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  He smiled at me. “I know you wouldn’t.”

  “Sir …”

  He had turned to go, and now looked back patiently. “A question?”

  I hesitated, and then blurted, “Why wouldn’t they come inside the church? What would happen if they did?”

  If he was at all surprised that this, of all the questions I might have asked, was the one I had chosen, he did not show it. He was thoughtful for a moment. “It is a matter of respect, I think,” he decided. “Long ago a human priest did us a great kindness, so the legend goes, and we honor his symbols as a way of remembering. To do less would be to negate our history.” And as he saw me draw breath for another question, he lifted a finger in amused remonstrance. “A perfect subject,” he suggested, “for you to research on your own. Do let me know if you find anything of substance.”

  Monsieur Forcat did not return, and the next day I began research on a book it would take twenty-five years to write.

  _____________________

  ____________________________________

  Excerpt from DAWN TO DUSK: A TALE OF TWO SPECIES by Emory Hilliford, PhD:

  The year was 1342. It was a time before reason, a time of great intellect and terrible superstition, a time of desperate poverty and expansive wealth; of petty wars fought with stone projectiles and boiling oil, of rampant disease and squalor. It was a time when humans—who had once conversed with the likes of Plato and Aristotle, who had lived like gods in the palaces of Rome—shared shelter with the oxen and fought dogs for scraps of meat. They suffered the punishments of a God they could not see; only one in a hundred could read or write his own language, and they believed with absolute certainty that werewolves walked among them.

  In this, of course, they were right.

  In France, the Devoncroix took over the lush wine country of the Loire, and from their magnificent palais in the heart of the valley they ruled the pack. The humans there regarded them with reverence and awe, and called them les loups garoux. In the villages that surrounded the grand chateaux of les loups garoux, humans continued to die of filth and disease and ignorance, and were ignored as long as they didn't lie too long in the street, or were killed outright if they became too much of an annoyance. It was here that the most legendary of all the pack leaders came into power, the loup garou who is credited with saving the human race. Her name was Eudora Devoncroix, and she is known, among her species, as the Mother of Civilization.

  Despite the accomplishments of the ruling family, centuries of primitive living had taken its toll on the numbers of the pack, just as it had with the human population. Moreover, there had been a recent alarming increase in the infant mortality rate, leading some of the best scientists of the day to suspect a viral pandemic in the making, most likely caused by exposure to humans. Mass killings of humans were recommended by radicals, and in some cases they were carried out. But infants of the lupinotuum continued to die of the mysterious disfiguring condition they called the Scourge, in which newborns left their mothers’ wombs as half-formed humans, half-formed wolves. Unable to breathe through half-formed lungs, unable to digest nourishment through half-formed intestines, suffering the agonies of a hundred malformed bones and muscles, they died horrific and heart-wrenching deaths unless—as was most often the case—a family member stepped in at the moment of birth and performed the ultimate act of mercy. The experts of the day predicted that, should the infant mortality rate continue to rise at its current rate, their entire species would be extinct within two generations.

  And everyone looked to their young, unmated queen to stop it.

  It was imperative that Eudora find a mate and produce as many healthy offspring as possible, both for the morale and the survival of the pack. But her selection of mates among a declining population was limited, for the deadly birth defect had begun to surface in even the smallest and most remote clans. And the best-kept secret in the pack was the fact that the highest incidence of the Scourge occurred within the Devoncroix line, which eliminated the possibility of her mating with one of her own clan, as was customary.

  In the midst of the crisis of the pack’s survival and her concern about the human threat, outrageous rumors reached Eudora regarding the family of loup garoux called Fasburg, who had, it was said, set themselves up in the North as humans in the midst of humans, mocking everything that was lupinotuum. Reluctantly, with far more weighty matters burdening her young shoulders, the queen turned her entourage toward the Black Forest, and her attention to the Fasburg problem.

  The Fasburgs were a clever, if dissolute clan, who in many ways represented all the worst of what Rome at its peak had brought to the world—and who, in other ways, were a perfect example of the pragmatism that is essentially loup garou. Two centuries earlier, they had come to realize that even the bounty of the Black Forest could not feed a clan of werewolves in their natural form indefinitely. They grew tired of living in caves and of killing humans before they themselves were killed by them. Far better, they reasoned, to use humans to create an easier life for themselves.

  And so they did. They employed humans to build a stone castle and to fortify it with a wall impenetrable to invaders. In return for their labor, the humans were given sections of land and taught how to farm it, and they were allowed to keep enough of what they harvested to make their cattle fat and their children strong. If more land was needed to support their ever-growing dynasty, the Fasburgs sent their humans out with swords and armor plating to claim it. When other humans swarmed down to challenge the castle, the Fasburgs took all the village inside the walls of their fortress and fed them from their stores and kept them safe. They conversed with humans, sheltered, fed and protected them; they even gave humans weapons and trained them in acts of war. Perhaps most outrageous of all, they paid for what they might so easily have taken from humans. They had humans in their homes and dined in human form at the same table with them, and none of the humans with whom they so blatantly mingled ever guessed their true nature. And, as a final insult to the pack and all it stood for, they took for themselves the titles of human royalty: Prince Eric of Fasburg, his sisters the princesses, an alarming number of royal dukes and duchesses and counts and countesses. The Fasburgs thrived; the humans thrived. Life was abundant and that, according to their reasoning, was all that mattered.

