Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  “Tom wasn’t trying to infect her. He was just arguing over a toy, the way puppies nip each other over a prized bone. Because he was raised as an animal in the woods, and that’s what they do.” I sighed, and my steps began to slow on the path. “I understand that they can’t stay in the village, but I think that the best thing for everyone is to take them both into the dark wood and—”

  “No. Adele.” Max’s tone was gentle, but he sounded . . . frustrated. “The best thing for everyone would be to eliminate the threat, rather than leave it to grow large enough to eat a human being. Just like both your mother and grandmother said.”

  “You actually think we should kill them?” My temper snapped, and I turned to him on the path. “What if it were your child? What if it were our child?”

  My question caught him so off guard that he stumbled, and the swinging lantern cast wild swaying shadows all around us. “Ours?”

  “Hypothetically speaking.” The words rushed out as warmth gathered in my cheeks. “Could you abandon our child in the dark wood to let nature ‘take its course’? Or could you ‘eliminate the threat’ presented by your own flesh and blood? A child you taught to walk and talk?” A child I’d carried?

  “Adele, we wouldn’t have any choice. The fact that the child was ours wouldn’t give us the right to let it threaten children belonging to the rest of the village.”

  “I know. I just . . .” I exhaled again. Then I forced the confession over my tongue. “I want this to be as hard for you as it is for me. I need to know that it isn’t easy for you to sentence two small children to death, Max. Otherwise . . .” Otherwise there was no point in even pretending to consider him as a suitor, because I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with someone who could make such a horrible decision so easily.

  “Mon dieu,” he whispered, as understanding seemed to wash over his features in the light from his lantern. Then he grabbed my hand and held it. “Of course this is hard for me. I’m horrified by what this means for those children, but I’ve tried to keep my personal feelings to myself, because they don’t change anything. And because I didn’t want to make this harder for you. I was trying to help you by not muddying the waters.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. God, Adele, this isn’t what I want.” His gaze held mine with a blistering sincerity that, oddly, made me feel a little better. “But it is what your village needs.”

  “I know. In the future, though, if you’re going to give me advice, I’d like to know not just what you think, but how you feel.”

  He squeezed my hand, and a tiny smile teased the corners of his lips. “So, we’re going to have a future, then?”

  “Again. Hypothetical,” I said as I gently pulled my hand from his grip and started down the path. “Come on. It’s late, and—”

  A shriek shattered the night, and I realized we were closer to the village than I’d thought. I took off at a run, and Max’s steps hurried after me, light from the lantern casting swinging shadows on the path ahead.

  “Someone catch that thing!” a woman’s voice shouted as we stepped out of the woods. “It has my hen!” A streak of white shot out from behind the Rousseaus’ barn, and a second later, Madame Rousseau—Elena’s mother—followed, holding her skirt up as she ran.

  Max and I watched, stunned, as she chased what appeared to be a small dog with a chicken hanging limp from its muzzle.

  Only that wasn’t a dog.

  “Oh no,” I breathed, just as Grainger raced into view from the other direction, his lantern swinging with each step. His sword clanked at his side, but when he stopped and set down his light, it was his bow that he drew, along with an arrow from the quiver on his back.

  He took aim, then his arrow whispered through the darkness, and the little white pup fell to the ground with a pain-filled yelp.

  “Did you get it?” Madame Rousseau called, squinting into the darkness beyond the light from her candle.

  “Stay back!” Grainger shouted, and she skidded to a stop on the frozen mud, her shoes peeking from beneath the hem of the skirt she still held up. “It isn’t dead. And . . . it isn’t a fox.”

  My pulse spiked with a bitter bolt of dread. “Grainger!” I raced toward the wounded pup, tugging my cloak closed to cover my hatchet and leather belt. “Stop!”

  “Adele!” Max whispered fiercely, as his footsteps pounded behind me.

  “Adele?” Grainger frowned at me in the glow from his lantern. Suspicion knit his brows together when he saw Max behind me. “What are you doing out so late?”

  “I was . . . We were—” Panic tightened around me like a vise. I’d been caught out at night with Max, and Grainger had shot one of the whitewulf pups, and I had no good way to explain either of those events.

