by S. A. Swann
If he hadn’t already known that something was deeply wrong, Josef understood it when Maria’s stepmother looked into his eyes. When she said that her daughter was not a monster, she said it to Josef, even though it was Heinrich questioning her. But if Komtur Heinrich noticed the direction of her pleas, he didn’t care to acknowledge it.
Josef looked around and saw fear in everyone’s eyes. The Poles held back in the wake of Heinrich’s anger, watching the German interrogate their own without a whispered objection. Even Telek seemed loath to challenge Heinrich now.
Josef wondered if everyone was trapped in the same nightmare paralysis he felt. When Heinrich struck the woman, Telek finally moved, saying, “Brother Heinrich, that is enough.”
Josef wondered if he was the only one who heard Telek’s voice. Josef’s master certainly didn’t acknowledge it. Instead he pulled the oldest of her sons to him, holding a dagger to the boy’s throat.
Telek stopped moving toward Heinrich. “Enough! Lower your weapon, Brother Heinrich.” He placed a hand on the pommel of his sword. “You have exhausted what leave I have given you.”
Now people seemed to hear Telek. Josef felt the shift in attention, the Germans moving hands toward their weapons, the Poles turning to face the small knot of Germans.
A small bead of blood rolled down the edge of Heinrich’s dagger. “I will not allow these peasants to hide the work of the Devil!”
“Those are my peasants.” Telek pulled his sword so that an inch of steel was visible. “Will you test my vow to protect them?”
“Do you defy God with these unrepentant wretches?”
“Let the boy go.”
“I—”
Heinrich’s words were cut off by a familiar voice.
“Please, let them go.”
Josef turned toward the road and saw Maria, just close enough to be visible through the mist. She stood on the road, naked, her arms clutching herself against the cold in the barest pretense of modesty. Even though she was half-hidden in the fog, he could tell that she had been crying.
“They’ve done nothing wrong. It’s me you want, isn’t it?”
For the space of several heartbeats, nothing moved. Everyone stared at the young woman pleading with them. Even the Wolfjäger knights didn’t move; they had spent their vocation hunting monstrosities of claws and teeth, fur and muscle. Never once had their quarry approached as a sobbing young woman pleading for her family.
It was enough to give even Heinrich a moment’s pause.
But only a moment’s.
“No, Maria, run!” her mother yelled as Heinrich called out an order: “Shoot her!”
Of the two crossbowmen, one seemed reluctant to shoot a naked woman, but the other, near Josef, raised his crossbow without hesitation. Josef grabbed for his brother knight’s arm just as the man fired. Josef felt the tensing of the man’s arm muscles under his hand.
Josef wasn’t quick enough. He saw, with unnatural clarity, the impact of the bolt into the flesh of Maria’s left shoulder. Without so much as a layer of clothes to retard it, the silver-tipped bolt tore completely through her. She grabbed the bloody wound and fell to her knees with a cry.
And a horrifying howl tore through the forest around them.
She stood before the men of Gród Narew, the Germans of the Order, and her family. She felt the fate of her true mother, Lucina, bearing down upon her, a weight on her soul. There was no escape from what she was, but she could not join in Darien’s bloodlust. She believed in God and Christ, which meant that she could no longer believe in her own redemption.
So she did all she could do: she offered herself up to the agents of God in a sacrifice for the sins of her family. She called on them to stop, to take her offer, and no one moved.
Then Heinrich, still pressing a dagger to Władysław’s throat, yelled over her mother’s cries, and one of the Germans fired. Pain tore through her left shoulder. She had the odd thought that a crossbow bolt should feel like a stab wound, not like the near-crippling hammer blow she felt.
She clutched the wound as the pain drove her to her knees, pain worse than that when Josef had impaled her with a sword.
Of course, she thought. That blade wasn’t silver.
She heard Darien howl.
“No!” she screamed. “Let this be!”
