WOLFWEIR

  Alphonse had spent some of the dull waiting time underneath the stage whittling down two of the fingers on his left puppet hand to sharp points. It didn’t hurt, it passed the time pleasantly with the smell of pine shavings, and it might save him if the “Van Gorith Ploy” didn’t work against Lord Blackgore – who was, after all, a trained and furious swordsman (and also, because he was a powerful Vampyre, able to fly for short distances!)

  As he now fought Edward Blackgore on the opera stage, giving it his everything he had – his parents’ lives were at stake, so to speak – Alphonse was only remotely aware of the chaos and horror Lucia di Fermonti, the White Wolf girl, was creating in the balcony seats. As the Vampyres near her recoiled, she rose to full height and let out a roaring howl at the moon.

  -Vile puppet boy! screamed Edward Blackgore, panting a little from the effort of fencing with this wooden upstart. I see you have brought us the Blood Amulet! Well done, fool!

  (Yes, Alphonse thought. It was a risk. But it also gave him incredible speed and power, which is why Malvic had reluctantly agreed to let him wear it for tonight’s bloody rampage. Still, he was barely holding his own against the Vampyre. What if -- ? No, it would not do to indulge in “what ifs.” Not now!)

  The Vampyre’s renewed attack was so urgent, forceful and harsh that Alphonse was nearly dazed by it. He tried the “Van Gorith Ploy” – it didn’t work. He only managed to cut Edward Blackgore across the dark brows with his swordpoint.

  The Vampyre’s counterattack was lightning. Alphonse saw his right puppet hand, still gripping the rapier, fly off into the orchestra pit. Was it time to despair? No. Howling in total silence, howling in derision and horror and anguish for his parents and hatred for all ghouls everywhere, Alphonse sprang at Edward Blackgore and thrust two sharpened wooden fingers into the Vampyre’s black heart.

  Edward Blackgore’s greenish white face distorted in shock and amazement – and he fell over dead.

  His body already turning to a cloud of dust.

  *

  Alphonse sprang into the orchestra pit, snatched up the severed wooden hand and the rapier, and jumped back onstage just as the White Wolf thumped down on all fours with an ecstatic, moon-frenzied, growling moan – a single wild leap had taken Lucia from the balcony to the stage.

  He slipped the hand in one of his pockets and sheathed the glittering Toledo sword in its cane. Then he jumped onto Lucia’s bristling back and clung to her fur.

  It was at that instant that he saw something horrific and dreadful – not that he was any stranger to horror and dread, after all his recent adventures.

  For Lady Blackgore was rising from behind the coffins, the cloak spread about her body like black wings, her bloodstained face drawn in an ugly rictus of laughter. She was holding a lance.

  There was a dent in the silver breastplate over where her Vampyre heart should be. But the holy-water-and-garlic treated pistol ball hadn’t pierced the silver.

  Neither Alphonse nor Malvic had counted on this strange peculiarity of the Vampyre Opera – that the Vampyres used real armor in their productions, as they also used real live bats and real razor sharp swords.

  And now Lady Blackgore was blocking Alphonse and Lucia’s exit through the wings.

  With a growling roar, Lucia now did something truly astonishing – she sprang from a crouching position on all fours straight upward at least twenty feet (Alphonse would later surmise), and with her front claws caught hold of the stage curtain.

  Faster than thought she climbed the curtain, shredding it in the process, to the top of the proscenium arch, which she used to swing herself (and the nauseated, tightly clinging Alphonse) to the summit of the dome – and through the glass skylight, smashing it to fragments that rained down on the screeching Vampyre audience.

  Ah! They were now in the clear vivid moonlight, on top of the dome, Lucia’s claws scratching wildly as she tried to hold a grip.

  And now Alphonse saw the Vampyre Lady soar up through the hole in the dome, her cape black as congealed blood, her white face grinning – the lance with its glittering point poised to hurl at he and the White Wolf.

  He searched with his remaining hand for the pistols – nothing, he’d tossed them away.

  Lucia growled, trembling, and gathered herself to spring at the Vampyre.

  As Lady Blackgore shrieked with rage and contempt, drawing back her arm to hurl the weapon., to impale both the White Wolf and the puppet boy on its cruel steel blade, the dome of the Opera House rippled like skin, then began to expand like a balloon, almost in slow motion, and then it burst apart with a roar.

