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 English were not a culture known for their cuisine by the time of the modern day – despite so many of the conquests that led to their empire being inspired by the spice trade – and I doubted that assassin-monks would be the ones to buck the trend.

The second was the company. The Victorian Age had its high points, but easy conversation and friendliness between human beings… were not among them, much less 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."

'Delayed'. Hah. Heard that used as a way to say 'killed' or 'imprisoned' before.

"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 and 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."

Grimacing, I held my tongue, 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 and probably wouldn't lead to food poisoning. There were a dozen ways I could have cooked it better using nothing but the usual contents of a non-British kitchen… and more than likely this kitchen as well. Even the most basic kitchen usually carried pepper and one that was supposed to take care of a house this large had to have something more than that to work with.

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 traveling, 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, the ghost of eagerness touching her tone an astounding level of emotional display from the woman. "Since my husband's death, I've found myself with a taste for supernatural fiction."

"You miss him," the Doctor said understandingly.

The eager light in her eyes dimmed to something that made Victoria's face look even older than its wrinkles and wear implied.

"Very much," she said quietly before the intensity of purpose 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..."

I'd seen the afterlife. Several of them, in fact, and I even 'owned' one, in a sense of the term. Some were pleasant, others were literal Hells, but even in the places where they didn't properly exist, people believed in them anyway. It was a comfort in a way, knowing that a loved one still 'existed' in some context beyond a pile of decomposing meat and fading memory.

But loneliness… yes, I could understand that perfectly. The pain of dwelling on something you couldn't touch anymore outside of fantasy, of feeling along even when standing in the middle of a crowd. Even if most of my people weren't 'dead', they were in a position that could be considered worse; balanced on the precipice between existing and not until I either succeeded or fucked up beyond repair.

Could I even draw on them to bring them to this universe? I wanted to. Maybe Selby's absence wasn't the sign of something gone wrong, but some sort of twisted-

I refocused my thoughts on the present. If dwelling was pain, I wasn't going to sit in it any more than I had to. Still, that internal resolve didn't change the fact that the conversation had taken a turn for the melancholy and taken me with it.

The Doctor seemed to feel it as well, the mirth slipping away from his face like a mask. Without the manic energy of his usual bearing lighting them up, those big brown eyes just looked broken. Another difference I could use to separate him from an old trauma; Kilgrave had never worn a look of genuine sadness or – if I wanted to be perfectly honest – genuine anything in any of our interactions except for annoyance, petulance, smugness, and sadistic glee.

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, especially given that I had my own dislike of the pair coloring my judgement on the subject.

Queen Victoria gathered herself again, packing away her grief and shoving it back behind the queenly mask. "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 movies, but she hated the werewolf ones in particular. They were either annoyingly cheesy or utterly terrifying, and her luck always had her watching the last, where the transformations were nauseating and unpleasant even to 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 was alien, or at least had something alien done to him. There was no other explanation for those molten silver-gold eyes, glowing silvery-white where they should have been black and gleaming jet black where they should have been white.

The body was wrong too, though it was a more subtle wrongness than the glowing eyes. It was in the uneven slant of the shoulders, the way the hands didn't quite match up in structure, fingers twisted around like claws wherever they didn't look straight out broken. It was like one of those Transformers toys after a few weeks of being turned around by a small child; lopsided shoulders, uneven legs, and the parts that folded in and out stuck halfway between those two positions.

"Don't make a sound," one of the other prisoners said. From the fact that she was more finely dressed than the rest of them, Rose assumed that she was Sir Robert's wife, Isobel. Who was supposed to be in Edinburgh.

Hah. If nothing else, it was an interesting nickname to give to a cellar.

"He warned us that if we screamed or made any loud noise," she whispered into Rose's ear, "he would slaughter us all. We've seen what he can do. What he can become."

Rose was going to ask how he was supposed to do that when it was him in the cage when the boy spoke.

"You're new."

The accent was Scottish and the voice the sort of whistling whisper Rose expected to come from a teenaged boy, but there was a certain… flightiness of sound that reminded her of trilling birdsong. Harmless in a sparrow, but when coming from a human staring at her with those too bright, too intense, too empty eyes, it was anything but that.

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

Those shining eyes fixed on her with a new, almost hungry focus, the lights shining behind the pupils focusing in a way that reminded Rose of Dalek eyestalks. Maybe it was that all-too-easy comparison which made the alien-boy so intimidating despite his lack of action.

