Wolf in Shadow-eARC

by John Lambshead

  Jameson did not like heights. He was not acrophobic or anything, but equally he would not volunteer to abseil down cliffs if given any choice in the matter. He steadied himself with his left hand, and leaned over. The whole center of the building was hollow down to the sub-sub-basement. It had once had wooden floors. The socket holes for the supporting beams were still visible. On the opposite wall was a rounded stone chamber with a flat floor. Upwards, the building was open to the dark grey sky.

  The bat-thing erupted into the hollow center of the building at a lower level. Karla’s clawed hand was not far behind, but she missed her strike. Jameson held his pistol extended in his right hand and sighted down the barrel, adopting a target-shooting stance.

  The monster was having trouble flying. Something was wrong with its left wing. It fluttered like a moth, which unfortunately made it a difficult target. It gained height with difficulty and just managed a landing on the floor of the stone chamber opposite Jameson. He fired, the clang of bolt on rock indicating a miss. The monster scrabbled up into the chamber and disappeared.

  “What the hell?” Jameson said, gaping.

  Then he realised what he had seen. “Oh Christ, the chamber’s one huge fireplace.”

  He leaned over and shouted down to Karla, “It’s climbing up the chimney.”

  She gave him a fanged grin in reply. He was glad somebody was having fun.

  Jameson ran back down the corridor to the landing. He took the stairs upwards two at a time. The spiral staircase terminated in a little turret with a window that gave a great view of the surrounding wilderness. Unfortunately, Jameson had no time for sightseeing. He emerged onto the corner of a platform that must originally have supported the roof timbers. It formed a stone walkway just a couple of feet wide around the perimeter. A low wall ran around the outside, but there, nothing but a sheer drop down on the inside edge. This was not something that helped his equability of mind.

  The bat-thing clung to the stone chimney opposite, using hooked claws that emerged halfway down the leading edge of its wings. It twisted its head around and cawed at Jameson. He tried to aim his pistol but his hand shook. Jameson cursed; trying to fire while panting from his climb was a beginner’s mistake. Nobody could shoot accurately after running. He had only three bolts left and might need all of them. He had no margin for error.

  The monster descended the chimney, partly opening its wings as it swung from claw to claw. Jameson noted with some satisfaction wing tears where he had scored hits. It couldn’t fly properly, so it was vulnerable.

  He needed to get close to guarantee a killing strike, so he walked slowly around the perimeter towards the chimney, letting his breathing steady. He wondered where Karla had got to but decided he couldn’t wait for her. The thing twisted its long neck to look down at the ground, trying to decide whether it could make it down. The tears in its wings would lengthen with every beat, but it was a short fall.

  “Hey, beasty, remember me,” Jameson yelled and waved his arms. “I’m the one who hurt you.”

  Yellow eyes glared at him vindictively. Mind made up, the monster dropped onto the parapet. It stalked towards Jameson on its hind legs, claws clicking on the stone. It dropped onto all fours to round the corner, using its front claws as feet. This posture tilted its wing tips up like a naval plane being stored on an aircraft carrier. It took Jameson a moment to place the vaguely familiar outline. The damn thing was like a model he had seen of a pterodactyl.

  So it was dinosaurs after all, he thought, chuckling at the absurdity of it all. Here he was, stalking a pterodactyl on the top of a ruined monastery under two moons like John bloody Carter. Join the Commission and experience all life has to offer and then some. The monster cawed, bringing him back to what passed for reality in his world.

  It reared up onto its hind legs just a couple of meters away. Jameson gripped his gun in both hands. He might only get one shot off so it had to count. He raised the pistol and took careful aim, squeezing the trigger.

  The monster gave a piercing steam-whistle scream, causing Jameson to jerk involuntarily as he fired. The bolt flew wide. The monster half jumped, half flew at him. That was its hunting technique. Scream to paralyze the prey with fear and then pounce, but Jameson wasn’t easy to intimidate.