  “What is that?” Madame Rousseau demanded, staring at the pup in confusion. “I heard a noise behind our cottage, and then the chickens started squawking. I thought it was a fox, in the dark, but I’ve never seen a white fox.”

  “It isn’t a fox.” Grainger pointedly turned away from me, approaching the wulf pup with his sword in one hand, his lantern in the other, his bow hanging from his shoulder. “Go get more light. Please,” he added when Madame Rousseau hesitated, still squinting at the wounded animal.

  She gave him a terse nod, then turned and headed back to her cottage, on the other side of the barn.

  I exhaled slowly. “Grainger—”

  “It’s a wolf,” he said, his voice cooler than I’d ever heard it. “Only a pup, but—”

  The puppy began to tremble just as the light from Max’s lantern fell over it. I darted forward, but Grainger put out one arm to hold me back. “A wolf in pain will bite.”

  Yet surely he had no idea how right he was.

  “I’ve never seen one so white. There isn’t a single streak of gray in its fur.” Grainger placed his boot lightly on the poor thing’s leg, and I flinched when he pulled his arrow free from its shoulder. Blood poured from the wound. “Probably because it isn’t yet mature.” He frowned as the wolf’s trembling became a full-body convulsion. “What’s happening to it?”

  Before I could figure out what to say, a gruesome popping sound came from the pup, and I realized exactly what was happening.

  Oh no.

  Grainger jumped back, startled, his lantern swinging wildly as the pup’s fur began to recede into its skin. But a second later he knelt close, holding his light high to illuminate the oddity.

  “Mon dieu,” he whispered. “It’s a werewolf. That pup is loup garou!”

  But I could only shake my head and take a step back, miming shock and fear, because he had to believe that Max and I were as astonished and confused as he was.

  “I’ve only seen one slink out of the dark wood before.” Grainger stood again and glanced back at the tree line, a new wariness evident in the dip of his brow. “And it certainly wasn’t a pup. Keep your distance.” He spread his arms and urged us back even farther as he drew his sword. “We have no idea what this little monster is capable of.”

  Horrified by the turn of events, I could do nothing but stand there and watch, feigning shock with my arms crossed over my cloak. Waiting to see which of the little pups he’d just shot. Which one was exposing itself to the entire village.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  A few seconds after it began, the process was over, and a familiar child lay on the ground before us, naked and shivering, bleeding from a gruesome hole in her shoulder. Her eyes were glazed with pain and shock.

  “Mon dieu,” Grainger whispered again, staring down at her in utter shock. “That’s Romy Paget.”

  “We don’t know what this means,” I insisted softly, struggling to find something to say that wouldn’t incriminate me or make things worse for Romy.

  “It’s devilry,” Grainger declared, his eyes wide as he stared at the child. “She’s fallen into the clutch of a monster.”

  Max gave me an uneasy look over his shoulder, and my mind raced while I tried to come u
p with a sensible counter to Grainger’s conclusion.

  Footsteps pounded toward us as Madame Rousseau returned, this time with her husband, as well as Elena and one of her brothers. From the center of the village came more voices and bobbing lanterns as my neighbors came out to investigate the middle-of-the-night commotion.

  “Where’s the fox?” Monsieur Rousseau demanded, his legs bare and prickled with gooseflesh beneath the hem of his night tunic.

  Though there was no fox to be found, the stolen hen lay a hand’s span from the semi-conscious child’s head, its neck broken, wounds slowly leaking blood where her teeth had punctured its skin.

  “Is that Romy Paget?” Simon Laurent asked, as several other villagers gathered close, his parents and brothers among them. My mother wasn’t there—she couldn’t have heard Madame Rousseau’s scream from across the village—but it was only a matter of time before the ruckus reached her. “What’s happened to her?”

  “Oh no!” Elena tried to kneel at the child’s side, but I lurched in front of her and dropped onto my knees next to Romy, worried that she might bite, though she looked close to losing consciousness as she shivered on the ground. “She’s hurt! She’s going to bleed to death, if she doesn’t freeze first!” Elena took off her own cloak and draped it over the child, when I wouldn’t let her get any closer.