  But of course their reasoning was, according to pack law, completely untenable and only this side of treasonous.

  Before the arrival of Queen Eudora, Eric Fasburg had lived his life as a careless bon vivant who venerated neither werewolf nor human, and who prided himself on the fact that no living thing escaped his mockery. He and his family had lived an isolated existence in the north that depended greatly on their own resourcefulness; they had neither asked nor taken any assistance from the pack in all those years. Consequently, the Fasburgs in general and Eric in particular tended to regard the remainder of the pack and its leaders as a frivolous, inferior and largely superfluous bunch, worthy of mockery and little else.

  Legend has it that he prepared a surprise welcome banquet for the Queen that included, as its centerpiece, a human head, fashioned in the rictus of its death throes, from marzipan. She was unamused. In retaliation, she called the pack into a spontaneous Change, and—legend has it—Eric Fasburg was captured in the throes of her chemistry.

  It is true that the Change can occasionally enrapture and emotionally enslave a werewolf of the opposite sex, but evidence suggests that this is more of an excuse than an explanation for unexpected passion. This much is known about Eudora Devoncroix: she was fierce, she was brilliant, she was compassionate. She was an artist who is credited with introducing three-dimensional realism into oil painting, and a poet whose songs are still sung today among the lupinotuum. She was also, as evidenced by her portraits, quite beautiful. There was much to fascinate a werewolf of Eric Fasburg’s tastes. It is entirely possible that he simply fell in love with her. And love, among the loup garoux as well as humans, needs no further justification. />
  There is a common misconception that the lupinotuum, as supremely intellectual beings, choose their mates in a logical fashion for the betterment of the pack and the strengthening of the line. No doubt logic does play a role, particularly among the ruling class. But among the loup garoux there is no such thing as a political marriage, for without passion, there is no reproduction, and without reproduction, there is no marriage. The writings of Eric Fasburg make his passion for Eudora the queen very clear. As much as he fought his emotions, he was obsessed. He was ensnared. He adored her.

  As for the passions of Eudora the Queen, much less is known.

  But what is known is the fact that, when he proposed his suit to her, Eudora’s willingness to consider it was based on far more than her obligation to the pack. The attraction she felt for him was based upon anything but logic. Two more disparate personalities could not have been found, and there is very little explanation for the sudden reversal of Eudora’s position regarding Eric Fasburg except, perhaps, the inexplicable chemistry of a love attraction.

  It should be noted that the Fasburg line showed no evidence of the killing sickness that was decimating the pack, and certainly this must have played a part in Eudora’s decision. An infusion of their blood into the gene pool could save their race, and no rational leader would have overlooked that factor. So what might have seemed on the surface an outrageous proposal from Eric Fasburg was, in fact, accepted, and the queen agreed to take Eric Fasburg as her mate. She left the Black Forest for the Valley of the Loire to prepare the mating festivals, with Eric and his household to follow at a later date, as was customary.

  It was during this period that some of the most passionate love songs in the culture of the lupinotuum were written, and they are accredited to Eudora Devoncroix. Yet it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether the songs were written to her fiancé or to another: the human who loved her and who, it is possible to suppose, she gave a portion of her heart as well. Between them, they would change the course of history for both their races.

  ________________________________

  Chapter Six

  The Present

  Rolfe leaned back in his chair, fingers templed at his chin, black eyes unfathomable. “I was interested, as I read your book, by the personal fascination you appear to have with the stories from the middle ages that surround Queen Eudora.”

  “It was a pivotal point in history.”

  “No doubt. But there have been others equally as important.” He smiled. “I think you are a romantic, Professor.”

  “I only wrote what I discovered.”

  He changed the subject abruptly. “Now, the Fasburgs, were they the only ones of their species you came to know?”

  “No. I encountered many members of the pack over the years. Some have dealt with me kinder than others.” Emory shrugged. “Just like humans.”

  “Tell me more about the pack. Is there but one pack, or many?”

  “Alexander Devoncroix is credited with uniting the pack for the first time since the fall of Rome into a worldwide empire at the beginning of the twentieth century.”

  “Ah, the famous Devoncroix again.”

  Emory fixed his eyes upon his glass, and kept his voice neutral. “Before that time there were sects and family clans and tribes who would bond together for a generation or two, then begin quarrelling among themselves and disband. A few of them rose to prominence over the centuries—if you’ve read my books you know this—the builders, the inventors, the artists and scientists that most of history has recorded as human. But as a race they never had any real power because they were so scattered. The Devoncroix united the clans into a world-wide corporation, and they came to dominate the global marketplace, as well as the arts and sciences, in less than a hundred years.”

  “It is logical, I suppose,” agreed Rolfe absently. “If a species possessed superior intellect, sensory ability and longevity, and if all members were united behind a common cause and well motivated by greed, it would not take long to become the dominate species on the planet. But a financial empire. A corporation. It all sounds terribly civilized to me.”

