Wolf's Bane

by Nancey Cummings

  She shook her head. She didn’t know what she needed, exactly. Wolfsbane. Honey. “Yes. My kit. Wolfsbane. All of it.”

  A feminine shout came from the other end of the house. Travers paled. “See to that. We’ll manage in here,” she ordered.

  “What can I do?”

  Cook arrived with the water and clean cloth on a dull metal tray. Solenne took the woman’s burden and set it on the side table. “Get his shirt off. Hold this to the wound until it stops bleeding,” she said.

  Her workroom was at the back of the house, in the original part of the building. The last expansion nearly a century prior added the front rooms laid out in a logical grid, with a corridor running down the center and a large foyer designed to impress guests. Narrow, twisting corridors filled the older section.

  Poorly heated in the winter and poorly ventilated in the summer, the family seldom used this section of the house, other than to store weapons and artifacts. Her workroom was at the very end, a room with tall, narrow windows that faced the morning sun.

  She ran, skidding precariously as she rounded a corner.

  And nearly collided with a man.

  “Colonel Chambers!”

  He reached out a hand to steady her. “Are you well? The door was open.”

  “Jase…Mr. Parkell arrived with Miles. He’s been injured,” she said in a rush. “What are you doing back here? They’re in the front drawing room.”

  “I thought I heard a noise, and the door was open.” He ran a hand down her arm. The gesture was a touch more familiar than she appreciated, almost possessive.

  She pulled away and stepped toward her workroom. “I require my kit.”

  “Was my nephew injured? He went out before dusk and did not return. I was worried.”

  “They were attacked in the forest, but he is well.”

  “Attacked? Here? Do you think something followed them into the house?”

  She hadn’t until that moment. Ice rushed over her. She told Travers to open the door, against every protocol, then had been too distracted to secure the door.

  Her eyes darted to the iron door down the hall. Chambers followed her gaze, then touched the handle of the nearest door. Silver nails decorated the door in a grid, but time had tarnished the nails to a dull gray.

  He drew his hand back when the handle did not budge.

  “We must be prepared to defend ourselves, I fear,” he said, shaking his hand slightly. “Can you open this door?”

  “That goes to the basement. There is nothing of use down there,” she said. Only the vault where the old and broken artifacts were kept, along with the few items too dangerous to leave unsecured.

  “The weapons we use are here,” she said, brushing past him in the narrow corridor. The skin at the back of her neck pricked at the proximity.

  The door to the weapons room required a code to open the lock. The ancient keypad, numbers worn smooth on the keys, had not worked in more than a hundred years. Now a combination lock kept the room secure.

  “Marvelous,” Chambers said. He reached for a club studded with silver nails. It was a brutal piece of work. “This will do.” He gave a test swing, lunging forward and stepping back.

  Solenne elected to leave the room unlocked, in case they needed to make a mad dash for another weapon. Chambers went to join his nephew in the drawing room, and she finally made it to her workshop.

  Dust and the scent of dried herbs hung in the air. Moonlight filtered in through the windows. She grabbed her kit and all the bottles of wolfsbane tonic. The supply was distressingly low. She felt certain she had more, but there was no time to count.

  A loud crash made her jolt. She turned around, her elbow knocking over a bottle that should not have been there. It rolled across the table, heading for the edge. “No, no, no!” she cried, dashing to catch it.

  The bottle smashed to the floor.

  Everything was going wrong that night. She felt flustered and wanted to toss her entire stock to the floor. She made do with old equipment and limited supplies. Everyone said the family’s work was important, valued, but those were only words. They did not offer tangible support. That smashed bottle cost money she did not have. She’d have to barter for a replacement.

  Solenne touched the silver bracelet on her wrist. When things went wrong, her mother always said it was best to take a moment to decide why, rather than fly into a rage. As much as Solenne’s natural inclination urged her to throw a tantrum out of fear and frustration, she needed to think.

  Calm.

