by Rose, Willow
“Let’s move on.”
He didn’t answer. He hardly even moved. He growled. The sound came from deep within him. It frightened me. Was he going to lose control over his wolf?
“Come on,” I thought. “We need to go before it’s too late.”
Still Caspian didn’t answer. His eyes looked maddened by desire for the human flesh. I was beginning to panic now. What if they had heard us inside the castle and were coming for us now? We had to hurry. The smell of the human blood was interfering and messing with my mind and thoughts, and given my history I didn’t want to come too close.
Caspian lifted his head then growled again that deep growl. Then he walked closer to the body. He sniffed it.
“Stop, Caspian!” I yelled through his thoughts. My heart was racing with fear. Caspian’s breathing became heavier like he was fighting this but not for long anymore.
I knew I had to do something, so I walked in front of him, between him and the body and growled as fiercely as I could manage.
It worked. Caspian lifted his head. I stared into his white eyes. I saw nothing but desperation. He needed my help to pull out of this I thought. There was only one way. I had to attack him. I had to pull him away from the smell and the source of this strong desire. So I jumped him. With open mouth I bit onto his fur and began dragging him across the gravel. It was hard since he was much stronger and heavier than I, but I wasn’t going to give up, not here, not this close. I pulled and pulled while Caspian tried to fight me off by tossing and turning his body, when finally I managed to get him close to the stairs of the castle and out of reach from the smell. It was like letting air out of a balloon. He fell to the ground with a hissing sound. Gone was the resistance; gone was the madness in the eyes. He looked up at me.
“Thank you.”
Caspian rose to his feet. Once again he looked like the proud Alpha male that I knew him to be. Always in control, always knowing what to do. But for once I spotted something more in his eyes. A sort of humble embarrassment. Like he was ashamed that he had lost control in front of me. It took a few seconds before he finally spoke in my thoughts:
“Now let’s go and get your mate.”
We ran up the stairs and managed to open the door then leaped inside the big hall. I sniffed the air, trying to catch Catalina’s scent but found it to be very faint. I followed its trail and soon we were downstairs in a basement. Desperately and frantically we searched the many rooms one by one, running in and out, sniffing, trying to catch a fresh scent, but all we found was old. Finally I tracked her scent to a small dark room. The door was open and I ran inside. Her scent was strong here but unfortunately old.
She has been here, I thought. Her smell is very strong. But she is not here anymore.
Caspian looked at me. Could she be somewhere else? Maybe she was in this room, but they have moved her to another room since?
I sniffed the floors, the walls, and the small thin mattress on the floor. Yes she had been here, she had been in this room, but it was some time ago. Caspian sniffed the mattress.
The scent is at least a few days old, he said. Let’s keep looking. Maybe she is somewhere upstairs now.
We ran up the stairs into the hall then continued to the second floor. A corridor with many doors met us.
This place is huge, I thought. It’ll take all night to find her.
Caspian came up close to me. Then we’ll spend all night looking for her if necessary.
The search soon became desperate and frantic. Especially for me. After every room we found empty I became more disillusioned and hope slowly oozed out of me. I couldn’t find her, not even a trace of her or a scent. Her smell was nowhere on the top floor or elsewhere in the castle. In one of the first rooms we found sleeping soldiers. I immediately went forward with the intention of killing them right there in their sleep, but Caspian stopped me. He blocked my way, then told me how important it was to restrain from killing humans if possible, not only because of the desire for the human flesh that would always try and pull us, but also because giving in to anger was a very dangerous thing for a wolf.
It ends up taking control, yes, you already told me that, I thought slightly bitter. I wanted to do something, I wanted them to suffer and die for what they had done. I was angry and sad at the same time because I didn’t find Catalina here. I wanted them to pay for that, but Caspian told me to stop, to hold myself back.
Killing can be like poison to you as well as anger. You’ll end up numb to the fact that you are taking human lives. It’ll be too easy and killing is not supposed to be easy.
I growled and backed up out of the room. I wasn’t satisfied, I was unhappy and angry.
We ran through room after room in the castle, but Catalina’s scent was gone. I could only track her to the room in the basement and in there the scent was old. Soon I was so desperate in my search I hardly noticed that Caspian had stopped and was staring out the window.
“The sun is about to rise, Sami. We need to get out before we change back.”
No!
Caspian turned and looked at me. “It’s over, Sami. She is not here. They must have moved her to some other place.”
“No! I’m not leaving till I find her!”
Despair and distress struck me. I was anxious, confused. I had to find her. She had to be there somewhere. Caspian looked at me very seriously.
“We need to go.”
Everything inside of me screamed while we ran back out the entrance and continued into the dense forest.
I need to go back in, I kept thinking. I need to find her.
“She is not there. They have moved her, Sami.”
Caspian found our clothes in a small clearing where we stopped. I cried while the change came upon me and that fragile, feeble human body was back again. I didn’t want to be human, I didn’t want to be me. I wanted to remain the wolf. Most of all I wanted to find Catalina.
