Moishe sat alone in his office, sifting through pages and ciphers by the light of the office's lone gas lamp. He had been at it hard for the last two days, shirking his other duties and taking only the barest of refreshment at tea time when one of the library's female assistants brought by the kettle. Donald McKinnon had been an excellent hunter, but a scholar he was not. The volume of notes and information he had managed to collect was without a doubt impressive, but the man had no sense of organization and clearly had very little idea what exactly it was he was collecting.

Most of the notes were nothing more than lists of ingredients and lab equipment, with a few more occult odds and ends here and there. That all was covered by the young ms. McKinnon, but what was left was significantly less clear. Lists of names that meant little and less except for one standout. The fellow in question had made an unsavory appearance in an archived copy of “The Daily Telegraph” for the alleged killings of three officers and five of his fellow enlisted men as they attempted to arrest him for crimes against the native population. A Sgt. Nathaniel Scarsborough. The name would have slipped by him completely if he hadn’t recalled reading it in a local paper in Cape Colony when he was on an academic holiday with an acquaintance from Charles University in Prague. The incident had made its way across half the dark continent and scandalized English officials for months as they hunted for the brute, to no avail.

“What on earth could a farzeenish like that have to do with all this mess?” He muttered to himself in the solitude of near darkness.

Moving past the seeming dead end of the names, Smelyanski began to dig into the real prize of the bunch, the lengthy list of dates and locations, jumbled together in a messy stack of notes tied through unevenly punched holes with a strip of hide. Donald had helpfully provided no context whatsoever for the data, but nevertheless, it turned out to be a gold mine of information.

Reaching for a low shelf on the left-hand wall, he retrieved a detailed map of Britain and sat about marking and dating locations as they appeared in the notes. He pinned over two dozen entries into place one by one, dotting the isle with gleaming brass mushroom heads from north to south. Placing the final pin in the map, he stepped away and hoped to gain some clarity or insight into the meaning of the markers, but nothing stood out. Digging through his desk, he found a roll of red twine for exactly this kind of occasion and began to wind it about the pins, starting with the earliest location and working chronologically. As he completed his twine labyrinth, he stepped back yet again to examine the result and was disappointed to see no greater answers seemed to have been revealed.

“What on earth were you tracking” Moisha grilled Donald through the link that was the notes.

Suddenly, inspiration, so obvious and elementary it was an embarrassment that he had taken so long to reach it struck Moisha’s typically fine-tuned mind.

“If Donald McKinnon were going to bother recording anything, it would be violent deaths!”

The coggs in his skull now working at their typically smooth, brisk pace, the next hour was dedicated to shuffling through the Libraries outstanding collection of national and local newspapers, using the dates and locations of the notes as his blessedly life-saving compass, and eventually had a pile of them on his desk. Unsurprisingly, he found exactly what he was looking for. Every last paper featured tales of grizzly violence and wanton slaughter. Individuals and families alike, butchered like so many pigs. Blame was placed on a panoply of suspects. These ranged from wild dogs to escaped lunatics, satanic cults, and predictably, Jews and Gypsies.

“Bog moy” Moishe exclaimed in his mother tongue. “So this isn’t just some personal revenge; whatever it is Donald is chasing is a true devil.”

The sheer brutality of the deaths, brought to life through tastelessly gory descriptions by the correspondence, and crude pencil drawings of the murders, would be considered animalistic by some, though in Moishe’s experience, it was only a man who would make such a twisted mess of things. That might be true, but it brought no better understanding as to what it was the McKinnons were after, given the fact that a man who seemed as rational as Donald had always been with Mr. Smelyanski would not likely spend half his life chasing after a monster when it was a man he was really after. No, he was certain after twenty years that what he was hunting was supernatural in origin. Moishe began to shuffle the papers around and lay them out on the floor in chronological order until he had a neat set of black and white paper squares occupying the majority of his available space. He stood over them, hands folded on his soft, academics gut, and allowed his mind to clear and begin making what connections it could.

Fifteen minutes passed before he was finally struck by two conflicting but critically important facts.

One. The ghoulish headlines reared their ugly heads once a month like clockwork for what amounted to two years worth of papers, beginning eight years back.

“January, February, March, April…” on and on he checked as he closed in on December.

