Sebastian remained reluctant of these words. With Tulcea, it wasn’t too late to have the things he wanted, even as the hunter’s acknowledgment of an afterlife brought relief.
“Help.” It fell past his lips in a whisper that Garrick leaned in to hear.
The hunter tapped the phial.
“How?”
“In your dreams…because there’s nothing left of her body. She comes at you from the beyond, and that’s where we have to go.”
Timothy had returned. Sebastian saw him over the hunter’s shoulder. He came no further than the doorway and shuffled his weight from one foot to the other.
“This will not be easy,” Garrick said. “The things you will dream are much worse than what haunts you now.”
“I think I would rather wait for Constanta,” Sebastian said. “That way you can leave me to recuperate while…”
“You will not see tomorrow’s sun unless it is done now.”
Garrick reached back across the room and beckoned for the kid.
“What do you need me to do?” Timothy asked.
“The two of us will go under,” Garrick fished through his satchel and pulled another phial from it. He clasped it in his fist and Sebastian couldn't see its color. “We will be vulnerable to this world. You will have to guard us until I can deliver Sebastian from the beyond.”
“What’s in this?” Sebastian said, holding the bottle to the bedside candle.
“You’ll love it. More refreshing than the pish-flavored gin you haul around.”
“What is it, Garrick?”
“It’ll make your dreams more lucid. She will be upon you as soon as you slip under so I need to be there. I will go into the next room and take this. If we do it the other way…you could be dead before I can find you.”
“Okay.”
Garrick nodded and hurried from the room as Sebastian took the phial to his lips and tilted the glass. It tasted sour, staining his tongue with something like acidic chalk.
He swallowed it and fell back to the pillow, looking to the kid for some last-minute assurance. Timothy’s cheeks were stained beat red, his eyes swollen. It was the face of a man who’d just stabbed his friend through the heart.
Sebastian knew then what they’d done.
He wanted to question it. Ask why the deception. But he knew the answer. There was no way to separate the hag from his soul. He couldn’t even feel betrayed. He only hoped it was quick.
His throat burned, and then the fire spread to his chest.
Garrick reappeared in the doorway, looking almost as solemn.
When Sebastian closed his eyes, he saw her face, lording right over his. Close enough that strands of oily hair brushed across his eyes. He opened them again and continued to feel her touch, and her lips. Her tongue slithered inside his ear, whispering unholy promises he prayed would never come to pass.
The poison worked fast, but dying didn’t come soon enough. The men he put in early graves got off easier than this. Was this penance for deciding the fates of so many?
A coughing fit took hold and his tongue tasted blood. With speech gone, he hoped his eyes would say to Timothy what his constricting throat could not. Sebastian needed him to know that this was the right decision. In some ways, he was proud of the kid for going along with what needed to be done.
He’s grown into his own, whether he knows it or not.
Tulcea wanted to use his flesh to step back into this world. Sebastian was glad they had bested her.
He tried to smile at the thought and hoped the kid would read it as shorthand for peace of mind. Only Timothy wasn’t looking at him anymore. His neck was craned, his face registered disbelief.
Sebastian’s vision was going. His eyes lost focus but they hurried across the room, reaching Garrick in time to see the hunter plop to his knees, an axe hilt embedded in his head so deep that his skull was split open like a cantaloupe.
The witch-finder’s face smashed the floor and his brains skidded across it like spilt water from a mop bucket.
Behind him, the raven-haired wolf woman they had tried so hard to kill stepped into the room.
There was a witch’s laughter in his head as his vision darkened and his body shook. He felt rotted hands sliding across him while her thighs tightened around his hips. He was sinking into oblivion now, and with his own personal guide to hell.
He slipped from life knowing they had failed.
***
Elisabeth could hardly believe her luck when she saw it was the familiar one on the receiving end of her axe. Finally, fate twisted in her favor. A laugh skipped from her throat, but it was more a startled reflex than anything else.
Rot, you bastard.
He goes to his grave with all the dignity of a common victim. One she might swipe out of boredom or for pleasure. She knew that every man died the same, but to see this one go so easily, with spilt bowels dampening his trousers as he crashed to the floor, was a startling reminder.
This moment didn’t allow her to rest on laurels. She stormed into the room as the wolf inside her growled a sudden surge of confidence. The animal was propelled outward by the murder of her deadliest foe, black fur swallowing her skin as the desire for fresh meat became too insatiable to ignore.
Elisabeth’s stomach rippled, a startling, uncontrollable transformation upon her. She tried holding it back, thinking she was too vulnerable if she changed in the middle of close quarters battle. Undeterred wolf bones pushed up through her moon-kissed flesh. The time wasn’t right, but her human protests vanished beneath commanding growls.
Two of her prey remained. One convulsed beneath bed sheets, his arms and legs lifted and fell, as if controlled by marionette strings. Foam bubbled around his mouth and poured past his lips with a mixture of blood.
As good as dead.
That left only one, and not for much longer.
