Rose: Briar's Thorn (3 page)

I learned of the lupus curse the following year.  The brothers Marcus had finally succeeded in gaining the power they craved but at a terrible cost.  As the years went by, more and more werewolves prowled the mountains on the full moons.  The first one that I had seen was terrifying in it's single-minded attack on me, it meant to eat me.

I reacted in fear, forgetting that I was more of a monster than it was.  My vines wrapped around it, constricting.  It was already dead from my poison in the thorns and reverting to human as the vines twisted, tearing it in half.  Sending the pieces flying.

I was quite mad by then.  Sanity is a fickle mistress.  When you can't interact with the world without killing... when you can't even share a single touch with a living being, you just sort of let that sanity slip away to cope.  I found that I enjoyed killing the wolf.  Killing a monster.  Maybe a small shred of me thought it indicated I had a tiny piece of humanity left in me. I would keep humans safe, and that made me human too... didn't it?

I actively hunted the feral wolves on the full moons for decades, while the humans that learned of my existence hunted me.  I never killed humans, but some were relentless in their drive to kill the monster I was, and would force my vines to protect me giving me more deaths to repent for.  So I doubled my efforts in hunting black magic practitioners, and on the full moons, feral werewolves.

It must have been almost a hundred years that I had lived with the hell, the prison my own body was.  I was no more than a feral beast myself by then.  Alister's wish for me to suffer for all time seemed to have been made to pass by the old crone's magic.

How I had longed to find Alina one day and show her the folly of creating a monster who could not be killed.  I would have visited the fruits of her casting upon her and Alister.  I could feel all the dark magics in the world, but I could not feel hers, I knew she was dead.  She died shortly after I was created, I think it was by Alister's hand.  But I could still dream.

The brothers Marcus, with their new powers as Alphas and the powerful magic users they had in their stables, kept them out of my reach.

So I settled for hunting what evil I could find.  That is when I met... her.  I found myself in the heart of the woods in Denmark where I had dispatched a coven of dark witches just days prior.  I felt myself slipping in that battle.  I craved their magics, I wanted them for my own.  My resolve had been slipping and I almost caved to the temptation.  A tiny portion of the Rose I had been, warned me against it, that it would make me even more of a monster if I succumbed to the lure.

I remember looking up at the full moon above and smiling maniacally.  Yes, I could let the monster out, to hunt feral werewolves to keep others safe.  I could let all the evil in me do some good.  I savored these nights, and I knew that made me no better than a psychotic, but it was the only good I could do.  It wasn't my fault if I happened to enjoy it.

I closed my eyes and just listened with more than my ears.  Werewolves were an odd magic.  Though created by black magics of a demon, I could not feel them like I could practitioners of magic.  It was odd.  Maybe because of the demonic nature of the magic?

Nonetheless, I could still feel the gentle ripples of the blood-lust inside the beasts.  It felt like what was inside me, but not tempered by what was left of my human conscience.  They truly had no humanity in them, they were killing machines that were nothing but primal instincts.

I felt a wave in the ripples, there was a concentration of them over the ridge.  As I moved through the forest on my slithering vines, my feet just off the ground.  I could hear the snarling, growling and snapping of a battle raging over the rise.  The little voice inside my head, the one of reason that had left me long ago whispered that I should hurry, the sounds meant there were humans in danger.  I could do some good.

I paused and inhaled sharply when I reached the top of the ridge.  There in a little hollow... was a woman.  A woman like no other.  She was surrounded by dozens of wolves who were intent on eating her and she was laughing and heckling them as her two short swords slashed gracefully around her.

She wore some sort of light armor that gleamed silver in the moonlight.  I almost had to shade my eyes.  Her mane of chestnut hair whipped around as she seemed to dance through the lunging wolves.  She was never where they pounced and she would deliver a slashing strike of a sword as she spun away.  “Too slow!”  She would taunt the werewolves who were multiple times faster than humans.

Her silvery laugh rolled through the trees up to me as she did some sort of vaulting leap over the top of an attacker, slicing down with a blade as she arced over it.  It was like watching some kind of macabre dance.

