"I left the baby with a wolf?" The warmth of Joe against her chest, his hot mouth on her breast, reassured her. "How could I?"
He lifted his eyebrows, but didn't answer.
Of course, her monster self would do anything.
"How did you change his diapers?"
"It was tricky," said Kelly. He glanced at the clock above the card table where she ate all her meals. "Got to get to the site, Amelia. Gotta pick up a few things from my apartment and get to work. I'll be home after five—three hours before moonrise, more or less. We can talk then." He put his hand on the doorknob.
Joe, warm and dry, lay in her arms. "Mr. Patterson. Thanks," said Amelia. She lowered her eyes.
She locked and bolted the door behind him, not sure if she wanted to talk to him ever again. He had seen the worst part of her—if it was really part of her, and not some alien creature that took her over three nights a month, which was what she told herself, how she lived with it.
Maybe, if she worked fast, she could load everything she really needed into her VW bug and get away, far away. There was still a little left of her mother's legacy, enough for first-and-last-plus-damage-de- posit and another six months of low rent and generic groceries. After that Joe would be old enough to go to daycare, and she could get back to temping.
Bui there was still the problem of getting a sitter for Joe before tonight.
Joe was sleeping against her breast. She transferred him gently to his crib and closed the closet door almost all the way, then went to the phone.
What had happened to that girl who was supposed to come last night, anyway? Amelia had left Joe with her a few times before when she had to go shopping and couldn't take Joe. She had found the girl's number on the bulletin board at the laundromat, and the girl had been clean and prompt and had no objections to the idea of staying with the baby overnight if necessary. The nights Patty had come when Change hadn't happened, Amelia had gone out to a movie and then come home, dismissing Patty early.
She checked the pad of paper by the phone and called the number. "Patty?" she said when a young voice answered.
"Patty's not here," said the voice, breathless. "There was an accident."
"Goodness, is she hurt?"
"Yeah, pretty bad. Yesterday she hit a car with her bike! She got a concussion. She had to go to the hospital."
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Will she be okay?"
"We think so," said the voice. It sounded uncertain.
"I'm sorry," Amelia said again. It didn't seem like the right time to ask the voice to recommend another babysitter. "I'm sorry," she said again. "Goodbye."
"Goodbye," said the voice.
She couldn't trust Joe with someone she had never met, and that included . . . him. Adam.
She wished she knew the phone number of the place where Mr. Patterson worked. She glanced toward the closet where Joe slept, then sat on the floor, elbows on the seat of one of the chairs, chin propped on hands. She had to think.
▼▼▼
Kelly was carrying a sack full of Chinese take-out when he knocked on Amelia's door after work. The door opened a crack and she peeked out, then widened the opening just enough for him to slip inside. He glanced at her as she bolted the door behind him, and got a shock. She had done something to her long brown hair—pinned it up somehow, the Search for Sophistication. She was wearing makeup—too much of it
—and a nightgown. A flannel nightgown, but the hem was torn off above her knees, and she had rolled the sleeves up to mid-forearm, and left the buttons at the throat undone.
He began to have a sinking feeling.
She looked at his face, then dropped her gaze. Her pinkened lower lip trembled. "I was afraid—" she said.
He went to the table and took the white cartons out of the sack, with napkins and two pair of chopsticks. "Have you eaten yet?"
"No, Mr. Patterson."
"Come on over and sit down. Call me Kelly. You did last night."
"Last night I was desperate."
"You look pretty desperate now."
She sat down in her second chair. She wouldn't meet his eyes. "I had this great idea," she said in a small voice. "When it turned out my babysitter was in an accident, I thought . . ."
He handed her a pair of chopsticks and a carton of shrimp fried rice. Savory steam rose from the opened carton. She set the carton down and stared at the chopsticks, still safe in their red paper sheath. "I mean, I could ask you to sit with Joe again, but you must have other things to do with your time. So I thought . . ." she said.
He opened a couple more cartons, waiting.
"I know how to get rid of Adam now," she said.
"How?"
"Get pregnant." Her glance darted up to meet his, then dropped. After a silence, she said, "I don't know how it happened last time. How or who. But I thought . . ."
Kelly swallowed. He let a minute go by. "You know that's not a long- term solution? You don't want to spend the rest of your life pregnant, do you?" She had an attractive scent; he had noticed it every time he came into contact with her. It spoke to him even when all the rest of her was posted No Trespassing. So he knew that what she was asking him wasn't impossible, but it would probably be damned uncomfortable for both of them. "Besides, you can't just plan on getting pregnant. Sometimes it takes time and work."
Her eyes closed. She had done the lids in silver, and her lashes in black. Too much of everything, but the hand that had applied the makeup had been steady and skillful.
"Can you support two kids?"
She took a deep breath and let it out. She looked like a little girl playing Mommy. She opened her eyes and stared at him, and she looked like a wood sprite. "I don't know," she said, "There's welfare, isn't there?"
