Text Key


"Audible speech."
'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'


Tooth And Claw

Chapter 8 - Howling Moon


There were plenty of things to dislike about this dinner.

First, the fact that said dinner was being served by assassins. Their plan probably didn't involve poisoning us straight off, but that didn't improve my mood by much because they hadn't bothered to season any of the food they prepared at all.

To be fair, I could probably chalk that one up to 'being British'.

The second was the company. The Victorian age had its high points - not many, but a few -, but easy conversation and friendliness between human beings… were not points I would mention, forget the actual content of said conversations.

"Your companion begs an apology, Doctor," the lead assassin said as he entered the room with a tray full of crystal goblets. "Her clothing has somewhat… delayed her. And the Lady Jane regrets to tell her Majesty that she does not feel well enough to join her for supper."

"Ah, Rose'll hardly complain if you save her a wee bit of ham," the Doctor said as he popped another bit into his mouth.

"Feral as her ways are, she'd probably eat it raw," the Queen replied around as much as a smile as she ever seemed to show.

Captain Reynolds laughed, an awkward stilted sound that clearly gave away how often the laugh was used. "Very wise. Very witty, ma'am."

"Perhaps a little too witty," she said, giving the man an unimpressed look. "I know you rarely get the chance to dine with me, Captain, but don't get too excited. I shall endeavor to contain my wit, lest I do you further injury."

Ouch.

I didn't say anything, instead turning my attention to the ham. Boring, boiled, and barely seasoned with anything more than salt, the most I could say for it is that it was edible. There were a dozen ways I could have cooked it better using nothing but the usual contents of a non-British kitchen.

Maybe I'd ask the Doctor if I could make use of the TARDIS kitchen. I couldn't stand deliberately bad food and it would take something particularly flavorful to get this grey taste out of my mouth. A thousand years or so of travelling, he had to have some spices floating around…

"Sir Robert," the Doctor said, interrupting the awkward silence. "I believe you promised us a story! A tale of wolves to stir the nightmares and tease us with a glimpse of what lurks in the darkness."

The Queen's eyes lit up. "Indeed," she said eagerly. "Since my husband's death, I've found myself with a taste for supernatural fiction."

"You miss him," the Doctor said, a note of understanding in his voice.

The light in her eyes dimmed slightly. "Very much," she said quietly before the intensity returned to her bearing. "But that's the beauty of a ghost story, isn't it? Not the scares or the chills, but the idea of… contact with the beyond, to know that the people who have left us still remember us. To have some message from that place..."

Something stilled in my heart. Yes. I could understand loneliness. The pain of dwelling on what I couldn't pray to touch anymore, of being alone even in the middle of a crowd. But it didn't pay to dwell on that, so I refocused on the now.

The Doctor seemed to feel it as well, from the way any mirth seemed to drop from his face in that moment. Without that manic energy lighting up them up, those big brown eyes just looked broken. Another detail to separate him from an old trauma with a similar face. Maybe that was why Rose was so important: she encouraged him to act and think in the moment rather than dwell on old emotions and loss.

Or maybe they were just bad influences on each other. It was hard to call.

Queen Victoria quickly gathered herself again. "But this is reality. The dead do not speak and we must wait. As is God's will," she declared, breaking the spell she'd cast over the room. "Come now, Sir Robert. Night has fallen, there is a chill in the air, the wind is howling through the eaves. The stage is set for the tale of your wolf… now, tell us of monsters."


Rose Tyler had never liked monster stories, particularly werewolf movies. They were either cheesy or terrifying, and her luck always had her watching the terrifying ones where the transformations were loud, messy, and unpleasant to even listen to. The nightmares she'd had after accidentally watching The Howling as a child had stuck with her for years.

And of course, her life would end up planting her in the middle of one.

The boy in the cage had been clearly alien, or at least had something alien done to him. No human had silver-gold eyes with black around them when it should have been inside of them, and there was something subtly wrong about the set of his body. Like one of those Transformers toys after a few weeks of being turned around by small children before getting stuck between car and human-shape, shoulders lopsided and smaller bits trapped halfway through their escape from their folding storage.

