The Moonlight Mistress (26 page)

Daglish went to check on the grenade supplies that were supposed to be in the gardening shed. Meyer hurried after her, his arms loaded with yards of fabric wrapped in brown paper. “Where would you like me to put this?” he asked.

“Table.”

“Do you need any help?”

She unrolled her housewife and plucked out a pencil and a tailor’s crayon. “You can’t draw patterns.”

“Well, no.” She could still hear him breathing, and finally he said, “You’re angry with me.”

She shrugged.

“Because of Crispin?”

She shook her head. Men could be so slow. Anger bubbled through her veins.

“I won’t say I’m sorry for trying to keep you out of this.”

“Why not?” She turned to face him. Her anger boiled over and she said, “Bloody hell, I even got shot in the line of duty.”

He paused, looked away, then looked back at her. “And if you were…Pittfield, say…yes. You’re right. I am sorry.”

As usual, he was genuine, but she was still a bit angry. “Get me some newspapers, will you? Or butcher paper.”

“I really am sorry.”

“Go on, now. Sir. We’ll talk about it later.”

TANNEKEN INSISTED ON TRAVELING TO KAUZ’S laboratory as a wolf. She wanted to have every sense available to her at its utmost capacity. If she needed to communicate with the humans, Ashby would be able to interpret her body language well enough. He intended to stay in his human form so he might use a pistol and be able to manipulate small objects. Tanneken felt Mademoiselle Daglish ought to be able to fill this role, except that Ashby was undoubtedly more skilled in the use of guns. Monsieur Fournier would be too busy attempting to extract Kauz’s foul scientific records before they destroyed the buildings.

She rode in the back of the open motorcar with Ashby and an Enfield rifle reeking of oil and metal beneath its wrappings; Mademoiselle Daglish drove, and Fournier spoke to her in low tones, oddly enough about mathematics, and occasionally passed around a flask of hot coffee. All of them were well wrapped against the bitter wind, which, Tanneken thought smugly, was nothing to her fine pelage.

After a few miles, Ashby took his glove off, rested his hand atop Tanneken’s skull, and scratched with his nails. Of course, he knew the places most rewarded by scratching, and also knew when to shift his attentions to her jawline, and then her chin. Tanneken allowed the familiarity. She had agreed to marry him, after all, and it felt astonishingly pleasant. She remembered with a pang that the last—and only—person to caress her in wolf form had been her mother. Her mother’s touch had not, however, been the same. Not at all. She shifted in the small space available to her and let her chin fall heavily on Ashby’s thigh. She knew he had not worn underthings, to enable him to quickly shed his clothing should he need to change. Quirking her brows, she licked him between his legs, laughing to herself when he jolted in his seat and then laughed, himself.

“What’s so funny?” Mademoiselle Daglish called over her shoulder.

“Just blowing off steam,” Ashby replied, fondling Tanneken’s ears. She huffed out a breath and had the pleasure of feeling him shift in his seat.

Mademoiselle Daglish drove to a railway siding and braked in the shadow of a bullet-riddled freight car. “We walk from here,” Fournier said, rewrapping his scarf and carefully buttoning his dark overcoat over his lighter-colored uniform. He’d earlier exchanged his kepi for a knit wool seaman’s cap. One like it covered Ashby’s bright hair, and another confined Mademoiselle Daglish’s longer locks. The humans quickly shouldered rucksacks, the two men carrying weapons, as well.

A few hundred feet away, it was easy to see why walking was required; the rails had been wrenched from the ground, some twisted from the force of explosions. Great ruts from
lorries scarred the earth. Feeling as if she hadn’t been free for months, Tanneken ranged freely through the dead grass, sniffing out rodents and listening to their tiny rustles as her three companions hiked along the remnants of the railway. She could see why Kauz would have chosen his location now. He would have wanted to take advantage of the railway, for delivering such items as heavy fencing and wire cages.

She took a moment to roll in the crackling grass, scrubbing the remembered scent of confinement from her nose. When she arose, she felt cleaner, and when the others caught up with her, she trotted next to Ashby for a time. She found his scent comforting, a reminder of sex and, even more, a clear sign that she was not alone. She would not be alone when she approached the laboratory buildings that masked the entrance to Kauz’s underground corridors, for the first time seeing them from the outside, while conscious. She would not be alone when she entered the rooms that stank of chemicals and pain and fear.

She lifted her head and deeply tasted the chill wind, concentrating on the tangled ropes of scent it brought her. It was easier to submerge beneath the wolf as she did that, and the rest of the night passed in a succession of moments, each filled with dead grass and live earth flashing beneath her paws. When she suddenly smelled danger, she nearly spun on her haunches and fled. She’d almost forgotten her purpose.

