Best New Werewolf Tales (Vol. 1) (18 page)

* * *

The house was huge, a marble pile sitting near to the castle. The high wooden door lay open. That got the hairs at the back of my neck rising. They rose further as I caught a familiar odor; the heavy coppery tang of freshly spilt blood.

I drew my sword and crept quietly into the vast entrance area. High overhead the ceiling curved in a vaulted roof of gravity defying stone and glass. I was still marveling at the wide, spacious emptiness of it as the main door closed with a bang behind me.

I turned, coming face to face with the
Dubh Sithe.

“What have you done with Eyr?” I said, raising my sword.

“I just got here,” he said. He gave me a predator’s smile. “Besides, it’s not me you have to worry about.”

The tang of blood had been masking something else—the musty odor of wet dog.

A low growl came from behind me. I turned, and looked straight into a pair of green eyes that belonged to a wolf, a huge gray male beginning to get its winter coat—shaggy and pale around the shoulders, darker gray along the flanks. Its lips pulled away from its teeth, showing milky-white canines and a blood-red tongue.

The eyes continued to hold me in their stare as I slowly backed away, keeping my sword between it and myself.

As I backed off, the wolf moved towards me, pacing my movements, his eyes never leaving mine.

“He knows you have it,” the Elf said.

I didn’t have time to answer.

Summoning up what little bravery I had left, I took a step forward. The wolf stood its ground, the green eyes daring me to come closer. My legs trembled, threatening to collapse beneath me.

I stepped forward, bringing my sword up towards its eye. The beast sprang at the same moment, and the blade caught it a glancing blow on the shoulder, not even slowing its attack.

Instinctively I threw out my left arm across my throat, just as the wolf’s jaws clamped shut. Long teeth raked my arm, opening a bleeding wound. The wolf went mad in frenzy at the taste of blood.

I couldn’t find sufficient angle to bring the point of the sword to bear. I hit the beast in the head, again and again with the hilt, but that only enraged it further as it chewed deeper into the flesh of my arm.

The weight of the creature dragged at me, threatening at any moment to pull me off my feet as we staggered together in a grotesque parody of a dance. We lurched left and right, and the pain in my arm flared and burned, threatening to overwhelm me.

I only had one option, and it would leave me vulnerable to attack, but I had to try, before tiredness took away any hope I might have.

I swung my left arm around, pivoting with my body, lifting the wolf off the ground, screaming aloud at the sudden, white-hot pain that flared in the wound. At the same time I lifted the wolf’s head as high as I could, thrusting it away from me while bringing my sword around in an arc.

I hit the beast in the side, biting deep. The creature made a whimpering noise in its throat but hung on tightly to my arm as my swing turned me fully around. Our combined weight finally sent us to the ground where we rolled and kicked and gouged. I was as wild as the animal that attacked me.

I stabbed for its heart, again, and again, my head full of blood and thunder.

And finally, it was still.

I rolled away, panting. It took long seconds for me to get my breath.

I turned—and looked at the dead, naked, body of an old bearded man, his chest a bloody ruin.

“Gwynne Ericsdochtir, meet Lord Cantor,” the Elf said.

* * *

I tried to stand, but felt dizzy and weak.

The big man came over, lifted me as if I weighed no more than a feather, and sat me against a wall. He sat on his haunches facing me.

“I suppose I owe you a story.”

I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I tried to stay awake as he talked.

“I remember a time when all I knew was forest and mountain. I ran with the pack. We ranged far and wide, under the stars. We took what we wanted, we went where we chose, and there was no man to tell us how to mark the passing of each day. Until Cantor came to the ruins at the western edge of our lands.

“He found the hair belt in a chamber under a temple as old as the stars themselves; and he was just learned enough to recognize it, and just stupid enough to use it.

“One minute I was hunting a small coney, and the next, I was standing, on two legs, beside a new wolf I had never seen before. For, you see, the belt needs two, one to be wolf, one to be man.”

The Elf’s voice had deepened, coarsened, and his beard seemed somehow fuller.