  He fired again at point-blank range. The bolt flew true and smashed into the monster’s chest. Dark ichor spurted, boiling into green fumes. The heavy body slammed into him. Not again, Jameson had time to think, before his hip hit the perimeter wall with a jolt so hard it numbed his whole leg. He grabbed at the wall, fingers catching the edge, but the monster’s weight pushed him over.

  “Oh shit,” Jameson said.

  CHAPTER 11

  MAX

  Rhian sat in a white circle that Frankie had sprayed on the ground with a can of aerosol paint. She huddled inside her jacket, collar up to keep out the cold.

  “Do we have to do this at night in the cemetery?” she asked.

  “It is traditional,” Frankie replied, with a smile. “The cemetery is like a big battery of power just waiting to be tapped. Actually, there is so much magic sloshing around East London at the moment that I could probably do this in my back garden, but there are other considerations.”

  “Such as?” Rhian asked.

  “Such as the spell is powered by human blood, your blood, to be exact.”

  Rhian opened her mouth, but Frankie talked over her.

  “I know, blood magic is bloody dangerous.”

  Frankie was clearly not trying to be funny.

  “But it is the only way. Celtic magic is blood-driven.”

  “I was only going to say that explains the knife,” Rhian held up the dagger Frankie had given her.

  “It’s not a knife, it’s an athame,” Frankie said.

  “Whatever,” Rhian said. “This blood magic?”

  “Yes?”

  “Won’t that put you in danger, or your soul, or something?” Rhian asked.

  “Not if I’m careful,” Frankie replied. “My soul has taken such a beating over the years that one more stain won’t show. The real danger is that blood magic is forbidden by The Commission, except when they use it of course or they choose to turn a blind eye for some other reason. The cemetery is the nearest convenient place where we can be unobserved and where nothing can be traced back to me.”

  Frankie sprayed a second circle around herself, making sure that the ends joined cleanly and there were no gaps. She set up her little stove and sprinkled herbs into the bowl, chanting softly. Rhian strained to hear. Some of the words sounded Welsh. The ceremony went on and Rhian’s mind drifted away. She daydreamed about her times with James.

  A charge of static built up around Rhian, causing the fine hair on her arms to lift. Something similar seemed to be happening to Frankie. Her hair frizzled and stuck out. Rhian giggled. Frankie was not the best-groomed person in England at any time, but she was not usually quite so disheveled.

  Frankie sat in a glowing column of air that cut off abruptly at the edge of the circle. Rhian was surrounded by a similar chamber. Her body felt light, as if it was becoming transparent to gravity.

  “Nick your thumb with the athame and squeeze blood on the brooch,” Frankie said.

  Except that she did not say it so much as the voice seemed to be in Rhian’s head. She lifted the chain that James had threaded through the brooch off her neck and placed it in her lap. She drew the athame across the tip of her thumb, cutting herself like she had done a million times before. Unusually, it didn’t hurt. Blood welled up along the line, and she rubbed it onto the brooch.

  The pain hit her like a blast of fire, twisting her body until every muscle contracted simultaneously. She tried to scream but her jaw locked. Then it was gone. Rhian sagged and moaned, her sight contracting into a monochrome circle. It was like looking out of a drainpipe into the night.

  “Rhian, Rhian, call the wolf Rhian.”

  Frankie’s voice sounded in Rhian’s head and she wished the woma
n would go away.

  “Call the wolf.”

  It wasn’t difficult. The wolf was thoroughly alarmed. It already lurked on the edge of Rhian’s mind. All she had to do was let it in. The wolf enveloped her and she stood on four legs, instantaneously, like magic. Rhian laughed to herself. Like magic, it was magic. That was the whole point.

  The wolf examined Frankie with suspicion. It moved towards her but bounced off the edge of the circle. It reared up, forelegs scrabbling, but the circle extended too high. It was trapped, not an agreeable experience for such a wild spirit. I can get us out, Rhian thought, if you let me. The wolf must have agreed because Rhian became Rhian again, on two legs, not four.

  Frankie cut the circle around her with an athame, and the column of light vanished. The white circle was just spray paint again. She cut open Rhian’s circle to free her, and the wolf went back to sleep.