Josef was struggling with the man who had shot her, but the agonized lupine howl froze him in place. The scream came from the throat of Hell itself, as if Darien had been struck by the same bolt that had torn through her shoulder. Heinrich finally lowered the dagger from Władysław’s neck and started yelling orders too quickly for her to understand.
Then the forest exploded behind her, branches and shredded underbrush scattering across the road. Darien fell into the ranks of Poles before they could bring their weapons to bear.
The Germans tried to close on the beast, but the Poles were in the way, blocking their attack.
“No,” Maria whispered, gritting her teeth from the pain.
A knight fell back from the chaos, the broken shaft of a polearm run through his chest. A Pole fell to the ground, clutching an arm that now ended short of the elbow. One of the footmen from Gród Narew tried to take the beast’s head with an axe, and Darien grabbed his neck in his massive jaws and shook his head from his body with a few quick snaps.
Josef stayed by her family, sword drawn, pushing them back toward the side of the cottage, away from the massacre.
Still clutching her shoulder, Maria rose to her feet.
Pikes snapped like toothpicks, and Darien knocked the Polish defenders aside, to attack the knights of the Order who still stood.
“No!” she screamed.
A silver sword rose, and the wrist holding it met lupine jaws, tearing free of its owner with just a flex of Darien’s neck.
Maria ran.
Heinrich screamed to God and charged the wolf monster. Darien backhanded the attacking knight, shredding his surcote and sending him tumbling and bloody into Maria’s path.
She jumped over the man as she charged Darien. His gold fur now rusty with blood, he stood in front of the cottage, looming over the scattered bodies of his attackers. The surviving Poles fell back, pikes lowered as if they expected a cavalry charge.
Josef was the only knight left within Darien’s reach. He held his sword one-handed, the other arm clutching his belly as he stood between her family and the beast. Darien held up a blood-crusted hand to strike him down.
Maria tackled Darien. The size difference between the wolf monster and her still-human body was huge, but no more so than the difference between her own monster and the elk, and she attacked him in the same way, diving at the knee of one outthrust leg, forcing it to bend, toppling him into the open door of the cottage. Even though she felt the pain of re-forming bone and twisting muscle, she didn’t yet have claws to slash or fangs to shred, but as Darien fell, she heard his own weight do the damage for her. She heard and felt tendons tear, and the cracking of the canine ankle joint as it bent underneath him.
Darien howled as he slammed into the floor of the cottage. A clawed hand swung out and grabbed her, claws sinking into the flesh of her stomach. He lifted her up, holding her in a slime of her own blood. She felt a blinding flare of pain as he pierced a kidney.
Then he threw her.
Maria slammed into a window on the far side of the cottage, blowing the shutters aside with her back. She felt her ribs crack as she crashed through, falling facedown into her mother’s herb garden.
The pain in her ribs, her kidney, and her shoulder all flared in time to her pulse. Her muscles joined the throbbing agony, moving, slithering under her flesh to twist her bones into their new shapes.
She pushed herself upright in a spasm of relief, the hole in her shoulder the only pain that didn’t evaporate with the force of her change. She ignored it.
She stood, a low growl leaving her muzzle.
In front of her, she saw her brothers running around the side of the h
ouse, then clustering around their mother as if they could protect her. Maria’s stepmother chanced to look in her direction, and her eyes went wide. She stopped moving. Władysław tripped over her and fell to the ground.
In the moment they stared at each other, Maria realized they knew who she was. Like her father staring into Lucina’s eyes.
Josef was on their heels, screaming at them to move.
Then Darien pounced on him.
XXXII
Josef hastened to get Maria’s family to safety, his mind reeling with the image of Maria, still human, naked and bleeding from a crater in her shoulder, holding the beast’s twisted leg in a crushing embrace. The vision still seared his mind as Maria’s mother stopped in front of him, tripping her own son.
Josef cried, “Move, curse you all, move!”
He turned to see what had stopped them, then spied another monster standing behind the cottage.
Maria.