Then, after two years, the pattern seemed to collapse. Slowly at first, with a killing still taking place on the proper cycle, but with an extra one or two in between. Then, within eight months of that, they would come in all manner of intervals for the next year and a half. Sometimes not even a week apart. Something was very methodical before going absolutely rampant. The first half was good and well, despite the seemingly chaotic nature of the supernatural, most legends, fables, and, if they were to be believed, personal accounts described phenomena and creatures with sharply defined habits and patterns of behavior. You could predict what they would do and how they would do it and were expected to use this common knowledge to avoid them. But what he was looking at now seemed to throw all of that to the four winds.

“Focus on what makes sense, then work on the mysteries.” He chided himself.

The first question to answer was the significance of the original pattern. This meant cross-referencing the dates that fell within the original pattern with the calendar and checking for auspicious days or events. Thankfully, Moishe’s mind for numbers and knowledge of practically every date of government or religious importance observed in Europe and half the rest of the world reduced this to a few minutes of muttering with his eyes closed rather than another dive back into the dusty papers. The number of dates that fell on one of these holidays was few enough to be brushed off as coincidence.

“If not holidays, and nothing mundane, then it must be…huh,” His eyes landed on his by now very messy desk and found themselves glued to the surprisingly well-done sketch that was lumped in with all of Donald's notes. There, he found himself drawn into a snarling lupine's hypnotic, predatory gaze. A wolf.

“Bog Moy” He whispered in horrific realization.

He checked the lunar calendar built into the small but beautifully crafted cuckoo clock he kept hanging on the wall behind his desk to see when the next full moon would fall. With this, he was able to work backward quickly until he landed on the most recent of the scheduled killings. Back and back, he worked until he exhausted all possible nights and found that every single one of them would have been on a full moon.

“Lycanthropes. Of course, that would account for everything…except the damnable break in the pattern. Why, why the change?!” The puzzle was enough to drive a man to madness, but it was not the only mystery to crack.

Moishe turned his attention from the loathsome list and gazed back at his map. There was no pattern, no shape, nothing to the geography of the marks that jumped at him. Just a tangled mess of pins and string, mocking him like an irritatingly gleeful eye, a green and brown pupil in the center of a red twine iris.

That’s when it hit him.

“The pins. They're everywhere. Everywhere except…” He placed a finger in the dead center of the empty space on the map, nearly equidistant from any of the nearest pins in any direction. It was an open and sparsely populated piece of countryside approximately halfway between Birmingham and Liverpool, in the heart of Staffordshire.

“There you are, you little svoloch” He cursed the open plain of the map, certain that he had found the literal center of this bloody conspiracy.

“So, a lycanthrope, or something that wanted to pass itself off as one, has taken up…alchemy? And is on a decades-long killing spree, hiding in the midlands? Where is the sense in it all? Where was the consistency, the logic to it? Nothing mindless has this sophisticated of a setup, this regular of a pattern, but what man kills this brutally, this wantonly, for so long, and involves himself in so much pseudoscience?”

The sounds of falling books and barely hushed curses in the library beyond his office dashed any hope he had of answering these questions for now.

“Fuckin hell, man, make a bit more noise, will yeh? Bring every bobby in the city down on us,” Came a suppressed angry whisper, the statement insinuating at least one more unwelcome visitor.

“Complainin about it won’t make it any bloody quieter. Now shut yer gob and get fuckin movin, we gotta bleed the yid and get out before he blabs about the boss.”

“I don’t see what’s the problem, even if he figures anythin out, whose’e gonna tell? The coppers? “Oh yes, sir, me and a loony pig farmer figured out half the murders in the shires was done by a bloody w-oof!” The original speaker was cut off by all of the available oxygen being driven out of his lungs via a sharp jab to the gut from his now steaming mad partner.

“You bloody, shtupid fukin shit for brains, I oughta gut you here and leave you alongside the hebe for that. Now button it up, and get fuckin moving.”

Moishe didn’t need to hear anymore to know that he had better get moving or get dying. After all, there weren’t too many alternate, or for that matter, innocent, meanings to the phrase “bleed the yid.”

