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“I thought you had decided to move on,” Lyall said, after a pause. “You know, it makes our whole living arrangement unnecessarily difficult, when we keep trying to fix Biffy—” keep him alive “—and you’re still pining, and trying to drag him down with you. You know perfectly well—”
“Do I.” A deliberate drawl that made Lyall want to growl.
“You know perfectly well,” he said stubbornly, “that he’s too young and too devoted, and he has to be devoted to the pack or he will die. It doesn’t matter that you could have made him a vampire, he’ll never be one now, and the closer you get, the more you dangle it in front of him and hurt him.” And they both knew that Lyall was a good beta. He would let Biffy die rather than let a single element of divided loyalty threaten his pack.
“You keep saying these things, my petite sherbet, as though I am not over him.” The vampire smiled sharply, and waved at the tea service as though Lyall might politely get the hint.
“I thought you were.” The werewolf did not smile back; nor did he take any tea.
“I know what I said before. But I cannot help it if nothing equals dear Biffy’s smoothness, his wit, his knack for dressing hair.”
“You’re annoyed at him for not dying for want of you,” Lyall retorted. “Still. That’s not the same as love, and it’s not the same as getting over anything.”
Akeldama’s eyes met his, glittering and angry, “Why does it matter how I feel if he is safe, your pack is safe, and I am still proven absolutely capable of getting everything I want?”
He had, in one fell swoop, moved his rivals out of town, moved a preternatural baby into his house, and made himself, socially and politically, the most powerful vampire in all of London. Lyall saw his point. He also saw it for what it was: a misdirection.
Lyall said flatly, “You didn’t get everything you wanted. We are emphatically not safe. And you’re too powerful, too brutish—yes, I do mean that—and there’s no longer anyone to keep you in check—as there had better be, while you’re raising Prudence. Conall will eat you alive if you make a misstep with his daughter. If Alexia doesn’t get to you first.” Which she would.
“You should fix it,” Lord Akeldama said abruptly.
“What?”
“Fix it, my sugar lump. If I can’t have Biffy, and you want me to stop this—whatever it is you think I am doing—you ought to fix it. It’s your fault. Give me compensation.”
“Give me inspiration, my Lord, and I might even try.”
“Oh, peach pit, you are so remarkably quick and so unremarkably pretty. You are just so deliciously intriguing, my little mouse tart.”
Lyall ignored the decorations and dug to the substance. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.
“You, of course, are nothing like Biffy. That’s not an insult. He’s emotional, young, has a history with me, which would make it difficult for anyone to move on, and we are so much tidier. You, however, couldn't possibly lose sight of your pack, no matter how much you mollified me.”
“Lord—” Lyall looked more horrified than Akeldama had expected.
“Are you offended by the idea, my little muffin cup, of a werewolf and a vampire being close? Is that the dread Victorian malaise that’s got your fur in a tangle? Just because it hasn’t happened before, that we know. . . ”
“Even if I thought it would work, I would never encourage something so contrary to my Alpha’s wishes.”
“Liar,” said Akeldama blandly.
Lyall coloured slightly. He said, “Not anymore. And no more than you.”
“But oh! Professor!” said Akeldama, leaning forward. “In this revolutionary time, there is no end to boundaries we may test. Are you sure you wouldn’t enjoy surveying the unexplored territories with me, my wilderness hound?”
“Queen Victoria is not inviting a new era of libertinism!” Lyall snapped. Akeldama stopped smiling.
“You wouldn’t categorize it in such a way,” he said. He sounded almost angry. “You wouldn’t dare be afraid of offending propriety. Even if you do put it on, my little fur puff, you’re not its Quixotic champion.”
“My Lord,” Lyall started. He didn’t know whether to feel harassed or worried.
“You’re afraid,” Akeldama said more easily. “Have you even let anyone get his hands on you since Tarabotti and your last Alpha died?”
Lyall didn’t answer. He felt pale. Akeldama sat back in his chair. The teacup in his hand was empty, but he didn’t seem to care that this particular prop was not performing at its best. At last Lyall stood up. He bowed sharply and without a word, and strode across the room without looking at the vampire once.
“Darling,” the vampire said with nasty sweetness when Lyall reached the door, “next time you find my activities distressing, do let me know what’s troubling you in the particulars. Self-righteousness just isn’t pretty on you. Neither is jealousy.”
Lyall shut the door quietly behind himself, and fled back to the pack’s side of the house. He didn’t stop until he had tucked himself somewhere silent, where he could banish the shaking in his hands.
