by Amy Cross
I take a deep breath. “A wolf,” I say. “A big, big wolf with crazy eyes”.
“Probably just Duncan,” says Olivia.
“Bigger than Duncan,” I say. “And I saw them together. They were fighting. I don't know...” I pause for a moment, remembering how I saw the larger wolf chasing Duncan. “I don't even know if Duncan survived”.
“Oh, Duncan survived,” says Olivia. “Duncan always survives. That's what he does. But...” She turns to Matt. “I don't see how the pit could have been breached, certainly not without us knowing”.
“We have to go down to the Lost Throne,” Matt says. “We have to check”.
“I'll get my things,” says Olivia. She casts a glance at me. “Is she coming?”
Matt turns to me. “If Duncan's there, we'll need you. He doesn't listen to us. Hell, he hates us with a passion”.
I look at them both. This whole situation seems crazy. “I don't know,” I say slowly. “It feels like this is more than I should be getting involved with. You'd probably be better off without me tagging along”.
“Without you, Duncan will die,” Olivia says. “I don't know your relationship to him, but if you care about him at all, we really need your help. If the wolf in the pit is really loose, we're going to need to get Duncan on our side. And we can't do that without you”.
A chill runs through me at the thought of ever seeing that huge, horrific wolf again. I could just walk out of here right now, and forget that these werewolves ever existed. Or could I? That wolf tracked me down once. If he kills Duncan, he might just come after me again for sport. Maybe I'm in so deep, I can't back out.
“It'll be okay,” says Matt. “We'll look after you. This is really a battle between two wolves. We're just there to keep things tidy”.
“It's dangerous,” Olivia says. “But so's crossing the road”.
I nod slowly. “Okay,” I say. “But I want a weapon. Something that's really gonna protect me”.
“We can rustle up something,” says Olivia.
“And I want a guarantee that you'll leave Duncan alone when this is all over”.
“We have an understanding with Duncan,” says Matt. “Once we sort out this whole problem with the wolf in the pit, we can let that... understanding... continue”.
“Okay,” I say again, though I'm already starting to think it was a huge mistake to agree to this. I don't really understand what I'm getting myself into, and the idea of going anywhere with these two makes me pretty nervous. Still, I've never been brave before.
Being brave feels pretty good.
Duncan
I walk to the edge of the pit and look down. As I suspected, it's empty. So it's true. The wolf has left the pit. This was a day that many foretold, but few believed would ever come to pass. The Lost Throne was to be guarded for eternity by the wolf in the pit, guarded against all those who would come and steal its glories. Now that the wolf has gone, the Lost Throne is defenseless and it will only be a matter of time before humans find their way back here to steal the glories of the wolf empire. If the wolf is not returned to the pit, there will be no further chance of protecting our secret. As the ancient wolves decreed, there must always be a wolf in the pit.
At the same time, I can fully understand the wolf's desire to leave the pit. For many years, it lived a feverish existence, surely driven mad by loneliness. How it escaped, I do not know, but I can only assume that it found a way to climb the stone walls. Looking down now at the bottom of the pit, I am filled with sorrow for the poor creature's suffering. No matter how deranged and crazy it has become, this wolf was once very much like myself. But things have changed, and this is not the kind of wolf that is to be allowed a free run in London. Crazed and insane, it is a dangerous beast that knows no limits to its hatred and its desire to kill.
Looking more closely, I start to see scratch marks on the side of the pit. Slowly, it becomes clear that the wolf hauled himself up the side, perhaps over many days. It would have been a slow, heavy process, the kind of escape that only a mad creature could complete. When the wolf was first abandoned at the bottom of the pit, he would have been too sane to have a change of escaping. But now, with his new-found madness, he is a far more formidable power, though he kills perhaps not because he is evil but because he has suffered such pain that he feels he must turn around and cause pain to others. He is a wounded animal who believes that he must wound others. Again, I feel great sorrow for his situation, even if I know that he must be stopped.
I turn and walk away. The wolf will return to the pit, and I must be ready. Yet I don't know my enemy fully. For one thing, I still don't know what he did to deserve being thrown into the pit and forced to martyr himself in such a way. It was said that he killed other wolves and that this was why he was chosen to enter the pit, but I have known wolves who killed, maimed and destroyed countless lives and they were always forgiven. What did this wolf do, to deserve such a terrible fate? What was the true secret of the wolf in the pit?
Jess
“The wolf in the pit was long thought to be a legend,” says Olivia, as we walk along the dark tunnel. Matt is a few steps ahead, using a small torch to see where we're going. “We heard that when the werewolves abandoned their home beneath London, they left behind a single mad wolf to stand guard and prevent us humans from entering their world and stealing their throne. But we never believed the story was true until...”
We walk on in silence for a moment.
“Until what?” I ask.