  “Stay back, Adele!” Grainger pulled me up by my arm, his brows knit low. “That little girl is a wolf.”

  “What the devil is he babbling about?” Elena’s father demanded, clearly ready to reclaim his warm bed, despite the tragedy unfolding before him.

  “I shot a young wolf with a chicken in its mouth, and it became little Romy Paget,” Grainger said. “She’s a werewolf.”

  Silence settled over the crowd, and every gaze landed on him.

  “That’s quite a serious charge,” Monsieur Laurent, Simon’s father, said at last.

  “And yet it’s true. That child was a wolf a moment ago.” Grainger’s earnest gaze skipped from face to face. “She only became human again after I shot her.”

  A sick feeling churned in my stomach, and I let Max tug me back until we were just two more faces among the crowd.

  “But that’s Romy,” Elena said softly. “She’s just a little girl.”

  “A little girl who wore a wolf’s skin and fur moments ago,” Grainger insisted. “She stole a chicken from your yard.”

  “Madame?” Monsieur Laurent turned to the Rousseaus, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Did Romy Paget steal your chicken?”

  “It was a fox, I think.” Elena’s mother frowned. “I couldn’t see well in the dark, so it could have been a small wolf. But it definitely wasn’t a child.”

  “It was a young wolf,” Grainger insisted. “Unnaturally white, carrying a hen in its maw. That hen.” He pointed at the dead chicken, and the crowd eyed the bird as if its existence might clarify the situation. “I shot the creature with my bow. Madame Rousseau went to get more light, and while she was gone, the wolf began to thrash about. A moment later the child lay on the ground, naked as the day she was born, and injured in the very same spot as the wolf.”

  “Devilry . . .” Madame Gosse whispered, one hand clutched at her breast. Behind her a fearful murmur rippled through the crowd, and hair began to rise on the back of my neck.

  “We must find the source of the infection before it spreads,” Grainger said. “Has the child been in the dark wood, or is there a wolf among us, right here in Oakvale? We’ll have to interrogate her family, and—”

  “Grainger, you know the Pagets,” I interrupted, desperate to stop a boulder that seemed to be picking up speed as it rolled downhill. “They’re good people.” I appealed to him as much with my gaze as with my words. “They haven’t hurt anyone.”

  But if my neighbors truly believed that Romy had been infected with lycanthropy, they would soon realize the only bite on her had come from little Tom. And if her family tried to defend her, the entire Paget household could be declared witches, protecting their own. Just as Max predicted.

  “They may well be good people,” Grainger said. “But Romy hasn’t been in the forest, that I know of. She hasn’t been attacked by a werewolf, which means we don’t know the source of this infection. But the village watch has an obligation to root out corruption from the dark wood wherever it may roost, and if that leads back to the Pagets, then this village will have a duty to perform, unpleasant though that might be. For the good of all of Oakvale.” His gaze locked with mine. “A wolf is a wolf, whatever face it may wear in the daytime.”

  Whatever face it wore. Including mine.

  The ground suddenly felt unsteady under my feet. As if the world were crumbling beneath me.

  Max gave me a sympathetic look, but he didn’t seem surprised by Grainger’s declaration. In fact, he seemed almost relieved to hear it spoken aloud. As if he’d been waiting for Grainger to say those words—for me to hear them—since the moment he’d arrived in the village.

  “Grainger . . .” Elena began, her words halting, her tone cautious. “Let’s think about this for a moment. Romy is just a child, and you’re right; she hasn’t been anywhere near a werewolf. So how could she be infected?” She let her words sink in for a heartbeat. “The hour is late and you haven’t slept. Surely your eyes were deceiving you. Maybe you were dreaming, on your feet.”

  “You think I dreamed it? You think I shot a child in a dream?”

  She shrugged, and Simon stepped closer to her, standing protectively by her side as he spoke. “There’s no other sense to be found in this.”

  “Sense or not, it’s the truth.” Grainger stood taller, secure in the accuracy of his report. Determined to do his duty. “They saw it, as well.” He turned to Max and me, and with his expectant gaze came the attention of the entire gathering.