^
“Prejudice and nonsense,” she said. “More or less. I suppose sometimes the loyalty issue can be a real problem for a pack, but for loners I can’t imagine why—vampires and werewolves do have plenty in common.” She smiled. “And besides which, Randolph, I should think either of us was proof that you needn’t ruin everything by loving outside the pack.”
“It can hurt the—other party—rather badly,” Lyall suggested.
“That’s true. But a supernatural can take care of—well, you’re all right at taking care of yourselves, anyway. Lyall, is this about Akeldama and Biffy?” Lyall’s heart jumped and then steadied.
“Yes,” he said gratefully. “Yes, it’s really a moot point, more a philosophical—yes, thank you.”
“Hmm,” said Alexia. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.
“Madam,” said Lyall, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
^
Akeldama was in Lyall’s rooms one day. It was startling because apparently no one had thought to put him out.
“You are quite right,” Akeldama said before Lyall could intercept him, or even fully comprehend this effective circumvention of all his efforts. “I was intolerably rude. I cannot imagine what sort of sprite of mischance I was courting with such baldfaced affrontery.”
Lyall hesitated, and took a seat. “If I thought it wouldn’t make things worse,” he said, “I would have suggested that you and Biffy continue to—keep company—in spite of the complications.”
Akeldama raised his perfect eyebrows. Lyall furrowed his dull ones. “It has not in fact been my life’s pursuit to spread misery as an officious schoolmaster,” Lyall said.
Akeldama twinkled. “You are so candid for a dangerous conspirator, my lumpkin!” he cried. “In exchange for this plum-drip of confidentiality I shall promise to tell you something deliciously true sometime or another.” His expression shifted just slightly and he added, “For no charge at all I will admit that I know you couldn’t have suggested it, and that I certainly would have killed him, and that I will undoubtedly get over it.” And then he looked, all at once, quite bleak. “I simply don’t want to get over any more young, beautiful, clever boys that are a delightful challenge to replace, over and over.” He looked up. “That was free as well, because I mentioned Alexia’s father.”
Lyall said, “Given the tenor of our last discussion and the tenuous relations between my pack and your household, perhaps we could reconvene somewhere other than my bedroom when time…makes itself available.”
Akeldama laughed. “Never wait on time, Professor. One ought to bully it and smother it in perfumes and make thorough use of it on one’s own terms. Like one of those delightful evening customers, you know, who can’t do better.”
“Naturally,” said Lyall, refusing to be offended.
Akeldama said, “You’re imagining something, Professor. Naturally I would never say anything so indelicate. You should come for a moonlight stroll with me and dear Prudence tomorrow. Three in the morning?”
Lyall noted, “Her name sounds worse when you own it even than it does from Lord Maccon.”
“Then it is,” Lord Akeldama pronounced, “the only thing I’ve ever owned that hasn’t fit. Perhaps I’ll grow into it. Come along now, fairy cake, will you take a constitutional with me and the mutually adored infant?”
“Assuming that no household catastrophe arises to prevent me,” said Lyall, “I will.”
^
Lyall watched Akeldama act fond and indulgent (he may have been in earnest) and absorbed by the baby (in that, he most certainly was).
Lyall was thinking that Akeldama must, in fact, like him. He conjectured thus because Akeldama had been truthful to him on a number of occasions, and that was very uncharacteristic for Akeldama. It had, of course, started when he was in a grieving rage over the loss of Biffy to the pack, at which point he had, quite probably, wished to rip the throat out of any werewolf that got near him. But he had made a rare habit of telling the truth since then, and not out of rage.
Lyall didn’t know what that meant. Akeldama was almost universally friendly, sometimes even as he put someone’s neck in the noose. He was socially incomparable, and there was nothing as fashionable (if improper) as his harem of young gentlemen. But Lyall was not certain of how often he liked people. Biffy, certainly, and Alexia—definitely not Conall—and Prudence at least entertained him, with her current status as a bauble of novelty (if a slightly vomitous one). Beyond that…
Lyall imagined that Akeldama’s main struggle in the afterlife was boredom. Or, perhaps, not boredom, but a lack of challenge. He learned everything, owned everything, flirted with everything, because the alternative, Lyall suspected, was to become so gripped by world-weariness that he crumbled into dust. He was too quick and too interested to manage a quarter of the leisure he pretended. There had probably been a little much truth in what he had said about time; Lyall could see the vampire throwing himself forward through time with violence just to keep diverted.
