Lucrezia felt her clothing and body for brooches or even a ring with a scratching surface. A pin, anything with a sharp point. No, there was nothing. She groped along the crenelated wall encircling the top of the tower. Searching for a loose stone to use as a club. She found one that wiggled in place and she clawed at the mortar to free it.
Boom. The door cracked with a terrific groan. It shuddered and split down the center. Rigord roared and redoubled his efforts. The door shook. A clawed hand broke through the split with a shower of splinters. Martin cursed and lunged forward with his sword. It drew blood and the arm withdrew. The beast on the other side howled in rage and pain. Then he attacked the door again.
One of Lucrezia’s fingernails broke, but she was scraping away the old, flaking mortar, little by little, trying to shake the stone free. It loosened. A moment longer, just a moment. One of the hinges broke loose with a scream of tortured metal and popping bolts. The door shivered and then the split broke it in two. Rigord shoved his snout through the gap.
Martin shouted a battle cry and leaped forward with his sword whistling through the air. But this time his enemy was ready. He jerked backward and the sword bit into the broken wood. Martin pried it loose as the door rocked back and forth. A second hinge popped loose. Then the third.
Rigord burst through, holding the shattered remains of the door. It was in three flapping pieces, held together by a few stubborn fibers. He hurled it over the edge of the tower. It spun as it fell, then smashed onto the frozen river with a boom.
Lucrezia gave the stone a final heave. It didn’t come loose. Still too much mortar. If only she had another few minutes. She fell back with a cry of frustration.
Rigord stood panting and snarling. He reared to his full height—seven, eight feet tall. The muscles on his fur-covered, stretched arms bulged as large as a man’s thigh. His clawed hands clenched and unclenched. Blood and gore caked his muzzle. It was a monster that stood before them.
He had torn through the men in the chamber below as if they were children armed with sharpened sticks. The wounds that bloodied his shoulders and haunches seemed nothing to him. Martin stood before him, trembling and small, his sword pitiful in the face of those claws.
Martin charged with a cry. The wolf man slapped away the thrusting sword. His claw raked Martin’s arm as it came across and the man flew backward. His sword fell to the ground and Rigord stomped his paw down to pin it in place. Martin lay against the wall, bleeding heavily from his arm, stunned and moaning. Rigord lifted his head and howled.
He turned his ravenous gaze on Lucrezia. His mouth opened, a deep gaping hole, rimmed with teeth, each as long as her little finger and as sharp as a blade. Teeth for tearing, not chewing. Backed by jaws strong enough that they’d crunched off Demetrius’s face in a single bite. And the hunger in those eyes . . .
Now! Jump. Cheat him of his victory.
Lucrezia backed against the battlement and wrapped her fingers around the outer lip of the wall, ready to fall back through one of the lower embrasures and let herself fall. It would have to be quick. All Rigord needed to do was stretch his claws and grab her throat. Her other hand went to her neck, where she felt the clasp of her cloak. And even then, her fingers groped desperately at the little jeweled nub, as if willing it to have a chunk of metal or something sharp to defend herself with. The cloak came loose.
Her eyes shot to Martin’s sword. Rigord had stepped clear and it lay on the stone, gleaming in the moonlight. Martin was on his knees, trying to regain his feet.
“Martin!” she cried.
Without waiting to see if he would act, or if he were even capable, Lucrezia swept off her cloak. She jumped toward Rigord with her arms swinging high, the edges of the cloak clenched in her fists. The cloak encircled the beast’s head. He roared and swiped with his claws. It was a blind grope, but his claws tore through the edge of her gown and nearly ripped it clean from her body. The wind flapped the cloak in the air and he struggled to get it off his head. It came off in pieces, shredded, while he howled in rage.
Martin regained his feet and lurched forward.
“The sword!” she screamed.
His right arm dangled uselessly. He’d have to use his left. Only a moment and Rigord would be free. Hurry!
