Franco grieved for his friend Pietro, whom he would never see again. Maria wondered at her husband’s newfound obsession with killing werewolves. Although the few wives who remained with their men told her how heroic he was, she wondered what had made him so dedicated to causing death at the constant risk of his own life.
For his part, Giovanni grew silent and, despite his great love for his family, distant to the point of being morose.
Corrado often looked at him with some vague suspicion on the tip of his tongue.
The fighting intensified, and Giovanni found himself celebrated as the unit’s best and most skillful wolf-killer.
It was cold at night, so no one questioned why he wore gloves on patrol. Only one person noticed that he wore them in daytime, too.
Franco. Another week later, Giovanni Lupo felt the burden of destiny come crashing down on him.
At dawn, he awoke shivering from a nightmare, bathed in cold sweat. Faint echoes of the dream lingered like the previous night’s moonlight, and he shrank at the images of blood and fury. God knew he had known enough of both recently. Where was he? Why was he shivering?
He was curled in a tight ball, trying to keep skin on skin so he could stay warmer. Had Maria opened the window again? She tended to feel hot, whereas he craved warmth in the night.
He shivered more intensely. His head ached, throbbing with a hammer-like cadence that threatened to overwhelm him. Slowly he became aware of the cold wetness covering every part of his skin. The tiny, hard points prickling his side puzzled him, as even the scratchy wool blankets piled on his side of the bed didn’t usually feel like pine needles.
Pine needles?
Suddenly his throat screamed for water, as if he had swallowed a bucketful of desert sand.
He remembered then that the shelter they had been forced to inhabit since Corrado had rescued and kidnapped him on the street, was below ground. He wasn’t in his own comfortable bedroom, where the creamy stucco walls bore only a crucifix and a portrait of Mary. He almost smiled at the memory, but his head hurt too much. And he remembered that the shelter was windowless.
He opened his eyes finally, sure that he wouldn’t like what he saw, and then he leaped up, shivering even more violently, shocked to see that he lay on a gently sloping hillside—in a clearing, trees cluttering his view all around. Over him the drooping branches of an elderly weeping willow seemed to cascade like tears. The long, narrow leaves dotted his arms and chest. His naked arms and chest! Where was his nightshirt? Giovanni always wore a thick layer of clothing to bed, but now he was naked, and the leaves tickled his skin above. The pine needles beneath him gouged the skin of his side and leg.
He hugged himself, trembling uncontrollably. Cold, wet dew numbed his toes. His penis had shrunk and sought shelter between his thighs, and small twigs made sticky knots in his pubic hair.
“Ma che cosa—?” What is going on?
He tore his right hand from under his left armpit, where he felt a semblance of warmth, cupping his genitals to preserve some body heat. He brought his left hand close to his face until he could see it clearly in what appeared to be the early morning light. The hand itched, as if ants swarmed under his skin. He shook it, but the feeling raged up and down his arm. He looked at his right hand and its crisscross burn scars, which he had begun hiding with a glove.
It was indeed dawn, the sky dappled with patches of light. A cool wind swept across the overgrown grass of the clearing. Cold and wet, he rolled over and climbed to one knee then stood. The clearing was not familiar. The slope meant he was back in the hills, but where? How had he gotten here? And why had he shed all his clothing? His feet squished in the wet grass as he started in one direction, stopped, then tried another.
It all looked the same. Every side of the clearing faced him with a thick stand of trees. Under the canopy of their leaves it was still dark. He didn’t know what had happened to him.
And yet…
He stooped to swipe off some leaves and twigs and recoiled to see that his feet weren’t only wet with dew—there were splashes of red. Was it…?
Giovanni’s breath caught in his throat.
My blood?
He checked his calves, thighs, and ankles thoroughly, but no, he saw or felt no new wounds.
Then whose blood?
He scraped at the bloodstains. Dry, mostly dry. He looked at his fingers. Dark matter was crusted under his nails.