"But look," he said, leaning a little closer to her across the gently steaming food. "You can't disrupt your whole life just because you want to—you want to get rid of this little fraction of it. Three nights out of thirty, and you've got all your days free. What is it? Five percent of your month, that's all. You can live with it." It was a set speech. He had heard it from Sonya-the-sudden. That seemed so long ago. He wondered why he had been so upset about the whole thing. It worked out fairly well, as long as he focused during change on thinking that what he really needed to do in the night was guard his apartment and take care of it. He hadn't done much exploring yet, but he figured there was plenty of time for that.
"You don't know what he does," she said, her eyes tearbright.
"Acts like an asshole," Kelly said.
"Much worse things than that."
"How do you know?"
Her lips thinned. She looked away.
"You do remember."
"I do his laundry."
He reached across the table and touched her hand. "Amelia, do you remember?"
"No," she said, and her face tightened. In a whisper, she said, "Maybe." Louder, "Everything he does, he does just to torture me. He knows all the things I hate and he does them all. Things I can't even think of. Things that make me throw up. Things my mother told me would make God strike me dead on the spot."
Her mother? How'd her mother get into this? "Still, just three nights out of twenty-nine or so days."
"Would you say that if I told you I murdered people on my Curse Nights? Just three people a month?"
"Uh—no, nope, I guess you're right."
She looked toward the window. It was still light out. In the streets below children played a game that involved shouts, racing footsteps, and the slap of a ball against asphalt or wall.
"Mr—Kelly, will you help me?"
"I still don't think this is your final answer, Melia."
"Maybe I can find some other answer, if I just have this . . . breathing room."
▼▼▼
Before moonrise they sat naked side by side on her living room rug and waited, not sure how change would take them. Joe had been fed and diapered and put to bed, the birds circling above him. The lullaby played faintly from the c
loset behind them. "I don't know," Amelia said. She had her knees up and her hair down, concealing everything a bathing suit would have covered, though he had seen and touched most of her already. "Maybe if I just start acting more like—like him, he won't come anymore. Maybe if I like doing what he did, he wouldn't do it anymore because he couldn't hurt me that way."
"Do you think that's possible? That you could like it?"
She slanted a look at him. "You smell good," she said. A silence. "I almost liked it," she said. "I'm not supposed to. I know I'm not supposed to. Mother said . . . But I think—"
Silver flame flared through him. It was Second Night, the night of no refusal. For an instant he tried to resist; but resistance made it hurt. He relaxed into it.
Moonlight spilled into the room through the open window. Wolf and woman stared at each other. She lifted a hand, and he nosed it. She stroked his head. "I think I can learn," she said.
THE MARK OF THE BEAST
Kim Antieau
▼▼▼
BUSHES and saplings grabbed me as I hurried through the starless moonless forest. M. Gamier had warned me to return to the chateau before dark, yet I had foolishly hunted until dusk and now I was lost. I stopped for a breath and shouldered my musket and game bag. Once night falls, Gamier had told me, the beasts come out.
In the distance, a wolf howled, a lonely cry which made my bones ache. I started forward again. The surrounding night reached into me. I felt like a child, untouched and alone in a darkness filled with malevolent shapes, instead of the man I was, sent from my father's house to shake the melancholy which had gripped my soul these many months. Now I was far from the world I had known all my life. Far from the world most men knew. The forest whispered to me in a language I could not comprehend. Some manner of beast awaited me behind each shadow. I shuddered.
"I will never find my way back," I said out loud.
My voice startled an owl off its perch in an old oak, and the air quivered as the bird fluttered its huge wings.
Near me, leaves crackled. Bushes shook. What thing sought me out in these woods? My heart pounded in my throat.
Suddenly, a small hand grasped my hand.
"This way," a woman whispered. She led me through blackness, and I welcomed her guidance. The forest parted as she moved ahead of me, like the sea parting before the bow of a ship. Leaves and ferns stroked my arms, calming my racing heart. For the quarter of an hour that the woman held my hand, the forest became familiar, like the woods surrounding my own distant home.
Then suddenly, the woman's hand pulled away from mine, and she was gone. I stepped out onto the lawn of the chateau.
"Jean-Jacques? Is that you?" Louis Gamier became a shadow in the entryway, framed by the dim gold light of an inside fire. "At last! I was afraid the beasts had gotten you. My old friend Rieux would have never forgiven me if I had allowed his only begotten son to come to harm!" Gamier motioned me inside. "Come," he said as I came toward him, "show me what you have killed this day."
▼▼▼
The following morning was bright and cool. After I dressed in a shaft of warm sunshine, I joined Gamier downstairs for breakfast.
"Have you recovered from your adventure last night?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, sitting across from him. "It was strange. I have lived in the Auvergne district all of my thirty years and I have never gotten lost before." I took a breast of quail from the platter and began to eat.
"Don't let it trouble you," Gamier said. "The Apcon forest is unlike any other place. Not many journey this far into it. Even our good King Francis does not venture here often!" He laughed heartily. Then he looked beyond me and the laughter died.
"Good morning," a familiar voice said quietly. My savior from the forest! I turned. I wanted to thank her then and there, but something about her timid gaze kept me silent.
"Marie," Gamier said. "Please, join us. Jean-Jacques Rieux, this is my wife, Marie. She was resting yesterday when you first arrived."
