Archive of Our Own

"Is there something I ought to know about?"

They were still two days out from London, at least by the route that Biggles had planned: they could have shortened it, just as they could have shortened just about every step that had carried them away from Sakhalin, but Biggles had all the time had the feeling that this wasn't the moment for haste. A couple of weeks out of time; a couple of weeks of possibilities, before they all began to collapse into certainties: that was all he could manage for any of them.

(He still slept more often than not with his heavy head in Biggles' lap, or his shaggy side pressed against Biggles' back; Biggles didn't think he'd ever quite get over the warmth of it. But in the day time he spent more and more time as himself - his other self - and he sat with Fritz, or with Bertie, or as much by himself as the cramped confines of the Otter could allow. And perhaps it was for the best: perhaps it was just another sort of healing, like the scabbed over sores.)

Fritz was sitting on the last of the mooring posts that dotted the waterfront, looking out over the harbour, out to where the Otter was still riding the gentle swell beside the jetty, the moonlight lining each ripple with silver. He cast Biggles a quick, almost furtive look; looked away again. There was a bundle in his lap, neat, carefully folded and rolled.

"No. Nothing that matters."

The quayside was deserted: only a little fishing harbour, after all, and the boats wouldn't go out for hours yet. Away in the town there was lamplight and the sound of music, but here all was shadow.

"Will he be coming back, do you think? Or is this it?"

"I don't know. I expect so. He's come back every stop so far, after all. And anyway - " Fritz hesitated. "He would tell you, I think - I'm sure - if he didn't intend to come back. It would be - vulgar, I think, not to tell you."

Biggles almost laughed at that. "Yes, your uncle may be many things, but he's very seldom impolite."

For a moment he stood and watched the moon as it rose above the harbour mouth, showing the palm trees, the Frankish ruins, blacker shadows against the night; then he got out his cigarette case, and, after a short internal debate, offered one to Fritz.

"No, thank you," said Fritz, with childish politeness; and then sighed. "Perhaps there is something. He - well, he changed, and I - I don't think he quite meant to. It wasn't at all like before, in that awful place, he hadn't forgotten himself or anything like it. I think he just - lost control, for a moment. He seemed almost surprised, afterwards. That's when he went off."

Biggles lit his own cigarette, a sudden flare of brilliance that blinded him to the night, then threw the match, still lit, into the sea; heard it hiss as the light was quenched. "May I ask why?"

"I - he was angry."

"About what?"

Fritz sighed. "About me, mostly. He thinks I want to stay in England, when we get there."

Biggles drew on the cigarette. "That might be difficult."

"I know that," said Fritz, quickly. "So does he. It wasn't - he wasn't thinking about the practicalities so much as the wish. 'Have some pride', he told me."

"I don't see how pride comes into it," said Biggles, shortly. "It's hardly demeaning to want to live somewhere you'll be safe, no matter what your uncle might think. England might well turn out to be the best place for you - and I'll do my best to make sure that you can both of you stay there as long as you want, though of course I can't make any promises. But no matter where you end up, you know as well as I do that you can't simply go back. They've already tried to kill you once, and back in the East you'd stand no chance if they took it into their heads to try again."

"Yes," said Fritz. "I know. I knew it when I first came over here. It was time to go." He laughed. "I didn't tell you, mostly because I just didn't think of it - but I hope you've put the jacket I left in your flat somewhere safe. There's a diamond ring stitched into the hem. My mother always called it my running away coat, she stitched it there when I was ten and it's gone into every coat I've had since." He breathed out, softly. "And now I've finally run away in it."

"It sounds like your mother will already have her bags packed too."

"I expect she will," said Fritz, with a sort of conscious lightness. "It's always been like that, for us. She says it was like that even before they lost the estate. Even with the land, and the house, and the title, and everything, they've always had to be ready to run. In a lot of ways the Communists have been better than most - at least they don't officially think we should be hunted down for what we are, or put in camps, or burned at the stake - but we've always known we couldn't stay on the right side of them forever. We never can."

Biggles shook his head. "I wish I could promise England will be better, but as far as I can see it's rather a legal grey area. We've never had as many - as many of your kind as there were in Germany. That means no one's ever quite got round to persecuting you, but there aren't any legal protections either. Still, a little ignorance ought to see you quite a long way. I think I can guarantee that the worst that'll happen if anyone sees you around London in your other form is they'll call the municipal dog-catcher out for you."

Fritz laughed. "I think I might cope with that, if I had to. You sound as though you've done a certain amount of reading on the subject."

Biggles smoked for a moment or two in silence. "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't taken an interest. I've known about your uncle - about what he is - for several years now, after all. And I've also thought it might come to something like this - well, this, or one or two rather bloodier alternatives. I thought I ought to know where he'd stand before I undertook to offer him a safe billet."

"Safe," said Fritz, softly. "I can't really imagine it."

Biggles flicked his cigarette butt into the water, and sat down on the next post over. "Do you think you'd stay in England, if you could?"

Fritz crossed his arms over the bundle in his lap, wrapping them around his chest, his right hand rubbing absently at his left upper arm as if cold. "I don't know. I don't have very strong feelings about England one way or another, and Germany has always been our home of course. Perhaps it would be better if I could stay in the West. It's only - " He broke off, abruptly.

"'Have some pride,'" said Biggles, slowly.

Fritz was silent for a moment. "Of course you've noticed it already," he said in the end, a little stiffly. "He always said you should have been one of us. You can sniff out a secret that he'd rather have kept hidden from a thousand kilometres away, he said."

Biggles shook his head. "It comes of being a policeman. It gets you in the habit of nosiness."

"I don't think you're a bit like a policeman," said Fritz. "At least not like the ones I've ever met." He passed one hand over his face, and somehow didn't look in the least like a weary child any more. "Yes. That's what he meant, of course. Stick to your own kind. Don't get too comfortable - they aren't like you, not really. They can't possibly understand. Don't put your hand on Ginger's shoulder. Don't jam yourself up against Bertie in the cabin. Have some pride. You're a wolf, for God's sake, not a lapdog. Act like one."

"As far as I could see, that's exactly what you were doing," said Biggles, evenly.

"But it isn't that at all," said Fritz, almost angrily. "When I'm a wolf I behave as a wolf, and when I'm a man I behave as a man, but there isn't a difference in how I feel. And the feelings aren't animal, they're not just instincts you can't control, it's just - for the first time in my life I'm with people outside my family who know me for both and don't fear me for it, so of course that affects how I behave around you. Can you imagine what that's like? No longer having to be frightened all the time? Not having to be ashamed?"

"Yes," said Biggles. "Not quite like you, perhaps, but something like it."

Fritz went on almost as if he hadn't heard. "It's true that it's easier as the wolf, because you don't feel the shame of it. If you want to bite someone, you bite them, if you want to lick their hand, you lick it. It's cleaner, without all the - " He gestured, expressively, beside his ear. "All the noise inside your head. But it's not different. We're the same, after all - we just have different ways of seeing. If I want to put my hand on someone's shoulder it's not just because the wolf's sitting in the back of my head wagging it's tail. It's me, either way."