“Gesu’ e Santa Maria,” he said softly and crossed himself, forgetting his nakedness for a moment.
He sniffed his fingertips.
It was blood. He had smelled enough of it in the last weeks.
He sidled toward the clearing’s edge. The approaching sunrise might well cause him to be seen by people who had awakened for field work or farm chores, or to attend mass or one of the meager markets. He had to find his way home.
Home?
Not home, but the shelter that had become his home.
With a deep breath, he abandoned any modesty that might have crippled him and sprinted through the dew toward the thinnest face of the forest.
Giovanni was still shivering, now with fear as well as cold.
The blood, the naked romp outside, and the lack of memory.
There was no accounting for this, none at all.
Unless…
Giovanni looked at his right forearm, which itched unbearably, as if he had a rash or had dragged it through a patch of poison ivy. Below his right shoulder, the ragged wounds where that monstrous creature had torn and ripped the skin with grotesque fangs or claws was throbbing painfully and itching madly, but incredibly the skin was unbroken and unblemished.
How could this be?
Both arms tingled, and he thought he felt the tingle reach his shoulder and spread across his back. He scratched at the edges of where the inflamed wound had been, but it wasn’t enough to slake his need. In fact, the itch seemed to be spreading to the other arm now. He would have given anything for some immediate relief.
He lapped at the tingling arm absentmindedly, his nakedness momentarily forgotten.
Then Giovanni stopped in mid-lap. What the hell was he doing, lapping at his arm like a dog?
Porca Madonna!
He shook his head and scraped the area around his mouth with one hand. Dried bits of red flesh flaked off his skin, leaving bloody smears on his palm. Some of the bits were sharp, bone-like. He sniffed at the debris. Smelled like…like slaughtered meat. He’d seen enough farm slaughters in his youth. This was what remained when meat was sawn and processed by butchers. The smell overtook his senses, and he felt the urge to vomit suddenly. When he forced himself to swallow and breathe deeply, the taste of raw meat and bone and rancid blood came alive inside his mouth.
His throat gurgled and hitched, and a stream of bloody vomit spewed onto the ground, splashing his feet before he could sidestep.
It looks like pieces of my lungs, Giovanni thought as he wiped his mouth. The bloody taste was still on his tongue, but now it didn’t seem so foreign, and even though he felt another spasm coming, he was able to avoid coughing up.
What is wrong with me? Giovanni thought, a strangled sob escaping from his lips.
He gagged again, but this time it overwhelmed him, and more pieces of bloody flesh and bone came gurgling into his throat and through his lips in a disgusting stream.
After the spasm passed, he opened his eyes and beheld the grotesque contents of his stomach, now splattered onto the grass. He turned away, dizzy, trying to keep his gorge from rising again.
He first now truly understood madness. The shivers he felt had nothing to do with the chill in the air, and the madness was just beginning.
Because not far from the clearing, Giovanni found his clothes. And the savagely butchered body of…someone. He wasn’t sure who the male human was, because his head was missing, his neck a red hole of gore and bone chips.
And Giovanni knew he had been cursed.
Corrado’s partisan brigade w
as pinned down by rifle fire from a crow’s nest of granite boulders above the sloping path.
They’d been climbing, their guard lowered because the territory had been recently cleared of Germans. But the first rifle rounds brought down two good men, and Corrado shouted at the rest of his column to seek cover.
While the partisans were kept down by the accurate gunfire, a pair of werewolves pounced on those in the rear.
The snarling of werewolves and the screams of men being slaughtered were punctuated by rifle fire, which kept the rest of the partisans pinned and helpless.
Giovanni started snaking back down the path, retrieving one of the daggers from under his coat. The other dagger was with a second patrol.
“Get down!” Corrado hissed roared. “You can’t take them on yourself!”
Giovanni ignored him. The brigade had run out of silver bullets days before, and the wolves would work their way back up the path and butcher each partisan one by one, unless someone counterattacked. And the holy weapon was the only way to win a clash with the shapeshifters.
