Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [33]
„I was at Wiessee in June „34. I think that you can talk to me about your sheep.‟
Harry tried to look as if he knew what she was talking about. George seemed to have a better idea of what she meant. „Ah yes - got the right idea, that chancellor of yours. If chaps are going to start planning coups all over the place they can‟t complain if the people they‟re planning to coup object.‟
It took Harry until half way through the speech to work out who “that chancellor of yours” was. He stuck an olive in his mouth in an effort to stop himself saying something that he shouldn‟t say three years before the second world war.
„Could do with a bit of that discipline over here,‟ George continued. Harry accidentally bit his cocktail stick in half.
Emmeline laughed. „You think such things as your sheep should be kept secret from we of the “fair sex”? “Sheep have died”, you say. „I cannot tell you how”, you say. And yet you are happy to speak before me of the slaughter of hundreds of my countrymen!‟
„Oh, I say…‟ George began.
„I tell you what you say: “The mad people, they think it is the full moon and I must take my gun and watch with them,”
you say. My English may not be as good as yours, but I know the word “maul” and I know of the werewolf - how could I not? It is from Germany that it comes - and having seen what I have seen, I have the... the mind that imagines enough to think of throats ripped out and bites taken and sheep insides falling to the floor.‟
George‟s mouth was hanging open.
„Dinner is served,‟ said Trelawny, from the doorway.
George closed his mouth. „Is it mutton?‟ he asked. „Or lamb?‟
„I believe it is a casserole of chicken, sir.‟
„Ah,‟ said George. „Thank goodness for that.‟
The car was going far too fast for the weather conditions, but strangely it didn‟t scare her at all. Well, maybe it wasn‟t that strange. Would even a car crash hurt her, if it wasn‟t a silver car?
The roads were almost empty; a Saturday night in the snow not conducive to travel. The Doctor had told her it was Saturday the twelfth of December. She had been in that place less than two weeks. How could two weeks feel like a lifetime?
The snow whipped all around them, and the wind rushed past. Normal people would freeze, she thought. Normal people wouldn‟t be able to hear a thing, either. But she wasn‟t freezing, and she could hear. And it seemed that the Doctor was the same.
„Where are we going?‟ Emmeline asked at last.
„Back where you came from,‟ the Doctor answered.
„Germany?‟
„Somerset.‟
They drove in silence for a while.
„Did you really know where they were going wrong?‟ she asked.
„Yes.‟
„But you did not tell them?‟
„No.‟
A deep breath. „Are you of my kind also?‟ She didn‟t see how he could be. She could sense others of her kind, and he didn‟t smell like a werewolf. But then, when she came to concentrate, she decided he didn‟t smell exactly human either.
„No.‟
„But you managed to track me down anyway.‟ And then she realised she had never asked him why he had tracked her down, how he even knew she existed. „Why were you looking for me? Why do you need a werewolf?‟ Had she escaped one danger only to find herself in another?
But his words reassured her. „I needed your help,‟ he said.
„I found those meddlers, with their ridiculous experiments. It seemed just as easy to get you out of there as to ask you questions with them hanging over my shoulders. That‟s the problem with humans, always meddling in things they can‟t understand. Oh, they‟d have succeeded, in time, I‟m sure.
But they didn‟t know what they were doing. If they‟d managed to force change you, I doubt very much that you would have been able to change back again.‟
She shivered. Eternity in the wolfskin? Clarity of thought fading away, animal nature taking over for ever. Raw meat and loneliness.
„Something to do with the war,