Full Moon City

by Darrell Schweitzer

  He did not stop to pick up Garrigue. His explanation to himself was that there wasn’t time, that every minute was too precious to be taken up with a detour; but even as he made it, he knew better. The truth lay in his pity for Garrigue’s endless nightmares, for his lonesome question, “It gone be like that time?” and for his own sense that this was finally between him and the man whom he had carved to obscene fragments alive. I let him do it all back to me, he lets them two go. Please, Damballa, you hear? Please.

  But he was never certain—and less now than ever before—whether Damballa heard prayers addressed to him in English. So for the entire length of the drive, which seemed to take the rest of his life, he chanted, over and over, a prayer-song that little Ti-Jean Arceneaux, who spoke another language, had learned young, never forgotten, and, until this moment, never needed.

  “Baba yehge, amiwa saba yehge,

  “De Damballa e a miwa,

  “Danou sewa yehge o, djevo de.

  “De Damballa Wedo, Bade miwa …”

  Rather than bursting into the cabin like the avenging angel he had planned to be, he hardly had the strength or the energy to open the car door, once he arrived. The afternoon was cold, and he could smell snow an hour or two away; he noticed a few flakes on the roof of Noelle’s car. There was flickering light in the cabin, and smoke curling from the chimney, which he and Garrigue mistrusted enough that they almost never lighted a fire. He moved closer, noticing two sets of footprints leading to the door. Yeah, she’d have been carrying Patrice, boy’d have been too scared to walk. The vision of his terrified four-year-old grandson made him grind his teeth, and Duplessis promptly called from within, “No need to bite the door down, Jean-Marc. Half a minute, I’ll be right there.”

  Waiting, Arceneaux moved to the side of the house and ripped down the single power line. The electric light went out inside, and he heard Duplessis laugh. Standing on the doorstep as Arceneaux walked back, he said, “I thought you might do that, so I built a handsome fire for us all—even lit a few candles. But if you imagine that’s going to preclude the use of power tools, I feel I should remind you that they all run on batteries these days. Nice big batteries. Come in, Jean-Marc, I bid you welcome.”

  It was not the shock of seeing Noelle tied in a chair that almost caused Arceneaux to lose what control he had and charge the smiling man standing beside her. It was the sight of Patrice, unbound on her lap, lighting up at the sight of him to call “Gam’pair!” He had been crying, but his face made it clear that everything would be all right now. Duplessis said pleasantly, “I wouldn’t give it a second thought, old friend. I’m sure you know why.”

  “Fontenot,” Arceneaux said. “Never knowed the old man had that much power.”

  “Oh, it cost me an arm and a leg … so to speak.” Duplessis laughed softly. “Another reason he had to go. I mean, suppose everyone could change whenever he chose, things might become a bit … chaotic, don’t you agree? But it certainly does come in handy, those nights when you’re suddenly peckish, just like that, and everything’s closed.”

  Noelle’s eyes were terrified, but her voice was surprisingly steady. She said, “He broke in in the night, I don’t know how. I couldn’t fight him, because he had Patrice, and he said if I screamed …”

  “Yeah, honey,” Arceneaux said. “Yeah, baby.”

  “He made me drive him up here. Poor Patrice was so frightened.”

  Patrice nodded proudly. “I was scared, Gam’pair.”

  “He tried to rape me,” Noelle said evenly. “He couldn’t.”

  Duplessis looked only mildly abashed. “Everything costs. And it did seem appropriate—you and little Rene working so hard to entice me up here. I thought I’d just take you up on it a bit early.”

  Arceneaux took a step, then another; not toward Duplessis, but toward Noelle in the chair. Duplessis said, “I really wouldn’t, Jean-Marc.”

  Noelle said, “Dadda, get out of here! It’s you he wants!”

  Arceneaux said, “He got me. He ain’t getting you.”

  Duplessis nodded. “I’ll let them go, you have my word. But they have to watch first. That’s fair. Her and the little one, watching and remembering … you know, that might even make up for what you did to me.” His smile brightened even more. “Then we’ll be quits at last, just think, after all the years. I might even leave some of the others alive—lagniappe, don’t you know, our greatest Louzianne tradition. As your folks say down in the swamp, lagniappe c’est bitin qui bon—lagniappe is lawful treasure.”

