by A. F. Dery
Grace had calmed him, even as a wolf. As a man, he couldn’t even smell her here anymore.
And now she was off somewhere in the tower, alone and defenseless without him and clearly not truly understanding her situation. She couldn’t possibly, or he would not still be bound and separated from her, and the Murderer would not still be standing there perfectly free to do as he pleased.
He howled in anguish before he remembered that men do not howl. He still did not feel like a man. His skin was crawling. Everything hurt.
The Murderer did not react, did not even turn his head in his direction. In a way, he was grateful for that. He was at the Murderer’s mercy as long as he was tied to this chair.
He strained at his bonds. He longed to cry out for Grace, but the words came and went, and at present they were gone.
At last the Murderer moved towards him, stiffly, woodenly, almost like a sleepwalker. The man-who-had-been-wolf snarled, bucking in the chair against the rope that held him. It bit into his flesh. He snapped at the air angrily.
The Murderer paused at the sound.
“I’m letting you go,” he said after a moment. He sounded tired. “I don’t believe you’ll harm her, and it doesn’t matter what happens to me if she is not left alone because of it.”
The man in the chair stilled, watching the Murderer distrustfully. The words came back. “I would never harm her. But you…” His mind entertained wolf-thoughts then, thoughts of rending flesh and snapping bone, the warm sticky feel of prey-blood.
But then man-thoughts returned, remembering the look on Grace’s face as she had pressed her lips to the Murderer’s face. He could not suppress a shudder of revulsion.
“You can do as you will, it doesn’t matter now,” the Murderer repeated, but the man in the chair recognized it at once as a lie. Grace would not react well if he “did as he willed,” not until and unless he managed to convince her of what this filth really was. He did not think she was really convinced as of now. She would surely not have left him here like this, and left the Murderer free, if she fully believed him.
But the man in the chair kept silent. One does not speak to prey.
The Murderer resumed his approach, and the man watched him from under heavy lids, unable to stop the low growl building in the back of his throat when the Murderer came within arm’s reach of the chair. He seemed to ignore this. He moved past the man to the table behind him, and the man heard him fumbling clumsily with something. Shortly after he reappeared, holding a knife still stained with blood from when he’d cut himself with it.
Even though rationally, the man in him knew that the knife must be meant to cut his bonds, the wolf in him still snarled. He shook with the effort it took to not lunge once more against the coarse rope, his lips stretching back from his teeth.
The Murderer bent low, groping with his free hand until he found the knots in the rope. The man felt one loosen, then another. Eventually enough was loosened that he was able to pull the rest off of himself, scrambling away from the wobbly chair and from the Murderer with the knife. He could barely keep his feet under him. Everything around him looked so wrong, like he was having a bad dream. His body didn’t feel like his own.
“You’ve been a wolf a long time, haven’t you,” the Murderer stated more than asked. He straightened from the chair, still holding the knife, but in an almost absent way, as though he’d already forgotten about it.
The man kept his eyes on it, refusing to dignify the filth with his words.
“You sound like you aren’t moving very well, and you’re still…well, growling, I suppose…rather than speaking. Did you lose yourself when you turned into that creature?” The Murderer’s voice was surprisingly gentle, even…sympathetic.
That irritated the man. He glowered at him darkly. “I’m me, just as I’ve always been,” he spat out, his voice low and rough, before he could stop himself. As the wolf, he’d acted largely on impulse; it seemed to be a hard habit to break himself of. He cursed internally.
“It must be a hard transition to make,” the Murderer went on, as if he hadn’t heard him. But the man knew he must have. The Murderer had demonstrated very keen hearing since he and Grace had arrived at the tower, many times. “I do not envy you it. I would offer you clothing, but all I have is in the bedroom, and I think…that is probably…” His voice broke and he was silent again. His ruined eyes were suddenly wet, and he was blinking very quickly and swallowing audibly.
His distress was not as satisfying as the man had thought it would be. It was more…sad? Pathetic? than anything else. He furrowed his brow, baffled at himself.
The Murderer sank down then onto the floor, sitting against the wall by the doorway with his back against it. He pressed the heels of his hands against his sightless eyes and drew his knees to his chest.
A fragment of memory, both human and wolf, came back to the man as he witnessed this: he remembered that he had not expected the Murderer to be blind. That part had come as a surprise. It was only fitting, of course, that the Murderer should suffer in every possible way for his vile crimes, yet it still was not what he had expected.
More and more, the words were returning in an unstoppable flood. The man didn’t know how to feel about that.
If only he’d cast off the wolf then, the moment he’d recognized the Murderer for what he was, and tended Grace himself, she would not be somewhere else right now, he thought desperately. He wanted, no, needed, to go to her, to make sure she was all right. He had been vigilant on her behalf all this time. Perhaps he could make her understand that he’d stayed with her to keep her safe, because he’d recognized the Murderer for what he was, but knew Grace still needed help that he could not provide. Not as a wolf. Maybe not even as a man. His talents had never lain in medicine, after all. But now…
Now, the words left again. He was panting, bathed in sweat despite the chill in the room, wrestling with his own mind as it returned, or tried to.
