Dark Knight of the Skye

by Ray, Robin Renee

  “You decide to change your mind, O’Brian?” D`nae asked walking closer. “Hey, you okay?”

  “Fine… I’m fine,” he replied, then collapsed to the ground.

  “Danny!”

  “Richt here, luv,” he replied, picking Grady up and tossing him over his shoulder.

  “Is this normal, Tabitha?’ D`nae asked as Tabitha walked up.

  “It is. He should change within the next twenty four hours. I will stay with him until he is alright.”

  “When will that be? I mean, how will you know?”

  “If he was not going to make it, the curse would have killed him by now.”

  “Like it would have killed me?”

  “Yes, your system was too weak, but he has not suffered the way that you did. Alasdair drained several times, or you may have made the transformation.”

  “I’m kind of glad Danny came along. No offence, but I think I’m where I’m meant to be.”

  “No offence taken. Your temper would have kept you in more trouble than mine does me,” she smiled, and they both followed Danny into the abandoned house.

  The girls piled old couch cushions up to make a bed for Grady, who was now falling in and out of consciousness. He mumbled words that made no sense to anyone, swinging his arms in the air every few minutes. Danny removed his shirt, while D`nae got the first aid kit out of the truck. The hiss that came from Danny had Tabitha closing her eyes in remembrance of her own walk into the life of becoming a shape shifter. His back was a massive mess of red whelps, all running from the one wounded shoulder, disappearing into his pants from hip to hip. They had started to wrap themselves around his ribs, as smaller lines traced up the side of his neck. The once white gauze that Grady had placed there that morning was now a yellowish green on the outside, and when Tabitha pulled it back, taking the scab that was stuck to the pad with it, blood poured down the back of his arm. Tabitha got down on her knees and leaned his head back, holding it with one hand. She looked up at Danny, who held his body in place, then lifted his eyelid with her free hand.

  “He will not change in twenty four hours,” she proclaimed.

  “Is he going to die?” D`nae asked coming through the door.

  “Of course not, but he will shift very soon, sooner than I would have thought.”

  “Wull he be hissel?” Danny asked, rolling Grady to his side.

  “He will be like a wild animal when he first changes, but he will have me to show him the way. I will take him out into the woods. Once he feeds, his mind will start to return,” Tabitha explained, holding the first aid kit open for D`nae.

  “Ah’ll gae tak a keek at the dungeon. T’wull nae need tae be any whaur round when he gae’s intae ane o yer fur balls then.”

  D`nae was snickering before he was halfway finished.

  “Fit sae funny?”

  “It’s called a basement here, babe. And you’re really not any better being a blood sucker and all,” she replied, causing Tabitha to laugh out loud, what was more than likely her first good laugh.

  “Hey noo, gangin up isn’t ane bit funny. Tae hens? Mither Mairi, o Joseph, ye’ll both be fur killin me,” he laughed and got to his feet.

  He left the two laughing women and went down the debris filled hall to find the door that led to the ’basement’. He smiled, kicking past the mounds of old newspapers at the end of the hall, turning down another one, disappearing from their sight. He found the door hanging from one hinge in the back of what used to be a fairly large kitchen. The cabinet doors laid strewn about the floor, with only a few hanging on with what little life they had left by the rusty screws that threatened to break if touched. The sink was gone, as well as all the appliances that were once used to help run a house that sheltered a family. Danny lifted the door up and the whole thing fell from the rotted frame, so he leaned it against the wall, and began making his way down the extremely wobbly wooden stairs.

  Back in the room where the others sat, another drama had begun. Grady had pushed himself off the homemade bed, getting to his hands and knees.

  “What’s happening to me?” he yelled flipping to his back, arching, making an excruciating face from the agony of the pain. Tabitha scooted close to him, looking back at D`nae, who needed no words to tell her to get out of the room and find Danny, which was the very thing she did. She stood, backing up, watching as the skin on Grady’s chest began to break open. Once the pink tinged fluids ran down his sides, she turned and ran down the hall. She ran into the kitchen and saw the glow from Danny’s lighter. She rushed into the open door and onto the top of the stairs.

  “Danny!” she said, quickly going down to meet him on the middle of the staircase.

  “No, stay where you…” Danny was starting to say when the staircase collapsed, taking them both to the basement floor.

  The dust was so thick, it found it’s way up and out into the kitchen, before settling back down to the floor. Danny sat up and started moving the broken boards off of the parts of his body that were completely covered.

  “D`nae!” he yelled “Luv, whaur ye be?” He got to his feet, rushing to the sound of her coughing. He found her lying face down on a portion of the stairs that actually stayed intact, but like him, she was covered in a fine layer of dust from head to toe.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as he picked her up.

  “Ne’re ye mind, luv. T’wur gaun tae fall nae matter.”

  “How are we gonna to close the door?”

  He smiled, and in the little light coming from the open door, she could see the glint that he got when he was about to do something sneaky. He stepped back, bowed at the waist, then leaped up in the air. He spun around, smiling down at her, then slowly made his way to the opening, grabbed the door and set it firmly in place. Danny came down behind D`nae, gripping her shoulders, rubbing gently with his thumbs, as his feet once again became one with the debris on which she was still standing. He leaned in and lightly blew the dust off the side of her cheek and laid a light kiss, then rubbed his short stubble beard along her neck.

