Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  Garret had stayed with Sarn for over an hour as he grieved for Father Bendetti, for Pa, and probably other things too. Eventually the tears ran out, as they always do, and Garret and his brother sat on the leaves and talked in sporadic sentences with minute-long pauses in between. Eventually, Garret had said he needed to go see how Joseph Bendetti was getting along. Sarn had said he needed to get back to Carson’s farm anyway. It was a pathetic situation, Sarn living with and working for the Carsons just to stay out of their mother’s house. It shamed Garret, but it relieved him too. Before they parted, Garret asked Sarn to explain his question from the previous night.

  “When?” Sarn asked.

  “I was having a nightmare, remember? You woke me up and asked me if there was something I needed to talk to you about. I thought you’d seen me change. But now you’re telling me you’d already seen that. So what were you talking about?”

  Sarn’s face took a far off look, and not an altogether pleasant one. “Don’t worry about it brother.”

  Garret wasn’t about to take that answer. He pressed. “You were really upset. What did you see? What did I do?”

  Sarn’s look was unreadable. “It wasn’t what you did, brother, it was what you said.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Garret shook his head.

  Oddly, Sarn seemed relieved. “Then don’t worry about it brother,” he said, taking one of Garret’s bare shoulders in his strong grip. “You’ll tell us both when you’re ready.”

  With that, Sarn had walked away through the woods.

  The Bendetti house was just over the next rise, at the end of Dawson’s Fork. Garret approached it from the rear. As a wolf, he found himself approaching everything from the rear unless he made a concerted, human decision not to.

  The house was small, about the size of Garret’s own, but more cottage-like. It still bore the feminine touches left by Joseph’s mother, who had died a few years before. Garret whimpered as he approached. Joseph had lost everything. His whole world was gone now.

  Garret stopped at the back door and scratched with his claws, like a hound, asking for entry. He came to his senses and shifted as quickly as he could. Only to find that he was, of course, standing at his friend’s door butt-naked. Garret looked around for something to cover himself with. What’s wrong with me?! God, it’s like I can’t remember anything when I’m a wolf.

  Garret was considering kicking the bottom out of the rain barrel when he realized how long it had been since he knocked. Joseph had more than enough time to come to the door. Warily, Garret dropped back to all fours and padded off of the back stoop. Now that he was paying attention, he could tell the house was vacant. It had the warm scent of a dwelling that was lived-in, but it didn’t feel full enough to be occupied at present. Garret jumped over a hoe left lying in the garden among the turnip rows. As he did so, the scent of death caught his nose.

  He landed, bristling, teeth bared. The scent, however, was several hours old. The creature had been here, but Garret knew that already. It had dragged poor Father Bendetti away from his garden. Dragged him away from his turnips, the sunshine, and probably his midday prayers to end his life in blood and darkness. To impale him on his own church.

  Ears flat against his skull, Garret stepped up to the hoe and sniffed it. It was still rich with Father Bendetti’s scent. This was probably the last time Garret would smell it whole and unmarred. He sniffed deeply, and a wash of sorrow covered him, both for the kindly older man and his teenaged son. But then the wind switched, and Garret stiffened. It had brought a new scent with it from the front of the house, a scent much fresher than that of the creature.

  Garret sped to the front door, but his nose told him the story before he arrived. Dr. Grey had been here. Within the hour, probably. His scent was fresh, as was Joseph’s. Garret sniffed around the front door and followed their scents into the yard. They had gone away together into the woods. Dr. Grey, the crazy vet who had taken a shot at Garret, had now taken Joseph away into the woods. Alone.

  A thunder of blood and heat surged in Garret’s ears. A friend, and in Garret’s mind, a cousin of the pack, was in danger. He had been put there by a heartless, cowardly human. The only things Garret hated more than humans were cowards. Garret was running. Low, flat, and fast. Grey would never know what hit him.