  “I think that went rather well,” Frankie said, as they walked back though the cemetery.

  “Well! It hurt worse than anything I’ve ever known,” Rhian replied. “After this, childbirth will be a doddle.”

  “Hmm, yes, I thought it might be a little uncomfortable,” Frankie said, like a dentist whose patient has just complained.

  “It definitely hurt me more than you,” Rhian said.

  “I know, but the wolf had to be tamed,” Frankie said. “He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, as the Bard put it.”

  “What bard?” Rhian asked.

  “The Bard of Avon,” Frankie replied, theatrically.

  Rhian gave her a sideways look that she hoped conveyed her heartfelt desire that Frankie would speak bloody English for once.

  “Um, Shakespeare,” Frankie said. “From his King Lear.”

  “Oh, Shakespeare,” said Rhian, “Didn’t he play in defense for Newport Pagnel?”

  It was Frankie’s turn to give a sideways glance.

  “No, um, Shakespeare was a playwright . . .”

  “I know who bloody Shakespeare was,” Rhian snarled. “Even if I never made university.”

  Frankie changed the subject, reminding Rhian who was doing whom the favor. “The situation was unstable. One day the transformation would have been fatal or you might have been unable to revert back to human. Besides, do you really want to keep being found unconscious and naked all over London? Hmmm?”

  Rhian had no answer to that, so she said nothing.

  “You seem to have been fortunate with this Max character. Next time you may not be so lucky.”

  Frankie clearly equated Max with “harmless sugar daddy.”Whatever Max was, neither sugar nor daddy aptly described him, but Rhian did not want to get into a conversation about Max. She changed the subject.

  “Why are you still on your own, Frankie?” Rhian asked, slightly cattily. “You are not that old, and still attractive to men.” Gary, for one, Rhian thought, but the idea of her boss getting off with her landlady was just too yucky to contemplate.

  “I realize that anyone over the age of twenty-five must seem decrepit to you, but I still mostly have my own teeth,” Frankie replied. “I might ask you the same question, why no boyfriends?”

  “You don’t think the wolf thing might be a bit off-putting?” Rhian replied. She lowered her voice to simulate a husky male. “Hi, this is my girlfriend but better not annoy her because she’s a werewolf.”

  “You are not a real werewolf,” Frankie said pedantically. “Anyway that’s just an excuse.” Frankie softened her voice. “You have to let go sometime, Rhian. You think your dead boyfriend would want you to sacrifice your life to his memory. He died so that you could live—so live.”

  Rhian’s eyes prickled with tears. She felt sorrow, shame, and not a little anger. James, you bastard, she thought, why did you have to leave me? But most of all, she felt the grinding guilt that she was alive and James was dead.

  “I didn’t mean to make you cry, honey,” Frankie said. “It’s not your fault James is dead.”

  “What would you know about it, Frankie?” Rhian asked, annoyed at the intrusion into her private life.

  “Oh, I know,” Frankie replied. “I was pregnant when Pete left me, perhaps that was why he left me. I did not just walk out of The Commission on a whim. Truth is, I came apart and was retired. I tried to kill myself but I survived. Unfortunately, my baby didn’t.”

  Rhian thought of her room at Frankie’s flat, all painted in bright, friendly colors. A room that was rather too small for an adult bed but just right for a cot.

  “Trust me, I know all about guilt,” Frankie said.

  A hand grabbed Jameson’s wrist with a grip like a great white’s bite. He swung like a pendulum until he crashed back against the wall. Karla hauled him up effortlessly and stood him on the roof. He swayed and would have gone back over if she had not retained her hold.

  “You cut it fine,” Jameson said, trying for a Bondlike insouciance and failing badly.

  “Are you all right?” Karla asked.

  “Oh, I’m just bloody marvelous,” Jameson replied. “My body feels like Mike Tyson’s punch bag.” He looked around. “Where’s the daemon?”

