among the happiest in my life. How I wish they could have never ended. But of course for poor elodie, it would not prove so pleasant."

Lucie's voice drifted off a little at the end and it was clear she didn't relish telling what came next. Chey took advantage of the pause to turn toward Powell and ask him a question. "How much of this is how you remember it?"

"Oh, she's telling it pretty straight," he replied. "Though maybe she makes the Graf sound better than he actually was. He loved Tavin alright, but when it came to other people ... well, when she says he stocked that hunting ground with game, you probably thought of deer, or maybe rabbits, right?"

"Yeah."

"It was more like drifters, criminals, and people who owed him money."

"That's horrible," Chey said. "He let his son hunt people?"

"None of them were innocent," Lucie insisted. "These were rapists and thieves."

"For the most part. It didn't mean they deserved to die like that." Powell grunted in distaste. "Chey, you have to understand something about people like the Graf. The nobility in Germany back then didn't think of themselves as the same species as the peasantry. The artists and the courtesans who came to the Graf's party were like the prize-winners at a country fair to him, but his son was born to be a great man. Nothing Tavin ever did, or wanted to do, could be wrong."

"And you lived under this guy's roof?"

Powell shrugged. "I genuinely thought I could help the boy. Teach him better and break the cycle. Or maybe ... if I'm truly honest with myself, maybe I was just tired of running. It was pretty comfortable there."

"Tavin was a sweet child," Lucie said, as if there had been no interruption. "How I remember the blush upon his cheeks. He would bring me posies of wildflowers picked from his private hills, and let me strew them in his long blond hair. He saved the best of the blooms for elodie, however. He was under the impression that Monty and I alone were married, and that elodie was like a sister to me. He could not imagine that we three were joined in union, because no such thing would ever have been allowed in the very proper society that raised him. So it could not exist. elodie was the first werewolf he ever met whom his father considered eligible to mate with him. He was not likely to meet another for a very long time. Do you understand what must happen in this case? He fell in love. For the same reason any boy falls in love with any pretty girl. Because she was there, and because she did not instantly refuse him.

"elodie was already mated, for life, to Monty. Yet she could not tell the boy as much. Certainly not when it would get back to his father. The scandal would be too much, and we three would be sent back out into the cold. If not worse. So we let young Tavin have his fantasies. It was a time of very long courtships, and it seemed the boy would take forever to ask for elodie's hand.

"I think, had we led him to believe that I was the available one, things may have gone very differently.

"For poor elodie knew so little of life. Before I gave to her the curse, she had been a sheltered girl, never allowed to stray from the castle where she was born. Now she was being asked to play a part beyond her abilities. She claimed she understood our ruse, but I wonder if she did not come to love Tavin a little bit. He was so very kind to her, which is ever the way to a woman's heart. That heart was not hers to give, and I believe the fracture between these two desires drove a wedge into her sanity."

Powell rolled over to face the two women. It seemed he had to interrupt. "Come on, we knew well before then she was having trouble. When I first met her she was clearly shell-shocked. She could barely speak. She was walking around with a candelabra that wasn't lit. Afterward, when I understood what had broken her sanity-because I was going through it, too-I tried to help her, but she would never talk about the things we did. And then she started to slip away. Become less human, and more wolf. She would wake up growling and for an hour or so in the morning she wasn't human at all. She couldn't bear to wear any underclothes because they just felt wrong against her skin. It was all we could do to keep her from going naked all the time. And then there was what happened in Venice. That should have been an obvious warning."

"Ah. Yes. Venice," Lucie said, as if his words had recalled to her something she'd forgotten from a shopping list. "But that was not so much. We had a room in a tower, there, where we would retire when the change was coming on us. It had silver bars on the windows and the door, so our wolves could not escape. There was a bed in the room, and the three of us shared it, and that one particular morning, when we woke together-"

"elodie rolled over and bit my throat," Powell said. His voice was hollow, almost emotionless. "Took a chunk right out of it. There was blood everywhere. Lucie tried to pull her off of me and elodie slashed Lucie's face with her fingernails. It took both of us to finally pin her down and all that day-until our next change-we had to hold her arms. She squirmed and shook and screamed at us. Howled at us, sometimes demanding that we let her go, sometimes just growling like an animal. We were humans and she was still a wolf, and she wanted nothing but to destroy us. When we finally changed it was such a relief. But then the next morning we were ready for it to start again. When we woke we were ready to fight her off once more. We didn't have to, though."

"What happened?" Chey asked. She had to know.

"I awoke," Lucie said, "and jumped out of the bed ready to restrain elodie, only to find her sitting before a vanity mirror, carefully pinning up her hair. She gave me a warm smile and asked if there was any chocolate for breakfast."

