by Gene Lazuta
“Woodie!” Norris screamed with one half of his mind, while the other half asked, “When did this start? Oh, God, how long have we been like this?”
“Don’t do it, Woodie! Please! She’s not even human!”
The golden-haired thing was crouching now, hands held loosely before it and fingers curled into claws. Its yellow eyes blazed hatefully as it moved to its left, circling the bed and pulling back its lips in a snarl that revealed teeth that were long, perfect, and needle-sharp.
Woodie’s heartbeat was suddenly augmented by the abrupt syncopated rhythm of a drum, pounding somewhere close, yet invisible.
The branches hanging all around swayed suggestively, rustling and crackling as things moved among them, positioning themselves for a better view and sparkling into the shadows like a thousand tiny eyes.
Woodie tossed the tatters of his robe aside and circled to his right, crouching, dripping sweat, studying the girl’s eyes and exposing his own teeth as he growled out a response to her snarl.
“As it happened a million years ago,” the voice of Mr. Green narrated, as if for the benefit of some attentive audience, “the human finds the beast and discovers love.”
Whoever Mr. Green was addressing, they were certainly nowhere to be seen. The people in the robes weren’t listening because they had begun dancing, off in the shadows thrown by the wildly flickering candles. A drum practically flooded the air with a horrendous din, punctuated by the dancers’ wordless grunts—so much like a chant, and yet expressive of no concept other than a growing anticipation. When the man spoke again, his voice fell from above, as if he had climbed a ladder or was speaking through the window in the ceiling that had been painted up to resemble the moon…which was the eye of the creature in the sky.
It was as if he had become the creature in the sky!
“The stone arrived from above, one dark night, on a barren, snow-covered clearing in what they call the Black Forest today. It fell through the darkness leaving a tail of red fire that stretched back up to the moon, from which it had originated. A creature was drawn by that fire and followed it to the blackened hole in the earth from which wisps of smoke swirled to make the air smell like lightning. That creature was important because it was the first of the Fathers, the sire of the Breed, and the original Blood Prince.”
Robert Norris heard the words, and somehow was able to perceive their meaning, despite his own protests and desperate struggles to keep Woodie from doing what he was about to do.
The girl’s robe had slipped down one of her shoulders, and the skin revealed was maddeningly seductive.
“The First Father came wrapped in animal fur and armed with a sharpened bone,” said the voice that was no longer Mr. Green’s because it was bigger, deeper, and less focused. The walls shook with the sound. “He was shunned by his tribe and driven from any gathering of his kind by thrown rocks and shouts. He was strong, smart, and dangerous. He took women when he wanted them and ate children when there was nothing else. And sometimes he ate them even when there was something else, because he liked the meat of man. He liked the taste of it…he was the Lover of Man’s Blood.
“His hair was golden.
“The modern word for him is cannibal.”
The girl lunged to one side quickly and then altered her course back around the way she had come. Woodie followed her movements, skillfully skipping one way and then the other with a smooth grace that seemed impossible, considering how much dope he had consumed, and the way his vision doubled and then refocused as he tried to keep himself centered directly in front of her. A laugh that was more of a grunt escaped from him the second time the girl tried to evade his circling approach, and that laugh stimulated a din of cruel merriment in the crowd that swelled into a surge of laughter that was undirected and sinister.
“The First Father had been roaming the plain for nearly three years,” the voice continued. “Alone and dirty, he lived on the periphery of the wilderness, watching the humankind that had repelled him, and taking them as his food when he needed to because they were the easiest prey, especially the woman who were pregnant with their infants.
“When he saw the stone, glowing red in the charcoaled earth, he was not afraid, for there was a sliver of bile in his nature that made him bold. He stepped up and took it in his hand, screamed out, and dropped it as his flesh blistered with its heat. He looked at his roasted skin, smelled it, and smiled. The second time he picked it up it had cooled, and he raised it to this eyes and, looking through it, saw something on the other side of the hole. When he lowered the stone, the image disappeared. But raising the grey, glasslike rock to his eye again, he found that he could recall the form, or smear of solidity, he had seen, hovering over the ground like a tiny, glowing moon.
“For a moment he was confused, and repeated his experiment. But he was a creature of action, not theory, and soon his attention was arrested by what he saw. His confusion gave way to joy as the form of the Lady of the Night took shape. It was she, the same as she is here now, who came to this ancient ancestor of all the Wild, and it was she who was to show him the path that has led us all here tonight.
“At first, her figure was like a liquid, moving, changing, fascinating the Man-Beast, First Father, Sire of the Wild. It swayed with the breeze and showed him many kinds of creatures, many shapes and sizes, combinations and arrangements, some familiar, and some unseen by any man before or since.
“The First Father studied the Lady of the Night, and when she assumed a form he liked, he laughed his loud, enthusiastic roar, and she noted his pleasure and marked it. His tastes were predictably primitive, but efficient. He was attracted by the form of a human female, as well as the forms of the more animal primate females he was accustomed to, and by them both, he was aroused. But at the same time, as a killer, he admired the wings he had seen bats use to fly—not the feathered ones of birds, but the fleshy ones of furry creatures like himself. He envied the big cat its claws, the lizard it tough skin, the elk its speed, and the wolf: over all and above any other, this man whose intellect we might at first be tempted to find suspect admired the wolf its unparalleled cunning. He also liked hair the color of his own, blond…nearly white—another reason for his being shunned from a tribe in which hair was uniformly black or brown. For this early man was albino, and consequently his light-sensitive eyes make him a creature of the night, much like the wolf he so admired.
