Renegade

by Donna Boyd

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  Chapter Fourteen

  I had my first taste of Armagnac that evening in the library with the prince. Outside the large arched window the sun turned the canal blood red. Inside, the wood beams, the ancient books, the fine paintings all were burnished with its rosy glow. The prince lifted his glass to me, smiling his approval as he set aside the papers he had just finished reading.

  “And so,” he congratulated me, “you have distinguished yourself with this research. I’m not certain anyone in our own race has ever uncovered so much detail regarding the truth of Queen Eudora.”

  I was enormously pleased. “I’m honored you think so, sir.”

  “Tell me, then. Is it your opinion that the good queen was enraptured of her human priest? Clearly he was utterly obsessed with her.”

  “It’s difficult to say,” I admitted. “It was far easier to uncover data on Montclaire than on the queen.” My search for writings and records referencing the medieval priest had taken me into the dusty vaults of Oxford University, the Louvre, and even to the Vatican itself, both in person and via correspondence with other historians who had come across references to him in their own research. The field of medieval history is not so broad a one as might be expected, and eventually all roads cross if one is persistent enough.

  “The human clergy of that era was trained to keep records,” I explained further, “and they wrote elaborate letters. The loup garoux, however, do not generally keep written correspondence, or records of any kind.”

  “That’s because our history is passed down by tradition,” agreed the prince, “which does occasionally allow for exaggeration or misunderstanding. It will be useful to the pack to have your written history—even if it does occasionally reveal things about ourselves we would prefer not to know. Do you think they were lovers, the queen and this human priest?”

  I said, “Nothing I’ve found suggests so. But my story is filled with gaps.”

  “It would be interesting, though, would it not, to discover that even the great Queen Eudora herself had a carnal lapse with a human?”

  I said nothing, and he merely smiled, faintly.

  He sipped his brandy, and when he lowered his glass, I tasted mine. I will never forget the sensation of that smooth rich Armagnac on my tongue, liquid gold, and the glow of the setting sun, and the breeze that wafted all the glory of Venice in through the open window to be captured, for just that moment, inside that room. I thought it was a perfect moment.

  The prince was watching me, as he often did, with a studious, thoughtful expression on his face. He went on, “Of course you know the tragic end to which the human priest came. It has been ever so when humans have dared to love one of us.”

  I felt everything in my body quicken with attention. His eyes bored through to my soul.

  “I wonder, however, if your studies have uncovered any reference to the suffering endured by the poor queen,” he went on, his tone musing. “Very little thought is ever given to the pain she must have endured. She lost her betrothed, she lost her human, but most tragically of all she lost her faith. It was years before she found a mate, you know, and then one must wonder if it was not only from obligation. What a tragic end to a tale of such great passion.”

  I said, with a very great effort, “It seems to me a tale of destiny, sir.”

  “Destiny,” he told me, “is what we make it. And it seems to me it would have been a much kinder thing had the human kept his place, and never tried to befriend the queen at all.” I could see the crimson sunset reflected in his eyes, like bloody water on polished stone. “Because when humans and loup garoux indulge themselves in their passion for one another, it invariably ends badly for all concerned. I think you will agree that history bears this out.”

  I swallowed hard, but did not flinch from his gaze. I said, “Yes sir.”

  In a moment he gestured me to be seated, and made himself comfortable in the deep velvet chair across from me. He said, “I have never regretted taking you in, Emory. You’ve matured into a strong, dedicated young man, accomplished in every pursuit. You are as fine a human specimen as I have ever known, and proof of what is possible for your race, given the right circumstances. I am proud of what you’ve become.”

  “I’m glad of it, sir,” I said sincerely. He had never spoken to me like that before.

  He sipped his brandy, dark eyes watching while red light crept across the room. “But you are still human,” he said. “And no human has ever been accepted into the pack.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that he knew about Lara’s conversation with me in the garden. He knew about the tickets to Paris, which I had tucked safely away in my cupboard upstairs, and he knew that his own daughter had turned to me to help her escape his house. And as much as I wanted to drop my eyes in shame, I did not.

  I said, keeping my voice strong even though my skin was beginning to prickle with the physical power of his gaze, “I know that, sir.”

  “Of course you do,” he murmured approvingly. “You very likely know more about our history than I do by now. Some day you will be famous among the pack for your writings.”

  I said, “That would be an honor.”

  “Because,” he went on easily, “while no human has ever been accepted into the pack, there have been one or two, over time, who have done us a service, and earned our respect, and have been accepted by the pack. Life for these humans was vastly different than for others.”

  I knew, suddenly, we were no longer talking about writing history down. We were talking about history. My heartbeat speeded, acknowledging my understanding, and he heard it.

  He lifted his glass. Red sparks caught in the crystal and shivered across his face. He sipped. “Have you given thought to your future?” he asked companionably, just as any father might ask of his son upon the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. “Do you have plans?”

  I said, choosing my words with care, “I would like to continue to study, perhaps to travel, one day to teach the sciences. To live with honor, and to bring honor to you, and to everyone you love.”

