by Morgan Hawke
Thorn had no interest in getting caught between the dogs and the dead. She wheeled and bolted down the street in a flat-out run, snow flying from her paws. She took a sharp turn into a long narrow lane between crumbling row houses that stank of charred wood and then took another turn into an even narrower street, little more than an alley. The sound of her panting breaths and her paws scuffing snow echoed between the buildings. Beyond that was only sporadic gusts of wind.
Huh? She stopped and turned to look back up the street. Nothing moved behind her. Neither the dogs nor the dead had followed her. Her ears lifted, and her head tilted in confusion. What had happened to them? She took two steps back toward the main road and stopped. Did she really want to see what had happened between the dogs and the dead? She turned away and trotted up the narrow road between the row houses through the falling snow. No, no, she didn’t.
Two streets later, Thorn realized she was even farther off course than before. She turned her nose firmly in the right direction and trotted into an alley going the right way.
She crossed a couple of empty gardens, a few barren yards piled with old refuse, and came face-to-face with a tall stone wall with a spiked ironwork grille at the top. Factory sounds drifted from the other side.
She stood up on her hind paws, leaning on her front paws for balance. The wall was nearly three times her length. It was far too high for her to jump, and the brick was almost glass smooth. Hands, even with claws, would be of no use to climb it. She needed to find a way over it or a door through it.
She sighed and dropped back onto her feet and trotted alongside the wall. She passed the backs of four clapboard houses before she realized she was going the wrong way again. A low growl escaped. What was wrong with her? She turned around and loped back the way she’d come.
The wall ended at a cross street. She looked left and then right. Nothing moved but the snow on the wind.
She took a step and stopped in confusion. Her inner directional sense urged her to go right along the wall toward the eastern edge of town and the distant mountains, but something else was urging her to take the narrow alley directly in front of her toward the north.
She took a step to the right and halted. She didn’t want to go that way.
What? She shook her head, flapping her tall ears. Yes, she did! She took a determined step toward the east and the mountains. And stopped cold. To her absolute horror, she eased back a step and turned to look to the alley leading north, the way she shouldn’t go.
No, damnit! She laid her ears back flat and turned her nose in the correct direction. Home is this way! But she couldn’t make herself take another step. A troubled whine escaped her throat. A howl of frustration very nearly followed. She clamped her jaw closed. The last thing she needed was a loud, clear announcement to the world in general as to where she was. God only knew what would try to find her, the other werewolf, the shambling dead, something worse…?
Unable to go in the right direction but not wanting to go in the wrong one, Thorn walked in a circle in the middle of the snow-covered lane. This need to go in the wrong direction didn’t make sense. The urge wasn’t something she was hearing or something she could smell. It was more like a pressure around her heart, something pulling her body. She’d never felt anything like this before, as a human or as a wolf.
Clearly she was being driven insane by this town. The walking dead, the deranged werewolf, people eating people…All of it was crazy! She needed to get back to the forest and sanity.
But something else wanted her to go to the north, and it wasn’t taking no for an answer.
She turned to face the north alley and snarled, baring her long teeth. Fine, then she’d go north. She trotted down the narrow lane, her ears flat back, anger making her shoulder fur stand stiffly. But whatever was pulling her north was going to be very sorry when she got there. She stretched out into a ground-eating lope.
The alley opened onto a wide thoroughfare that had once been a wealthy neighborhood. It had been completely decimated. The mansions on both sides of the street were blackened piles of rubble behind shattered walls. Even the trees on the once-stately lawns had been burned to char. It looked like a war zone without the battle wreckage.
The only building still standing was at the far end of the broad street—a massive and ornate gothic church several stories tall. The soaring sides were supported by the arched ribs of decorative flying buttresses. The medieval circular stained-glass window, centered between the two rising spires, appeared to be intact.
Whatever had forced her all the way to the north end of town was there.