He grabbed up his leather satchel from its hanging spot on his chair and began stuffing papers into it by the fistful. He looked at the periodicals lining the floor and knew he had no time to do anything constructive with them, but he did what he could not to leave any obvious clues as to what he knew and regretfully scattered them about at random with the foot of his good leg. He checked his work area and realized that the most damning clue of all was still wildly obvious. He sacrificed more precious seconds and ripped a fistful of pins and string from the map, obscuring the revelation about the enemy hiding place as much as he could afford right now, before slinging the satchel over his shoulder, blowing out the lights and slipping out of the office, grabbing his cane as he did.

Careful to make as little noise as possible, Moishe awkwardly crept through the isles, staying away from the center, hoping the tables would aid in sheltering him from the gaze of his pursuers. As he crept to the staircase that led to the study area, he heard the thudding of footsteps coming up and quickly ducked into the last isle of shelves, praying the shadows would be enough to keep him safe. His back against the wall, clutching at his walking stick, desperate to avoid the wicked intentions of the men hunting him, and he felt his mind being drawn to the past like water swirling down a drain.

Flames licking at the sky. The shouts of men and the cry of a woman. Her face streaked with tears as she looked down at the young boy dangling from the window over the snow-covered street below. She mouths something like “I’m sorry,” though he can not hear her voice over the roar of the fire and the ringing in his ears. A brief feeling of weightlessness followed by a sharp pain in his leg. Now he’s limping away, shouts ring out behind him. He is trudging through the snow, fear, and numbness clouding his mind. Now he is in a forest, unsure of how much time has passed. Where is he? Are they still after him? The sound of snarling dogs answers that question for him. “Catch that filthy Ivrit,” A voice filled with hate and death. His heart pounding, Pounding. Pounding. Pounding!

“Lights off, little bastard musta heard you carryin on and slipped out,” The first, less angry voice spoke, mere feet away in the study space, snapping Moishe from the waking nightmare.

Moishe was breathing hard, a sheen of sweat covering him from head to toe, bleeding through his shirt. By some infinite mercy, his subconscious had possessed the presence of mind to cover his mouth during its hijacking of Moishe’s senses, likely saving his life.

“Search the office, I’ll look for the little rat. Can’t have gotten too far. Maybe we take im back to the boss and see what it is he thinks he knows, make sure he ain't told nobody. I’d pay a pretty penny to watch em’ rip into im hehe.”

The hounds. Snuffing, snarling, closing in.

“NO! No time. Must focus” He shoved down the memory as hard as he could and began thinking over his escape.

He stayed curled in the darkest corner of the isle and waited for the sound of footsteps to give away the direction of travel of his predatory guests. One pair of feet went off towards his office as they discussed. The other pair frustratingly began to *thud* *thud* their way back towards his hiding place but gratefully turned left and down a separate aisle two rows down. Despite the risk, once he heard the office door creak open, Moishe felt he had no better chance or options than to make his break right then and there.

Slipping as quietly as he could from the shadows, cursing his bad leg's clumsiness and inability to quietly use his cane to make up for the impairment. He paused at the end of the shelves and pressed himself so hard and flat against the stacks of books he thought he might assimilate into them. He thought he could feel the scratching of bark and the bite of frosted moss against his spine, but a stiff shake of the head and almost painful wincing of the eyes blew those illusions apart like wet tissue paper.

“He was here alright. But looks like he snatched up whatever he was lookin at. Just a bunch a newspapers and a map.”

“Lemme see before ya go leavin behind somethin what gets us turned into chow.” The second voice and its accompanying footsteps made their way through the rows of books and down the center aisle towards the office.

That was Moishe’s cue. He seized the opportunity, ducked as low as he could manage, and hobbled double time for the stairs, grasping the banister and slinging his bad leg over to slide silently down the rail to the ground floor. Woefully, just as he was removing himself from the banister, he stumbled as his weak leg failed to make it in one movement, and his cane slipped from his grip in the moment of imbalance and reflexive panic. He tried to lunge for it, but his hand closed around nothing but darkness, and a loud clatter could be heard as brass and wood struck tile and rolled away in a wide, lazy circle.

“Bog Moy” Moishe cursed his foul fortune and mentally prepared for the hell to come.

“What the hell was that?” Came the call from upstairs.

“Rotten bastard’s scuttlin around downstairs like a little cockroach. After im!” Was the follow-up.