  Someone had been in her workroom. They moved the bottles, carelessly leaving them in a location where it would be easy to knock them over. She had already caught Aleksandar helping himself to her wares. It was not inconceivable to imagine him doing so again and then being thoughtless enough to leave a mess.

  They would have words once this horrible night finally finished.

  She gathered up the supplies required for Miles’ wound, then hurried through the corridors.

  The air had shifted. First, Solenne noticed the scent of flowers that only bloomed at night. The air felt dry and crackled with static. Tension wound itself through every room in the house, tracing a path down the darkened halls, up the stairs, and into the secret, forgotten corners.

  The front door was open. Again. Still.

  “Travers. Chambers,” she called.

  No response.

  Miles was alone in the drawing room, sprawled back on the settee. His skin appeared glossy. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. The fever had not broken in the slightest.

  “What happened to Jase?” she asked gently, exchanging her kit for the bowl of water and cloth. She soaked the cloth, wrung it out, then placed it against Miles’ forehead.

  He jerked forward, his hand clamping around her bad wrist. His grip was tight, but not painful. “Oh. Apologies.” He released her. “I’m not myself.”

  “You’re having a bad reaction to more than the bite, I think. Were you stung by anything? Eat anything?”

  “Nettles? I cannot be sure. Is that a difficulty?”

  “Less than ideal,” she said. Normal nettles were unpleasant but would not induce such a reaction. He could have been stung by an insect or pricked by a plant mutated by the nexus energies.

  “Any difficulty breathing?”

  He shook his head, then shivered. “No. I’m cold.”

  Finally, a bit of luck. If Miles were having an allergic reaction, his throat would be swollen and he’d be quite blue.

  Solenne pulled the footstool to Miles and sat before him. Taking his arm, she ordered him to remain still. She swabbed the bite area with the disinfectant. It bubbled and fizzed. Miles watched, fascinated.

  “It’s funny,” he said.

  “Oh, this is a very humorous situation, getting yourself turned into a chew toy.”

  “No, the nexus. People say it’s magic, but it’s not. It has rules.”

  “How so?” She dabbed away the excess with the clean cloth. “Tell me,” she prompted, content to let him lecture if it kept him still while she picked out the bits of leaves and grass from the wound.

  “It’s on a cycle. We’ve known that for years and years. And it only happens in certain places, which is weird. And things come through, we know that, but mostly what comes through is energy. We have our own form, of course. It’s in the background, harmless to us. But what comes through the nexus, it waxes and wanes, but it doesn’t go away. It changes. But that’s what energy does, like heat. I use the heat from fire to transform metal.”

  “And the nexus energy does this? Can you harness it?”

  “We tried, you know. Or others in the past tried. They built machines, but those didn’t work. They failed. The energy is not compatible. Which is a shame, because it’s everywhere. So we have this raw energy, like the heat from the sun or the wind, and it doesn’t vanish. It forces mutations in plants.” He paused. “In people.”

  Pausing her work, she gave him a serious look
. “Miles, the bite carries a virus. It’s not raw cosmic energy. This was the work of tooth and claw.”

  “Energy can’t be destroyed. You can contain it or transform it, but never destroy,” Miles said, as if he did not hear her. His head lolled back. “Transform is the wrong word. Disperse? Dissipate? Expend. Yes. Contain or expend.”

  Those words were familiar. She had heard them before. “Mother’s journals,” she breathed.

  He nodded. “I have them.”

  “You stole them?”

  Amalie had been an artificer, much like Miles. The older tech fascinated her. She spent countless hours trying to repair or recharge the artifacts in the vaults below the house. One such endeavor cost her her life.

  “No, you misunderstand. She loaned them to me a fortnight before her death. I did not know how to return them. I feared—”

  “I always thought Father burned them,” she said.

  Miles nodded. “Exactly. I fear Godwin would destroy them. Your mother had a marvelous mind. Are they still there? Below ground?”

