The Wolfstone Curse

by Justin Richards

  Fallen masonry and broken stone had been cleared to the sides. Metal stanchions held the remains of the roof in place. Lights were strung along the length of the corridor – bare bulbs attached to thick, dark cable. It was painfully bright after the gloomy passageway.

  “They’re excavating,” Peter realised. “Digging their way back into whatever’s left.

  “This is where the labs and the experiments were,” Carys whispered. “That must be what they’re after. But how did they know?”

  “From Sebastian Forrest, maybe?” Peter suggested. “If his father told him about the raid.”

  The noise started up again – and now they could hear that it was drilling.

  “They’re still excavating.” Peter had to speak loudly to be heard over the noise.

  They went cautiously, ready at any moment to duck into whatever cover they could find. There were piles of debris, alcoves, side corridors. But they stuck to the main route, heading towards the sounds of excavation. The drilling stopped again, and was replaced by a scraping sound.

  They reached an arched doorway. One wooden door was jammed closed, the wall beside it bulging out. The lintel above had slipped down. The other door had been wrenched from its hinges and was leaning back against the wall.

  The room beyond was virtually intact, though layered with debris. Two rows of metal-framed beds lay under blankets of dust and shattered stonework. Equipment lay broken on the floor. Glass crunched under their feet as Peter and Carys picked their way across the room.

  Carys gave a gasp of disgust. Peter wasn’t surprised. He felt weak and sick. He tried not to look at the beds. The light was poorer in here, but even with just a couple of bulbs strung up overhead, he could see clearly what lay on them.

  The bodies were dry, decaying husks. Skeletons poked through the flimsy remains of sheets and hospital gowns. Sunken eyes stared out of parchment-wrapped skulls. Several of the bodies still had tufts of hair clinging to the brittle bones and translucent skin. All of them were misshapen – jutting jaws, elongated limbs, claws emerging from the ends of gnarled fingers…

  “Let’s get out of here,” Carys hissed. “We’ve got to find that car.”

  Peter wasn’t about to argue. They hurried on through to the next room. The doors were standing open, so they saw at once the figures standing in the chamber beyond – and froze.

  The chamber looked exactly as the journal described it, and it was almost intact. Peter guessed that the vaulted ceiling had angled the blast of the explosives away from it. The raised altar in the centre had collapsed and the remains were strewn with fallen stone, but the floor had been cleared. Bright lights stood on metal poles, illuminating the work at the doorway on the far side.

  And in the middle of it all, stood Einzel, hands clasped behind his back, his left shoulder hunched, watching the work. Pale dust spattered the shoulders and back of his dark leather trench coat.

  Two of the wolf-guards held a massive drill, ramming it into a pile of fallen rubble. The sound of the drill shook the floor and echoed around the chamber. The room filled with a fog of dust.

  After a few moments, the drilling stopped. The guards pulled the drill away, and two more wolf-guards shovelled the fallen debris into wheelbarrows. They carted it away, through another door. The wolf-guards with the drill set it down, and clawed at the pile of rubble, digging their way through.

  Peter strained to see better. “What are they looking for?” he whispered.

  “The next room,” Carys whispered back. “Remember?”

  Peter edged back into the laboratory. “Time we were going.”

  “That corridor must lead back to the car. I guess that’s how Einzel got here. He probably flew to somewhere nearby and had the car waiting for him.”

  They hurried back through the lab, trying not to look at the bodies.

  “But why does he need the Crystal Room?” Peter wondered as they emerged back into the corridor.

  “They want more of the crystal, like in David’s ring.”

  “So how does he even know where to find the Crystal Room?”

  The answer came from ahead of them. “That’s something you can ask Herr Einzel yourselves.” It was a voice they both recognised at once.

  David Forrest stepped out of one of the dark alcoves. Beside him, a woman dressed in a dark business suit raised a pistol, covering Peter and Carys. Her blonde hair was cut to her shoulders and her eyes were a cold ice-blue.