Moishe clambered for his cane, and as he felt his hands firmly grasp the aid, he took off into the gaping maw of shadows that lay before him, allowing it to swallow him entirely into the safety of its muzzle.

The sound of footsteps on stairs set a fire under Moishe and pushed him ever deeper into the blackness. He kept a smooth pace despite his physical difficulties but was suddenly tripped up by a-.

Branch

No! A chair, just a chair someone forgot to put back. He recovered as best he could and turned to his right, risking slowing his pace to gain a bit more stealth.

“You go left, I’ll go right. Front door’s jammed up nice’n tight, so he aint goin that way.”

“Of all the neschast’ye- Why do I have to get the cautious thugs?” He inquired of whatever cruel or indifferent god might be watching events unfold.

Moishe thought about doubling back and going for one of the service exits in the rear of the building or attempting to lose the stooges in the labyrinth of storage facilities and deep archives under the building. Despite the seeming initial brilliance of these ideas, both had to be scrapped. If Moishe could not move quickly or quietly, which seemed all too likely, then he would be spotted and gutted in no time by his pursuers.

“Damn them, damn them damn them! I escape only to be marked for life like a runaway slave.” He found himself, not for the first time, but perhaps in the most urgent context yet, lamenting his unnatural deformity.

“No, no time for that, just get breath, observe, act.”

His eyes, by now adjusted to the darkness, darted around the cavernous space in desperate need of inspiration. He could hear the echoing of footsteps all around him, the sounds unhelpfully thrown around at random by the smooth hardness of the tiles and the litany of shelves and furniture. They didn’t seem to be so urgent as to indicate they were onto him, but he knew it was only a matter of time.

“There!” He shouted internally as the epiphany struck like lightning.

His gaze fell upon the window to his salvation, which in this case was an actual window. One of many long and somewhat narrow windows that angled in light and merciful summer breezes for the readers without the distraction that actual views to the outside provided. All he needed to do was find a way up the nearest stack of shelves across fifteen feet of open, vulnerable space and shimmy his way through the windows and down onto the street below. Not difficult at all….for someone significantly more stealthy, brave and athletic than himself.

“No choice, I have to tell Gavina what I have learned; she must not know this loss.” More buried memories threatened to bubble to the surface, but he managed to hold them down this time before they could steal any more of his focus.

“OI! You found im yet?” The shout echoed through the corridors like thunder.

“If I’da found im, you think I wouldn’tve said something by now ya dunce? Keep lookin and keep quiet!” The second voice, frighteningly close now, shouted back without the faintest hint of irony at the disconnect between his words and actions.

A chill ran through Moishe’s blood, like chunks of ice flowing down a winter river as the echoes of footsteps altered their cadence and direction, signaling his enemies' path towards, rather away, from his hiding place. Knowing that discovery was death, he analyzed his surroundings for any options of escape or concealment. To his dismay and likely demise, there was nothing to be seen but rows of neat and tightly stacked books. Specifically biographies.

“Books. Yes!” Inspiration broke through the barriers of panic surrounding his rational mind and granted a moment of life-saving clarity.

Gripping his walking stick tight, he walked over to the nearest row and slipped a selection from its shelf. He instinctively peeked at the cover and saw the name “Coleridge” peaking out at him through the gloom.

“Net” He resolved himself. He was not about to abuse the poet so indignantly.

His life may have been in danger, but literature and knowledge were his life, and some things were worth showing reverence to. He jammed it back into its resting place and with the expertise of someone practically raised in a library, found a much more acceptable sacrifice.

Book in hand, Moishe crept to the end of the stack, opposite where he heard the sounds of the henchman's plodding footsteps, and with all the strength he possessed, he reared back and hurled a copy of “Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Realm” into the murky abyss of the hall where it landed unseen with a satisfyingly loud *THWAK* which garnered the desired reaction from the malicious duo.

“Oi, overhear! He’s makin a go fer it!” Came a shout from a terrifyingly close three shelves away.

“Fuckin after im’ then!” Came the reply, even as it was already racing through the dark towards the decoy. A loud and satisfying *CRASH* “FUCK!” Indicating someone had tripped in their haste to shuffle Moishe off this mortal coil.