  “Not on your life, buddy!” she giggled, bashfully pushing him away with the back of her hand, as she stepped down off the mess she had made.

  Danny leaped into the air and landed in front of her. “Fit aboot a wee, fit ye caw it? Lip lockin?” he asked, stepping closer to her.

  “Danny Gilmore, I am a girly girl, and no way in hell are you putting your hands on me…” she looked down, “…looking like this.”

  “Aw, but ye keek sae guid tae ma richt noo,” he said, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “Baby…”

  A brutal scream echoed throughout the old abandoned house and every neighboring canine in the area began to bark and howl to the top of their lungs. Tabitha watched as Grady’s human flesh ripped, and his bones slid and reformed themselves into longer, disjointed elements of his once human self. Grady’s fur pushed forward in a jet black furry of waves, rippling over the course of his snapping, twisting, and reforming new body. His monstrous head flew up from its hanging position while a new, more alive release flew from his lungs, and his transformation was complete. Grady’s wolf form rose off his hands, still enormous even on his knees, and turned, looking petite Tabitha right in the eyes. He snarled his lip up on the left side and let out a low rumble of a growl.

  “You have done very well,” she said, removing her shirt.

  Grady bound to his feet, bending forward with a full open mouth of perfect razor sharp teeth, and blasted her with all of his brand new might. Tabitha turned around and swatted him on the nose with all of hers, spinning his head to the side so fast that he almost lost his footing. “Mind your manners,” she hissed, then shifted before her pants touched the ground. He spun back on her, and both ended up on the ground. Grady’s mouth was open, snapping shut just as fast and as soon as he thought he was close enough to get Tabitha by the throat. Tabitha had him by the throat with one of her claw filled hands and the other was making its way to his mos
t vulnerable area. She latched on and he cried out. As soon as his head went back, she flipped him, one hand filled with dagger like claws on his manhood, and her jaws now around his throat. Tabitha held Grady in that position until she felt his heartbeat calm to a rhythm that was close to matching her own.

  She released her jaws, but kept a firm grip. She lifted her head, growling the whole time, licking her lips rapidly, tasting his scent, remembering it. He doubled her in size, but she had him. He lowered his chin, and began humming a low purr, far different from the aggression that came across from his demeanor not five minutes earlier. Her hand came away, and Grady rolled onto his massive feet, squatting, looking at her like he recognized her for the first time. He sniffed the air, then moved closer, tilting his head much like Tabitha always did to D`nae. Tabitha stood on her hind legs, showing her glory to him. He made his way around her, like all new pups to the pride, sniffing, licking out, tasting. When he had made a complete circle around her, he stood and even in her werewolf form, one could hear her breath suck in at the shock of his beast. He towered over her like a solid black shimmering wall, and she found him to be beautiful.

  D`nae laid in Danny’s arms as they listened to their two furry beast companions leave the old house. Fog was heavy in the air and the wet dew of the morning soaked into their fur as they ran through the woods. Tabitha would watch as Grady made his first kill. She had meant what she had told D`nae about meat being just that - meat, and any woodland creature of substantial size would do. Tabitha’s beast smiled the only way that it could when she saw the way that Grady’s head snapped to attention at the first scent of game. She had picked it up long before he had, but it was something that she had had years to perfect. She slowed, putting her arm out touching his chest. Grady stopped beside her, sniffing the air like a hound dog. Tabitha’s nose lifted in the air, and then he was off like a streak of lightning.

  The shrill squeal of a boar hog sang out from the direction that Grady had vanished, and Tabitha knew he had made his kill. She broke through the undergrowth to find him already ripping the insides out of the pig with one hand, while tearing at the stomach’s flesh with his teeth. She hunched down on her hind legs and watched as he ripped the animal apart. He ate as if he hadn’t eaten in ages, and it wasn’t until Tabitha’s foot moved and broke some twigs that he even realized that she was there. He reached down, pulled one of the back legs off and slung it over to her. She looked down at the offered meat, and didn’t know how to take a male being kind and offering her anything, much less part of his kill. She didn’t hesitate after the thought, she simply reached down, grabbed it and ate. He grunted then growled, trying to make his voice work. When he couldn’t, he gestured with his arm for her to come closer.

  Tabitha stood, gripping the meal in her hand, moving with caution to his side. Grady offered her another piece of meat, while filling his mouth with his own. It was the very first time since her mother that she had shared a kill with another of her kind, and never with one that she had created. She looked at him with guilt in her eyes. He had to be a good man in life to be such a kind beast, because all show their true nature in the form of the werewolf. Even she knew that she carried a darker side in her beast that made it more than easy to take a human life, never once thinking twice about it. Grady was the second that she had infected; the other was a man she stumbled across when she was a little girl, while she and her mother were out picking berries one summer morning in a small wooded area close to their camp.