  “Probably. The only items we’ve bartered away have gone to you,” she said.

  “No. The batteries. The containment banks for—”

  Glass shattered inward. Solenne raised an arm to shield herself from the flying shards.

  The beast crouched, snarling.

  Aleksandar

  Boxon Hill

  The Stone Circle

  * * *

  The moon aligned with the tallest stone, casting a long shadow. Energy poured through the nexus, the thin veil that separated the planes nothing more than a suggestion of division. The wayward energy hummed through the air, searching for a vessel.

  With his eyes half-closed, Luis spread his fingers wide, like he could feel the current of energy in the air.

  Alek could sense it, but only because of the combination of the summer solstice and the proximity to the nexus. The standing stone circle amplified the sensation.

  At any other time, any other place, it was noise in the background. If he focused, he could feel it. Barely. Luis’ gesticulation was a learning tool. As his skill grew, he’d lean less on the hand-waving and stumbling with his eye closed.

  Godwin required no crutch to track the flow of the nexus energies and, by extension, any mutated beasts. The energies wanted to flow to the beasts, like a river rushing downwards. The full moon was a deluge. Finding a trail in all the noise would be difficult, even for one as skilled as Godwin.

  A useful mutation, Amalie had called it. Those who lived near nexus points had higher rates of mutation, mostly benign and unnoticeable. Tolerance for pollens that were not, strictly speaking, of this world. Natural pheromones that repelled insects. Very useful.

  Violet blood.

  This phenomenon had fascinated Amalie. In her crumbling, ancient texts, she found mention of a disease caused by a parasite born through an insect bite. Populations with this endemic disease developed a mutation in the blood cell that granted resistance to the parasite. This same trait could also affect the body’s ability to deliver oxygen, often leaving the person fatigued, and the cells died early, leaving the person with a low blood count.

  A useful mutation that had a price.

  Luis pressed a palm to the largest of the stones, as if that grounding could amplify his senses. Perhaps it could.

  Alek did not have to wonder what price Luis’ useful mutation took. The cost was a lifetime in servitude to guard against the monster that prowled the night. A long-ago ancestor had shown an aptitude for the task, and it passed down through the generations.

  As for what Alek sensed, it was a jumble of information. The nexus energy flitted about him, humming happily in his ears like bees in a summer field. He sensed nothing beyond his own nose.

  Not true.

  He felt a tug, the thinnest of connections between him to Solenne. It whispered home and mate. His beast agreed.

  Alek tugged at his ear in a futile attempt to dispel the high-pitched noise. Every part of him itched. The silver on his neck, the bands on his arms, and the silver-inked tattoo over his heart burned. He wanted…

  He couldn’t form the instinct into words. To shift, to let the beast out in a burst of energy, but that would not only soothe his discomfort momentarily.

  Home. Mate.

  The connection back to Solenne anchored him, made the itching and the humming tolerable.

  Godwin watched Alek with his one eye. “Anything?”

  Alek scanned the ground, hoping to point to some trampled bit of grass or conveniently placed pawprint in the mud.

  Luis and Godwin gasped at the same moment. The cord connecting him to Solenne vibrated, the tone of it black and red, ringing inside his head like a bell.

  Wasting no time, he ran toward the house. The full moon cast a pale imitation of daylight over the ground. His boot heel skidded on the grass as he descended Boxon Hill.

  “You’ll break your neck!” Godwin shouted.

  “The house,” Luis said. “I can feel it.”

  Alek wasted no time. The house was under attack. The nexus energy parted around him like an eddy, surging toward something furious and hungry. Solenne needed him. Her fear…

  He did not understand the connection, but he welcomed it. If Solenne was afraid, then she was alive.

  His feet pounded the ground, and his legs pumped. He ran until it felt as if his lungs would burst. Not fast enough. Not strong enough. He needed to be unfettered.