I stood and bowed slightly. Marie returned the bow and then sat next to her husband. She was small with golden hair pulled away from her face and curled so that it fell down her back in a way I had not seen in other women. She was more a girl than a woman, perhaps eighteen. I glanced at Louis Gamier. He could have been her father.
"Her parents were killed when she was a child," Gamier said. "They were distant relations of mine. I took Marie when they died."
"My husband is a generous man," Marie said. Gamier glanced at her and then down at his food again. Marie picked up her goblet with her child's hand and sipped the water slowly.
"How long can you stay with us?" Gamier asked me.
"Through the week if that is convenient for you and Mme. Gamier," I said. "I wish to be far from the world for a time."
Marie twisted the heart-shaped ring on her little finger. She did not look at either of us, yet I sensed she was intensely interested in the conversation.
"No inconvenience," Gamier said, his voice merry. "It will be good for Marie to have someone around closer to her own age. In this forsaken place, she has only me and her wretched Gypsy as companions."
Marie looked at Gamier and smiled. "Yes, it will be good to have M. Rieux stay." She reached out to touch her husband's arm, but he quickly moved it out of her reach.
"Hurry and eat, my dear," Gamier said. "You have lessons. I must go into the village today, but I will want to hear your recitations when I return."
"I am finished," Marie said. She had not eaten anything. "If you will excuse me?" I nodded. Marie quietly left the room.
"Troubled child," Gamier said.
"How so?"
"You cannot see?" he said. "She has the mark of the beast on her."
"I'm afraid I do not understand." I had seen no birthmark on her. No sign of the devil.
"Her parents were killed within this Godless forest," he said, "by a man-wolf. Marie almost died, too. She was mauled by the beast."
"Are you saying her parents were killed by a werewolf?"
Gamier pushed away from the table. "Yes, such things live in these forests. We convicted a man only last week for crimes he committed while he was in the shape of a wolf. I go to town today for his execution."
I had heard stories of werewolves, but I had regarded such tales as mere gossip—a way to damage a man's good name.
"These are treacherous times," Gamier said, his voice rising. "The plague devastated our village ten years ago. As we try to rebuild, we have witnessed a degradation of moral character which must be stopped. The man we are hanging raped and killed a young girl! A rope will snap the devil out of him. It will break the beast's back."
"What does this have to do with your wife, sir?"
"My wife is an emotional . . . sensual girl. She must be on her guard or the beast she carries within her will be unleashed." He looked out the window at the forest. "I married her so no one else would."
I stared at him, not understanding how he could speak so about his own wife.
He sighed and slapped the table. "Well, enjoy yourself today. 1 will return before dark."
As Gamier left the room, Marie wandered into view outside. An older woman with shiny black hair followed her. They talked in friendly whispers. Marie laughed and touched her companion often. When she bent to sniff a rose, she saw me watching. She bowed slightly. I nodded. Perhaps later I would get an opportunity to talk with her.
Clouds covered the chateau soon after Gamier rode away. The rainfall was heavy and I was in no mood to hunt. Instead, I explored the chateau. I walked about for some time admiring the woodwork and paintings. Then I grew hungry and wanted to return whence I had come. I soon realized I was lost. I wandered down a long empty corridor cursing myself. First the forest and now the chateau.
I heard laughter coming from one end of the passage and I went toward the sound.
"Raynie! That's cold!" Marie's voice.
I stopped at the entrance to the room. The two women had their backs to me.
A fire burned in a huge stone fireplace. Near to the fire, Marie sat on the polished stone floor, naked, her knees drawn up toward her breasts. Her eyes were closed as the old woman stroked her back with a wet cloth. Tiny pools of water around her buttocks and feet reflected the fire and her whiteness. I remained still, startled by the beauty of the scene. I watched the cloth move up and down. With her other hand, the old woman stroked Marie's hair.
"This reminds me of when I was a child," Marie said. "When you would take me to the river. Remember?"
The old woman nodded. She leaned forward. Her hand moved up over Marie's shoulder until the cloth and her fingers cradled Marie's small breast.
I nearly gasped. Marie's mouth opened slightly. The pleasure was so apparent in her features that I almost became ill. Gamier had been right. The fire illuminated her lustful features. She was a sensual creature.
The woman's hand moved again. Marie giggled.
"That tickles!"
I stared at Marie. She was merely a young woman enjoying the innocent caresses of her servant.
I stepped away from them and leaned against the wall. It was I who was lustful, I who had seen what was not there, I who had stared at another man's wife while she bathed!
"I cannot bear Louis's coldness," Marie whispered. "He thinks I am some kind of monster."
"Shhh, child, you are not a monster."
"I want to be touched. Loved. Is that wrong?" Her voice trembled. "I remember when your people used to visit us once a year." Her voice became happy again. "How we danced! Each person held me in his arms for a moment before whirling me forward. I am sorry Louis won't allow them on his land anymore."
"We will sneak away to see them sometime soon," Raynie said. "They have only just arrived, did I tell you?" Raynie's voice was gentle and affectionate, stroking away her mistress's despair.
I hurried from the women, down the passageway and the stairs, and somehow found my way back to my own room.
The Ultimate Werewolf Page 9