Chapter 29
Her scent was gone. All I could find was the old smell of her. But I couldn’t catch a new one, a fresh one or one of her leaving the castle. It almost drove me mad with anger and fury. We walked back through the forest and climbed the fence. When we got to the other side we ran across a field while I tried desperately to track down what direction those bastards had brought her when they transported her out of the castle.
“Your anger blurs your senses,” Caspian said. “The frustration you are feeling on the inside makes it impossible for your wolf to work outside. You need to calm down to be able to catch her scent again.”
My wolf growled from inside of me as I turned and looked at Caspian. I sensed how my exasperation showed in my eyes. I felt nothing but wrath and it was eating me up. I was afraid that Catalina had died in that castle since her smell stopped there and seemed to not go any further.
“Why don’t you do it?” I snarled. “Why don’t you find her track?”
He annoyed me. I had wanted to kill those soldiers. They deserved it. But he had stopped me. I resented him for that. My wolf was growling inside of me as anger rose. With it grew resentment towards Caspian for holding me back. I wondered if I could have found Catalina a long time ago had I been by myself, not letting him stop me.
“I already have,” he replied nonchalantly.
“You have found it?” I asked.
“Yes,” Caspian said and moved closer. He put his hand on my shoulder. Then he pointed into the air. “It’s coming from the north-east.”
We walked for hours without a break towards the north-east but I still couldn’t catch Catalina’s scent. Caspian was the only one who could find it, but he admitted it was very weak.
My anger grew stronger and stronger as the hours passed. Slowly I felt more and more stirred up on the inside. I felt we were all wrong in the way we were going about all this. At one point we heard a truck and hid behind an old shack. I watched as the truck drove by. It was packed with people. Men, women and children. Their faces were distressed. Fear was eating them up. I had seen fa
ces like these before, I had seen a truck just like that one once before and I knew where they were going, what was going to happen to those people. I snorted and stepped forward as it passed us. For a second I entered the mind of all those people and was struck by the despair and hopelessness that lingered inside of them.
Caspian saw it in my eyes.
“Let it go. You can’t do anything,” he said in my thoughts.
I turned and looked at him with anger. I shook my head slowly thinking, “Yes, I can. Yes we can. If anyone can do anything it is us.”
“Don’t Sami. Don’t let the anger control you. You need to stay focused on your task. You have made a promise to someone and that’s your priority right now. You can’t save the entire world. This is no longer your world. Humans have always been at war, there is always someone killing each other somewhere. You can’t change that. It’s just the way things are.”
I was furious and didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t want to just look at all this injustice happening. He could say what he wanted but this was still my world. These people were my people.
“Sami. You need to stop this. Block your anger. Your wolf will show...”
We heard shots in the distance as he spoke. Then screams before the worst sound of all arrived. Silence.
“They’re all dead,” I said. I looked at Caspian with great resentment. “Are you happy? I could have saved them. There were children for God’s sake. Children!”
“Sami you have got to stay calm, you have got to keep your peace.”
“Peace?” I yelled. “How can you talk about peace when people ... when people die in front of your very eyes. You’re talking about me letting go. Why? So I can be a coward like you? So I can stand and watch while people are being killed, while Catalina is being tortured somewhere? For all I know they have sent her to one of those camps like they did me after they interrogated me. Do you know what they do at these camps? They kill people. Elderly women and young children are being put in chambers where they kill them with gas. The rest they work till they die from starvation. And you’re talking about keeping my calm? This could be my parents! This could be me!”
My heart was pounding forcefully in my chest and I was breathing heavily as I my fingers began to hurt. I looked at my hands and noticed grey hairs growing out everywhere. I stared at Caspian with spite. I no longer wanted to live like this, I no longer wanted to be a coward. I didn’t try and stop the change from coming upon me, I didn’t fight it, but welcomed it. The fury inside of me grew and grew as the wolf returned and was now standing in front of Caspian. He shook his head in disbelief, then tried one last time to speak sense to my mind.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Sami. It will end badly.”
“I don’t care,” I thought.
I took one last glance at Caspian before I took off running across the field. I never looked back.
Chapter 30
I ran for hours, staying away from main roads and people. I kept the anger alive in me, the rage intact in order to not lose my wolf and become human again. I kept thinking of the faces of the people on the truck minutes before they faced certain death. I kept imagining the terror in their minds that I sensed when they passed me, the horror on their faces as the soldiers pulled out their guns and began shooting.
As I ran I became more and more convinced that Catalina had in fact been sent to one of the camps in Transnistria where I was supposed to go as well. It fit well with the direction of northeast. I became almost obsessed with the thought of her in one of those camps, obsessed with the thought of getting her out of there.
I searched for railway tracks and found one to follow across the country. I ran like I have never run before, growling, snarling in fury.
To my luck it didn’t take long before I spotted a train in the distance. I hid behind trees and as it passed I realized it was packed with people. They were screaming inside the freight cars, crying, whimpering, their voices shattered in fear. It struck my heart and increased my anger. As the last car passed me I leaped from a branch in a tree and landed on top of the train.