  Tabitha came from a group of her own kind that traveled to keep from being discovered. Her mother was one of the oldest and strongest. She kept Tabitha close, teaching her the ways of their people, so that she too would one day watch over their kind just as her mother did, as her mother had done before her. Innocent nine year old Tabitha found herself wandering alongside the river bank, pulling cat-tails and watching butterflies. She stepped right out of the brush into a camp of three bearded men, all wearing long blades down the side of their right legs and red sashes tied around their waists, with white stripes that ran down the outside of their pant leg. When she stepped out, they all stood.

  “Good heavens, child, what in all tarnation are you doin’ way out here?” the first man asked.

  “She looks lost, Serge,” a second added.

  Tabitha flinched as they made a move to come closer.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna hurt ya, girl,” the one they called Serge said, and he took two steps closer.

  Tabitha screamed and dashed for the underbrush. The Sergeant rushed forward and grabbed her dress, pulling her back. “You‘ll get yourself killed out there, little one,” he claimed, as she came around with glowing red eyes and a mouthful of fangs that clamped down on his arm. He yelled out, both from the pain in his arm and the fear from the sight of what was once a beautiful child. Tabitha’s hand came up with lightning speed and sliced four perfect incision-like openings down his upper arm, as she shook her head then released his lower arm from her jaws. Serge then fell back, trying to get away from her. He landed on his backside, gripping his upper arm. Tabitha stood there, knees bent, arms pulled in, hands held out in front of her with her fingers elongated into massive black talons. Her dress was torn, and blood soaked, and a sound came from deep inside her chest that no human had ever heard coming from another, and especially not a little girl. She pulled in a deep breath of air and roared her first guttural cry of the wolf. The grotesque mixture of his blood and her spit flew in tiny splatters of raindrops all over his face. It was then that a much louder, more vibrating howl returned from the woods. When Tabitha put her head back and made a softer cry for help, one that he recognized as an animal call - short whimpers, high pitch squeal. It was then that he knew something bigger was coming.

  He back-peddled on hands and heels until he felt one of his men grab him under the arms and pull him to his feet. “What…?” the man started to say, but the Sergeant pushed him back and frantically began gathering up his belongings. The other two followed his lead, and the last thing that Tabitha heard was them riding away on their horses. She fell to the ground and started crying. It was the first time that she had ever harmed anyone, and the first time that her fear controlled her body in a fashion that her mind had no say. Her mother found her lying on the ground, covered in the man’s blood, and dashed to find the one who had harmed her, no questions, just pure rage.

  Grady made a sound, bringing Tabitha back to the world that her body was presently sitting in. She stood and stepped back, regaining her human form. For her, it was almost a transition like that of walking under a waterfall. She knew, however, that it would be a living hell for Grady, until he became adjusted to his new differences. His beast fell forward, landing on top of what was left of his kill. His left leg stretched out as his head went back, whipping from side to side. One arm came up, then slammed down on the ground. At first, the sound he bellowed out was nothing more than the yelping cries of huge wolf in agony, but later, as the fur began to split, the man’s voice started to emerge. “It hurts!” was all that she could understand with her ears, but her heart knew all too well what he was going through.

  When it was over, Grady laid nude on top of the butchered pig, breathing heavily and completely exhausted. She sat down on the ground, pulled her knees up to her chest and waited for him to wake up.

  After a while, Grady started to moan and tried to push himself up onto his elbows. Tabitha laid her knees over, placing her hands on the ground, anxious to see what he was going to do next. “I have a hell of a headache,” Grady said bringing one hand up to his head. He quickly held it back, then rolled over to see what he was lying on. It didn’t take two seconds for him to bounce off of the cold dead carcass. He sat back on the ground, looking at his coated hands, drifting his eyes down his gore covered nude body.

  “How do you feel?” Tabitha asked in a soft voice.

  Grady’s eye darted up to where she was sitting and automatically his hands covered his groin.

  “H
ow the fuck did I get out here, and where the fuck are my clothes?”

  “Do you remember nothing?” she smiled.

  “What the hell is so funny? Is this a joke? Did you guy’s lay me on that gross ass thing?”

  “Think Grady, just calm yourself, and think,” she said standing up, causing him to gasp. “What is the last thing that you do remember?”

  “I remember driving off and leaving you guys, then the pain hit in my stomach.”

  “Then what?” she asked, sitting down next to him.

  “I remember the smell… and I could hear animals.”

  “Your ancestors,” she said, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. “I remember that as well.”

  “I could feel this enormous pressure wanting to explode on the inside of me,” he said looking over at her, then quickly looking away.

  “I have no shame in my body, and you have seen me before.”

  “I know, but for some reason, you’re different.”

  “What else can you tell me, Grady? Please, try to remember getting here.”

  “I could hear a soft whisper in my head over and over. It’s the one thing that seems to still be in there. Somewhere at the back of my brain is this voice, I just don’t know how to explain it. It kept saying, ‘release me’. I thought I was going mad,” he explained, wiping his hands on the grass. “I felt myself running. I was strong, it couldn’t get away, and that’s when I sank my…”

  “It will all get easier from here, I promise,” she whispered. “I can never tell you how sorry I am. I can only be here to show you what I was once taught.”