Wolf's Cross (37 page)

I
n the chaos of pain, growls, blood, and fur, Josef was aware of one thing: the black-furred monster was Maria. Whatever else he knew, or thought he knew, the black lupine demon was still her.

Still the woman he loved.

The knowledge stayed his hand when they grappled and she
was in harm’s way, but once the golden one pushed her away, he had no hesitation—the golden one was unquestionably Satan personified in tooth and claw.

Only his swing came too late, slamming his sword with jarring force into the wall. He felt the impact in his wounded gut. He swung again, his sword missing where the wolf’s head had been. His arms still followed through on the ineffective stroke, and he felt carrion breath on the side of his neck, and saw gaping jaws and a lolling tongue in the corner of his eye.

Something unseen slammed into his back, knocking the sword out of his hand.

As he hit the blood-soaked floor, he thought he heard that satanic maw snap shut. He tried to roll over and get up, but a massive black paw stepped on his chest, pressing him to the ground.

Maria crouched above him on impossibly large canine legs, a hideous snarl creasing her muzzle as she faced the larger wolf thing.

“Do not take what is mine, bitch!”

“He is not yours. Not if you want me.”

“You are mine!”

A feral growl rose, and the words she spoke were barely human: “Only if I say so, Darien.”

“You can’t defy me like this!”

“You can have me or these men.” She shifted her weight so that her foot left Josef’s chest. She straddled him, paying him no attention at all. He fumbled for his sword.

“Step aside.” The golden monster, the one she called Darien, was focused completely on her. Disturbingly to the point of arousal.

Her growling voice had lowered to little more than a whisper. “Do you love their blood so much more than mine? Or do you just doubt that you can take me?”

Darien gave vent to an inarticulate howl. If any sense was borne within it, it was inaudible to human ears. Maria moved, and Josef rolled to grab his sword. He lifted it, but she was already running the length of the balcony, away from him. She passed right by Darien as if to taunt him. He grabbed for her, but she moved even more quickly than he.

Josef’s surviving brothers ran from the open doorway, one crossbowman falling to his knee next to Josef. Even as he brought the weapon to bear, Maria stood upon the wall overlooking the front of the stronghold. Josef watched the man take aim, and his heart pulled taut and still like a skin of a drum.

The man fired.

And Maria leapt.

The bolt embedded itself in the wall where she had stood, and Darien followed her over.

Josef scrambled to the wall and looked down at where the two monsters had landed. The ground was nearly invisible through the mist, but through the gauzy shroud of gray he saw a quick black shadow move, climbing over the inner wall and vanishing into the invisible buildings of Gród Narew. Close behind, a larger, lighter-colored shadow followed.

He saw a pair of crossbow bolts sail after the moving shadows, but to no effect.

Josef leaned against the wall, letting the brick merlon support his weight, the surface cold, rough, damp with condensation, and in some spots sticky with blood. His dead comrade’s sword hung loose in his hand, trembling slightly. He stared into the gray mist and prayed to God for strength and for wisdom.

If they are both servants of Satan, why do they fight?

Why had she saved him? And not only saved him but drawn the beast Darien away from this place? Why didn’t she kill, like he did?

“What work of the Devil has been wrought here?” Heinrich’s
voice came from the doorway. Josef didn’t turn to face him, because he doubted he could look at his master straight on. He was only probationary anyway, soon to leave the Order. The question wasn’t directed at him.

One of the surviving knights related the battle. Josef half-listened to the details. The knight spoke truth, though the knight’s truth put more weight on Josef’s attack than was warranted, and omitted the wolves’ conversation.

But perhaps the knight hadn’t heard it for the growls.

Of course, Brother Heinrich had a pat answer for the monsters’ behavior: “Two demons fighting over whose life and whose soul to claim.”

Josef clutched his stomach and tried to tell himself that the pain he felt was only the wound in his belly.

He winced when a hand came down on his naked shoulder. “You’ve acquitted yourself well, Brother Josef.”

Josef turned to look at Heinrich to tell him that he was no longer part of the Order, but something in those hard gray eyes stopped him.

“You will come with us, this last time at least.”

“Where?”

“To track this new beast home.”

M
aria had snatched Josef from Darien’s jaws, praying that she knew enough of her bestial lover’s heart. She had taunted Darien, pushed him, testing his dominance to the point of fury. To the point of arousal.

When she leapt, she knew there was no question that he would follow.

Her actions were moving so far ahead of her thoughts that the ground was racing to meet her through the mists before she fully understood what she had done. Every instinct in her body screamed that she had just committed suicide.

God help me
was the only prayer she had time to compose, as she drew her legs up and closed her eyes.

