DEVIL’S ROW

by Serafini, Matt

  Blood ran from her severed appendage and she whirled on her feet to start another awkward climb. When she reached the next landing, she saw two vertical openings in the tower, but the wolf was far too large to get through them.

  Then she saw the grappling hooks wedged into the stone ledges and realized that she hadn’t yet won.

  Death bellowed from above, coming in the guise of an axe blade slicing through her shoulder. The crusader’s feet hit the wooden landing just after she felt the pain, but there was no time to face him. Another one rushed down the stairs and shot her. The silver pellet missed her eye and broke through her cheek, decimating her vision. Her eye dimmed and barely saw.

  She took him in her fist and lifted him off the floor. His gun fired again and the silver landed directly beneath the first shot. Blood splattered across her rippled snout and stung her good eye. The wolf roared her displeasure as he shot again, screaming as he pulled the trigger. The next pellet hit her mouth, exiting through the back of it.

  The sound of a body dropping from behind them—

  She couldn’t afford to look any more than she could suffer another shot, pulling the trigger-happy assassin against her shoulder with such force that the jutting, embedded blade broke through his forehead. He dangled off her like a fleshy piece of armor, and she whirled to face the last of them.

  He was sprawled across the ground, a silver pellet blown through the top of his head, taken by friendly fire.

  Elisabeth dropped, exhausted. The fire hadn’t yet eaten its way up here, though it seemed to be picking up momentum. She could hurl herself over the railing and hope the drop didn’t cripple her, only there was no water to break her fall this time.

  She couldn’t say for certain what happened to an immune wolf if she spattered, and didn’t wish to find out.

  Let me return, Elisabeth thought, calling her attention to the grappling hooks. She expected the wolf to balk at this suggestion, but it was embraced, almost immediately.

  The beast pushed the dangling human shield from her body and lifted the axe free. Then she closed her good eye and looked to her human form to finish this.

  ***

  It was hard to feel hopeful about anything.

  Timothy’s head thumped from being smashed—the only way they’d been able to get him inside this cell. The back of his cranium swelled. A tender mound grew beneath his hair, raw to the touch. It prompted the kind of pain that ignited whenever he moved his head or rolled his eyes. If he did anything besides stare whichever way his head was already aimed, it was a crippling migraine.

  It was also the least of his problems.

  The cell was a closet. His legs were tight and he was desperate to stretch them. The space was so confined that he couldn’t move but a sliver’s length in any direction. Because he couldn’t do it, he suddenly needed to do it. It was like standing in an upright coffin. Maybe it was just as well that he got a head start on his fate. He was tired of running.

  Salih looked at him through the tiny window of grey bars. His voice talked tough, but there was remorse in his eyes. He took no pleasure in this interrogation. “If you have nothing to hide, we’ll discover the truth soon enough.”

  “It happened as I said!” Timothy’s voice was a roar. The wrong move, he knew. Salih would read it as desperation and think that captivity was getting to him. The truth was that Sebastian had taught him to withstand worse than this. The only thing bothering him was the idea of being caged when an unstoppable wolf ran loose.

  Timothy’s heart pounded as he thought of Raven, but Salih seemed tired of his pleas.

  “Look,” the scribe snapped. “No one wants to travel to Rodica, but that was all I could arrange to prevent your execution. The warders will not believe your story. Many of them have killed for less. Understand where I am coming from.”

  Timothy did. He hated it, but the position was clear. He had to remain cramped in here until daybreak. He tried relaxing some, encouraged somewhat by the positive side of Salih’s words. He’d apparently stuck his neck out past what was customary. If the roles were reversed, Timothy wondered if he would’ve done the same and gave the thought a toss when the answer depressed him. He pleaded with Salih to keep careful watch. “Because the Raven will come,” he said.

