Ironclad
Page 3
The amber eyes were twenty-five feet away now. Twenty. Fifteen. They revealed nothing but ancient need.
Molly stood. “Garret!” she screamed over the storm. “Garret stop!”
The wolf didn’t seem to know Molly was there. It kept coming out of the tumultuous night, drawing down on the doe.
“Garret!”
Amber eyes. Shoulders rising and falling. Hackles. Black lips pulled back, unsheathing rows of sharp, curved ivory.
Molly stopped. Her heartbeat slowed. Fear for her husband had become a constant, occupying some part of her emotional being since not long after she had met him, but this was the first time in her life she had been afraid of her husband. As he came, stealthy and quiet, paws sinking into the mud, lips fluttering back from his fangs, her mind groped through thoughts and images, trying to make sense of the raw animal she saw before her. In her mind’s eye, she saw Garret as a young boy, the shy, broken, backwards blacksmith’s son she’d met behind the school house years ago. Then she saw him as a naked young man, not two years ago, his body ripped to pieces, bleeding to death on the floor of her father’s study while she scrambled madly out the door to find Dr. Grey.
And then as the final image, her mind surrendered to the night around her. At long last, she saw Garret as he really was.
A cold-blooded predator.
And she was afraid.
Her hands felt weak. Her whole arms. “No…” she whispered. “Garret… please, please don’t do this to me.”
The wolf approached the deer, who, instead of going wild like Molly would have expected, cowered against the log that had broken her. Fear had overcome the doe. She wasn’t going to fight. The storm lashed them all, the wolf crouched for the killing stroke, and the little doe was overwhelmed. In the darkness, she gave up.
The amber-eyed wolf took a final step, belly to the ground, ears flat to its skull, teeth glistening.
Molly watched, and her heart ripped. No…
The wolf sprang, a black furred agent of death. Molly flung herself into the way. The wolf came at her through the air, ears back, eyes clear and focused, teeth bared. But as she entered its flight path and its sight, human awareness came back into its canine eyes.
The furry animal tried to backpedal in mid air. It looked confused when it hit her. Then everything was a dizzying blur of motion. Molly felt the impact of fur and muscle against her body, but instead of knocking her aside, the beast curled around her. Its fur retreated, replaced by warm skin, slick with rain water. It was skin she knew all too well. Garret had her in his strong, skinny arms, and as they flew, he turned them so he was the first thing to hit the ground. The breath whuffed out of him as her weight came down on him, and they slid through the mud together. Before they’d even slid to a stop, she was hitting him, pounding on his chest and screaming.
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” She was crying, sobbing as she hit him. “Stop it! Come back! Come back right now—”
He caught one her hands, but couldn’t speak as he sucked for air. The storm thrashed them, and she thrashed him.
“Stop it Garret! Stop it! Stop it!” It was a bloody shriek.
She yanked her hand out of his and stumbled away from him. She fell in the mud and cried, but Garret was coming. She felt him coming. She crawled away. Away from the boy, the man, the wolf, away from whatever the hell he was.
He’d gotten his breath back, or part of it anyway. He was saying occasional words, entreaties, but they were lost in the storm. He kept coming and she keep retreating. She was shaking, maybe shivering.
Eventually he caught up with her. She shuddered at his touch, but he pulled her into his arms and after she hit him a few more times and screamed at him some more, she gave up like the doe. He held her for a long time, but it didn’t feel good to her. It felt like being in the arms of a stranger.
W
Later, they sat at the kitchen table. Opposite sides. Both of them were soaked and both of them were wrapped in blankets. Molly stared listlessly at the table. She didn’t know what Garret looked like because she wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at anything, really.
His voice came hollowly across the wood. “Molly, please say something.”
She stared at the hand-me-down table. Smooth wood grain, worn by years of cups and bowls and spoons. Worn by work. Worn by family.
Dully, Molly knew that Garret was on the edge. His voice had that brittle, desperately tight quality she’d heard only a couple times before.
“Molly, I’m so sorry. You can tell me you hate me if you want to, just say something.”
Finally, she did. “Did you kill the doe?”
“No,” he said, “I had to get you dry and warm.”
“Don’t kill the doe,” she said quietly, closing her eyes. She was coming back to herself. Just a little, but it hurt anyway.
“Sure, no problem,” he babbled. “I won’t touch it.”
“I mean it,” she said, eyes still closed.
“I won’t,” he promised. “I swear. I don’t care about the deer, I’m just worried about you.” His voice trembled on the last part.
“You have to care about it,” she said fiercely, finally looking up at him.
And there, across the table from her, sat not a monster nor a predator nor a wolf nor a man, but only a boy. Skinny, soaked. Thin face and pinched features, only seventeen years old. His eyes were wide with worry. Dark and scared, like the doe’s had been. He was rubbing his collar bone nervously, the one Charity had broken. He never seemed to realize when he was doing it. One of his hands was on the table, as close as he dared reach to her. It wasn’t very close at all.