Her half-wolf, half-human form stood upright, growling lowly. The fog sapped the highlights from her black fur, leaving a lean silhouette broken only by the white glint of teeth in her muzzle and the flash of her too-human eyes.
Then a weight slammed him into the ground with a familiar snarl. He could smell its fetid breath as it washed against the back of his neck, and he turned to see death’s golden-furred jaws clamp down on him.
Then a black shadow fell upon the beast’s head.
The monster on him howled as a black muzzle tore into its jugular, spraying Josef with blood. The creature stood and threw the smaller black wolf off its neck. The black one slammed into the side of the cottage with a spine-snapping impact.
Maria slammed into the side of the cottage.
Josef fumbled for his sword and tried to swing at the beast, but the blow had no force from his prone position. The silvered weapon bounced off the thick fur on its flanks, leaving little more than a shallow cut. The monster didn’t even notice his attack. Instead, it crouched and jumped after Maria, the spurting wound in its neck already sealed.
It landed on her with growls worthy of a rabid Cerberus.
Maria slammed into the wall of her one-time home and felt flashes of pain as several bones, many in her back, broke with the impact. But she found it easier to think through this pain. Her body, miraculous monster that it was, was already pulling the broken pieces together, making them whole.
When Darien leapt upon her, she could move enough to bring her legs up, raking across his abdomen, pushing him away. She scrambled to her feet as he attacked again, dodging a bite. She felt his claws rake her, but it wasn’t enough to stop her. She spun around and jumped onto his back, sinking her jaws into his neck, digging her claws into the sides of his chest to hang on.
Her mouth filled with fur and blood, and the smell of his torn flesh overwhelmed everything else. He screamed and bucked and slammed her into the wall, fracturing more of her bones. In response, she buried her claws and teeth deeper.
He shook and moved toward the road, and she found her grip slipping as his body shifted underneath her. She scrambled for a better hold.
Something slammed into her thigh—a crushing blow that flared pain worse than any of Darien’s attacks. Her whole body jerked in response, and she fell off Darien into the pine mulch of the forest floor.
She blinked, disoriented, seeing the trees clawing the gray mists above her. She tried standing, but her right leg collapsed under her. She looked down and saw a crossbow bolt sticking out of the meat of her thigh.
She reached to pull it out, but Darien charged out of the mists, fully a wolf now, his jaws clamping down on her left wrist, tearing flesh and pulling her arm back, nearly dislocating her wounded shoulder as she fell to the ground.
Maria yelped as she slammed down, yanking her arm away, barely managing to keep her hand. As she rolled over to her knees, Darien spun and seized her wounded shoulder in his jaws.
The agony in her unhealed shoulder made her cry out again. She grappled him as he dug into her torn flesh, every shake of his head knocking the breath from her body.
She forced herself upright against him, pushing up, her right leg trembling under the burden. Darien’s wolf was large enough to keep himself locked on to her shoulder even as she stood, forepaws dug into her chest, trying to force her back down. He pushed against her, and she found herself stumbling backward until a tree blocked her path.
She felt dizzy, and suspected that demons couldn’t lose all their blood. Her left arm dropped to the side, nearly useless with Darien chewing through her shoulder, and her right leg trembled, ready to give way underneath her.
Her right hand, knotted in the fur of Darien’s neck, tried to pull his jaws away, but she couldn’t pry him off. Close to blacking out from the pain, she looked down and saw Darien’s appalling excitement, blood-red and throbbing, only a handsbreadth from her.
Desperate, she reached her right hand down and grabbed his testicles, hooked her claws into the flesh, and squeezed.
Darien’s entire body went rigid, and his jaws opened in a breathless gasp, letting her shoulder slip free. Her back slid down the tree against a slick of her own blood as she twisted her hand, making him feel the pain she did. When he fell from her, she tore her hand away, castrating him in a spray of fresh blood.
Then she ran, limping, deeper into the forest.
She knew he would recover from the insult, just as the wound she had chewed into his neck had healed.