  “I . . . I’m not sure what I saw,” I stammered. “As Madame Rousseau said, it was very dark.”

  “Romy!” Madame Paget cried. A second later, she forced her way to the center of the crowd with her husband on her heel, carrying a lantern. “What’s happened?” She gasped when she saw her daughter, then she fell to her knees at the child’s side.

  I let her stay, because Romy had fallen unconscious and couldn’t bite her.

  “What is wrong with you?” Madame Paget stared up at the crowd, accusation written in every line of her face. “She’s injured! Why is no one tending her?”

  “She’s right. Let’s get Romy inside,” I said, eager for the opportunity to break up the crowd before people could grab pitchforks.

  “No!” Grainger blocked my arm again, when I reached for the child. “It isn’t safe to touch her, and as cruel as it seems, we have no choice but to put her out of her misery.”

  “He’s right,” Madame Gosse said, and my heart dropped into my stomach when an uneasy murmur of assent rose from the crowd. “‘Suffer not a witch to live!’ We all heard it in church, not a month ago!”

  “What are you saying?” Madame Paget demanded, pressing her hand over her daughter’s wound. “What happened to her?”

  Grainger’s hand tensed around the handle of his lantern. “Madame, you should move back, for your own safety. I shot a wolf pup, but what lies in its place is your daughter.” He looked around at the crowd again. “Everyone, step back.” He threw out his arms, to push back the crowd. “Romy Paget has been infected by a werewolf, and she’s a danger to us all.”

  “Lycanthropy is a curse from the devil . . .” someone murmured from the crowd, as the circle slowly expanded away from us.

  “Unnatural . . .”

  “It’s witchcraft!”

  “Nonsense!” Madame Paget shouted as she glared at them, still applying pressure to her daughter’s injury. “She’s only a child!”

  “I’m sorry, Madame,” Grainger said. “But I saw it with my own eyes. So did Adele. Tell them, Adele.”

  Panic flooded my veins, burning like fire beneath my skin. “I—”

  “That’s nothing more
than frivolous superstition!” Monsieur Paget roared, lifting his lantern high, so that shadows fled from his face. “She’s just a little girl recovering from an illness.”

  “Grainger Colbert is telling stories to cover his own guilt!” his wife declared, tears shining in her eyes. “For firing an arrow at a child! You should be ashamed!” she added, aiming a distraught look at him.

  Another murmur rose from those gathered, and I could feel the crowd’s confusion. Its shifting sentiment.

  Grainger turned to Elena’s mother. “Madame Rousseau. You saw me shoot the wolf. Tell them.”

  “I . . .” Eyes wide, her nose red from the cold, she glanced around at a crowd still swelling as more people gathered. “It was dark. I thought I saw a fox. The one that’s been killing hens all over the village. But I see no fox now.”

  “Are you saying there was no fox?” Monsieur Laurent turned to me, obviously expecting a verification.

  I could deny what I’d seen—what I knew—and let our neighbors believe Grainger had shot a child in cold blood, or out of negligence. In which case he would surely stand trial. Or I could admit the truth and condemn the Paget family to accusations of witchcraft. In which case they would surely be burned.

  “It was a wolf,” Grainger insisted. “But now—”

  “It was—” My voice broke, and I cleared my throat as a dozen different gazes settled on me with an unbearable weight. “It was a wolf,” I said, and I saw Grainger’s tense grip on his lantern ease. “A young one.”

  Grainger exhaled slowly, relief flooding his features. “It is as Adele says. She would never tell a lie.”

  “But a natural wolf, not loup garou,” I continued, and a gasp went up from the crowd, as Grainger stared at me in shock. “It was just a wolf pup that stole Madame Rousseau’s hen. Monsieur Colbert fired an arrow at it. But he missed and hit little Romy instead. It was an accident. Right, Max?”

  “Of course.” Max nodded decisively. “He was aiming for the wolf and hit the child instead. The wolf was startled and dropped the hen, then it fled into the forest. Monsieur Colbert is not to blame. It was just a tragic misfortune.”