  “You are so predictable. Caught like rats in a trap.” David smiled at the woman with the gun before introducing her. “Let me introduce you to Einzel Industries” public relations director. Irena has the rather tricky job of explaining how the laboratories in Vrolask got burned down yesterday.” He stepped forward, raising his hand to strike Peter.

  “No,” the woman said. “There’s no need for that.”

  David froze, hand raised. It was obvious who was in charge.

  “Einzel wants the boy alive and unharmed,” she continued. “So if he tries anything, I will kill her.” She moved the gun so it was aimed at Carys.

  “She’ll do it too,” David smirked. “Tough bitch.”

  Irena ignored him. “As for why we need the Crystal Room…” she went on, “well, if you are really unlucky, we’ll show you.”

  Einzel looked back over the shoulder of his limp arm, as Irena and David led Peter and Carys into the chamber.

  Bloodless lips drew back to reveal sharp teeth. “Vandals,” he hissed. “Have you any idea how much damage you have caused?”

  “Lots, I hope,” Carys snapped back.

  Einzel’s grimace became a smile. “Then you will be disappointed. I was already closing down the laboratories in Vrolask. You achieved nothing!”

  “That’ll be why you’re so upset then,” Peter said.

  David’s fist slammed into his stomach and he doubled over in sudden pain.

  “Leave him,” Irena said.

  “After what he’s done? Both of them – they humiliated us, and they’re still laughing!”

  “Leave him,” Einzel agreed. “Oh they will suffer for what they have done, but not yet. When the time is right. When they can be of some use, repairing what little damage they have done. If they have made work for anyone, it is Irena.”

  “I have already issued a press statement about the accident and fire,” the woman said. There was a hint of pride in her voice.

  David gave a disgruntled sigh. “They know about the Crystal Room,” he said.

  “I doubt that.”

  Einzel turned back to the excavation. The wolf-guards were attacking the last of the rubble with pickaxes. They hammered them into the debris, ripping out chunks of stone and clouds of dust, grunting and snorting with the effort.

  “Carefully, my friends,” Einzel warned. “We must not damage what lies behind those doors.”

  “Why not?” Carys demanded. “You just want to break up the crystal to put in those rings you all wear. You’re going to smash the room up anyway.”

  “How little you understand. We have enough crystal for the rings, and for the lights we’re setting up outside to replicate the stones at Vrolask. You saw them, I’m sure. David tells me you came by train. I applaud your resourcefulness.”

  “Listen,” Peter said, “you’ve had your gloat. We’re no use to you, and no threat. So why not just let us go?”

  Einzel turned to stare at Peter with what looked like pity. So close to him, Peter could see the fine tracery of lines across his aged face – like cracks in the glaze of ancient porcelain.

  “Everyone has a use. People are nothing more than a commodity. David here did not know how useful he could be when he came to me. He wanted something from me, but I have been able to take so much more from him.”

  David smiled proudly, taking Einzel’s comments as praise. “Anything I can do.”

  “And Irena,” Einzel went on, ignoring David, “she thought she was working in public relations. But now she appreciates the benefits o
f joining us. The real benefits. And in return she makes problems like a small fire at an obsolete laboratory fade into obscurity.”

  “My father served Herr Einzel for many years,” Irena said. “Now I am glad it is my turn.”

  “Your turn to become a wolf, that is?” Carys asked wryly.

  “To live like those things,” Peter gestured to the wolf-creatures clearing away more of the rubble. “That’s no kind of life. Not really.”

  “You understand so very little,” Einzel breathed. “If, as David says, you know what lies behind the doors we shall soon uncover, then I must assume you know what happened here, during the war.”

  “The experiments. The raid,” Carys said. “We know everything.”

  “You do not even know who I am,” Einzel told her. “How could you? And as for the Crystal Room, well – you might know where it is, you may remember the legends, but you do not know the whole story and what it implies. If you did, you would never have dared to come here. You would have taken your chances with my wolves in the forest outside.”