The moon was bright as a searchlight across the water, but half of Fritz's face was still in shadow. Biggles could almost fancy that there was a flicker of cold fire in the one eye that he could see, as there was in the wolf's. His fingers itched for the cigarette case again.

"Does your uncle think about it the same way?"

Fritz sighed. "I don't know. That's the trouble. We used to talk about it a bit, sometimes, when I was little and he thought my mother wasn't telling me enough about - about our people, our history - but not so much lately. And I think perhaps he's spent so much time trying to think one thing and do another that he's forgotten how not to."

Biggles' mouth twitched a little. "Yes, that does sound rather like him."

"He enjoys that, of course," said Fritz, a hint of bitterness in his voice. "And he's good at it. I'm not sure I ever could be. He prides himself on it. He always followed his duty, right up until - " He broke off.

"Yes," said Biggles, dryly. "Well, we know all about that. Believe me, I'm very grateful that your uncle's change of heart happened when it did."

"It happened long before that," Fritz insisted. "It's just that my uncle never has been much in the habit of listening to what his heart has to tell him."

"No. Well, I suppose he didn't have much choice in that."

The night breeze flowing down from the hills was growing chilly, and Fritz shivered at its touch. His shirt was a little awry, Biggles noticed, unbuttoned at collar and cuffs, and his jacket - the jacket he'd been wearing when he left the Otter - was draped over the bundle in his lap. Biggles nodded briefly towards it. "Might as well put that on, if you're not going to be wearing your fur coat tonight."

"It might still come to that," said Fritz. "It rather depends on whether I need to go looking for him."

"Cross that bridge when you come to it," said Biggles. "If you go looking for troubles you'll almost always find them." He reached over to pull the jacket from Fritz's lap, and drape it around the lad's slim shoulders. He had a very vague sense of déjà vu, and wondered how many young men he'd reminded to keep warm and well-rested in the course of his life. "I take it Erich wasn't the only one who's changed his spots this evening."

Fritz hesitated, then answered in a rush: "Yes. Just for a moment. It was more instinct than anything else."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

Fritz groaned. "No, but I suppose I should."

"We could hear a little of it from across the water. Was that what you two were arguing about - your pride, or lack of it?"

"It wasn't really an argument," said Fritz, a little sheepishly. "You may be able to argue with him, but then you've had rather longer than I have to practise. He said one thing, I said something back, he snapped at me, and I - well, I told him that he couldn't exactly lecture me about pride when he was getting his ears rubbed every night."

That startled an astonished bark of laughter from Biggles. "I'm sure he appreciated that!"

Fritz made a quietly distressed noise. "It was stupid of me, I know! And I didn't even really mean it - I meant the opposite, if anything - that there was nothing wrong with - well. He got this awful look about him, as if - as if he was going to hit me. I've never seen him look that way before, at least not at me. And that's when he changed. As I said, I'm not even quite sure he meant to do it. One minute he was standing giving me that awful look, and then he was there with his hackles up, and I shifted too because - well, partly because taking a nip is rather different as a wolf to how it feels as a human, but mostly because that's just what you do - human for human, wolf for wolf, that's how it works. And then - I don't know. All the fight went out of him, I suppose, or at least that's what it looked like. He ran off, and I changed back." He rubbed at his upper arm again - the sort of place that an older wolf might nip a younger, to nudge it back into line. "No one saw, I think, but he didn't even think to check. I've never seen him so careless about it."

"I suppose it's still early days yet," said Biggles, rather absently, pulling the cigarette case from his pocket again. "It's hardly a surprise if things haven't gone back to normal yet."

"Yes," said Fritz. "I suppose so."

Biggles looked over at him. "Is the prospect of things going back to normal such a miserable one?" he asked. "You've got your uncle back, after all."

"I know," said Fritz, hurriedly. "And I'm grateful, of course I am, more than I can say. But - well, I don't want things to go back to just as they were - not that they could, of course, but - but even the things that can - " He turned: enough that Biggles could see the faint, fading luminescence of his eyes. "It's only that it's very difficult to have to walk back into your cage, when once you've tasted freedom."

Biggles shook his head. "You won't. No more cages for either of you, not if I have any say in the matter."

Fritz laughed, short and rather hollow. "But there are so many cages in the world! And I'm not sure that even you can spring every lock."

* * *

The first time was a fortnight after they came back from the east: just long enough that he had begun to lose the sensation of soft hair under his fingers, of warmth resting against him as he slept. The Air Commodore had spoken to Erich alone in one of the interview rooms at Gatwick; the Air Commodore had found him somewhere safe to stay; the Air Commodore had assured Biggles, seriously and repeatedly, of his profound commitment to not making Erich von Stalhein pay for his board and lodging in a currency incompatible with his honour. And that was all: for a fortnight.

It was late; it was wet; the three of them jumped out of the car outside the flats on Mount Street, and found that between themselves and the door was a damp and lugubrious policeman, a damp and extremely irate Mr Farquhar from number four, and a very damp and very large wolf. Only the wolf appeared to be largely unperturbed at the situation. He was lying with his head on his paws and his eyes almost entirely closed, and he was lying directly across the threshold, and rumbling softly in his throat.

"For goodness' sake," said Biggles, hurrying up the steps. "Couldn't you at least have sat to the side? They'll have the law on you for obstructing the thoroughfare."

"Is this your animal?" called Mr Farquhar, rather shrilly. "For God's sake call him off! I've been trying to get in for a good half an hour now, but the wretched creature simply won't move, and every time I try to step over him he bares his teeth!"

"Of course he'll move," said Biggles, firmly. "Won't you?"

The wolf had pricked up its ears when it heard his voice; now it raised its great head and yawned, enormously, showing a truly astonishing selection of huge white teeth - Mr Farquhar stepped backwards, hurriedly - and shuffled to its feet.

"There, you see?" said Biggles, automatically putting his hand to the wolf's rain-wet ears. "He's quite reasonable if you only ask him properly."

"First I've heard about it," came the mutter from the bottom of the steps, and Biggles coughed, slightly, to cover it.

"Is this your animal, sir?" asked the policeman, impressively, as Mr Farquhar hurried inside, muttering darkly to himself. "Only it can't go running about the streets, not in London, sir, not a dog that size. It'll cause a disturbance."

"Well - yes, I suppose I'm responsible for it, for the moment," said Biggles, very aware of the faint humming sensation under his fingertips, like the feeling in the fuselage when an engine was giving its lowest revs, and of the prickling at the back of his neck that it produced. It was the sort of growl that, in his childhood, had often emerged in his dreams from the depths of some imagined cave, and he had woken up wrapped up tight in the bedclothes and streaming with cold sweat. He wasn't entirely sure who it was intended for - the policeman for the question, or himself for the answer. "When the real owner isn't in evidence, at any rate."

"Perhaps you'll tell your friend that he ought to keep it leashed, then," said the policeman. "And think about getting a muzzle for it too."