Did his treacle-and-diamonds act of the fop make him happy, or did it just distract him? Perhaps it was Lyall’s own reserve colouring the situation, but such vicious, superficial good cheer always looked just a touch masochistic.
“Pumpkin,” said the vampire, still looking at the baby, “my cocoa cream puff. If you don’t cease this overtaxation of your mind you will spoil the whole mood.” He handed Prudence over to Lyall, and he took her by reflex.
“My apologies,” Lyall said, blinking down at a ball of baby-fat wolf cub.
“I dislike brooding in my walking companions,” Akeldama said sadly. “It makes me feel I’ve done something wrong, and I do dislike being unhappy about that feeling.”
“Apologies,” Lyall said again, and Akeldama frowned.
“You truly aren’t in your usual spirits,” he observed. “Reticence and melancholy are utterly different creatures. Did I really upset you so much the other night?”
Lyall said, “I’m only thinking. I do think.”
“What about?” Akeldama wondered.
“You,” Lyall said blandly.
“Well! Then don’t have the effrontery to look so sad about it!” He reached across Lyall’s chest to almost absentmindedly pet Prudence’s fur. Lyall swallowed.
“Come with me to the opera,” Akeldama commanded. “I know it’s early morning, but it is so divine, one of the boys can drive, and I suppose you can attend to that.”
Lyall was uncertain what he was meant to be attending. He sighed. “I may be busy,” he said.
“You’re a doll,” Akeldama said. “A peach, a pear, a dairy cow of pure sweet love.”
Lyall said, “If I knew exactly what you were trying to get out of me I would probably say no.”
“You wouldn’t, my poppet!” Akeldama exclaimed. “You would simply be weak with gratefulness!”
What an obnoxious man, with his perennial dimples and these awful endearments that he didn’t even mean. Lyall should really like to tell him properly to shut up, just once.
“I am a-quiver with joy at the mere chance of joining you on a journey of musical ecstasy.”
“I see,” said Lyall. “I’ll try to excuse myself from breakfast.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the vampire.
Prudence, the small ball of fur, was burying herself in the crook of Lyall’s elbow. Akeldama levered her free and resumed cooing as her fur receded and minute, elegant fangs shaped themselves from her doggy incisors. There was nothing to read in her foster father’s perfect face that Lyall could see.
^
“My Lord?” he queried.
“Don’t be silly,” Akeldama said. “You would just use them to sneak off into your own head, and I refuse to let you out this time.”
Oh dear, thought Lyall.
But the opera was delightful. Lyall attended, and they talked at the interval, and on the way home.
“You should have breakfast with me,” Akeldama pointed out.
“I shouldn’t,” Lyall corrected him. “Because I am a responsible beta, and Lord Maccon is already annoyed that you coopted me for the morning. Besides, I’m sure your young men are wilting without you.”
“Oh, they’re one-third affection and two-thirds affectation,” Akeldama answered carelessly.
“And yet I must go,” Lyall said firmly. He went through the right door when the carriage stopped. He couldn’t help thinking that Akeldama had looked pleased when Lyall turned his invitation down.
The consequence was worse than he expected, for a number of the pack had seen him go out with the vampire, and Connall’s attempts to put them off had resulted in a terrible rash of gossip.
“It’s bad enough to have you running out on business,” Lord Maccon growled behind closed doors. “That it’s with that—that fellow, no less, it’s not tolerable. I knew it would be a disaster, being so close to those creatures, and it’s infuriating enough that Akeldama has my child as his own—as though he’d ever get a child anyway—without his stealing my beta as well! And everyone knows. It’s shameful!”
“My Lord Maccon,” Lyall said soothingly. “Akeldama certainly has not stolen your beta.” Although Lyall did wonder somewhat if that was what the vampire would like to do. “I’m nothing but an ambassador.”
“You’re nothing like an ambassador!” Conall shouted. “I swear ye’d rather be on his side of the wall half the time you’re here! Lately you’re more vampire than wolf!”
“Not at all, sir,” Lyall said. He was shaken, however, and all of Alexia’s soothing of Lord Maccon did not put Lyall at his ease. He withdrew from Akeldama’s company as completely as he could, until several weeks later, he was summoned, and even Lord Maccon did not give him an excuse to refuse.
^
“Professor Randolph Lyall,” Akeldama said, “you put far too much worry into that brilliant head of yours. You are far too frightened of something that is never going to happen a second time.”
“What?” Lyall asked. He saw, nearly, what he had been unsure of before: what this conversation was about, if he was still unsure of where it was going to go.
