In the end, it was the other man who made his mind up for him, stepping up behind the distracted Helena and grabbing her by the shoulders. If she had intended to conjure a spell her opportunity ended when his forearm slid up round her throat. She struggled and kicked against him but it made no difference. He was a lot bigger than her, at one point he succeeded in lifting her clear off the ground.
“He won’t hurt her,” the one holding the section of wood was saying. ‘Sokay. He’s only havin’ a laugh. Come here. Let’s sort it out.”
He was a real smooth talker. If I had any inclination to do as he said I was further discouraged by the sound of the other man’s laughter. A guttural animal sound. When I heard that I inverted the big champagne bottle, holding it by the neck. I might have run out of ideas but I was definitely going to make a stand. Running away might have been the intelligent option but there was no way that I could leave Helena like that. I intended to go down swinging.
Luckily, I didn’t have to. I had been aware for some time of movement over to my right but had dismissed it as the wind playing tricks. I saw the ripple of ferns as something moved rapidly through the undergrowth towards where the men were standing. Without warning, the man holding the club bounded towards me. He’d noticed my momentary hesitation and was taking full advantage it. I didn’t seem able to move. I stood stock still, frozen to the spot. He must have assumed that I was frightened of him but that wasn’t the case at all.
The unseen force pulsing through the under growth had triggered some deep seated fear within me. It stripped me of any notion that, just because I lived in the twenty first century, I was somehow insulated against the dangers that had threatened my forefathers. I knew in an instant that man isn’t necessarily the most dangerous predator on the planet. Here was a presence much more malign, much more cunning. A raw, unambiguous power that would hesitate at nothing to bring me down. A creature with a predilection to kill and eat me.
The wolf launched itself at the man, hitting him in the stomach with its hind legs, raking down. The impact sent him staggering backwards as the weapon flew from his hands. The creature paused to sniff the air its coat black in the moon light. There was no sense of urgency now as it coldly circled the man searching for weaknesses like a builder appraising a wall.
The man held his hands up, imploring. Just as everything relaxed and I was starting to think that it was all over, the animal bounded forward, locking its jaws around the man’s leg just above the knee. As it twisted its head the man let out a desolately thin cry which turned my stomach to water. He hopped backwards on one leg as the wolf’s shoulders bunched together sparkling in the moonlight.
Back and forth its head went in a sawing action. The man let out another keening wail, steady and rhythmical, his eyes never leaving the creature.
There was a crack then, like a tree breaking under enormous pressure and the wolf finished off with one fluid jerk. Something sailed away to my right and the man simply sat back down amongst the ferns before disappearing completely.
The wolf moved over to where he had lain down. Its head disappeared from view and I was reminded of a dog I’d once had tugging on an exposed tree root. But no matter how I tried I couldn’t erase the sounds. The wet, snuffling sounds as the wolf began to feed.
When I looked up again there was no sign of the wolf. The man holding Helena had dragged her backwards into a kind of thicket. In his panicked state he had gripped Helena even more tightly, pulling her back so that the branches of overhanging trees caught at her head and neck.
It did not deter the wolf.
It re-appeared to the far left of the man, in his blind-spot, its snout wet and black in the moonlight. Moving sinuously, it weaved its thick body between the saplings littering the forest floor, the only sound coming from the swaying of the trees above. The man’s eyes were darting from side to side showing a combination of panic and disbelief. At one remove, it was like watching some terrible Grand Guignol pantomime played out with giant puppets. Helena had gone very still, as if anticipating what was to come, the white of her jacket standing out in the darkness.
The man must have heard something – the snap of a twig, perhaps - because he started feverishly checking to his left. Then he gave Helena a solid push, hard enough to send her to her knees, and spun around.
The wolf was less than a metre away. The man stood there, irresolute, staring straight at the beast. Then he threw himself to one side in an attempt to scuttle away. But the saplings were denser there and refused to give under his weight, pressing him back. Still he struggled to make headway as, all the time, the wolf was closing down his only means of escape.
There was a moment of absolute stillness as the wolf paused, its muzzle savouring the air. Then its jaws were gripping hold of the meat of his hamstring. There was the sound of whimpering. As the wolf started to pull him back, the man managed to grasp one of the stouter saplings. It bent under his weight but it refused to break. The wolf’s haunches rose and fell with the effort of this barbaric tug-of-war. Something would have to give eventually and it came with the sound of sinews snapping. The man’s body arced in pain and then went limp. Next he was taken by the hip and shaken ragged to the sound of splintering bone.
I couldn’t watch the rest. I turned aside, vomiting against a tree. Once I’d surrendered to them, the choking spasms overwhelmed me and by the time my stomach was empty I was down on my hands and knees .
Helena clambered unsteadily to her feet and began pushing her way through the thicket with a bobbing gait. She winced at the sound of the man’s screams as the wolf began stripping the flesh from its prey. As I ran to help Helena I felt a fine mist flecked my cheek. Only later would I realise that it was blood.
Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of the wolf dragging the man back into the thicket. I chose instead to focus on Helena. She’d lost a shoe somewhere and was now stepping gingerly through the fallen leaves.