The humming sensation in his fingertips increased; and for a moment, Biggles could almost feel under his hand the slick, obscene metal of the cage they had pried out of the wolf's flesh on Sakhalin. His fingers dug, instinctively, down through the wolf's wet upper coat, down to where the undercoat was still thick and dry and warm. The wolf stilled: just enough.

"That won't be necessary," he said, coldly. "I'm a detective with Scotland Yard, and I'm quite capable of managing him without assistance."

"Thanks all the same though," said Algy, hastily, stepping forward to shake the police officer's hand and, incidentally, transfer something into it from his own. "Police dog, you see - we're looking after him for the dog section. They're trained to look fierce, but his bark's worse than his bite, probably. Still, it's always a pleasure to see uniform doing what they do best. When your shift's over, have one on us."

The policeman subsided, gracefully enough, and splashed away in the direction of Grosvenor Square.

Algy turned on them and scowled. "And that's another ten bob you owe me."

"I don't owe you anything at the moment," Biggles protested.

"I wasn't talking to you," Algy grumbled. "He still owes me goodness knows how much for all the years he's taken off my life." Then Algy wrinkled his nose. "Christ, we're never going to get the smell of wet dog out of the settee. Come on then. Just make sure you have a good shake in the hall before you go up."

The wolf ignored him, but deigned to pad heavily inside when Biggles held the door open for him.

"He's looking a bit thin," said Ginger, quietly, as they followed the beast slowly up the stairs to their landing. "Thinner, I mean. I thought he'd filled out a bit by the time we got home - but maybe it's just the rain making him look so sorry for himself. I'd probably be looking a bit woebegone too if I'd been out in that all evening."

"No, I think you're right," said Biggles in a low voice, though he still saw the wolf's ears twitch, slightly, as he spoke. "I thought he felt thinner."

"Never mind that - how on earth does he know where we live?" asked Algy, not quite quietly enough. "Do you think he tracked our scent all the way from the office?"

"What, in this weather?" asked Ginger, sceptically. "Maybe we should get him a warrant card, he'd be the answer to the drug squad's prayers."

Biggles shook his head. "I imagine he's known where we live for quite some time. He telephoned me here back in the thirties, don't you remember?"

"That's encouraging," Algy grumbled. "I suppose it's a comfort to know that he was so keen on keeping that particular card to himself that he never actually got round to playing it."

"He looks exhausted," said Biggles. "And he's limping more than usual, I'm sure of it. I wonder if something's happened."

"What - you think he might have had to make a break for it?" asked Algy. "But why on earth would he have come here? And surely Raymond would have mentioned it if they'd lost sight of him?"

"Not necessarily," said Biggles, fumbling for his flat keys. "Not if they were trying to find him again before letting us know the bad news. Still - "

He broke off. The wolf, sitting patiently beside the door to their flat and leaving a small puddle of rainwater on the carpet, had leaned against his side, heavily enough to stagger him a little, and forced his head up underneath the hand that was rooting out the keys from his jacket pocket.

"Still," he went on, opening the door with his other hand, "we'll find out in the morning, I'm sure."

The wolf limped heavily inside as soon as the door was open, and then stood, seemingly at non plus, in the hallway, the great head turning slowly, the nostrils quivering.

"Wait there while I find you a towel," said Biggles, squeezing past the creature to get to the airing cupboard. The hallway suddenly felt very crowded. "No point getting the place wetter than we have to."

"Not one of the decent ones!" Algy yelled from the direction of the kitchen. "We'll never get the grease off. Use one of Towser's old ones."

"Might as well use one of your pocket handkerchiefs at that point," Biggles called back from the depths of the cupboard. "It's a question of scale. Towser would barely have made a decent-sized mouthful for him. It'll have to be the guest towel."

"Oh, marvellous. You can break it to Marcel next time he stays over."

The wolf looked at him a little askance, he thought, but consented to have his fur rubbed roughly dry without complaint. Biggles took the opportunity to feel him over, noting the places where he could still touch each line of the ribs, the half-healed sores, the blotches of scar tissue; but the fur was beginning to grow in again at the raw places and the places where he'd had to trim it back, and when he'd finished rubbing it down he thought it already seemed thicker, sleeker than it had a few weeks before. Not as it had been when he'd first encountered him like this, nothing like: but better than before.

"I hope you've not come expecting supper," he murmured. "We've been flat-out on a case for the last three days, and I shouldn't imagine there's a bite in the place beyond bully beef and biscuits."

The wolf shot him an expressive look, and Biggles laughed. "All right, yes, there probably wouldn't have been much else even if we'd been at home twiddling our thumbs."

"Don't pretend you know what's in the kitchen when you've never bothered to look," said Algy, rather starchily, emerging from the little kitchenette with a plate in his hands. "Here. Cold chops and boiled potatoes. It won't go far in something his size, but it's better than nothing. Ah - " He stood, for a moment, looking down at the plate in his hands. "Do you suppose he'll mind it on the floor? It's funny, it seemed a lot less rude to put it down for him when we were all eating out of mess tins in our laps."

The look that the wolf gave Algy was quite astonishingly human.

"Unless he's sitting in one of the dining chairs, I'd imagine he's not expecting to eat at the table," said Biggles, firmly.

"All right, all right..." Algy put the plate on the floor, muttered a very quiet 'sorry', and straightened up, brushing his hands clean one against the other. "And please try not to push the plate around the floor too much - Bertie's already broken more than we can really afford to lose."

They could have gone into the sitting room, of course; but it seemed somehow impolite to leave their guest eating by himself in the hallway. So Ginger sat down with his back against one wall, and Biggles sat down with his back to the opposite one, and Algy slouched grumpily in the kitchen doorway, and they all watched as von Stalhein crunched the pork bones as if they were potato crisps.

"My word," said Ginger, a little faintly. "I'm glad I hadn't seen him doing that before I helped give him that bath in Fukuoka."

"Golly, it's frightful out there - positively coming down cats and dogs! I hope you fellows appreciate my generous spirit in dropping you off at the door, I think I must have knocked five years off my time in purgatory by - " Bertie, fussing with coat and hat over by the front door, broke off, and sniffed. "I say, speaking of cats and dogs - "

"We found a visitor waiting for us," said Biggles.

"Oh, I say," murmured Bertie, coming to squat down at the wolf's side and quite visibly resisting the urge to ruffle his ears. "Missing us already, old thing? Or is something up?"

"We haven't heard anything," said Biggles. "And he hasn't said."

"Well - no, quite. I must say I don't feel too terribly chatty until I've got myself wrapped around a chop or two of an evening either."

"If you want to fight him for them, be my guest," Algy remarked. "I thought his need seemed greater than yours."

"Never yet met a hound that couldn't give you that impression when they set their mind to it," said Bertie, a little mournfully.

The wolf, which had wedged the dish against the wall the better to lick up the congealed pork fat around the edges, rumbled slightly in his throat, and began to chase the plate along the skirting board. Biggles put out his hand to stop it, and held it steady as the beast licked it spotlessly clean.

The soft, wet curl of the tongue about his fingers was brief, but utterly unmistakeable.