“Finally, when the smoke was gone, the First Father lowered the stone and found a beautiful woman standing naked before him. And as might be expected in a man of his nature, he was instantly attracted to her. He felt her perfect harmony with his own being and sensed that, in her, all the other things that he had seen and responded to were hidden, just below the surface.
“What he didn’t know—perhaps what he could not have known or even understood—was that he had made her. It was his mind that had given her form. She was sent from above without physical proportion as a gift that would save the world. As the one brave enough to claim the stone, the First Father became her creator and master, as much as any man can be master of a being such as she.”
As if cued by this last sentence, the girl moved with blinding speed and tore off her robe. Her naked body revealed so abruptly, stunned Norris inside his brother’s head and affected Woodie so thoroughly that, for an instant, his reaction produced a physical vibration that traveled up his spine and quivered his entire body. The girl—or woman, for bereft of her covering there was no mistaking her for anything less than mature—stood still for a moment, as if to give her pursuer an opportunity to study every detail of her figure, and then, in a remarkable, almost absurd transference of roles, she assumed the hunter’s stance, and Woodie, despite himself, moved to avoid her advances.
“Oh God!” Norris shouted inside Woodie’s skull. “Don’t let her touch us! Don’t let her do it!”
But Mr. Green was speaking again, and his words were deafening.
“Lovers they were, and lovers they have
been ever since. That same Lady of the Night and all the Blood Princes descended from that first, brave man. Lovers they were, and together they built a secret world. Just the Lady’s touch gave the Blood Prince the power to keep hold of the stone, and just touching the Blood Prince kept the Lady ‘real,’ which was all she desired. Together, Lady and the First Father found others like himself, and as their numbers grew, so did their knowledge of the powers they possessed because of the stone. They learned their advantages, marked their limitations, and bonded together in the first and most dangerous pack in the history of this planet, bringing ruin down upon untold numbers of those creatures who had shunned them, and feared them, and hated them in their natural guise.
“But still the numbers of the Flock grew. Whole species of man, for at that time there were many, many types, had disappeared under the fang. But those that remained reproduced quickly, and learned much of their surroundings. So it was decided that, in order to hunt more effectively, the pack would split up and go their own individual ways. Twenty-four killers comprised that nuclear family, and they hung their heads and disbanded, traveling many miles and arranging themselves over the planet. But even so far apart, they could sense the presence of the others and feel the power of the stone, so they never felt alone.
“New packs were formed, with new killers, now called Vyrmin, emerging from the very heart of those civilized sheep as slaves to the original Fathers, who served as the minds and hearts of each hunting unit. For thousands of years, blood ran in rivers, the Flock flourished but was kept to manageable numbers, the wolves flourished and ruled the land, and the Dark Times were the only times. In Europe, Africa, Russia, and even in what was to be called America, the wolf legends were passed from one generation to the next.
“But slowly—so slowly as to be imperceptible at first—the Flock’s numbers grew.
“And grew.
“Like rats, the sheep thickened over the planet. Roaming the forests, I myself searched out the Vyrmin among them. But to no avail.
“The Flock just grew.
“We hunted and killed with renewed purpose, gorging ourselves full while finding more and more members to join us.
“But still the Flock grew.
“The Black Plague came, and the Flock was thinned.
“But soon it passed, and the Flock grew again.
“Wars came, and the Flock was thinned.
“We feasted on their flesh, and gnawed their bones.
“But always the Flock recovered…
“For the first time we didn’t eat what we killed.
“And still the Flock grew!
“It overran everything, destroying all in its path and raping those precious forests that are the very soul of the spirit that energizes this otherwise desolate rock. It swelled to ridiculous size, and the wild nature in its members that fueled the packs dimmed as civilization warped minds and softened bodies. It blackened the air, fouled the water, and soured the earth. It pushed out from the original pockets of its home and it grew, and grew, and grew!
“As it did, the Wild suddenly found themselves the hunted. Without eating our kill, we left evidence of ourselves and for the sheep to find and study. They were smart, and for their nature, amazingly willing to become aggressive. Soon, any action violent or natural that did not benefit the Flock was outlawed. The killers they found were locked away, or killed themselves. The weak, strong now because of numbers, imposed their own sense of order and turned the world upside down. And finally, three hundred years ago, the packs were thinned so far as to put the remaining Wild at the mercy of their onetime prey. They scattered and hid, running for their lives, denying their natures in the process.
“As for the Lady of the Night, and the Man in the Woods, we are powerful when the packs are powerful, and weakened when the packs are weak. We shrank from our onetime glory to the pitiful, nearly starved creatures you see today, waiting for that one opportunity, that one miraculous time, when it might be possible to reclaim our power…and our place!
“And that time has come!
