“I-I’m dreadful sorry, Lisette,” I blushed. “I don’t know what’s wrong. This has never happened to me before.…” That part was true, since this was only the second time I’d ever been in such a position with a woman.
“While you’re human you can’t get hard. Vargr can only get it up when they’re in their wild skins,” she breathed into my ear. Lisette grabbed me by my hair and pulled me down on top of her. She writhed against me like a hungry cat, her eyelids fluttering as if she were in the grip of a fever. She wanted me to change. She needed me to change. And the only way I could ever delve the sweet mystery between her legs was if I did change.
But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Every time I closed my eyes to focus my attention on shifting from human to wolf, all I could see was Flood Moon’s blood-smeared face, screaming in horror as I ravaged her. I pushed away from her, gasping like a man who had just narrowly escaped the pull of a whirlpool. My face was flushed and my eyes swam, but I was still wearing the skin of a man.
“I’m sorry, Lisette. I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean you can’t? I told you how to do it,” she pouted.
“I just can’t. That’s all there is to it,” I muttered, turning away from her so she would not see the look of disgust and fear in my eyes.
Lisette’s displeasure darkened her face, twisting her beautiful features into something far from pretty. “Grondeur might be a wheezing old dog, but at least he knows what to do with a woman when he’s got her under him!” she snapped.
If she was expecting me to respond to this goad, I’ll never know. For there was a sudden, sharp report and her head, from the nose up, disappeared in a spray of blood and bone. I was too stunned to do more that twitch as Lisette’s brains splattered against my face and chest. She sat there for a moment, her hands still fluttering in her lap like wounded birds. Then her body slumped to the ground as if it had suddenly become sleepy.
I looked in the direction of the shot and saw Grondeur standing by his private wagon. He looked tired and older than I’d ever seen him before. Even though the night was cool, he was dressed in a flannel night shirt, not his wolf skin. Beside him was one of the pet eunuchs, a smoking rifle gripped in a pudgy hand.
“The little minx fancied she could poison me with her pathetic little herbal mixtures,” Grondeur snarled, his words slurred. “Thought she could cuckold me, as if I was a common miller! Wretched little creature!” He stepped forward, his skin becoming darker and hairier. “And as for you,” he growled, lowering his head as his nose pushed and twisted its way into a snout, “you thankless little bastard, I’ll deal with you like the dog you are!”
I shifted as the older werewolf came at me, leaping to meet his charge halfway. We struck headlong and began tearing at one another with all the fury of true wolves. He may have been old, but Grondeur was far from inexperienced when it came to hand-to-hand combat. But, then, I was far from a piker myself. Still, I’d never fought one of my own kind before, and I was unprepared for how strong my opponent proved to be.
All my life, I had been accustomed to tackling critters weaker than me—and that included grown buffalo, mind you. But Grondeur was powerful and knew where to bite and where to claw to do the most damage. While I had youth and vigor on my side, he definitely had years—if not centuries—of experience is dealing with rival vargr. Fur, blood, spittle and shit flew in every direction as we rolled about on the ground. It wasn’t until I felt a sudden heat across my shoulders and back, followed closely by intense pain, that I realized we had rolled into the campfire and that my pelt was ablaze. I howled in agony and snapped at Grondeur, biting off a couple of his fingers just as neatly as he bit the ends off his cigars. Although he yowled in pain, the old werewolf refused to let go.
“You were going to cuckold me, you worthless piece of shit!” he growled through bared teeth. “You were going to steal my Lisette and set up your own pack! Let’s see how many cubs she’ll bear you now, interloper!”
He forced my head back, exposing the soft meat of my jugular, and for a moment it looked like I was truly done for. Although I had endured what would have been certain death for a normal human time and time again, I knew there was no surviving a killing bite from one of my own kind. Just as Grondeur lowered his head, there was a horrible, high-pitched scream from the direction of the wagons. I used the distraction to break free of his hold and put some room between us. I fully expected Grondeur to press his attack, but to my surprise he seemed to have completely forgotten me.