"I'm no sort of vet, but I'm not sure there's much wrong with him that a good night's rest won't sort out," he said quietly, as the wolf huffed out a hot breath and rested its muzzle heavily against his hand. Probably he should have felt a certain amount of trepidation that the strong white teeth were within an inch of his fingers; but he didn't.

"Just make sure you give his paws a good wipe off if he's going to be in with you," Ginger remarked, pushing himself to his feet. "The laundry has enough to put up with from us already."

The wolf submitted to having his paws wiped; he trailed Biggles to the bathroom, and lay patiently outside the door with his muzzle on his paws while Biggles rather shame-facedly changed into his pyjamas. Normally he would have done it in his room, but the prospect of doing so with the golden eyes resting on him was curiously unsettling. Then he brushed his teeth, and went back to his bedroom with the wolf plodding slowly at his heels. He switched out the light; lay down; and the wolf flopped, with a deeply contented sigh, down over rather more than half the bed, and buried his nose somewhere under Biggles' elbow. He was asleep in less than twenty seconds.

Biggles lay in the half darkness, the only light the sliver of lamplight under the door and the orange glow of streetlight washing in around the edges of the curtains, and resisted the urge to bury his fingers in thick, soft fur.

"Well," he said softly. "What on earth has brought this on, then?"

* * *

Afterwards, he suspected that it was the sensation of movement when von Stalhein shifted back that woke him. There was one brief, astonishing moment when he first opened his eyes, and saw Erich von Stalhein lying beside him in the first silver-grey light of morning, stubble along the line of his jaw, his lashes a charcoal sweep, and his lips a little dry, a little parted -

- and then his eyes opened.

It was probably inevitable, Biggles reflected as he sat up in bed and watched the other man storm off in the direction of the hall, that, given his unusual situation, Erich should be rather more comfortable with casual nudity than the average.

"Christ Almighty - Biggles! Couldn't you at least have found him a dressing gown or something?" came the yelp from the hall. "Look, the char's going to be here any minute, for Pete's sake put some clothes on can't you?"

"Which is Lord Lissie's room?" Erich's voice snarled.

"Last on the right - but don't imagine he's going to be any happier to see you in that state than I am."

"I require some trousers whose cuffs won't be halfway to my knees."

"I'd have thought that fashion would be the last thing on your mind at this point. Beggars can't be choosers, after all."

Biggles hauled himself out of bed, and put his head into the hallway at precisely the moment when Bertie opened his door to the peremptory knock, and his sleep-addled, owlish, rather put-upon expression turned precipitately into something closer to panic.

"I say, old boy, look out, you'll scare the horses!"

"My apologies," said von Stalhein, in the least apologetic tone that could be imagined. "You will be kind enough to lend me sufficient clothing to return to my rooms."

"Well - naturally, old thing, only too pleased to oblige - oh, I say, not those though, they're Huntsman's best and I only just got 'em back from alterations - "

"I shall return them."

"Of course you will, old thing, it's only that they will bag so in the knee if you don't take care - "

"I shall take care."

Biggles went and stood in the doorway to Bertie's small room, as von Stalhein rifled the wardrobe and pulled on trousers, shirt, socks, shoes, with all the efficiency of long military training, and the sort of barely-suppressed fury which suggested the very real possibility of pushing his foot right through the bottom of one of Bertie's lambswool socks. Bertie grimaced helplessly in Biggles' direction.

"There's plenty of breakfast if you'd like some," said Biggles, as mildly as he could. "And coffee, though I can't guarantee it's up to much."

"I am not hungry," von Stalhein snapped.

"No, that'll be the chops you polished off last thing," Bertie muttered, a little peevishly.

"I shall be sure to impose on your hospitality no longer."

"It's not an imposition," said Biggles, impatiently. "I'm sure none of us would object even if you came round next time in your own clothes - at least that would prevent this sort of difficulty."

"The difficulty will not arise again, I assure you."

"Well, if that's how you feel about it..." Biggles stepped ostentatiously out of the doorway. "I hope we've made it quite clear that you're entirely free to come or go as you please. None of us will try to stop you. But since you're here, I think you might at least stop for a cup of tea like a gentleman."

Von Stalhein flushed, red then pale. "A gentleman would not have invited himself here in the first place."

"I invited you here," said Biggles, firmly. "I seem to recall that I even held the door open for you."

"Magnanimous as ever," von Stalhein sneered, walking past him briskly as he fastened the last cuff button.

"For God's sake, you can't have it both ways," said Biggles, irritably, following him to the front door. "Either you presumed on me or I condescended to you, but at least pick one for me to argue against."

"Another time, perhaps," said von Stalhein. He turned, to send a neat, punctilious bow in the direction of Bertie, standing in his bedroom doorway in his pyjamas. "Thank you, Lord Lissie, for the loan of your clothes. I shall have them cleaned and returned as soon as possible."

"Not at all, old thing, don't think of it," Bertie called. "That is, do think of it, of course, that's really rather a nice suit after all, but don't -"

The door slammed, hard enough to rattle the hinges.

"Well, really," said Bertie, plaintively. "And after I let him eat my chops and everything."

"He's not himself at the moment," said Biggles. "I don't imagine you would be either if you'd had a few months like his."

"It's amazing how much more naked someone seems in a London flat than in a bathhouse in Japan," said Algy, reflectively, reappearing in the kitchen doorway with a cup of tea in his hand. "Still, I suppose we're lucky that this split personality of his is manifesting itself this way round. Imagine what it'd be like if it was von Stalhein who was begging for pork chops and belly rubs and the Hound of the Baskervilles snapping our heads off in the morning. It doesn't really bear thinking about either way."

Which was the moment when the door to Ginger's room opened, and an extremely tousled head poked out.

"What on earth are you all shouting about?" Ginger yawned. "Did I miss something?"

* * *

The second time wasn't until more than a month later: long enough that Biggles had begun to wonder if the first time had been a singular aberration. But then he was roused from the edge of sleep by a frantic scratching on the front door, and answered it to find an extremely urgent and very large wolf who immediately knocked him off his feet, and somewhere behind the wolf, Mr Farquhar from downstairs, who proceeded to tear a strip off him over the howling under his window in the small hours. By the time Biggles had finished placating his neighbour the wolf was already asleep on his bed; and once again he sighed, and arranged himself as comfortably as he could around the edge of the great rangy beast. (A couple of hours later he woke up teetering on the very edge of the bed, because the wolf had shuffled closer and closer to him as he slept. Biggles tried to push him over a little; but it was like pushing a young carthorse, and in the end he climbed over the top of him to sleep on the other side.)

The third and fourth times the wolf had seemingly slipped in through the front door of the building behind some late-arriving neighbour, because all there was to see when one or other of them opened the door to the desperate scratching was the beast itself; the fifth, he was brought up by the irate doorman of the mansion house opposite, who was a kind-hearted soul and an animal lover and declared that it was a disgrace that such a magnificent beast should be left to wander the streets, and that someone would make off with it if they didn't take better care of it and it'd be a judgement on them. And the sixth time was poor Mr Farquhar again, more irate than ever; and at that point Biggles sighed, and asked the wolf whether he wanted his own entrance.