"Don't make a sound," the lady had said. Rose assumed that she was Sir Robert's wife, Isobel. Edinburgh. Hah. If anything, it was an interesting name for 'cellar'. "He warned us; if we scream or shout, he will slaughter us. We've seen what he can do. What he can become."

Rose had asked how he was going to do that when it was him that was in a cage.

That was when the boy had opened his unnatural eyes. "You're new."

The accent was Scottish and the voice was the sort of whispery whistle that Rose had expected from a teenaged boy, but there was some sort of trill behind it that didn't fit. A flightiness of sound that made Rose think of birdsong.

Still, for all it sounded like the harmless tittering of sparrows, she didn't relax.

Those eyes were too intense, too bright while somehow being too empty to think of as belonging to anything harmless.

"What are you?" she asked. "Where are you from? You're not from this Earth."

Those empty eyes seemed to shift, the eerie silver glow moving in ways that reminded Rose of Daleks. Maybe human eyes could be like that, if they glowed from the inside, but it was only unsettling here watching those star-bright spots focusing in on her through the gloom.

"Oh, intelligence," the boy breathed, leaning forward. "Uncommon rare on this meagre sphere."

"Where were you born?" Rose tried again, trying to calm down the wild beating her heart.

"My self or this body?" he asked, tilting his head to the side as if considering the question. "The body, ten miles from here. A frail, weak, heartsick boy, stolen away in the dead of night by the brethren. For my… cultivation. Myself? Oh, across further distances than you could ever imagine, young wolf."

Wolf? What wolf? "What… what about the boy?" she asked before shaking her head and steeling herself. The Doctor wasn't here now, so she needed to ask the questions he would. "I want to talk to your host."

There was a cruel twist to that pale mouth before the alien opened its host's mouth to reply.

"You ask to speak to my… host," it said, leaning forward to curl long-fingered hands around the bars of the cage as its eyes glittered in the dark. "As soon as I came into this body, I carved out his soul and devoured his heart."

Rose swallowed. Oh, this situation just seemed to be getting worse and worse. "I know someone who could take you back to your home world. All we would need –"

"But why would I want to leave this world and all its industry, workforce, and warfare? Why return to where I have nothing when here, I can have everything?" it said, closing its eyes and breathing in deeply before adding in a nearly rapturous voice. "I could turn it to such purpose."

Oh no. "And how would you do that?" she asked. She had to get answers. Anything that could tell her and the Doctor how this thing worked, how it thought, and how they might stop it.

"This flesh grows weak. It is time for me to migrate again. This time, though, not to common children stolen in the dark," it murmured before flicking its eyes to fix on Rose's again. "Were my plans not hitched on taking over the Holy Monarch, I might have taken you, young wolf."

"You mean the Queen?" Rose asked before leaning back. "And why do you keep calling me that?"

"With one bite, I'll pass into her veins and her soul." It sniffed, pulling its lips back from its teeth. "And you… you have something of the wolf about you." The alien threw its stolen body forward, forehead slamming against the bars of its cage as it bared yellow teeth at the humans, who pulled back in fear. "You stink of sunlight, time, and stars, young wolf. All of them burning bright, even in memory. I have no need of the sun. Only the moon."

As if that was some cue to some unseen stagehand, the cellar doors were thrown open, allowing the silver light of the moon to pool across the floor. The alien threw back his thick cloak, giving Rose a clear view of the twisted body as it stretched out its stolen arms.

Then, one of the arms threw itself out of joint. The boy screamed, the high noise abruptly turning into something lower as his body was thrown forward again, shoulder blades flexing in unnatural ways as muscles started swelling like something out of a nightmare.

Ignoring the urge to vomit, Rose grabbed the thick chain she was cuffed to and pulled. It was heavy and the anchor in the wall barely gave. Still, it gave. There was a chance.

"Come on!" she yelled at the other hostages, who were all staring at the alien-werewolf in various states of shock. "Stop looking at it! Listen to me. Grab the chain and pull! All together, we can pull it free of the wall!"

