“Ilanna,” he croaked.
His daughter reached the bed, an immense shadow amid the blackness, leaning over him.
Soft moonlight filtered into the room and draped a silken sheen of radiance across her face. It was changed, altered . . . hideous.
Noah’s world disintegrated. His aged, drugged voice produced only a whispered scream of fear, anguish, and betrayal.
The werewolf’s roar, the crushing of bone, and tearing of flesh were deafening.
1944 A.D
NORMANDY,
FRANCE
A bank of drifting smoke obscured the beachhead but it failed to hide the sounds and smells. He doubted any of the mortal soldiers by his side heard the repetitive crackle of German machinegun fire, or the tortured screams of the wounded and dying already being decimated on the sands. They smelled the oppressive tang of the sea air, but he doubted they could decipher the sweet aroma of freshly spilled blood.
Trace had smelled its odor for six centuries, and the stench still invigorated him.
The ice-cold sea sprayed his face; either hurled into the craft by waves smashing against the bow or from plumes of water thrown twenty feet in the air by descending artillery shells. He ignored it, as he ignored everything else mankind had to offer.
To his right, Private First Class S. L. Howard leaned forward and vomited for the third time in the last half hour. Trace wasn’t sure if it was fear, seasickness, or a combination of both, but the young man probably wouldn’t stand a chance once the bow ramp dropped. Most of them wouldn’t. They were anxious, the inexperienced soldiers terrified, yet all of them knew death waited for them on the sodden Normandy beach. Trace didn’t care, this wasn’t his fight. His battle would be fought further inland.
In human form, the werewolf stood six-foot-six, battle-hardened in a war the young American troops at his side were oblivious to. He expected his war to continue long after the mortal memories of this day faded into insignificance.
A high-pitched whistle signaled the downward trajectory of another shell and the members of Baker Company hunkered lower in the hope they’d be spared. The sea swallowed the missile and spat water into the landing craft. Trace remained motionless. A saturated cigar butt hung loosely between his lips and cobalt eyes stared indifferently at the steel ramp of the Higgins boat. His drenched uniform hung heavy on his form, the carbine slung over his shoulder. He doubted he’d fire a shot.
To his rear, Lieutenant Joseph R. MacMillan barked his orders but Trace ignored him. Commanding his own platoon of lycanthropes, he didn’t need to bother with the American plan of attack.
Maintaining his balance in the middle of the buffeted landing craft, Trace looked through sea spray on either side at the Higgins boats making the early morning run at the beachhead. Dark against the brightening sky of a June morning, the crafts surged through choppy seas at a steady nine knots. In each boat the heads of thirty-six servicemen bobbed in rhythm with the waves. Some of the soldiers peered over the edges to inspect their targets; one of them vomited.
Seven crafts made the run into Easy Red Sector, and unknown even to America’s war leaders back in England, a pair of werewolves rode in each boat. Glancing forward again, Trace made eye contact with Bergen. Ironic really, Trace mused. Born in Berlin around 1735, Bergen was about to take part in an amphibious landing against his own countrymen. Trace nodded, Bergen smiled, and the British coxswain indicated they had thirty seconds until the ramps dropped.
Baker Company tensed. Bullets glanced off the boat’s hull. The faint screams of directionless soldiers stranded on the beach could be heard.
For the last five years the pack had used mankind’s greatest war to conceal their conflict. Such practice had become commonplace as many an immortal battle had been fought and won shielded by the human race’s seemingly constant need for combat. If any mortal historian discovered that a pack of werewolves waged a supernatural war against a coven of vampires then the course of history, and mankind’s future, would have to be rewritten. More accustomed to brutal close combat against those immortal bloodsuckers, today’s mission promised to be an unusual change of pace. Search and rescue wasn’t usually Trace’s forte, but this was different: this was personal.
“We’re coming in off target!” the coxswain screamed.
Strong currents had taken all of the crafts away from their designated landing sites.
“Drop it here,” Lieutenant MacMillan ordered, “we’re going ashore. Meet you on the beach, men!”