Which meant that the seventh time, of course, Biggles nearly suffered a heart attack when the first he knew of the wolf's arrival was a scrabbling on the window-sill, a cold, wet nose against the back of the neck, and a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness of his bedroom.

"I take it you didn't have any trouble with the fire-escape then?" he asked, rather bad-temperedly; and there was some quality in the wolf's silence which was next-best thing to a laugh.

In the morning, Erich would scowl, and storm, as though he'd been brought to the flat against his will; in the morning they would all have to pretend, as far as they could, that a six foot tall slab of misery wasn't stalking about the flat like some ill-shaven portent of doom. (Biggles kept the suit of Bertie's clothes, returned carefully cleaned and pressed each time, in his own wardrobe now, and was considering speculatively leaving a spare shaving kit on the shelf next to it.) But each night when the great heavy body flopped across his bed Biggles found it harder to mind. He slept better when the wolf slept warm across his feet or against his back; and each morning he would feel, still, the denseness of fur under his fingers, even after Erich had snarled at him and slammed the door behind him. And still, growing more ghostly as the memory of it faded, he could feel in it the softness of Erich's own hair, that only and singular time when he had changed back with his head still resting in Biggles' lap, and hadn't woken.

He thought of him pacing in his safe house, his cheap hotel, his shoddily furnished flat, wherever it was that Raymond had allowed him to hide himself away; pacing, as evening paled into night, door to window, window to door: a man walking like a wolf in its cage at London Zoo.

He'd asked Fritz about it, carefully, knowing that Fritz might be wary of discussing matters of their kind with outsiders; knowing also that whatever lay behind it, it wasn't necessarily something Erich would have wanted his nephew to know about. But Fritz was easier with questions now than he had been at the start; had grown easier with each mile they had flown away from Sakhalin. He was still in a limbo of legal negotiations, but in the meantime he would meet them for lunches, go with Ginger to the pictures, join Bertie for a joy-ride in his new and extremely ostentatious Jag; would smile, and laugh, and fret about his Abitur, and become astonishingly like a teenage boy.

('Have some pride.' Biggles could hear the snap of it in the back of his mind, as clearly and distinctly as if he'd actually heard it spoken.)

"Can you remember everything about when you change?" he asked, when he had worked the conversation around to the subject one lunchtime.

"Well - yes and no," said Fritz, indistinctly, as he polished off the last of Biggles' mixed grill as well as his own. "You see the world differently, of course, and so when you change back, the way you remember things feels different too. I can remember how the night feels - seeing every creature for a mile around by its scent, even in the pitch darkness, seeing what they've been eating and where they've been and what they've brushed past on the way - even if I can't experience it again, exactly. It's all there - it just feels a little like a dream. It has its own logic, its own rules."

Biggles tapped the bottom of his cigarette against the case, once, twice. "But you don't feel different, exactly? You've never done something when you're in the other state that you wouldn't do as you are now?"

Fritz cocked his head at him, a little as though considering a bright and well-meaning but fundamentally ignorant child. "Well - of course I have. All the time. I've never felt the least desire to chase pheasants as I am, but you've no idea how satisfying it is when you actually get your teeth around one's throat. But it doesn't feel alien, if you can understand when I say that - the feelings, the understanding is all the same, it's just the way it's expressed that's different. Hunting a pheasant with your teeth isn't so very different from hunting one with a gun - it's just the pleasure is a wolf's pleasure, not a man's."

"And when you look back at the wolf's pleasure, it doesn't concern you?" Biggles asked.

"No," said Fritz. "Perhaps that surprises you - but, you see, we couldn't go on very long as we are if it did, I don't think. I think it's because it seems so utterly normal - so completely natural - when you're the wolf. There's nothing that feels shocking about it at the time, and so even when you think about it afterwards - even when you remember the sensations, the blood in your mouth, the crunch of bone between your teeth - you don't feel shocked at all."

Biggles lit the cigarette. "And is that the case for all of you?"

Fritz paused for a moment. "I don't think I can really answer that - I've met so few of us. Mother told me that when she was little they had a sort of family archive - personal papers, diaries, histories, that sort of thing - and I'm sure some of that would have talked about that sort of thing, but I'm afraid it all burned with the old house. I think some people - long ago, you know - worried about it - whether someone could really be one of the Elect if they accepted the wolf's appetites within the man, that sort of thing. I imagine the two didn't sit very comfortably together for them." He put his knife and fork tidily together on his plate, looking down at them carefully. "We're staying in the same place, by the way - my uncle and I. I can't tell you any more than that, I'm afraid, and perhaps I shouldn't even be telling you that much - but I wanted you to know that I think I can guess what you're dodging around."

"Can you?" asked Biggles, lightly. "That's rather more than I can."

"I was scared witless the first time it happened," said Fritz. "He's always stayed up late, of course, but he hadn't left the house at night since we arrived here, and then when I got up in the morning and found his clothes in a heap and not even a note - " He shuddered. "Well. I was on the point of running over to tell you we needed to go and rescue him all over again. But then he came back in a suit I know I've seen Bertie wearing, and nearly bit my head off when I asked him about it, so it didn't take very long to put two and two together."

Biggles exhaled a long cloud of smoke. "Bright lad. I don't suppose you've got any suggestions?"

Fritz sighed. "I wish I did! As I said - I can really only answer for myself - how I feel about - well, you know. And probably any two of us are just as different in how we think and feel about things as any two of you. Uncle Erich's always been a bit old-fashioned, of course - he thinks we ought to stick with our own kind, that it's safer that way, and perhaps that's why - " He broke off, and shook his head. "It's only that there are so few of our kind left, and I know I don't want to spend the rest of my life with just Mother and Uncle Erich, no matter how much I love them - and I don't want to spend it rattling around the Schwartzwald with a bunch of charcoal burners either, just because they're the only other ones left who still understand the old ways. And what's more, I don't imagine Uncle Erich does either, really. It's just that he doesn't have any good ideas about what to do instead."

"No," said Biggles slowly. "And I don't imagine wolves are terribly good at noble isolation."

Frtiz shrugged. "Neither are humans, really. It's just that sometimes they like to imagine that they are."

* * *

It was the tenth or perhaps the eleventh time - some six months after their return from Sakhalin, just as the autumn evenings were beginning to draw in and the air to smell of coal fires and damp earth - that the change happened, not first thing in the morning as usual, but in the middle of the night. Biggles felt it rather than saw it, drifting up out of the clinging weeds of sleep: the pulling of the blankets, the mattress shifting under him as the weight, the musculature, the skeleton rearranged itself. He lay still for a long moment, feigning sleep still.

"I can tell," came the sleep-roughened, change-roughened voice. "Especially this few minutes. I can hear your heart beating faster."

"I was hoping to give you a few more minutes rest, if you wanted them," said Biggles, opening his eyes. The room was dark; but a few inches away was the pale golden glimmer that was the fading of the wolf's eyes. "Before you run off again."