Ashby’s gloved hand burrowed into her ruff and stayed there as he crouched beside her. “Tanneken,” he said softly.

It was enough. She swished her tail once and lifted her brows, knowing he would be able to make out her expression in the nimbus of light thrown by the laboratory’s electric flood lamps. She could not, however, disguise the faint trem
bling in her muscles. She was unsure if it sprang from anger or fear. She decided it was a combination of both.

Ashby rubbed his face against hers. She huffed out a surprised breath and licked his nose.

Mademoiselle Daglish turned her back on the fenced buildings and set down her rucksack. “The entrance is on the other side,” she remarked. “The shed I burned, when I brought out Ashby, is to this side.”

Tanneken lifted her head. Yes, she could still smell the taint of petrol and ash, and even the scent of wolf, oddly fresh to have been a reminder of Ashby’s presence. The other wolves, she realized. They were here.

Bob didn’t smell any dangerous chemicals outside the laboratory, but perhaps they didn’t have any smell. She crawled back across the stretch of bare ground and squirmed down into the scratch trench Daglish had dug for cover, between the two men. Daglish lay on his belly, his head turned toward Meyer, though she couldn’t see the direction of his gaze through the camouf laged sniper’s hood he wore. Meyer had the deeper side of the shallow trench; he crouched over their grenades, inspecting the tobacco tins for leaks or damage from the trip here.

They’d had a ride first with a slender, pretty Belgian woman named Miss Wuytack, who was one of Monsieur Fournier’s spies. She’d been a little taken aback that neither Daglish nor Bob had spared her a second glance. She’d made a valiant attempt to flirt with Meyer, until he skillfully let slip that he was a Jew, and then he spent the rest of the ride staring out at the countryside while the spy drove on in resolute silence.

After Miss Wuytack let them out, they’d loaded their
grenades onto a hand-operated railway cart, which took them as far as a deserted hamlet, recently abandoned by the troops of both sides. Past that hamlet was enemy territory, though it didn’t look any different to Bob than what had gone before, until they began to spot small groups of patrolling soldiers. So far, they’d successfully avoided contact with the enemy, but that wouldn’t last long, now that they were dug in near a semiofficial government-funded German laboratory.

It was time for action. “Half a dozen guards,” she reported, her breath fogging in the cold air. “Couple smoking, out by the latrines.” She stopped and wiggled a hand beneath her camouflage overshirt to extract a rock that was poking into her belly.

“Fancy uniforms. Every one with a shiny prick on his hat.”

Daglish choked on a laugh. Meyer cast her a look she couldn’t decipher through the sniper’s hood he wore, but she could tell it wasn’t appreciative of her humor. She added, “No machine gun.”

Meyer carefully laid out rows of jam-tin grenades. They had twenty-one. “Seven each,” he said.

“Ten for me and eleven for Daglish,” Bob corrected.

“I thought you were holding the pipe.”

Daglish said, “I can’t carry them all. Hailey will hand them over as they’re needed. What we’ve got should be plenty.”

Meyer said, “I seem to recall that I should be in command.”

“We’re on leave,” Bob said. She rolled onto her back, tugged off one glove with her teeth and began checking through her webbing equipment, making sure she had multiple tins of safety matches. She dug out the cheap pipe and pouch of tobacco she’d bought in Paris and set about the delicate process of getting it lit. Hopefully, the smell wouldn’t be strong enough to carry all the way to the Germans standing guard.

“I’d still like it if you would be careful,” he said.

“Us, too,” Daglish said. “Try not to shoot us, will you?” He patted the butt of the rifle they’d brought.

Meyer snorted. “I think the camouflage will help me identify you, even from back here.” He fidgeted with the grenades again, but plainly it was just from nervousness, not anything that needed doing, so Bob laid her gloved hand atop his.

She said, “Ashby’ll be terribly disappointed if he doesn’t get to see you, after all this.”

“I don’t think he’d be all that happy if one of you was killed, either.” Meyer pulled away and ran his hand over the rifle barrel. “Cold as ice,” he remarked. “I wonder if it shoots frozen bullets?”

It would have been better to have grenades thrown from all directions, but it hadn’t been practical with only the three of them. Meyer had insisted that one of them be armed with a more accurate and long-range weapon, much as the infantry were protected by artillery. Of them all, he was the best shot with a rifle, though he wasn’t as good as Southey or anywhere near as good as Mason, back at the regiment. Hailey reminded herself that accuracy like Mason’s or even Southey’s wasn’t required here. All Meyer had to do was plug someone until he couldn’t attack anymore. Even the worst shot in the regiment could usually manage that.

Meyer interrupted her thoughts. “Be careful. Both of you.”

Daglish said, “I, for one, don’t intend to be killed. Hailey, you ready?”

“Yes,” she said.