  Arceneaux ignored him. To Patrice he said, “Boy, you get off your mama’s lap now, I got to get those ropes off her. Then we all go get some ice cream, you like that?”

  Patrice scrambled down eagerly. Noelle said, “Dadda, no. Take Patrice and get out—” just as Duplessis’s voice sharpened and tightened, good cheer gone. “Jean-Marc, I’m warning you—”

  The ropes were tight for stiff old fingers, and Noelle’s struggling against them didn’t help. Behind him, Arceneaux heard Patrice scream in terror. A moment later, looking past him, Noelle went absolutely rigid, her mouth open but no sound emerging. He turned himself then, knowing better than they what he would see.

  Petrifying as the sight of a werewolf obviously is, it is the transformation itself that is the smothering fabric of nightmare. On the average, it lasts no more than ten or fifteen seconds; but to the observing eyes and mind the process is endless, going on and on and on in everlasting slow-motion, as the grinning mouth twists and lengthens into a fanged snarl, while the body convulses, falls forward, catches itself on long gray legs that were arms a lifetime ago, and the eyes lengthen, literally reseat themselves in the head at a new angle, and take on the beautiful insane glow that particularly distinguishes the loup-garou. Alexandre Duplessis—cotton-white, except for the dark-shaded neck-ruff and the jagged black slash across the chest—uttered a shattering half-human roar and sprang straight at Arceneaux.

  Whether it was caused by the adrenaline of terror or of rage he couldn’t guess, but suddenly the ropes fell loose from the chair and his fingers, and Noelle, in one motion, swept up the wailing Patrice and was through the door before the wolf that had been Duplessis even reached her father. The bad knee predictably locked up, and Arceneaux went down, with the wolf Duplessis on him, worrying at his throat. He warded off the wide-stretched jaws with his forearm, bringing the good knee up into the loupgarou’s belly, the huge white-and-black body that had become all his sky and all his night. Duplessis threw back his head and bayed in triumph.

  Arceneaux made a last desperate attempt to heave Duplessis away and get to his feet. But he was near to suffocation from the weight on his chest—Baba yehge, amiwa saba yehge, de Damballa e a miwa—and then the werewolf’s jaws were past his guard, the great fangs sank into his shoulder, and he heard himself scream in pain—Danou sewa yehge o, djevo de, Damballa come to us, they are hurting us, Damballa come quickly …

  … and heard the scream become a howl of fury in the same moment, as he lunged upward, his changing jaws closing on Duplessis’s head, taking out an eye with the first snap. Wolf to wolf—the greatest sin of all—they rose on their hind legs, locked together, fangs clashing, each streaked and blotched with the other’s blood. Arceneaux had lost not only who he was, but what—he had no grandchildren now, no children either, no lifelong downhome friend, no memories of affection … there had never been anything else but this murderous twin, and no joy but in hurting it, killing it, tearing it back once again to shreds, where it belonged. He had never been so happy in his life.

  In the wolf form, loups-garoux do not mate; lovemaking is a gift for ordinary animals, ordinary humans. Yet this terrible, transcendent meshing was like nothing Arceneaux had ever known, even as he was aware that his left front leg was broken and one side of his throat laid open. Duplessis was down now … or was that some other wolf bleeding and panting under him, breath ragged, weakened claws finding no purchase in his fur? It made no difference. There was n
othing but battle now, nothing but hunger for someone’s blood.

  Most of the lighted candles had been knocked over—some by Noelle’s flight to the door, some during the battle. The rag rugs that he and Garrigue had devastated and not yet replaced were catching fire, and spreading the flames to dry furniture and loose paper and kindling. Arceneaux watched the fire with a curious detachment, as intense, in its way, as the ecstasy with which he had closed his wolf jaws on Duplessis’s wolf flesh. He was aware, with the same disinterest, that he was bleeding badly from a dozen wounds; still, he was on his feet, and Duplessis was sprawled before him, alive but barely breathing, lacking the strength and will to regain the human shape. Arceneaux was in the same condition, which was a pity, for he would have liked to give his thanks to Damballa in words. He considered the helpless Duplessis for a moment longer, as the fire began to find its own tongue, and then he pushed the door open with his head and limped outside.