  Their scents were easy to follow. Humans blundered through the woods like gangly, walking fence posts. They were slow and stupid to the ways of the forest. It had meant their deaths for centuries. Garret bared his teeth as he leaped a log. Now he would bring death to the one called Grey, the one who licked the wounds of men’s pets. Garret did not enjoy the thought of killing Grey, for animals take no pleasure in causing death. They killed when necessary. Only men enjoyed killing, which was why Garret hated them so much. It was also why he was convinced that the creature was more human than wolf.

  As he ran, Garret wished men would go away and leave him and his pack alone, that they would do no more harm, and steal no more, and kill no more, and burn no more with the crackling terror they called fire. But he knew it would not be so. Men knew nothing of how to live in peace. They tromped through creation with their awkward feet and their loud voices, taking, wrecking, and destroying. They knew nothing of how to give back. And now Garret would be forced to kill one of them, just as his kind had been forced so many times before, to protect one of their own.

  Garret threaded through a boulder which had long ago split in half. The one who Garret loved, the one called Joseph, had suffered enough this day. As long as Garret had breath, no one would take any more from Joseph. The rest of Garret’s thoughts boiled away into the wolf’s passions.

  At the crest of a rise, he heard men’s voices, angry, exchanging the hatred and venom which seemed to be their special gift. The sound of the words stung Garret’s ears. Some other part of him, deep down, asked him to listen to what they were saying, but Garret had forgotten how.

  He slowed and became a predator, blending into this grey tree trunk, then slinking to that fallen log, then becoming a lump on a nearby bounder, all the while working his way closer to the two people yelling at each other in the clearing. They were not harming each other, but they sounded near to blows.

  The hidden meaning in their words nagged Garret, and he stopped behind a tree in agitation. He knew what he was there to do. He was there to protect the smaller one, the one who was a cousin to his pack. But how could a human be cousin to him? Garret knew he had forgotten something. Something very important. Something he had sworn to the moon he would not forget.

  He shuffled his paws and watched the taller man, his face angry and ashen, the large artery throbbing just below his chin. Garret the wolf knew he needed only to sprint a few quick steps, leap and tear the artery from the man’s throat, and it would all be over. But Garret didn’t. He stayed where he was. The other side of him was coming back, this time with a vengeance. After a moment of deliberation, he let it come. Garret relaxed, huffing a breath out of his wolf nose, and Joseph’s words began to make sense to him. The slender boy was crying, almost screaming in frustration and sorrow.

  “I know you know! Tell me where to find it!”

  Grey was still ashen, but couldn’t meet Joseph’s eyes. “I can’t. It’ll kill you.”

  Joseph’s pain spiked through Garret’s wolf heart, and he wanted to run to the boy and comfort him, but he didn’t. He knew he had to wait. He needed to hear, first.

  “Where is it?!”

  Grey tried to reason with Joseph, even though he was beyond reason. “You can’t kill it. What would you do? It would only kill you, instead.”

  Joseph had the taller man by his lapels, trying to shake him, but he was too weak. “Just like it killed my father? Just like it killed my mother?”

  Garret reeled. Joseph’s mother had died two years before, in a barn fire, so he’d been told. The funeral had been closed casket. Garret remembered it well. He remembered Jose
ph sobbing uncontrollably and being emotionally unstable for months afterward. He remembered Father Bendetti officiating the ceremony, a bare shell of a man.

  Grey seemed as surprised as Garret. His voice grew thin. “Your mother, too?”

  “I found her,” Joseph cried. “I saw what it left of her. I know what did it!” He was back in Grey’s face again. “Now tell me where it lives!”

  Grey tried to deny it. “I don’t—“

  Joseph cut him off with a fist to the chest, a weak blow that probably didn’t hurt, but shocked Grey as much as it did Garret. Garret had never before seen Joseph raise his voice to anyone, let alone raise a hand to them. Garret was moving again, quickly down towards them.

  Joseph tried to hit Grey again, demanding an answer, but Grey side stepped and pushed Joseph rudely away. The slight boy hit the leaves in a heap of tears and despair, his breath whuffing out of him. Garret hit Grey like a bullet, knocking the man into the leaves. Twice the size of the average wolf, Garret had momentum to go with his strength, and Grey slid with it, Garret on top of him, grinding him into the rocks and dirt. Garret hoped it hurt. The expression on Grey’s face was pure terror.

