Had the monster ran for the open wilderness or back into the village? It must have gone for the open country, Amy ceded. What else would it have done after being interred for so long? There would be no hope of finding it now to destroy it and end Lara's suffering. If that plan would even work.
Noise rose from the square. Cries for help and the bellowing of the watchmen and over all of it the godforsaken sounds of the wolf. It had gone for the town. There was still a chance.
Amy pushed on, limping on her banged up knee as quickly as she could.
~
Tasha's wish to retreat from the horror was no more than a penny tossed into a fountain. Wasted and unfulfilled. If anything, the inverse occurred as her adrenalin spiked and her senses became acute as the pale wolf breached the gates. Even her other sixth sense flared hot as an empathic waves of fury washed over her from the lobo.
And there were the dead, rising up from the earth or drifting in from the periphery to crowd the scene. The ghosts of those killed by just such a monster, shambling around the living, their wounds and mangled limbs as fresh and dripping as they day they had died. These phantoms caught fast in the violent moment of their deaths, each reacting as they did in life. A woman in a bloodied apron shook her fists at the wolf while a man hid his face in his hands, his entrails spilling out behind him as he wept. A little boy in suspenders looking here and there for a parent that would never come.
Some shrieked at the wolf but other phantoms railed at Tasha herself, barking their grievances and tragedies to her, each one desperate to be vindicated or avenged. It didn't matter that some sputtered German and others in Tasha's native English. The meaning of their outrage was explicit. Look at me, they cried. Look at what was done to me. It's not fair. I wasn't ready to die. Not like this.
Not all of the dead wailed. A few watched quietly from a distance, as if amused by the living in their folly . One of them had come close and was trying to speak to her. He was urgent but calm, not furious like the others but his words were drowned out by the screaming of the rest and Tasha couldn't decipher what the man wanted to tell her. His sad eyes orbited between the pale wolf and Tasha and back again.
Tasha looked away, unable to endure their demands anymore. But there was nowhere else to cast her gaze than the violence at the gate. The watchmen charged at the wolf only to be repelled back as the beast struck them down.
The guardsmen retreated and the wolf padded away, passing the two souls lashed to the rough-milled poles. Tasha felt her heart clang as the pale wolf swung about, its snout flaring hot and cold as it took her scent. It was close enough that Tasha could smell its musky hide and when its yellow eye rolled up to meet her own, her mind finally shut down.
The other ghosts had fled, as if in danger from the beast but the dead man with the urgent message had remained. More than that, he had stepped between Tasha and the wolf and he held out one hand, as if to keep the lobo from coming any closer.
The pale wolf stopped short and reared away but not because of the ghost before it. Tasha was certain the wolf couldn't see or smell the entity in its path. Something else was happening and looking up, she saw what had caught the beast's attention. Slinking out into the square came the other wolf, the demonic creature she had witnessed earlier.
The wolves swung about, each orbiting around the other as if taking its measure. Then the monsters charged at one another and the sound of their impact thundered the ground.
Tasha closed her eyes to the horror but she could not block out the heinous sound of the wolves ripping into each other.
~
The monsters tumbled in a blur of teeth and hide as they drew blood and rent flesh, rolling in the dust only to break away and charge in again.
Crashing into the bonfire, their hides lit up, smoldering with a greasy black smoke. The burning logs scattered into the long grass that was brown and dry from a fortnight without rain. The ground burned with ease and a breeze from the east fanned the flames higher, pushing the fire in an arc like a sail across the dry earth.
The wolves clashed on, heedless to the islands of flames rippling around them and the smoke from the dry grass swallowing them up in clouds. It choked the gullets of the watchmen, forcing them back and obscuring the vision of all.
The Bishop's heart sank as he came loping on his long legs around the blacksmith's shop to witness the terrible battle tumbling though the square. The two wolves were mindless in their savagery and the Bishop knew not which lobo would best the other. There was no way to tell the way they tumbled snapped and the fire burning round them obliterated them with smoke. His men stood idle as oxen, watching the battle play out.