Half of the servants finally started moving, grabbing different sections of the chain before throwing their weight behind it, but the lady of the house still sat there, staring dumbly ahead at the monster before her.

"'Everybody' includes you, your ladyship," Rose snapped.

The werewolf howled again.


The Doctor was already running by the time the second howl ripped through the house, Sir Robert on his heels.

Oh, he should have known. Sir Robert had been dropping hints like flies since they had arrived, despite the threat to his wife's safety. The stories of the werewolf and the monastery that sought to stop any investigations into the subject. The entire staff consisting of men made as identical as the technology of the era would allow should have been a dead giveaway that something was afoot even before they started chanting.

Lupus deus est.

The wolf is the god.

Another howl rang through the building, followed by very human screaming. One was definitely Rose's. The Doctor corrected his course and accelerated as he finally saw the most likely door for the noises to be coming from.

Without slowing down, he kicked through it.

"Rose!" "Isobel!"

"It's about time you showed up!" the blonde snapped as she started herding people out of the room. Twenty hostages. Enough to constitute the entirety of a household staff. One woman, dressed more finely than the rest, fell into Sir Robert's arms. However, the man's attention was fixed on another point.

"Oh my god," Sir Robert breathed.

On the other side of the cellar, a cage sat. Inside was… "Oh, that's just lovely," the Doctor murmured as the werewolf stretched out its long arms and showed off a set of very long, very sharp claws. The creature looked up, focusing silver-gold eyes on the Time Lord before ripping its cage in half.

"Move!" Rose said, pulling him out of the way as half of the cage crashed into the doorframe.

The door shut behind them – and did that piece of wood feel incredibly insufficient in the face of imminent werewolf –, the Doctor set to work removing the shackles from the staff.

"What's going on?" he asked Rose as he set to work on getting her loose.

"It's some kind of alien parasite," Rose said. "Passes itself on through a bite. Feeds on moonlight. Wants to take over the Queen and make itself an empire."

Ah. How uninspired. "Werewolf. Oh, so many forms of lycanthropy, so little..." the Doctor looked up. "What did its eyes look like before it transformed?"

"Black around the outside, gold rings around silver," the blonde recalled before pointing at her iris. "And that part was silver too. Glowing."

Energy-based then, since there weren't any ready light sources in the cellar to set off any natural eyeshine. Likely fed off moonlight itself, using the power of those specific wavelengths to fuel the transformation and damage inflicted by it. "Anything else that stood out?"

"Body was kind of messed up, lots of scars." Rose was gesturing at her own body as she relived the memory, tracing the lines of what she was describing. "Stretch marks, right shoulder was… broken or something, but it awful."

The Doctor calculated the information. Alright, so not a clean transformation. Probably rough on the host body, and why it transferred its very consciousness to a new host every twenty years or so. A sort of sentient virus, fueled by light on a frequency available via the Earth's moon and cursed with a blatantly visible tell of its nature.

Why it thought it was going to get away with its scheme when it was so obvious when it was inside someone was beyond him though. Maybe it just never had access to a mirror.

"Arms, and you five! The rest of you and Lady Isabel, out through the kitchens!" one of the men called out. The Doctor spared them a glance before ignoring the hubbub as soon as it was clear that the steward was handing out guns. They wouldn't work. Nothing that converted energy into bodily repair would be taken down by something as simple as a blob of lead flying at supersonic speeds.

No, this required more thought and supplies that the Doctor simply didn't have. Not unless…

Yes. Sir Robert's father. The one that knew all the stories, had held issue with the party responsible for the werewolf, and had done strange and inexplicable things that baffled those around him. Somehow, he had known this was coming and must have had some kind of plan in place.

It was just the matter of assembling the pieces left behind.


Queen Victoria was a stone-cold killer.

I mean, I'd already kind of guessed and the fact that she'd shot the lead assassin in the episode wasn't anything new to me, but knowing it and actually seeing it in action were two very different things. It wasn't completely at odds with my previous image of the woman, but it certainly was a new dimension.

