by Mark Tufo
“We could all retire comfortably with this much treasure,” I said, looking at the large box nearly overflowing with the booty.
“I wish that could be the case, but the fates have determined another path for us,” Azile said with a faraway stare.
“Who, exactly, are the fates, because I’ve got a couple of choice words for them.”
“Ah, there is more of the Michael I knew,” Azile said, smiling at me.
“What makes you think these towns are going to do anything but keep the silver you give them?” I asked.
“You’ll have to watch them cover their weapons.” She smiled back.
“Wonderful, what now? Do we just find some werewolves and start hacking away?” I asked.
“First, I believe we should find some shelter. Rain and wind may not affect either of you too much, but I can’t stand it, and holding it off is beginning to wear on my reserves.”
“You have power over weather?” I asked in awe.
“There is a reason your brother’s house has not yet crumbled in on itself from crushing snow.”
“I just thought I’d been lucky…or unlucky really.”
She snorted slightly. “Come. There is an old house up ahead that I used last night. It should be suitable for this evening as well.”
The ‘old house’ was in fairly good condition considering its age. It was a log cabin style kit home; from the outside it appeared to be roughhewn from large logs inside it looked more like a ski chalet.
“Had I known how long I was going to exile myself, I would have chosen a place like this,="+e like ” I said as I looked at the grand staircase. Candles were blazing in nearly every corner making the house much brighter than outside. “Not very safe leaving these on while you were out.”
“They were being tended,” Azile said.
“Our fifth traveling companion?” I asked Tommy.
I nearly fell over Oggie trying to get out of the house when a scaled animal came strolling out from a side hallway. It walked on four legs, after that, any familiarity to any living animal was gone. It was red and covered in the aforementioned scales. Its head, which was triangular shaped, had small horned protrusions arising from it. Large reptilian eyes blinked at me, its leathery wings seated high on its back flapped once or twice.
“What the fuck is that?” I asked Tommy, using his shoulder to prop myself up.
“Sebastian, what are you doing?” Azile said, approaching what I could only call a mini dragon.
“It’s her familiar,” Tommy said, dropping his pack onto the ground and striding into the house as if that explained everything.
The thing flickered once, the scales seemed to melt away, replaced with fur. The wings folded and retreated into themselves, and the angular head took on a roundish shape, whiskers poked out.
“A cat? It’s a fucking cat? I would have rather had the dragon,” I said.
Sebastian hissed at me. “Oh look at you, Mike, making new friends wherever you go,” Azile said, spreading her arms to catch the cat as it leaped onto her. You’re going to hurt his feelings.”
I wanted to tell her I really didn’t care about his feelings; his distant relatives had taken the life of my best friend and nearly my own as I had tried to destroy them. We would always be on shaky ground.
“What’s with the dragon thing?” I asked, pointing at the Gatekeeper to the Underworld.
“He likes to pretend. Sometimes he’s a dragon, sometimes a lion, and whatever else he feels like turning into,” she said, stroking his fur. He was purring contentedly whilst also mean-mugging me. If the cat could have somehow stayed in contact with her petting and slashed a claw across my face, I’m pretty convinced he would have.
“Wonderful…a shape-shifting cat. Any chance he could turn into a cheeseburger?” I asked, giving him the same stare back. He didn’t seem like he gave a shit. Go figure.
“I think it is time you made peace with cats,” Azile said as she absently stroked the cat’s back.
“Let’s give it a few more centuries and see what that brings us,” I told her. “Speaking of which, how is it that you’re still with us?” I asked, not realizing how callous my question was until I saw her expression change. “No, no I didn’t mean it that way,” I backpedaled.
“Same Mike…same womanly charm.” Tommy laughed, heading upstairs. Azile shared in his merriment.
“You guys use this place often?” I asked of his familiarity.
“It’s one of many way-stations we have across the land,” Azile said.
“And with Azile’s concealment spells, m cant spelost stay hidden from prying eyes,” Tommy said as he reached the top of the stairway and headed right.
“Most?” I asked.
“There are others with power that can see beyond it, including some of the Lycan.”
“Wonderful,” I answered her. “Is that going to be a problem here?”
“No, not yet anyway.”
“Please don’t get me wrong, Azile, I’m more than thrilled to see someone from the past, but how? And you still look so young.”
“Would you rather I look like this?” she asked sweeping her hand across her face. She instantly transformed into an old woman. A large hooked nose peeked out from the deep folds of skin that created crevices in her face. A wart the size of a rat’s nose was nearly lost in a forest of thick coarse facial hair.
I took in a sharp intake of air.
“Relax.” She smiled, her more customary face coming through.
“Which one’s real?”
“Touch me.” She leaned in towards me.
I tentatively reached out with my hand and touched her face. It was as soft and smooth as any young woman’s face should be. I pulled back quickly. “I’m sorry,” I told her.
“For what?” She asked smiling, I think she knew why.
“You’re nearly half my age.”
“Michael Talbot, I am a hundred and seventy-three years old, there are not many beings that can claim I am half their age.”
“You know what I meant,” I said with embarrassment.