Another shifting and rustling, and a moving paleness in the dark. Biggles sat up. "May I put the light on? Not all of us have your night-vision."

"It is your light, and your room."

Biggles reached out, and switched on the small bedside lamp. Erich was standing at the wardrobe already, reaching for the neatly pressed suit.

"For heaven's sake - you really don't need to, you know," said Biggles. "You surely can't be intending to walk back to wherever-it-is at this time of night - there won't be any trains or buses to speak of, and you'll never find a cab. Stay."

He had the jacket off the hanger now, the shirt over his arm.

"Just until morning," said Biggles. "If you leave now then I'll have to go with you to make sure you don't get bumped off by the KGB on your way back, and I really don't want to get out of bed."

"I am not asking for an escort," said Erich, stiffly.

"No," said Biggles. "But I'd feel compelled to offer one anyway."

Von Stalhein paused for a moment. "Ah - this feels very familiar," he murmured. "The illusion of choice, even as you cut off all means of escape."

"Look at it that way if you like. I'd rather think of it as each of us being allowed to make our own choices."

"Only one of us is in a position to 'allow' anything."

Biggles leaned over to fetch the cigarette case and matches from the bedside table. "Yes. I know. That's what's damnable about it, of course. But stay all the same. Please."

He opened the case, and held it out to von Stalhein.

There was a moment's pause; and von Stalhein took a cigarette.

"Thank you," said Biggles, as he struck a match, lit his own cigarette in one long drag, and held up the flame to the other man. "For staying, I mean. It's odd - we had two weeks of living in each other's pockets, but since then I feel like all I've really seen of you is your receding back. It's been quite like the bad old days."

The long, cool fingers curved around his own, held them still so the flame rose straight and steady as von Stalhein leaned into it, and then back, and released him. "I would have thought that you've seen more of me in the last six months than you would ever have imagined you would."

Biggles laughed. "Only in the strictly anatomical sense."

"If it isn't to be Savile Row, then perhaps you might still perhaps lend me something," said Erich, one hip cocked against the corner of the wardrobe, as thoroughly armoured in his nakedness as most men would be in a neatly-pressed uniform. Algy was quite right, Biggles thought, as he attempted to keep his eyes strictly within the limits demanded by propriety: there was something oddly more exposing about seeing a man naked in one's own flat than aboard one's aeroplane.

He looked away. "It seems to me that it doesn't matter much to you one way or another," Biggles said, as lightly as he could. "And that being so, I don't care if you don't."

"I don't feel ashamed of it," said Erich. "But I still prefer to maintain a line of demarcation."

"Then there's a pair of pyjamas that might do - second shelf down, blue with white piping. I'm afraid they'll be rather short in the leg, but I promise not to tell your tailor." He addressed his words to his cigarette, peripherally aware of Erich's pale form, scar striped, scar mottled, as he found the pyjamas and began to slip them on. "I'm sorry we can't run to a cigarette holder too, by the way. I don't think I ever really imagined circumstances where you wouldn't have one with you."

"Really?" asked von Stalhein, in the muffled tones of someone carefully holding a cigarette between his lips so he could use both his hands to tie the cords of his pyjama trousers. "I seem to recall we've had rather more of those than usual this last six months too."

There was something oddly naked, too, in seeing the cigarette pressed against Erich's lips, when he came and sat down on the chair at the foot of Biggles' bed where he hung his jacket for the next day. Biggles' eyes kept being drawn back to it.

Even after Sakhalin, Erich was still broader at the shoulder than he was. The pyjama top pulled a little, and left an inch of thin wrist uncovered on each arm; but it would serve its purpose, Biggles supposed.

"Is that the problem then?" he asked softly. "That the line of demarcation isn't as clear as it ought to be?"

Von Stalhein went very still for a moment, the only thing moving about him the smoke curling slowly up from the cigarette, the almost imperceptible flicker of the pale fire in his eyes as the transformation state faded. "It's perfectly clear," he said after a minute. "It just doesn't appear to be sustainable at present."

"Is that very surprising?" asked Biggles. "After everything that's happened, I mean. On Sakhalin we wondered if you would be able to come back at all - if you would want to. Naturally it'll take a while before you're fully in control of it again."

"As always, you speak with absolute confidence on matters about which you know remarkably little," said von Stalhein, impatiently. "There is no question of 'controlling it' - neither of the man controlling the wolf, nor of the wolf controlling the man. They are they same. You cannot understand it - can never understand it - because you have not experienced it. The man and the wolf cannot act against each other's interests - they cannot disagree. They are -" He cut himself off; drew on the cigarette, held between fingers that Biggles could see were not entirely steady.

"You're right - I expect I can't understand it," said Biggles, slowly, his eyes still on that infinitesimal shaking. "But that wasn't what I meant. I meant controlling the change between the two. That's the thing that's broken down, isn't it? That's what Fritz was afraid of on Sakhalin - your not being able or willing to change back."

"That is a different matter entirely," von Stalhein snapped. "He was worried that I would lose myself in the wolf. It is something that can happen when - when the human state can no longer be bourne. No. I do not fear that. I can bear whatever I must."

"But it happened on the way home, didn't it? You changed without meaning to."

Von Stalhein drew on his cigarette again. "Considering his upbringing, that boy talks too much."

Biggles sat and smoked; let the silence draw out. Usually von Stalhein was as adept at recognising that sort of tactic as any man on earth; but tonight his hand was shaking a little, and he was sitting at the foot of Biggles' bed in borrowed pyjamas, and Biggles could still remember the softness of his hair.

"I - find I do not sleep well," said von Stalhein, unwillingly. "It is worse recently - since we returned from Onor. There were things there - " He broke off; drew on the cigarette again. "But one was never alone, and there's some comfort to be found in companionship, even in hell. It is - hard, I find, to get used to sleeping alone again. And when I have not slept well, it becomes difficult to hold back the change."

Biggles leaned over; fetched the ashtray from the bedside table, and stubbed out his cigarette with that faint crumpling, hissing sound, only detectable because of the stillness. "You mean that you're deliberately holding it back the rest of the time. Is that the way it's supposed to work?"

"'Supposed to' - " von Stalhein began, in that short-tempered, lecturing tone again. Biggles gestured with the cigarette butt and cut him off.

"All right, forget 'supposed to' - is that how it worked with you before?"

A moment's hesitation. "No," said von Stalhein, grudgingly.

"Then what's changed?"

The silence stretched out again, thick and heavy as an animal's pelt.

"When I change, I come here," said Erich, eventually.

Biggles sat and watched him, for one long moment. The cigarette paper was burned almost down to his fingers.

He held out the ashtray. "Watch it. You're not using a holder now."

Von Stalhein reached out, wordlessly, and stubbed it out in two vicious presses.

Biggles sat back, and put the ashtray down on the bedclothes between them. "I can think of worse places to come for company," he said, lightly enough.

"It is a humiliation," snapped von Stalhein. "Intolerable."