She panted as she limped into the ghost-gray woods. She was horribly handicapped now. Darien outweighed her and was stronger. The only advantage she’d had over him was speed, and the bolt embedded in her thigh had cost her that. But she had to stop him somehow. Otherwise he would just keep killing and killing and killing …
She had distracted him twice now, focused his attention on her, but that couldn’t last. She knew that the next time he caught up with her, he would either kill her or leave her in such a state that she’d be unable to do anything to stop him.
She couldn’t do anything now. She didn’t have the strength to sever his neck the way he had done so casually to the people he had attacked.
Behind her, she heard Darien’s howls, and in it she heard a cry for her own blood.
Why wasn’t she healing? He had only bitten and clawed her, but the savagery he had done to her wasn’t repairing itself. Blood poured from her ragged shoulder, and her left arm hung limp, hand dangling from a flayed wrist. But none of that had been done by silver. The only wounds that shouldn’t heal were the wound in her shoulder and the bolt in her leg …
God in Heaven, the bolt!
Darien howled, closer now.
She half-fell, half-leaned against a tree. The silver tip of the bolt in her leg was preventing her body from healing. She reached down and gripped the shaft with a shaking hand.
The pads of her inhuman, half-lupine hand were slick with smears of Darien’s blood, and she couldn’t find a grip. Her hand slid off, firing an agonizing spasm down her leg that dropped her to the ground.
“Please God, don’t let me bleed to death because of this.” She rubbed the gore off on the fur of her leg and gripped the bolt again. She gasped. “At least not before I end this.”
She pulled, tearing the bolt free. She felt it rip from her flesh, the pain echoing through all her wounds, her shoulder and arm trembling as her body finally began to repair the damage. She tried to push herself upright, but her wounded leg gave way beneath her.
She rolled onto her back and groaned, feeling as if all her strength was leaking away through her shoulder and leg. As if her body itself was collapsing, draining away. She grabbed her leg, trying to hold herself inside.
Her hand held on to the wound—a wound in soft, hairless flesh.
“Please, God, no,” she whispered. She glanced down at herself and saw her body: the same human body she had grown up with. The wolf had abandoned her. “No, no, no!”
She tried to push herself up, tried to call the beast back before D
arien—
As if the thought had called him forth from Hell, Darien sprang from the fog—furious, intact, and covered in the blood of a dozen people. His forepaws twisted into clawed hands as he landed on top of her, painfully slamming her naked shoulders into the root of a tree, holding her upper arms to the ground.
He stared down at her with a distorted lupine face, the fur of his cheeks matted black with blood, panting foul gore-tainted breath. Threads of drool dripped onto her face, her neck, her breasts.
“Maria,” the wolf growled, bending down so his face was a hairsbreadth from her own. “This will stop now.”
She struggled, pushing against him with her arms and her one good leg. But even if she hadn’t been weakened, she never would have had the strength to dislodge him.
“No place to run,” he whispered into her ear, the clotted fur of his muzzle brushing against her cheek. “My mate, my bitch.”
She felt the wolf’s unsheathed manhood burning against the naked flesh of her leg, and she screamed at him: “No!”
Not like this, not ever again.
“You can’t refuse me,” he said. “You don’t have the strength. You don’t have the will.”
She pushed against him with her leg, but it was like trying to hold up a toppling tree. She tried to kick his newly healed testicles, but the sole of her foot slid on still-bloody fur, and then a massive paw came down and slammed her ankle to the ground, pinning it.
He grabbed her face, cupping her chin, squeezing her cheeks in a furred inhuman hand. “Do you enjoy the pain?” he whispered.
Her free right arm pounded on his back. With his hand holding her jaw shut, she couldn’t even scream anymore.
He forced his muzzle down in a perverse kiss as he forced himself between her legs. Her hand flailed ineffectively against him until she felt something on the ground next to her.
Her fist seized on the crossbow bolt as he lifted his face from hers and rammed himself inside her, tearing her open. “You were always meant to be mine.”