Martin lowered his head and charged. He didn’t go for the sword, but wrapped his arms around the wolf man and drove him backward with a cry. Rigord got the cloak free and turned his head to bite. But Martin already had him against the edge of the wall. For a moment they hung there, one driving to the edge, the other with claws screeching against the stone as he tried to gain purchase. They teetered for an instant, balanced. Rigord lifted his head, eyes wild. He turned back to Lucrezia, just long enough that she could tell he recognized the look of mixed triumph, fear, and worry in her eyes.
Then the balance shifted. They fell, still flailing. She was alone on top of the tower.
“Martin!” she cried. “No!”
A terrific crack split the air—the sound of breaking ice.
Lucrezia ran to the edge in horror. Martin and the beast lay motionless atop the frozen surface of the river, still locked in each other’s embrace. A web of cracks spread from the impact, but they hadn’t broken through to the water below. She stared down in horror, willing Martin to rise. He would climb shakily to his feet, kick the dead wolf man in disgust, then limp for the shore. Even though it had been a hundred feet or more, somehow Rigord’s body had cushioned the fall.
No. There was no movement. Both of them lay dead.
With tears filling her eyes, she turned away. No time for that now, no time. She picked up Martin’s sword, gave one last look over the edge, then, stifling a sob, turned back to the gaping hole where the door had been. She made her way slowly down the stairs, now cloaked in darkness, listening. A moan reached her ears. A man, crying for water.
Someone was still alive down there. She had to help.
When the guards finally did arrive at the house, several minutes too late, they found Lucrezia with one of her servants, a young girl who had locked herself in a closet, terrified, to wait out the battle. The two women were ministering to a mixture of servants and men-at-arms savaged by the wolves, but not dead—half a dozen in all. She thought she might save four of them, but she would need to make more of her tincture with monkshood. The last two she made comfortable the best she could and sent someone for a priest.
As she worked, she said her own prayers. Martin dead, so many other faithful servants murdered. Her beloved dogs, both killed defending her. She couldn’t take any more loss.
Let Lorenzo live, she begged. Keep him safe.
Chapter Thirty-three
Courtaud snarled in rage. The red wolf leaned against a metal grating that had been pulled across the passageway. A lock had snapped it in place, holding it against bolted rings tamped into the stone wall. The wolf had been pulling at the grate, as evidenced by the blood and the bent metal, but it had held, preventing escape.
The four men stayed a pace back, the brothers holding their swords. Marco held a torch in his other hand. Simon and Montguillon also carried torches. The prior stared at the animal with disgust etched into his face.
Courtaud had taken serious injuries. Of course blood had fallen all along the way, leaving a speckled pathway, but Lorenzo hadn’t expected to find the wolf here gasping for air, barely on its feet. It must have battered itself against the grate, further weakening itself.
The wolf bared its teeth in a snarl. It was still large and dangerous and they stayed back. Its thoughts radiated outward.
Betrayed. Lied to. I should have known.
In the chatelet, when Courtaud ordered the other wolves to flee, to leap from the walls into the moat and swim to safety, the words had come through dimly, like voices overheard through a thick plaster wall. But it was stronger this time, a voice speaking inside his head. The wolf’s powers must have grown, that he could cast his thoughts directly into another’s mind.
&nb
sp; Montguillon drew back in surprise and put a hand to his head, but recovered quickly. His lips pulled back in a mirthless smile. “And why would you believe otherwise? Did you expect your dark master to honor you? He is the Father of Lies, the Deceiver. Did he promise you would rule by his side? The only thing Lucifer can offer you is the torments of hell.”
The wolf let out a deep, throaty growl. You are a fool, Inquisitor. Brainless beneath that bald scalp of yours.
“Kill him,” Simon urged. “Destroy him now.”
Lorenzo and Marco exchanged another glance.
Montguillon ignored the young friar. “I don’t think so, wolf man. What have you gained? Your allies in sin and sorcery lie dead, trapped and destroyed. Now there is only you, wounded and dying. Moments from now, when your soul is rent by everlasting torment, when you lift your eyes from the lake of fire, when ash burns your lungs and liquid flame pours down your throat, you will think differently. You will beg for mercy, but your cries will go unheard. You will think of me and my wisdom and remember the mercy offered to you in this life. And you will curse your own wretched evil.”