'Indeed,' one of my other selves murmured, not only one of Victoria's contemporaries, but one of her subjects. 'An understandable reaction for a lady with so many threats leveled against her, but not entirely out of character.'

There was a further buzz of voices my other selves started chattering, tossing theories back and forth, but I tuned it out. I had more important things to worry about. Namely, kicking the shit out of everyone on Team Werewolf.

I'd removed the limiter. There were too many enemies to hold myself back like that and no reason to while the Doctor was absent. I didn't plan on doing anything wildly irresponsible like transforming into some kind of big cat but it didn't hurt to have a little extra when dealing with a larger, better armed force, for what little 'larger' and 'better armed' counted for in this time and place.

And there were some of them now, just around the corner. I held up my hand, motioning for Captain Reynolds and the Queen to stop. Why the monks had traded their brown robes for geographically incongruous saffron crowned by mistletoe wreaths, I didn't know, but I did know what they were holding in their hands.

Martin-Henry rifles. Breech loading, lever-actuated, single shot. Not great at close range, but with the narrowness of the hallway, a lucky miss was unlikely.

There was also very little benefit in me really cutting loose.

So I needed range, in a way that didn't require a reload if I missed and wouldn't be immediately classified as 'strange and unnatural' if witnessed by anyone with an ounce of sense in their heads.

I grabbed a tall candlestick, the sort that would eventually evolve into floor lamps. I blew out the candle and hefted it. The balance was poor for the use I was about to turn it to, but a little Transfiguration would change that soon enough.

Add to that a touch of the Jedi Mind Trick… well, I'd be sitting pretty then.

I counted out a few second before stepping out into the hallway, slamming my improvised weapon into the head of the closest monk. As he fell to the ground – unconscious or more likely dead –, I shifted my stance again and pulsed my magic –

Wait. There's no magic.

I twitched to the side, avoiding a bullet as I tried the spell that would turn the candlestick into a properly weighted bludgeon.

The candlestick remained a candlestick, unbalanced and wholly unsuited for the violence I was applying it to.

There's no magic.

Why the fuck is there no magic?

I forced myself past the thought and into forward momentum again, slamming the base of the candlestick into the stomach of my next victim before I let go. Before he had a chance to get his breath back, I'd slammed both of my hands over his ears. Temporarily deafened and disoriented, if I didn't manage to burst one or both of his eardrums.

I didn't stay still long enough to find out, instead maintaining momentum as I twisted around his faltering punch. I grabbed him by the forearm, bringing it over my shoulder before dislocating his. As the monk choked down a scream, I threw him – by the affected limb, no less – through a window.

I didn't know how far down it was or what lay at the bottom of his fall. I didn't really care.

The last two didn't even react to the abrupt defenestration of their companion, moving towards me with their only concession to my skill being to attack me together. Good tactics, but ten thousand years too early.

I twisted around a strike, kicking out one's knee before throwing him into his fellow. Right after the furthest monk had slammed into the wall, I had his head in my hands to smash it into the wall again. He and his friend wouldn't be getting back up any time soon.

Four men down in six seconds. Good time for someone not using powers or magic. I'd have to figure out what was going on with that later.

I looked back at the Queen and Captain Reynolds. The man at least looked impressed, while Victoria simply watched. Analyzing.

Oh, in a different era – forget a different era, she was a maker and breaker of nations as it was.

"You must be one of those western ruffians that are so popular with the dime novelists, Mister Eastwood," she finally said. There was no shock or disapproval in her voice as I might have half-expected. No, the violence in front of her was no more worthy of emotion or comment than the weather.

"That's not an… inaccurate statement," I replied as I stood back up, smoothing out the lines of my borrowed coat as I balanced the wreaths of mistletoe on my arm. "I assume our would-be captors see some use in these," I said passing them over to the Queen's remaining bodyguard.

"I'd call it naught but superstition, but somehow I feel that word would be ill-used tonight," Captain Reynolds said as he took the wreaths from me. "Would you take protection for yourself, sir?"