“For a time, we led a double life, Cantor and I, as wolf and man. But I grew to like the soft life I had been given; the candied sweetmeats, the ale, even the smoke-weed. So I laid a trap for Cantor, drugging his meat.

“That night, for the first time, I controlled the belt, controlled the change. I placed Cantor in a cage deep beneath our home here in the city, and went on with my life as a man.

“And all was well for many years. I made token pretense of hunting for the belt, while living the soft life of a rich man. Until last week.

“A thief came into the house when I was distracted, and took the belt. He was also stupid enough to loose the wolf.

“You can figure out the rest. Cantor had just enough man-sense to hunt for the belt; and just enough wolf-sense to kill anyone in his path.

“We both tracked the belt; and we both ended here. I fear that Cantor has killed Lord Colwyn; but you will be able to blame that one on me after I’ve gone.

“But first, the spell is broken…  For me to return to the wolf I once was, I need the belt. Otherwise I will be a strange foul half-beast, neither one nor other. I can feel it in me even now. The belt please. And quickly.”

I took the glass from my pocket and wiped my hand over it.

“Face. It is time.”

She noticed the blood.

“Gwynne. Are you okay?”

“I will be. I need the package.”

“Ready and waiting.”

I put my thumb and forefinger through the mirror, and met the dry hair of the belt on the far side. I pulled it out in one smooth motion.

“Gwynne?” Face said, worried, but I wiped her away. She’d get—the story later—once I’d worked out in my head what the story actually was.

I handed it to the Elf. He was definitely hairier now, and his eyes had taken on a deep green tinge.

* * *

He chanted, a harsh tongue I didn’t recognize.

Emned kechod da h’tebs saih bhro h’car h’tan lana.

He clasped the belt around his waist—and suddenly he wasn’t a man anymore.

His backbone curved, forcing his head lower to the ground––a head that slowly stretched and elongated as long fangs burst from bloody gums. Talons slid from under his fingernails, slithering and viscid, like a wet fart.

His silks split with a loud rip. New muscles strained tight against the ripped material. Thick bristles of hair forced their way through his skin, the hands lengthening as the talons grew longer and knuckles popped. A long snout lifted in the air.

He shook off the last torn remnants of his silks and sniffed at the air.

I pushed myself upright using my sword as a walking stick, and hobbled over to the door. It was well oiled, and swung open easily.

I opened it wide, and let the wolf out into the waiting night.

OUT OF THE LIGHT

DOUGLAS SMITH

The morgue door swung open. Jan Mirocek hesitated at the threshold, clinging to the hallway’s bright comfort. Ahead in the dark room, under a lonely cone of light, Detective Garos loomed over a shroud-covered corpse. Jan glared up at the single ceiling bulb. Forty watts max, he thought. He turned to a clerk slouched at a desk in the hall. “Got any more light?”

The man just shrugged. “Our guests don’t do much reading.”

Scowling, Jan stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind him, cutting the light even more. He cursed and pulled a small flashlight from a coat pocket, his breathing slowing as the beam brightened his path. I can do this, he thought. Trying not to look into the shadows, he walked to Garos.

Morgues didn’t bother Jan. He knew death. And corpses.

He just wanted more light.

Garos eyed the flashlight but the big man didn’t comment. “Good to see you in action again, hunter. It’s been a while since—last time.” His beefy hand swallowed Jan’s.

Last time
. At least, old friend, you have the decency to leave it at that, Jan thought. “I’m retired, Andreas. Why’d you call me?” Ignoring the frown from Garos, he studied the contours of the white shroud. Slim, short, female.

Garos shrugged then turned to the corpse. “White female, early thirties. Found about one this morning––just twelve hours ago––on a well-lit, still-busy, Toronto street.”

Stabbing his beam into dark corners, Jan pulled two extra flashlight batteries from his pocket. He shook them in his hand, calmed by the clicking noise. “So? What do you need me for?”

“You tell me.” Garos pulled back the sheet.

Maybe it was the light. Or the darkness. Or perhaps seeing Garos in a professional role again had brought her back, brought it all back. He looked down, and
she
was there. Her face. The way it used to be in the mornings––peaceful––beautiful.