After that it was the usual sort of running and dodging and flinging oneself into cover, except the sniper gear was uncomfortable and she had to do everything more carefully
because of the grenades, and normally, she wouldn’t be given grenades, even jam tins, because her job was to carry messages. In front of Meyer, she’d pretended she didn’t mind, but in truth the grenades made her nervous enough that her palms were sweating inside her gloves. She was good at staying concealed, though.

Daglish had taken platoons out on raids, so he knew what he was about. When they reached the stand of trees that was their midpoint, he settled in among the leaf litter and silently began to lay out his grenades in an arc around his feet. Bob did the same, then slipped the lit pipe from its loop on her webbing. She could still see a red-orange glow within the pipe’s bowl. She stirred up the embers just a bit with a stick and murmured, “Ready.”

Daglish rose slowly, stretching his arm and rotating it to make sure his sleeves—uniform beneath, sniper tunic above—wouldn’t catch and land a grenade on top of them. He scooped up a tin in each gloved hand and held them out to Bob, who held the pipe bowl to the fuses until they caught. Together, they counted, then Daglish threw, strong clean arcs that nearly made her whistle in admiration.

He’d easily cleared the tall fence. She counted another second, then two explosions ripped the air, one after the other. Sound rushed in on her, and she realized she hadn’t been breathing, but she was already lighting the next grenade, holding the fuse steady in the bowl of the pipe until sparks crackled, slowly eating their way up the fuse toward the tight-packed guncotton. The explosion would fling free the nails and other bits of metal rubbish they’d packed into the tin. The sharp odor of gunpowder singed her nostrils, or was it smoke from the laboratory compound? She held the grenade up to
Daglish without looking at him, shook burning ash off her leather glove, then began to light the next fuse.

Daglish had thrown perhaps half the grenades before she heard the gate rattle open and the
pop-pop
of rifle shots. “Run?” she asked. She risked a glance; three guards had ventured out, staying close to the fence.

“Two more,” Daglish said, heaving the grenades he held. They landed on a roof, and the resulting explosion resulted in a tower of flame as dry wood caught fire. He hissed with satisfaction as the flame leaped to another roof, which caught fire with a roar. “Meyer’s killed one.” He unbuttoned his holster and yanked out his pistol. “Take this, in case.”

Bob shoved the pistol through her webbing and lit the next grenade. Daglish threw it toward the open gate. The two remaining guards scrambled to be out of range before it exploded, and Meyer picked off another. “Here,” she said, shoving another lit grenade into Daglish’s hand.

The last guard retreated into the laboratory complex, scrambling over the rubble of the gate. Daglish tossed a last grenade after him. “Now we go,” he said. “He’ll no doubt be calling for reinforcements.”

“Got to collect Meyer,” Bob said.

Daglish faltered for a moment, then patted her shoulder and together they retraced their steps. An hour later, they were on their way back to Paris.

Lucilla felt like laughing as she hurried through the laboratory’s deserted underground corridors, a rucksack of chemicals on her back and a wolf trotting at her side like a gundog. The situation wasn’t funny, not in the least—the stinking room full of cages had dispersed that notion immediately—
but she felt the same euphoria as when she and Pascal had stolen Kauz’s motor. Her vision was unnaturally clear, her heart pumping blood until her fingers and toes tingled, and her thoughts were sharp as needles.

She stopped at a crossroads in the corridors and shoved one of her bottles into a convenient spot made by the junction of two crossbeams, feeling a distinct satisfaction as the bottle fit snugly into the narrow space. She didn’t bother digging into the corridor’s dirt wall, as she doubted it was flammable.

Miss Claes stalked up the left corridor, head lifted to catch any scent of Kauz. Having grown used to this, Lucilla ignored her while she fixed a new rubber cap to the bottle, one she precisely pierced to allow a slow but steady drip onto the wood. Eventually, the acid would eat through the rubber and the remains would spill out, but by then discretion wouldn’t matter. She placed one more bottle, stuffed guncotton at several key points, wound in fuses and hurried after Miss Claes. She’d prepared every one of the corridor branchings for collapse; now all that remained was to set the fires and hope Pascal had calculated correctly, and the flames would follow the path they’d set instead of flickering into nothing for lack of air.

This area was silent but for her booted footsteps and the faint click of Miss Claes’s claws on the roughly laid wood floor; it smelled dank and dusty. She’d left Pascal waiting at the underground room they’d identified as Kauz’s office, hurriedly sorting through messy piles of laboratory notebooks while Ashby stood guard with both rifle and pistol. Ashby had assured them, his voice uncharacteristically flat, that he would smell Kauz arriving. Though Miss Claes couldn’t speak in her current form, Lucilla had the distinct sense that she’d agreed vehemently.