Courtaud stared back and there was a hint of satisfaction in the wolf’s gaze. The prior missed something that everyone else in this chamber understood, at least in part. Whatever suspicion had crossed Montguillon’s mind upon their descent into the crypts and catacombs seemed to be gone now. His final malediction uttered, he seemed only to want this wolf dead.
“Now!” the prior ordered Lorenzo and Marco. “I command you. End his filthy life.”
Neither brother moved and Montguillon repeated his command with increasing urgency, with Simon taking up the plea.
“Not yet,” Marco said.
He swung his sword and shoved it under Simon’s chin to force the unarmed man against the wall. He tossed his torch to the ground and snatched away the friar’s own torch.
“What are you doing?” Montguillon said. “Kill the beast. Hurry.”
Courtaud’s thoughts came through with a chuckle. There are wiser heads in this room than you, old man. They see. They know.
The earlier suspicion now bloomed anew on the prior’s face. “Brother. Is this true?”
“It’s witchcraft,” Simon said. “He’s poisoning your mind. Filling it with lies and doubt. Don’t you see?”
“What did he promise you? What would possibly make you aid these wolves to desecrate this holy place? It is an abomination.”
“Even worse than that,” Lorenzo said. Courtaud chuckled again, but he ignored the injured wolf as he continued, “Simon has been in league with these beasts since the beginning.”
“No, I don’t believe it,” Montguillon said. “I can’t.”
Lorenzo stared grimly. “Simon was the friar who translated Lucrezia’s Slavonic fragment, wasn’t he? He knew everything from the beginning. And he used that information.”
“My God, the manuscript. You read it, you entered freely into an alliance. You weren’t seduced by their promises—you made the offer yourself.”
“This is why there are two wolf packs,” Lorenzo said. “Lucrezia tricked her husband, who corrupted men until he formed a pack to surround him. But Simon took the fragment and he spread the information to these others. Then he agreed to help them attack and destroy the cathedral.”
Ah, the wolf said. I thought you had it. But no, you almost understand. But not quite. Not yet. “What do you mean?” Marco said. He pulled his sword from the trembling friar’s throat and aimed it with Lorenzo’s own blade at the wolf. “Tell us.”
Or what? You’ll kill me? I think you’ll find out soon enough. Ask yourself, why am I trapped here? Who disappeared in the battle, first to unlock these gates, and then to lock them up again and seal me in alive, so I’d be killed? It was a trap within a trap. He wants what I have.
“To what? Take over the pack himself?” Marco asked. “But how? They’re wolves, he’s—”
He stopped and at that moment Lorenzo understood as well.
Look to your friend, Courtaud said. There is your answer.
Simon stood trembling and sweating with his back against the wall. “It’s your fault,” he said to Montguillon. “You forced me to it.”
“What idiocy is this?” Montguillon raged. “Unfaithful, miserable sinner. I did nothing.”
“You’re a tyrant. Living under your command, the insults, the abuse. What do I have to fear from hell? I already live in a hell of your own making.”
“Blasphemer.”
“But this, this is power. This is control like you could never understand. To live forever, to see men tremble at your feet. And when I—”
Simon stopped, unable to continue. He convulsed and fell to his knees. Even though Lorenzo knew what was happening, knew he should take his sword and shove it through the friar’s heart, he was transfixed by the scene. The young man tore at his clothing. Off came the scapular and the black cloak, then his robe. He knelt gasping and shuddering in nothing but a loin cloth.
Thick brown fur sprouted on his back, his face, his arms, his tonsured scalp. His face stretched and he leaned back his head and screamed in pain. His spine arched, a bald tail sprouted from his back end, twisting like an adder emerging from its burrow. Soon it was covered with hair like the rest of Simon’s body.
“Kill the bastard,” Marco shouted.
The brothers surged forward. Marco swung his blade, but Simon, still halfway between wolf and man, swung his arm and knocked him back. Lorenzo tried to get in, but Montguillon blocked him. The prior chanted in Latin and brought his staff around and struck Simon across the brow. Not effectually.
