by JL Merrow
“I can’t—he said you were not to be told. That you wouldn’t understand. Not yet.” He was caving, his head lowered, his arms wrapped around himself like a security blanket.
I wasn’t proud of myself, bullying the kid. But I couldn’t stop now. Not when I was finally getting somewhere. “Tell me.”
“Christoph… He’s in the old house.”
“The old house? This place is the young house? By whose system of measurement? Methuselah?” I got a blank stare for my trouble. Maybe they didn’t teach the Old Testament at his school. Or maybe he’d gotten bitten before they reached that lesson.
“Show me.” I grabbed his bony shoulders, easing off a little when he winced.
Ulf screwed up his face like a baby about to bawl for its mother. “I can’t—you don’t need me, okay? Just go out the back, walk along the path through the trees and you’ll see it.”
Relieved to have an excuse to cut him some slack, I let go of him. “Okay. But you keep a look out for the SS poster boy coming back, and you come out and yell when you see his car.”
Blue eyes glared at me. “You shouldn’t joke about the SS.”
He was worried about political correctness at a time like this? Kids. “Fine. You look out for Sven, okay?”
“You’re going out there now?” The eyes went wide.
“No, I figured I’d wait until the whole damn pack gets home. You bet I’m going out there now.” Ulf was practically wringing his hands, which made me feel kind of guilty. “Look, if anyone comes back, just say you couldn’t stop me, okay?” I said, and then I headed off down the hall toward the back door before those baby blues could get to me anymore.
It felt strange, walking out the door all by myself. Like I was a free man. Hell, like I was a man, not some freak-ass monster that had to be kept on a leash for the public good. The air smelled different. Fresher—or maybe just stronger—but strange, like I didn’t belong out in it anymore.
Or maybe that was just Schreiber and his rabid dogma messing with my head.
It was a warm day, the sun shining through a haze of cloud, the kind that promised thunder later. I didn’t believe it; I’d seen too many days end in the same old fug, with no cleansing rain to clear the atmosphere. My head felt tight, and there was a thin trickle of sweat running down my back all the way to my ass. The trees ahead of me looked dry and unwelcoming, and the path was dusty. I’d have to brush my pants off when I got back in the house.
If I got back in the house. Goddamn it, what the hell was I thinking? I could make a break for it. I could be out of here, away from this hell house of freaks and ghosts. So I’d still be a fucking werewolf. So what? I’d learn to control myself. Like Ulf said, it’d come naturally. I didn’t need to take Werewolf 101 from the kind of guy who thought Jim Jones’s only fault was being way too lax about the whole People’s Temple thing.
For a moment, the thought of freedom tugged at me so damn hard it hurt. Sure, Ulf would get into trouble when they found I was gone, but I figured they wouldn’t do anything real bad to him. He was just a kid, right?
Except I didn’t know shit about what happened to guys who fucked up here. I didn’t know what they’d done to Christoph. This was my one chance to find out. So I went on down the path that wound around and through the trees. And no, I couldn’t tell you what sort of trees. They were tall, and they had leaves on, okay? They had birds in them too—rustling little bastards, making me jump when they flew off, squawking like a fucking siren. I could feel my teeth lengthening, and my skin itched. Bastards. I wondered how loud they’d sing from the inside of my stomach.
Then I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing pulse. Sven was out. I was safe—for now. Get a grip, Leon.
Even though I’d gone out looking for the place, the old house came as a surprise when I rounded a bend in the track and saw it. It was like it didn’t belong here. I wondered why it had ever been built, and why it’d been abandoned. It was in a clearing, although the forest was working hard on closing that gap. It deserved its name. It reminded me of a gingerbread cottage: it had the fretwork balconies, the shutters, the steeply pitched roof. More or less. Bits were falling off all over the damn place, and what was left was slowly being eaten up by ivy.
It was a gingerbread cottage that had long since passed its expiration date and gone to mold.