Moishe recognized his best possible opportunity and made a break for the shelving below his literal window of opportunity. Throwing caution aside, he made no attempt at stealth or subtlety and instead sprinted in his awkward, limping gate and slammed into the unit so hard it practically readjusted his spine. He lobbed his cane up on top and willed it not to fall back down with his entire being as he began to hoist himself up one grueling step and pull at a time. His leg could hardly take the weight and strain of the exercise, so his arms were forced to make up the difference, causing him to fatigue rapidly.

“Not a single biscuit or once of pastrami until this blasted stomach is gone” He groaned through gritted teeth at the effort, regretting allowing his disability and bookishness to cultivate a perhaps fatal lack of physicality.

Hauling himself to the second to last step, his tendons feeling as taught as steel cables and his muscles quivering like a bowl of jam on a rickety train, his fortune finally failed him. With no warning, his right arm lost its strength and slipped from the ledge at the top of the shelves. Without time for thought or consideration, he reached out to grasp anything at hand to spare himself a potentially lethal fall. Instead of sturdy, stable oak shelf, what he grabbed was a trio of dusty reference books that his momentum slung from their resting places and towards the ground at breakneck speed. This crescendo of this act was a loud clattering trio of *THWACK*’s that sang out through the empty space, with no hope that those pursuing him wouldn’t hear.

Moishe’s fears were immediately realized when the dreaded cries of “Over there!” shot through his ears and into his pounding heart like a thunderbolt. Struggling to regain his balance and maintain his position atop the shelves, Moishe called upon all the strength he possessed and gathered it into his good leg. With a push that tested the outer limits of possibility, he managed to propel himself upwards and slam both arms onto the safety and stability of the dusty top shelf and was able to regain a sense of stability. Before he could celebrate, however, trouble arrived.

“There he is, the little cockroach. Thinks he can scurry on out the window. Oh, looks pretty high don’tcha think?” The more aggressive and bloodthirsty voice mocked Moishe and his precarious position atop the stacks.

“Could be dangerous, soft little fella like im. Maybe we outhta give him some help down?” The insincere offer of aid was provided via the slightly more amused and nasally of the two voices that had been plaguing Moishe’s ears and stoking his fears.

“Basil, grab the ladder and bring im down. We’ve got a few questions for our little friend, and I wouldn’t want him breakin his precious neck before we get the chance.” Were the chilling commands of the apparent leader of the pair.

“A ladder!” The idea he had overlooked something so obvious as the rolling ladders scattered all over the library was so simple, so infuriating, that it was almost comedic.

“Stupid, stupid STUPID!” He bellowed as he smashed his forehead against the stained oak of the shelf he was now clinging to like a tick on a cow's rump.

“Oi! Who you callin stupid? You're the one what forgot the ladder, not me, say that to my face when we get you down and see how big a man you are then professor.” The speaker obviously a bit sensitive about his intellect.

The sounds of squeaking wheels signaled approaching doom as the ladder glided across the polished floor and parked itself to Moishe’s immediate right. He could hear the creak of wood as the one apparently called Basil began the short journey up to Moishe.

“Hey Shiv, does the boss really need to be in on this, or do ya think we can hog the fun for ourselves, just this once? I mean, him and his friends get to let lose all the time, all we ever does is fetch and carry. Doesn’t seem fair if you ask me.” He was now a mere three rungs below Moishe and getting closer by the second.

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t just hear you talk about cheatin the beast what keeps us in ale and whore flesh, and remind you to shut yer soup hole about the boss for the last time before I bring the Jew back in a sack made a your skin!” The man known as Shiv was beginning to lose his light grasp on patience and boiled at the greed and stupidity of his partner.

“Fine,” One wrung.

“Just don’t seem right, is all.” Another.

“We don’t even get a taste uh’ the glowy stuff, and we got’s ta do all the heavy liftin for the good Sargent, just seems like we could at least carve up a little nobody like this every once in a while.” Last wrung, his hand reached out for the collar of Moishe’s shirt.

“Does the word secret have no fuckin meaning to you!” Shiv practically shouted at Basil.

“What’s the bloody point of keepin quiet when there’s nobody to keep it from! He’s fuckin dead anyway, so back off me ass before I come down there and clip the ear Scarsborough left you!”

