The Wolf's Hour (29 page)

He thanked God he couldn’t see himself, but the shock in the berserker’s eye told him enough. He had willed the change, and it was on him.

Mikhail’s bladder let go, streaking yellow across the white. He saw the berserker dismiss him, and start to lean over Franco again. Franco had passed out, was unable to defend himself. Mikhail bounded forward, got his forelegs and hind legs tangled up, and he went down on his belly. He got up once more, shaky as a newborn. He shouted at the berserker; it emerged as a thin growl that didn’t even snag the red wolf’s attention. Mikhail leaped clumsily over the snow, lost his footing, and fell again, but then he was right beside the wolf and he did it without thinking: he opened his jaws, and sank his fangs into the berserker’s ear. As the animal roared and twisted away, Mikhail tore the ear off to its fleshy roots.

The berserker staggered, stunned by the fresh pain. Mikhail had the ear between his teeth; his throat convulsed, blood in his mouth, and he swallowed the wolf’s ear. The berserker spun in a mad circle, snapping at the air. Mikhail turned, the twitching of his tail almost throwing him off his paws again, and he ran.

His legs betrayed him. The ground was right in his face, and all perspective was bizarre. He stumbled, slid over the snow on his stomach, scrambled up, and tried to flee, but matching the movement of four legs was a mystery. He heard the berserker’s rumbled breath right behind him, and he knew it was about to leap; he feinted to the left and swerved to the right, skidding off balance once more. The berserker jumped past him, digging up a flurry of snow as it fought to change direction. Mikhail struggled up, the hair bristling along his back; he swerved violently again, his spine amazingly supple. He heard the click of fangs as the berserker’s jaws narrowly missed his flank. And then Mikhail, his legs trembling, turned to face the red beast, snow whirling into the air between them. The berserker rushed at him, snorting steam and blood. Mikhail planted his paws, his legs splayed and his heart seemingly about to explode. The berserker, expecting his enemy to dodge to either side, suddenly checked his speed and dug his paws into the snow, and Mikhail reared up on his hind legs like a human being and lunged forward.

His jaws opened, an instinctual movement that Mikhail couldn’t remember triggering. He clamped them on the berserker’s muzzle and crunched his fangs down through hair and flesh into cartilage and bone. As he bit deeply, he brought his left claw up in a savage arc and raked the talons across the berserker’s remaining eye.

The beast howled, blinded, and twisted his body to throw the small wolf off, but Mikhail held tight. The berserker lifted up, hesitated for only an instant, and then smashed down on Mikhail. He felt a rib snap, a crushing pain jabbing through him, but the snow again saved his spine. The berserker lifted up again, and as the beast rose to his full height Mikhail released his grip on the bleeding muzzle and scrambled away, the pain of his broken rib almost stealing his breath.

The berserker clawed the air with blind fury. He raced in a circle, trying to find Mikhail, and slammed his red skull against the trunk of an oak tree. Dazed, the beast whirled around, fangs snapping at nothing. Mikhail backed away from him, to give the thing plenty of room, and he stood near Franco, his shoulders slumped to ease the pain in his rib cage. The berserker gave an enraged series of grunts, snorting blood, and then he spun to right and left, the crushed nose seeking a scent.

A russet shape shot across the snow and crashed headlong into the berserker’s side. Renati’s claws flailed ribbons of red hair and flesh, and the berserker was thrown into a tangle of thorns. Before the berserker could grasp her, Renati darted away again and circled warily. Another wolf-this one blond, with ice-blue eyes-leaped in from the berserker’s other side, and Alekza raked a claw along the berserker’s flank. As he turned to snap at her, Alekza bounded away and Renati darted in to seize one of the berserker’s hind legs between her teeth. Her head twisted, and the berserker’s leg snapped. Then Renati scrambled away as the red wolf staggered on three legs. Alekza lunged forward, grasped the beast’s remaining ear, and ripped it away. She danced back as the berserker clawed at her, but his movements were getting sluggish. He went a few paces in one direction, stopped and turned in another, and behind him he left bright splotches of crimson on the snow.