The ramp dropped into seven feet of water and an assault of 8 millimeter machinegun bullets filled the Higgins. The first three rows of infantrymen were cut to shreds in an instant, cadavers collapsing across the boat’s bow before the decision to move could be made.
Bergen advanced forward, pushing the troops ahead of him towards the exit. Plumes of blood replaced the showers of sea spray and splattered the inside of the boat.
Lieutenant MacMillan pushed at Trace’s back. “Move soldier, move!” It was the last thing MacMillan ever said. Two bullets shattered his face almost instantaneously.
Private First Class S. L. Howard took his first bullet to the shoulder and staggered forward, anxious to leave the claustrophobic Higgins. The second bullet—high enough in the chest that it exited at the base of his skull—sent him sprawling backwards.
Blood layered the bottom of the boat.
A bullet tore through Trace’s abdomen and the pain burned like fire. He gritted his teeth and charged over the corpses.
Thirty-six men in the Higgins, yet only four made it out. Two mortals stumbled clear of the boat, one already bleeding, and disappeared beneath the surface. Trace followed Bergen into the cold sea.
The heavy combat equipment dragged him towards the sand.
Bubbles acted as tracers in the wake of bullets passing through water. American infantrymen floundered in the depths, some of them already on the bottom. Held in place by the weight of their pack, boots and helmet, they’d lost their lives without firing a single shot.
Unconcerned by the dwindling breath in his lungs, Trace retrieved the knife from his belt and slashed the straps of his pack. It came away and his body rose towards the surface. He discarded his helmet. An 8 millimeter shell scythed through the water and slammed into his chest. It ripped a hole in his right lung and he opened his mouth, bubbles rising in a muted scream.
Trace’s blood mingled with that of dead Americans.
His head broke the surface and the cacophony of warfare filled his ears. German machinegun fire orchestrated the music of death: bullets entered the ocean with a plop and a hiss; projectiles glanced off the iron sea defenses with a resounding twang. It was hard to discern American voices above the clamor, but at least some of them were trying to give orders. The screams of the wounded sounded loudest.
With his abdomen burning from the earlier wound and his breath wheezing around the bullet lodged in his lung, Trace finally found purchase on the seabed.
He waded onto the sands of Omaha Beach; Easy Red Sector. Crouching behind the angled iron obstacle of a Czech Hedgehog in the company of two terrified servicemen, he smiled. Nothing easy about this!
Crimson water lapped at his feet, bodies buffeted by the gentle surge of the morning tide. The American soldiers who had survived the slaughter within their landing craft sought as much cover as they could find: hedgehogs as Trace had done; the bodies of their fallen comrades; some even returned to the water and lay submerged with only their noses above the surface.
An officer crawled to where Trace waited and barked an order to move out, to advance up the beach to the cliffs. Trace nodded, and watched the American scamper to deliver the same command to another batch of soldiers. The servicemen by his side moved away. Trace wondered how much longer they’d live.
A lone figure lumbered through the drifting smoke. Devoid of his weapon, clothes shredded by fire, the werewolf spotted Trace’s position and sprinted to where he sat. Blood streamed from the lycanthrope’s ches
t, his right cheek gone but the bones and muscles already in the process of regeneration. It wasn’t Bergen. The hands were misshapen into claws and the soldier’s eyes blazed with feral rage. The werewolf appeared seconds away from relinquishing control and shredding his human disguise.
“Get a grip on yourself, soldier,” Trace shouted.
Eirik focused on his commander and the claws withdrew, becoming human hands again. A bullet whipped through the air and smashed the werewolf’s shoulder, ripping flesh and splattering blood onto the already soiled beach. Eirik growled in pain and anger, teeth surging from his gums.
“Calm it,” Trace warned. “Don’t show yourself here.”
Rising from the water like a demented leviathan, Bergen hauled his body from the tide and walked proudly up the beach. Machinegun fire blasted his torso, bullets carving a line from his abdomen to his left shoulder. Blood spurting, Bergen staggered backwards and collapsed into the water.