I shook my head, no mortal weapon could deal enough damage to a werewolf to kill it.  It was best to decapitate them or disembowel them.  They healed fast and a simple sword wound would heal in mere seconds.  But... they didn't.  I watched in confusion as the wounds this magnificent woman inflicted upon the wolves seemed to foam up in a frothy white slurry.  I could smell the stench of burning flesh and singed fur from where I stood.

Most were stuck with what would have been mortal wounds if they had not been cursed monsters.  Here the impossible happened, those wolves... died.  They died and their bodies started morphing back to their human host forms.  The ones who received glancing blows survived, but I could see they were in great pain and not healing.

I let my senses expand, was this woman magic?  A white witch of some sort?  But I could detect no magic, no enchantment.

I smiled as a wolf got inside her guard and she actually punched it in the muzzle.  Can you imagine that?  The woman punched a werewolf in the face?  The bloody muzzle it received for its effort was foaming white as well.  I looked at how her metal gauntlets gleamed like her armor and swords.  Was it the metal that shone so unnaturally?  She taunted, “Now now, patience, I'll get to you.”

I smirked then realized I had just been watching the magnificent display and not helping.  I could feel more wolves approach like multiple little ripples in a still pond.

I flowed down into the hollow, my thorny vines, and brambles churning.  My bloodlust and excitement of the hunt rose inside me.  I flowed right over two wolves in my approach, leaving their dead bodies behind me.

She was diving over another wolf when she saw me approaching, and she landed in a roll and came up with a knife that she flung in my direction before grabbing her second blade on the ground. She decapitated a pouncing wolf with her blades crossed in a scissoring motion.

I twitched a finger and a vine wrapped around the oncoming dagger and then slapped it onto the ground at her feet.  I hissed out in my serpentine voice, surprised I still knew how to talk after all these years,  “I'm here to help silly girl.”

She glanced at me as she battled and something inside me fluttered.  I blinked at the woman.  She had a hard beauty to her, and her eyes seemed to take me in at that instant.  I almost smiled at the emerald green reflecting from her eyes.  I had felt something like this before, but where?  She nodded once.  I was barely aware of the wolves that had been diving at me and dying as my black vines dispatched them.

Then I blinked when she turned her back to me to handle two larger and more aggressive wolves.  The minx actually chuckled and asked, “Are you just going to stand there then?”  Why, the sassy imp.

I grinned when she looked over her shoulder and then swept my arms wide, splaying my fingers.  Then bit back my scream as vines and branches exploded from my body in all directions, the thorns sawing at my flesh.  In mere moments every wolf in the hollow was dead except the two she was facing.

I pulled my black vines back inside and crossed my arms and smirked at her shocked look, as I said, “Well then, are you going to do your part or what, maiden?”

She grinned and actually dove at the two circling wolves.  What person runs in to battle monsters instead of running from them?  My smile grew as she drove her twin blades through the back of one, and rolled across the ground below the leap of the other, opening its belly from pelvis to sternum, spilling out it's guts.  With a little yelp, the last of them died.

She rolled up onto a knee beside her dagger on the ground as she simultaneously sheathed both swords.  She grinned at me and picked up her blade and slid it into her articulated shining metal boots.

Then she stood and offered a hand to me, saying, “Nicole of Arad,” as I found myself rocketing backward on skittering vines.

I hissed sharply, “Do not touch me!  My touch is poison!  Poison, poison, sick, die, kill, poison.  Not good for the living, sick, poison.”

She tilted her head to regard me.  I lowered my eyes as she looked at my vines with the fascination a child has when witnessing something for the first time.  There was no repulsion in her shining green eyes.  She looked at her hand and stepped toward me, her arm outstretched.  “I wear armor, lady.”

I tilted my head to the side.  My tiny voice inside saying that it was not natural, it was more bird or reptile-like so I straightened a bit as I looked at her hand.  True, there was but cold shining metal there, not skin.  I slowly timidly started reaching out.  Her smile grew and she nudged her chin at her hand, encouraging me.  I touched her gauntlet and pulled quickly away, but she did not fall.

I smiled and stood taller as my vines retreated inside me.  I grasped her hand and just stood there staring at our hands together.  I was touching someone, and they yet lived.  She gave me a crooked half smile and said, “This is the part where you tell me your name, silly woman.”