The unpainted front door was half-rotten and didn’t seem to shut properly anymore. It opened easily when I pushed; I’d been half-afraid my hand would go right through. It smelled foul in there, like some kind of cesspit, but maybe that was just my Spidey senses kicking in, making it seem worse than it was. Or wolf senses. Whatever you want to call them.
It smelled of blood too. When I realized I was drooling, I gagged and almost threw up. Jeez, that’d be all I needed. Slipping in a pool of my own barf and braining myself on the door jamb. I took a deep breath, gagged again, then slapped my hand over my mouth and stepped inside.
The bare floorboards creaked like they were dying on the rack. I was in a narrow, empty hallway that seemed almost pitch-black after the sunlight outside. There were doors off it to either side, but the smell of blood drew me to the end of the corridor. I pushed open a dark painted door and stepped through.
I was in a bare, dusty room. And I had company.
Christoph.
Chapter Six
I drew in breath so fast it’s a wonder my lungs didn’t burst. Instead they filled up with that foul stench of blood and must, and I coughed violently.
They’d put him in a cage. A fucking cage. So damn small he didn’t even have room to stand upright. He was naked and crouched down, huddled in on himself, his hair loose from its tie and falling over his face. There were marks all over his body, I couldn’t tell what the fuck from. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. My eyes were watering from the dust and the coughing. I scrubbed at them furiously, as if I could scrub away the scene in front of me. “Christoph?”
His head jerked round.
I choked again. “Holy fuck!”
The whole left side of his face looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a meat grinder. Like someone with a handful of knives had used them all on him at once… “Shit, are those claw marks?”
Hollow eyes stared at me. Christoph didn’t speak. Could he still speak?
“Christoph?” I tried again. I’d thought… I don’t know what I’d thought. Maybe that it’d be satisfying to see him being punished. That it’d make up some for him turning me into a monster.
It didn’t. It made me want to throw my guts up. Schreiber was so damn pleased with himself for not embracing the animal, and he did that to a guy and then put him in a fucking cage? I reached for the bars. ”Fuck!” It burned like ice. “What the hell?”
“Silver,” Christoph said, only it was more like a croak.
Silver. Pure, holy silver. And now it burned me.
For a moment, I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing, coming to the rescue of the guy who’d made me into a monster. Then I looked again at that ruined face. I had to look away almost immediately. Shit. I had a picture in my mind, clear as day, of the way he’d looked when we’d first met. Of the way he’d looked at me. Now…now he’d never look like that at anyone ever again.
Maybe Christoph wasn’t exactly my favorite person right now, but he didn’t deserve that. Nobody did. “How do I get the cage open?” I asked the bare walls of the room.
Silence.
“How do I get the fucking cage open?” I snarled, turning to glare at Christoph.
“Key. On the wall, by the door.” I could feel his pain-filled eyes following me as I went to the door, scorching me with their gaze. I picked up the key off a rusty nail—and dropped it when it burned me. “What the fuck?”
Christoph didn’t answer. I kicked the silver key through the dust and over to the cage, wishing it was Schreiber’s head, then I picked it up using the hem of my T-shirt to shield my fingers. When the cage door swung open, I crouched down to pull Ch
ristoph out. He fell into my arms. And maybe you’re thinking I got some sort of a thrill out of that, with him being naked and all, but let me tell you, there was nothing erotic about that moment.
Christoph was lean, but he was so damn tall I was about to drop him, so I eased him down onto his ass on the floor. “He’ll put you in the cage for doing this,” Christoph croaked.
“Schreiber? He can go fuck himself.” Even though the fear of what’d happen if that bastard found out what I’d done almost made me puke. “We’re getting out of here.” I tried to pull Christoph upright, but it was like his limbs were locked in position. “Fuck. Can you walk?”
“A moment.” His voice was so dry it hurt to listen to it.
I wished I’d thought to bring some water out here. “Hey. Let me give your legs a rub. It might help.” I crouched down to massage his calves. Jeez, how much must he hurt, after being cramped up in that damn cage for fuck knows how many hours, unable to straighten his limbs without getting burnt by the bars? “Is that okay?”
“It’s good,” he rasped, putting a hand on my arm for a moment.