"Oh, intelligence," the boy cooed, leaning forward to look at Rose more clearly. "Uncommon rare on this meagre sphere."

"Where were you born?" Rose tried again, trying to calm down the wild beating of 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, even if the tiger would tell you."

Wolf? Tiger? "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. Many of the joints were out of place, the crooked fingers pale as bone around the dark metal of the bars that contained him. "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."

"And how would you do that?" She had to keep it talking, either to get answers or stall for time. 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 glowing 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. The wording was odd; archaic beyond anything she'd even dream of associating with this era. That meant it was old enough to have picked up that phrase. "And why do you keep calling me that? I'm no wolf."

"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. More than something." The alien threw its stolen body forward, forehead slamming against the bars of its cage as it bared yellow teeth at the humans. The other prisoners shrank back with only the smallest cries of fear. "But you stink of sunlight, time, and stars, young wolf. All of them burning bright, even in memory. Brighter than the tiger could ever manage, even over a hundred thousand years. I have no need of stars. Only the moon."

As if that was a cue for some stagehand hiding in the eves, the cellar doors were thrown open, allowing silvery moonlight to spill across the floor. The alien threw back its thick cloak, giving Rose a clear look at milk-pale skin and the twisted body it covered as the creature stretched out its stolen arms.

Then, one of the arms threw itself out of joint with a sickening crack. The boy screamed, a high noise that abruptly dropped into something lower and infinitely more bestial as his body was thrown forward and to the ground, shoulder blades flexing outwards as muscles started swelling up and out in a transformation that belonged in a horror movie.

Ignoring her immediate urge to be sick, Rose turned her attention to something that might do some good. The heavy chain she and the rest of the prisoners were cuffed to was heavy, but it was anchored in an aged stone wall with crumbling mortar. She pulled and while the chain didn't offer up any real give, not yet, a little bit of dust fell down.

That was just as good a chance as any.

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

The other prisoners – save for the lady of the house, who simply stayed down and kept staring– snapped back to reality, taking up places along different sections of chain before throwing their collective weight behind it. The anchor creaked this time, teasing at an escape that might just happen in time. They just needed a little more force behind the action.

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

The werewolf howled again before the woman finally started moving to help. Rose hoped that the time they'd just wasted on Lady Isobel hadn't been the time they'd needed to get out alive.

The howling had been the Doctor's cue to run, Sir Robert on his heels as the Time Lord ripped through the house towards the source.

Oh, he should have known. Sir Robert had been dropping hints like gingerbread crumbs since they had arrived, despite the threat to his wife's safety, and they had just… missed them! The stories of the wolf, 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… all of it should have painted an arrow straight at what was coming and it had taken ominous Latin chanting for the blatantly obvious fact that something was afoot for him to realize it.

Lupus magnus est, lupus fortis est, lupus Deus est.

The wolf is great, the wolf is strong, the wolf is God.

Another howl tore through the building as if in response to that cold, cold thought, this time accompanied by very human screaming. One of those screams was unquestionably Rose's.

The Doctor corrected his course and, seeing the most likely door for the noises to be coming from, slammed himself into it with a vicious kick.

"Rose!"

"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 far side of the cellar was a cage, which contained something –

"Oh, that's just lovely," the Doctor murmured, not even in full sarcasm, as the werewolf stretched out its long arms, rolling its massive shoulders within what little space it had to work with.

Those big ears weren't for show either, as the creature's head snapped up, its silver-gold eyes focusing on the Time Lord for one long moment of clearly intelligent appraisal before it grabbed the bars of its cage and started to pull. The bars put up a token resistance before they broke, leaving nothing but an eight meter span and a handful of stairs between them.

"Move!" Rose yelled, pulling the Time Lord out of the way just as the upper half of the cage smashed into the door frame. She slammed the door shut and the Doctor locked it, though he wouldn't call them safe just yet.

He'd been able to kick through it without much difficulty. The werewolf on the other side of the door, while having the token disadvantage of being on the wrong side of the hinge, would have even less.

"What can you tell me?" the Doctor asked Rose as he set to work on removing the shackles.

"It's some kind of alien parasite. Passes itself on through a bite and feeds on moonlight," she answered, rubbing her wrists as soon as they were free. "It wants to take over the Queen and make itself an empire."