But he was strong. Mikhail stood back and watched as Renati and Alekza wore him down, the death of a thousand bites and scratches. The berserker at last tried to run, dragging the broken leg behind him. Renati slammed into his side, knocking him to the ground, and crushed a foreleg between her jaws as Alekza gripped his tail. The berserker struggled to rise, and Renati drove her talons into his belly and ripped him open with a grace that was almost beautiful. The berserker shivered, and lay writhing on the bloody white. Renati leaned forward, seizing the red wolf’s unprotected throat between her fangs. The berserker made no effort to fight back. Mikhail saw Renati’s sleek muscles tense-and then she released the throat and stepped away. She and Alekza both looked at Mikhail.

He didn’t understand at first. Why hadn’t Renati torn the throat out? But then it dawned on him as the two wolves stared impassively: they were offering the kill to him.

“Go on,” Franco said, a raspy whisper. He was sitting up, his torn hands clenched to his shoulder. Mikhail was amazed on a new level; he’d understood the human voice as clearly as ever. “Take the kill,” Franco told him. “It’s yours.”

Renati and Alekza waited as the snowflakes drifted to earth. Mikhail saw it in their eyes: this was expected of him. He walked forward, his legs slipping and ungainly, and he stood over the conquered red wolf.

The berserker was more than twice his size. He was an old wolf, some of his hair gone gray. His muscles were thick, carved from struggle. The red skull lifted, as if listening to Mikhail’s heartbeat. Blood oozed from the holes where the eyes had been, and a crushed paw feebly scarred the snow.

He’s asking for death, Mikhail realized. He’s lying there, pleading for it.

The berserker made a deep groaning noise, the sound of a caged soul. Mikhail felt it leap within him: not savagery, but mercy.

He leaned his head down, sank his fangs into the throat, and bit deep. The berserker didn’t move. And then Mikhail braced his paws against the berserker’s body, and ripped upward. He didn’t know his own strength; the throat tore open like a Christmas package, and its bright gift spilled out. The berserker shuddered and clawed the air, perhaps fighting not death, but life. Mikhail stumbled back, flesh between his teeth and his eyes glazed with shock. He had seen the others tear the throats of prey, but never until this moment had he understood its sensation of supreme power.

Renati lifted her head to the sky, and sang. Alekza added her higher, younger voice in harmony, and the music soared over the snow. Mikhail thought he knew what the song was about: an enemy had been killed, the pack was victorious, and a new wolf had been born. He spat the berserker’s flesh from his mouth, but the taste of blood had ignited his senses. Everything was so much clearer: all colors, all sounds, all aromas were heightened to an intensity that both thrilled and scared him. He realized that up until the moment of his change he had been living only a shadow life; now he felt real, gorged with strength, and this form of black hair and muscle must be his true body, not that weak pale husk of a human boy.

Dazed with the blood fever, Mikhail danced and capered as the two wolves sang their arias. And then he, too, lifted his head and opened his jaws; what came out was more of a croak than music, but he had time to learn to sing. All the time in the world. And then the song faded, its last notes echoed away, and Renati began to change back to human form. It took her perhaps forty-five seconds to alter from a sleek wolf to a naked woman with sagging breasts, and then she knelt down beside Franco. Alekza changed as well, and Mikhail watched her, fascinated. Her limbs lengthened, the blond fur re-formed into the long blond hair on her head and the golden down between her legs and on her forearms and thighs, and then she stood up, naked and glorious, her nipples hardened by the cold. She went to Franco’s side, too, and Mikhail stood on all fours, aware that something had grown hard at his groin.

Renati inspected Franco’s mangled leg and scowled. “Not good, is it?” Franco asked her, his voice groggy, and Renati said, “Quiet.” She shivered, her bare flesh covered with goose bumps; they were going to have to get Franco inside before all of them froze. She looked at Mikhail, the wolf. “Change back,” she told him. “Now we need hands more than teeth.”

Change back? he thought. Now that he was here, he had to go back there?

“Help me lift him,” Renati said to Alekza, and they struggled to get Franco up. “Come on, help us!” she told Mikhail.