  Noelle cried out at first as he stumbled toward her; but then she knew him, as she would always have known him, and knelt down before him, hugging his torn neck—Duplessis had come very near the throat—and getting blood all over the pajamas in which she had been kidnapped. She had no words either, except for Dadda, but she got plenty of mileage out of that one, even so.

  The cabin was just reaching full blaze, and Patrice had worked up the courage to let the strange big dog lick his face, when the police car came barreling up the overgrown little path, very nearly losing an axle to the pothole Garrigue had been warning them about for the last couple of miles. Antoine was with them, too, and Garrigue’s son Claude, and a police paramedic as well. There was a good deal of embracing among one group, and an equal amount of head scratching, chin rubbing, and cell-phone calling by the other.

  And Jean-Marc Arceneaux—“Ti-Jean” to a very few old friends—nuzzled his grandson one last time, and then turned and walked back into the blazing cabin and threw himself over the body of the wolf Alexandre Duplessis. Noelle’s cry of grief was still echoing when the roof came down.

  When Garrigue could talk—when anyone could talk, after the fire engine came—he told Noelle, “The ashes. He done it because of the ashes.”

  Noelle shook her head weakly. “I don’t understand.”

  Garrigue said, “Duplessis come back once, maybe do it again, even from ashes. But not all mixed up together with old Ti-Jean, no, not with their jaws locked on each other in the other world and the loa watching. Not even a really good conjure man out of Sabine, Vernon Parish, pull off that trick. You follow me?”

  “No,” she said. “No, Rene. I don’t, I’m trying.”

  Garrigue was admirably patient, exhausted as he was. “He just making sure you, the grandbabies, the rest of us, we never going to be bothered by Compe’ Alexandre no more.” His gray eyes were shining with prideful tears. “He thought on things like that, Ti-Jean did. Knew him all my life, that man. All my life.”

  Patrice slept between her and Antoine that night: the police psychologist who had examined him said that just because he was showing no sign of trauma didn’t mean that he might not be affected in some fashion that wouldn’t manifest itself for years. For his part, Patrice had talked about the incident in the surprisingly matter-of-fact way of a four-year-old for the rest of the day; but after dinner he spent the evening playing one of Zelime’s mysterious games that seemed, as far as adults could tell, to have no rules whatsoever. It was only when he scrambled into bed beside his mother that he asked seriously, “That man? Not coming back?”

  Noelle hugged him. “No, sweetheart. Not coming back. Not ever. You scared him away.”

  “Gam’pair come back.” It was not a question.

  You’re not supposed to lie to children about anything. Bad, bad, bad. Noelle said, “He had to go away, Patrice. He had to make sure that man wouldn’t come here again.”

  Patrice nodded solemnly. He wrapped his arms around himself and said, “I hold Gam’pair right here. Gam’pair not going anywhere,” and went to sleep.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PETER S. BEAGLE was born in New York City in 1939 and raised in the borough of that city known as the Bronx. He originally proclaimed he would be a writer when he was ten years old; subsequent events have proven him either prescient or even more stubborn than hitherto suspected. Today, thanks to classic works such as A Fine and Private Place, The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Inkeeper’s Song, he is acknowledged as America’s greatest living fantasy author; and his dazzling abilities with language, characters, and magical storytelling have earned him many millions of fans around the world. In addition to stories and novels, Peter has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn, plus the fan-favorite “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His nonfiction book I See by My Outfit, which recounts a 1963 journey across America on motor scooter, is considered a classic of American travel writing. He is also a gifted poet, lyricist, and singer/songwriter. For more information on Peter and his works, see www.peterbeagle.com or www.conlanpress.com.

  HOLLY BLACK writes contemporary fantasy for teens and younger readers, including the Modern Faerie Tale series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and her graphic novel series, The Good Neighbors. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her husband, Theo.