"Really? Rather boring motive," the Doctor muttered. "But werewolf. Oh, so many forms of lycanthropy, so little ti–" Hold on. He looked up. "What did its eyes look like before it transformed?"

"Black around the outside, gold rings around silver," Rose said before pointing at her pupil. "And this part was silver too. Glowing."

Energy-based, since there weren't any light sources in the cellar at the right angle to set off any natural form of eyeshine. Likely powered by moonlight itself, using and storing the power of those specific wavelengths to fuel the transformation and repair the damaged inflicted by it. "Anything else of note?"

"The body – the human body was messed up badly," she said, gesturing at her own body as she recounted the damage. "Lots of scars, stretch marks, right shoulder was… definitely not in the right spot. Looked like he should have been dead weeks ago."

The Doctor added that information into his calculation. The transformation wasn't a clean one. It wore on the host body and was too extreme to fully fix after each moonlit jaunt, thus leading to an accumulation of injury over time. That accounted for the stories of a child being stolen every twenty years or so; because even when taking advantage of a younger body's increased ability to recover from damage, there was still an expiration date attached.

So, sentient virus, fueled by light on a frequency available via the Earth's natural satellite and cursed with a blatantly visible tell of its inhuman nature.

It was lucky to have lasted this long, honestly. If not for the cult that had sprang up around it, the werewolf should have been dead in under a century, if it had even made it past the first decade.

It was also incredibly stupid. How did it expect to get away with its scheme of impersonating such a public figure as the Queen while saddled with such an obvious sign that something was wrong?

'Well, reclusive monastery, never interacting with regular society, probably never had access to a mirror…'

Before any of his previous incarnations could wander off onto the subject of if silver was a factor in that, the sound of bustle and the unpleasant sound of rifles being broken down and reloaded brought the Doctor back to reality.

"Arms! You five! The rest of you and Lady Isobel, out through the kitchens," one of the men called out. The Doctor spared them a glance – muskets – and then went back to his own plots. The bullets wouldn't work. The werewolf had a natural healing ability that would far outstrip the amount of damage a supersonic blob of lead could inflict. So long as it had access to moonlight and its opponents were limited to the weapons of this era, it was practically unstoppable.

So, that left being clever. The Doctor was good at clever, if he did say so himself, but 'clever' still required time and supplies to pull off, things that the Doctor didn't have. Not unless…

Robert's father. The one who know all the stories, who held issue with the monks that protected the werewolf, who had done things that those around him couldn't fully wrap their minds around. Somehow, he'd known this was coming. Therefore, he must have had some kind of plan in place for when the creature came to call.

It was just a matter of assembling the pieces before the big bad wolf blew down the door.

Queen Victoria had managed to surprise me, despite my foreknowledge and experience.

Not by much, no. I'd seen this episode before and a few of my alters had their own passing experiences with variations on the woman in previous universes, but 'knowing' something and actually seeing that it in action were two very different things. That she had the capacity to shoot a man in cold blood was not at odds with my understanding of her character, but it was one of those things that one never quite expected to see in person.

'Indeed,' one of the others - Maximilian, native to this century, if not this country - said. 'One usually expects royalty to rely on others for defense, but for a woman of such station with so many threats leveled against her person, it is an understandable precaution.'

There was a dull buzz of voices as my alters started buzzing over the nature of the multiverse, royalty, and reasonable paranoia, tossing theories back and forth as I turned my attention back to more pressing matters.

Namely, kicking the shit out of everyone on Team Werewolf.

The limiter was long gone, shuffled away to my Warehouse the minute no-one was watching, but that didn't mean going all out. Partially because I didn't want to throw away the image of human harmlessness just yet, but mostly because my primary goal of 'keep as many people alive as possible' would work out better if I didn't drop the house down on top of them.

That didn't mean I was low on options, but in a universe were magic wasn't one of them, it did cut an already diminished list shorter.

Picking up on some figures standing just around the corner from us, I motioned for Captain Reynolds and the Queen to stop before taking a proper X-Ray look at the monks. Four of them all together, armed and on guard. Why they had traded their brown robes for saffron – forget denomination, that wasn't even the same religion – I couldn't say, but the rifles in their hands and mistletoe wreaths they were wearing around their necks had a clear enough use.

The guns were the immediate concern. Martin-Henry rifles. Breech loading, lever-actuated, single shot. Not great at close range, but with the narrowness of the hallway, there wasn't much chance of missing a human-sized target moving at human speeds.