He didn’t want to change. He dreaded going back, to that weak, hairless body. But he knew it had to be, and even as the knowledge sank into him he felt the change taking him in the other direction, away from the wolf toward the boy again. The change, he realized, always began first in the mind. He saw his skin, smooth and white, his hands ending in fingers instead of claws, his body supported upright on long stalks. And so it began to happen, just as the images were held in his mind, and his black hair, claws, and fangs left him. There was a moment of searing pain that drove him to his knees; his broken rib was returning to the rib of a boy, but it remained broken, and for an instant the jagged edges ground against each other. Mikhail grasped his white side with human fingers, and when the pain had cleared, he stood up. His legs were shaky, threatening collapse. His jawbones clicked back into their sockets, the last of the dark hair itched fiercely as it retreated into the pores, and Mikhail stood in a mist of steam.

He heard Alekza laugh.

He looked down, and saw that neither pain nor cold had unstiffened him. He covered himself, his face reddening. Renati said, “No time for that. Help us!” She and Alekza were trying to cradle Franco between them, and Mikhail stumbled forward to add his dwindling strength.

They carried Franco to the white palace, and on the way Mikhail retrieved his robe and hurriedly put it around himself. Renati and Alekza’s robes lay on the snow, just outside the palace wall. They let them lie until they’d gotten Franco down the stairs, a treacherous trip, and had put him down near the fire. Then Renati went up to get the cloaks, and while she was gone Franco opened his bloodshot eyes and gripped the front of Mikhail’s robe. He drew the boy’s face close.

“Thank you,” Franco said. His hand slipped away, and he’d passed out again. Which was fortunate, because his leg had been all but severed.

Mikhail sensed a movement behind him. He smelled her, fresh as morning. He looked back, over his shoulder, and found his face almost pressed into the golden hair between Alekza’s thighs.

She stared down at him, her eyes glinting in the ruddy light. “Do you like what you see?” she asked him quietly.

“I…” Again, his groin brittled. “I… don’t know.”

She nodded, and gave him a hint of a smile. “You’ll know, soon enough. When you do, I’ll be waiting.”

“Oh, get out of the boy’s face, Alekza!” Renati came into the chamber. “He’s still a child!” She threw Alekza her robe.

“No,” Alekza answered, still staring down at him. “No, he’s not.” She slid her cloak on, a sensuous movement, but she didn’t draw its folds together. Mikhail looked at her eyes and then, his face flaming, looked to the other place again.

“In my youth you’d be burned at the stake for what you’re thinking,” Renati told the girl. Then she pushed Mikhail aside and bent over Franco again, pressing a handful of snow against his shattered leg bones. Alekza drew her cloak shut with nimble fingers, and then she touched the two bloody furrows on Mikhail’s back; she regarded the smear of red on her fingertips before she licked it off.

Almost four hours later Wiktor and Nikita came home. They had intended to tell the others how their search had failed, because the berserker had marked every one of the caves with his spoor and Wiktor and Nikita had been caught by the winds on a narrow ledge overnight. They’d intended to tell them this, until they saw the huge red wolf lying dead in the snow and the crimson carnage all around. Wiktor listened intently as Renati told him how she and Alekza had heard the berserker howl and had gone out to find Mikhail locked in combat. Wiktor said nothing, but his eyes shone with pride, and from that day on he no longer looked at Mikhail and saw a helpless boy.

In the firelight Franco offered his right leg to the sharp edge of a piece of flint. The bones were already broken, so it was only a matter of cutting through torn muscle and a few tatters of flesh. His body oozing sweat, Franco gripped Renati’s hands and clenched a stick between his teeth as Wiktor did the work. Mikhail helped hold Franco down. The leg came off, and lay on the stones. The pack sat around it, deliberating, as the smell of blood perfumed the chamber.

The wind had begun to scream outside again. Another blizzard was sweeping across Russia, the land of winter. Wiktor drew his knees up to his chin, and he said softly, “What is the lycanthrope, in the eye of God?”

No one answered. No one could.

After a while, Mikhail got up and, pressing his hand against his wounded side, went up the stairs. He stood in a large chamber and let the wind flail him as it shrieked through the broken windows. Snow whitened his hair and gathered on his shoulders, making him appear aged in a matter of seconds. He looked up at the ceiling, where faded angels dwelled, and wiped blood from his lips.