by A. F. Dery
“I was just as much me…when I was the wolf…I was more me…as the wolf…than I am now,” he said bleakly in his halting way, closing his eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Grace said bluntly. But she lowered the poker, and moved far enough into the room to set the lantern on the table.
“The wolf is me, and I am the wolf,” the man said slowly. He opened his eyes again. “We are the same. It’s not…pretending…to be a wolf. I was the wolf. Part of me…still is.”
“How did that happen? Did someone curse you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve always been this way,” the man narrowed his own eyes, appearing to be deep in thought. “Always. I studied to become a mage. I thought…to become the wolf’s master…to stop being pulled between the two, but be the one I wished.”
“And it didn’t work,” Grace guessed. She felt sad for him, despite herself. What a hard life to have, if what he says is true.
But to her surprise, he shook his head. “No, it worked. That’s why…I was the wolf…and stayed the wolf…for so long.”
“You wanted to be a wolf?” her eyes widened. “But why?”
The man looked away. “I told you…I am more me…as the wolf.”
Grace wasn’t sure what to make of that. At length, she said, “I trusted you, you know, when you were the wolf. I-I know it’s stupid…but I felt like we were friends. Allies. Something. Now you aren’t the same…the same person or creature or whatever you want to call it…a man is not a wolf.” She shook her head uncertainly, words failing her. She thought uneasily of all the times he had seen her naked when he was the wolf. “I wouldn’t have acted the same around you, if I knew you thought and acted like a man and not an animal. It wasn’t appropriate. Am I making any sense at all?”
He bowed his head, his hair falling down and obscuring his face.
“When I was a wolf…I thought and acted….like a wolf, not a man. It is not the same. Please…I did not mean…to betray any trust. The wolf…likes you. Wants your company. So do I.” The man’s voice wavered, but still he did not raise his head or meet her eyes again.
“It’s strange that you talk about the wolf like he was someone else, while telling me at the same time that you’re the same as him,” Grace frowned. “You’re either the same…person or creature or whatnot…or you are two different people. Which is it?”
The man shook his head again and groaned. “It’s…hard to explain. Words are hard for me. We are the same, the wolf and I…but I think differently when I am the wolf…I see things differently. We are different, but the same.”
His voice held a note of pleading. Grace wasn’t sure she understood, but thought it best to let it drop for now. She had more important concerns anyway than whatever crisis of identity this man was having.
“Where is Hadrian? What did you do to him?” she asked flatly. Her fingers tensed on the poker.
“Nothing,” he said, finally lifting his head and looking up at her again. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? He killed your brother, and you just let him be, did you?” Grace raised an eyebrow.
The man grimaced. “I did not think…you believed me about him. I did not want to…give you any more cause to…hate me.”
This surprised her. Her eyes went wide again. “I don’t hate you, I just don’t trust you. But you’re right. I believe he did what you said- after all, he admitted to it- but I don’t believe he’s a murderer. There must be more to this. Or maybe he’s just changed. I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. I don’t suppose there’s anything more you could tell me? I mean, about what happened?”
She took a step closer to him without thinking, her eyes intent on his.
The man sighed.
“He used his magic to make…a…” he stopped, looking lost in thought. Finally he said, “sickness? Plague! He made a plague. A plague of magic. Set it on…an entire village. And it spread. My brother…was one of the people who died from it.”
“But why?” Grace gaped. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“These places…these villages…we were ruled by a different lord…his lord was enemies with ours. I could not say…why he did it…but I’m sure he was asked, or told, to do it…and he did. He was the head mage of his country, hand chosen…by his lord…a prodigy, they said.” The man made a huffing noise, not unlike a laugh. “How far he has fallen, from golden child to blind exile.”
“He was exiled here?” That certainly put a different spin on Hadrian’s explanation for being here.
But the man shook his head a little. “I…don’t know. I don’t know what happened, after the plague began to spread. He just seemed to disappear. No one knew why. I don’t know…whether anyone looked for him either.”
“So that is how all those people died,” Grace said faintly. She looked off into the fire, watching it flicker in the hearth. A plague. He’d made a plague. And then he’d come here, to “research,” he’d said. Research what? Another plague? If the first plague worked, as clearly it had, why make a second? He had said something to her about making a potion. Surely the plague hadn’t started with something like that? And why come here all the way out here into the middle of nowhere?
“Where did all this happen?” she asked the man at last. “I’ve never heard of any of this before.”
“Corvan is, or was, my country,” the man answered after a moment. “It hasn’t spread past there, as far as I know.”
“And how did you end up here? Were you looking for him?”
He winced. “No. I was just…wandering. There was no purpose in it. I thought a man such as him…with so much power…if he had not yet been found, I did not think…I could find him. I would not have ever guessed…to even look for him here. This was just…luck. Bad luck, but luck. These things that happened…they did not feel so fresh, when I was the wolf.”
“How did you know it was him, then? How did you recognize him?”