Of all the people in the house, I probably needed the protection least. I shook my head. "Let it be used where it will do the most good. Where to?"

"To my property," the Queen declared. "I would not see it fall into the hands of these traitorous monks."

For a mere jewel. Hah. No, this game was being played for more than that, and she knew it. But I wouldn't argue. Not with the Koh-i-Noor playing such a vital role in the climax of tonight's events.

It was only a short distance to the safe room and none of the monks had saw fit to guard it. So they had no idea what steps had been taken to kill their werewolf. Good. That meant that the beast would be off guard, unprepared for what was going to happen to it.

Of course, that still left the rest of us to spring said trap.

We rushed down a staircase, just as the Doctor, Rose, Sir Robert, and a whole storm of other people burst into the foyer down below. They slammed the door behind them, barring it before looking up at the other immediate source of noise; us.

"Your Majesty!"

"Sir Robert!" the Queen said, staring down at the man. "My… personal Sir Walter Rayleigh. Do you have an explanation for the dreadful noises that I've been hearing about the building?"

Between the howling and far more human screams, that was a wild understatement.

Sir Robert took a deep breath. "The wolf, ma'am. It has taken one man already tonight. Tore him to pieces." He looked up, scanning the stairs. "Where is Father Angelo?"

"Disposed of," Victoria said coolly. "Along with a number of his cohorts."

Sir Robert's eyes went to Captain Reynolds and then over to me. The Queen herself was never a suspect in his mind. An erroneous assumption, thinking that an old woman couldn't be just as deadly as anyone else, given the right motivation.

"The door's boarded. We need to get out of here –"

"Can't," I said, casting a glance out of the window. "Our saffron suited friends are outside and I doubt they're there to wave us goodbye. It's a base under siege."

"Do they not know –"

"Who you are, your Majesty?" Rose finished. "Yes. That's why they've want you. The wolf's lined you up for a biting."

"There can't… there can't be an actual werewolf," Victoria murmured. That was the line that she wasn't willing to cross? Even in the face of murderous monks and whatever other weird shit this 'verse had to offer? "It's nonsense. It has to be some rabid beast, cultivated to appeal to those who believe such superstitious drivel–"

A howl rang through the house. It wasn't quite the sound of a proper wolf, but louder. More primal and agonized than any natural beast should have been capable of.

"Sound's fairly real to me," the Doctor said. He'd dropped the Scottish accent, a detail that would have been impossible to miss had the situation been any less rushed.

"Yes, but a… a werewolf?" Captain Reynolds repeated.

The door the Doctor had barred splintered as a heavy form slammed into it. Long claws dug through the wood as the wolf slammed into it again. Part of the wood gave way, allowing a glimpse of gnashing teeth through the quickly disintegrating door.

"I'd say it's a there wolf right now," the Doctor said in a surprisingly blasé tone before yelling, "Run!"


The Doctor had no idea how many staircases this house had, but it was starting to feel like far too many for a non-dimensionally transcendental structure. Still, he rated this one as his favorite, because it had given them access to the one room in the mansion that might be able to save their lives.

The library.

Delaine suddenly dropped back, something bright flashing in her hand as she turned around and threw it at the wolf on their heels. A knife, long and shining silver in the moonlight planted itself squarely in the wolf's forehead, and the beast stumbled back, clutching at its head as black blood seeped out of its new wound. Had she palmed it back in the dining room when the howls first began?

Whatever had possessed her to pick the knife up in the first place, she wasn't wasting any time on it because as soon as she knew it had hit, she'd started running again with the rest of the group.

Still, there had been that second of hesitation, like she'd been about to follow up that knife with another attack.

"That gets us a few seconds," Delaine yelled. "How far is the library?"

"Not far," Sir Robert panted. "We'll make it."

The wolf slammed into a wall behind them, apparently recovered from whatever injury that his companion had managed to inflict on it. This time, Captain Reynolds was the one to turn and attack it, shooting it right between the eyes.

