Cruel and Unusual - serialised novel EXCLUSIVE to Steemit Part 24

OOPS! I missed posting this last night. Sorry about that. Two episodes today then!

Exclusive for Steemit - serialisation of Cruel and Unusual – my second novel

Episodes:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Pictures from Google Images and Pixabay

“Oh blessed beings, fortunate creatures, please, I implore you, divulge your secrets to me, even if they be the last things that I hear. It has been my life’s work and all would be for nothing if I do not know.” Jack seemed so impassioned that the two Werewolves in human form again looked to each other.

“No,” the woman said.

“No?” her mate asked.

“I do not want to. Why should we tell this Hume our secrets?”

“He does not wish to know our secrets. He cannot glean from us answers that we do not wish to give. Come, it would be such sport.”

“You want to do this, Marcellus?”

“Indeed I do.” He turned his face away from Jack, dropped his voice so low that it was impossible for Jack to hear and added, “And after we have delighted him, we can devour him.”

“You are insane, Marcellus.” She smiled and then said to Jack, “Very well. We will indulge you, but I will not answer questions that I do not wish to. Do not press me on any that I refuse to answer.”

“That is understood, dear lady.”

“My name is Almyra.”

Jack nodded and smiled as he dipped in a polite bow.

They stood for a moment until Marcellus took the initiative. “Shall we then?” he held out his arm and the lady took it, then they accompanied Jack along the pavement for the short distance to his front door.

Jack maintained an excited babble for he realised that he must keep up the pretence of adoration, if only to mask his sheer terror.

He held open the front door for his guests and the couple preceded him. They were all in the hall and Jack locked the door and then invited them to, “A tour first?”

He took them all the way up to the top of the house, to the attic where Jack had seen Marcellus before he had realised whom Marcellus was.

Then they went back down the stairs and Jack said, “May I offer you a drink, perhaps tea or brandy? I have an excellent wine cellar. Oh, I also have my collection and my work on Werewolf lore and legends if you would be so kind as to give me your more enlightened opinion upon it?”

“Of course, that is the reason that we are here, is it not?” Marcellus said without waiting for his fiancée to give her affirmation.

“It is all down in my cellar,” Jack fished in his pocket for the key to the door. “I keep it locked for my daily maid is quite inquisitive. I also keep my research down here so that she does not get too suspicious. I allowed her to find the door unlocked once and I spied on her as she came sneaking down. It took great self-control not to laugh out loud as she screamed. She almost fainted when she saw this particular specimen jar,” he indicated to a large bell-jar with the wrinkled form of a grotesque and vaguely humanoid foetus.

The colour of its skin was distorted by the liquid that it was immersed in but it did not look to be the usual pale pink colour of a new baby and it was covered in two inch long thick black hair.

Almyra gasped in surprise and gripped Marcellus’s arm. “Is that…?”

“Ask him.”

Jack looked back to his guests realising what they were questioning.

“No dear lady that is not a Werewolf baby. The mother was also exceptionally hirsute, to the extent that she did indeed resemble a wild animal but I assure you, she did not alter during the full moon.”

“You watched her?” Almyra asked.

“Of course I did. I had as much protection as I could possibly get. I had a large pentagram, cloves of garlic, a silver cross and Deadly Nightshade, so I was perfectly safe.”

The two Werewolves looked at each other with knowing smiles. They looked at Jack’s notes and documents, his books and the experiments that were set up and then Marcellus paused. He beckoned Almyra over and showed her a book, the very book that Jack had purchased from the bookshop that had set him on his studies.

“Where did you get this book?” Marcellus asked.

“Oh, from an ordinary book shop, the one in Whitechapel Road, I believe.”

“You are a mortal; you are not permitted to possess this book. It is a Grimoire.”

“Oh, I did not realise. You see I bought it, I did not steal it.”

“It should not have been sold. I must take it,” Marcellus picked up the book and held it to his chest as though protecting it.

“Oh dear, but I suppose, if you must, then you must.”

“And is this where your information has come from?”

“Well yes, for the most part, but also from my travels to Europe and to the New World.” Jack hung his head as though sad that the book must be taken from him but he did not argue.

They then made their way back up the stairs back into the main body of the house.

“Oh, I almost forgot the wine.” Jack said and went back down the stairs to where they had seen the vast array of wine bottles in one corner of the cellar.

Jack re-joined them at the top of the stairs where they had waited for him, entering neither the drawing room nor the sitting room. Jack motioned for them to go into one of the rooms off the hallway.

“I think that we shall be most comfortable in here,” he said as he followed them into the sitting room. “Please sit down.”

Jack made himself busy uncorking the wine and allowing it to breathe whilst he put the glasses ready. He then poured out the wine and as he sat down, he swirled his wine around in the glass, making up for the lack of time he had given it to breathe in the bottle. He held up his glass to his guests and said, “To immortality,” then he took a sip and savoured the taste.

His guests glanced at each other and also held up their glass to him, clinking them together just between the two of them. “Immortality,” they said in unison.

Jack picked up a pencil and a notebook and looked expectant, waiting for Marcellus or Almyra to begin.

“You expect us to allow you to write down this interview?” Almyra asked.

“Why yes, I did rather.”

“There must be no written record of us even being here, let alone having given an interview.”

“I see, in that case, I shall not write anything down. I suppose this is more like conversation between friends then?”

“Yes, exactly so,” Marcellus replied, smiling.