Storm Wolf (22 page)

Javinė calculated on his fingers. “Today is the fourth of January. Epiphany will be on the sixth. He will transform the children on the seventh.” He turned his head to look at Alexei. “Counting today, you have three days to track him, find his hiding place, and stop him.” Javinė looked away from Alexei. “But you can hardly move, can you,
vilkolakis
? You are hurt even more badly than you were before. Am I correct,
vilkolakis
?”

Alexei sighed with a grimace and nodded. “I am hurt,” he admitted. “It is difficult for me to move about. At least, as a man. I seem to have had no problems moving about as the… the
vilkolakis
.” He borrowed Javinė’s Lithuanian word to describe himself. “But I cannot simply hide here. Yet if I become the wolf, I cannot always control my actions. I can forget who I am. But I must find the missing children and stop the monster.”

A loud argument broke out in the barn below them. From the sound of the voices, several men were arguing with Adomas and Dovydas. Javinė slipped to the edge of the hayloft and peered down at the men. After a moment he crawled back to Alexei.

“They are arguing about you,
vilklolakis
,” the barn sprite explained. “The men want to search the barn. They have already seen the small room where you sleep and you are not there. So they come looking for you in the barn, but Dovydas asks them if you would be so silly as to hide here. And his father Adomas agrees.”

The sprite and the man listened to the argument continue below them. Eventually Adomas and Dovydas seemed to have persuaded the men to leave. Chickens began to strut about the barn floor again, clucking and rustling their wings. Cows chewed their cud.

“I will do what I can to protect you as well,
vilkolakis
,” Javinė promised Alexei. “If the townsfolk come to look for you again, I can confuse them and lead them astray. I can make them see things that are not there as well as convince them that they did not see what was in front of their faces. You are the best hope these townspeople have, even if they do not realize that. I will keep you safe so that you can heal enough to go hunting for the monster wolf.”

“Thank you, my friend,” Alexei told the sprite.

“But do not take long to recover,” the sprite warned. “You only have three days to stop him.”

Alexei slept again, even without Vakarė’s special tea. It was the next day, about noon, when he woke and stretched, daring to gingerly touch his ribs.

“How are you feeling now,
vilkolakis
?” Javinė asked, strutting about with his arms crossed across his chest.

“Still sore.” He grimaced. “But much better.”

“I should hope so,” Javinė chided. “You have slept much too long. I overheard Adomas and Dovydas as they cared for the cattle and chickens and pigs this morning. Another small child was stolen during the night.”

“Were any betrothed girls killed?” Alexei wanted to know.

Javinė shook his head. “From what I could make out from what Adomas and Dovydas were saying, I think not. But a seven-year-old boy was taken from his bed. His mother discovered that he was missing. Then, after the livestock were cared for, a handful of men came to search the barn, thinking to find you and the boy.”

“Adomas allowed them into the barn?” Alexei pushed himself up, worried that his friends might begin to believe the stories being told by their neighbors.

“No, the men just showed up here,” Javinė told him. “They came into the barn and threw straw and bales of hay about, hoping to find your hiding place. But they lost track of each other—thanks to me!” Javinė made a little bow, flourishing his hat in an extravagant gesture. “They could hear each other but could see nothing but the hay and straw they were throwing about until Adomas heard them calling to each other and came storming into the barn with a cudgel. He drove them all out onto the road.” Javinė stood upright again. “But I do not think he will be able to drive them off again,
vilkolakis
. They will come again, with cudgels and shotguns themselves. And more of them, I think. They will not rest until they have found you—you and the missing children.”

Alexei slumped against a bale of hay. “I need to go out hunting for the monster again, Javinė. But how long has it been since I’ve eaten? Can you can bring me something to eat? And something to wear? I need to regain my strength as well as heal my bruises if I am to hunt down and stop the killer wolf.”

Javinė crossed his arms. “Do I look like a nurse to you,
vilkolakis
? Or a maidservant?” The sprite tapped his foot impatiently. Alexei, familiar now with the sprite’s grumpiness, looked down and struggled to hide his grin.

“Very well,” the sprite finally muttered. “I will bring you what I can. But don’t think that it will be much or that I can always find whatever you need,
vilkolakis
!” Javinė tramped off and climbed down into the barn below, continuing to mutter under his breath.

The man with the greasy hair slipped around the side of the church as the evening shadows crawled along the church’s walls. He felt confident that in the growing darkness no one passing the church would see him, as long as he did nothing to attract attention. He wrapped his dirty palm around the handle of one of the church doors and gently tested it.

Locked.

He glanced up and around as he looked back across his shoulder. He twisted his head, looking up and down the street outside the church. There were a few figures in the street but none in the immediate vicinity of the church. He turned back to the door and wrenched the handle in his grip. Wood cracked and splintered. The paltry lock came apart. He pushed one of the doors open and stepped into the church. He pushed the door shut so no one would notice that it had been damaged. He slunk down the aisle between the pews toward the altar.

“Four children more I need,” the man muttered, his eyes darting hither and thither in the dark interior of the church. He wanted to be sure that he was alone. Candles sputtered at the feet of saints along the walls on either side, causing the shadows to leap and dance, but the darkness between the saints was nearly impenetrable. Only his eyes, used to the dark, could make anything out, and he was relieved to see no one kneeling in a pew or before a saint.

He paused at the low marble rail running along the front of the church from one side to the other. Another candle burned more steadily above him, a large candle in a lamp hanging from a chain. He looked up at it and smiled, his yellow eyes delighted and his yellow teeth exposed as he hungrily licked his cracked lips.