  Teeth bared, ears flat and eyes afire, Garret rumbled deep in his chest while he stood on Grey’s torso. He dripped saliva on the terrified man and snapped, his teeth slamming shut an inch from Grey’s ear.

  Garret had abided a great many things in his sixteen-year life. But he was at his wit’s end with cruelty and injustice. He would take no more of either. Grey would pay for them both. Garret would crush Grey’s throat, strangling off his cries for help, shake him until the vertebra in his neck began to snap, then drag his bloody body away into the woods where the creature would find it. Then justice would be served, at long last.

  A maniac battle-cry surprised Garret, and he turned his head to see Joseph coming at him, weak and slow, still not fully having recovered his breath, but bearing a tree branch which was too heavy for him to lift properly.

  Garret watched him come, his anger melting. Joseph was trying to save Grey, a man he rightfully hated, from a wolf. As far as Joseph knew, he was throwing his life away in a futile attempt to rescue someone else. Garret watched his skinny friend coming, and he saw the fear in Joseph’s eyes. But Joseph came nonetheless. A couple steps away, Joseph raised the wobbling branch over his head and brought it down with a puny shriek.

  Garret caught the branch between his teeth. They froze like that for a second. Garret standing beside Grey, the branch in his mouth, and the wide-eyed, shocked Joseph holding the other end.

  Joseph tugged. Garret held the branch, then firmly pulled it out of Joseph’s hands and laid it aside.

  “Joseph,” Garret said, “It’s me.” The words were distorted by his wolf’s throat but still understandable.

  Joseph went white as a sheet. Garret snagged the loose patch of fur at his shoulder and pulled it away. A moment later, he was kneeling in the leaves, the strap hanging in his mouth. He spat it out and looked uncertainly at his friend, who was shaking.

  When Joseph spoke, he stuttered. “Garret, what have you done?”

  Grey was thinking faster than anybody else. “See there!” he said, scrambling away from Garret and towards Joseph. “It’s not what you think it is! That’s what killed your father. And your mother. Your own friend!”

  The creature had murdered and killed and slaughtered. It had mentally raped Garret himself. It had killed Pa. But Grey was blaming it all on Garret. Garret saw red. His rage rose to something more like insanity. The wolfstrap flew up off of the leaves and hit Garret, wrapping him in its needs and passions and strengths. He wanted to kill Grey. He needed to kill Grey. It would be good and right to rid the world of him. But Garret resisted the urge. It took everything he had. Garret stood and ripped at the growing wolfstrap as he roared at Grey. “How dare you!”

  His words twisted into a wolf’s howl as his muscles surged, trying to take him to all fours, but he stood, fighting against it, against himself. His vision shifted from color to black and white and back again. Garret screamed in rage and defiance as the fur crawled over him. He seized it and ripped it away, flinging the strap, which now looked more like a large, flat pelt, away from himself.

  His body was fully human, but his senses were all wolf as the skin hit the leaves, huge and heavy.

  “How could you say that?!” he howled again, seething at Grey who cowered in the leaves. The skin no sooner landed, than it rejoined into a strap and came flying at him again, this time hitting Garret’s back hard enough to make him stumbled forward, almost falling into Grey. The heavy, hot, perspiring scent of Grey’s fear was too much, and Garret reached for Grey’s throat. His hands were tipped with sharp fingernails on their way to becoming wolf nails. Garret pinned him down, slamming Grey’s head into the leaves with twice his human strength. The grey fur blossomed down Garret’s arms, shrinking his fingers away into paws, and he reeled back from Grey, screamed wordlessly into the sky, and grabbed the back of his own neck with both hands. The fur grew thickest there, and it joined to him this time, not something loose. Using all his strength, Garret ripped the strap away in a long, ragged piece, from the top of his head to his buttocks, skinning his own back. The strap came away heavy and thick with his own blood. He flung it off and stumbled under the sudden agony.

  Joseph was yelling at him, crying out for Garret to stop, to listen.