The screaming continued. It was high and womanish—and for a second I thought it was one of Grondeur’s wives. I looked in the direction of the noise and saw Henri, Grondeur’s chief eunuch, standing as if transfixed, his chubby hands clutching the arrow sticking out of his chest.
Suddenly the sky was full of burning arrows plummeting to earth. Some of them thudded harmlessly to the ground. Most of them, however, landed in the canvas rigging of the covered wagons, setting them ablaze in seconds. Grondeur’s harem poured from the burning wagons, their tongueless voices filling the night with mute screams.
The werewolf stood on crooked, shaggy legs and shook his fists at the night, bellowing at his unseen attackers like a vengeful Old Testament patriarch. “Who dares?!? Who dares attack Grondeur!?!”
His answer came in the form of a single rifle shot, which caught him in the chest and hurled him backward a good ten feet like a slaughtered fawn. To my surprise, he stayed down.
I’d like to point out that at this point I was hurt pretty good myself. I’d suffered some serious burns and sustained substantial internal injuries. I could feel myself bleeding inside, as some ribs had snapped and punctured one of my lungs. Grondeur had also torn off my right ear and bitten through my snout, so that it bled like a sieve. Still, despite all that had happened between us, I crawled to where my uncle lay dying.
He was still alive, but just barely. Blood was pumping out of his shattered ribcage and running out the corner of his mouth. He looked stunned and more than a little betrayed, like a child thrown from a beloved pony. “Silver,” the old werewolf whispered, his words thickened by the blood filling his lungs. “They’ve got silver bullets.” And then he died.
I didn’t need to hear any more to know who was behind the attack on the camp. It was my very own private devil, come to make sure I didn’t get lost on my way to Hell.
Somehow—I’m not exactly sure myself, since I was rapidly becoming delirious from my injuries—I managed to drag myself away from the camp before Grondeur’s attackers swept down from their hiding place in the surrounding hills. I got as far as a rise overlooking the massacre before my strength deserted me entirely.
Broken, burned and bleeding from more than a dozen deep wounds, I looked on helplessly as more than twenty Whites—most of them sporting heavy beards—rounded up Grondeur’s harem. It slowly dawned on me that these were the Mormons my kinsman had hoped to blend in with and, eventually, prey upon.
The remaining eunuchs were killed as they tried to protect their fallen master’s wives. I’ll give them one thing—they might not have had testicles, but those poor bastards certainly had guts. The women, unfortunately, suffered a far worse fate than their keepers. Makeshift torture racks were made from the wheels of the wagons, and each wife was, in turn, stripped naked and lashed in place, her arms and legs spread wide.
It was then Witchfinder Jones stepped out of the crowd of gathered men. Even from a distance, I had no trouble in identifying him, for he still wore my father’s pelt. I watched as he methodically gutted each of the pregnant females, yanking their unborn whelps from their bellies and crushing them under his boot heel.
A great sadness filled me and I began to chant prayers to the Great Coyote in the Comanche tongue. Somewhere along the fifth or sixth wife I blacked out, my eyes swimming with visions of half-formed things crushed to jelly, and the screams of tongueless women ringing in my ears.
Chapter Nine
I don’
t know how long I was out, just that when I came to, I was lying on a pony drag. I struggled to sit up, but the pain that filled my body made me stop. I fell back and moaned.
“You are awake, skinwalker?”
The voice made me open my eyes again, for it belonged to a woman and spoke in the tongue of the Shoshone, a cousin tribe of the Comanche.
The horse came to a halt, and I heard the rider dismount and walk back to where I lay on the drag. Standing before me was a woman dressed in a long buckskin skirt and tunic, the front decorated with elaborate beadwork that marked her as a medicine squaw. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, although I guessed her age to be no more than sixteen or seventeen. On her head was a cap made from the skull and pelt of a badger, its paws tied under her chin.
“You are Shoshone?” I asked, my voice sounding so weak it frightened me to hear it.
She shook her head, causing the badger’s empty paws to sway. “My mother was Shoshone, taken in a raid. My father is Lakota Sioux from the Hunkpapa council fire. I am called Digging Woman.”