Survivor lifted his gun, but the space between them was short. Her hand, a contradictory display of human forearm spearheaded by a wolf paw, knifed through the air and clasped around the barrel. She yanked it toward the ceiling as he squeezed off a shot. Silver shards exploded into the beams overhead and wood splinters rained down.
Elisabeth shrieked and pulled the gun away, leaving his hands open and then fumbling for another means of defense.
Survivor looked as though he were about to cry, tucking his head into his shoulder and pushing through shattering window glass. His body went horizontally through the pane and tilted toward the village street below.
The wolf lunged, attempting to catch him. His boot heels slipped through her claws. The incoming wolf filled the air with a howl of frustration as she gave pursuit, diving between the glass teeth and hurtling toward the ground.
She smashed atop him and rolled aside. Her torso stretched out, her thighs becoming muscular hinds.
Survivor stood. A rivet of blood dribbled from his hairline and streaked his face like war paint. True to his look, he unsheathed his blade and came at her. She parried his thrust but he adopted a defensive stance.
Quick for his kind!
He pivoted on his heels and turned, preparing for her counter-attack.
She barked and dropped to all fours. One final surge tore through her and chased away the last relics of humanity, leaving the wolf to circle him with ready forefeet. Her claws were prepared to lash out the moment he dropped his guard.
But he didn’t. He hurled the silver dagger forward, blade-first. The wolf snarled and hopped out of the way. It gave him all the time he needed to dash off down the cobblestone. Survivor could never hope to outrun her, but this was what she’d expected him to do all along. They always tried running.
He ran straight for the smoldering tavern and disappeared through the smoke-filled doorframe.
The stone street was unforgiving on her claws as she skidded to a stop. Her toes swelled as her nails scraped the riveted pavement.
The fire had run its course, but lit embers remained alive on the largest pieces of bro
ken and fallen wood. Throbbing and intense heat kept the wolf at instinctual distance. She swiveled her head one way, and then the other. Survivor was nowhere that she could see. The second story had collapsed, restricting his movements and creating a smoldering impasse.
The wolf worked up the courage to step to the fire at last, driven by urges of hunger and retaliation. Her form was so large that squeezing through the doorframe took a swell of effort. When her shoulders got through, she searched the air for his smell.
From the darkest pool of consciousness, Elisabeth fought to get her human rationale heard. Don’t do this, she cried, feeling as though her implorations were being offered to a brick wall. If the beast hadn’t forced her slender human frame away, she could’ve followed him inside and ended this.
Let me come back. That thought reverberated through her mind as if she’d shouted it from the bottom of a well.
The wolf’s ears flexed, but the dwindling blaze of popping wood drowned out the other ambient noises. Her reliable snout returned charred wood, and long rotted, now burnt, flesh.
However many parasites had burned up in here, it wasn’t enough.
The wolf pulled away from the doorframe and circled the building. A stairwell led into a cellar out back. She crawled the stone steps and took cautious sniffs. Survivor could’ve been waiting on the other side of the door, but his escape options were limited. She could wait him out if need be. If he opted for cowardice, he would burn to death or die by smoke. Not the most satisfying vengeance, though his death was what mattered.
Elisabeth hurried back to the street and stretched out on it. The stone was cool against her undercoat, balancing the heat from the fire. In another life, this would’ve been a beautiful and tranquil sight. The blaze’s glow was warm and relaxing. Low, deep rumbles were the only noises filling the quiet morning sky.
The wolf yawned and dropped her muzzle between her front paws, eyeing the door with a singular recurring thought.
Food.
Elisabeth’s human rationale reached out once more, but there was no reasoning to be done. The animal had been away for too long; her hunger was unrequited. She didn’t trust the wolf to her own devices. Not against someone who’d annihilated so many of their kind.
She flashed Nightfall across the wolf’s brain. How these men and their weapons had nearly taken her life.
Do you want to feel that again? She screamed out. These efforts were exhausting and the wolf grew irritated with them. It was an argument Elisabeth couldn’t hope to win. So she changed up her thought process, accepting that Survivor would be eaten and that, yes, he’d make a delectable meal.
There was no argument there. The wolf and Elisabeth had fallen out of step, and they needed to find common ground once more.
Both of them wanted this one dead. Toying with Survivor could be the best way to get back in touch with the animal. Why rush this? The familiar one and the old man were gone, leaving a single boy to suffer her wrath. This was about more than flesh and blood, despite the wolf’s instinctual motivation.
Hunger and vengeance didn’t have to be separate goals. Her thoughts and the wolf’s could harmonize within this shared space.
Make him fear you, she thought. Terror was exquisite when absorbed into the flesh. Let him soak in that before moving in for the kill. Remember how much better this meat is once it’s been basted in panic.
The wolf considered this, along with all the examples of it that she’d encountered over the years. She paused, and for a moment, Elisabeth saw an opportunity to climb out of the abyss and help steer.
Her influence over the animal was suddenly winning.
Last Man Standing
Timothy heard the wolf pushing through the warped doorframe. He crouched inside the stairwell, trapped. What should’ve led to a second story was now a gaping hole beneath the sky. The steps overlooked spilt rubble and broken wood spread across the first floor.