"Go! Keep her Majesty safe!" he called as he reloaded his gun.

"Bullets won't stop it!" the Doctor snapped.

"They'll buy you time, now run!"

They ran. The Doctor wasn't proud of it, but he ran, dragging Delaine by her arm as she moved to join the captain, and as soon as they were all in the Library – all except for Captain Reynolds –, he slammed the door shut.

The door was barricaded now, locking out the one person who'd stayed behind to buy them time. Captain Reynolds had given his life to see them to this tiny patch of safety, and the Doctor was intent on making the most of the opportunity, even as the screams of the man echoed through the building.

He made a point to ignore the look that had come over Delaine's face as he went to the bookshelves and started pulling out volumes. All covered in dust without a single sign of being opened within recent memory. He flipped through them before tossing them aside. Natural history and general geology. Nothing even remotely related to this situation.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Rose asked.

The Doctor grabbed another book, zipping through the first few pages before throwing it away. Useless. He grabbed book after book, ignoring the dust stirring up all around him as he tried to find something relevant to werewolves and aliens and Torchwood.

"Doctor," Sir Robert said, grabbing his arm. "I fail to see –"

"Your father knew this was coming. I don't know how, but he did," he interrupted. "He surely had some plan in place to deal with it!"

Sir Robert worked his jaw wordlessly for a moment. "He-he said nothing to me on the subject –"

No. "There has to be something," the Doctor muttered as he pulled out more books. "You all," he called out. "Get looking for anything that might have something to do with our werewolf. Local history, mythology, anything even remotely connected."

"I know you, don't I?"

He stopped, though he didn't turn to look at the Queen. "You've never seen me before, your Majesty."

"Thirteen years ago, there was a fair young man with celery in his lapel who was appointed my scientific advisor during a plague of false ghosts. He had the same sort of energy as you, the same way of speaking, the same alias, and that same look in his eyes. You might have changed your face, Doctor, but you cannot change your soul," she said, still watching, still staring. Oh, Victoria was a clever one. Should have been a companion, if history would have allowed such a thing. "You are not of this world, Doctor."

"No." He grabbed another two books. Native Flora of the British Isles and Cultivating Cultivar. Neither were relevant, beyond the fact that the werewolf was practicing a sort of photosynthesis. Alas, they probably didn't cover carnivorous space plants. "But I consider it a home."

"Why?"

Oh, there were so many answers to that. Because his own home was gone. Because the Earth had saved him so many times. Because something about the little blue marble, so otherwise insignificant, called to him. "Because I do."

The Doctor grabbed another book – 'Secrets of the Kells' – and opened it. Once again, nothing. Was it too much to ask for a journal, a book safe, a key, anything that gave him the chance of solving how to stop the wolf.

"Doctor…"

"What?" he snapped.

Delaine was up against the door, her fingers pressed against the dark wood. "This door can't be more than an inch and a half thick," she said. "Why hasn't the wolf broken through it yet? It didn't have any trouble with the others…"

He stopped. There was no reason why it shouldn't have torn through them as easily as the others. Not unless he missed something very important.

He rushed over, pressing his face up against the door. The varnish had an odd smell. He licked it.

"Viscum album oil worked into the varnish," the Doctor murmured as another piece of the puzzle assembled itself. "It's repelled by mistletoe."

"The monks were wearing mistletoe wreaths," Delaine said.

And Victoria was wearing one now. "Before you stole them?" he asked.

The girl grimaced, as if the Doctor putting two and two together was painful to her. "Aye."

"Good work," he said as he jumped off of the makeshift barricade and went back to the books. "Alright, has anyone found anything?"

Sir Robert cleared his throat. "Ah… a bit of local history. 1540, something fell to Earth. A star, burning in the pit for eight days." He looked up. "That would be the Glen of Saint Catherine just by the monastery."

More like a spaceship. "Three hundred years to plan and adapt to humanity, plenty of time," the Doctor muttered as more pieces fell together. "Considering when it landed, that also explains why it thought that taking over the Queen would give it absolute power over the Empire."