Corrado knew they had no silver other than the dagger, but he tried to stop Giovanni. He’d become fond of the young, fearless fighter—and he was fond of the man’s wife and child, too. His own family had been killed by Germans, shot in reprisal for partisan action. But the reprisal had made a partisan out of Corrado, and his leadership had now cost hundreds of German lives. He lowered his head to avoid the damned German riflemen, helpless.
Giovanni scrambled down the rocky incline, past the huddled partisans, avoiding their eyes. In a minute he had reached the slight turn they had recently traversed. The snarling continued, but the screaming was silenced—the men were surely dead.
The first of two werewolves materialized as if magically on the path just below him, its eyes widening with glee and gluttony at the sight of prey, but Giovanni was ready, the dagger held close to his body until he could smell the beast’s breath.
Then, when the wolf’s muscular legs propelled it into an uphill lunge for his throat, Giovanni judged the timing perfectly, unsheathing the dagger just as the animal reached him, sidestepping it and throwing it off-balance long enough to drive the dagger’s point through its neck.
The wolf’s scream of tortured pain effectively hid Giovanni’s. His hand smoked where the silver scorched his skin and flesh, turning it black. The pain was excruciating, but he still managed to stab the wolf once in the heart as it collapsed at his feet, its wounds flaming and its blood boiling in its veins.
Giovanni whirled to face the second wolf, but this time he’d misjudged the angle of attack, and the red-eyed demon knocked him painfully to his knees. He tried to bring the dagger around, but it was still buried in the dead wolf, who was flickering like a candle back and forth from monster to human.
By the time he ripped the dagger out of the corpse, the second frenzied wolf snatched his hand with its jaws, and he dropped the dagger with a yelp of pain and frustration.
Holding his wounded hand, Giovanni backed up against the rocky slope, knowing the nearest partisans watched helplessly a few meters away, their guns useless and their heads still pinned down by the sniper fire. The wolf’s jaws trailed bloody drool as it approached, staring intensely at this new enemy. Its scrabbling paws avoided the toxic dropped dagger, but its body prevented Giovanni from retrieving it.
Before he knew what he was doing, Giovanni felt the rage take him.
He had learned a little about his new condition in the last few weeks, secretly, but he barely understood how the beast inside his bloodstream could take over.
He tried desperately to reverse the feeling, but he felt the changes in his body and the terrible itch of his fur suddenly sprouting along his arms and back, and then—
—then he was Over-over-Over, lost inside the instincts and defensive rage of the Beast he barely understood.
The last his human ears heard was the shouting of his partisan companions, horrified by what they saw: one of their own number taking the form of the wolf, the dreaded enemy.
His clothes dropped, ruined, beneath him as his wolf’s body took the enemy wolf by surprise.
Jaws snapping at each other, the two wolves closed and fought, biting and retreating, their claws slashing.
Growling, shrieking, they attacked and feinted, bit and retreated, rolled over and over, the advantage switching.
Bullets struck them both, but did no damage. Their fangs drew blood from wounds that hurt excruciatingly, but which began healing and closing up almost immediately.
Suddenly the beast that had been Giovanni was backed up against the hillside, and his paws lost their purchase on the rocky path, and the other wolf seemed about to go in for the kill.
But instead he regained his human form and, while Giovanni tried to make sense of it, reached down and snatched up the dagger and its scabbard. Naked, he sheathed the dagger and inserted it into his mouth, then—before Giovanni could act—returned to his wolf form and bounded away down the hill and around the curve.
The wolf that had been Giovanni regained its footing and scrambled down the hill, human screams following him until he was gone.
The other wolf had too much of an advantage, and even though Giovanni had the scent in its nostrils, he couldn’t see him, and he was forced to run blindly. In his brain, where Giovanni and a terrible monster both jostled for control, all he could think was that he had lost one of the holy daggers.
