Red Hood: The Hunt (6 page)

I tilted my head in prompt to her, and she grabbed the cloak, balling it up and placing it behind her head like a pillow.  I could see the shape of her crossbow in it.  She inhaled deeply and held her breath before exhaling.  “I'll tell you the tale of the night I was... made... if you tell me more of that night seventeen years ago.  I fear we have a common enemy.”  She locked eyes with me, she seemed to be looking directly into my soul. I nodded once, though it was always painful to talk about that night, and she smiled wistfully at me.

She reached over and grabbed one of my hands and gave it a reassuring squeeze before releasing it.  It was hot like I had observed before.  Unnaturally so.  Her hand had a restrained strength in it like coiled steel.  I could tell she was being careful to be almost delicate when she touched me as if not to hurt me, like she was handling a piece of fine china.  Then I remembered her catching a hundred and fifty pound wolf in mid-leap with one hand while the bitch dangled from her other arm and understanding flowed through me.  She seriously didn't want to break me.  I shuddered.

I took my light jacket off and balled it up behind my neck and laid back against the wall and said, “Tell me your story, Maireni.”  I swear her eyes lit up when I accidentally said her name.  She leaned over and playfully bumped shoulders.  I could feel her heat and caught her wild scent.

She centered herself, her eyes unfocused, looking far off into the distance like she was watching a story unfold in front of us.  She started with, “I would appreciate if what I share with you, you do not repeat.  Just as I would never share what you confide in me.”  I nodded.

Then she said, “Once upon a time.”  With a wry grin that made me smile against my own will.  The damn woman was too much fun for a killer.  Then she got more serious.  In the spring of 1895, in what is today Vionessa, Romania, in the mountains in the shadow of Mount Lotrului, my brother and I were rushing home in our coach when a spoke broke in a wheel.”

She looked almost afraid as she spoke, lost in the memory.  “There was to be a full moon that night.  We had left the main town for home late because I had to get my dress for the upcoming chancellor's ball.  So there we were on the forest road to our family chateau just minutes before sunset.  Mykal had looked at the sun on the horizon.  He started getting the horses out of their harnesses on the yoke so we could race the sun home when the last ray of sun was swallowed up by the horizon.”

She shuddered and continued, “Moments later, we heard the howling and snarling of a werewolf pack that must have caught our scent already. Mykal threw me on a horse and slapped its hind quarters.  I looked back to see him mount up as the pack came streaming into the road between us.  They started to give chase as their predator instincts saw me as prey trying to escape.”

Her voice hardened. “The last I saw of my brother was him yelling to get the attention of the pack, to draw them away from me.  All but one broke off and dove toward my brother as he charged the pack, yelling in challenge.  I can still hear his screams when they tore him and his horse apart.  He had sacrificed himself so I could get away.”

She seemed to be part of the memory now, her face was contorted in pain and disbelief. “My brother had died protecting me because I needed a stupid dress.  The werewolf which maintained pursuit of me kept gaining on us, but Goliath gave me everything he had, keeping us just beyond reach of the slashing claws of the unnaturally large blackish grey wolf.  I swear the wolf was laughing as it would fall back then lunge forward, causing Goliath to lurch forward.  I could feel his lungs under my legs working like immense bellows and his mouth and nostrils were foaming.”

Something gleamed in her eyes as she breathed. “The chateau was in sight, and I dared hope I could make it. Then I saw the beast as it looked at the horse then barred its fangs. With a great leap, he landed on Goliath's haunches, tearing and shredding with its fangs and claws.  I tumbled across the ground as my brave horse fell and whinnied in pain.  I got to my feet seeing the carnage as the wolf tore my horse apart.”

Then she almost snarled. “I ran to the old gardener's shed.  It was made of stone with silver veins, Papa had it constructed that way as an emergency shelter for the hired help if it was ever needed. The heavy oak door had silver leaf in the carvings on it.  I had just placed the oak crossbar into the cradles as the entire shed shook with the impact of the large wolf on the door.”