“Move, you laggards! Move!” He shoved and struck at them like dumb animals, hazing them into the fray. “Kill the pale wolf! But leave the old one. It is not to die!”
The watchmen looked to one another with unease at this impossible demand but no man questioned his marching orders. They moved in with their weapons curled in their clenched fists. The Halford boy, recruited an hour earlier and thrown into battle, recited the words of a Psalm as he marched behind the veterans and prayed that the monsters would simply destroy each other.
~
The signs of the old wolf's passing were evident in the bodies strewn in the road as Amy ran to the square. A man in shirtsleeves lay crumpled in a bloody wreck on the steps of a green clapboard house, the blowflies swarming over his wet eyeballs. A second man was spread-eagled in the dirt. His wide-brimmed hat still clutched tight in his hand but, she could now see, the man's head was completely gone.
The fog rolling past the houses seemed odd for such a sunny day until she realized that it was smoke. Small welts of fire glowed through the billows, the haze all but obscuring the town around her. Above the screaming and hollering, she could hear the popping teeth and she knew the pale wolf had come. The two lobos clashed with ferocious hatred and all she could do was listen. There was no sight of the beasts at all, not even a silhouette in that smoky sea.
And they were on the move. The snapping echoed up ahead and then the snarling sounded off to her lee side. Then behind her, the clash a running battle with the wolves covering ground quickly.
Gripping the fifty caliber tight, she brought the barrel up and trailed the sound with her aim. All she could do was pray that the old wolf did not overcome the pale one.
The sound hemmed close and a dark mass loomed in through the smoke. The wolves tumbled over one another in a writhing ball, both bloodied and driven mad with frenzy. Amy drew a bead on the lobos but they moved too quickly, tumbling and lunging in a blur and she couldn't fire at the old wolf without hitting the pale one.
Be patient.
The moment came when the pale wolf stumbled and hit the ground. The demonic-looking wolf lunged in, locking its jaws around the other's throat and pinning it to the ground. A heartbeat, then two, and the beasts remained still, allowing Amy to draw a bead on the trunk of the decrepit monster. Through its ribs, where its heart would be. She eased down on the trigger.
A voice broke, shrieking her name. Silas's voice, telling her to run. She glanced away and the moment was lost, the wolves tumbling through the ash again. Her target lost. Wheeling around she saw a troop of watchmen charging at her through the haze. Five strong, with their weapons poised to kill.
40
SILAS WAS CLUBBED ABOUT the ears and kicked forward to keep pace with the advancing troop. The watchmen marched before him, some armed with long spears and others with a heavy net. The Bishop pulled him along by the scruff of the neck. Clutched in the man's right hand was an antique sabre, its blade polished to a high patina.
When the Bishop halted the troop, Silas expected to see the monster from the pit or even the pale wolf. What he saw was Amy, appearing through a break in the smoke. The Bishop hissed at his men and gave the order.
“Kill her.”
The pikemen charged in. The girl was armed with the pistol but outnumbered by the charge of the guardsmen. And Sil
as knew there was only one cartridge left in the gun. Even if she shot down one of the watchmen, the others would gut her on their lances.
So he screamed out her name, warning her of the attack.
The look in the Bishop's eyes relayed pure murder. The long blade of the sabre came up whistling and Silas knew the man would cleave him dead. He threw himself into the man, ruining the blow and tumbling the Bishop to the ground under him. Silas drew up fast and hammered his fist into the older man's face. Something unhinged inside his heart as he burned hot and went berserk on the corrupt fraud he had revered all of his life. He knew it was wrong but a mad glee swelled his heart as his fist bludgeoned the older man's nose and he felt cartilage break and soft tissue split under his knuckles. A solution to every problem sprang up in his fevered brain, one so simple it seemed absurd. He would kill the Bishop here and now, with his bare hands. How much brighter would this world be with this foul man dead at their feet? How could God object?