"She had no idea that anything had happened," Powell went on. "She couldn't remember the day before at all. When we insisted, when we showed her all the blood on the sheets, she only blushed and looked away and claimed she'd had her-her, you know. That she'd gotten her monthly bill."

"Like, her period?" Chey asked.

"Don't be crass, jeune fille," Lucie said. "I will admit, it was a disturbing episode. But we did not want to believe it was part of an overall pattern. It happened rarely that she would fail to recover her humanity upon awakening, and I for one was polite enough not to make much mention of it.

"Yet when Tavin started to plead his love for her, and fall upon her knees and beg her to say she loved him too-"

"It started to get worse," Powell said, his voice very soft.

"I-I can see where this is going," Chey said. She was terrified by the story Lucie was telling her, and she suspected that was the very reason why Lucie had chosen to relate it. Lucie wanted her to squirm. To live in terror of what was happening to her, now. "Every time she changed, when she woke up, she had a harder time shaking off her wolf, right? It was always with her."

"Sometimes ... she would seem so normal. So human. She would be walking with Tavin and they would be talking like young people," Powell said. A deep sadness had entered his voice. "Or we would be taking a meal and she would be correcting my etiquette-telling me which spoon to eat my soup with." He sighed. "And out of nowhere it would come over her. Her face would change. She would stop talking. She seemed to lose the ability to speak. She would look around as if she had no idea where she was and her lip would curl back in a snarl. It was like her mind wanted to transform, even when her body wasn't ready."

"When the moon was still below the horizon," Lucie pointed out. "You know how good it feels to change. To become that thing, so powerful, so self-assured. elodie's human life could not compare. It was a maze of confusions and little pains. Every little shock, every frustration she felt would send her running for the comfort, the peace, that only our wolves can know."

Powell cleared his throat. He hadn't wanted to tell this story before, but now it seemed like he needed to get it off his chest. "We hid it as best we could. The Graf had been pretty clear on one thing: we were welcome in his house only as long as none of his guests ever suspected there might be something different about his son."

"It was not easy. We kept elodie apart from the Graf and his human servants, as much as possible. Especially at mealtimes. elodie could not bear to have anyone touch her food but one of us. Should a footman attempt to clear her plate before every morsel was finished she would snap and bite at his arm. Should anyone be so clumsy as to drop a fork on the castle's flagstones, the noise would send her dashing for the hunting grounds, where she would strip off her clothes and run as best she might on all fours.

"Tavin was our great ally in this deception. When his father would ask why elodie did not dine with him, or why her clothes seemed to fit her improperly, he would make up one thousand excuses, or simply say she chose to spend all her time with him. He believed so fervently in her love. In their future together.

"But then the time came, when we could pretend no longer. There was a ball, a formal event. Guests of great importance were coming. All the avant garde that the Graf wished to impress-millionaire heiresses from America, cabaret stars from Berlin, a cousin of the Czar of Russia who intended to raise an army and take his country back from Lenin. The cars that pulled up in front of the castle were like none we'd ever seen before, sleek, powerful things that throbbed with speed. The fashions the guests wore were daring or provocative but always so chic. The servants, so many servants for these wonderful people, so many they had to build a city of tents outside the castle wall for them to live in. It was like a great sparkling galaxy of light and color had descended on our tiny world in the country. There was music playing, all the time. Jazz! Hot jazz, of a kind we had never heard before. It stirred the blood. Excited all the passions."

"Which was a problem," Powell said, his voice a soft growl. He didn't like this part of the story. "The Graf had told his guests a little about us. Not everything. They had no idea what would happen to us when they'd all gone, and the moon rose. But he had hinted that we were afflicted by some mysterious, ancestral curse. A dark past no one could ever speak of aloud. Which meant every one of them would want to meet us and ask us leading questions. The men would all want to dance with Lucie and elodie. The women would want to try to seduce me. So there were no more excuses to be made. elodie had to appear for this party, no matter how 'sick' she might be, no matter how much we claimed she needed to be allowed to rest."

"And of course, there was another reason, which we were not told. Which elodie had not spoken of, not to us," Lucie said.

"Tavin had asked for her hand in marriage. And she had said yes."

"You cannot imagine the mental strain upon poor elodie," Lucie insisted. "She knew this could not be permitted. And yet she could not refuse her beloved. Their engagement was to be announced at the ball before God and everyone worth knowing. She and Tavin would have the first dance. It was to be a grand evening, indeed."

"I'm guessing it didn't go so good," Chey said.

"No," Powell agreed.