“You were always quiet,” Akeldama said, “but you weren’t such a bundle of unappiness before they died.”
“I’m not unhappy,” Lyall said calmly.
“No, no, maybe not. But you’re simply worried to death about being—dare I utter such words?—loved by somebody. Afraid to soften up, you know. And as a consequence now you’re so stiff and formal I doubt you go by your given name even in your own head!”
“You—indescribably frustrating man,” Lyall said, between his teeth. “I wish very much that you would put a halt on your insults and tell me what you want.”
“I told you!” Lord Akeldama cried. “I want compensation! I’ve let go of Biffy, have I not? I am not mooning over him or making him more melancholy, and he is going to be perfectly all right and loyal and a perfect werewolf gentleman—if there were such a thing—”
“Yes, but I still don’t know what you want!” Lyall barked, and Akeldama fixed him with a look that sent a shiver straight through his middle.
“When I said you would owe compensation,” Akeldama said in a low voice, “I meant you.”
“You can’t have meant,” Lyall stuttered in protest, “you wouldn’t want—”
“Was I not supposed to want a replacement, my little fur and treacle tart?” Akeldama asked with vicious sweetness.
“I couldn’t say what you’re meant to want, my Lord,” Lyall answered, teeth bared.
“Of course you could, my sugared duck,” Akeldama said, eyes glittering. He sat forward quickly in his chair. “Did you go silent all at once, and very successfully, too, with excellent use of messengers—did you vanish from under my eyes, after such lovely outings and brutally honest conversations, because you were bored of the company?”
Lyall swallowed the woolly feeling from his throat. “No, my Lord. But I do have duties. And family. And loyalty.”
Akeldama laughed, hoarse and sharp. “Naturally,” he said. “What was it, my petit bonbon? Is Conall all afright you’ll be my next Biffy?”
Lyall jumped in his skin, at that, though he regained his composure admirably. “Please show some decency--” he began.
“I have shown plenty,” Akeldama hissed. “I’ve done everything rightly as I ought to be doing it. If you had any, my honeyed bee, you’d have turned me down like a gentleman instead of running off into the daylight and treating your protector like vermin.”
Lyall choked on his own words for several uncomfortable seconds, and at last successfully sputtered, “I am not spurning your advances, my Lord! You aren’t a suitor!”
“Oh?” Akeldama asked smoothly. “What makes you say so?”
“Revenge and romance are not equivalent,” Lyall said coldly. “And, if you’ll forgive me, your flirtations are widely known not to amount to much.”
“Oh,” said Akeldama. “No. My dear Lyall, my flirtations are widely known to amount to everything. It’s only that you have a delicate disposition and don’t like to think of what I may be doing with my beautiful young men behind closed doors. Or open ones,” he added thoughtfully.
“Why am I here?” Lyall demanded impatiently.
“Because,” Akeldama said, “you owe me and I have courted you, and if you won’t give me an answer you’re a beast, and if the answer is no you must find me something else.”
Lyall said, “You’re a vampire.”
“The most notorious in all of England by now, I think,” Akeldama said. “So what? Other than Lord Maccon’s blustering, what is the philosophical objection.” He looked Lyall up and down. “If it is a personal dislike, I will try to be understanding.”
Lyall released a small sound—close to a whimper, if that were something Lyall did. He snapped his lips together fast and glared as inoffensively as possible at the vile Akeldama.
Akeldama rose.
“Come now, Randolph,” he said softly. “Saying no isn’t any difficulty for you. There’s not even any blackmail to the matter.”
“I,” said Lyall.
“Would you like to try it?” Akeldama asked politely, and then leaned forward and kissed Lyall without preamble. The kiss did not land on his lips, but on his jaw. Lyall shivered, and made the same noise, though more loudly.
“Oh,” he said. “My lord, I don’t think—”
Akeldama chuckled low in his throat, his fingertips brushing the nape of Lyall’s neck. “Are you going to call me that all the way along?”
“I think so, my Lord,” Lyall said, frowning.
“Is that a yes?”
“Not in this room, my Lord,” Lyall said. “But I would relocate to a room more suitable.”
“Oh, if we must,” said Akeldama delightedly.
The room was Akeldama’s own, which was certainly used for similar purposes by different partners. Biffy, Lyall thought, wincing.
“Am I going to get a ridiculous pet name, if this continues?” he asked.
“Oh, no, no,” Akeldama said, pulling him in and shutting the door. “You are a stuffy, smelly academic animal. You’re no man of mode.”