Good for me that I was a human-sized target that could move a lot faster than that.

I darted out, closing the gap between myself and my targets with a speed that was just barely inhuman. The first monk didn't have enough time to react before I crushed all the bones in his wrist and ripped the rifle out of his hands, kicking out one of his knees as an afterthought.

He was lucky to keep all his fingers. The next one's luck was in keeping half his teeth after I slammed the butt of the rifle into his jaw and, through the force of that blow, the back of his head into the wall behind him.

As both of them sank to the floor in their various states of uselessness, the other two started to move. Too slowly for me, who had already brought up my gun to bear on the closest. I squeezed the trigger and he lost an eye, along with his life.

There was no waiting to see how he'd fall before I moved onto the last victim of this encounter.

Him, I decided to go more complicated with.

I threw my spent rifle into his hands, allowing the reflexive catch to buy me all the time I needed to bring my leg up and out into a kick straight into his solar plexus. The force of that kick did the rest, carrying him back and out of a window, the shattering of glass a herald for a much less pleasant crunch as the monk hit the ground at a bad angle.

Tucking a toe beneath one of the other rifles left over, I kicked it up into my waiting hands and shouldered it. Four men down in the span of six seconds. Not bad time for someone running at a mostly human capacity.

'And this is why we study CQC with Virgil on the weekends,' Tsela said, rolling his good eye. 'Because it's practical for these scenarios.'

Also because V was one of the only people who could give me a good fight at this point.

I looked back at the Queen and Captain Reynolds. The man looked impressed, which by Victorian Britain's measure of emotion meant 'five degrees off the coast of gobsmacked', but Victoria was simply watching. Analyzing.

"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 one might have expected. No, the violence in front of her was no more worthy of emotion or comment than the weather.

Damn English.

"True enough," I replied as I smoothed out a bit of velvet that had gotten roughed up in the exercise. I leaned down to pick up a wreath of mistletoe off of one of my victims. "Our would-be captors must have seen some use in these. Far be it from me not to do the same."

"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 wreath from me. "Would you take protection for yourself, sir?"

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

"To the safe room," the Queen declared. "There is property that I would prefer not to see fall into the hands of these traitorous monks."

The Koh-i-Noor. Hah. If it didn't play such an important role in coming events, I'd abandon it. It was a rock, pretty perhaps, and with a whole lot of history attached, but no better a paperweight than any other chunk of stone and certainly not worth its weight in blood, much less someone's life.

The safe room wasn't too far out of our way and there were no guards in evidence, enemy or otherwise.

'So they have no idea what steps the late master of this manor took against their wolf,' Zeke said. I could feel his analytical gaze burning through my eyes like cold stars. I was lingering outside while Reynolds and the Queen collected her property, watching for any unexpected company.

'Point in our favor then, if it doesn't have any idea what's its getting into,' I replied.

'Yes, provided you can get it into the right place at the right time, of course.'

I let out a low chuckle as I let a sliver blade fall out of my sleeve into my waiting hand. A slick enough trick for a normal human, but I had a warehouse of weapons to choose from and the means to call them to hand at will. This one was merely thematically appropriate and, if I had the smallest bit of luck on my side, a good tactical choice. 'Oh, I'm sure I can prove an inconvenience as is.'

"We have what we came for," Captain Reynolds said as he darted out of the safe room, covering the other end of the hall as the Queen came out. "Onwards to the door."

Locked, most likely, but they were optimistic.

I wasn't, though I had every reason to be.

Even if I could kill the werewolf easily enough, there would be costs to it. The integrity of the building, the lives of those in the immediate vicinity, and my own cozy anonymity were just the most obvious.

But even if I didn't want to show off, I could buy them some time.

Zeke frowned. 'There are more than one ways to achieve your ends without destroying the building… albeit ways not within your usual range of talents.'

'If that's an invitation to switch off, may I remind you that my making a sudden disappearance is the exact opposite of not-drawing-attention?' I shot back.

'…would it really –'

Before Zeke could finish the thought, yet another monk materialized, only to receive a hard slam in the face from the butt of my rifle sent him sprawling backwards. The one that followed him was less fortunate, getting a stab between the ribs for his trouble. My third confirmed kill of the night and he didn't look a day over twenty-five. Likely had been given over to the monastery by parents who couldn't afford another mouth to feed, only to get sucked into a cult he'd never had the chance of escaping. Well, it wasn't like he would have lived too much longer, given the charge of treason the actions of his order had brought down on their heads.