“How about this?” she asked once again running her hand past her face.
I staggered. “T-Tracy?” I cried. “I-I’ve almost forgotten what you looked like.” I was sobbing now. “Please, no more.” I put my arm up and out to block her from view.
“I’m so sorry, Mike. I just thought you might be more comfortable if I looked like her.”
Her words were lost as I stumbled out of the house. Fat tears fell from my eyes as my steps faltered. I don’t know how far I traveled, but when I looked up I could no longer see the house. I don’t know if that was because of Azile’s spell or if I had just wandered that far away. I could hear Oggie barking in the distance. Right now I wasn’t sure if I even wanted his company.
“Maybe I should just keep going,” I said aloud. I caught a glimmer of something bounding through the woods. Oggie had sniffed me out and was even now coming at a full tilt. I could outdistance him and be away from all of them. I stood my ground as he leaped, placing his paws on my chest. He drove me to the ground and licked the salt from my tears.
“Yeah, that was a stupid idea,” I told him as I wrestled his head.
Azile was standing at a tree not more than five feet away. She must have been at the head of her craft class. “I’m sorry, Michael. I won’t do that again.”
I nodded. Owas>I noddggie grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet.
We walked back to the house. At first it was an uneasy silence and then it became a comfortable quiet. Sounds roughly the same, but what can I say, it’s how I felt. Oggie would wander off and come back. He sounded like a bear in some of the thicker underbrush.
“Was Purpose, your idea?” I asked her when we got to the door.
“Tommy’s. We had discussed how we could get you to this point. He came up with a dog. I had a different idea.”
“What was it?” I asked curiously.
“It’s a pity you’re as
handsome as you are and not the brains to match. Good night, Michael Talbot.” She lightly touched my face and went into the house, disappearing down the hallway from which the dragon cat had originally emerged from.
I waited for Oggie to come bounding into the house, I shut the door behind him; it finally dawned on me what in the hell Azile was talking about. “Oh,” I said, and then I may have blushed, tough to tell without actually looking in a mirror.
I went upstairs and found a room that seemed to be to my liking. Oggie hopped up on the bed, his tail wagging. I shut the door and joined him. Thoughts of my beloved dominated my night. I hung onto that momentary image Azile had given me. I focused on every detail, trying my best to burn it into the folds of my mind. I’m not ashamed to admit, a good deal of that time was spent with a pillow over my mouth muffling my sobs. I bet at some point during the night my face was probably puffed out enough to look like I had been on the losing end of a prizefight. If that was the case I was going to imagine it was at the fists of Iron Mike Tyson when he was in his prime. If you’re going to get your ass handed to you, might as well be from the best.
How pissed off could Chuck Norris really be having lost to possibly the greatest fighter of all time, Bruce Lee? Gotta love me some random thoughts. By the time I got up, Oggie was no longer in the room. I wasn’t sure when that had happened since I didn’t really remember falling asleep, and last time I checked, he couldn’t open doors. Tommy and Azile were sitting at a small table, Azile stood as I approached.
“You get stung by a bee?” she asked as she touched my apparently still puffed up face.
“Allergies,” I told her.
Tommy looked over at me.
“Fine, sand in my eye,” I told him. I couldn’t pull out the standard ‘I sat on my keys’ without a car.
“Where’s Oggie?” I asked.
“He’s rounding himself up some breakfast, I would imagine,” Azile said. “Speaking of which…Tommy tells me you did not feed.”
“I ate,” I told her defiantly.
“Not properly,” she chastised me. “Make no mistake, Michael, we will soon be at a war we may not win. You are not preparing for this correctly.”
“By not eating people? How would that possibly be helping the human race by eating them?”
“It is the sacrifice of the one for the lives of the saives ofmany,” she replied.
“I’ve always hated that argument, Azile. That one you speak so casually of is special to someone. How do I go back and tell that person’s mother or wife or children that they gave their lives up in a noble cause?”
“And what of those men you killed in the zombie war, did they not have a special someone somewhere?” she retorted.
“That was different. It was a war.” I didn’t know if I was winning the argument or burying myself, but considering I was talking to a woman, odds were I was on the short end; you know, the part that’s been swirling around in the shit.
“Michael, these people would willingly give themselves to you if they knew the devastation that was going to be wrought on everything and everybody they love. The Lycan are not human and never were. They do not have human emotions, they kill without impunity or value. They will lay waste to a village merely because they can.”
“They weren’t human? They weren’t infected like zombies or vampires?” I don’t know why that was so important to me, but it was.
“Never. The only reason man has become the dominant species on the planet is his relatively quick reproductive cycle. Lycan mate once every five years.”
“No wonder they’re so pissed off,” I said.
Tommy snorted.
“So they have marriage, too?” I asked.
“Michael, this is serious!” Azile fairly demanded.
“Sorry, every five years, that’s a long time to keep the pipes backed up,” I told her.
“How is it that you’re our best chance at victory?” She asked.
“Hey, you said that, not me,” I told her. “If I had it my way, me and the Ogster would have stayed up in Maine.” He came over and licked my hand when I mentioned his name. I noticed that he had to bow his head to do so. The dog was growing in leaps and bounds.
