Only the Moon Howls

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Only the Moon Howls Page 26

by Connie Senior


  Liszka and Bela had not defended him only to have him abandon them. He would see to it that they had futures, both of them, and Grigore, too—but just what futures, he couldn’t imagine. Even now, after all these years, he didn’t know if his kind belonged in the city, or even whether they were human. Which was more of a lie, his time at the university, or his greater number of years as Lupeni Alpha of the Transylvanian Alps?

  He sat up on his blanket and moved closer to Liszka, who had probably kicked him in her sleep. He wondered if all couples had this bed-hog problem. “Are you all right?” he asked Bela gently, hating himself for the trite phrase, always somehow embarrassed when people were injured or ill.

  The boy growled noncommittally and finally turned his red and feverish face to Caleb, showing the only emotion he was really good at. “Kill him,” he snarled.

  Caleb was startled, but realized when Liszka growled approvingly that it had been her idea.

  “You warned him,” she said angrily, though with no surprise. “You told him who we were, and described us, and he tried to kill us.”

  She hadn’t been there to hear the description, and the fact that she trusted him so implicitly made Caleb feel even worse. It was true that he had tried to make Alexandru understand how much the white wolf and her young black companion meant to him. He was horribly dismayed that the old wizard hadn’t been able to subdue them without hurting them, but he was sure Alexandru would apologize and make amends. Something must have happened by accident, something he had missed or forgotten. Most likely he had mistaken Bela for Vlad.

  Caleb was formulating a reply for the glowering Liszka when there was a loud metallic scrape at the door of their prison, and the sound of muttered spells. Liszka pulled both Bela and Caleb closer to her. Grigore awoke and came to huddle on Caleb’s other side, blinking with sleepy fear.

  Alexandru strode into the room, neatly sidestepping the pool of Bela’s blood. “Ah, I see all but one of you survived,” he said cheerily. “Good. I’m having Mihail brew some Poultice Potion now, so you’ll be useful when the vampires arrive.”

  In a split second, all of his excuses for this human fell to pieces in Caleb’s brain. Alexandru could see the blood, he could see that Bela could barely sit up and that all of them were dazed with grief and pain—and “useful”? “All but one,” as if Vlad were the equivalent of one of Caleb’s pack?

  Caleb was furious. The fact that he had no words to express his bonds to Liszka and Bela made it all the worse. If he derided Alexandru for injuring his wife and son, it would make no sense to the old wizard, for by human laws they were not. His mate and pup? Even worse, when what angered him was being treated like an animal.

  Then Alexandru walked calmly over to the levers and moved to reset the traps.

  There was only one thing Caleb could say, and that was a low, angry growl that would have made any listener wonder whether he had transformed back.

  His growl was not alone. It was almost inaudible, in fact, over those of the other Fives. Beside him, Liszka tensed as if preparing to spring.

  “Don’t touch that.” Caleb knew where his loyalties would lie if Alexandru attacked Liszka. “Don’t you dare.”

  The old wizard turned, and regarded the wolf pack with a stony face that betrayed nothing. But he took his hand off the lever and backed out of the room, magically locking the door behind him.

  “You see?” Liszka demanded. “Kill him.”

  Caleb stood up to follow Alexandru, but nearly fell over from stabbing pains from ankles to neck, souvenirs of a nasty tangle with Vlad and the vampires, of which he now remembered little.

  Had it been Cuza last night? He couldn’t begin to guess, and efforts to recall only drove the memories still deeper. Walking stiffly out of the room, trying not to move any joints or muscles more than necessary, he wondered if he could get past his differences with Alexandru enough to ask.

  He knew the old wizard well, and could forgive much if he had finally been confronted with his arch-nemesis. Like Caleb, Alexandru often reacted to panic by becoming excessively cool and collected, and all Caleb expected of him now was an apology to Liszka and Bela, an acknowledgment that they were brave and hurt but that he was asking humbly for their help.

  It’s simply a matter of respect, he told himself. If there was one thing he couldn’t endure, it was someone who treated others as inferiors when they were in no position to fight back.