She loped right down the middle of the street, getting angrier with each long stride. Damnit, she was hungry! She’d caught the scent of more than one penned-in goat, but this tether was pulling her too strongly for her to step aside long enough to raid a backyard chicken coop or rabbit hutch.
An eerie high-pitched, baying howl shattered the silence.
Thorn skidded to a stop and turned to look.
Behind her, a hideous manlike creature in a long black coat was bounding up the street in an ungainly lope. Tall, pointed ears parted ragged red-brown hair framing a repulsive face bearing a short doglike muzzle with far too many teeth and not enough fur. Oversize clawed hands extended past the coat’s sleeves, and the trousers were ragged past the knees, showing misshapen clawed feet. She couldn’t smell anything from it; the wind was going the wrong way—but it was coming straight for her.
Thorn turned and bolted.
“Wait! Wait!” The bellowing voice was oddly pitched and the words barely recognizable. “Please!”
Please? Thorn very nearly tripped. She skidded to a stop and turned to look back at the man thing. It wasn’t growling, and its ears were up; it didn’t seem to be trying to attack her, but it was so very wrong looking.
Four lengths away, the creature shambled from an uneasy trot to a walk, sniffing. “Smell right….” It stopped a body length away, and its bestial yellow eyes widened. “Oh, pretty….”
Thorn skittered away from it. It must be nearsighted. The clumsy thing wasn’t acting aggressively, but she had no intention of letting it get close enough tograb her.
The thing stumbled after her. “Wait! I…I’m…” It pressed a clawed hand over its eyes. “Think…” It dropped its hand and took a deep breath. “Yes.” It opened its yellow eyes. “Go!” It lurched toward her, waving his clawed hand. “That way!”
She danced away, circling around it. What the hell was this thing trying to do?
“No, no, no!” The creature twisted around to follow her on its misshapen feet and very nearly fell. “That way!”
The wind shifted, and she finally caught its scent. It smelled of dog, old blood, and something else, someone else, someone familiar. The hair rose all over her body. It smelled like…Max.
What? This hideous man creature couldn’t be Max. She dodged around the creature to catch a better scent and immediately wished she hadn’t bothered. It was hard to detect under the stench of dog, old blood, and gun oil, but it was Max all right. What the hell was wrong with him? He shouldn’t look this…deformed. He didn’t even have a tail for proper balance.
The wolf that shared her soul snarled in disgust. Disconnected, warped, divided, imbalanced…insane.
Thorn snorted and circled out of grabbing range. There was no arguing with any of that. Max was definitely not well-connected in the head. She was just glad he wasn’t trying to eat her. So what did he want?
Max stopped and lowered his head, panting from his deformed muzzle, and wavering on his clawed feet. He took a breath and spoke slowly and with effort. “You are going the wrong way.”
Oh! Thorn stopped circling. Was that all? She moved in front of Max and lifted her head. Ears up in a happy, nonaggressive manner, she gave him her best tongue-lolling grin. Very carefully she nodded her entire head in the human manner.
Max straightened, and his head tilted to the side. “You know?”
Tho
rn nodded again.
Max’s ears flattened back. “Why?”
Thorn rolled her eyes. She had no earthly idea why she was out here. She turned to face the church. All the answers were there. She turned and trotted away from the ungainly wolf man.
“Hey!” The word was more bark than speech.
She stopped and looked over her shoulder at Max. What now?
His ears lifted. “Follow…you?”
She gave him a broad, friendly, panting grin. Sure, why not? Whatever had brought her out here could say hello to Max, too.
8
Alert for unusual movement, Thorn padded down the street across the top of the fallen snow, heading straight for the big church at the very end.
Behind her, Max grunted with every step. The snow was up to his calves, and he was foundering in it pretty badly.
Thorn snorted. Idiot. If Max had simply assumed a wolf form, he wouldn’t be having nearly this much of a problem with the snow. She stretched out into a lope. If he couldn’t keep up with her, that wasn’t her problem.
Thorn stopped at the ironwork gate to the church’s walled enclosure and stared.