“I object very strongly—” Lyall began, but Akeldama swept him up, and he was, truthfully, content to be waylaid—particularly as he got in his few good bites between kisses.
“I love your smell,” Akeldama said winningly. “So stuffy, and academic, and animal.” He prised off his shoes without looking away from Lyall’s face. “By now you know what we’re doing, don’t you, my little—”
“I know what we’re doing,” Lyall said firmly, unbuttoning his jacket, and his waistcoat underneath. “But you will be doing nothing at all if you call me a single one of your revolting pet names.”
“While we do this thing?”
Lyall strongly wished to say, ever, but there was only so far anyone could push the vampire, and only so far (Lyall thought fairly) that anyone should try to change him.
“Yes,” he said. “During this—event. You can start again afterwards, if you must.”
Akeldama grinned sharply. Lyall sighed, took hold of Akeldama’s no doubt shockingly expensive canary-yellow shirt, and threw him backwards onto the bed. Akeldama seemed surprised to go. Lyall finished with the buttons on his own shirt and shrugged it to the floor; he climbed up to where Akeldama lounged, looking pleased, now, instead of startled.
“So very forceful,” he said, and then Lyall pushed him down with all his weight and his him so deeply that Akeldama’s moan could not escape. The vampire’s hands ghosted across Lyall’s bare sides, and his knees hitched up to squeeze against Lyall’s hips.
“Is that what you want, my Lord?” Lyall queried.
Akeldama appeared delighted. “I would equally like to fuck you,” he said, and Lyall jumped. “But I think I will let you if you like.”
“You’ll like, I think,” Lyall grumbled, picking Akeldama’s clothing off him button by button. Akeldama sighed and stretched under his hands like a cat. He wriggled free of Lyall’s hands as soon as his shirt was open and dragged Lyall down until they were pressed chest to chest and skin to skin. Akeldama was pale and cold, but Lyall only noted it in interest. It was not as unsettling as he had expected, touching a vampire like this.
“Remember when I almost died?” Akeldama sighed.
“Yes,” Lyall grumbled. “Don’t. And please don’t try to use it as leverage to make me—touch you more. Or whatever it is you want. What do you want?”
“Touch me more,” Akeldama said beatifically. “I won’t die at all.”
“Of course, my Lord,” Lyall said dryly, jumping inside his skin. He did, however, with all of his usual devotion to doing things well, and Akeldama stopped his preening and his playing. He panted and gasped, clawing at the blankets and yelping as Lyall touched him hand by hand.
“Hush,” Lyall said in the middle of it, tugging at Akeldama’s trousers.
“Do you--mean it?” Akeldama said incredulously. “I sound--delicious.”
“No, you vain—No, my Lord, I don’t mean it,” Lyall said. “Let me get these off, please.” Akeldama sighed weakly and levered himself up, and Lyall slipped his trousers over his legs. He let them fall to the floor with some satisfaction; more satisfying, Akeldama did not even register the affront.
“Still in your shirtsleeves, my Lord?” Lyall observed.
Akeldama looked more than usually pleased with himself, as sunny as a vampire could be.
“I find that I’m cold,” he said silkily.
“Beast,” Lyall said. “I can use any—method that you might prefer.”
“I was quite serious,” Akeldama said. “Plunge ahead, my—ah—dear Randolph.”
Lyall nearly lost himself then to a fit of embarrassed laughter, but he contained nearly all his amusement by burying his face against Akeldama’s stomach.
“Very well,” he said. Akeldama smirked, rolled over, and swiped his hand under the bed. He rose again with a small box in hand. “Everything you need,” he said.
Lyall did not say that he knew perfectly well how to function without any supplies that Akeldama might offer; instead he made use of what there was, which was, he admitted to himself, very good. He readied himself, and held the vampire down with a firm hand pressed to the centre of his chest.
“Ask me, my Lord,” he said.
“I don’t beg, as a general practice.”
“Learn it,” Lyall said. “Or, if you like, my Lord, we could stay like this.”
Their bodies barely touched, and separated again with each of Lyall’s exhalations. Lord Akeldama shivered and squirmed, while Lyall slowly wedged his knee between Akeldama’s thighs.
“I have a deal,” Lyall said. He leaned down against his hand until the pressure forced the unnecessary air out of Akeldama’s lungs.
“Yes?” Akeldama croaked.
“If you tell me why you wanted this,” he started, but the gleam in the cherubic vampire’s eye was only too apparent. “If you tell me why you wanted me to sleep with you,” he corrected himself, “I will sleep with you. Otherwise, in five seconds I will leave and go back to our side, and you can find one of your dandies to do the work for you.”