  “They are an ancient race. They grew weary of savagery long ago.”

  He smiled faintly, and all too knowingly, it seemed to Emory. “Did they indeed?” And then, briskly, “How many of them are there?”

  “I don’t know. A million, three million, five. The queen of the pack knows all the names and family lines. I’m not sure anyone else does.”

  “I see. And assuming I accept your claims as fact, I am curious. Why would they be so careless with their secrets as to share them with a human boy? Why risk exposure in such an unnecessary way? And if others before you have known them as intimately as you, how can their society have existed undiscovered for so long?”

  Emory shook his head slowly, smiling. “I think you’re missing the point.”

  “Pray.” Rolfe turned a casual hand, palm out. “Enlighten me.”

  Emory was silent for a moment as pictures unrolled inside his head and concepts so deeply embedded into his consciousness that they had never been expressed before formed themselves into thoughts, and finally into words. “Once,” he said at length, “in college, I got very drunk and spilled out my entire long tale of werewolves in Venice upon the pillow of the girl with whom I was infatuated at the time. She was enchanted, hanging on every word I spoke. And she broke up with me the next day. Do you know what she said to me? ‘You’re just too deep, Emory. Just too tortured and deep.’

  “Another time I noticed that the corporate recruiter with whom my lab partner was interviewing for a job was a lupinotuum, and because I was going through an angry, rebellious phase, or perhaps just to see what would happen, I told him so. He laughed. When I pressed the point he became annoyed, and told me to get some help. We were never very close after that.”

  He shrugged. “So you see their secrets are not as much at risk as one might think. And even if they were—and here is the real key—they don’t care. It’s not simply that they have nothing to fear from exposure. It goes deeper than that. The truth is, I think, that there is a part of them that will never be complete until we know them, fully and completely, for what they are, and worship them once again, as we did during the Golden Age of Greece and Rome.”

  He reached for the glass, managed to close his hands around it, and lift it to his lips. He drained the contents. His voice was flat. “But that’s just what I think.”

  Rolfe was silent for a moment. “Well, my friend,” he said at last, “an interesting theory to say the least. But I deal in facts, not theory. And I am most interested in how you came to be the person you are today—the one upon whom all history pivoted, for a single moment, for better or worse. Will he choose rightly, or wrongly? If he goes right, the human race will be saved. If he goes left … alas, a tragic loss. So tell me that story, if you please. How did you come to make such a gruesome mistake?”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” Emory said sharply. He added, “And I am not your friend.”

  “Ah, but you will be,” Rolfe assured him, “before our time together is done. You will be my friend, or you will be dead.” The cool, humorless smile did not touch his eyes. “Perhaps you will be both. Only time will tell, eh? In the meantime, we did have an agreement. Tell me your story. ”

  Emory was silent, arranging his thoughts. “I can’t tell you my story without telling you theirs,” he decided after a moment. “The Devoncroix.”

  His smile was mild and humorless. “Somehow I suspected as much.”

  “Most of what I knew about them as a child I learned from history books. They were legendary, of course, since the time of Silas of Gaul, when they began to rebuild the world that had crumbled during the fall of Rome. They ruled the pack virtually unchallenged for over six hundred years.”

  “According to their history.”

  Emory was quiet for a time, lost in his own thoughts. “Oddly enough, my story began to intersect with the
irs before I even met them. In 1980, the entire pack was invited to attend the ascension ceremony of Nicholas Devoncroix, heir designee, who was only thirteen at the time. He was a genius of sorts. Most of his contemporaries were sixteen to eighteen before gaining their ascension.”

  “Ascension?”

  “It’s a ceremony that marks the completion of their primary education and declares their status and their function in the pack. They are introduced to the pack by name for the first time and for the first time they take Eudora’s vow. After that they are considered adults.”

  “And I presume you witnessed this momentous event, as you have done so many others.”

  “No. I was furious to be left behind, but there was no question of taking a human to Castle Devoncroix.” A faint smile, remembering. “But Lara and I had no secrets. I saw it all through her eyes and ears, and the eyes and ears of children are everywhere and seldom noticed. It was only many years later that I began to put together the story she told me of that magnificent week at Castle Devoncroix with the events that later tormented us. And I realized that was where it had all begun. At Castle Devoncroix.”

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  Chapter Seven

  Castle Devoncroix

  1980

  Deep in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness, buried so thoroughly within the natural edifice of the Rocky Mountain range that it was almost indistinguishable from the mountain itself, the spires and chimneys of the ancient structure grew skyward as though they had been created to do so. There were no roads, nor any need for them. There were no concrete parking structures, since the area was inaccessible by automobile. There were no lighted runways, no golf cart paths, no bridle trails. From the air it would be virtually impossible to recognize the vast sweep of rugged forest and jutting mountaintops as a destination unless one knew exactly what to look for. But as one grew closer, a landing pad emerged, and beyond it flashes of a rolling green meadow barely visible through the veil of towering evergreens. Castle Devoncroix. And for everyone who came here, it was home.