I swallowed and carried on. Suddenly it all seemed kind of intimate. I tried to concentrate on rubbing the cramps out of those lean muscles.
“I think…now I can walk,” Christoph said, just as I was really getting into the massage.
I straightened and started to help him up, trying not to look like I was disappointed. “Wait. You need clothes. I’ll get you some clothes.” How the hell I was going to manage that without Ulf catching on, I didn’t have a clue. But the thought of trying to run from there with a naked guy was freaking me out almost more than, well, the thought of trying to run from there. “Wait here. I’ll come back for you.”
Christoph sank back down to the grimy floor, and I escaped.
Ulf was waiting by the back door of the house, hugging himself and hopping from one foot to the other. He jumped a goddamn mile when he saw me hurtling down the path toward him.
I was pissed, to put it mildly. “I thought you were looking out for Sven!” My heart leapt into my mouth. “Wait—is he back?”
“No,” Ulf mumbled, looking miserable. “Is Christoph all right?”
I stared. “What the fuck do you think?” I spat at him. Then I pushed on past him into the house, my mind working furiously. I headed straight to the kitchen.
Silke was there. Hell, I’ll bet she even slept there. She flinched when she saw me, so I tried to act nonthreatening, holding my hands out wide. Which was kind of dumb, because on a werewolf, even an empty hand holds a fistful of weapons. “Silke, I need some spare clothes.” Too late, I wondered just how deep she was in Schreiber’s control—but hell, the thought of her posing any kind of physical threat nearly made me laugh out loud. It wasn’t like I was planning on staying around here anyhow. She could tell Schreiber all she wanted after I’d gone, just as long as she helped me get the hell out of here.
Silke nodded and turned away, telling me to follow her with a jerky motion of her head. We headed up to the bedrooms, Ulf watching us miserably from the foot of the stairs. She led me to a room on the second floor, at the other end of the house from mine. It looked like she used it as a laundry room—there were clothes hanging everywhere, a lot of them ragged at the edges and turning grey from over-washing. An ironing board stood ready in the corner, and the whole place had that phony “fresh” scent you get with cheap detergent, mingled with the mustiness of clothes that’d dried indoors. “For Christoph, yes?” she asked.
I froze. “Look, you can’t stop me—so if Schreiber asks, you tell him I made you help, okay?”
She nodded, then pulled out some stuff from off of a rack—pants, socks, shirt. Then she just stood there, looking down at the clothes she was holding.
“You want to give me those?” I hinted.
She looked up quickly. “I’ll bring them.” Hell, maybe it was Christoph she was sweet on, not Ulf.
Shit. “Hey, Silke…” I stopped. How the fuck to say this? “Christoph’s kind of a mess. Schreiber ripped him up some.” I ran my fingers down the side of my face to make sure she got the picture and managed to creep myself out nicely.
She trembled like a fucking leaf. Then she nodded. “I saw when it was done.”
What the hell? Was Schreiber selling tickets? Jeez, didn’t the poor kid have enough to deal with without being made to watch corporal punishment in action?
Silke looked up at me earnestly. It was probably the first time she’d ever looked me in the eye. “It was—he didn’t deserve that. Not Christoph.” She swallowed. “He was kind to me.”
I nodded. “Okay. Come on, then.”
I went to take her arm, then thought better of it. We headed downstairs again. I was light-headed with tension—what if Sven came back? What if Schreiber and the guys took an early lunch break? My mouth was so dry I was glad I didn’t have to speak. It would’ve come out like a fucking death rattle.
When we got downstairs, Ulf grabbed a hold of Silke and spoke to her so quietly, so fast, I couldn’t catch what he was saying. It wasn’t helping the paranoia any, but I figured I could guess the gist of it when she shook her head violently and pulled away from him.
Damn, I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her. Ulf threw up his hands and slouched away. Hopefully to keep a lookout for trouble, though I figured I’d best not rely on it. “Come on,” I told her again. “Wait—he’s going to need shoes. Damn.”