"We did what we could," Lucie said. "We spent all that day with her. Calming her nerves, soothing her little fears. Encouraging all that was still human in her. Then we helped her into a very fine if slightly old-fashioned dress and a pair of satin dancing shoes, and led her down to the hall. When she was announced, she made a perfect curtsy, and everyone applauded her entrance. While a famous musician played his latest composition on the piano, we drew her back to the edges of the crowd, and told her how well she was doing. How proud we were of her, and how she was a perfect mate for the two of us. How we would soon leave the castle and begin a life together where things were easier for her."

"I've always wondered if that's what did it," Powell said. "I think maybe she wanted, in the human part of her, to stay there. To really marry Tavin."

"Unthinkable," Lucie insisted. "She was ours."

Powell could only shrug. Chey knew that he would have found a way to break the bond, to let elodie have her happiness, if it had been possible.

"While the music was playing, the servants were busy laying out a quite lavish dinner. There were oysters and canapes, and sausages of a hundred varieties, and many fish courses, and of course an enormous roast joint of venison.

"elodie said the music hurt her ears. To be fair, it was an atonal composition in the most progressive style of that time. Not melodic at all, instead all brash, jarring chords and sudden changes of time signature. elodie asked if she could be excused to use the necessary."

"The toilet," Powell translated, and Chey nodded in thanks.

Lucie wrinkled her nose, but went on. "We listened to the rest of the piece, and gave our polite applause. We were just about to go looking for her, to bring her back, when Tavin said he had an announcement to make. You know what it was. Yet he never had a chance to say the words. He asked us where elodie was, and when we attempted to stall him, he laughed and said we must produce her at once. I looked to see the Graf, his face very pinched, and knew he was displeased. This made me very worried, of course.

"At that same moment, a sound was heard from the grand dining room. A sound that was as dismal as the tolling of a funeral bell.

"Perhaps what happened next could have been hidden, if we had been quicker. Alas, we could only stand there in horror and pretend nothing was happening when everyone in the room could hear growling and the sound of gnashing teeth. Everyone rushed in to see what was happening. We could not stop them. All those millionaires, painters, jazz trumpeters, servants, the Graf, Tavin-all of them saw it. They saw our elodie, crouched on the table like an animal, tearing at the joint of venison with her teeth. Grease and gravy covered her hands and chest. Her dress had been torn off and discarded on the floor. Though she still wore her satin dancing shoes.

"The ball, needless to say, was canceled. Everyone was sent home at once, the servants abandoning their city of tents in place, the intellectuals and artists bundled off in long cars. Some of those people could be bribed to never speak of what they'd seen. Others were guaranteed to gossip, but it was unlikely they would be fully believed. It was nineteen twenty-one, a very wild time in that part of Europe, and many impossible stories were making the rounds. As for us, however-the Graf made things quite clear.

"We had disgraced his house. Abused his generosity. Worst of all, we had broken the heart of his beloved son. Tavin had fled to his tower room and locked himself in, and would not come out for days. Servants who put food outside his door said they heard him sobbing in there, and thought every so often they heard him calling elodie's name, sometimes in despair, sometimes so he could curse her to damnation.

"This, the Graf could not accept. At once he made his decision known. elodie was sent naked into the walled hunting ground, behind the gate of silver bars, and there she was locked away. We were not permitted to go in after her. No one was."

"Nobody ever spoke a word to her again," Powell said. "She never put on another dress. Or combed her hair. Or had a fire when it was cold." Emotion choked his voice. He had obviously cared for elodie, in some capacity. Had he loved her? Chey couldn't know. "It's hardly a surprise that within a week her human mind was gone. Utterly submerged. There was nothing left of her but a wolf, a wolf that couldn't understand why it spent half its life in a body it hated. We could hear her howling, day and night. We could hear her screams." He turned away so Chey couldn't see his face, even in the darkness of the den.

Lucie was nearing the end of her story and the excitement in her voice was growing. "In time, it became necessary to-"

"Stop," Powell said.

"But, cher, I-"

"No! You're done. Chey, as far as I'm concerned, you don't need to hear the rest. It has nothing to do with you. And I am not going to lie here and listen to it."

"No! Come on, I need to know this. I need to know how it ends," Chey insisted. "If I'm facing the same thing."

"It ended in madness and howling," Powell said. "What happened after that doesn't matter."

"It became necessary," Lucie said, as if Powell hadn't spoken at all, "to put her out of her misery."

"The Graf was many things, but always he had a sense of style," Lucie went on. "He sent to another cousin of his, a Polish prince who had a grand collection of curios and artifacts from the Middle Ages. A wagon was dispatched, and in a few days it arrived. In the back was a thing about the size of a packing case. Or a coffin. It was very old, and made of base metal, much of which was red with rust. It was tapered, wider at one end than the other, and the narrow end was carved with the face of a howling wolf. It opened in the front, with a pair of doors that could be latched shut with a silver hasp.