  The faintest smile of approval. He sipped his brandy in silence for awhile, enjoying the dying evening, and so did I.

  The crimson cast had faded from the sky; the golden rim upon the clouds had paled. Inside the room the shadows were blue and purple. The sounds of motorboats and laughter and fast Italian voices drifted up from the canal below as the population of Venice sailed off to meet their dinners. Somewhere in the distance a gondolier sang for the tourists. The dying light did harsh things to his face, planning it into sharp angles and sunken shadows. I could not see his eyes, though I thought I saw a glitter there, as hard as a sunspark caught on a blade, as he watched me in long and speculative silence. I could feel my future spinning slowly on the edge of that silence.

  When at last he spoke his tone was mild, his expression easy.

  “Well then,” he said. “I promised you an evening together, and it’s time we were on with it. I go tonight to a place few humans of this or any other century have seen, to participate in an ancient ritual few have ever witnessed. It is possible for you to be among those few, if you wish.” He must have noted the speeding of my pulse, the catch of my breath. He must have smelled the anticipation that flooded my pores. Because he fixed me with his dark gaze and he added, “Of course, we are likely to be out quite late. Well past midnight.”

  I knew then what he had known since well before we sat down for this conversation—what, in fact, I had known as well. I was going to break Lara’s heart. I would do that believing I spared her from a greater pain. I would do it to save her from the tragic ending I always had known was inevitable. I would do it believing I served a nobler purpose. But I would do it nonetheless.

  Yet he kept his expression neutral, his tone conversational. “Or we could sit here for a time a longer, and enjoy another glass of brandy, and later take a vaporetto to Al Fontego and have some of Chef’s excellent sea bass.
I quite have a taste for it tonight myself, but you choose. After all …” He smiled and raised his nearly empty glass to me. “It is your special night.”

  And just like that, I chose.

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  Excerpt from DAWN TO DUSK: A TALE OF TWO SPECIES by Emory Hilliford, PhD:

  For Eudora the proof of trust misplaced was her broken heart. The treachery of the priest had only proven what she should never have doubted at all: the Fasburgs, with their simpering, indulgent ways toward humans, were wrong. Humans were a danger to the pack, to all it stood for, and Eric, the mighty prince of Fasburg, must be made to see that. The time for tolerance was over. The human population must be taught a lesson. And so, at the welcoming banquet arranged for her betrothed, Eudora declared that the traitorous human should be sentenced to death, and thrown to the pack at midnight.

  But Eric, Prince Fasburg, could not allow a fellow Brother to suffer such a fate. He stole into the castle dungeon and freed the hapless human. Louis Phillipe should have fled the palace grounds, the province, the country, with his life as his treasure, never to look back. But he had learned to love the queen. He had come to know the glory of her kind. And he counted his life a small sacrifice for the knowledge.

  Here is the truth about the deadly birth defect that was killing the offspring of the lupinotuum: it was carried in human blood. The reason the Fasburgs had thrived so well was because of their peaceful relationship with humans, and their lack of exposure to their blood. But the rest of the pack were hunters, and killers of humans. And once the disease entered the bloodline of a werewolf, it was there forever.

  There was a cure for this disease, a simple remedy that could rid all the pack of its plague. But this cure had a steep price, and was known only to certain members of the Brotherhood of the Dark Moon. Its use was strictly forbidden. On that night, the human Louis Phillipe, who had come to know and love too well a species that was not his own, broke the vow he had made to preserve the balance of nature, and he brought the cure to Eudora the queen.

  The rest is the stuff of epic legend. Through the ages the tale was told of the human priest who loved the werewolf queen and who, having been discovered unwarned in her sleeping chamber, was torn to pieces by her guards. How she, the good queen Eudora, arose weeping from his bloodied corpse to vow to the skies that never again would a human being know harm from werewolf hand.

  And this much is true. From that day forward there went out a decree: never again should one drop of human blood be spilled at the hand of a werewolf, no longer would humans be hunted or abused, and the penalty for ignoring or disobeying that law would be death, and the shame of all the pack. From that time forward, no werewolf child has reached the age of majority without making that most solemn covenant, Eudora’s Vow.

  And until this day, none of them has known the truth.

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  Chapter Fifteen

  We traveled under the shadow of a midnight sky in the prince’s private gondola down the Grand Canal to a narrow street that climbed an ancient bridge and wound its way to a tall narrow building with a door carved in worn wolves’ heads. No one forced me to pass through that door, or to follow the prince down the steep stone staircase into a room that smelled of dampness and earth and candle wax and ancient secrets locked in stone. We entered a small anteroom lit only by two bare candles on opposite walls. The prince stripped off his clothes, and advised me to do the same. But when he dropped a cowl-hooded robe over his head, he did not pass one to me.

  “No unproven human may come before us clothed,” he told me. “It will be cold, but you’re in no danger of hypothermia. You may leave at any time, and no one will think the less of you. What we offer is a gift, not a threat. Do you understand?”