It wasn’t a church. It was an honest-to-God gothic cathedral. The iron-studded double doors at the top of the steps were a full story high and banded with iron. The huge circular stained-glass window between the tall bell towers had to be at least three of her body length wide. Gargoyle drain spouts stared down from under the eves. Intricate vines and decorative coils framed every arched window. What she could see of the churchyard appeared to be crammed with overgrown bushes and statuary.
It was actually rather pretty in a creepy sort of way.
Whatever was pulling her didn’t feel like it was coming from inside the church, so it was somewhere on the grounds.
The wrought-iron gate was chained and locked, but the surrounding stone wall was fairly low. She set her front paws on top and took a quick look. She didn’t see any upright glass shards cemented into the broad flat top, and there weren’t any iron spikes. A small jump took her on top of the wall. Her wolf’s body was long but very narrow. She had no problems balancing.
The churchyard was one huge graveyard crammed tight with headstones. Funerary statues and a few oak trees rose above clumps of winter-bare bushes and the occasional thorned holly. Massive oaks bordered the far edge. Whatever was calling her was just beyond that line of trees.
Panting for breath, Max blundered up to the gate and stopped cold in his tracks, staring at the church. He shuddered, cringed a little, and stepped back.
Huh? Thorn’s ears lifted. What was wrong with him now?
Max covered his muzzle with a paw and stumbled farther back. “Bad…smell bad.”
Thorn sniffed. The smell of church incense was pretty strong, but it didn’t smell bad.
The wolf in her soul radiated smugness. Unnatural, unwelcome.
Unnatural? Thorn snorted and tipped an ear back. Hello, kettle, this is pot; we’re both covered in soot! She was just as unnatural as Max. And what did she mean by unwelcome?
Different. The wolf within firmly disagreed. One body, one heart, accepted.
If you say so…. Thorn had no idea how any of that could possibly make a difference, but Max clearly did not like the church. She turned and jumped down from the wall to the top of a broad, snow-covered stone sarcophagus. Either he followed her into the graveyard, or he didn’t. She had other things to worry about.
If she didn’t eat something really soon, she was going to have a real problem staying in wolf form. Those bowls of stew hadn’t been near enough to keep her fed. Hopefully she’d find a rabbit or something hibernating under the roots of one of the bushes.
Out on the street, Max made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a frustrated whine.
Thorn eased through overgrown snow-dusted bushes between the headstones. She ended up fairly close to the cathedral’s mortared stone wall and followed it back and back and farther back…. The building was a lot longer than it was wide.
Whispers of pipe-organ music drifted from the windows she passed. She turned an ear toward it. Someone was up late. Dawn was still a number of hours away.
Thorn reached the tree line and found a downward staircase that curved to the right. The stairs were broad and shallow. She went down them carefully, barely making a footprint in the snow. Pale gray, moss-stained, marble walls rose to either side, decorated with carvings of flowers and vines.
Thorn stopped only a few steps from the bottom. Before her was what looked like a deep round amphitheater bordered by walls of smooth marble. Sunk into the wall were more than half a dozen grave vaults with grilled cast-iron doors framed and decorated with Roman-style pillars and carvings. Trees and bushes bordered the upper edge of the wall, nearly a full story above, blocking the wind and quite a bit of the blowing snow. The stairs appeared to be the only way in or out.
She couldn’t smell anything—the wind was going the wrong way—and she didn’t see any movement, but the hair lifted along her spine. She knew a trap when she saw one. She turned to leave.
“At last.” The voice was deep, masculine, and accented with an Eastern European lilt.
She froze. She knew that voice. She turned back to look.
The door to the farthest vault on the right swung open. A shadow parted from the darkness within to become a tall dark-haired man in a fur-lined, hooded, ground-sweeping black coat. A sword was belted at his hip, and a pistol was tucked into his black sash. The long black hair, spilling from under his hood, lifted in the wind. He smiled. “Thorn.”