Moishe, seeing his last chance at freedom, his sole opportunity to escape this alive, seized it with all the strength and courage he possessed. Feeling around for the cane and almost weeping for joy at feeling its smooth walnut grip in his hand, he put his full body weight, risking throwing himself from the bookcase in the process, into a mighty swing that landed with a sickening dull *Thump* on the top of Basil’s skull. The henchman’s grip loosened instantly from the hold it was just getting on Moishe, and his body crumpled like an old rag and dropped straight down the ladder and onto the floor with a horrifying *CRACK* sound. Though Moishe was no physician, he was confident that the pool of blood beneath his head, and the angle of his spine, were not signs of good health.

“Basil! You rotten little bastard, come hear!” Shiv cried out, horrified at the fate of his companion, and rushed for the ladder.

Moishe, losing not one more second of time, swung himself onto the ladder and hurried the last few steps up to the top of the shelf. As he finally was able to rest his searing arms and throbbing leg, he used a foot to fling the ladder and send it racing away to the far side of the stacks, buying him a precious few more seconds of peace from imminent danger. Breathing hard, he sat up and began his search for the latch that would finally lead him to safety. With no time to truly reclaim his vigor, Moishe felt around the iron trim of the window until he felt the latch, wrenched the semi-rusted bit of metal to the left, and felt the panel loosen. He pushed his way through on his hands and knees, but once again, disaster struck due to his clumsiness and exhaustion.

Moishe lost control and felt himself rolling and then sliding down the steep angle of the roof, something he had utterly failed to prepare for, and tried with all his might to come to a stop. When he reached the ledge, his legs kicking desperately like a swimmer treading water, it was with every ounce of remaining mental and physical strength that he was able to hang on and avoid the lethal plunge. As he struggled, he felt the blood rush to his head; a loud, echoing *BANG BANG* *BANG BANG* roared through the night air, and the familiar ringing filled his ears. His vision blurred, and he was transported to another place and time. He was holding on not to the cold metal gutters but to a pair of soft, warm hands. He was not at a large silent library but a humble, roaring townhouse. He was not alone and afraid for his own life, but with a woman, he would have done anything to reach out and hold again, to hear her reassure him. He could see her mouthing those unthinkable words. Those words held in them the most final and irreversible of goodbyes.

“Otpustit’” “Let go.”

“Let go!”

“LET GO!!!”

The voice changed tone and volume; it was not her desperate plea of concern but a strong, deep, commanding voice of authority that had no place in that caring, loving face. Moishe felt his strength give way, his fingers loosened, and his exhausted muscles relaxed as he slipped from the ledge and into the all-consuming void of night, the woman's face swept away in a swirling mist, replaced with the starry sky above.

“Will it hurt this time? Will I suffer again? Or will it be quick? Please be quick” These oddly calm and practical thoughts were all he had time for.

Still trapped in his twisted memory, he expected to land broken in the snowy St. Petersburg street below his childhood home, his corpse probably chucked back into the blazing building for good measure. But this did not happen, nor did he smash into the cobblestone courtyard below the library, to be scraped off and put in a horse-drawn cart in the morning. Instead, he fell into a waiting pair of arms as strong as yew branches and a torso as stout as oak. He then felt the two crumple to the ground, with a loud foreign curse uttered as they did.

“Mere Raba!” Moishe’s apparent savior cried out in Punjabi, a language he had some familiarity with as a student of cultures.

This dragged him back to reality so quickly he was certain he had mental whiplash. Everything hurt, everything throbbed, and he wasn’t sure he had even the energy remaining to stand up. This decision, however, would be taken from him as an iron grip found itself on his left arm and dragged him to his feet before he felt himself being dusted off and his personage straightened out. Feeling no less in pain but somewhat less disheveled, he took his walking stick, which the stranger was proffering him with the stiff courtesy of a servant, and leaned heavily on it as he reached out his free hand in thanks. Feeling the sturdy hand wrap around his own tortured one was both painful and comforting, and he took a moment to drink in he who had delivered him from doom.

“Th-thank you, good sir. I thought…I thought I was dead. Actually, I am not so confident that I’m not. Who-” But his question was cut off as he finally gained a bit of focus and mental acuity and realized who it was he was speaking to.

“I can assure you, Mr. Smelyanski. You are very much alive, praise Raba.”