“Tell me what I can do to help, before you do whatever you mean to,” the Murderer said quietly. The man looked up and saw he had not moved from where he was standing by the chair. He had not even realized he’d ever looked away. His head spun. “You’ve only tried to help her…I can’t blame you for telling her what you did. It was only the truth, and I should have told her myself before now. I was afraid she’d do something foolish, that she might try to run.”
That thought, oddly enough, had not occurred to the man before, and he stiffened. What if she did run? She would die out there. He had risked his own life every time he’d left the tower as a wolf, and he’d only done so then because the need was dire. The snow was deep and continued to fall; the pass down the mountain away from the tower, from whence Grace had come, was totally blocked, and there was no other way off that a human would be able to traverse, even if the weather cooperated.
And there were other creatures out there, far less tame than he, and far hungrier. The thought of Grace coming across one of these twisted his stomach into knots.
“I…I did not mean…but I could not watch her…” he fumbled with the words helplessly, unable to exactly convey what he was thinking.
“I know,” the Murderer said, in the same quiet tone. “And you were right. It…it was getting out of hand…it’s not something I expected.” He was silent for a moment, then suddenly he said, “I know you might not believe this, and I understand if you don’t, but I wasn’t trying to…to get her to feel sorry for me, or anything…improper. She has a kind heart, but I wasn’t trying to take advantage of that.” The man could hear the sudden confusion in the Murderer’s voice.
He’s right, I don’t believe it, he thought, very clearly. He may not have meant for it to happen, but he certainly did mean to take advantage when it did anyway. He vividly recalled seeing the Murderer raise his hands to touch her, and another growl erupted from his throat.
“I’m not...your excuses don’t matter to me, Murderer,” he hissed. “I know what I saw. I saw the look on y
our face when she was near you. Some times, I could hear your heartbeat. Deny it to yourself if you must, but don’t waste your lies on me.”
The Murderer went still again, and somehow, it seemed as though he paled even more. “You are mistaken,” he said uncertainly. “You must be. You don’t understand, it’s just that it’s been so long without anyone here…you misunderstand.”
There was a note of desperation in his voice that was strangely pleasing to the man. But even so, his thoughts drifted back to Grace, wolf-thoughts of the smell of warmth and sweetness and a hint of salt.
He tried to get to his feet, his efforts lurching and clumsy, the world tottering around him in a strange way. Everything was much…shorter…than it should have been.
“Where are you going?” the Murderer asked, tilting his head as if listening. He probably was.
“Grace,” was all the man said. He lurched to the door, nearly falling to his knees before he made it. He leaned against the doorway a moment, pressing his head against it, willing the world to stay still a minute.
“You’ll only frighten her more like that,” the Murderer said reasonably. “Perhaps you can find a blanket somewhere, or something. I know she was doing some washing down in the kitchen.” He paused. “Aren’t you…well…going to get on with it? With…what you’re going to do to me?” There was something in his voice that almost sounded like hope, and it made the man straighten his spine with new resolve.
He looked back at the blind man over his shoulder, and said slowly and clearly, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? So you wouldn’t have to live with what you’ve done anymore. So Grace would hate me for killing you. Until she’s ready for you to die, you live, you son of a bitch.”
And he stumbled his way into the hall, and to the bedroom door, without looking back again at the Murderer.
He leaned against the wall next to it, and reached over and tried the handle. The door did not budge. It was nothing more than he expected, but it still ignited a surge of fear in him. He could not see her, and through the thick wood of the door and the cold stone of the walls, could not hear her. In his present form, he could not smell her either. Although his man-mind knew she was in there, his wolf-mind howled in despair: she vanished, she’s gone!
He argued within himself, shaking and wracked with anxiety. He just needed to see her, or hear her, or something. He beat against the door with his fists, but there was no response from within.
“Grace,” he called out hoarsely. “Grace!”
Nothing. Wildly he considered going back to the Murderer: perhaps she would open the door for him, or at least answer him. But something in him just could not sink so slow. Not yet, anyway.
He pulled at the handle. He pushed as hard he could with his shoulder against the wood, but his body still ached horribly from the transformation he’d just undergone, and he knew his strength was not what it should have been. There was only so much he could stand. A wordless cry left his lips as he dropped to his knees on the floor before it. He pressed his ear to the wood from where he knelt, and still heard nothing. In desperation he flattened his cheek against the floor, by the narrow crack underneath of it, and inhaled as deeply as he could, but he could smell nothing.
Again the wolf howled. He started scratching at the door with his hands, splinters burying themselves in his flesh before he realized brokenly what he was doing.
Groaning in pain and anxiety, the battle within himself between man and wolf raged on.
It was hard for Grace to determine, as she sat on the bed staring at the barricaded door, what had been the most unnerving part about the past few hours: the conspicuously wolf-like howling and whimpering that came from the other side of the door, despite Grace’s certain knowledge that there was no longer any such creature in the tower, or the eerie silence that had persisted for at least the last hour or two.