  Karla pointed over the wall, so he leaned carefully out to look. A black burn mark stained the grass in the courtyard. If he screwed his eyes up he could imagine it was in the shape of the monster. Green vapor drifted lazily away.

  “You killed it, my love, hunted it down and killed it,” Karla said, eyes shining emerald green.

  She gazed at him with something resembling adoration and pride, the way a woman should look at her man. Could she really love him? The Commission witches would have laughed at the idea that a sucker could feel such an emotion, but Jameson was not so sure.

  “Yeah, well,” Jameson said, feeling embarrassed. “We got it.”

  He held up a hand to forestall further arguments.

  “Let’s go home, which way to the gate?”

  “It’s gone,” Karla replied.

  Jameson took a deep breath before replying. “Gone?”

  “Gone, the daemon created it, so when the daemon died . . .”

  “Right,” Jameson said. “I get the picture. Tell me, you can find another?”

  “Sure,” Karla replied.

  There was a pause.

  “You want me to find another route?”

  Jameson nodded. Karla could be so very literal.

  They went down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Karla wandered around, sniffing the air like a hound dog. She selected a place and dug into the ground with her claws, cocking her head and listening before digging slightly to one side. Carefully she extracted a skull stained brown with dirt and minerals. She held it up and gazed intently into its eye sockets.

  Jameson wondered what the hell she was up to. He did not recall her getting a bang on the head. Of course, he had taken a few, so maybe it was him not her that was ga-ga.

  She shook the skull until something with multiple legs fell out and scuttled away. Her boot squashed the wriggler before it got more than a few centimeters. She gazed at the skull again, nodding as if she was in a conversation.

  “Getting somewhere?” Jameson asked, tentatively.

  “Sure,” Karla replied.

  She crushed the skull between her hands and dropped the splintered bone fragments.

  “This way,” she said, walking back across the cloister.

  Jameson followed her into the tunnel. It turned out to be longer than he remembered. He touched the roof and discovered that it was concrete rather than stone corbelling. They were on their way through the Otherworld to a different place, maybe a different universe. They emerged into daylight from between two shattered concrete blocks. He had to duck under rusted iron strands hanging from ruined ferro-concrete.

  The sky was still grey and cloud covered. They climbed through twisted rubble that resembled a bunker complex that had been comprehensively smart bombed. Shattered remains of modern buildings hemmed them in. Bushes sprang up wherever enough earth lodged in hollow
s to sustain their roots. Creepers climbed the shattered concrete columns. Whatever happened here was years old judging by the plant growth, maybe decades old.

  Water trickled from under a fallen wall, running down to join a brook that flowed in a straight line alongside a zone that was largely clear. Wreckage lined each side like—like a shattered street, except that the surface consisted of grass. Jameson scraped some away with his foot to reveal the remains of tarmac.

  They walked along what was left of the road. Gradually the damage lessened until the buildings were substantially intact. Most had lost their roofs, but the deterioration seemed to be from decades of neglect rather than violent destruction. Ivy climbed the walls, turning structures into romantic ruins like the follies Victorian gentlemen built on their estates. A sycamore grew out of what had once been a showroom window.

  They arrived at a crossroads and Karla stopped.

  “Where now?” Jameson asked.

  Karla did not answer, occupied by gazing thoughtfully down one of the side streets.

  “What the hell is this place?” Jameson said. “The Otherworld shadows the real world, right?”

  “The parts we can access do,” Karla replied.

  “So where are we?” Jameson asked again.

  “London, or an echo of a London,” Karla replied. “It may never have existed. You people are so confused in your thoughts, but you have such powerful ideas, such vivid imaginations. You project images of your dreams and nightmares into the Otherworld, shaping its form and substance.”

  “Hmm,” Jameson said. He had heard that explanation before, but this place spooked him.

  Karla turned left at the crossroads, leaving the stream that tumbled on along the middle of the main road. Jameson followed but found he missed the comfort of the stream, the only friendly, living feature of the landscape. The clouds were thinning, allowing sunlight to illuminate the ruins. This did not improve Jameson’s mood because it made the city look more abandoned and sad.