“Digging Woman—how did you come to find me?”
She smiled, and it was then I glimpsed the beauty and power held within her. “I saw you in a vision, Walking Wolf. I had traveled into the wilderness in quest of visions, and the Great Coyote came to me and showed me where to find you.”
I should have been surprised she knew my Indian name. But having learned at Medicine Dog’s knee, I knew better. I had prayed to Great Coyote and he had heard my prayer, sending this woman to my aid. I tried to sit up again, but the pain was still too great. Digging Woman’s eyes flashed alarm and she pushed me back with a gentle shove.
“Do not try to move, skinwalker. Your wounds are grave. Give them time to heal.”
As I scrutinized what little I could see of myself, I could tell she wasn’t exaggerating. The backs of my hands and my forearms were covered with scar tissue—no doubt from the fire. I tried to touch my left ear—only to find a raw nub. As my regenerative abilities were taxed to their limit, it would be some time before my body could rebuild itself properly.
“I owe you my life, Digging Woman.”
She shrugged and pulled a handful of dried herbs from a pouch secured to her waist and handed me a drinking skin. “It is a long ride to my people’s camp. Chew these and wash it down with water. It will help dull the pain.”
I did as she said. Although I have a high pain threshold, something told me I’d be stepping over it quite a bit in the next few days. As with most things unpleasant, I was right.
Digging Woman was a remarkable person. If I did not have reason enough to consider her so from the start, I quickly came to respect my savior during the two days she dragged me through strange and doubtless hostile territory.
The Sioux were much like the Comanche, seeing how they were both nomadic tribes that wandered the Great Plains and relied heavily on the buffalo for their day-to-day existence. Both tribes were noted for their ferocity in battle and skill as horsemen. Both were proud warrior societies. The big difference between the two, however, lay in their attitude toward religion.
Comanche, like I said earlier, were rather pragmatic people. They observed the taboos and rituals imposed by their gods but did not put much stock in supernatural things. While medicine men were respected, they were not treated with the respect one gave war chiefs. The Sioux, on the other hand, were great believers in visions—and not just those given to shamans and elders. The everyday Sioux went in for rituals and dances and saw signs and portents in many things.
Digging Woman was a wise woman, schooled in the knowledge of roots, herbs, grasses and the phases of the moon. There was no such thing amongst the Comanche, unless you counted the Grandmothers who attended the women when it was their time to give birth. And, to judge by her dress and manner, Digging Woman had attained a great deal of stature within the tribe at an early age. Although the Sioux could be as dismissive of their women folk as the Comanche, the strength and truth of Digging Woman’s visions and her skill as a healer had won her great respect from the various Lakota councils.
She explained to me that she was born of a family famous for its medicine. Many great and powerful shamans had been born of her clan. In fact, her uncle was none other than Tatanka Yotanka, better known as Sitting Bull, the most revered of the Hunkpapa medicine men. The night before we reached her tribe’s camp, she informed me she would send a dream to her uncle, to tell him of their arrival.
Later that evening, I saw what looked to be an owl rise from where she was sleeping, its muffled wings beating silently as it flew in the direction of her people’s camp. A coincidence? If I had been raised White, and human to boot, perhaps I could believe that. But I have walked the thin line between the real and the unreal all my life, both as a Comanche brave and a shapeshifting were-beast, and I know better than to dismiss such things out of hand.
The very next day, as we entered the Hunkpapa camp, Sitting Bull strode from his tipi and warmly greeted his niece without anyone telling him we had arrived. I was able to understand most of what he said, as I’d spent the past couple of days learning as much of the Lakota tongue as possible. Once again my gift for languages had come in handy, allowing me to become fluent in a matter of weeks instead of months.
“Digging Woman! Little daughter! I saw you in a dream last night! It is good to know my vision was true.”
“It is good to see you as well, Uncle.”
“In my dream, you said you were bringing back powerful medicine to help us in our war against the Whites. Is this true?”