“I’ve seen him before,” the man answered glumly. “Smelled him before. He came with his lord…to see what his plague had wrought, not long after it had begun. I was a wolf then, which is why I think…I did not get sick. I saw them riding into my village…from the trees. He wore mage-robes and stank of magic…but also of himself. I knew what he was, what he had to be. I could smell magic…on the people who got sick. It was him…and he admitted to it.”
“Yes, he did,” Grace agreed, sadly. Oh Hadrian. She knew there had to be more to it. He was not the kind of man to just randomly strike people down. He’d been following orders, not that it excused him.
Perhaps he had obeyed from pride, or perhaps he’d just been a coward. Like me.
“You need…to stay away from him,” the man went on hoarsely. “He’s…dangerous. Even blind, he has great magic. Whatever you think…you know about him…he is still a murderer, Grace. You must let me…keep you safe…until we can leave.”
Grace eyed him cautiously. “Thank you, but I don’t need your protection. I don’t believe I’m in any danger, unless it’s from you.”
“No, I told you,” he said vehemently. His dark eyes were wide and bright. “I would never.”
“Just the same, you’re a stranger to me now, and Hadrian isn’t. Can you understand that?”
“But he did not…tell you the truth! He had the chance…when you told him…how you came to be here. He did not, he kept it…from you…but you trust him? You are not thinking clearly, where he is concerned. Perhaps…because he helped you. But I am here, and I will keep you safe,” the man rasped insistently.
“Can you really blame him for not confessing everything to me? No one is going to react well to news like that,” Grace said reasonably. “He never deceived me, as far as I know. He just didn’t tell me everything about himself, and I knew I didn’t know everything about him.” She left unspoken the accusation that she’d had no such knowledge about the wolf.
But he seemed to hear it, just the same. He hung his head once more, the very picture of remors
e. “I know you don’t believe me now, but…I will make it up to you,” he said quietly. “You can’t trust yourself, when it comes to him…not now…but I will take care of you.”
Grace didn’t like the sound of that. She pressed her lips together, trying to suppress a scowl. “That isn’t necessary. Really. I’m fine. I need to find Hadrian and make certain he’s all right, after all of this.”
“No,” the man said fiercely. She did not think she imagined the growl in the back of his throat as he said it. He rose to his feet with startling speed and she backed away, suddenly feeling very small. Her hands tightened on the poker. “You need to stay away from him. He can take care of himself. You are safest…away from him. If you don’t…want to eat something…I will walk you back to your room. Where I can guard you.”
“I don’t need guarding!” she snapped. “I need you to leave me alone. I need to talk to Hadrian.”
The man said nothing, but stood watching her with an inscrutable look on his face.
Grace sighed and tried again in a calmer tone. “I’m not going back upstairs until I’ve checked the rooms down here for Hadrian.”
“I don’t know where he is,” the man told her somberly, “but you’re not looking for him. I will carry you up if I have to.”
Grace brandished the poker at him. “Absolutely not!”
But he took a quick, long step forward and plucked it from her hands with as much ease as if she had been a mere child holding a stick. She stared blankly at her empty hands for a moment, looked back at him holding the poker, then scrambled back the way she came.
He covered the distance between them more quickly than she would have thought possible, following on her heels. His legs were much longer than hers. Before she could get to another one of the doors, he’d somehow moved between her and it. He was still naked, and she cringed away reflexively, not wanting to touch him.
“Upstairs,” he said flatly, the growl back in his voice. The sound made her blood turn to ice in her veins. She stared at him, wondering how she could get around him, and realized dismally that she couldn’t do it. Not this way.
He has to sleep sometime, though, she thought, and with a sigh, threw up her hands in a gesture of surrender.
Upstairs it was.
CHAPTER SIX
The man followed Grace up the stairs closely, his eyes riveted to her. It took a lot of effort to keep his gaze fixed on her back: the man noticed all too much about her that the wolf had not. But he did not dare look away entirely. She was quicker than he’d thought she would be, and he wasn’t taking any chances of her dashing off to another room the moment she made it up the stairway and possibly running into the Murderer.
She was being curiously stubborn, but he supposed that was to be expected. It was the Murderer who had nursed her back to health, after all; the Murderer who had been able to comfort her in her guilt over her village and given her some sense of purpose and distraction in the midst of her turmoil. This disturbed him more than he wanted to admit, and for the first time, he began to wonder how much of that had contributed to him transforming when he did. He had certainly not meant to do it at all unless he had no other choice, and he was not certain that time had actually come.
But all he needed to harden his resolve was the memory of Grace tenderly embracing that bastard, her silky honey-colored hair spilling over the blind man’s shoulder, her sweet face the very picture of compassion. The very image did something unpleasant to his stomach and made his jaw clench.
About midway up the stairs, Grace said without looking back at him, “Rather than trying to keep me prisoner, why don’t you just come with me when I speak to Hadrian? Can’t you guard me that way?”
He barely suppressed a growl. He did not want her around or near the Murderer, period. “You’re safer away from him,” he said through clenched teeth.
