Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2
Chapter Forty-Eight

Paris. October 1814.

“There’s nothing to fear here anymore,” I promised him in vain.

Maximo stood on the sidewalk in front of our townhouse on the Rue Las Cases. He stared in every direction, tuning his senses to locate any lycan who might be in the district.

My assurances meant little to him after so many years of violence between us and the Château de Rousselot, the home of the Marquis de Archambault and his pack of over eighty werewolves.

The revolution changed many things in Paris, particularly the face of the monarchy. Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Those nobles who had escaped with their heads remained mostly in hiding or gone. Their grandest possessions were seized by one of the myriad forms of government that ensued. Others broke apart and sold off their lands to survive the transition.

Maximo, once Phillipe, and now in his third generation as Maximillian Phillipe, had readily seen the future coming. He successfully changed our status, abandoning our noble titles, and publicly altering the source of our perceived income. Unshackled by the people’s intolerant attitudes, he successfully sought more egalitarian roles for us in the new France.

To my private delight, I was a farmer again. Of course, I was now a farmer with an old aristocratic name who hadn’t picked grapes in a century. Nevertheless, we sold dozens of farms to humans to prove our new role in society, though we remained privately invested in each. Through our stewardship, the finest vintages in the region were created. Creating this enterprise felt like the first accomplishment of my own making, though written here, I see how it resulted from the benefit of a stolen legacy. Nevertheless, I grew to love wine-making in ways that only my long-lost Dionisio might have genuinely appreciated.

Inspired by the nation’s social changes, Maximo took the Roussade name with him to the capitol when the Bourbon Restoration attracted royalist exiles to return home. In Paris, he devoted his fourth iteration to seeking roles within any government that would lead to greater liberty for the people, even if it ironically meant relying upon his nobleman’s name.

Upon our first visit to the capital a decade ago, we discovered the great city was almost devoid of lycan. We could only guess the reason for their mysterious absence.

Maximo suspected they found the modern world too overtly distasteful, as the over-crowded capital had grown a dozen miles in every direction. I wondered if it wasn’t rather the modern world that changed them. Might not the growing secular society have emancipated them, offering a new culture devoid of the old religious ways? Had they any need for packs to hunt humans without those rituals?

Whatever the reason, the once abundant lycan of Paris were almost all gone. Those who remained kept their distance even when they didn’t know who we were.

Still, a decade of undisturbed peace couldn’t change the expectations Maximo had painfully developed over a lifetime.

“Of course, there’s nothing to fear,” he smiled. “But I heard something.”

He shot me a mischievous look before taking off down the road on foot toward the National Assembly building.

I set my sights upon preparing for my day and returned to my room upstairs. I was expected at a parish soup kitchen within the hour. After, I planned to meet with the monsignor to discuss a patronage. I had backed many schemes in Burgundy to see that the region’s mortals never truly went without. But after so much war and upheaval in Paris, la misere were everywhere, and they commanded much of my time.

My lady’s maid had not yet returned from her shopping trip, and I started to lay out the clothes I meant to change into, expecting her arrival soon.

Then I heard it.

Humming in the back of my head was a flavor of sound I knew well but could not place. It took me ever so gently, fading in and out just long enough to send my mind in search of something it couldn’t quite recall.

I made my way back downstairs and through the front parlor to the door. I stepped out onto the sidewalk alone and scanned the street, searching for the source of the peculiar sound. If there was a lycan nearby, I would know it.

Just then, a delivery car hauled up before me, the carriage pulled by two horses and carrying two men. Self-consciously, I stepped back into the house, replaceing our butler waiting. The man was perplexed by what my intentions might be.

“Forgive me, Marcus. I thought Monsieur Roussade had returned,” I lied.

“Mistress,” he said, nodding his acceptance and holding the front door open for me.

Just as he was about to shut it, one of the delivery men called to Marcus.

“This is the Roussade house?”

“It is.”

“We have a delivery for the madame.”

“In the back, please,” Marcus directed him.

“Not this one, if you will,” the agreeable man implored. “It’s not for the kitchen and is very heavy.”

“Very well. Bring it in this way, then.”

Marcus held the door wide for the men, who lifted a long wooden crate from the back of their truck. As they negotiated their way inside, the sight of it confused me, and I stood out of sight to wait.

“Carefully,” he warned them. “You may place it in the front parlor off to the side there.”

When the massive crate was laid down, the driver pulled a manifest and pencil from his jacket to take Marcus’ signature of receipt. Once obtained, the delivery man placed a sealed envelope in Marcus’ hands before receiving a gratuity.

When they’d departed, Marcus handed me the letter and left to fetch his tools.

“It must be wine from home, no? I couldn’t imagine what else might come here in a crate like this.”

“Perhaps a gift from Monsieur Roussade?”

“Oh, you must be right,” I sucked my teeth and examined the letter. “But Max knows I don’t like surprises, and why wouldn’t he arrange for its delivery while he wasn’t at home?”

I broke the red wax seal, noticing it bore the initial ‘L.’

“The shipping stamp is from the Kingdom of Italy,” Marcus said absently as he hammered open the heavy lid to expose the packing material.

Unfolding the parchment, I found only a single sentence scrawled in small letters:

Forgive me. -Duccio

Every hair on my body rose to attention, and I stepped back instinctively from the crate.

Not noticing my alarm, Marcus removed the packing material to expose dozens of leather-bound journals. Among them were numerous folded bundles of paper and even scrolls with forged metal caps. The difference in age between each article was confounding.

Atop them was a single sheet of parchment folded in half. Marcus drew it from the crate and handed it to me, pausing only to sharpen his eyes when he read the name scrawled upon it: Gabriella.

At once, the smell of the parchment transported me back a century. I gasped, dropping the other letter to the floor.

I could smell his scent upon the paper—a fragrance my mind had long forgotten. There was no question of whose handwriting I held in my trembling hands.

I unfolded the sheet and stared at the written words, blinking helplessly as tears flooded my vision.

To save you from the unreasonable burden of such archaeology, I have collected here the notes and journals you requested in yesterday’s session. I pass these on to you in hopes you will discover something of value in them to satisfy your curiosity.

I cannot promise these papers’ integrity, being ancient as they are—as we both are. Nor could I hope to be of much help in explaining the bulk of their contents. I hope you will understand they are accounts written by a much younger and painfully foolish lycan, who is now as much a stranger to me as he will be to you.

S

P.S. Why not transcribe the older ones to the modern tongue before they’re gone forever? It will help you master both languages further. It embarrasses me that I’ve never gotten around to it after all this time.

I stepped forward to the crate, but my legs gave out, and I fell awkwardly to my knees.

“Mistress!” Marcus turned in panic.

I couldn’t breathe, nor could I stop trembling.

He took my arm to help me from the floor, then settled for a nearby armchair when my legs would not support my sobbing. Poor Marcus waited upon me, no doubt awkwardly, for several moments before he reluctantly stepped away to leave me in private.

“Forgive me, Marcus,” I called lamely after him.

“Not at all, Mistress,” he somberly turned to answer.

“It comes from my family. Those are my father’s possessions, you see. His private writings from when he was a young man. I thought they were lost forever.”