He moved his mouth, confused, trying to grasp her request. “I don’t underst—”
“You have to care, Garret!” she begged, maybe for the doe’s life, but definitely for his.
“Okay, I care. I promise.” Tears started running down his fleshless cheeks. He had no idea what was going on, it was written all over his face. He didn’t understand what she wanted. She didn’t know how to handle it anymore. Neither did she know how to not handle it anymore.
“You have to care about the doe because she’s afraid, Garret,” Molly sobbed. “She’s so scared.”
Garret was the one begging now. “I won’t touch her, Molly. I won’t hurt her. I swear it.”
“You’re dying Garret,” Molly cried, “You’re dying a piece at a time. And I’m dying with you.”
W
April 5th, 1914
Garret lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the doe had died. It had laid there under the tree, the back half of its body crushed, for almost two days until it expired in a miasma of misery and incomprehension. Its eyes had become glassy even while it lived.
Garret stared at the featureless wooden ceiling, whitewashed, like everything else in the house. He would almost have preferred the bare wood. Maybe it was because his bedroom ceiling had been bare wood all through his childhood. Or maybe it was because the whitewashing bleached out even the grain, leaving plain strips of white with nothing other than parallel joint crevices to distract his mind.
Molly was in bed with him, but she might as well have been a mile away. She had put on a thick flannel night gown, even though it was too warm for that now, and she lay on the opposite side of the bed, as far away from him as she could get. She slept on her side, keeping her back to him, and she kept the baby curled to her chest. She would not allow the baby to sleep in his own room anymore, even though it had taken them two months to get him to do it in the first place.
Garret stared at the ceiling, his stomach in knots. I don’t know what to do. No matter what he’d tried or said or done over the last two days, it seemed only to make things worse. The damn doe hadn’t helped matters. He was afraid to go within a hundred feet of it, and so it had laid there, slowly dying, and Molly, with sagging face, had watched out the window all the way.
She looked like she was dead, but still walking. She looked like he’d killed her.
I shouldn’t have gone out hunting. I should never have turned into a wolf in the first place. He glared at the closet door, from which hung the long, looped pelt. I wish I’d never seen that fucking strap! Why? Why did this happen to me?!
Garret leaped out of bed, seized the strap off the closet door, and rushed through the darkened house. He didn’t need to light a lamp. He was so fully human that he was holding the strap in his hand, fully detached from himself, and yet his wolf vision opened the dark interior of the house before him as if it was a fair twilight. He couldn’t get rid of the damned thing. He didn’t need it to shift anymore, but it wouldn’t go away.
It infuriated him to the point of craziness.
I’m going to destroy this thing. I’m going to find a way. It was part of him, he knew that. The one time he’d injured it, it had injured him as well. He’d nearly died from it. Ironically, Molly had saved him.
I only care about Molly and the baby. Nothing else matters to me. He clenched his fist on the wolfstrap, crushing the fur with the superhuman strength that the strap itself was providing.
He knew that too, and it made him crazier still.
There’s nothing in the world I love like I love them! Why can’t I tell them that! Why can’t I make her understand? How can I destroy this damn thing?
The answer came to him. Fire. He would never forget that night in his smithy, over a year ago, when his life had been split in two. An ancient being had come to him, from out of the blaze of his own forge. It had stayed hidden from his sight, as if cloaked behind the air itself. Perhaps it was an angel. Perhaps it was the first blacksmith who ever walked the earth. Perhaps it was a demon. He did not know what it was, he only knew what it had done.
He had watched, cowering on the floor, as the invisible blacksmith had taken the old chain from the wall and flung it into the forge. The forge fire had swelled from orange and yellow to white, hotter than coal could ever burn. He remembered watching the invisible blacksmith pounding on the chain, making his anvil cry in pain, making his smithy shudder from one end to the other, shaping and pulling and drawing the metal in ways no blacksmith before had ever dreamed. He remembered the quench bucket exploding in steam when the blacksmith dropped its creation into the water.
And Garret would always, always remember his first intoxicating smell of the fur when he held it to his face.
Damn it all to hell!
Garret stopped in the darkened kitchen, rummaged in the drawers and seized the box of matches. He’d burn his wolfstrap in the yard, right there between the chopping block and the path to the cellar house.
Then he’d go back into the house, wake Molly, offer her the ashes of it, and beg her forgiveness. He’d win her back. No matter how long it took, no matter what he had to say or do. She was afraid of him, and that was the worst feeling he’d experienced. It was going to end. Now.
Despite how much Garret loved his family, and would lay his life down for them without hesitation, he had always feared that someday he would make a mistake and hurt one of them. It was the waking nightmare that followed him into his sleep. Now it was following Molly as well. For once, they were on the same page. Both of them were afraid of him.
I’m not going to let it happen. I can do whatever the hell I want with this thing, and I’m going to burn it. Garret stomped to the back door, not caring how much noise he made. He would be waking Molly as soon as it was done anyway.