I had done the trip once before and knew it would take many hours for the train to reach Transnistria but I never once rested. Not for a moment. I kept my anger intact, I even managed to make it grow further by thinking about all these innocent people inside of the train under me. I smelled their fear and read their minds to feel their distress until it became almost unbearable. I did it just enough to make me even angrier and enraged. The wind was icy cold but I hardly felt it under my thick fur. Tears streamed down my face as we came closer to a camp in the distance. Thick smoke billowed from the chimneys and made the sky dark, almost black above it. People in the wagons were panicking, shrieking and screaming with pure fear.
Right before the train drove into the train station I climbed down and hid between two wagons barely holding on with my claws to the side.
I heard the soldiers shouting and dogs barking, then bone-piercing screams from the people being separated. I closed my eyes and felt fury rise while thinking about how they had separated the little girl from her mother the last time. I was stirred up on the inside, ready to explode in rage.
A woman screamed and a soldier yelled back at her. Then he pulled his gun and held it to her head. A small boy screamed for his mother while another soldier held him. The soldier with the gun was about to pull the trigger when a sound made him look up. The sound of a wolf growling. At that second I jumped from the train on top of the soldier. His gun went off into the air as he fell to the ground. People screamed and yelled and turmoil erupted as the soldiers tried to shoot me, but soon realized that their bullets were no good. They were absorbed in my fur and I hardly felt them. I ripped the soldier open with my claws, then went on to the next. In a rampage of killings I took them down one by one and when they were all dead, I had just begun. People were running around on the train station screaming, trying to escape, and running away from the camp and into the surrounding forest and mountains.
Meanwhile I was the only one running towards the entrance of the camp. I howled and growled with rage and fury as I sprinted towards the big fence guarded by hundreds of soldiers. The perimeter fence was made of close fitting rough wooden stakes at least three meters high. At each of the four corners was a small hut-like structure on long stilts where the armed guards oversaw the camp and high-powered searchlights beamed during the hours of darkness. Cleared ground on the outside of this fence totally surrounded the camp and this was patrolled by guards and their dogs. There was an entrance gate suitable for allowing large contingents of men and lorries to enter or leave.
Once the guards spotted me someone cried out “wolf” and in their amusement they began shooting at me like it was a game, but as they realized their bullets had not slowed me down I sensed a wave of fear come upon them that I enjoyed immensely. It energized me. Their fear gave me more strength as I ran towards the tall fence. The soldiers were running around in front of the fence like anxious chickens, yelling, screaming, and shooting at me. The soldiers in the towers thought they were safe behind the fence and barbed wire as they watched me attack the soldiers on the outside and rip them open.
When I came close enough to the fence I gathered all my anger and strength into a giant leap and went straight above it and then in another leap jumped over the barbed wire placed behind it.
The soldiers stared at me with wide eyes as I landed on my paws on the ground. They looked at me motionless, paralyzed.
Then I opened my mouth and let out a deep and terrifying growl. The soldiers stared at me, then turned and ran.
I killed them all. Every soldier, one by one that I came across, simply ripped them open with my claws, even those in the small towers. I climbed the ladders to reach them. They used up all their bullets on me, trying to stop me. Then when the gun clicked, fear struck their faces and seconds later they were dead. One jumped out of his tower and killed himself landing on the barbed wire meant to kill prisoners trying
to escape.
At first the people detained in the camp were afraid of me, watching me attacking the soldiers one by one. They feared being the beast’s next prey, but soon realized I was only killing their jailors. It took awhile before they could believe it was really happening, before they dared to rejoice. Some of them I couldn’t save. They were shot by a guard who was desperate to keep the prisoners back. He managed to kill three people before my claws ripped his throat open. Blood spurted out as he tumbled to the ground and begged for his life. The smell was intoxicating, but I refused to give in to it. I backed up and as the crowd cheered me on I continued to the next soldier, then the next and the next again. Hundreds of guards were ripped open and thrown to the ground that was soon red from all the blood.
When I could find no more soldiers, I went for the officer’s quarters. I found one in bed with a woman. Her grey prison uniform was on the floor. He was beating her with a stick while forcing her down when I broke down the door to his room. The woman screamed for help while the officer tumbled to the floor, startled by the wolf suddenly entering his room. Then he pulled up his pants and went towards me with the stick in his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m not afraid of you.”
I growled deeply from within. He lifted the stick and began to beat me. I hardly felt it. Then I lifted my paw and with just one stroke he was thrown to the floor, bleeding from the deep wounds my claws had left in his chest. He was panting, gasping for air while the woman picked up her clothes and ran out the room. Another officer came to see what was happening. He pointed his gun at me. It was shaking heavily in his hand. His eyes were full of fear. I snarled, showing my fangs, then jumped him and left him for dead. I searched the rest of the headquarters then ran outside.