He crossed himself but chided the useless gesture as soon as he was finished. He wouldn’t go running back to the Bible now.
They won’t have that satisfaction.
His mother had read that book to him when he was a boy. Regaled by nightmarish stories of avenging angels, demonic possessions and a merciless God, there was precious little in there for him to appreciate. It was a horror show, and his impressionable mind glommed onto the death and misery of it all, leaving him worried about superstitious gestures and wrathful spirits. Looking over his proverbial shoulder each time he did anything less than pious, wondering if the holy ruler might deem his blasphemy enough for punishment.
If mother hadn’t been murdered, she might’ve been able to iron those fears out, straightening his hesitation into lessons to be carried throughout his days. Then again, Timothy wanted to believe that no matter his upbringing, he would’ve recognized the church and its teachings for what they were: another way for society to control its people.
It was terrifying to think now that those stories, at least some of them, might’ve been more than that.
You cannot deny all that you’ve seen, as much as you would like to.
Timothy resented his logic turning against him like this.
The wolf rattled around in the doorway like a caged animal, and Timothy gripped Sebastian’s flintlock pistol in his palm. Wide eyes glared down the barrel sight with itchy reflexes.
It became clear that the wolf could come no further. He followed the stone steps as high as they went, lifting his head into the naked air. When the roof had fallen, part of the outer wall had gone with it. From here, he could reach for the windowsill across the narrow alley.
Timothy had almost no energy in the reserve coming out of tonight’s battle. He spent every last drop to lift his weight up onto the opposing building’s window and grab for the slanted roof.
Delivered from the immediacy of harm, he lay across the sloped shingles and gasped for breath while peering over the ledge. The animal was stretched across the cobblestone in front of the tavern. Her rich black fur made her look like a gigantic pulsing shadow—a bottomless hole in the middle of Rodica’s street.
The air up here stung. It was filled with cooked flesh and smoky wood, a combination that confused the wolf’s sense of smell. Not to the point where Raven would think him gone, but plenty sufficient to obscure his trail.
He needed all the help he could get because he wasn’t making it back to Constanta with a varcolac nipping at his back.
How the hell am I supposed to do this?
Contemplating life without Sebastian brought no pleasure. The old man had done everything for him. He’d plucked an urchin child off the street before the local orphanage could capture him and cultivate his malaise. Timothy remembered seeing the cold, iron-wrought fences on countless occasions while under Sebastian’s supervision. Forsaken faces looked out on free London, defined only by the tragedies that had led them there.
Sebastian Miles had done a good bit more than rescue him from noble incarceration, though. He’d afforded him the opportunity to hunt the men who left Mum raped and bleeding. Presented the eleven-year-old child with a choice upon finding those butchers: kill them now, yourself, or risk the Queen’s justice.
Even then, Timothy had never been controlled by requital. Such notions were outdated, and if society was to rise above them, he’d have to practice his beliefs hard and strong. Knowing that he must lead by example if he were to change minds, he’d chosen to turn those savages over to the law, hoping that a civilized world might tame even the harshest of souls.
The important thing was that Sebastian had allowed him the choice. Rather than shape his young mind into a jaded copy, the old man had demanded he remain true to himself.
That was the most generous thing anyone had ever done for him.
Timothy was not inherently violent, not when they killed Mum and seldom during the days that followed. That changed when they faced down Evan’s killers. All he could think of then was the way his friend had dropped face down into tha
t ditch, a glass shiv jutting from his ear canal. In that moment, he’d been glad to squeeze the trigger.
It was right after, when there was nothing in the air save for swirling gun smoke, while pools of blood formed around his boots, that he felt corrupted.
Violence was a tool for the powerless. The real answer was to be a harbinger of change. Make the world a better place for all. If this attitude made him naive, so be it. He still believed in it, even as he glared at the wolf and felt insurmountable hatred for it, or her, whatever. The need to kill might’ve been worse now than on that midnight road facing down Evan’s murderers, but paralyzing terror prevented action. He resented himself for it.
He swore that he’d hunt this beast to the brink of extinction. His blood became incalescent with every image that flashed into the mind’s eye: her death at the tip of his blade, or her brains blown out through the top of her skull. So many possibilities, each a satisfying conclusion to this story.
Garrick might’ve been proud.
When the hunter had taken him aside earlier to tell him that Sebastian was already dead, and had been that way since allowing the hag to take possession of him, Timothy was appalled by his proposition.
“If we do not kill him tonight,” Garrick had said. “The hag will take his body and return to this world.”
There was no hope for his mentor, apparently. Garrick had asked Timothy to be complacent in Sebastian’s demise, assuring him that the poison would at least set the thief-taker to rest.
“His soul was gone the second she slipped inside of him. You will not wish to see what happens if she takes him completely.”
Garrick’s pleas were bona fide, and Timothy knew deep down that this was a merciful action. He’d watched his old friend suffer, entranced during the days following the mine. That didn’t make the decision any easier. Fighting side-by-side with Sebastian in the tavern onslaught, Timothy had been tempted to slash his throat, ending things quickly, but he couldn’t find the necessary savagery within him to do it.
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