And that he could never go home, for now he was unmasked as one of the enemy. A monster.
I am banished.
Franco
It had been months since they’d told him his father had died, but he knew they whispered about him and his mother when they thought he was asleep.
Maria wept uncontrollably when Corrado’s decimated patrol had finally returned on that fateful day, telling tales that both celebrated and vilified his father.
He was a hero. He was a monster.
He could never return.
Franco understood then that his father was alive, but that he was dead to them. Because he had become a monster, and because he had lost one of Father Tranelli’s strange daggers.
There was no consolation in anyone’s eyes, and Franco felt the hate that suddenly bloomed against his mother and himself. As if they had helped his father fool the partisan brigade! As if Giovanni Lupo had intentionally put one over on them!
“We should have never allowed someone named Lupo to join us!” one shouted in a drunken rage. “Never again!”
Then they turned and stared at his mother. And at him.
Their days with the partisan brigade were numbered.
And early one morning, after the new year had come, he and his mother took their few belongings and stepped into the hidden staircase exit, the staring eyes of Corrado and the Jesuit and the few remaining men and women of the brigade boring into their backs, refusing to stop them or send them off with a wish of luck or farewell.
And they had headed for his uncle’s farm in the hills, neither of them knowing whether he still lived. Their trek took two weeks of arduously climbing narrow paths, always on the lookout for desperate German soldiers left behind to die.
At the end of 1944, the partisan resistance had risen up against the weakened German occupiers and formed provisional governments which sought and received foreign recognition as sovereign states, but the Germans and the remainder of the Italian forces still loyal to Mussolini were successful in quelling the rebellion and executing its leaders.
Now, all the disparate partisan units could do was await the Allies, whose painstaking advance had been mired by the vicious rearguard action of suicide patrols who would fight to the last man, and elements of the Werwolf Division.
When the Allies finally arrived, their guns audible in the distance, the withdrawal of the few surviving Wehrmacht and ragged Werwolf units left an almost tangible vacuum.
Franco and his mother had been safe on the desolate farm, but the boy could not forget what
had happened to his father, or his friend. The nightmares kept him awake, and his mother worried for his health and sanity. In his sleep, he saw the wolves come for him and his family, but then instead of being a German werewolf who battered in their door it was his father, jaws slavering and red eyes glaring with hate. And hunger.
One morning, when Maria went to wake the boy, he was gone.
Franco had grown rapidly, and in a few weeks he already appeared years older than his actual age. What he had witnessed, suffered, and lived through had toughened him, but those things had also changed him in ways he could only suspect. Frequently he found himself awash in a rage, yet unable to understand or explain why. Until one day, when he realized that he needed to face his father—the partisan hero who had become a monster and shattered their small family.
But where could he find Giovanni? Where would his father have sought refuge?
Instinct and keen insight into his father’s mind brought him back to their old neighborhood. Franco sensed that his father would have hidden in their old apartment if he could, perhaps to await their return. Not knowing what he would find, the boy—now just barely a teenager—made his way along the street on which he had grown up. Several buildings had been demolished since the last night he had spent here, and others had been damaged, some walls sheared away to expose their insides like grotesque layer cakes. Mountains of rubble lay at the bases of their surviving structures.
Franco looked at all the places they had played during more innocent times and couldn’t help thinking of Pietro. The day of their airplane tire stunt was a hazy memory by now. Everything that had happened since then was a nightmare from which he could not wake up.
He pushed open the door of their old apartment, surprised the building still stood, and was overwhelmed by the stench of rotted meat and dried blood. Franco stood in the doorway, breathing through his mouth to avoid being sick.
“Papá’?” His voice was soft and tentative and echoed in the high-ceilinged space. “Sono io, Franco.”
He heard a shuffling from the kitchen and stepped into the long corridor that led there. He was reminded of that night, when his father had found him hiding here. He pushed the memory aside.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 29