'Actually, never mind. You're too inherently physical for me to imitate properly.'

'Thanks.' I straightened up, swiping blood off of my knife before turning my attention back to Reynolds. "Anything happening on your end?"

He shook his head in the negative. "It seems that we've already attended to any enemies that could have come from this direction."

Hm. The shortness of these fights was beginning to make them tedious… though it wasn't like I was likely to draw out anything worth mentioning from anyone 100% human. If there was a large mob…

'Only you would ask for a more talented opponent while also worrying about being noticed.'

I stretched out my senses. There were maybe twenty-five people left in the house – most of them hostages – and an equal number still active outside. Insufficient for entertainment purposes, but largely manageable for a rescue mission outside of the obvious and avoidable limitation of not revealing my true nature unless I took a few pages out of someone else's book.

I recalculated, coming up with six different ways to proceed from this point. "Do you want to secure the Queen in a safe room?" I asked, looking around. This area was secure, so it wasn't like there was any overt danger at the moment. No reason to feel bad about ditching anyone in the quest for bigger fish. "I'm willing to continue elimination if you wish to stand guard."

"No need," the Queen said, walking calmly out of the treasury room. "I have collected I came for and have no desire to linger any longer." She spared a glance to the monks I'd brought down. "Especially considering the present company. I trust that you hold no issue with that decision?"

I dipped my head in a near display of respect. "Shall we proceed?"

As soon as Rose and Sir Robert were clear of the door, the Doctor slammed it shut, dropping the bar down in place and locking it with the Sonic Screwdriver. It would hold, at least for a few minutes, which was often just long enough to come up with a better plan than 'run'.

Right, there was front door. Most likely barred, but still worth a try. One rattle was enough to confirm that fact. Any other exits? Windows, obviously, but a manor house in this era wasn't designed with that manner of accessibility in mind. And what about the people who weren't out to kill them?

A sharp noise drew the Doctor's attention away from his thoughts and his gaze upwards to the stairs that went up to an interior balcony that overlooked the main entry. A yell was the only warning before a person in brilliant orange fell backwards over the stair rail, their shock cut off as they hit the floor two stories down. The Doctor spared the fallen monk a glance – dead or unconscious, probably the former from the way he had landed on his neck – before looking back up to where the man had fallen from.

Delaine was standing there, looking down at them with Captain Reynolds and the Queen at her back. There was a slight air of breathlessness about her, a few strands of hair fallen out of place and her expression cold and utterly dispassionate. The rifle she was holding over her shoulder didn't help make that image any friendlier and the glint of something sharp and silver in her free hand only served to reinforce that steely atmosphere.

"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 around the building?"

There was another howl, followed by far more human screams. More members of the staff that had opted for the direct approach despite all the evidence recommending against doing exactly that.

"The wolf, ma'am. It seems the legend has more… er, teeth than expected. It's already taken at least one man tonight, possibly more since we left. The one… he was torn to pieces." His eyes scanned the stairs. "Where is Father Angelo?"

"Disposed of," Victoria replied with a cold satisfaction. "Along with a number of his cohorts."

Sir Robert's eyes went from Captain Reynolds to Delaine, a line of thought that the Doctor found himself following as well. Right now, there was a predatory edge to the girl – no, not predatory. Predators could be evaded. The impression Delaine gave was that of a force of nature; something that could not be tricked, negotiated with, defeated, or even outrun if the one who had made the mistake of underestimating it realized their folly at the last minute.

A human shouldn't have felt like that. Nothing that could be construed as 'mortal' could.

The Doctor shoved his misgivings aside. There were bigger concerns. "Right, escaping. The door's barred…"

"And we've got a yard full of our saffron-suited friends waiting outside with guns and likely not to give us a salute as we leave. Classic base under siege situation," Delaine finished as she leaped down the stairs and tossed Sir Robert her rifle. "Not much of a gun person myself."

"What –" Captain Reynolds began to say, lifting his revolver.

"Already got a weapon," Delaine pointed out, lifting her knife. It was a long thing, clearly designed for fighting instead of any domestic use. It might have even been a bayonet; it was difficult to say without having a clear look at the handle. The question of where she got it still lingered, but it was hardly one to be asking at the moment. "Might as well get as much use out of the equipment and present company as we can…" She glanced back at Sir Robert. "You do know how to…?"