The wolf- or man- was not just quiet: there was no noise she could detect at all. No shifting about, no fidgeting, no panting, no movement. No sound. At one point she went closer to the door, straining to listen, but still, there was nothing.
It did not surprise her that Hadrian had freed him. Her heart ached whenever she thought of him. If he had not admitted to his misdeeds himself, she never would have been able to believe it, but even with his admission, there was some part of her that just couldn’t accept it. A murderer of hundreds would not have freed his accuser. The more she pondered it, the more incredible it all seemed.
Is it possible for people to change that much? Grace wondered, rubbing at her eyes. Maybe he was very different once. What does that mean for him now?
She didn’t want to see him suffer, but justice surely had some claim on him. One couldn’t simply forget the murder of one person, never mind hundreds. His depression made sense to her now. She couldn’t believe it was only about losing his sight.
And he tried to comfort me when I told him about running from the warlord, Grace mused, remembering the feel of his lips on her skin and flushing. No wonder he called me innocent.
Then again, for all she knew, she was responsible for her entire village being torched. Whatever Hadrian said, she could not ignore the fact that she would have been the catalyst for whatever retribution the warlord may have exacted. How was she to live with that? Should she die for it? If not, why not? Should Hadrian die for what he had done?
It’s not my place to decide these things. It’s not the wolf’s - er, that man’s, either. The magistrates exist for a reason, she decided. I don’t even know the circumstances. She couldn’t even imagine what those circumstances could have been.
She thought back to what the wolf-man had said about Hadrian killing his brother and blanched. What if he had tried to avenge his brother when Hadrian freed him? He would have just stood there. He would have let the wolf-man do whatever he wanted. She was sure of it. Would he have even cried out? He wanted to die. The bottle of poison was proof enough of that.
She hurried to her feet and unbarricaded the door as quietly as she could, not wanting to alert the wolf-man if he was on the other side. She grabbed the poker from the fireplace and cautiously lifted the bar from the door, then cracked it open gently, peering out.
No one was there.
She opened the door a little wider, looking around cautiously. There was nothing and no one to be seen. The hall was empty. The door to the work room stood open, but from her vantage point she could see no one in the room. She pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped out in the hall. A smear of red caught her eyes; the bottom of the outside of the door was splintered and bloody. She recalled the scratching sounds she’d heard shortly after locking herself in and swallowed hard.
Clinging to the poker, she moved warily to the work room and took a closer look around. No one was there. The chair she had bashed the wolf-man with was empty, surrounded by cut rope. Not that there had been any doubt that he was free now.
She didn’t see Hadrian anywhere, but she also didn’t see any evidence he had come to harm. Yet.
She went back in the hall and tried to think of where he might have gone. She had not seen him in any room other than the bedroom and the work room up here. The other two rooms were, as far as she could tell, never occupied. One was filled with odds and ends of old furniture, moldy books, and general clutter. The dust had been so thick on everything when she’d ventured in that everything had appeared gray, as though leeched of all color. The other room had a large hole high up in the exterior wall, and drifts of snow had blown in through it. If anything else was in the room, she did not, could not, see it.
There was the kitchen downstairs, of course; she knew he had gone in there, before she’d gotten back on her feet. He’d avoided it for the most part once she was mobile, but maybe he had gone down seeking a warmer room. The bedroom had been the warmest room apart from it. She felt a twinge of guilt for locking him out.
He’s a murderer, she rebuked herself sternly, but her heart wasn’t in it. She went back to the bed
room for the lantern, lit it, and then with the lantern in one hand and the poker in the other, she made her way carefully down the stairs.
She was accustomed to them now, or as accustomed as anyone could ever get to them. It had been some time since she’d had to take breaks along the way to rest, and she now had a good idea of just how long they really were, which was reassuring. She could never quite get used to how dark it was, though, and her knuckles turned white on the lantern’s handle.
Once downstairs, she crept as quietly as she could to the kitchen. The door was standing open and orange light spilled out into the landing.
She could see nothing from the doorway, so she took a deep breath and went inside, looking around as she did.
She did not see Hadrian, but she did see the wolf-man once she was just past the entrance way. He was sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the back door, his shaggy blond head in his hands.
The moment she saw him, he looked up with startled dark eyes and saw her, as if he had somehow heard her approach.
“Grace,” he croaked at once, but didn’t move. His eyes fell to the poker in her hands. “You don’t need that. I’ll protect you.”
“It’s not for Hadrian,” Grace said darkly, narrowing her eyes. “If he meant to hurt me, he would have by now, I should think.”
“You can’t know that…but the same could be said for me,” the man rasped. His speech was halting, as though he had to stop and think to piece the words together.
“Perhaps it could. But while Hadrian may not have told me about what he had done, he didn’t hide his true nature from me, either. I believe the Hadrian I’ve gotten to know is the same Hadrian who killed those people. There’s a lot I don’t know yet, but I don’t believe for a moment that he was pretending to be someone else all this time. You, on the other hand…”