The Curious Case of the Werewolf Read Online Free

question by asking one of his own. "You indicated in your original missive that this was a supernatural matter."
    Mr. Caviglia nodded once, sharply.
    "Well, you caught the antiquities ministry's interest. They brought your letter to government oversight, and oversight brought it to the Templars, and the Templars brought it to me."
    The archaeologist sucked in on his pipe sharply at that revelation. Mr. Tarabotti waited with ill-disguised impatience while Mr. Caviglia coughed out puffs of vanilla-scented smoke.
    Eyes watering, the man looked more closely at Alessandro's face. "You're one of them, aren't you? I thought they were all dead. Too susceptible to the poisonous humors."
    Mr. Tarabotti, who was a bit of a poisonous humor, said sharply, "Interesting that you even know of my kind."
    "My cousin is a Templar," Mr. Caviglia explained hastily.
    Alessandro grimaced. That could make things difficult.
    Mr. Caviglia recovered his equanimity. He handed back the letter of marque, openly evaluating his visitor's appearance. Alessandro knew what he saw: a man of lean build and patrician nose, tall, wearing a cleverly cut coat and trousers a little too tight. In short – a dandy. He would not see that the coat was cut to hide musculature, rather than exaggerate it, and that the tightness of the pants was to distract from the smooth movements of the legs that wore them.
    "You're not what I would have expected."
    Alessandro cocked his head. "Well, at least one of us is surprised. You're exactly what I expected."
    And the archeologist was – unshaven, undersized, wearing round spectacles and a jacket no decent human would wish upon his worst enemy. He could be handsome under the grime, in a peevish scholarly way, but there were certain unforgivable flaws. Atop his head rested a battered object that might have started life as some species of hat many years ago and at the bottom of the ocean.
    Mr. Tarabotti shuddered. "Shall we go in now?"
    Mr. Caviglia nodded, tapping out his pipe on the side of the entranceway. "A remarkable discovery, really quite remarkable." He led the way inside the tomb.
    Its ceiling was higher than Alessandro had anticipated. A smoking torch in the far corner cast a dim flicking light. It was as clean as could be expected from a place recently filled with rubble for thousands of years. There were few artifacts left – a broken column, several pottery bowls before an inset shrine, and a pile of digging tools nested at the base of the torch – but the walls were littered with carved and painted images. On one, a jackal-headed man sat at a vast banquet – bread, meat, and fruit laid out before him, a curly-tailed monkey crouched underneath his throne. On the other, the same man was shown undergoing various death rituals of a decidedly heathen nature.
    "We found the tomb partly looted, of course. Most of them are. Oddly, the looters stopped half way through and not a single person has touched the tomb since. Until we came along." The archaeologist crossed the room, grabbed up the torch, and led the way through a carved opening into a short passageway.
    Mr. Tarabotti followed.
    The passage turned to the left, and before them stood a huge basalt statue of a mummy, threatening and protective.
    The archaeologist ignored this, turning again and leading the way down a steep set of stairs, talking all the while.
    "Once we saw the mummy we realized why. The natives are terribly superstitious about these kinds of things. Well, you would be too, if you grew up in a land entirely devoid of supernatural. I mean, our government has been trying for elimination ever since the Inquisition, but the hives and packs will keep springing up. Not here, though."
    Mr. Tarabotti placed a hand against the tunnel wall to steady himself as he climbed down the dark stairs. "They're too strong and too well connected."
    "Yet the Templars back home keep trying."
    "They're believers." Mr. Tarabotti grimaced as his hand came away from the wall