  “So tell us the whole story,” Carys said.

  Einzel turned to look at her. His grey eyes narrowed as he considered her question. “Why not?” he decided at last. “It’s just an exercise in public relations, after all.” He nodded to Irena, then turned away again, apparently losing interest.

  She seemed happy to oblige, leaning back against the stone altar, gun held across her body. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a count who had a beautiful daughter. He loved her very much… All the best stories are about parents and children, don’t you find?”

  There were wolves in Russia in those days. Wolves, and worse-than-wolves. Soon after his daughter was born, Count Grishko lost his wife to a wolf – to a worse-than-wolf. He determined that he would not lose his only daughter too, vowing that he would rid the land of the beasts.

  The count consulted the wisest men of the area. He sent for the most learned scholars in all the Russias. He asked them how to protect his child, and they all told him the same thing: that there is no certain way to protect a beautiful girl. Because girls become women, and women will not be ruled by their fathers any more than men will be ruled by their mothers.

  So the count kept his daughter locked in the highest tower of his palace at Vrolask, and he let no one see her except her serving maid.

  Until one day, a young huntsman came to the palace. He brought a deer that had been savaged by a wolf, and he presented it to the count. He told the count that he had found the deer close to death on the Vrolask Estate. He had driven off the wolf, but could not in good conscience keep the deer, so he had come to return it to the count. Impressed with such honesty, the count invited the huntsman to dine at the palace.

  That moonless night they feasted on venison from the deer, and they talked long into the night. When they had eaten and drunk much, the count asked the huntsman if he knew any sure way of keeping the wolves at bay.

  “You are worried about your daughter,” the huntsman said. “I have heard she is very beautiful, and you have consulted the wisest men in all the land on how to keep her beauty safe and pure.”

  “Without success,” the count confessed. “No one can tell me a sure way of protecting her.”

  “If someone could,” the huntsman said, “what would you give him by way of reward?”

  “I would make him rich,” the count said. “Can you help me?”

  The huntsman laughed. “I want no riches, but I can tell you the surest way to keep your daughter safe. In return, I ask for only one, small thing.”

  The count agreed, and the huntsman told the count to construct a special room in his palace. He showed the count where to quarry stones that contained the tiniest fragments of crystal – crystal that captured and retained the moonlight. The same stone as had been used in ancient times to construct the Vrolask Circle outside the palace. He taught the count’s craftsmen how to extract and work the crystal, though he never saw or touched it himself.

  And under the huntsman’s guidance, the count constructed a room lined with the crystal. The crystal walls were built around the furthest stone of the Vrolask Circle – the Lonely Stone – just as the count’s finest silver sword was also lined with crystal.

  When the work was done, the count sent for an old woman from the village, who was said to be a witch. The count bade her dine with him in the Crystal Room. Just as the huntsman had promised, the moonlight from the crystal worked its power on the old woman. As she ate, she changed – she transformed into the hideous beast that she really was. The crystal revealed her hidden nature, and the count took his crystal sword and severed her grotesque head from her hideous body.

  Then the huntsman, hearing that the Crystal Room was complete, claimed his reward. He asked only for a kiss from the count’s daughter. He took the girl in his arms and kissed her on the lips. And, having never seen a man so handsome as the huntsman, she kissed him back.

  The count’s daughter grew more beautiful with each passing season. But any suitor for her love had to dine with the count in the Crystal Room. They were allowed but one meeting with the daughter, and each one she thought less handsome than the huntsman. Each one she scratched with her elegant fingernails to see if their blood was red, or if the beast might be revealed beneath the skin.

  And each and every man, besotted with her beauty, dined with the count in the Crystal Room. Each and every man died there when the infection within him was manifest in the cruel moonlight stored in the walls. Each became a ravening beast, and each had his head struck from his body by the count.