“What begins here tonight, with these last descendants of the First, who have come so far to respond to the call of the Wild, will lead us to a new Dark Time for the Flock that will save this planet from the disease that is mankind. The wolfstone will be the gateway to the Wild, and the Blood Prince, as he has always been, will be the key that will throw open that gateway. The sheep are smothering this earth, choking its breath and breaking its heart. We can save this globe. And we shall! By roaming free and reclaiming our place as the Masters of the Hunt, we shall follow the demands of our natures and rejuvenate the natural balance!
“Hail, the Blood Prince!
“Hail, the Lady of the Night!
“Hail, the Demon Lover, bane of mankind!”
And that finished it, Norris realized as the voice culminated in a crescendo overhead. He didn’t know when it had happened, but somewhere during the narrative, everything in the room had gone still. The drums had stopped, as had the dancing. The girl had stopped, and stood naked in her place. And Woodie had just planted his feet and waited. There was something important about what was being said, something so vital and personal that not one person in the room could help him- or herself from listening.
And listen they did.
But when that voice hit its final note, and the sentence of release peaked, the world started moving again, and events rolled on as Norris had been praying that they would not since realizing what the girl and Woodie were going to do.
“Now!” Woodie growled, hunching into a crouch.
The woman snarled back at him from across the bed.
The drums exploded, people danced, and the stars began to move…
“Wait!” Norris screamed. “The stars can’t move! They’re painted on!”
But his words didn’t matter.
Stars were moving, clouds tumbled, and that huge, dark thing that was the watcher in the sky that Norris had called Satan—simply because Satan was the word he knew—lifted its ghostly arms and threw back its head in a laugh that sounded like thunder, and…
“Nooooooo!” Norris shrieked.
And the woman touched Woodie’s flesh.
It was like instantaneous combustion, and the flash they produced repelled them both backward before a great white fireball. The crowd roared when the sparks flew, but before Woodie could organize his senses, the woman was up and flapping her wings.
“Christ!” Norris moaned as his brother rolled on the floor, found his hands and knees, and was lifted, straight up into the air so that his perspective dipped beneath him like the view from a movie camera knocked from its tripod.
Then he fell, landing atop the bed and producing a huge plume of dust. Wings flapped, his vision bounced, and his arms and legs flayed as powerful hands grabbed bunches of his skin and squeezed, firing pain up his back and down his legs. When he tried to crawl, he was lifted again, and taking the sheet off the mattress with him, he kicked and screamed as he was turned to face his newfound love in the air.
Norris’ cries—echoing through the blackness around him and obscuring all sound inside Woodie’s head—were mimicked as his brother opened his mouth and produced a truly audible, simply awful wail of terror. All the passion he had felt was gone. Any attraction he had felt for the woman in the white robe had fled. Revulsion and horror took absolute possession of his senses and convulsed him into a shuddering mass of struggling muscle and sweat…
Almost.
Externally he was that way.
But somewhere inside…
The woman’s bat wings beat faster, lifting the pair higher and tumbling them together intimately—she with her arms around him, and he with his fists beating at the sides of her head. From the base of her spine squirmed a scaly, snakelike tail with a spatula head that moved up from between her legs and through Woodie’s thighs to flatten itself on his buttocks and press his pelvis firmly into hers. Her flesh seemed to be moving over her muscles, crawling,
in a way, and puckering itself into weird, indefinable folds and crevices that pulled, peaked and then split, producing whiffs of steam and a series of noxious sucking sounds, the loudest of which seemed positioned near Woodies’ groin.
“Oh Christ, oh God, oh Jeeesssssssuss!” Norris howled as a wire of heat implanted itself right into the center of Woodies’ brain. Norris could almost see it, tangling a fiery red and twisting through the darkness from some point that looked to be a thousand miles away, from a million years ago. It climbed up from the very depths of Woodies soul and invigorated his reptilian brain stem with an electricity so powerful that it stiffened both his legs and his penis in one painful jerk.
“Woodie!” Norris screamed. “Stop it! For God’s sake don’t!”
But it wasn’t really all Woodie’s fault, he realized at that instant. As much as he screamed, it would do no good, even if his brother could hear. Woodie was simply reacting in the way his body was built to react. Norris found himself, somewhere deep down inside, wondering if he too didn’t have just a twinge of his brother’s passion. If perhaps this was not so hard to understand, not so repulsive…
Not so ugly…
Why…
“No!”
The woman had been so attractive—he could see her as she had appeared: all innocence and charm.
The moment passed and her face was back in his eyes, hair hanging in billowing tendrils that hissed and squirmed around her ears, eyes glaring coldly, having lost all hints of any humanity they might have ever possessed, tongue flashing out, six inches and then a foot, long, black, and forked, from between the lips of a snout that suddenly looked as if it had once belonged to a baboon. As she turned over in midair to pull Woodie on top of her, she snarled so savagely that foam flecked the gleaming points of her wicked teeth. Her lizard eyes squeezed shut, and her clawed, clutching hands tore into Woodie’s back until one finger actually hooked itself through a slab of muscle and caught the back of one of his ribs.
Woodie screamed as he entered her…