"I don't see that," said Biggles. "You need company, you need somewhere you can feel safe. Frankly, I'm delighted that at least some part of you has the necessary common sense to come and seek those things out - and more than a little surprised." He paused, and his voice softened a fraction. "It's not humiliating. It's just human."

"Yes," von Stalhein said. "And it is human, too, no doubt, to come crawling on one's belly like a common cur - to scratch at the closed door, and whine, and beg for scraps from the table."

Biggles made an impatient gesture. "My God - is that it? I've seen your other self tear out a man's throat, Erich, I'm hardly in danger of mistaking him for Towser."

Erich's laugh was short and bitter. "No, you only rub his ears and allow him to lick your hand. Such condescension."

"And if I shouldn't have, then God knows I'm sorry for it!" Biggles rapped back. "But what should I have done, left you out in the street in the rain? I wouldn't have done that to a dog, let alone - " He pulled himself up short. "Let alone a friend. Or something very like a friend. I rather hoped that's what we were - or at least that's what we could be."

Erich was looking at him: a curious, unreadable look. "How many of your friends do you feed chops on the floor?"

Biggles smiled, small and crooked. "Damned few. But fortunately I don't make compatibility of eating habits a condition of friendship. If I did, then Algy and I would have been on the outs years back."

There was a sweep of grey-dark hair hanging low over Erich's brow, still disordered from sleep. Biggles' fingers knew too well the softness of it: they itched to push it back. "You call the wolf my 'other self'," von Stalhein said wearily. "It is not. It is me. My nails scrabbling at your door. My head in your lap. My tongue against your fingers."

He felt the flush stealing up his neck, and couldn't hold Erich's dark, lacerating gaze. He looked away.

"Yes," Erich went on, with something like satisfaction in his voice. "It is not pleasant to think of, is it? And that is what I have in my mind, every time I come back to myself. The memories twist along with the body. It is - intolerable."

Biggles raised his eyes; saw the look on Erich's face, that shocking pride of his, that triumphant self-wounding. "And yet the memory of your teeth in someone's throat isn't."

His face shuttered: instantly. "It is quite a different thing."

"Is it?" asked Biggles. "I rather thought from what Fritz said that it wouldn't be."

"Fritz has not yet learned better."

"Then teach me. How is it different?"

Von Stalhein's face twisted. "That part of us which wishes to tear out an enemy's throat - you may fear it, but you also respect it. Can you imagine what it is like to find there is a part of you which wants nothing more than to - to abase yourself? To roll upon your back and show your belly? To fawn upon your enemy's hand?"

"Not an enemy," said Biggles, swiftly. "Never that, at least as far as I was concerned. We were on opposite sides, yes, and often, but you were never my enemy. And if I was yours once - well, then I hope we've moved some way past that now."

"It makes no difference!" von Stalhein snapped, with an abrupt, cutting gesture. "The hand is the same."

"It makes all the difference! You may have licked my hand, but never my boot, Erich! I never wanted to bring you low - I never wanted to beat you down - and what's more, I never did. And even if I had - I've never met a man less given to cringing servility than you! That's exactly why the Soviets never knew what to do with you, for heaven's sake."

"Your boot would be easier," said von Stalhein, spitting the words as if they were foul. "A man with a boot on his throat will do what he has to to save his life. And you have never brought me to that. You have always been faultlessly merciful - ostentatiously so, I might almost say. And so it is not your boot that I lick when I am given the chance, but your hand - and I am well aware that it is not servility that lies behind it. What difference do you imagine that makes to the memory of your fingers under my tongue?" He stood up from the chair; crossed from the foot of the bed to the wardrobe, from the wardrobe to the window. "It is why we stick to our own kind. When one wolf behaves thus towards another then he is still a wolf, there is no confusion, no contempt. When he shows affection for one of you he becomes - " Another of those slashing, frustrated gestures, and a word in German, some dialect term which Biggles didn't know. "Lesser. A dog that wags its tail when its master approaches, that takes pleasure in the fetching of his slippers."

"Ginger's been known to fetch my slippers, on occasion," said Biggles, watching him as he paced. "And I might not have a tail to wag, but I think I've probably grinned like a Cheshire cat when I've seen Algy after a few days away. I don't see that it's so very different from what you're describing."

"You grinned," von Stalhein conceded, bitterly. "But you did no more than that."

"No," said Biggles, slowly. "But then, I'm not a wolf, you see. If I were, then I suppose there's a good chance I would."

Von Stalhein was standing beside the window, his fingertips in the mess of soot that had settled on the sill since the char woman had last been: the window that had been left half open every night of the past two months, in case a great soft-footed shadow chose that particular night to enter. "I think sometimes that you should have been," he said, after a long moment.

"Would it have made things easier?" Biggles asked.

"Yes." The answer was hardly more than a whisper. And then: "Some things, perhaps. Not all. Ach, but what's the use of thinking about it? You are what you are, just as I am what I am. There is no changing it. There is no changing any of it."

"You can always change things, if you really have to," said Biggles, more brusquely. "I told you that you were under no obligation to come to this country, and I meant it - and as far as I'm concerned you're under no obligation to stay, either. But even if England really is the best place for you, then you don't have to be here, not if it's so intolerable for you. I believe York is a very pleasant city, and even you might have some trouble making a beeline for my door if my door happens to be two hundred miles away. But you should do it because it's what you want, not because you imagine that I or anyone else feels a particular way about all this." And then, more gently: "There's no contempt on my side, Erich, believe me."

He was very still for a moment, looking out of the window to the glum orange-black of the London night sky, visible as a sickly glow above the rooftops. "I imagine you believe that to be true."

"All right, it's a pat answer, but as I can hardly prove it one way or the other while sitting in bed at four AM, it's the only sort of answer I can give," Biggles snapped. "And if you can't accept it - well, there it is. But you do have a choice, so don't pretend you don't. It's just up to you to make it."

"I have already made my choices," said Erich, his back still turned, his voice curiously level now. "As so often, they have not solved anything."

"Then make a different one."

He laughed: an odd, strangled sound. "Some choices are not choices at all. You should know that. You've spent your life forcing them on me."

"Oh for God's sake - ! I've spent the last six months tying myself in ever more elaborate knots so I don't force anything on you! What more do you imagine I can do?"

Erich turned; but his hand was still on the windowsill, as though keeping himself tethered there. "Nothing," he said, quietly. "Forgive me. I spoke - The fault is not yours. I do not hold you responsible. You are right - the responsibility lies with me, and no one else."

"What fault?" Biggles demanded. "How many times must I tell you that I don't blame you for turning up here? And that I don't think less of you for it either? And nor do the others, for that matter, not really - well, Algy will probably put you through hell for it, but that's just his way, and it's not more than he'd do to me. They don't think it reflects on you, you know, not really."

"But it is me," said von Stalhein; and there was a sort of desolation in his voice that Biggles hadn't heard there before, even in Onor. "That is what you can never understand."

And quite suddenly, what Fritz had said - what Erich had been saying - slipped into place.

"It's only that when you're a wolf, you don't feel the shame of it," said Biggles, softly.