If the Almighty objected then He would have to issue a lightning bolt to strike him dead because Silas refused to let up his punishment to the vile face of his beloved Bishop.
~
On came the black guard with their pointy sticks aimed at her belly. Amy swung about and leveled the big gun at the rushing troop. They reared up, stopping in their tracks. None of them had ever even held a gun but all had witnessed its destructive power when the outsiders first breached the village walls. None of them wished to meet its thunder.
Amy's hands trembled but it was not from fear. She was spent and had little strength left to steady the heavy gun. The watchmen held their breath, waiting to see what she would do. She prayed none of them knew she had only one round left. And that shell was promised to the old wolf, she couldn't waste it on them.
“Drop the sticks,” she barked. The men didn't move, their lances frozen. Amy couldn't tell if they didn't understand her or stood defiant. She took a step forward, aiming the barrel at the man out front and the troop reacted in unison. Their long pikes clattered to the ground at her feet.
One of them, the lean man on the left, began muttering something at her but Amy had no way of knowing what he was saying. Was he begging for mercy or praying for salvation? She barked at him to shut up and the lean man fell silent for a moment. Then his jaw gaped open and he began muttering even more urgently, his eyes fixed on something behind her.
Keeping the gun trained on the men, Amy glanced over her shoulder to see the pale wolf stagger out of the smoke and collapse in the dust. It's snout bloodied and all but ripped from the nose bone.
~
Of the troop under the Bishop's hand, only the younger Halford boy had returned to guard the head of the church. He stood impotently with the pike in his hands and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His lips gibbered as he watched Silas hammer the Bishop with his fist.
“Silas,” the boy pleaded. “Stop. Please.”
Silas did not stop or even slow. His arm felt like jelly from lashing out so many times and his knuckles were breaking, his hand turning to ground meat from striking bone. His Bishop's face had begun to sink inwards in a dark red hole. A wet puckering sound gurgled from the man's face as he tried to breathe through the blood in his windpipe.
The boy with the spear began to cry. “Silas, stop. You're killing him.”
This isn't how he should die, Silas thought. It was too easy, too pedestrian a death for a man this monstrous. This fraud, this degenerate pope they had all loved and revered. A better suited death, a proper punishment, would be to push the reprobate into the open maw of the decrepit wolf from the pit. To let the Bishop be devoured by his own pet.
It was wishful thinking, Silas concluded. He continued with his punishment until his arm fell limp and dead at his side. He rolled off, listening to the rattling sound of the man choking on his own blood. It went on and on, that terrible gurgling sound, until at last it stilled and rattled no more.
The Bishop was dead. Praise be to God.
The Halford boy began to tremble. Tears streaked the grime on his cheeks. He dropped his weapon and ran for home.
~
The pale wolf careened out of the smoke like an apparition. Blood dribbling from its mutilated snout left a trail in the weeds as it tumbled to the ground. It rose up and staggered on before falling again.
Amy gaped at the prone lobo. Rent to shreds, it lay still. She was too late.
A creak of leather snagged her ear. Turning back to the men before her, she spied the watchmen reaching for their weapons. She marched on them fast, all but shoving the barrel of the gun down the nearest man's throat.
“Run,” she spat. “Before I blow your head off.”
The lean man turned and ran and, like dominoes, the rest followed. The smoke swallowed them up and Amy let herself exhale, the precious round still in the chamber of the gun.
The smoke cleared and she saw Tasha tied to the post across the square. Like Lara had been earlier, waiting to be burned. Tasha was screaming something at her and Amy craned her neck to listen. Behind you.
She pivoted on one heel to see the pale wolf rise up. It was snarling through its torn up snout and its eyes were lights of rage. Driven to a frenzy by the clash with the other lobo, there was no mistaking its intent; it was rabid with bloodlust.
She leveled the gun at it, staggering backwards to keep some distance from it but the wolf kept coming.
“Lara, stop. Don't do this.”