  With a growl, he grabbed the silver chain at his neck. Pain burned his fingers as he tore the chain away, but pain was momentary. Unfettered, he could breathe. The wild vitality of the nexus poured into him, filling him to the point of bursting. He could not contain it.

  The shift started in his toes, elongating and the nails piercing through the leather like daggers. His fingers burned and flexed, claws out. A shudder rippled down this back, forcing him to bend forward. Fabric ripped at the seams of his coat.

  Alek stumbled, falling to his knees. It was too much, like trying to fill a teacup from a gushing torrent. He wheezed, mouth opening and sucking in air, but nothing came. This curse had been smothering the life out of him for years, and it was, literally, smothering him now.

  He pressed the heel of his hand to the tattoo on his chest. It burned, but that pain was a slight point of light in the overwhelming darkness. This cursed promised power, but it felt him trembling and weak. He fought to contain it, to control it, but the constant fight left him even more vulnerable.

  Home. Mate.

  The beast wanted out. It promised to strengthen him, faster. Fast enough to protect their mate. It tempted him. Teeth crowded his mouth, drawing blood. He couldn’t do it on his own, he couldn’t resist. He couldn’t even breathe. He was drowning, and the connection with Solenne screamed and—

  A hand thumped him hard on his back.

  Alek gasped, breathing in.

  “Come on. We need you.” Luis held out a hand and hauled Alek up. The younger man gave him a curious look, then shoved him in the house’s direction. “I can sense two. One is close.”

  Very close.

  Chapter 11

  Solenne

  Boxon Hill

  Marechal House - The Parlor

  * * *

  The glass fell to the floor. All she could hear was the pounding of her heart.

  The beast stood on two legs, looking far more human than she felt comfortable with.

  Miles stirred on the divan, struggling to rise to his feet, but his legs seemed unable to support his weight.

  The beast’s maw moved, and something like a croon came out. Was it trying to speak? She had never heard of such a thing. People under the curse were still, at least in theory, people, but they lost their minds from the pain of the transformation. She could not imagine how much it hurt to have bones snap and re-knit, for skin to stretch, tear and heal. Had this person come to her for help?

  “It is an evening of unprecedented events,” she murmured. Carefully,
she inched closer to the sideboard.

  The beast tracked her movement.

  “I believe I can help. I’m going for my kit,” she said. The beast snarled and snapped its jaws. She immediately paused. “All right. What do you want then? You obviously came here for a reason.”

  The man, obviously a male from the endowment nestled in a thick patch of hair between his legs, moved forward. She averted her eyes, looking toward the decanter and glasses on the sideboard.

  He leaned in, muzzle against her hair. His hardened member pressed against her hip. She closed her eyes, willing herself to remain calm and not give in to fear, which clouded the mind.

  Hot, foul breath wafted over her. He growled and snapped his jaws, making her jump with a strangled shout.

  He huffed, as if amused.

  Her fingers gripped the edge of the sideboard, more annoyed that the beast wanted to frighten her than actually feeling frightened.

  A wet tongue licked the side of her face. Revulsion rolled through her body. The beast snarled and shook its head, one clawed hand scraping at its nose, as if trying to remove a foul taste.

  How extraordinarily rude.

  A shout came from outside the house. Luis and Alek.

  “In here!”

  The beast turned, grabbing her arm roughly. Solenne reached back to the sideboard, knocking over the decanter and fragile glasses. She struggled in the beast’s grasp, his claws digging in, but she did not release the tray.

  Alek filled the doorway, menace rolling off him in waves.

  The beast yanked her forward to use her as a shield. Her grip on the tray held, glass shattering on the floor. Swinging with all her might, she brought the silver tray around and connected solidly with the side of the beast’s head.

  Its grip faltered enough for her to scramble away, still clutching the tray.

  Alek and Luis surged forward, knives out. The beast swiped with huge hands, each claw a dagger in its own right. Each blow only seemed to enrage it, to feed its fury.

  “Here,” Miles said, pulling her back into a corner behind the divan.