Yaroslav? Thorn’s ears lifted. All the silver had gone from his midnight hair, and his proudly masculine face had smoothed to the beauty of a fallen angel. He looked…young. She shook her head. Never mind that, what was he doing here?
“This ground is blessed. The unclean dead cannot abide here.” Yaroslav held out his hand. “Come. We have little time.”
The pull in Thorn’s chest was coming from him. He was the one that had forced her to this place. She braced her feet, dropped her head with her ears laid flat back, and growled. She was not taking one more step.
Yaroslav dropped his hand and sighed. “You are angry.”
Thorn curled her lip, baring her teeth, and growled louder. Damned right, she was angry! She was not some dog to answer his call. She had a job to do, damnit, and he was getting in her way.
“What is this…job?” He frowned. “I believed that you were done with your U.S. Secret Service?”
Huh? Thorns ears lifted. How the hell did he…? Was he listening to her thoughts again?
Yaroslav waved his hand and scowled. “Yes, yes, of course I hear you. You carry my blood.” He lifted his chin. “Come, we have much to accomplish before they arrive.”
Thorn dropped her ears and snarled. I can’t stay. I have a delivery to make! She suddenly realized what else he’d said. They? They—who?
Yaroslav lifted his chin. “They—of the high prince’s court.” His jaw tightened. “You cannot leave; they will kill you.”
Prince? What prince? Thorn rolled her eyes. Never mind…. She snorted. I’m just a wolf; nobody will notice me. Not to mention that she was more than a little experienced in bypassing troops on the field.
“They will indeed notice you.” Yaroslav snorted and folded his arms. “They are watching for that which is out of the ordinary, and this land does not have such large white wolves.” He lifted a black brow. “And certainly none bearing a backpack.”
Thorn curled her lip. Then I’ll wear a human form long enough to get past them.
The vampire shook his head. “They have come to burn the unclean dead. They will kill any wandering human they find.”
What? The fur along her spine lifted. Burn the dead?
Yaroslav looked down and scowled. “Fire is the only way.”
Fire? Thorn shivered. He couldn’t possibly mean they were burning this town; a lot of people lived here.
Yaroslav met her gaze. “Most
of the living population has already been fouled. Death, for them, is only a matter of time.”
They can’t burn the whole town! Thorn lowered her head and flattened her ears. How would you know how many people are…fouled…anyway? You haven’t been here!
He shook his head. “To those who can see, it is…unmistakable.” He closed his eyes briefly. “The poisoned living must be destroyed, along with the unclean dead, or they will contaminate every town within reach of the railway.” He sighed heavily. “If they have not already done so.”
Brentwood’s words came back to haunt her. “There have been reports of attacks in just about every town in this region.”
Yaroslav lifted his hand. “Come, I wish to examine your aspect before the prince’s men arrive.”
Thorn stiffened against the pull. Examine my…what? Despite her resolve, she stepped down to the bottom of the stairs.
“Your existence proves that there is a heretic sorcerer doing forbidden magic. The heretic’s sigil, their signature, will be incorporated into your aspect.”
She froze, her muscles shivering with tension. She did not want whatever made her a werewolf taken apart.
Yaroslav frowned. “Thorn, please, stop this resistance. I have no intention of harming you. I merely wish to see who has done this to you.”
She snarled at him. Why?
He took a deep breath and released it. “It appears that my prince has somehow come to the conclusion that I am the creator of the walking dead.”
You? She tilted her head. She couldn’t see how. Come to think of it, she couldn’t see how anyone could make the dead walk in the first place. She’d read in one of the papers that electricity could make dead frogs twitch, but make a whole town of corpses move? She tilted her head the other way. Why do they think you did it?
Yaroslav looked away and shrugged. “I do possess the knowledge to design an infectious spell to do such.”
A spell? Wait a minute, you’re saying this is all—magic? Thorn’s ears lifted, and her mouth opened with a wolf’s grin. Magic made the dead walk? You can’t be serious? That’s fairy tales and make-believe!