"I would sooner die than grant this creature victory," Victoria spat.

"Your Majesty…"

"No, Sir Robert. I would not see this wolf despoil the empire I have been given charge of," the Queen declared, fresh steel in her eyes. "The life of an old woman is no matter. I only ask that you find some place to hide something far older and more precious than myself."

Any protests over the value of a life over some material good died away as the Doctor saw what the Queen held in her hand. Maybe the size and shape of a squashed plum, it was a diamond, but not just any diamond. No, it was one of the Royal Jewels and one of the most unique of the set. Such a strange bit of rock, eating up all the light that hit it from head on, it still glittered around the edges.

"That's the Koh-i-Noor," Rose breathed.

"The Mountain of Light," Delaine said quietly before flicking her eyes up to meet the Queen's. "Why do you travel with it?"

"My annual pilgrimage," Victoria said, handing the diamond over to the Doctor for inspection. "I was taking it to Helier and Carew, the Royal Jewellers at Hazelhead. The stone needs recutting."

"But it's perfect," Rose said.

Victoria shook her head. "My late husband never thought so. He always said the shine wasn't quite right. But he died with it still unfinished."

"Unfinished. Yes," the Doctor said, looking down from the diamond to the last book he'd pulled from the shelf. He didn't bother opening it before putting it back. No answers would be forthcoming from Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius. "There's a lot of unfinished business in this house. His father's research, and your husband, ma'am, he came here and he sought the perfect diamond."

Something in his mind clicked together and the Doctor snapped his fingers. "Hold on, hold on. All these separate things, they're not separate at all, they're connected. Oh, my head, my head. What if this house, it's a trap for you. Is that right, ma'am?"

"Obviously."

The Doctor ignored a bit of plaster dust that fell from the ceiling. What was a bit of dust on his shoulder when he was only a minute from solving the riddle? "What if Sir Robert's father and your husband decided to make it into a trap for the wolf? Not just telling each other stories, but finding out what would slow the beast… and ultimately kill it?"

Some more dust fell, this cloud thicker than the last.

"Doctor."

"What?"

Delaine was looking up at the skylight. "We need to get out of here," she murmured, stepping backwards towards the door.

The Doctor looked up and saw the dark figure hunched over the skylight, its massive body silhouetted by the full moon.

"Ah."


Author's Notes


Another unbeta'd chapter. Please tell me if there are any major errors in the text that I may have missed in my gloss over. Anyway, updating a little quicker than I usually would because... well, the reviews section has been a little quiet on all my fics and I'd appreciate some kind of feedback. Little petty, I realize, but it's one way to break an uninspired streak.


I changed a few details of the werewolf, not only to make it more personally interesting to write but for a few other reasons.


The Koh-i-Noor has been written to be more accurate to the real thing rather than the generic diamond shaped plastic/glass thing used in the episode. More interesting that way.


It is 'canon' that magic does not exist in the Doctor Who 'verse because Rassilon used time travel to 'retcon' it from their universe (part of exiling 'irrationality' from the universe). Xenophobic and generally unpleasant, he killed off most of Gallifrey's population in an attempt to render the rest immortal via the ability to regenerate. Then, in what is generally accepted as a dick move, he deliberately induced a limit on the number of regenerations.

Rassilon is also famous for killing off most of the universe's vampires, 'inventing' time travel, shoving his best friend / research buddy into a black hole, and abusing label maker technology by putting his name on literally everything ever. Also may have altered the universe so that the majority of sentient species were Time Lord-shaped. Definitely committed a couple dozen different flavors of genocide and was into deleting people from creation so thoroughly that nobody even remembered that they had ever existed in the first place. There's a (lot of) reason(s) that one of his nicknames in the classic fandom is 'Assilon'.


Anyway... I think I've left a lot of hints as to other 'verses' that Delaine may have visited in the text so far, so if you have any guesses, feel free to voice them. I'll tell you if you've won a cookie.


As always, comments and criticisms are welcome and I hope you enjoy the story.