“Michael, they will destroy all of mankind, eating and enslaving as they go. The Lycan clans are uniting under one leader, and when they decide how they will divide the world up, it will be too late.”
“Azile, maybe it’s their time. Since the beginning of time some species rule for a while and then yield to another after some cataclysmic event. Humans had a decent run, considering we got too smart for our own good. Too many brains, not enough morality. I don’t see the Lycan being any better or any worse.”
“Would you have said those same words if your family were alive, Michael? Would you not fight for all you and they were worth?”
I wanted to rant at her that she wasn’t being fair.
“Don’t other men with families deserve the right to raise and protect their families as best they can, men like you?” she continued.
“To be fair,” Tommy interjected, “there really aren’t too many meid too man like Mike.”
“Thanks…I think,” I told him.
“No problem.” He smiled at me; I noticed some red jelly gooped around his gums. I didn’t ask.
“Would you like to see what you’re up against?” she asked.
“Not really,” I told her, being honest.
“Tommy, let’s gather our things and get ready to travel,” she said curtly to him.
“What about me?” I asked.
“What about you?” she asked, turning back around. “You made yourself clear in your intentions.”
Had I? I thought. I guess I did; sometimes being argumentative can cause problems. “I promised the Judge in Robert’s Land I wouldn’t go back through town.”
“You’ve already broken one promise…what’s another?” she asked.
“What promise did I break?” I asked Tommy quietly.
“Your bond with mankind,” he answered sincerely.
“Did you learn the guilt trip shit from Tracy? Because she was a master of it. Or is it just an inherent thing in the female species?”
“Do not hold me responsible for pointing out your conscience,” she told me.
“Dammit all. Fine, Oggie and I will go a little farther with you…but no promises.”
“As you will,” Azile said as she went back to the house.
“I think she’s smitten with you,” Tommy said, backhanding my shoulder.
“Smitten? Are you kidding me? Just because it looks like the 1800s doesn’t mean we need to talk like it,” I told him, as he smiled at me, I heard something rustle in his pocket that sounded suspiciously like a foil packet; again I didn’t ask.
I walked next to the wagon. Truth be told, my ass was hurting from the lack of cushioning and shocks. Oggie had no such compunction; he was sitting next to Tommy on the wooden plank bench. Tongue hanging out, he looked as happy as a witch in an apothecary store. I wanted to keep the analogy relative.
“Comfortable up there, you lug?” I stroked his paw. He looked over, a long string of drool dropped on my arm. “Nice,” I told him. His tail thumped.
It was a long day, sometimes I got up on the cart, but for the most part I walked, it was nice to stretch my legs and enjoy the day. Dusk was beginning when Azile had us stop. I figured we had another half hour of light. We could have kept going, and I didn’t see a particularly good spot to set up shop, but it looked like she was the boss of this little expedition so we stopped.
“You ready?” She asked, as she got down off her horse. She produced a lantern from the back of Tommy’s cart and with a one-word incantation we had light.
“Cavemen would have loved you,” I told her as we followed her into the woods on the d aoods onright side of the path.
The sun had just about set when we finally got to where we were going.
“Help me,” I heard a weak voice utter.
> “Who was that?” I asked looking around.
Azile strode a couple of paces further to a large iron cage, made with columns and cross sections as thick as a man’s leg.
“What the fuck you got in there, elephants?” I asked as I approached.
“Please help me, sir,” an ancient man asked. He was huddled in the far corner of the cage, shying away from Azile’s lantern.
“How did you know he was here?” I asked her.
“I put him there,” she replied calmly.
“He’s almost as old as I am, Azile. What the hell are you doing?” Then it dawned on me. “Oh…I get it. Old guy, probably has no family no one will miss him. I told you I AM NOT going to sustain from humans!” I was bellowing.
“Oh, he has plenty of family. When he grew too weak to keep up with them, they abandoned him. I found him.”
“And then stuck him in a cage? What happened to the Azile I knew?” I asked.
She went to the large lock. “If you can kill him,” she said, talking to the old man and then pointing at me, “I will set you free to roam the wilds as you please.”
“You speak the words of the Moon, Spirit Woman?” he asked her.
“I do.” She nodded.
What happened next is almost beyond description. As she removed the lock, the man began to transform. I don’t know if it was a trick of the light, but he seemed to double in size. Silver hair sprouted from every part of him. His mouth elongated, as did his arms, legs, hands, and more importantly, claws. A snarl pulled his lips back to reveal fangs a Saber-toothed tiger would have been proud to display. He stood on two legs but that was now the only thing he had in common with man. Tommy moved away, he grabbed Oggie who was barking wildly. The old man-slash-wolf-thing lunged at me, a backhand from its right hand/paw sent me sprawling, and I found myself sliding on a bed of wet leaves, moss, and broken branches.
“What the fuck?” I asked, trying to shake the cobwebs from my head. The thing was already in the air. I turned to my right and his claw cut a swath in the forest floor. The same leaves I had taken a joy ride on most likely saved my life as the beast slid away from me, giving me time to regroup.