  Until one day, when she was come of age, the count’s daughter asked her father to show her the Crystal Room, where so many of her suitors had met their fate. The count unlocked the door and showed her the room. The room he had constructed to keep her safe from the wild beasts.

  As soon as she crossed the threshold, as soon as she saw the beauty of the crystal and the glow of the scattered moonlight, the count’s daughter began to change. He watched in horror as his beautiful daughter became disfigured by the revelation of the beast within her.

  Then the count took the crystal sword from where it hung on the wall of the Crystal Room. And he plunged it into his own heart.

  For who can know what might be revealed when you scratch open the skin? Who can tell when the infection of the beast and the heat of desire might be passed on, not by a scratch or a bite, but in a simple kiss?

  From that day on, the count’s daughter and the huntsman ran free in the woods around the palace, and loved happily ever after. For while a wound may heal and memories may fade; a kiss can last for ever.

  “The huntsman bit the girl’s lip when he kissed her, of course,” Irena said, lips drawn back over her own teeth in a cruel smile.

  Carys glanced at Peter before asking Einzel, “Are you the huntsman?”

  Einzel had been watching them both intently as Irena related the story of the count and his daughter. At this he gave a guttural laugh.

  “Don’t be absurd! It may explain the Crystal Room, but it’s just a fairy tale.”

  David sniggered. But it didn’t seem absurd to Peter. “So how do you come to have pieces of crystal for your rings if you haven’t excavated the Crystal Room yet?”

  Einzel nodded slowly. “Ah, I see the logic. You think that, as the huntsman knew how to refine the crystal from the raw stone, then I must be the huntsman.”

  “Or someone with his knowledge,” Carys agreed. “We know most of the stones at Vrolask have gone.”

  “Logical.” Einzel smiled thinly. “But wrong. The stones were taken from Vrolask hundreds of years ago, which does present its own problems of course.” He gestured to one of the wolf-guards still clawing rubble from the blocked doorway. “It has taken decades for me to acquire this site. Years to excavate it to this level. The ruins of the castle above had to be cleared away almost completely. Then I could open up various routes in, like the passage I assume you used to get her
e.”

  “They did,” David said. “Just like you said.”

  Carys was surprised. “You knew about that?”

  The wolf-guard was helping Einzel out of his long coat. Once it was removed, they could see that his left arm hung limp and emaciated at his side. With his good hand, he unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Is it wise to show them your weakness?” Irena asked.

  “My weakness is our strength,” Einzel retorted. “Tonight,” he said to Carys and Peter, “at last we shall break into the Crystal Room.”

  The wolf-guard helped Einzel out of his shirt. One whole side of his chest was sunken and tinged blue like a huge bruise. The colouring was deepest and most pronounced at the shoulder. He turned slowly, exposing his back.

  “The Crystal Room,” Einzel went on, “that I brought out of Russia for Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler.”

  “You brought it out of Russia?” Peter gasped.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why we call him the Old One?” David asked.

  “But that’s impossible,” Carys replied.

  “I can assure you it is not,” Einzel said. “I was one of the first volunteers for Himmler’s experimental programme. The Reichsführer himself shook me by the hand and explained the plan of how we would be the first of an army of wolves. Unstoppable. Bluitzkrieg taken to the next level. Then he kissed me on each cheek, and told me how indebted the Fatherland would be for my sacrifice. But it was not a sacrifice at all. It was an honour.” He drew himself up to his full height. “You asked me how I knew the Crystal Room was there, my answer is: because I rebuilt it there, in 1942.”

  “So long ago,” Irena breathed. “If only we could reproduce the experiments.”

  “Longevity is a problem,” Einzel conceded. “But we each have our cross to bear. For me, it is this.”

  The skin on his back was as discoloured as his chest. It was paper thin, almost translucent. And through it, Peter could see the broken-off end of a blade, embedded deep in the flesh. A blade made of silver, encased in pale glass-like crystal.