  He found Alexandru in the Great Hall, standing watch over Mihail as the latter added sprigs of flowering dogwood to the Poultice Potion—that instead of wolfsbane, since the werewolves didn’t want or need an antidote to their own magic. Dogwood would heal the bites and scratches as well as cure fever. As usual, the Romanian servant was as canny a potion-brewer as any MIT chemist.

  Just watching it bubble made Caleb feel better, even as he battled exhaustion, pain, and anger. He hadn’t seen Mihail’s fancy-dress of last night, or at least didn’t remember it, and now was somewhat startled to notice that the servant wore a mirrored ball gown.

  This was not the time to worry about transvestite tendencies. “I believe you owe Liszka and Bela an apology,” he said coldly, wondering which of them would lose his self-control first on this grim autumn morning.

  The brief puzzled look on Alexandru’s face—clearly he had forgotten their names—enraged Caleb so much he almost didn’t hear the words. “I only did what was necessary,” the old man said. “It’s too bad, but when your kind pose a threat—”

  “We were a threat to no one,” Caleb hissed. “You could have worn wolfsbane and retired to your room until dawn, rather than play games with your own life and the lives of my family.”

  He could only guess what Alexandru had done, but his guess was good enough, as it made the monster-hunter flinch. “I am not one to hide in my room,” he responded, self-control weakening. “I shan’t do so today, when Cuza returns—and neither shall you.”

  He’s giving me orders, Caleb thought in surprise. It was almost funny. “I will do what I can for my loved ones, but don’t be so sure that I will risk my life for a murderer.”

  39. The Gang’s All Here

  Caleb’s cruel words finally melted Alexandru’s cool. “I hired you to hunt monsters, not to consort with them,” he bellowed, his yell causing Mihail to startle and drop his pestle into the potion.

  The werewolf stayed calm. It was always easier when he felt he was winning. “Someday you might ask yourself just who is the monster,” he rejoined casually.

  Alexandru’s response was to look Caleb insolently up and down, his eyes lingering on the clots of blood and matted hair on his clothes, the face shadowed from a night of sleeplessness and the strain of the Dark magic that powered the transformation.

  “Perhaps it’s you,” the old wizard inquired pointedly, “who has been killing hunters who come into the mountains?”

  “Killing, no.” Caleb smiled. “Scaring, yes. It’s too bad, but I only did what was necessary,” he echoed. Caleb was no longer a teenager—he was twenty-two—and he would not let the old wizard patronize or intimidate him, nor would he apologize for what he was. “Perhaps you should consider not only the opinions of your own kind, but try to see yourself as others do,” he declared. “But I don’t suppose that will happen until the day you die.”

  “Which will very likely be this morning,” said the old wizard in a quiet voice. When this silenced Caleb, he told matter-of-factly of the Allium birds, the desiccated greenhouse, that he had seen Cuza just outside the stable gate. The Jupiter ward could not be reset until after nightfall, when the planet reappeared, and even then Alexandru wasn’t sure he could overcome the Kronos curse. “There is no good in a vampire,” he said, regaining his cool, professorial tone. “He is coming to kill me, and you too, I expect, and I do not know how many allies he has gathered around him.”

  Caleb remained unconvinced. “Cuza may be evil,” he agreed, “but what if I told you of a vampire who has lived as a human for more tha
n a decade? Abstaining from human blood and living only a—a life of the mind?”

  “I would tell you it cannot last,” Alexandru replied.

  “And that’s where you’re wrong,” Caleb retorted, now angry in his turn. “And a bigot.”

  Alexandru didn’t get a chance to respond, as there was a sound of footsteps and dragging fabric behind them. The old MIT sweatpants were much too big on Liszka, who’d tried unsuccessfully to roll them up around her ankles. She glared at Caleb, who after six years as her mate and co-Alpha knew that look. Kill the human, Fido.

  Alexandru, of course, didn’t know Liszka. “You don’t think I’m a bigot, and a monster, do you, young lady?” he wondered, his condescension making Caleb want to tear his eyes out.

  Liszka wasn’t much for verbal duels. “A monster? No—you’re a human,” she said somewhat timidly, not knowing that to Alexandru that was a compliment.