  Someone’s entrance to the cellar chamber was signaled by a thunderous slam of the door. Timothy couldn’t see the new arrival from where he stood, but Salih, who’d leaned against a table across the way, leapt to his feet with startled reflexes. His body language was rigid as he looked toward the stairs, but his shoulders soon relaxed and his weapon hand fell with them.

  “The wolf is here. The belfry burns but she refuses to die!”

  Salih threw Timothy a revelatory glance that might’ve been validating any other time. He shuffled against the wall on worn legs, too nervous to speak. Once the words found the courage, he blurted, “I can help.”

  The scribe fumbled with the locking mechanism while the warder hurried past, moving into a different room. “I am going to open this,” Salih whispered.

  Timothy nodded with so much eagerness that it was nearly a seizure.

  “But you will not help us. You will run.”

  “How can I run if she is upstairs?”

  The warder returned with a pile of weaponry in his arms, a mixture of long and short ranges. The types of things they’d thrown at her on that mountain. Garrick’s plan had only made her angry.

  “He doesn’t run,” the warder said in an accent nearly as thick as Salih’s. “He fights beside us.”

  “This is not his fight,” Salih said. “Someone must know what happened here.” He edged the cell door open. It creaked and Timothy nearly tumbled from the crevice.

  The scribe was wrong about this not being his fight, it was his more than theirs, but Timothy wouldn’t argue this time. The inclination to do so wasn’t even there. If there was a chance he could get away from this mess, he was taking it. His mind was a canal floating that single concern. This wasn’t yet over. The bitch hadn’t yet won. The maimed vision of his future didn’t have to come to pass—

  The warder’s hand trembled as he loaded a pistol with silver pellets. He might’ve taken an oath on behalf of his order, but his robes, perhaps dignified on their best day, were lathered in soot and accented with crimson lashes. His eyes were soaked and his lip quivered. A man who didn’t want to die, but whose pledge held greater sway than his survival.

  Salih slipped a gun into Timothy’s hand and helped him across the room. He opened a wooden door and they overlooked a descending stairwell.

  “Go,” Salih said. “Now.”

  Timothy took a few steps and then recalled the last time this man had opened a door for him.

  Sensing his reluctance, Salih came onto the landing with him and closed the door.

  “They would’ve killed you if not for her,” he said. “Your trust could never be proven to their satisfaction. I’m sorry I lied, but the order was never going to allow you to leave here.”

  Timothy had questions, but none were as pressing as the need to defend his life. He thought about urging them to come along. Surely, they were stronger in a group of three, although it hadn’t helped Sebastian and Garrick. He started down the stairs and looked back once more. Salih was about to turn, but caught Timothy’s motion and froze.

  “You will die.” Timothy had meant this as a question, though it came out as a declaration. Probably more accurate.

  Salih nodded. His forced smile couldn’t hide the horror in his eyes—a man walking willingly to his grave. “If we must die, then we do it while upholding the order, so that we may go to the next life in honor.”

  For a moment, Timothy was compelled to hold his ground and fight. He owed these men nothing, and didn’t mourn their fallen, but this would never end while Raven lived. The three of them may be able to put her down once and for all.

  “No,” Salih said, sensing his reconsideration. “You don’t understand. No one can know we exist.
If Garrick truly drafted you for help, know that he intended to kill you at the end of it.”

  Garrick’s frosty demeanor and silver-bladed cruelty made sense at last. Sebastian told him once of the things he’d caught the warder doing to the prisoner wolves in Freywald. A few weeks later came Ritter’s cold-blooded murder, and then Sebastian’s poisoning.

  To which you agreed.

  “He will die humanely,” Garrick had said in the hallway of that inn. “Without pain.”

  So the witch-finder had wanted him to die there. Less of a mess to clean up later. He must’ve figured that Constanta was close enough to reach with just one man, saving at least one bullet for Timothy’s skull.

  Sebastian could’ve been saved, then.

  He wanted to ask Salih for confirmation, but now wasn’t the time for an alchemy discussion. The answer was known in his gut, and Timothy would go to his grave knowing that he could’ve prevented his friend’s death.