The man adopted a proper carrying position, quickly checking the mechanism and chamber before placing it up against his shoulder. "I certainly would hope so," he replied somewhat dryly. "Though I have my doubts about the efficiency of bullets against our current opponent."

Victoria bristled. "Do they not know–?"

"Who you are, Your Majesty?" Rose finished. "Yes, they do. That's why they want you. The wolf's lined you up for a biting so its… curse will pass on to you."

"There can't… there can't be an actual werewolf," the aged queen murmured. "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, falling out of his affected accent. There was too much to do right now to focus on something so trivial as that, too many threads to weave into a comprehension of the situation and then a plan on how to solve it.

"Yes," Captain Reynolds said. "But a… a werewolf?"

The door rattled as a massive force hammered on the other side, the wood splintering under the strain. On the second strike, long claws peeked out of the wood before digging all the way through. A glimpse of flashing teeth was just visible through those cracks.

"I'd say that it's a there-wolf right now," the Doctor said in a tone that was infinitely calmer than the rest of him. Then, his voice caught up with his current state of stress. "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 abruptly dropped back, pivoting in place before pulling her arm back to throw her knife back at the wolf. It slammed home squarely in the center of its forehead, sinking in almost to the hilt as the creature stumbling back to clutch at its head, oily blood bursting out and coating silvery fur in wet black.

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.

"Good shot!" Reynolds cried.

"Good enough to buy us a few seconds," Delaine replied as another silver blade flashed into her hand. How many did she have on her? Had to be quite a trick getting anything that long to hide smoothly up a sleeve, even with the advantage of a Time Lord's dimensionally transcendental pockets. "How far is the library?"

"Not far," Sir Robert wheezed. "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 in a space still left beneath Delaine's knife.

"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!"

"No!" Delaine stretched out her hand to the Captain, but the Doctor pulled her back before she could make contact.

He wasn't proud of that. He could admit that to himself as they - all except Captain Reynolds - reached the library, the Doctor slamming the doors shut and locking them before the process of barricading secured them further.

Captain Reynolds had given his life to see them to this tiny patch of safety and the Doctor wasn't going to waste that sacrifice, even as the man's screams were still ringing in his ears.

Ignoring that sickly expression that had crept over Delaine's face, the Time Lord turned to the bookshelves. From the dust, it was clear that none of them had been touched in recent memory - so no clues there as to if there was anything relevant to the situation to be found.

That left doing it the long way.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Rose asked

"Looking for anything that might be useful," the Doctor said, throwing away another book and grabbing the next, flipping through the pages - natural history and general geology - before tossing it aside as well.

"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," the Time Lord snapped as he threw something about economics to the side, dust flying up as it hit the carpet. "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. Descartes, useless. Breton myth, useless… "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."

The next few followed the pattern; the Doctor would pick up a book, zip through a few pages, and then throw it away. He needed something relevant, something that said anything about werewolves and aliens and Torchwood.

"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. Could 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. These interruptions took time, precious time that could be spent actually learning something useful -

Delaine was up against the door, 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 this set as easily as it had the door from the basement and kitchen areas. 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. "Yes."

"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 from the text. "That would be the Glen of Saint Catherine just by the monastery."

More like a spaceship. Now that was properly useful.

"Three hundred years to plan and adapt to humanity, that's more than enough time for most," 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 is it here?"

"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, the quest for 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?"

"Obviously."

The Doctor ignored a bit of plaster dust that fell from the ceiling. What was a bit more 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. "We need to get out of here right now."

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

"Ah."

Author's Notes

Edited - 11/19/2021

Minor tweaks, more interactions with alters, references to other jumps, corrected a section about the absence of magic which was shifted to chapter 1. Fight scenes also tweaked to be more engaging.

Took a while to get here, which was a bit irritating because this chapter previously contained a point of distinct irritation with myself - specifically, it used to be the point where the Whoniverse's absence of magic was discovered until I realized that somehow not noticing it earlier was stupid. So, fixed. Still got a lot of tweak work to do after this but that was the big one.

Maximilien's a longer standing Alter (in the note form at least) and roughly contemporary to Queen Victoria in a most of his various planned jumps, though he's French rather than British. He'll come up more when he comes up.

Virgil'll (Tsela's husband) pop up later as well.

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.