“Let’s get out of here,” I whispered, taking her arm.
Helena shook her head, “We can’t. We have to wait.”
“Wait! For what?”
“For him to ...” Helena’s expression froze, her eyes glazed over as I realised that we weren’t alone.
I could hear the sound of breathing coming to me on the cool night air. It sounded like a refrigerator motor, measured and impartial. The moon cast a shadow across my feet. Helena didn’t move she simply locked her eyes with mine. There was fear there. She was terrified that I was going to try and run for it and bring the wolf down on both of us.
We stood like that for longer than I’d care to remember. At one point I felt hot breath against my leg and I almost lost it. Almost tried to run. But Helena’s eyes held me where I was. Imploring.
She needn’t have worried. I had no intention of going anywhere. By inclining my head a fraction I managed to get my first sight of the wolf up close. It was padding away from us now but, just as I thought it was leaving, it stopped, tilted its long head to one side as if savouring the air, its mouth open. It craned its head around back in our direction the moon reflected in its eyes as big and bright as silver dollars.
There was intelligence there. I knew that holding eye-contact with an animal like this was dangerous. I needed to drop my eyes, to show subservience, but I couldn’t. I just stared back, fascinated.
The wolf looked me up and down one last time and then was gone, bounding away into the undergrowth.
When I was sure that he’d gone I reached out and grabbed Helena’s hands. Her hands were cold and damp but I’d never welcomed another person’s touch quite so readily. She pulled me to her and held me for a moment. I welcomed the sense of calm that our closeness afforded watching my breath form in front of my face.
Stepping away from her I didn’t know what to say. Something had passed between the pair of us though, that much was clear. All my queries about what had just occurred felt oddly redundant.
All I knew was that I had been inducted into a bigg
er, harsher world where physical transformation was as immediate in its potency as it was in its brutality. This was my own personal Narnia with a werewolf standing in for Aslan. I felt at once both incredibly exhilarated and acutely aware of my own mortality. Everything that I’d understood from my studies had just been re-evaluated. Old ideas that I’d given little credence to stood out as being crucially important whilst others ideas which I’d put so much faith in now appeared childlike and naive.
I imagined that this must be what it felt like for a graduate of Sandhurst to encounter the battlefield for the first time. I felt privileged to be a part of something so few other people had even glimpsed whilst implicitly appreciating its real and awful cost. Life was not now something that happened to other people. I was being thrust forward as an active participant.
Our eyes had become accustomed to the lack of light so we were both able to step through the undergrowth eager to escape the oppression of the woods.
“What about those two?” I asked.
“There’s nothing we can do for them now.”
It was a simple statement of fact.
Helena unbuttoned her coat, shrugged it off and passed it to me. “Put this on. You must be freezing.”
I was about to protest when I realised that my teeth were chattering. The flesh on my forearm was numb to the touch. It was only then that I realised that I was still holding the bottle of champagne. Helena took it whilst I put the coat on, giving up on the buttons after my third attempt.
I was glad we hadn’t gone back to check on the two men. It would have been all too easy to feel sorry for them but I knew with grim certainty what they’d had in mind for the pair of us and that was a sobering thought. We’d nearly died in these woods.
Helena surveyed the scene, hands on hips, as if viewing the aftermath of a children’s birthday party. Then she announced breezily, “He must be changing.”
She pointed towards a dark bank of trees, “Over there I think. By the way, have you seen my bag?”
She had lost it during the struggle. We searched around half-heartedly looking for it, parting ferns, pushing back piles of leaves, glad of the opportunity not to have to think about what lay off to the right. Eventually, I was the one who spotted it. When I handed it back to her she broke the clasp and produced a brand new pair of chinos and t-shirt still in its wrapper. She completed the outfit with a pair of flip-flops.
“He’ll need these.”
She set off towards the trees, clothes in one hand, bag in the other. After a moment she stopped and turned in my direction, “Do you want to come? The worst’ll be over by now.”
I didn’t want to be left on my own so I followed.
He was standing some way back in the thicket, bracing himself against the trunk of a tree. He had regained his human form, his back towards us the moonlight picking out the contours of his body. Every few moments he was required to brace himself against the tree as muscle spasms racked his body. I was amazed to see that his spine seemed to have taken on a life of its own, contorting and convulsing like a boa constrictor trapped under his skin whilst he clung on in an effort to remain upright. The thing that most unnerved me though, were the noises that he was making. Sounds I’d never heard before – yelps and shrieks and clicks which reminded me that what I was looking at wasn’t entirely human.
Eventually, the convulsions subsided and Helena touched my arm, signalling that it was alright to approach. He was fully human now but still totally naked. I feasted on the sight of him with unalloyed delight. He had a beautiful, broad back with wide shoulders narrowing to an admirably tight waist. But it was his lower body which really drew the eye: his buttocks and hamstrings had the fullness and muscularity of a champion race horse. I’d never seen anything so perfectly proportioned. I wanted to cover his body with my own, to press myself against him, to wrap my hands against the hardness of his stomach.