If there was any shred of the woman left inside, it was gone now. All that remained was the wolf and its savage nature. Amy begged the wolf to stop but it would not and when she stumbled, the wolf sprang.
Tasha's vocal chords shredded from screaming so hard. All she could do was watch as the girl fell backwards and the wolf lunged forward.
The haints had all scattered like chaff, the dead backing away at the sight of the wolf as if they were in mortal danger. An instinct that even death could not scrub off and one that Tasha was thankful for. Their wailing cries had overwhelmed her and she was grateful for the quiet in her head. Except the one, the man who had tried to communicate with her. Moving quickly over the ground, he hewed up before the girl and put himself in the path of the lunging wolf. He had no substance, just form and smoke. None of it corporeal. Did the apparition think he could stop the monster?
The earth was hard as Amy fell. Flat on her back, she locked her arms straight and drew her eye down the barrel. Off the sighting bead rose the wolf, all gaping maw and teeth. There was no part of Lara in there and the wolf was going to kill her. Her finger hovered over the trigger piece, trying not to let the tears blur her aim.
Then the cold hit, an immediate plunge in temperature that goosed the flesh of her arms. The air pressure rose diametrically, stealing oxygen from her lungs. Someone just walked over my grave. An old saying she had heard from her grandmother. Her dad's mom, grandma Gallagher.
I'm losing my mind, Amy thought. The wolf is coming to kill me and I may have to kill Lara to stop it. And I’m thinking about Grandma Gallagher.
The wolf sprang. The girl pulled the trigger.
Mid-leap, the wolf buckled in two as if it had hit a brick wall that wasn't there. It crashed to the ground in a cloud of ash, its limbs kicking about as it tried to gain its feet.
Amy lowered the barrel, the gun unfired. She had pulled the trigger but the piece was locked and wouldn’t budge. With the weapon lowered, she felt the play return to the trigger as if nothing was wrong with it.
Why did the wolf changed course in mid-strike? Had it suffered a seizure in that instant before the kill? It didn’t make sense.
The lobo kicked at the dust to get up again but it could not. Amy pushed up slowly onto her feet and pushed down the aches that needled every muscle. The pale wolf lay in a heap before her but where was the other one? Had it fled for the trees or was it still here, circling her in the smoke of the scattered fires?
As if summoned by her thoughts, the haze parted and a dark ma
ss took shape. The old wolf lay sprawled in the dirt with its malformed spine toward her. The thing didn't move. Praying it was dead, she stole forward with the gun gripped tight in both hands. Its belly was ruptured, the insides tumbling into the grit. The creature's throat was rent apart to the thrapple, the windpipe exposed to the air. Its decrepit blood was everywhere.
Her heart ballooned at the thought that it was dead, a tidal crescent of relief eager to spill out of her. Holding her breath, she inched closer. One savage eye wheeled up in its socket and sought her out. A shudder rippled down the ancient lobo's flank and its jaws moved up and down slowly.
The wretched thing wouldn't last much longer and, if she wanted to, Amy could have sat in the dirt and watch the monster die but there was more at stake here than the demise of this old wolf. There was a riddle that needed an answer. If the Bishop was telling the truth then this calamity before her was the first werewolf. And if Lara's notion, based on the ramblings of a psychotic, was true then killing it would free Lara from its curse.
Its obscene jaws popped open and snapped shut, still eager to tear her even as it lay dying. Amy took hold of one tattered ear to hold it still and pressed the gun barrel against the flat shelf of its crown. Then she pulled the trigger.
The boom was loud and the recoil violent but she held true. The lobo’s skull erupted in a vomit of gore over the earth.
It shrieked. Half the skull was obliterated and its lower jaw detached save for a thin strand of tissue but still the thing screamed. An unearthly sound that was like nothing Amy had ever heard and would later come to haunt her dreams for years after. The thing's legs kicked out in violent spasms, as if it could outrun the destruction it had suffered.
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 81