I blinked and mumbled, “Name... yes a name.  I had a name.  I had a life.  Before the monster, I was a woman.  A name...”  I looked up at her suddenly and blurted, “Rose!  My name is Rose!”  She smiled.

Then I tilted my head, making sure to keep it in the human range of motion and I asked, “Arad? Sunteti romana?”

She nodded.  “Yes, I am Romanian.”  Then she looked at our hands.  “I will need that back eventually, Rose.”

She said my name.  I stepped back after quickly releasing her in embarrassment, the contact just felt so good after so long.  I smiled, my name, someone spoke my name. Not Mother Death, or Thsalias, but Rose.  I was Rose.

I looked at her blades.  “Are your weapons enchanted?  To kill the cursed like that?”

She chuckled, then her face went still.  “Oh.  You're serious?  No, simply silver plated.”  Then she furrowed her brows.  “Everyone knows silver is anathema to the werewolves.  It was discovered fifteen years after the contagion started spreading.”

I dipped my eyes and tilted my head, remembering not to cock it too severely.  “I have not been around people for so very long.  I do not wish more innocent deaths at my hands.”  I looked at my hands.  “Death, poison, kill.”  I nervously toyed with the end of a vine as I regarded her.

She looked as if she didn't believe me.  “It has been common knowledge for the past eighty-five years.  That is when the great silver walls of the cities started going up.”

I widened my eyes, I knew that part!  “Yes the walls, I have seen them from the ridges when I go to watch the people below.  Dancing and laughing, hustling and bustling, living life.  Families... mothers and fathers... betrothed.”

There was something in her eyes.  Emotion.  I used to be able to pick out the emotions, but it was harder to do now.   She looked over the carnage of the battle and then to a fallen tree.  “Sit with me.  I need to check my gear.”

I nodded and she sat on the log.  I walked to the far end and sat.  She snorted and patted the place beside her.  “I don't bite, you silly woman.”  I scooted over a little and she rolled her eyes and smiled.  I felt the fluttering in my stomach, I know I have felt it before and I continued to scoot until she allowed her cocked eyebrow to fall.  This got another smile from her and I felt myself smiling back.

I watched as she checked the leather straps that held her armor plates on.  I inquired, “Are you lost?  Is that why you were caught up here in the forest with no shelter on a full moon?  Is that why you had to battle the wolves?”

She paused and looked up at me then cocked her head as she furrowed her brow and said like it was obvious, “No.  I'm a Wolf Hunter.”  She said it like a title as she tightened a strap to her shoulder plate.

I blinked and turned my head almost upside down as I looked at her to see if she were jesting.  My little voice told me to stop it so I did.  She just stared at me for a few heartbeats then explained, “There are more and more ferals roaming the countryside, refusing to restrain themselves on a full moon.  The defenses at the walls of the cities are overtaxed.  So the Wolf Hunters were formed.”

She looked up like she was in a memory.  “We are tasked with hunting down the ferals on the full moon.  They made their choice by not containing themselves.  This keeps the feral populations down and relieves the pressures at the city gates.  We receive a bounty of one gold coin per kill as recompense and to buy food and supplies in our hunt.”

I muttered, “If silver kills, that is good, smart.  Wolves are wolves no more, Wolf Hunters.”  Then I squinted and looked into her intense emerald eyes which seemed to be studying me intently as she started wiping her blades with a cloth before re-sheathing them again.  “But you are a maiden.”

She chirped out some delightful laughter and I smiled over the fact that I had made her happy somehow.  She said as she sheathed her last sword, “Can a maiden not fight?”  She gave a toothy grin then her face dropped a little as she confided, “My family fell to a feral pack, they dug through the walls of our cottage.  I hid in the chimney like father told me to.  I can still hear the screams.”

Then her eyes lit with something I could understand, she wanted vengeance.  “I will bring to bear what they wrought on my family.  I am the first female Wolf Hunter sanctioned by the Treaty of the Realms.”

Then she looked at the single vine that was sprouting from my sleeve that I was playing with.  She held out an armored hand.  “May I?”  I could not seem to deny this spectacular woman. I idly wondered if she had somehow bewitched me, but I tasted no magic around her as I let my vine extend to her hand and rest in her armored palm.