  That thought stuck him like a blade to the heart.

  He took a few more steps until he was far outside the cone of torchlight, eager to leave these fools to their crumbling crusade.

  I hope she kills you both.

  Then he was moving through the dark.

  Alone again.

  ***

  Elisabeth came into the church, stepping over the splintered door that the wolf had earlier smashed. She was so broken and torn that she could only shuffle her feet in the slightest forward motion. Anything more and her body threatened to stop then and there.

  She dug silver pellets from her face with cracked nails as she staggered past the pews. Her body was ripped, painted red with still-spilling blood. The palms of her hands bled from rope burns accrued from her tower descent.

  Somehow, those hurt the most.

  The curved bell tower entrance looked like a roaring fireplace. The heat tickled her from here and she sauntered away from it, shambling beneath the Stations of the Cross to avoid it. The back of her throat burned where a silver pellet had torn a hole, though every shot had missed her vitals. She tried to laugh but her damaged tongue made a mushy noise much closer to a chicken’s cluck.

  The hallway off from the altar led to the priest’s bedchamber. She dragged her feet inside, searching for unwanted surprises, such as additional bodies that could flank her as she entered the down chamber.

  The room was sparsely decorated. A bed tucked into the corner wearing a tangled sheet, with a small crucifix nailed into the wall beam above. His dresser housed different vestments and cassocks, and was devoid of any personality.

  A bottle of alcohol sat on the floor near the bed. It took every bit of strength to reach it. Its pointed stench stabbed upward through her nostrils. Very assuring. This would do nicely. She lifted it to her face and let the contents bathe her.

  Every cut and wound cried out at once, but relief quickly washed the irritation away.

  She then passed through the stone hallway’s other ingress, finding the winding stairwell she knew would be here. Every rat had a hole. It descended into cool, musty confines and she stopped at the bottom, in front of the wooden entrance. Her heart trundled, a feeling that she resented, as she stared at the door with hazy vision. She struggled with clipped breaths and tried summoning her senses to understand what waited beyond it.

  She pushed in and her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness. The torches had only now been extinguished. They were still smoky and cooling as she shut the door behind her. Her pupils enlarged in the blackness to cover the front of her eyes. Without ambient light, her vision was as useless as theirs was, or nearly so.

  Her wolf’s ears would lead her right to them, though, for there was no trouble finding their shallow breaths in this plunging blackness. Two men, both positioned at the back of the room, tried their best at silence, despite tense bodies and terror spilling off them like sweat.

  Elisabeth guessed they were counting on her advance. Her knees bumped against a table and her hands fell atop it. She traced the length while moving, searching for its edge. Once her fingers dropped off the side, she ran her toes along the floor until they brushed against steel.

  A leg-hold trap.

  It prompted a smile. This was cunning, almost commendable. The fools had chosen to make their final stand. They might’ve snared her if she’d been just a little less hurt and a little more eager.

  She went to her right and found another table that extended across the middle of the room and to the wall. Their hope was to funnel her right through the center, but Elisabeth got to her knees and crawled beneath the blockade.

  The back of the room rustled. They knew their trap hadn’t worked.

  Chairs were pushed in against the table, barring her exit. If she moved any of them, she was tipping them to her approach. She couldn’t sustain any more damage without losing consciousness, and that couldn’t happen while she was in the belly of the beast. They surely had the means to lock her away forever, and would do much worse to her body in the process.

  Elisabeth considered those atrocities. It wouldn’t be the first time supposedly good men harbored more cruelty than the allegedly evil ones. The memories returned to her without warning, as they were wont to do. The way sick men, crusaders, struck her mother down with sadistic laughter. How they took pleasure in eradicating her village, burning away lives like they were nothing more than piles of dried brush.

  How they’d orated their pent lusts in her ear while forcing her to march—too stunned to understand what was happening.