  The winner of both a Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award, P. D. CACEK has written more than two hundred short stories, appearing in such anthologies as 999, Joe R. Lansdale’s Lords of the Razor, Night Visions 12, Inferno, and the inaugural YA anthology of horror fiction from Scholastic, 666: the Number of the Beast. Although Cacek will probably always consider herself a short story writer, she has written four novels to date and is currently finishing up a fifth, Visitation Rites, a good old-fashioned ghost story. A native Westerner, Cacek now lives in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania … in a haunted house across from a haunted mill. When not writing, she can often be found either with a group of costumed storytellers called the Patient Creatures (www.creatureseast.com) or haunting local cemeteries looking for inspiration. You can visit her website at www.pdcacek.com.

  ESTHER M. FRIESNER is a Nebula Award winner and the author of thirty-four novels and more than one hundred fifty short stories, in addition to being the editor of seven popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, Poland, and Italy. She is also a published poet and a produced playwright. Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in Writer’s Market and Writer’s Digest Books. Her latest publications include Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize, from Random House; and Temping Fate, from Dutton/Penguin. She is currently working on Sphinx’s Princess and Sphinx’s Queen—two books about young Nefertiti, for Random House—and Burning Roses, for Penguin. Educated at Vassar College, receiving a BA degree in both Spanish and Drama, she went on to receive her MA and PhD in Spanish from Yale University, where she taught for a number of years. She is married, the mother of two, and lives in Connecticut.

  GREGORY FROST is a writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction who has been publishing steadily for more than two decades. His latest work is the fantasy duology Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet, published by Del Rey Books. His other works include Fitcher’s Brides, Tain and Remscela (another duology comprising a retelling of the Irish epic Tain Bo Cuailnge), the fantasy novel Lyrec, and a Nebula-nominated science fiction work The Pure Cold Light. Much of his best short fiction is collected in Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories. This collection includes his acclaimed novelette, “Madonna of the Maquiladora,” a finalist for the James Tiptree, Jr., Award, Nebula Award, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and Hugo Award.

  Frost’s short work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, and numerous anthologies. For two years he served as principal researcher for Grinning Dog Pictures, a Philadelphia film and television production company, on two pro
ductions for the Discovery Global Network series Science Frontiers, one of which, “Wolf Man: The Myth and the Science,” examined the folklore of werewolves, the psychological illness known as lycanthropy, and the history of Inquisitional trials of accused werewolves, establishing that most were afflicted with ergot poisoning. It was the highest-rated show of the year on Discovery Europe Network. Frost has also acted in two very, very, very “B” horror films, including S. P. Somtow’s The Laughing Dead. His website is www.gregoryfrost.com. Blog: “Frostbites,” is at http://frostokovich.livejournal.com.

  RON GOULART, in addition to being a mystery writer (twice nominated for an MWA Edgar) and a science fiction writer (once nominated for an SFWA Nebula), is also the author of more than a dozen nonfiction books in the popular fiction field. These include Comic Book Culture (2000, trade paper 2007), which was nominated for an Eisner Award, The Comic Book Encyclopedia (2004), and Good Girl Art (2008), an illustrated history of women characters in comic books from the 1930s to the present. His next book will be Good Girl Art Around the World (2009). He’s sold more than six hundred stories and articles in his long and colorful career. He and his wife, also a writer, live in ramshackle splendor in a rustic patch of Connecticut.

  TANITH LEE was born in 1947. She became a full-time professional writer in 1974 and made a tremendous splash with her first fantasy novel for adults, The Birthgrave, in 1975. She has so far written nearly 100 books and more than 265 short stories, plus radio plays and TV scripts. She lives on the Sussex weald with her husband and coconspirator artist/writer, John Kaiine, and two tuxedo cats. She reports that she has numerous short stories and novellas out or due in anthologies from Ellen Datlow, Marvin Kaye, Gardner Dozois, and Leah Wilson. Others are forthcoming in Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, and the UK’s Nature. Her most recently published adult fantasies were the LionWolf trilogy: Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, and No Flame but Mine (Tor MacMillan). Three Piratica novels for young adults have appeared from Hodder Headline. Norilana Books (USA) will be reissuing all the existing Flat Earth novels, plus two new Flat Earth books through 2009 and 2010. She has won numerous awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award.