“It’s okay.” Silke fetched a pair of grimy, worn-in sneakers from a room off the kitchen that seemed to serve as a dumping ground for shoes, boots and all sorts of crap. She handed them to me. They smelled better than they looked—like forest earth and something familiar, almost comforting… Damn. They smelled like Christoph.
We scuttled back to the old house through the woods like Little Red Riding Hood—sorry, Hat—and the Big, Bad Wolf. Christoph was right where I’d left him. Like a lamb waiting for the guy in the striped apron with the damn big knife to come along and finish the work he’d started. His limbs didn’t seem to be working any too good, so I had to help him on with his clothes. Jeans—some down-market European brand. No underwear—maybe Silke liked her guys to go commando, though I’d had Schreiber figured as a boxers guy. There was an uneasy moment when I wasn’t sure if I should zip up for him or not, which he solved by batting my hands away and doing it himself. There was plenty to fit in there, I couldn’t help noticing.
I wasn’t perving on him, okay? It’s a guy thing. Compare and contrast.
Then the T-shirt—faded grey that might have been black way back before I was born. A checked shirt Christoph pulled on stiffly and didn’t bother to button. The broken-down sneakers.
Not a lot we could do about that damn face, though.
Silke turned away while I was dressing him, so I guessed she hadn’t just come down here to cop an eyeful. I took a couple deep breaths once we’d gotten him decent. “We have to get out of here right now. There’s just Ulf in the house, but I don’t know for how long. Silke, can you distract him while I get Christoph out of here?”
“No,” Christoph said harshly. “Silke, you must come with us. He will know that you helped us—”
“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hands in the universal symbol for fuck-this-shit. “I never said anything about her coming with us.” Okay, so maybe her life here wasn’t great, but was it really worth her risking everything by throwing her lot in with us? Who was in charge of this rescue, anyway? “She’ll be okay. I told her to say I made her help us. Schreiber’s got to cut her more slack than the rest of us—”
“He will not spare her. Silke, you must come.”
Damn. “Silke, will you be okay if we leave you?” I mean, hell, she must have gotten into this thing with Schreiber of her own free will. Chances were she’d want to stay with him anyhow. Just because a guy’s a bastard doesn’t make you love him any less. And yeah, that’s the voice of experience talking.
Silke was staring at the floorboa
rds. Trembling. “My father—”
What the hell? “Schreiber’s your father?”
She nodded to my feet. I tried to get my head around the idea that I’d so totally mistaken their relationship. Then my stomach flipped over as it occurred to me that maybe I’d gotten it right after all. Damn. “Look, you can come if you want to, okay? But you’ll have to do what I say.” I figured she’d be used to that anyhow, poor kid.
Guess she figured the same, because she nodded.
“How long do we have until the others return?” Christoph asked.
“Damned if I know. Sven got called away suddenly, and I came to get you as soon as he’d left. How far away is this scrap yard, anyhow?”
“Not far enough. We need to leave right now.”
“I’ll go grab my stuff,” I said quickly. If I was going to be on the run, I wanted to do it in my own underwear. Hell, that backpack had been with me for five years, traveling through more countries than I could count on both hands. I had my Levi 501s in there, and my camera and a whole load of other stuff I’d dragged all the way from the States. Plus my only photo of me and Ben. It’d gotten a little creased and faded over the years, but I wasn’t leaving it here for Schreiber, Sven and the gang to chew on.
“Silke, you have anything you wish to bring?” Christoph asked.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. “It’s okay. I have nothing.” Jeez, not even a goddamn cuddly toy? Schreiber was one hell of a father.
“Leon, you must be quick,” Christoph said. I gave him a dirty look. The sooner he realized who was in charge here, the better.
“You wait here,” I told them, staring Christoph down in case he was planning to protest. It wasn’t easy, holding firm with him looking like that, but I managed. “When I get back, we’ll head out through the woods this way—too risky to go along the roads on foot. Sven could be back along there any minute.”
Christoph nodded. I set off down that path again, my nerves jumping worse than they had on the way out. Hell, for all I knew, Ulf had called in the cavalry already.