Then the face shifted into someone else––some
thing
else. Jan stared at the desiccated corpse of a stranger, black sunken eye sockets and cheeks, lips pulled back from rotting gums, white hair framing gray translucent skin. The shadows closed in and with them, his terror. He ran from the room.

* * *

Ten years old. Lying in bed beside his brother Pyotr, in their house in the woods. His mother’s voice rose and fell in her sing-song way of telling stories. But these stories were not of frog princes, or bears and honey pots, or little girls chasing rabbits down holes. These were—different.

“To begin his change, the werewolf put on a belt of wolf skin, then drank water from a wolf’s paw-print,” their mother whispered. Jan looked at Pyotr. The younger boy was wide-eyed. Jan smiled. These are stories, he thought. Just stories.

* * *

Five minutes after leaving the morgue, Jan sat huddled at a window table of the first bar he had found. The afternoon sun of a Toronto winter did little to remove the chill he felt. A familiar face peered inside. Moments later, Garos eased his bulk into a chair beside him. “You okay?”

Jan lied with a nod. “For a second, I saw—” Her name caught in his throat and he swallowed. “I saw Stasia’s face.”

Garos frowned, his eyebrows forming a single bushy line. An old woman in Sicily had once told Jan such eyebrows were a sign of the
lupomanari
. She had missed the true signs in her own son. He killed nine people before Jan and Garos had brought him down.

“I shouldn’t have called you,” Garos said.

“I’m okay!” Jan snapped. Garos looked away. No, you shouldn’t have, Jan thought, you of all people. Jan stared at his hands gripping his beer as if it were a beast about to leap at his throat. He held life that way now, a wild thing to be feared, never trusted to lie quietly at his feet. “Who was she?”

Garos said a name. It meant nothing to Jan. He looked up. “Why
did
you call me, Andreas?”

“Did that look like a fresh corpse to you?” Garos asked.

“The rotting doesn’t mean it was done by a shifter.”

“Come on, Jan. We saw the same rapid body decay in shifter victims back home.”

“Any ‘bodies’ we saw were in pieces and mostly eaten.”
Her
body would’ve been too, Jan thought, if he had been able to bring himself to see it. “This one was intact. That’s no were-beast.”

Looking around, Garos lowered his voice. “We’ve had other killings, similar to this. We’re barely keeping a lid on it.”

Jan swallowed. “What’s similar about them?”

“Victims killed at night on bright, busy streets. No robbery. Victims in good health. No drugs or sign of sexual assault. No violence except some contusions around the throat, but death wasn’t by strangulation, and—” Garos leaned forward. “—and the corpses rot within hours.”

“Any pattern to the killings?”

“None I can see. Both genders, all ages and professions. All over downtown. The only consistency is the body decay and autopsy results, plus the time of night and type of locations.” “Anything else?”

“A witness saw a guy standing over this body. She says she chased him into a dead-end alley. No door, window, fire escape. Nowhere to hide. But also no suspect—the alley was empty.”

Jan felt cold. “That still doesn’t say shifter.”

“Put it with the body decay, it says something weird.”

“You believe her story?”

“She gave a description. We’re checking it out. And her.”

“I’ll bet your theory went down well with the brass.”

Garos snorted. “I keep my own counsel. They’re not from the old country. Don’t believe as we do, haven’t seen what we have.” He stared at Jan. “I need your help.”

Jan avoided his eyes. “I came to this country, to a big city, to escape the beasts of the night, Andreas. They don’t come to the cities. You don’t have a shifter. Even if you did, I can’t help you. And you know why.”

They sat not speaking, Jan’s shame burning him. “Well, I had to try,” Garos said as he stood. He looked at Jan. “I know what she was to you. I know you blame yourself. But she knew the risks.” He squeezed Jan’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Janoslav. Give yourself a break for God’s sake.” He walked to the door, then stopped and looked back. “What if you’re wrong?”

Jan stared at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“What if I do have a
kallikantzari
? A beast of the night in your big safe city. What then, hunter?” Not waiting for an answer, Garos turned and left. Jan stayed until the winter sun sank too low. Walking home, he watched the shadows all the way.