bitten_notshy | Paris, Overnight, 9-10 Jan., 1902

The collective resources of an authoress, a sorceress, and a wampyr and his valet are not to be underestimated. They visited, in quick succession, a certain dusty-windowed bookstore bearing no sign except the name of the proprietor in scraped gold letters on the glass; a library wherein Abby Irene had been obliged to unpin her pleated shirtwaist and display the sorcerer's tattoo over her breastbone; and last, the home of a certain Monsieur Armitage, noted author of Gothic romances and dear correspondent of Mrs. Phoebe Smith. He was not only overjoyed, if startled, to meet her in the flesh, he was equally thrilled by the opportunity to speak with Sebastien and Abby Irene. There was, they conceded, no point in pretending any longer to be other than they were, as it seemed their presence was not secret and never had been.

In any case, Monsieur Armitage had an extensive -- and esoteric -- library, and was certainly well-equipped to help them educate themselves on the weirder aspects of French history. Sebastien supposed there were worse deals he might have had to make for information than an hour's conversation with an earnest and pleasant author.

When the four of them returned to the hotel -- long after dark, but barely after suppertime -- Sebastien and Jack were both mightily weighed down with books, and even Abby Irene and Phoebe were not unencumbered. Within short order, they were arranged around the room, and the silence was broken mostly the sound of flipping pages.

"Courtaut," Phoebe said, holding up a slender blue-bound book with gilt page-ends. "I have found him. You lived here, honestly, Sebastien, and never heard of these wolves?"

"Not a word," he answered. "But I did not associate greatly with those who repeated tales of bogeymen."

"Bogey-wolves," said Jack. "Let's hear it."

Mrs. Smith lowered her book into the light, and read aloud in French: "In the winter of the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and thirty nine, when famine lay upon the land and civil war smoldered between the followers of the Count of Armagnac and those of the Duke of Burgundy, the countryside was locked in snow such as none had seen. The city of Paris was laid under siege by a pack of wolves such that none could enter or leave the city for fear of being cast down and devoured. Many starved, and many travelers were slain, and livestock was raided away by beasts with no fear of man. The wolves came into Paris along the Seine, which was frozen with the great cold of that year, and their leader was the bandit wolf called Couped, for he had lost his tail in a trap. In those days, some kennelmasters crossed wolves and hunting-dogs to create the fiercest hounds, but as happens when one meddles in God's affairs, they bred a monster. The dog was untamable, and so he was sent to the baiting.

"Couped feared not men, for men had made him. But he had a hatred of them. In the fullness of time, he escaped from the fighting pits and fled into the wild. When he returned, it was with an army at his back."

Phoebe lowered the book, her finger still marking her page. She cleared her throat and spoke in English. "Sparing you any further moralization or melodrama, it goes on to say they held the city under siege for three months, and in no less than a fortnight killed and devoured fourteen men, women, and children. Courtaut was captured on St. Martin's Eve and paraded through the city in a cart before being dispatched. The total death count is given as nearly a hundred, but I wonder how many of those froze or starved and were, you know, gnawed. It also says the wolves dug up corpses in cemeteries -- I suspect that's embroidery, because if the Seine were frozen, the ground certainly would be too -- and stole from larders -- and it says they ran through the very streets of Paris herself."

"They still do," Abby Irene pointed out.

Sebastien folded his arms. "Les loups du Paris," he said. "Les bêtes de la Ville-lumière."

"But not the beasts we have to catch."

"No," Sebastien said. "Abby Irene, do you suppose the legend could have inspired a ... man? A slasher? Such things do happen -- "

"Maybe," she said, her mouth twisted with thought or skepticism. "But that doesn't do anything to explain the nature of the dead man's wounds. Or why you found a man's footprints beside those of a beast, in the alley."

The remainder of the night, the four of them spent in the study of the books they had collected, divided up by language as appropriate. They spoke only rarely, to ask questions or seek Sebastien's help with a difficult or archaic word.

The crack that they heard before sunrise, even through the windows and the shutters, was the sound of the Seine freezing from bank to bank. It was loud enough to make Jack lift his head in the lamplight. (He had dozed off, and the others had been merciful enough to let him rest.)

He rubbed his eyes, poured cold coffee from the pot set in the center of the table, and bent over his tome again.

One more night of the full moon. One day to learn enough about the beast to anticipate where it might appear, and have the tools to stop it. One chance.

In the morning, the papers reported a woman dead.

[OOC: NFB, NFI, stolen from New Amsterdam. Part of this. THREE POSTS LEFT and we're finally on the last actual day.]