Grace was silent for the rest of the walk upstairs. He stayed close enough to her for his breath to ruffle her hair, and he recognized her hurried, slightly clumsy movements as she went to the bedroom and immediately shut him out of it as those of frightened prey.
It made his heart sink, but whatever she thought, he knew this was the best thing for her. With some time and distance from the Murderer, she would surely gain some clarity and come to understand his point of view. Or so he hoped. He sat down on the floor with his back against the closed door and the poker laid across his lap, and he kept his vigil.
Over the next few hours, he saw and heard nothing. At one point, worn out by the transformation magic and all the strange feelings and speech he’d been occupied with ever since, he could not hold his head up any longer. His eyelids turned to lead, and fluttered closed as he succumbed unwillingly to his bone deep exhaustion.
In his dreams, he was the wolf again, and he was running over cold stones that stung the pads of his paws, in the grip of an inexplicable urgency. Uncharacteristically he fell, tripping on something unseen and striking his head against the stones, but he scrambled back to his feet and continued to run as hard as he could.
He could smell Grace, but he could not see her. He could hear her moving, but he could not find her. He was desperate to find her. She needed him. In this dream world, he could not think of why, but he knew it must be true.
The creaking of a door hinge jarred him awake; in his sleep, he had fallen over. The door behind him had moved. Grace was moving around him, with speed.
His hand shot out and grabbed her ankle, just before it was out of reach. She fell to the floor with a cry, but he did not release her. He sat up groggily, disoriented. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was, or why his body felt so strange, or how it was he had grabbed her, even. He uttered a sudden howl of anguish as he remembered himself, anguish that turned to anger.
She had been trying to sneak out while he slept, to fret over that Murderer.
“Why would you do this, Grace?” he snarled. He pulled her closer by her ankle, her hands scrabbling futilely against the stones as she tried to resist the pull. She tried to kick away from him with her free foot, without success.
“Let me go,” she cried. “You’re hurting me.”
He looked down at his hand, his knuckles whitening in their grip on her ankle.
“He would hurt you worse, can’t you see that? I can only let you go…if you agree to go back…and stop this madness.”
“He needs us, can’t you see that?” Her voice was almost a wail. She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes feverishly bright and wet. “He’s depressed. He could hurt himself. He could have done it already. You think I won’t hate you for just letting him do something terrible to himself? Please, just let me go. Come with me if you want, if you think I’m in so much danger. You said you studied to be a mage, so why would you be scared of him? I don’t think he’s used magic in years. He can’t see anything even if he did. Please, just let me make sure he’s all right.”
“I’m not scared of him,” he growled. “But I won’t take any chances…with your safety. He is a grown man. He has survived here…many years…without you. Go back in.”
He leaned forward and grabbed her around the waist with his free arm at the same moment as he released her ankle. She kicked wildly at once, but he picked her up easily: she seemed very small and light to him. She tried to hit at him but he barely felt the blows, marching her into the bedroom and dropping her onto the bed. She reared back and grabbed the lantern off the bedside table, then swung it at his head.
He dodged it barely in time, and growled again, showing his teeth out of habit. She cringed away, her eyes huge. He grabbed the lantern from her before she could swing it again and truly bring him, or herself, to harm. “What are you doing? I’m trying to help you, Grace. Why is this Murderer so important to you?”
“Why wouldn’t he be? He still helped me. He’s still a person, whatever he’s done. You must see how it eats at him, what he did. I can understand that. Haven’t you ever done anything you regret? Anything you could never
take back?” Her eyes were pleading, tears finally spilling over.
Something about the sight of her tears made something inside of him snap. He tossed the lantern aside, heedless of its dangers now, his face heating. “You’d…shed tears…for that filth? Has he enchanted you somehow? Or did the fever destroy your mind? I brought you here, Grace. You’d be dead if not for me. And I stayed to watch over you…when I recognized him. I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never hurt you. I’ve never murdered anyone…even as a wolf. You would help him…cry for him…and attack me?”
His whole body had begun to quiver; he felt the hot tingling under his skin that was the magic, building up, crying for release. He tried to tamp it back, feeling a sudden stab of panic at its unexpected forcefulness, but all he could think of was Grace’s wide tearful eyes, her arms around the Murderer, the Murderer’s lips on her face…
Without will, without thought, the magic leapt from him, like a force in and of itself. The air sizzled audibly with it, suddenly awash in pale blue light.
Grace cried out, hiding her face with her arms and hunching against the bed. An unearthly light radiated from him, and everything the light touched froze, becoming instantly coated in frost that glittered and smoked. His breath came out in short, shallow plumes as he tried desperately to rein it back in, to restrain it before it spilled out even further and enveloped Grace. He wanted to tell her to run, but he was not able to speak, and not sure he wasn’t blocking the doorway besides. The last thing he wanted was for her to run right into it.
Slowly, excruciatingly, he managed to choke the magic back, until it dissipated in a blue tinged fog against his skin. He fell to his knees, exhausted beyond bearing, panting with exertion. He felt unspeakably cold, and he shivered with it so hard his teeth clicked audibly against each other.