He saw the other man stiffen: and realised, suddenly, that he understood.

"It was something Fritz said, on the way home," he went on, slowly, feeling his way, but his mind racing at a hundred miles an hour. "The wolf feels things as a wolf feels them, the man feels them as a man, but it's the same feeling - only the wolf doesn't feel the shame of it. If you want to bite someone, you bite them, if you want to lick their hand - "

He stopped. The breath that Erich had taken had been so thick that he had heard it even as he was speaking.

"Come here," he said; and then: "Please."

And, for a wonder, Erich turned: turned as though dragged, and walked over to the bed as though drawn by invisible hooks lodged under his skin. His eyes were shadowed and dark, too swamped by the dimness to show more than a slight ring of blue-grey around the pupil, and no hint of that clouded gold.

"Sit," said Biggles. "Please."

And Erich obeyed.

He could see the rise and fall of his chest at this distance, more obvious than usual in the tight, borrowed pyjamas, faster than usual, though he couldn't hear it, even in the quietness of the room, the quick, shallow panting of his breath. His own breath was coming quickly too, his heart pounding, adrenaline flushing through his system, readying him to run; but his voice was strangely sure.

The hair was still drooping over his forehead. Slowly, carefully, he reached out his hand to smooth it back into place.

Erich flinched, his head snapping away as though avoiding a blow; and Biggles froze.

"I'm not trying to scratch behind your ears, if that's what you're thinking," he said softly. "But here - "

He let his hand drop, and took hold of Erich's own where it rested in his lap; and his eyes darted back to meet Biggles', as sharp and wary as any wild animal.

"We can do it this way if you'd rather," said Biggles, practically: and brought Erich's hand up, and pressed it to his own cheek. He heard the slight scrape of the stubble against Erich's nails as his hand jerked, just once; and then it settled, the heel of the hand beneath his jaw, the thumb against his cheekbone.

"What - " Erich stopped; moistened his lips with his tongue. "What are you doing?"

"If I'm wrong, then I'm just rebalancing the scales a bit," he said in that same unnaturally steady voice, looking into his face, looking at the tiny movement of the muscles beneath his eyes, the flare of his nostrils. "There's more than one way of rolling over and showing one's belly, after all, and more than one way of humiliating oneself. But I hope I'm not wrong." He smiled, slightly. "I'm rather banking on it, actually, since you're quite capable of tearing my throat out if you take exception to the idea."

And carefully - cautiously - his eyes on Erich's all the time, watching for that telltale swirl of gold, his heart pounding in his ears, and unsure how much of it was fear and how much was something else - he leaned up, and pressed a kiss against his mouth.

Erich's eyes widened a fraction; but there was no flare of gold. His hand tightened, just a fraction, just enough that Biggles could feel the press of fingernails against his scalp. His mouth didn't soften: but he didn't pull away.

It ended: and he was still alive.

"There," he said; and now his voice showed something of that unsteadiness that he'd felt all the while. "Have I shown my belly enough, do you think? Or must I lick your hand, too, for you to get the point?"

He wondered if von Stalhein's ears had lost their more-than-human sharpness yet: wondered if he could still hear the pounding of his heart. They were close enough now that even with his entirely human eyes Biggles could see the flush of red that crept up from under the collar of the borrowed pyjamas; could hear the quick catch of his breath.

"It - is not the same," he managed.

Biggles laughed, feeling curiously light-headed, because there was an astonishing freedom in having said the worst, done the worst, and to still be there. "No, I should think it isn't! But I would, you know. If you wanted me to." Erich's hand was against his cheek still, his eyes still on his face, looking at him as though he was something miraculous, something horrifying, something fundamentally incomprehensible. "You aren't the only one who does things - wants things - that some people would despise you for, you know," he said, as slowly and as clearly and with as much certainty as he could manage. "I've known it for years - what would happen if most people found out what I was - what I wanted. That's another thing Fritz asked me on the way back from Sakhalin - whether I could imagine what a difference it would make to him, no longer having to be afraid or ashamed of what he was. Well, perhaps I can't, quite - but I think I can perhaps come a bit closer than most people. So no - I don't despise you for it - not for any of it. I don't think any the less of you. I've seen you kill a man - I know you could kill me in a heartbeat, if you wanted to, no matter what form you were in. And if you've chosen not to - if you've chosen to trust me with this - to put your head in my lap, to lie at my feet, to - to lick my hand, even - " His cheeks were burning now, but he plunged on regardless, because if you paused to think then you got shot down: "- then I know it's not weakness that made you do it. I never knew a stronger man than you. If - if I'm right - if that's even remotely what this means - then it's a gift, Erich. The most astonishing gift I've ever been given."

There was a long moment of silence. Biggles swallowed, heavily, his throat so dry he almost couldn't manage it. "Well? Am I right?"

The silence stretched out, unbearably: when he felt the touch to his hand on the counterpane between them it was as sharp and unexpected as an electric shock. He looked down: saw Erich's hand over his own; watched, as he lifted it, slowly, to his lips, and pressed a kiss against the palm.

"You could, you know," he said, his mouth still so close against Biggles' hand that Biggles could feel the touch of his breath, the occasional brush of his lips, and his voice something between a rasp and that low rumble which had set the hairs upright on the back of Biggles' neck. "Scratch behind my ears, I mean. If you wanted."

Biggles' eyes shot up from Erich's mouth to his eyes; and despite what he saw there he was able to breathe a rather shaky laugh. "Only if I wanted to lose the hand, I think."

"Perhaps," said Erich. "Perhaps not. Perhaps it would be as well to keep you on your toes about that, at least."

"Oh, you've always managed to do that," said Biggles; and moved his hand from Erich's lips to his hair, to close his fingers in the softness of it at last, to tug him closer: and this time his mouth wasn't still and unyielding, it was soft, and hot, and eager, and there was every chance that neither of them really knew what they were doing but there was at least a small chance that it wouldn't matter.

He pulled away, just a fraction, his heart still shuddering in his chest, one hand still in Erich's hair, the other - the other somehow resting at his hip, at the place where the borrowed pyjamas showed a scant sliver of skin, and for the life of him he didn't know when he'd put it there. "You know, I'd have done this ten years ago, if I'd had a little more confidence that you wouldn't have gone for my jugular because of it."

Erich smiled, with something in it of a bearing of teeth. "I think you were wise not to try the experiment. Sometimes even as a man I wasn't sure which way it would have gone - and the wolf lacks a certain subtlety."

"Thank God for that, anyway," Biggles murmured; and his hand was underneath the pyjama top now, finding the sharp ridge of his hipbone under his palm, the silk and the heat of his skin. "I sometimes think that half of your problems have been caused by you being too subtle by half."

"I thought you would have worked it out after Kurdistan, at any rate," said Erich, a slightly breathless note in his voice. "The wolf licks your hand - the soldier clicks his heels and asks for his orders - and the man - "

And Biggles pushed him back onto the rumpled bed, the bed in which they'd already slept close curled together for half the night -

- and for the first time, Erich stayed for breakfast.