She slammed into the ground on all fours with an impact that felt as if it shattered every long bone in her body. She rolled to the side, groaning, realizing that was probably the case. She could feel her skeleton moving, realigning, her muscles snaking to pull the damage back in line, the pain exploding and then evaporating in an orgasmic release.

She made it to her feet just as she heard Darien thud to the ground next to her.

H
e chased her over the inner wall and through the empty alleys of Gród Narew. In the mist, it seemed as if the whole village were dissolving into nothingness.

For her, it was. There would be no coming back here, not after Darien’s massacre.

She climbed the outer wall of earth and logs, scrambling over it as if it were only a deadfall in the forest. She paused, crouched on a high point to make certain Darien followed.

He emerged out of the mists, running on all fours now, intent on nothing but her. At first, she feared that he wouldn’t be able to follow her up the wall in his wolf form, but the inside of the wall sloped enough, and he leapt onto it with so much forward momentum that, even with a wolf’s forelegs, he could scramble to the top.

She waited until his forepaws touched the walkway where she crouched; then she vaulted over the side. As she fell from the wall, she called to the rest of the wolf to claim her, and she landed square on four paws. When Darien jumped after her, she had already run halfway to the edge of the woods.

S
he led a race through trees that were a black reflection of her previous day with Darien. The woods had dressed as an anteroom of Hell, cloaked in a chill fog that stole light and color, decapitating the trees and erasing the world more than twenty paces away. Whatever lived here had fled or stood mute in the face of the two demon wolves charging through their midst. The only sounds she heard were paws pounding through the mulch of the forest floor and the ragged panting as they ran.

She heard him, she smelled him, she could
feel
him as an angry presence behind her. She knew that, eventually, he would have to catch her.

But she had resigned herself to that fate. He was her kind, and he was right; she
had
given herself to him already. In her own heart, where the old human Maria still clung to herself, there was something irrevocable, inviolate about what she had done. A promise between him and herself, and to God, tying them together.

And even if she could break that bond, it was the only power she had to keep him from continuing the slaughter. She had to lead him far away from all this.

After it seemed they had run for hours, she heard a growling cough followed by the breathless words “Maria. Stop.”

Something in his voice, some semblance of reason, made her slow. Inside, she tensed, expecting that this would be the moment when he took her.

“Maria,” he repeated.

She slowed and padded to a stop, turning to look in Darien’s direction. She smelled his exertion, heard his panting, but he was invisible behind the veil of gray that wrapped the forest.

“We belong together,” he said between breaths. “You know that.”

“Then stop this killing!”

“Why, Maria? Why are they more sacred than the elk we slaughtered?”

“They are people!”

“Yet they would kill us for what we are.”

“Of course they want to kill you, Darien! How many of them have you murdered?”

“They want to kill you as well.”

Maria stood briefly mute at Darien’s horrible logic. Then a growing realization made her ask, “How did my cross find its way there?”

There was a long silence, where all she heard was Darien’s breathing.

“Tell me!”
she growled into the featureless gray.

“You needed to understand.”

She felt her own rage building.
“Understand what?”

“You ran back to them! I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You left it on purpose, to make me into a murderer in their eyes.” And right now, her mind did drift toward murder.

“Once the humans knew what you were, you’d be doomed. It was better you find out now, when we both could punish—”

“You don’t know anything! Just because some humans hurt you, you think they
all
deserve the same fate? My human family knew all along and …”

Her words trailed off.

They wouldn’t …

Of course they would.

She turned and ran, no longer listening to him.

How long had she played this game with him in the forest? An hour? How long would it take Heinrich’s men to find her family?

And what price would the Order want from someone who’d raised one of their demons?

J
osef walked through the next hour as if through a nightmare. He spoke little and moved as if another intelligence directed his legs. He faded in and out of awareness. He wore a borrowed shirt and surcote that he did not recall being given. He also carried a scabbard on his belt, probably from the same anonymous source. He didn’t remember descending from the stronghold, but he now stood with his few living brothers by the gate leading out toward the rest of Gród Narew.

The mist refused to burn off with the advancing day, and the
cold and damp clutched at him like the hands of a drowning man, pulling him back down toward unconsciousness. Brother Heinrich commanded the more able-bodied men to open the door, and a voice called
“Hold!”

Josef turned slowly, feeling the motion in his abdomen, wondering idly, with the unconcern of the dreaming:

Am I bleeding again?

Telek stood in the doorway of the stronghold, at the head of a mass of men bearing on their tabards the odd devices of the Poles: multiarmed crosses, horseshoes impaled by swords and arrows, and glyphs less comprehensible—all red and blue, gold and white. They outnumbered the Germans easily four to one.