"It was-"

"Stop!" Powell shouted. In the little cave the noise was enormous. Chey felt his breath stir the tiny hairs on her cheek. "If you won't stop for her sake, stop for mine. I can't think about this now. I can't remember it!"

"Powell," Chey said, very calmly, "I'm asking you, please, to let her speak. Because I want to know this. I want to hear it."

He stared at her and even in the paltry light of the den she could see his eyes burning. Then he turned away and buried his face in the wall of the cave, clutching his hands over his ears.

"I will whisper it, so as not to hurt him too much," Lucie said, and dropped her voice.

"It was called the silber jungfrau. The silver maiden. A device that had been built by the Prince-Bishopric of Mainz in the sixteenth century. A device of execution for werewolves. It had been used only a scant handful of times. Mostly the church was content to burn our kind at the stake, and bury us with silver crosses. The silver maiden was used only for private executions, for those werewolves who were discovered high within the church hierarchy, or for those of princely rank and above. It was in a way a great honor that elodie should meet her end within it."

"How did it work?" Chey asked, almost breathless.

Lucie didn't answer her at once. "A team of liveried servants unloaded it in the castle courtyard. They opened the doors and then ran inside, to safety. Tavin went to the silver gate and unlocked it. He called to elodie. When she did not come, he went to her. How he convinced her to emerge from her refuge, I do not know. But he was almost tender with her as he brought her, naked and covered in filth, into the courtyard. I watched it all from a tower window. Powell could not watch. He was chained in the castle's counting-house, under armed guard so he might not try to effect a rescue.

"elodie had eyes only for Tavin. There was fear on her face, but not as much as you might expect. I think the wolf in her brain recognized him, still. He led her over to the maiden, and only then did she begin to tremble.

"Perhaps you have heard of the device called the iron maiden, and so you know already what was in store for her. The inside of the silver maiden was lined with spikes of silver, very long, like very sharp nails, polished to a high gleam. There was room inside for a small person to stand without being pricked-but only with the doors open.

"Tavin spoke very softly to her. I could not hear his words. She nodded, once, and then she stepped inside.

"Then he closed the doors. He did not slam them shut. He locked the hasp. And then he went inside and had his breakfast.

"We could hear her screaming, of course, but no word was spoken in the castle that day about what was happening. The Graf would strike any servant who so much as glanced toward the courtyard with the back of his hand.

"I do not know how long it took her to die. I do know that when they opened the doors again, and took out what was left of her, it was a wolf's body, not a woman's. Powell buried it inside the hunting ground.

"Then he threw a glass of wine in the Graf's face. And the two of us took our leave of that place, forever."

Lucie's tale was finished. Chey couldn't breathe. She could only stare at the redhead, and try not to shiver.

Perhaps tired out by telling her story, Lucie went to sleep shortly thereafter. Powell still was turned toward the wall. Chey knew she wasn't going to sleep for a long time, so she scooted over toward him and reached for his shoulder. He shrugged her off.

For a while she just lay there, thinking about what was happening to her. Wondering how much longer she had before she, too, went mad. Before her wolf took over and drove away the last of her humanity.

She couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand living with that knowledge, couldn't stand not having anyone to talk to. "Powell," she whispered. "Are you asleep?"

He shifted slightly, curling up further around himself.

"Powell," she said again. "That was in nineteen twenty-one. The same year you left Europe-that's what you told me. Was this why you left?"

"Yes," he whispered back.

When he didn't say anything more she scooted closer to him, until they were almost touching. "You must have been very upset," she said, which sounded lame. "It must have torn you up inside."

"elodie was my mate. How do you think that felt?" he asked. He didn't turn to look at her, but there was a slight relaxation of his shoulders that told her he was resigned to talking to her now. "Yes. That was when I decided to leave. Before then I guess I thought I could make a life with the two of them. That no matter what horrible things I saw-what terrible things I did-it was still better than being alone. When elodie ... died, that changed. Lucie didn't want me to go, of course. She didn't want to be alone and she fought me."

"You mean you argued about it?"

Powell's shoulders shook in mirthless laughter. "She tried to kill me. Said that if she couldn't have me, I didn't have any right to live. She had made me into this-this lycanthrope. She felt that I owed her something. I disagreed. So we fought like savages. It was brutal, and bad, and we both got seriously hurt. She wasn't able to walk afterward, and I was. So I walked away."

"And then you came home. To Canada."