  A burst of strength from the wolf took her. It came as simple as a flexing muscle, and Elisabeth pushed upward with a growl. Her back rippled and the table rushed up to greet the ceiling. It smashed and tumbled somewhere behind her. The wolf’s snarl pulled from her damaged throat and was somewhat hollow as she strode forward in the chaos, sending the chairs scattering in every direction so that her approach couldn’t be pinpointed.

  Her body was stuffed with too much silver for anything beyond a momentary surge, and the wolf went whimpering into her subconscious once more.

  But it was enough. She’d managed to breach their last-ditch blockade, catching a whiff of Survivor as she stomped forward with one of the chairs in hand. He wasn’t among those here, but was close by. Her booze-drenched nostrils burned with him as her arms wound back, raking the chair legs along the ceiling.

  She hoped the noise was unexpected enough to startle them.

  Elisabeth caught a shifting shadow, and she moved wide with the chair while his outline craned to follow the sound. With a roar, she slammed it down and dropped him chin first. She fell onto his back as the chair broke apart, and she was tugging and twisting his hair and then his head, searching for that satisfying crack. It finally came, signaling that he’d bother her no more.

  This caused the other man to retreat against the wall, his fear leading her straight to him. Dark skinned and drenched in panic, his face broke into tears as she shoved her now ghastly visage into his.

  “Shhhhh,” she whispered. Her voice was too damaged to say anything more. Her fingers slid down the length of his arm to his wrist, and finally, his hand. She slipped the dagger from his grip, closing her hand around it.

  The blade cut into him and he crashed against her, his stomach splitting and then spilling. The center of his sternum broke and cracked like a walnut. He slipped down her blood-wet body until he was motionless on the floor.

  Elisabeth took the time to recover her breath. It was no less labored, although she felt relieved to be rid of these men, even if satisfaction continued to elude her.

  After some fumbling, she found a plate of matches on a table and used them to reignite a few of the torches.

  The opposite end of the hall housed a small antechamber. Torch in hand, she stepped inside. An iron door sat on the wall beyond it. A planning room with a row of empty seats.

  She shrugged it off and returned her attention to the corner desk. It housed several rolls of parchment, many scribbled in an unin
telligible language that she’d never seen. A few bound books offered the same language, and a map of the Carpathian Mountains was stained heavily with black ink.

  These men were searching for something and eliminating areas where it was not by marking them off with a black x.

  Castle Daciana.

  The implication made her nervous. How could they know of its existence? What other knowledge did they possess? There was no time to find out. The church was burning by now, and others would be here soon. She held the torch to the books and papers so that they would join the bell tower in flames.

  Elisabeth stepped back into the main hall. The door beside her was an empty cell, and she stared at it in disbelief. His overpowering scent broke on her again and again.

  He was here. Now he’s gone.

  Beneath her, the dark-skinned man groaned. His will to live was impressive.

  Anger and frustration filled her. The joy of murder, of painting this bloody masterpiece, was offset by Survivor’s evasion. She knelt beside the wounded man and her muscles shifted. Something about this easy kill goaded the wolf. She loosened her body and the sensation went away. As much as it hurt to do so, she was going to have to speak to this one.

  “Where?” Her words were quiet and jagged.

  The man tried to speak but a glob of red came bubbling past his lips.

  “I will end your suffering if you tell me.”

  He was only capable of more gurgles.

  His organs were coiled on the floor between his legs. Elisabeth stirred them with her hand. In a better mood, she might’ve giggled while doing so, because the look on his face was so stupid. So helpless and pathetic. She watched his eyes tilt toward the back of his head. The noise that followed was a death rattle.

  “Not yet.” She gave him a harsh slap across his face. It was enough to make his eyes flip back to normal, though any ability to focus was long gone. Her hand moved inside the runny moisture of his opened cavity.

  His insides were warm against her wrist and her eyes refused to waver. Every exploratory motion made him wince in a different way, an amazing, empowering sight.