  Grey was halfway across the small clearing, crawling away, but despite the fact that Garret couldn’t seem to stand upright, he was on Grey in an instant, biting, clawing, going for Grey’s throat. The wolfstrap hit him again, but it was as injured as he was, and the transformation was slow and agonizing. Garret rolled off of Grey, lurching and jerking, grinding dirt and stones into his glistening red back even as the shredded strap tried to cover it.

  A few seconds later, Garret lay on the ground, whimpering, his paws paddling weakly as his joints popped in and out of place. His ears were telling him things that didn’t make sense, of a loud ringing sound that was probably just inside his head. His vision had no color, but it was blurry. He saw Joseph kneeling over him, horror on his face, wanting to touch, yet afraid to touch. Suddenly Grey came out of nowhere, locking an arm around Joseph’s slender throat and brandishing a boot knife in his other hand.

  “Follow us and he dies,” Grey said. With that, he dragged the startled Joseph away.

  Garret tried to rise, but pain wracked him from nose to tail. Even if he could ignore the pain, which he couldn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to get up because his body wasn’t working correctly. The wolfstrap was injured and the transformation hadn’t gone properly. Garret was hurting on the inside as well as on the outside.

  His human mind was overloaded and felt as if it was about to buckle. The instincts took over. After four tries, he gained his feet. The wolfstrap was still struggling to finish the transformation, but Garret didn’t wait for it. He started moving. His right shoulder and left hip kept popping in and out of socket as he limped along. A sharp pain wrenched his lungs every time he breathed, and his guts were in knots. Maybe literally.

  Mile after mile he dragged himself through the woods. His joints improved, but he was far from well. He’d lost a lot of blood while the change sealed over the damage he’d done. His fur was soaked with it, and though he wasn’t losing any more, he was weakening by the mile.

  His instincts drove him to find a safe, warm place to sleep, possibly for days, while his body attempted to mend, but a stronger instinct, both wolf and human, drove him onward. His injuries had stacked up, compounded, and the wolfstrap was unable to right them, because it too was grievously wounded. This was more than pain. It was more than injury. Garret’s life was slipping away. He was dying, and he could not bear the feeling of dying alone. There was someone he had to be with again before he went. He had to lay his head in her lap and hear her voice and feel her fingers in his hair.

  A long while later, he gained the crest of the knoll on which
the Malvern’s mansion sat. Dusk was coming. Garret dragged himself past the pond and the goose pen and the flower beds and into the statue garden. He looked longingly at the stone edifice in which Molly lived, but it was cold and dark. There was no one there. His human mind remembered now. She had left days ago. Dusk came slowly, and Garret lay down on the grass.

  “Molly,” he said as he lay and oozed blood from his tattered back into the grass. He raised his voice and called again, probably just to hear her name. “Molly!”

  As he laid his head down in the grass, he thought he heard a door click open and feet run through the grass. Small, light feet, flying like the wind. Like breeze on a summer’s day, come to carry him away.

  * * *

  Garret’s awakening was long and slow. His body was there waiting for him, and it told him loudly of all manner of aches and pangs. At least he was warm. Very warm.

  Garret groaned.

  “Garret?” The sound of the voice warmed Garret’s heart.

  “Molly,” he croaked, forcing his eyes open. And there she was, kneeling over him, almost laying on him, one hand on his bare chest, the other on his forehead. Fatigue and worry lined her eyes, but she was smiling and appeared relieved, almost as relieved as he was to see her.

  “Molly, you came back.”

  “Garret, don’t try to move. Your back is still—”

  His back was on fire, but agony be damned, he sat up, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He slid his arms down around her lower back and held her as tightly as he dared, trying to let her know he would never let her go.

  Five minutes earlier

  Molly sat on the edge of the bearskin rug in her father’s darkened study. The heat from the hearth washed over her, and over the naked young man asleep on the bearskin. She wanted to lay down with him, curl up his arms. The only reason she didn’t was because she didn’t want him to wake and find her there; she knew the peace she would feel lying with him would put her soon to sleep.