Trace counted, reached four before the werewolf regained his footing and this time crawled from the surf. The agony of burning lead was evident on the lycanthrope’s face, the discomfort of regeneration probably swamped by the pain of a new bullet thudding into his lower back.
Trace glanced to his right and studied the beach’s crescent shape. Americans hunkered for cover at the water’s edge while others tried to wade ashore under a hail of enemy fire. The same officer who had approached Trace earlier had moved about fifty yards, desperate to deploy troops further up the beach. The infantrymen made slow progress along the sand, some lucky, others slaughtered where they crawled. Things had gone horribly wrong for the humans; the primary landings at Omaha Beach were being decimated.
Crawling in the opposite direction from the fraught Americans, five werewolves made their way to Trace’s position. A quick glance in the other direction alerted him to the rest of the squad signaling their location and waiting for the order to head towards the cliffs.
Using hand signals to direct his troops, Trace led the lycanthropes east along the waterline. Bursts of gunfire tore into his group; they collapsed with injuries that would have killed a mortal man. Slowly, sometimes painfully, their supernatural bodies disgorged the German bullets and began the process of regeneration. Linking with the rest of his squad, Trace and his werewolves inched their way up the beach.
It took them ten minutes to climb the cliffs at the eastern end of Omaha. Avoiding bunker positions, the lycanthropes advanced silently beyond the German’s first line of defense.
Pausing for a brief moment, Trace glanced over his shoulder. American soldiers floundered in the lapping tide of a red sea, struggling to stay alive under a merciless barrage of sustained machinegun fire. He wouldn’t help the soldiers on the beachhead: those he’d socialized with last night, those brave men he’d crossed the channel with—mankind could write its own history.
Turning his back on the carnage, Trace followed his platoon of werewolves into the fields behind the battleground.
* * *
In an overly cautious effort to not dump their payload onto their own soldiers, American bombers delivered explosives too late and too far inland. The falling shells, meant to weaken the German defenses, demolished inland areas south of the beach.
The town of Saint-Champs-Remes had taken a number of direct hits. Blast craters tarnished the fields surrounding the hamlet, and the majority of buildings had obviously suffered from the careless American bombers. A pall of smoke drifted skyward from near the town square, with buildings further towards the suburbs either ablaze or smoldering. Located near beach link roads, Saint-Champs-Remes discharged Nazi troops as if they were ants swarming to protect their queen. German personnel carriers thundered along the blacktop to deliver reinforcements in an effort to push the Allied invasion back into the sea.
Obscured in a hedgerow near the road, Trace watched the Nazi armies driving past. Even in human form his sense of smell was superior to almost any animal. The acrid tang of smoke hung heavy in the morning air, its unmistakable stench overtaken by the pungent aroma of exhaust fumes. Death’s odor clotted the atmosphere, a subtle breeze carrying the smell of burning flesh from Saint-Champs-Remes. Another fragrance drifted to his nostrils: an animalistic odor not borne from nature. It confirmed that Edward, their target, remained in the shattered village.
Trace smiled; he recognized the werewolf Elder’s scent anywhere.
In the early fifteen-hundreds Trace had trained for their supernatural war under Edward’s guidance. The English aristocrat turned lycanthrope had been a diligent teacher: strict and unforgiving; patient and supportive. Trace had learned a lot, and felt no other werewolf deserved the lofty status of Elder more than Edward. His last known location before this week had been Warsaw, Poland, on the eve of Germany’s invasion. Lost to the pack since that day, the great werewolf had finally been found. Trace’s chest swelled with pride; it would be him who brought the revered leader back into the pack’s safe embrace.
Glancing over his shoulder, he noticed the last of his troops had shed their clothes and hidden the American uniforms deep in the hedgerow. Eight hundred years ago, before their war came into existence, werewolves evolved so that they no longer required the brilliance of a full moon to instigate their transformations. A new genus developed: taller, stronger, more vicious, and one that did not need the cover of darkness to become feral. Muted by the roar of German vehicles the werewolves’ bones cracked and shattered as naked men shifted into wolfen monsters.