She crinkled her nose.  “I can still smell the singed fur and flesh of the thing, still hear its yelp of pain.  It circled the shed for a minute and I heard more and more growls and a couple other tries at the door followed by yelps.  The pack had arrived.”

She gritted her teeth then said, “After about an hour they seemed to leave.  But then I heard a commotion coming from the chateau.  There was screaming... mother...”

She took a deep breath and continued, “I just balled up on the ground in the shed as I listened helplessly to the screams of my family and the workers.  The wolves had somehow breached the walls and there was nothing I could do as I just listened to them kill everyone I ever cared for.  It was like the big wolf, that Alpha Wolf, was having his pack do it on purpose just to punish me for getting away.  Unlike a normal wolf attack where they just shredded their prey, they stretched it out all night.  I couldn't sleep even if I wanted to.  Just when I thought it was over, another scream would sound from the chateau.”

Then her eyes widened as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I had no more tears then, I had no voice from my own screams.  I just sat and rocked on the ground.  Then I tried to scream when there was a thud on the roof followed by the stench and yelp of a silver burned wolf.  Twilight was streaming in through the cracks in the door, I had hope, sunrise was coming.”

She tilted her head like she was watching it unfold again.  “That's when she arrived.  I heard the pack move off toward the chateau again.  Then the snarling and snapping and yelps of pain of battle.  I was saved I thought until I heard it.  The sound of digging behind the shed.  A wolf was digging under the walls, avoiding the silver like it had figured it out, but I thought wolves were dumb animals, incapable of rational thought.”

She exhaled loudly again. “I knew right then and there, that I was going to die.  It was a truth I could not change.  The fear I thought I'd have was not there, I had nothing to live for anymore with my family dead.  But some primal survival instinct made me run to the door anyway as the snout came up under the rocks of the wall, lips pulled back to show snarling teeth.  I paused when I saw the green eyes of a man, they weren't the eyes of an animal and my blood ran cold.”

She snarled. “I grabbed a hay fork and repeatedly stabbed at the wolf, trying to stop it from digging further as I realized the sound of battle outside was subsiding.  With a great snap of its jaws, the wolf snapped the fork and flung it aside as it pulled itself into the shed.  I threw the board out of the cradle and ran outside.”

Then she got the predatory look I had seen on her face in the alley.  “Then he leapt at me from the shed, impossibly fast and impossibly far.  I closed my eyes and waited for my death but instead I heard a thump and a yelp.  When I opened my eyes, the wolf was at my feet with a woman in a billowing red cloak on its back.  She had stopped him from killing me.”

She squinted and crossed her arms over her chest like she was hugging herself to protect herself from the memory.  “They tumbled across the ground.  The wolf didn't fight like any wolf I had seen.  He seemed to be looking for weaknesses in the woman's defenses.  She held two silver daggers and used them like claws of her own.  Then the wolf wound up in front of the woman and me, and it turned its eyes on me.  Those green human eyes, and I could see the almost smug expression on the wolf as it smiled.  I swear to God that it smiled, and I realized it was closer to me than the woman as he leaped with his fangs bared at me.”

Her breathing increased.  “Almost faster than my eyes could register it, the woman seemed to pirouette in the air unclasping her cloak which she flung over me as she flew past.  I felt the impact of the wolf like a house had been dropped on me.  I could feel the snapping of jaws and slash of claws on the cloak but impossibly, none made it through.”

Then I saw hate in her eyes and something I have seen in the mirror in my own eyes, the need for vengeance.  “I heard yelping and thuds as the beast was pulled from me.  I threw the cloak off and ran toward the chateau, it was stupid really but I was little more than a child.  Home had always been safety though if I had thought about it, it had also have also been breached.”

She bit her lip then continued.  “I looked back and the woman, who had just kicked the wolf twenty feet from her, gave an incredulous look at me like she didn't believe I was so stupid to leave the safety of her cloak.  It was my fault... in her distraction the Alpha Wolf dove at her and his jaws clamped down on her throat and tore it out in one violent movement as I stared on in horror.  But then the wolf's head snapped to the east and the first rays of sunrise came over the peaks.  He gave one hateful look at me and started running away as he changed back to human.  He never looked back, so I don't know what he looked like, but I know those eyes, I'll recognize them when I see him.”