The transformation came to an end. Simon was a wolf. Not so big as Courtaud or as fierce as some of the other beasts who had savaged them on the road and attacked them in Nemours’s chatelet or in the cathedral, he was still a fearsome sight. More so in the narrow confines of the catacombs. He leaped forward and slammed into Montguillon. All three men fell back.
Simon came down on top of the prior. His jaws snapped and tore. Montguillon screamed. Marco came in again with his sword.
Courtaud.
Lorenzo whipped a glance toward the closed metal grating. He wanted to make sure the big red wolf wouldn’t leap at them while they battled Simon. But Courtaud was gone. Vanished, as if he had slipped through the grating into the darkness on the other side. Lorenzo snatched up Marco’s torch and waved it around.
There. A shadow bled into the darkness back up the tunnel from which they’d come. It was the same dark magic that had allowed Courtaud to elude the battle in the cathedral. Wounded, he had fled, abandoned his pack. Desperate, he now tried to do the same even if it took him back toward the surface.
Lorenzo shouted and ran after him. Marco paid him no attention, with Simon now up from the fallen prior. Marco slashed and jabbed. The wolf drove him back.
Hurrying, but not running up the passageway, Lorenzo kept both torch and sword in front of him. He was afraid of ambush. Run too fast and he’d come around one of the dogleg corners to find Courtaud waiting to spring. Always, the shadow stayed just ahead of him. Then they reached one of the branches in the catacombs. Two of the tunnels led deeper, the last back toward the crypts and the surface. If the shadow disappeared before Lorenzo could follow, the wolf might escape.
He threw himself forward and stabbed blindly into the shadows. The tip met resistance. A yelp. The sword came back bloody. The shadow disappeared, replaced by glowing eyes and snarling jaws. The wolf jumped for him.
Courtaud’s snout slammed into Lorenzo’s chest and he stumbled. He dropped the torch. Trying to bring his sword to bear, he lifted his other forearm and drove it under the wolf’s jaw. Lorenzo fell on his back with the wolf on his chest. The jaws forced against his arm and snapped at his neck. He only just kept the thing at bay. Courtaud was weakened, dripping blood on Lorenzo’s face. Attacking with desperation now. But Lorenzo’s arm was pinned—he couldn’t get the blade up.
So he dropped the sword. Instead, h
e grabbed the wolf’s head. His thumb probed for its eye. A stabbing pain shot through his arm. The wolf had him above the wrist and shook his arm back and forth in his jaws. Then Lorenzo’s thumb found the eye socket. He squeezed with all his strength.
The wolf fell away with a whine. Lorenzo groped for the sword hilt, found the torch flame instead. It scorched his hand. He yanked it back and this time found his sword. He lifted the blade as Courtaud regrouped and sprang on him a second time.
The wolf landed on the sword tip. His weight drove both man and wolf to the ground, and forced the blade into the beast’s chest cavity. Courtaud howled in anguish, writhing and snapping and trying to pull himself free. Lorenzo shoved and pushed and whipped his head from side to side to keep away from the biting jaws.
The wolf’s struggles slowed. At last he fell still, weight still bearing onto Lorenzo’s chest. Thick, hot blood gushed onto Lorenzo’s neck and face and soaked his tunic. He summoned the last of his strength and heaved the wolf off him with a grunt.
His arm felt on fire. Wolf teeth punctured deep into the flesh, but they hadn’t ripped the muscle from his body. Lorenzo labored under no delusions; if Courtaud hadn’t already been wounded, the beast would have torn him apart.
From deeper into the tunnel, where he’d left the others, came only a deep and ominous silence. Terrified for his brother, Lorenzo snatched up the torch and left the dead wolf where it lay. He came up to the grate, expecting to find both Marco and Montguillon dead and Simon with his muzzle buried in guts, feasting.
But Marco stood panting, sword bloody, his face splattered. Simon lay dead at his feet. Montguillon lay on the ground, still moving, not quite dead yet.
“Thank God,” Marco said when Lorenzo came around the corner. “Is that—is it your blood or that devil’s?”
“I killed him.” Lorenzo lifted his arm. “But I hope Lucrezia has something for this.”
Marco winced at the wound. “I took care of mine, too. But he was just a little one. Not like yours.”
The Wolves of Paris Page 26