As the holler of the last thundering engine faded into the distance, Trace’s platoon broke their hiding place and loped across the open field towards the village.
Running in formation, the werewolves covered the rough ground in a little under a minute. They ran on hind legs: potent, imposing creatures. As expected there were no soldiers in the deserted village, and Trace led his troops through the rubble-strewn roads towards the old church. Here, the aroma of Edward’s scent settled heaviest. Pausing for a moment to check their surroundings, the lycanthropes scaled the church steps.
Using grunts and hand signals, Trace sent Eirik and a group of six beasts to the rear of the building. Bergen and the other warriors stayed close to their commander. Shockwaves from falling bombs had pulled the church’s heavy wooden door from its hinges. Inhaling deeply Trace detected the aroma of mortal man.
Puzzlement creased his wolfen brow.
Dust motes drifted between shafts of morning sunlight filtering through the building’s arched windows. A somber gloom settled inside the cathedral. A section of the roof had collapsed and heavy masonry lay scattered amongst broken pews.
Something moved towards the rear of the altar and Trace tensed, lycanthropic senses on full alert. Eirik skulked through the shadows, leading the remainder of the platoon towards the entrance to the church’s cellar doors.
The smell of the werewolf Elder grew stronger near the basement, its aroma tainted by the stench of human fear. Trace eased his bulk through the fragile wooden door and descended the steps, thirteen untamed monsters guarding his back.
His bewilderment thickened. Trace couldn’t understand why he could smell humans. He’d expected the Elder to have been abducted by vampires, their deadly foe, yet he failed to detect the stink of their cold, regal bodies.
In the name of the Elders what is going on here?
Without losing stride Trace stepped into the church’s basement; into a room adorned with steel workbenches decked with beakers and vials of liquid; a room converted into a laboratory which reminded Trace of that Frankenstein movie he’d seen over a decade ago; a room guarded by about six German soldiers.
“Sheisse,” one of them whispered.
Fourteen werewolves spread out into the room.
The soldiers opened fire. The incessant cackle of MP40 submachine gun rounds reverberated through the room in a deafening crescendo. Pain flared through Trace’s body as bullets slammed into his torso, the hot lead burrowing holes through his tissue and organs. Nothing short of
decapitation could kill an immortal, however.
The pack took the gunfire and picked out their targets.
Howling in anger Trace lunged for the nearest soldier.
The German infantryman’s blood gushed down his gullet as Trace tore him to shreds on the concrete floor. Heavily outnumbered and no match against enormous, ferocious werewolves, the soldiers were effortlessly silenced.
Quiet solitude draped over the room.
Confusion once again flooded Trace’s system, something he seldom felt while embracing the beast. Two dissection tables near the far wall contained a subject each; a man naked from the waist up on the left one, a transformed werewolf stretched along the other. Neither was dead, both joined by transparent tubing that carried a red liquid Trace instinctively knew to be blood. Edward was there, but he wasn’t the lycanthrope chained to the slab.
Trace had seen Edward’s human disguise often enough to immediately identify the elderly man standing in shadow at the head of the tables. Edward did not look pleased.
“Trace!” he bellowed. “What’s the meaning of this intrusion?”
He recognizes me? At first Trace wondered how the man could possibly distinguish him among the other lycanthropes skulking through the laboratory, and then realized a father would always know his son.
In less than five seconds Trace had shed his more powerful form and stood naked and sweating in the middle of the room. The flavor of blood continued to taste sweet even when his tongue had taken its human form.
“We have come to rescue you, father.”
“Rescue? Does it look like I need rescuing?” Edward stepped from the shadows.
Shock altered Trace’s countenance, the dominant lycanthrope unable to conceal his surprise at how frail his father now appeared. Peasant clothes hung from his emaciated frame, the garments torn and soiled. It seemed he hadn’t eaten in months, his features gaunt and misshapen by the protrusion of his skull under the skin. Trace wondered how long it’d been since the great werewolf had adopted his more powerful form, and considered maybe his father no longer had the strength to perform such a task. He looked pathetic.
BLOODLINES -- Blood War Trilogy: Book I Page 6