Digging Woman hopped off her horse and gestured to me, wrapped in blankets and curled up on the pony drag like an ailing grandmother. “Judge for yourself, Uncle.”
Sitting Bull frowned and moved to lift the blanket from my face. I was groggy from the herbs used to blunt the pain that stitched its way through my body like lightning. My nose elongated and became a snout, and I flashed my fangs in warning lest he touch me. Sitting Bull’s eyes widened, and he stepped back from the pony drag, clearly shaken.
“You have captured Coyote!” he exclaimed.
Digging Woman shook her head. “He is not Coyote, but one beloved of him. He calls himself Walking Wolf.”
Sitting Bull nodded his head as he digested what she was telling him. “You have indeed done well, Digging Woman. Our medicine will be made strong against the Whites! I will see to it that the skinwalker is welcome here.”
That was my first meeting with Sitting Bull, and it would prove to be far from the last. True to his word, Sitting Bull had one of his sub-chiefs surrender his tipi, so I could recover from the grievous injuries dealt me by Grondeur. During that time, Digging Woman tended to me personally, but Sitting Bull was often a visitor to my tent as well. There was much on the chief’s mind, and he often talked with me when he was troubled.
The Sitting Bull I knew was still relatively young, but he lacked the bloodthirsty brashness that marked so many of his fellow war chiefs. He was a thoughtful man, in his way. He reminded me of Medicine Dog, and I guess that was one reason I came to trust and respect him so quickly. When I looked into his eyes, I could tell he was a man who could see true.
Word soon got out that Sitting Bull was playing host to a skin-walker, and many of the rival chiefs came to pay him homage. I distinctly remember the day Red Cloud, chief of the Oglala Sioux, rode into camp. Red Cloud was feared far and wide, by Whites and Indians alike. Before the settlers found their way onto the Great Plains, Red Cloud’s name struck fear into the Utes, Crows and Pawnees. A ruthless warrior, he was known as a man of pronounced cruelty. One story told how he pulled a drowning Ute out of the river by his hair, only to scalp the poor bastard once he got him to shore.
When he arrived at Sitting Bull’s camp, his party rode in whooping and shrieking so that everyone would know they were fierce and mighty warriors. Red Cloud was, by this time, an older man—older than Sitting Bull by a decade or more. He dismounted, and Sitting Bull greeted him c
ordially. Red Cloud was a proud figure of a man, although he now limped from an imperfectly healed wound he’d received from a Pawnee arrow a few years back.
I was sitting in front of my tipi, wrapped in a buffalo robe and smoking my pipe. I had been amongst the Sioux the better part of a month and was close to being completely healed. My left ear had yet to grow back all the way—I wasn’t exactly sure why it was being so stubborn, perhaps because my attacker had been a vargr—but the burn tissue had all but disappeared, except for a thick patch on my right shoulder the size of an eagle dollar. I watched as Sitting Bull and Red Cloud strode in my direction. I could tell by the look in his eyes that Red Cloud was displeased.
“You told me you had a skinwalker, Sitting Bull,” he protested. “How can this be a skinwalker when he is White?”
Sitting Bull simply smiled and said, “He is White on the outside, but hairy on the inside.”
I lay aside my pipe and stood up, shrugging off my buffalo robe, and looked Red Cloud square in the face. It was a hard thing to do, for he indeed had the eyes of a born killer. And, without speaking a word, I shifted into my true skin. Red Cloud’s face showed no trace of fear or surprise, but I could see something change deep within those merciless eyes.
He nodded, more to himself than to show approval of me. “With such powerful medicine, we cannot lose against our enemies.”
He was wrong, of course. Horribly wrong. But at the time it seemed like the truth.
I spent the next thirteen years living as a member of Sitting Bull’s tribe. They were good years, although far from idyllic. The U.S. government considered the Sioux hostile since they didn’t hold with the Whites trying to build roads across their hunting grounds. Conflict was a constant part of Sioux life—as was death. But I had been raised amongst the Comanche, and the idea of being constantly at odds with those around you was far from unusual to me. Peace was good, but war was the way of things. This the Sioux and Comanche understood.
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