  “Which means you behave more viciously and ignobly than any monster,” Caleb translated.

  Liszka growled in agreement, and it wasn’t clear how Alexandru was going to respond. The Fives’ leader glared at him, circling nearer, suspicious that he had magic that, this morning, could kill her. She was not without magic of her own—Caleb had seen her defeat magical creatures twice her size—but she wouldn’t last long against a powerful wizard, if it came to that.

  Her appraisal of the wizard was interrupted by a sudden, splintering crash from the library.

  Groaning and creaking noises from the library preceded the final collapse of the roof. The thick cedar beams holding up the roof had been flexing for some time, growing progressively thinner as the relentlessly hungry beetles ate through them—but the sounds had gone unheeded as tempers flared.

  At some point, one beam became so weak that it bent instead of flexing. The sharp crack could be heard throughout the castle, waking Bela and frightening Grigore in the tower room, and silencing the murderous argument in the Great Hall. The loud report was followed by an avalanche of sounds, as the shelves tumbled down like a house of cards under the weight of the wooden roof and books flowed along in a chaotic jumble. A few books spilled out of the library and into the Great Hall, skidding across the floor to meet Alexandru, who had forgotten the werewolves and run to the open door.

  Several centuries of dust billowed into the Great Hall, temporarily obscuring the old wizard from view. The others heard him coughing and momentarily saw him again, peering into the destruction now visible in the former library. Caleb hurried to his side, hearing the roof of the Great Hall creak ominously as he ran, and wondering if they would all suffer the same fate as the books soon.

  “There,” muttered Alexandru, looking up through the large hole which now graced the roof above the library. “Two of them, as I guessed.”

  Caleb looked up to see glimpses of ragged black wings against white clouds and blue sky, disappearing against the darker background of aged wood.

  “Vampires have entered the castle,” he said grimly. “Any idea how?”

  Mihail gave a shriek in the background, and began speaking rapidly and incoherently. Alexandru ignored his old servant to ponder the question. As was typical of him, he betrayed little excitement, although Caleb suspected that he must be holding in a great deal of emotion. These two vampires, who had brought together an astounding array of magical weapons and waited patiently for the aid of celestial events, were not simply out for blood. They and Alexandru must be bitter enemies in a way that Caleb, with the disjointed fragments of Arghezi history that he knew, couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Unhurriedly, the older wizard squatted down and sifted through the dust thickly coating the floor near the library door. He stood and held out his hand to Caleb, showing a collection of beetles, some still wriggling and climbing over one another in his palm.

  “I fancy these are responsible,” he replied thoughtfully. “They could be induced to gnaw at the roof beams very quickly with the right enchantment. As to how they got here, I believe that the werewolves were made to carry them in last night by some means.”

  Caleb noted the neutral tones in Alexandru’s voice and the careful choice of words. While not an apology, it at least suggested that he did not blame the werewolves for what had happened.

  That was somehow worse. If he didn’t blame them, why was he incapable of treating the others with the courtesy he showed Caleb?

  He had to tell himself over and over that they would fight Cuza first, and deal with Alexandru later.

  “Two vampires,” Alexandru declared more loudly, turning away from the library door to face the stricken Mihail, clutching at the sides of his cauldron near the hearth. Liszka stood nearby, tensely trying to read the expression on Lupeni’s face for guidance.

  “We must make what preparations we can,” Alexandru continued, throwing down the handful of dusty bugs. With a startling rapidity, he raised his arms and called forth an incantation that uncovered the last of the huge mirrors, each one about twenty feet wide and forty feet high. Now all four walls of the Great Hall sported mirrors.

  Caleb, in turn, summoned the sunstone from his room. This small fist-sized lump of rock had served him well against vampires in caves and barns, but he wondered if it would work at all in the large, open hall. Still, they had to use what weapons were on hand.

  He stepped quickly over to Liszka and murmured in her ear, “Take the potion to Bela and Grigore, and make sure they’re safe.”