I wanted to explore…
“Easy tiger,” it took me a little while to realise that Helena was talking to me. “Weres throw out a lot of pheromones when they’re changing. If you could bottle it you’d make a fortune. Some people are more sensitive than others.”
I looked at her, slightly dazed. “I’m fine.”
“Sure you are. Nonetheless. You’d better hang back a bit.”
But I couldn’t. I pushed my way forward ignoring the branches which caught at my face and hair. I wanted to see him … up close. The sweat was evaporating from his shoulders and the animal smell of his over-heated body filled me with a sensual urgency.
When he turned to look at me it was as if I’d never seen another man in my entire life. It was like I was twelve years old again.
I was shocked when I realised that the transformation wasn’t complete. He was still going through the last vestiges of the change. His massive jaw, which initially appeared to be broken, twisted from side to side, finally knitting itself back into position with a creak of bone.
His eyes, still silver, were slowly losing their brightness and I mourned their loss. Here was something that really warranted the term “supernatural” because he truly transcended the laws of nature. Something greater than I’d known before. Something unique and unknowable. It made all my spells and incantations seem tawdry and cheap, because here was real power.
His muscles were filled to bursting from his exertions. The vein which snaked across his bicep livid with blood. The dry, dense firmness of his chest. He exuded life from every fibre of his body as if newly born. It was a dizzying combination: on one level I wanted to hold him, to protect him but on another level … my eyes dropped to his waist and the shadows below. I couldn’t stop myself from staring, completely at the mercy of my desires. Major emotions that had been sub-merged for months, in some cases years, flared fully into life, unchecked. It was an intoxicating, dizzying blend.
I raised a hand to stroke his face, the darkness of his skin contrasting with the pallor of my own. It was Helena who stopped me. She grabbed me forcibly by the shoulders, wheeled me around to look me straight in the eye. When she spoke she did so slowly but firmly. She was spelling everything out so that I couldn’t mistake her intentions.
“Bronte, listen to me. Silas needs some privacy now. Go and stand over there while he gets dressed.”
When I attempted to resist she took me by the shoulders and shook me, hard. “Stand over there, Bronte. And try not to look.”
I was distraught at the thought of this perfect creature suddenly being taken from me, instantly suspicious of Helena’s intentions. I knew that the thoughts were ridiculous even as I was thinking them yet I couldn’t control myself. I was desperate for some kind of physical contact with him. Desperate.
Luckily, something about Helena’s demeanour got through to me. She made it very clear in her body language, the set of her shoulders perhaps, that she would brook no opposition. She was in charge. I would do as I was told.
The realisation made me terribly sad.
When I eventually managed to stagger away it felt worse than being drunk. I was sluggish and un-coordinated yet I couldn’t resist one, last illicit glimpse at his nakedness. My heart was fluttering somewhere up around my throat. He had turned slightly to take the clothes Helena was offering. She hadn’t thought to bring any underwear and so I watched as he pulled on the chinos without any briefs.
I forced myself to leave. I had to get out into the open-air, my head spinning, my breathing short and ragged. I was totally aroused. Achingly ready yet completely unprepared. If Helena hadn’t been there I would have yielded to him unquestioningly. I’m certain of that now. Yet there had been no response from him, no “come on”, no obvious allure, just sheer animal attraction. It made the hairs at the nape of my neck stand up just thinking about it.
Once the pair of them managed to join me out in the open I had calmed myself enough to feel more than a little embarrassed by my massive over-reaction. I still felt enervated by the whole thing, despite the fact that I didn’t even know his
name.
He was now fully clothed, dressed in a white t-shirt and blue chinos. I’d never seen anyone look so good in a white t-shirt. I tried to stop myself from staring but it was difficult. As he pulled on the offered flip-flops he looked for all the world as if he’d just strolled over from a beach-front in Cephalonia. But then, as far as I was concerned he could have been wearing anything. The effect he was having on me would have been the same.
In an attempt to alleviate my own sense of guilt, I reminded myself that I hadn’t had sex in months. What I was experiencing was a build-up of pent up desires. It was completely natural. It was just that it didn’t normally subsume me like this.
Chapter 11
When Helena introduced him to me as Silas he didn’t appear to be listening. I wondered just how much of the night he might actually remember.
“Are you feeling a little better?” Helena asked. She was holding Silas’s arm just a little too intimately for my liking. Her fingers clasped in the crook of his arm.
When I realised she was talking to me, I nodded my assent. I still didn’t trust myself to speak.
“And this is Bronte. Bronte Fellows,” she said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Silas said. There was an aloof quality about him. Either that or the fact that he seemed much more intent upon his surroundings. “I take it that you’re the reason I’m here.”
I looked at Helena, “I don’t know. Am I?”
“Bronte has proven herself to be quite useful already.”
“She’s a witch?” he said. “Like you?”
Helena didn’t reply. Instead she said, “I took her to a murder scene this afternoon. She noticed a few things that made me think of you.”
“I’m sure that there are lots of things that remind you of me,” he patted her hand. He was extremely well spoken for a werewolf.
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