“Oh!” Akeldama said, eyes widening beneath his halo of golden hair. “Lyall, you are a vicious, demanding monster.” Lyall thought he did not seem to mind this very much. “Very well: I am charmed by you because I have taste, and anyone with a modicum of taste could not help being charmed by you! Since you have taken away the loveliest boy I have attached to myself in quite some time, I’ve thought I might put my attentions where my troubles are.” He smiled, too angelic to bear. “Moreover, I like you, Professor Lyall; and you are very attractive. That ought to be enough, don’t you think.”
“I’m not one of your cosseted lap pets,” Lyall growled. “I am not your cat, and I am not your dandies.”
“Oh, no,” Akeldama answered. “No, you are not. You are more interesting…and you don’t begin to compete with me for style…and Lord Maccon will throw a fit to highest heaven when he smells me on you.”
Lyall reared back in some horror at the realization that Akeldama was right, but Akeldama caught his arms with strong, slender hands.
“I would rather, my dear,” the vampire said carefully, “that you did not go.”
Lyall scrutinized him carefully, since Akeldama usually played games, and just as usually played more than one at a time. Yet there did not appear to be any more artifice in his expression than usual; Lyall leaned in and kissed him deeply, and then threw aside his many and reasonable doubts, and pressed himself down until his body covered Akeldama’s entirely. Akeldama was hard underneath him, hard and squirming, happily noisy without any sign of shame. Lyall resisted the urge to cover his mouth, because fair was, after all, fair; he ran his hands down Akeldama’s sides, slid his body down until he knelt between Akeldama’s legs.
“I almost like you myself,” Lyall said. “But that is not a bargain.”
“No more than a tryst,” Akeldama agreed. “One time and that’s all. Needn’t come back if you don’t like to.” He shivered as he spoke, his eyes bright and his hands flat against the quilt.
“Hush,” Lyall said, hoisting Akeldama into his lap. Akeldama lay flat out below him, and Lyall would have called his expression dazed if he had dared. “You make it hard to think.” He pressed Akeldama’s legs apart, felt him out, slid in wet fingers while Akeldama wailed and struggled and clutched at him for more.
“Now!” Akeldama cried. “Now, please, more, now!” Lyall pulled his fingers free, quickly (unfairly), just to see the vampire squirm.
“You want me to fuck you?” he said.
“I hope something terrible happens to you,” Akeldama said. “If you stop now—that—is.”
“No one has ever done this before,” Lyall said, realizing as he spoke how silly it sounded. He prepared himself to say, No werewolf and vampire have done this. Akeldama, however, grabbed at him and shook him by the arms, still writhing against the bed.
“Nothing terrible will happen,” he said imploringly. “Please. If you leave it like this I—will be—”
“Put out,” Lyall murmured. And, despite the fact that Akeldama could be quite wrong—and was certainly correct about Lord Maccon—he felt at once peaceful and delighted. It was the most unexpected sensation; he thought he should act on it while its influence lasted.
“Please,” Akeldama said, only a trifle hysterically.
Lyall smiled, shifted, and pushed inside.
His eyes remained trained on Akeldama’s face, usually so controlled and now given up to him utterly, until both of them cried out, and they fell limp against each other with arms intertwined as though there were nothing more natural in the world.
^
Lyall waited in the tail end of dusk—so early in summer, fortunately enough—for the door of the vampire’s house to open. It did, at last, as the sun slipped entirely out of influence. Lord Akeldama appeared, in cherry red and peacock blue paisley and a pleased expression, Prudence tucked under one arm and a pram dragged behind him.
“That is hideous,” Lyall told him.
“I expect you to think so, my toffee badger,” Akeldama said with pleasure. He set the pram right at the bottom of the steps, and tucked Prudence inside it.
“I can take a turn of that,” Lyall said.
“You may,” Akeldama said. “Prudence will like to leap up and make you transform her. She does like a werewolf, you see.”
“I see,” said Lyall.
“So do I,” Akeldama added. “They’re so charmingly mannerless. So brutish. So soft.”
“A deal,” said Lyall. “You refrain from insulting remarks, and I may still like you by the end of this walk.”
“A deal,” Akeldama agreed, smirking prettily. Lyall took the pram, and Akeldama walked beside. “Later we might switch,” he added.
“Later we might,” said Lyall. It was peculiar and pleasant that there was a later at all; but there was, and there would be. For whatever reason, they made it so.