  She looked at him doubtfully—and then she turned her head slightly towards the prison room and gave a long howl. When a cry came back in response, she translated it for Caleb as though he weren’t one of them. “They’re fine,” she said, “they’ll lock themselves in. I’m with you, Lupeni. I’ve come this far.”

  “But there are vampires here.” She had hunted creatures with him many times, but he didn’t think she’d ever encountered a vampire, certainly not one who had been a wizard in life. “Powerful ones.”

  “Vampires?” she shrugged. “They can bite me.”

  Determined both to protect her and to prove to Alexandru that she should be respected, Caleb handed her the sunstone and told her how to work it. That gave him his hands free to summon objects and to hold a stake.

  Meanwhile, Mihail had continued to babble. Something about the look of grim determination on his master’s face, combined with Liszka’s methods of communication, caused him to lose all vestiges of self-control and fly into a panic. He shuffled from the room as fast as his old joints and fluted ball gown would allow. Although not screaming, he muttered incessantly and disconnectedly to himself. The occasional proper noun that reached Caleb’s ears hinted that he was reliving vampire horrors of a half-century ago.

  The servant found refuge in the only place he knew—his bedroom, which until last night had been guarded against several forms of Dark magic. Now, his garlic mysteriously vanished, his wolfsbane dried out, there was nothing he could do but lock the door tightly, using the strongest enchantment he knew to block it against forceful entry. He hoped that would be enough.

  He could not just crawl under his covers and wait to die. Instead, he sat bolt upright in bed. He did not have long to wait. Soon, as he feared, tendrils of gray mist seeped under the door, creeping across the floor, growing larger and rising into a shape.

  A shape that he recognized. He ceased to mutter to himself, only whispered two soft words as the shape took on the features he would never forget: “Ana Maria.”

  For it was she, the pallor and depthless eyes of the Undead only adding to her ethereal beauty. She parted her lips, a scimitar of a smile spreading across her face, revealing her softly shining, pointed teeth. Mihail forgot he was afraid as she began her song, one that he had heard distantly in this very castle long, long ago.

  “Come to me,” she sang, and he obeyed.

  In the Great Hall, meanwhile, a lone bat came to rest on a windowsill opposite the large mirrors. Alexandru, Caleb, and Liszka stood ready.

  “Helios!” cried
Liszka, as her sensitive ears picked up the faintest pop.

  But the blinding white light was reflected back into their faces, making them squint. A thick fog had appeared suddenly in the hall, its tiny droplets refracting the sunstone’s rays into thousands of tiny rainbows. The scene would have been mesmerizing with its beauty were it not for Cuza’s cruel laughter echoing around the cavernous stone room.

  “How do I turn this thing off?” Liszka muttered, blinking.

  Caleb murmured “vesper” and tapped the stone with his finger. Once it was extinguished, the fog no longer entranced them, but they could see no more clearly.

  Alexandru had a stake out and was turning around in circles, trying to locate his enemy by shadow or sound. Liszka growled quietly and Caleb knew exactly what she was thinking: it would be so nice to have movable ears. But perhaps that didn’t matter—perhaps Cuza’s voice didn’t tell them his location, as it bounced around from the ceiling to the fireplace to the entrance hall.

  “Where am I?” he taunted his ancient foe. “Over here? Or over there? …Or right beside you?”

  Alexandru jumped as the voice appeared to hover over his shoulder, but then it was gone again.

  “So many traps,” came the voice, and there was a flash of light and a tinkle of broken glass. The vampire-hunters couldn’t see what had happened, but they could guess that Cuza was destroying the mirrors under protection of the fog. “So many wards.” Another crash.

  Caleb and Alexandru came to their senses at once.

  The old wizard called Wind, and it came strong and hot, whipping through the Great Hall, stirring up the fog but doing little to disperse it. But at the same time…

  Caleb summoned Fire, and the walls began to glow red-hot, the fog condensing onto them and dribbling to the floor like rain.

  They could see the vampire now, strutting boldly through the garlic-free, mirrorless Great Hall.

  “Boys, boys,” purred Cuza, turning to regard them all with a bloodless hatred. “You should know better.”

 

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