  I said that I did, and already I was shivering as he opened the door that led to another spiral stone staircase. We climbed down and down in the dark, for so long that it seemed the act of descending was a destination unto itself, the dark a tangible, breathing thing. The sound of the prince’s bare feet on the stones before me was my only orientation. My hand trailed the wet stone wall for balance until my fingertips were numb. I could feel pressure in my ears and my chest, and I realized we were far below sea level; I could almost hear the weight of the ocean pressing on the walls and I marveled at how old this place must be, at the engineering that had kept it strong, at the unfathomable brilliance of those who had built it.

  At last the footsteps stopped, another door opened, and I felt the gust of air that came from the cavernous room beyond. For a moment I was too disoriented, and my eyes were too slow to adjust to even the dim light beyond, to fully understand what I was seeing. Then I heard the prince’s voice, loud over the murmurs of others, echoing throughout the room: “This is Emory, a human and a seeker, who is under my protection.”

  There was silence, and I felt the prince’s hand on my bare shoulder, pushing me forward. The room was as big as a public auditorium, and it was filled with dozens of shapes in long cowled robes, like the prince wore. The hoods were up, so that no faces were visible, and when I glanced to my side, I saw that the prince had raised his hood as well. At some point during the hours that followed I became separated from him, and could no longer distinguish him from the others, or know whether or not he had even stayed. The only light came from a brazier in the center of the room, and from torches that were placed around its perimeter every dozen or so feet. The flames glistened off the weeping stone walls, and the air smelled of heat and burning pitch. The prince stepped away from me then, and I stood cold and naked while they passed before me in a ritual manner, each in turn circling me, inspecting me, taking in my scent, assessing me, memorizing me. I never saw a face. I did not know whether they were male or female, if they were strangers to me or acquaintances. But I knew what they were. Who they were.

  The assemblage—I did not count how many, because I did not know to do so—completed their first examination of me, and then a pair of strong hands grasped my shoulders and pushed me down, forcing me into a sitting position against the cold stones in a pool of shadow. I folded my legs beneath me, trying to gain my balance, and I felt a warm spray of liquid on my face. I recoiled instinctively, brushing at my face, and there was another spurt of liquid, acrid and hot, and another, in my hair, on my shoulders. The smell was strong, and unmistakable. They were urinating on me. I recoiled and shouted in protest, I tried to shield myself, but the urine splashed in my eyes and my mouth; it drenched my hair and trickled in hot salty paths down my back and chest and pooled in my chest. I tried not to gag. I breathed between my fingers. They were marking me.

  I, a twenty-one-year-old human boy, had been brought into the ranks of a fraternity as old as recorded history, so secretive that even the leader of the pack denied its existence. You may leave at any time, the prince had said. Yet even though I sat trembling with cold and fear and humiliation, even though the pounding of my heart shook my entire body, even though all the horrors of Dante’s hell might be yet ahead of me in this place, nothing could have made me leave. I saw my destiny unfold before me, and I embraced it.

  You will want to know the details, the rituals, the secrets of that night. I will not tell them. There was no torture. There were no honeyed drinks laced with hallucinogens, there was no bacchanalia of sexual frenzy, there was no coercion. The prince did well when he chose me, he did well when he raised me, he knew when I was ready. He would not have brought me there otherwise. What I did, I did of my own free and gladly given will.

  There was no time. I might have been there hours, or days. At some point, when I was weak with exhaustion and cold and the emotional and mental impact of what I had experienced, the torches were extinguished, one by one. I sat in the center of their circle in absolute blackness and silence for so long that I seemed to float. I lost the sensation of my arms and legs, of the cold and the aching muscles, and became somethin
g entirely outside myself. I realized later that this was an effect of sensory deprivation, and so, perhaps was what happened later, but I don’t think so. After an eternity of this floating void, I became aware of a soft shushing sound, rhythmic and soothing, like wind through the leaves, like the breath of a sleeping infant, accompanied by the faintest tympani of a soft-skinned drum. It was singular at first, an eerie, lonely sound, but then it grew weightier, as though multiple instruments were playing the same song, and then it became a mighty wave of susurration and a thunder of drums and I realized what I was hearing was their heartbeats, the pulse of their blood, and it seemed something not outside of me but a part of me; it bore me up and into it and I trembled with the sheer ecstasy of being part of them, of knowing such a sensation. The air was suffused with a perfume, no, a dozen perfumes, sweet and bitter, sharp and smooth, rich dark spices and heady chocolate notes. I could taste their scents, they flowed into me, rolled around inside my cells, filled me with euphoria and yearning and wonder, each of them unique, each a part of me. I came as close as it is possible to come to knowing what it was to be one of them; that was their gift to me. No human, having come so near to touching the face of the gods, could remain unchanged.

  And so I took the vow of fealty, I smelled the burning of my own flesh as the brand of the cross sank its mark into my neck, because that was what I was born to do, what I had been raised to do, what I had been trained to do. I belonged to them now, and forever more.