“Four children and this I need,” he muttered, stepping through the gap in the marble rail and up the three shallow steps to the altar. A strip of heavy, rough linen covered the other, fairer linen cloths that lay atop the altar and hung nearly to the floor on either side. Six candlesticks atop a shelf behind the altar gleamed in the candlelight, three on each side of the small tabernacle in the center of the shelf.

He licked his dry lips again and leaned forward, resting one dirty hand on the altar as he reached up and fumbled along the shelf where the tabernacle stood. He found the small key that he had expected to be nearby and reached up under the brocade coverlet draped over the tabernacle. He slipped the key into the tabernacle door and turned it. There was a quiet click as the door popped open. He reached inside and pulled out the pyx and set it down on the altar.

The pyx, a small bronze clamshell, gleamed in the candlelight as well. He slid a grimy thumbnail along the edge and lifted the top, exposing the consecrated Communion wafers within.

Satisfied that he had what he had come for, he closed the pyx and slipped it into a coat pocket as he stepped away from the altar. Reaching the marble rail, he turned slightly and spat on the floor behind him and then marched down the aisle toward the doors.

A floorboard to one side creaked. The man stopped. He peered in the direction of the noise but could see nothing. He held his breath. He heard nothing.

He strode toward the church doors again. There was a cough towards one side, where the floorboards had creaked.

He stopped again. “Who is it?” he demanded. “Who’s there?”

Alexei stepped up from between the pews. He clutched one to support himself.

“I have been looking for you,” he told the greasy-haired man. “I was passing the church and caught what I thought might be your scent. I found the lock broken and the door ajar and so I crept in here to see if I had found you.”

The greasy-haired man stood and studied him and then barked a few words in Lithuanian that Alexei did not understand. The man laughed and began walking towards the doors again.

Alexei scrambled after the man, pulling himself along the pews. The man turned and laughed at him again. Then he reached forward, grabbed one of the pews with both hands, and wrenched it from the floor. It splintered, a hefty chunk of wood coming away in the man’s hands. He laughed again and threw it at Alexei.

Alexei ducked and the wood grazed his shoulder before smashing into the wall behind him. The man wrenched another piece of wood from the broken pew and hefted it above his head, slipping into the row of pews and darting towards Alexei.

Alexei picked up the piece of wood from the floor behind him. He saw the man standing above him and felt the wood in his hand come crashing down across his shoulders. Alexei swung the board that he had picked up and struck the man in his ribs. Another blow fell across Alexei’s shoulders and he struck again at the man, who jumped back. Alexei missed and lost his grip of the board, which clattered along the floor. Alexei pulled himself onto the seat of the next pew over and threw himself at the greasy-haired man.

Alexei landed on the man’s chest, knocking him over the pew behind him. Both men fumbled and clutched at each other, kicking and snarling as they fought. Trapped between the pews, neither could do more than punch and kick at the other. The greasy-haired man dropped the wood he had been holding, unable to get far enough away from Alexei to strike him with the wood. They tumbled into the aisle.

Shadows flickered around them. The greasy-haired man shoved himself away from Alexei. The bronze pyx tumbled from his pocket and Alexei lunged for it.

“If that is important enough to him to break into the church and steal, it’s important enough for me to stop him from taking it,” Alexei realized. His fingers closed around the pyx, and the other man’s boot came down on Alexei’s wrist. Alexei cried out and reflexively let go of the pyx. The other man leaned down and snatched it up again, stumbling away and kicking Alexei in the ribs once more. Then he staggered down the rest of the aisle and burst out of the church doors.

A small boy stood there, staring up at the doors as the man came out. The boy was holding his mother’s hand. She shrieked in fright as the greasy-haired man half-fell onto the street.

The man stood up, seeming disoriented. The woman shrieked again and the boy cried out. People began shouting. Alexei tumbled from the door behind him, grabbing at the man’s boot.

He kicked Alexei away, grabbed the boy from his mother’s grasp, and ran back around the church and into the trees behind.

Alexei winced in pain. He had found the man stealing something from the altar of the church, and now the man had not only escaped with the stolen object but had also stolen another child. He heard people shouting and running, the woman screaming and the fading sound of the boy’s cries in the night. The boy’s cries were suddenly silenced, as if a great, dirty hand had been clamped over his mouth.

Realizing that the townsfolk would probably think he had been working with the greasy-haired man rather than trying to stop him, Alexei pushed himself up from the ground and ran around the church and into the trees as well. He had to get away before the townsfolk caught and killed him.

Alexei hid in the forest and slunk back to Vakarė’s family farm toward daybreak. Another day passed as Alexei attempted to rest in the barn and recover. Javinė seemed to be finding him bowls of stew and loaves of bread, but Alexei didn’t ask where the food was coming from. But the pain in his wrist and ribs was nearly paralyzing, and great bruises bloomed along his shins. He tried to explain to Javinė what had happened, but the sprite seemed uninterested in the details.

“Only one day left!” he kept reminding Alexei. “Tomorrow is Epiphany and the monster still needs three children! Three children, do you hear me? And now he has—what was it?—taken something from the altar at the church? He must need to desecrate it in some way and use it to finish changing the children into his apprentice monsters on the day after Epiphany! You can’t just stay here,
vilkolakis
! The monster will be out hunting tonight for sure and you—you!—must be hunting him as well!”

“I know,” Alexei agreed, clutching his aching side. “I know I have to hunt him down tonight. But I need to rest until then, Javinė! I cannot go hunting the monster if I do not recover somewhat!’

Javinė glared at Alexei and muttered, pacing back and forth along the edge of the hayloft. Alexei drifted into a shallow sleep, broken up by nightmares of the greasy-haired man and the face of the boy he had grabbed in front of the church.