I understood that intimately and now I think I knew her fascination with me and my story and why he knew the big wolf who attacked my family had green eyes.

Then her hand drifted back as she cried, and she grasped her cloak.  “I saw the remains of my family after that and I numbly started walking toward town since all the horses in the stables were dead.  As I passed the woman's red cloak, it seemed to call out to me. I grabbed it in desperation I didn't understand, and when I put it on, I was engulfed in a white light and such searing pain that I fell to my knees, unable to scream.”

Then she dropped her hand. “When I opened my eyes, the world was much brighter, more colorful, I was hit by smells so intense I could taste them.  And I felt energized I felt... powerful.  And I knew what I had to do.  The woman before me gave her life to save me, a stranger to her.  I would do the same.  Help those who could not help themselves with this new-found strength of mine.”

She shrugged and finished. “So that's what I have been doing ever since.”  I couldn't help myself, I reached a hand toward her and brushed a tear from her cheek with my thumb. I cupped her unnaturally hot cheek.  She leaned into it and made a sound that was part sigh, part contented growl that I could feel through my entire being.

I looked at her, I saw no sign of deceit in her eyes and after seeing the things she could do, I found myself taking her impossible story as plausible.  I asked, “This was in 1895?  Four years before the Lycan Contagion spread to the Americas?”

She nodded but corrected me. “Curse, not contagion.”

I cocked an eyebrow and prompted in a patronizing tone, “Curse, as in oggity boggity?”

She nodded and her eyes narrowed at my attitude. “Curse as in a pact with demons gone awry.”

She believed in demons, I might have laughed at her if not for the fact that demons truly existed in the form of werewolves.  The same wolves that took my family.  I amended that though.  No, that took our families.  I found myself asking, “How is any of this possible?”  I know how stupid that sounded as soon as I asked, the wolves were proof enough that it was possible I supposed.

She pulled away from the foundation a bit and rummaged around in an inside pocket in the cloak and handed me possibly the oldest leather bound book I had ever seen.  It had nothing written on the spine or cover, and I opened it carefully.  The pages were brittle and stained from years of use and exposure to the elements.  There was flowing handwriting on the first pages, I couldn't read a lick of it.  I looked up at her and she said, “Romanian.”

I nodded and carefully thumbed through the book.  It was a diary from what I was getting, and the dates before each entry or sketch.  Some of the sketches were people or wolves, symbols, and towns.  The handwriting changed to a clumsier hand, then again at a later point to block lettering, then finally to a flowing script again that changed to English half way through to the present.

The final entry was from a month back. “Marcus is here in the Seattle area, I am sure of it. All signs are pointing to him having something to do with the silver shortage and the waves of Ferals under compulsion at the city gates.  I believe I have found a kindred spirit in...”  She took the book from me before I could finish reading.

She carefully put the book back into the cloak pocket then said, “My predecessors have been able to put together how the lycanthrope curse had been unleashed upon the world, and why the Red Hood exists.  It is not our name as some may believe, but the title of the one to balance the scale.  The yin to the evil of the curse's yang.”

I put two and two together. “This Marcus person?”

She nodded. “He is the Alpha Wolf, the first.  The progenitor of all lycanthropes.  I exist to bring an end to him... to rid the world of his curse and to free myself from my own curse.”

I nodded but furrowed my brow, maybe it is the investigator in me or just pure human curiosity, I prompted, “Your curse?  Tell me about Marcus.”  Was he the wolf that killed my family?

She tilted her head at me in a most inhuman manner, almost like a dog who was trying to pick out a sound carried on the wind.  Then she nodded slowly and slid down the wall to lay on the sleeping bag using her cloak as a pillow.  I took it this was going to be a long story, so I followed suit.