I’m so sorry Molly, he thought as he turned the knob. I should have done this the day you agreed to be my wife. But it all ends right now. I promise.
He was out the back door and down the steps. Had he not been consumed with his self-assigned mission, he would have felt that something was out of place. Had he not been in such mental turmoil, his wolf senses would have told him something was wrong before he stepped out the door.
But Garret was consumed. He’d sworn before the stars to protect his family from all danger, as he himself had never been protected. And he had meant it, even if it meant destroying part of himself.
In such a state, he was blind to all else, including a rifle butt, swung out of the darkness behind him.
Had Garret merely glanced to the side as he exited the back door, he would have seen Sheriff Halstead pressed against the side of the house. But Garret didn’t, and the rifle connected with the side of his head, hard and solid.
If only Garret had seen, a great many things would not have had to happen.
Chapter 5
The outskirts of Philadelphia, May 12th, 1914
It was early morning, an hour yet before dawn. The Schuylkill River slid smoothly past the edge of Philadelphia, making only a quiet susurrus. Over the river stood an old brick bridge. The bridge’s four arches had supported it for decades, bearing foot traffic, animals, wagons, and finally the clanking, chugging newfangled automobiles. From the center of the bridge, one could see a hundred yards in every direction, and in the early morning, all was deserted.
Two men stood on the middle of the bridge, leaning on the brick half-wall along its edge. Spring had attained its full strength, and to most people in the city, this new spring felt like a rebirth after the long winter. The two men standing on the bridge knew better. To them, this spring felt alive only in the way that new fungus overgrows a rotting log.
One of the men was young, barely more than a boy. He was nervous, and dressed in farmer’s clothes. The other was middle aged, but as unbending as the bridge upon which he stood. He was wearing a United States Navy pea coat against the chill.
“What did you find out?” asked the older man.
“Not much,” replied the younger, glancing around at the empty morning as if he expected an entire army, marshalled solely to kill him, to emerge out of thin air. He continued. “Something about a holiday at the end of next month.”
“St. Vitus Day?” the older demanded. “Is that the holiday?”
The younger man shrank under the older man’s intensity, but nodded. “I think so.”
The older man turned his gaze away across Philadelphia. The Serbian holiday of Vidovdan, commemorating the martyrdom of St. Vitus, would occur on the 28th of June. That was unbelievably, insanely soon.
There was never enough time. In his position, short notice was a fact of life, but this was different. June the 28th left no time at all, and far too much hung in the balance.
“Vidovdan,” said the younger man, suddenly remembering. “Someone else called it that. He said, ‘The new world begins on Vidovdan’.”
The older man stared down the Schuylkill River, at its unalterable, imperturbable course. It seemed he’d spent his life trying to change the inevitable. The younger man mistook his superior’s ire. “I’m sorry, Mr. Maxwell,” he said. “I mean Captain. That was all I heard. I barely got out. They’re still looking for me.”
Maxwell took a small slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to the younger man. “Go to this address. Tell the man there that you were my informant. He will see that you are protected.”
Without another word, the young man took off, moving with shoulders hunched and back slightly bent. Maxwell did not watch him go.
Vidovdan. The beginning of the new world, they said. Maxwell felt his face harden, his entire body and mind solidifying with resolve. He felt the weight of countless innocent lives settle onto his shoulders, but they did not bend him, nor did they slow him.
There wasn’t time for anyone else to be told. Every bit of planning had just gone out the window. There would be no more communiques, no more clandestine meetings. Ther
e was only one choice now. If he were a sentimental man, he would have wished that his choice could cost only his own life. But Captain Maxwell was the distillation of a man, pared down and honed by the life he had chosen. Such dross as wistfulness had been burned out of him long ago. He knew the blood of innocents would pave this road.
And he knew that he would walk it.
Chapter 6
Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, May 29th, 1914
Training ship, USS Columbia
Garret shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. One of his hammock ropes popped in the dark, but he didn’t hear it. He only heard spiteful words. They were the same words every night, passing through his dreams. They made a quiet hissing sound as they slid through him, like a keen blade being drawn through flesh.
It wasn’t an accident, Garret. Don’t ever let yourself think that. You did this. It’s your fault. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you can’t get away from what you are.
Those words had been said to him nearly two months ago, the night he had left home for good, but their venom was still as bitter and crippling as the morning’s milk was wholesome and creamy. With that thought, Garret was dreaming about morning milk, sitting on his porch, condensation glistening on the bottle, cream pushing at the cap. Then his addled mind smeared the dreams together, mixing the poisoned sound of the words and the wholesomeness of the milk. The milk became cloudy. It darkened and soured.
Then the words were gone, and the milk was again fresh and clean. It had been a while since Garret had had fresh milk. It felt like another lifetime, and he like another person. His life was a study in irony. When he had been a half-breed—a physical mongrel of some unknown origin—he’d felt like he had the right to call himself a human. Now that he was merely human, with the wolf long destroyed, he knew he could never consider himself a person because of what he had done.