  Alphonse, wide-eyed, saw Lady Blackgore engulfed in a column of flame that shot up through the skylight.

  Then he and Lucia were hurled away with the flaming debris.

  *

  Malvic, waiting on the street outside the Opera House, saw Lucia and Alphonse emerge onto the domed roof. He saw the black figure soar up after them, armed with a lance that glittered in moonbeams. He saw the explosion, as the Opera House seemed for an instant to turn to light. He covered his head as the debris rained on him. Around him, horses were screaming and dragging away the elegant black carriages. Flames rained onto the street. Then something fell near him with a clank. A glance told him that it was Lady Blackgore’s silver breastplate – it was smoking, blackened by the explosion. He saw Lucia and Alphonse land nearby, the puppet boy bouncing and clattering as Lucia rolled over and over, and as he ran to them he tore off his cape, and he covered Lucia with it and rubbed it on her fur to put out the flames. Alive. She was alive. He snatched her up wrapped in the cloak.

  -Come, puppet boy. Run!

  Alphonse was dazed but not unconscious. He followed Malvic at a run, down a side street and through an alley, to where their cab waited, the horses jumping in place spooked by the explosion and fire.

  *

  At roughly this instant, Alphonse’s parents awoke from their twin comas in twin hospital beds in Paris.

  Epilogue

  After the noisy and total destruction of the Vampyre Opera House in Edinburgh, Malvic and Lucia booked passage on an ocean liner to Canada, where they would rejoin the Man-Wolves to establish a new kingdom on the plains of Manitoba. Lucia’s eyes were feverish and tearful as Alphonse removed the Blood Amulet from his own neck and fastened it around hers. The puppet boy had insisted on tracking down Vesuvio, the Gypsy sorcerer, alone.

  Malvic provided Alphonse with plenty of gold for his journey, as well as some vital intelligence regarding the usual movements of the Gypsy. Vesuvio was said to always winter in the South.

  Alone and suffering from unspeakable melancholy, Alphonse travelled by steamer to Naples, Italy, wrapped in a cloak and muffler and a derby hat pulled low about his ears. He carried with him everywhere his dapper and fatal sword cane.

  In the Edinburgh hotel room, Malvic had reattached the puppet boy’s right hand, using wires and glue. It worked now well enough to wield a sword.

  After several months of intense searching, Alphonse located Vesuvio in a forest outside Genoa. He crept into the camp by night. The puppet boys were padlocked into their circus wagon. Vesuvio was drinking wine by candle-light, the Blue Orb perched on a shelf nearby. It would have been no difficult matter for Alphonse to enter Vesuvio’s wagon via the window and run the drunken Gypsy through with his rapier as he sat dazed by wine, nostalgically humming old Sicilian folk songs. Instead, he sat down in the wet grass of the clearing and waited for morning.

  When the fat Gypsy stepped out of his wagon into the “golden mists” of dawn, stretching his fat hirsute arms and letting out a yawning hiccup, there was the puppet boy swordsman – standing out in plain sight with his steel already bared. Vesuvio seized the hatchet from a tree stump and ran at Alphonse with a shouted Sicilian curse. Alphonse killed him cleanly and without ceremony. Then he wiped the blood from his sword on Vesuvio’s wine-stained undershirt, sheathed it, walked into the Gypsy’s wagon, and took down the Blue Orb. He carried the Blu
e Orb outside and, just as unceremoniously, smashed it at his feet.

  At the instant the Blue Orb shattered into smoking bits, Alphonse’s nerveless puppet body dropped clattering to the ground beside the dead Gypsy – while the real Alphonse, the flesh and blood Alphonse, woke with a start in a Paris hospital, astonishing both his parents (who were both, as it happened, right there in the room with him, as they had been – at least one at all times of day and night -- for the past two months).

  Yet there may be even more to this story. Is it not possible, for example, that one afternoon several years later, as Alphonse is finishing up a homework essay assignment, he glances out his window onto the traffic-roaring Avenue Dupin and sees, five stories down below, a real beauty of a golden haired young woman, scarcely more than a girl, clad in a blue travelling dress and yellow gloves stepping lithely from a drawn up carriage? And might it not happen that, as his heart gives an anguished leap, and the sweat comes out on his brow, the young woman turns her head to look upward at his, Alphonse’s window -- and he recognizes with a jolt of his body the blue eyes and smiling lips of Lucia di Fermonti, Queen of Wolfweir?

  End