Olivia sighs. “Until maybe ninety years ago, when some Greystone agents were sent down here to investigate. Nothing was heard from them for days, but finally their bodies were discovered by the river. It was clear that they'd been killed by a wolf. At that point, our predecessors began to consider the possibility that the story of the wolf in the pit was true”.
“And now you know it's true,” I say, “what happens?”
“We have to find out how the wolf escaped, and we have to capture it and put it back in the pit,” she says. “The wolf has to be there. We have to make sure that this can never happen again”.
“Stop,” says Matt, and we stop behind him. He stands in the darkness, shining the torch ahead.
“What did you hear?” Olivia asks.
“Nothing,” he says, “but do you smell something?”
We stand there in silence. “We're in an old sewer,” I whisper. “It's hard not to smell stuff”.
“Something fresh,” says Matt. “Something marking its territory”. He looks around us. “We just crossed a line. We just entered its territory”.
“Do we turn back?” I ask.
Matt shakes his head. “No, but we must be aware that we're now on the wolf's turf. It will act to defend that turf if it detects us”.
“The best thing,” says Olivia as the three of us start walking again, “would be if the wolf is not here right now. That way, we can examine the pit and find out how it escaped, then we can work out how to get it back”.
“But if it's mad,” I say, “is there any point putting it back?”
“Better than no wolf at all,” says Matt, up ahead.
“And if the wolf catches up to us first?” I ask.
“That's why you have the gun,” Matt says.
I put my hand on the gun in my pocket. Matt, Olivia and I each have a gun loaded with six silver bullets. Though they won't kill the wolf, the bullets will slow him down long enough for us to escape.
“And what about Duncan?” I ask.
“He'll find us,” Olivia says. “He might even be following us now. Duncan is a very smart wolf. He's surprised us both in the past, he's certainly capable of pulling something out of the hat again this time. That is...” She looks at me. “I mean, if you're sure you can't contact him?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I don't have his mobile number”.
We reach a junction in the tunnel. Matt stops and looks both ways. “Left,” he says finally, then he turns to us. “We're almost there.
Also...” He takes a deep breath. “About two minutes ago, I became aware that we're being followed”.
“By who?” Olivia asks.
Matt shrugs. “One of them. Duncan or the other wolf. I'm assuming it's Duncan, because the other wolf would probably have just attacked by now. Still, best to be on your guard in case... well, in case anything happens, okay?”
We start walking again.
“I should probably tell you that no team has ever returned entirely complete from the pit,” says Olivia, keeping her gaze focused on the darkness ahead.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath. “Whenever a team has gone to the tunnel,” she says slowly, “at least one of them has always died”.
I feel a chill in my blood. We walk on in silence, and I triple-check that the gun is in my pocket and is ready to grab if necessary. How exactly did I end up in this situation? I glance over my shoulder at the darkness behind us. Duncan, is that you back there, following us? And even if it is, how afraid should I be?
***
“Behind this door, we reach the pit,” says Matt. He turns to us. “You should both know what that means. It means there's no turning back. What we find is almost certainly going to be an empty pit. We have to get in there, find out what happened, get out and come up with a plan that'll get the wolf back into the pit”.
He pushes the large wooden door open to reveal a round stone chamber, in the center of which is an open hole. As we walk toward the hole, I see that it's about thirty meters deep, with nothing at the bottom but a brick floor and some vegetation. There's no sign of a wolf.
I turn suddenly as the door closes behind us. Olivia smiles. “It's okay,” she says. “Let's just do our job and get out of here”.
I look down into the pit. “How long was he alone down there?”
“Centuries,” says Matt.
“What did he eat?” I ask.
“Not a lot,” Olivia replies, walking to the edge of the pit. “Werewolves can go for many hundreds of years without eating, but they do end up being rather hungry at the end of it. Hence his latest rampage through London”.
“Okay,” says Matt, “enough chatting. Jess, you and I are going down”.
As I turn to him, shocked, I see that Olivia has pulled a rope from her case and is tying it to a ring at the edge of the pit.
“There are scratch marks,” Matt says, pointing out cracks in the stone. “He must have climbed up, digging his claws into the stone one by one. It must have taken him years”.
Olivia has the rope fastened, and she throws the other end down into the pit.
“We just need to go down and see if there are any clues,” Matt says. “You okay with that?”
“Can't I wait up here?” I ask, looking at them both.
“No,” says Olivia, rather hurriedly. “Matt needs help gathering samples, and I'm sorry but we can't trust you to be the one up here with the rope. No offense”.
I look down into the pit. It's so dark down there, the only light coming from Mark's torch as he shines it down. “We'll be five minutes,” he says. “Max. Okay?”
Every part of me is screaming to get out of here, but I figure the best way to get out might just be to do what they say. “Okay,” I say, my voice wavering slightly. “Let's get this over with”.
“I'll go first,” says Matt. He grabs onto the rope and starts inching his way down. When he's about halfway, I take a deep breath and step toward the edge.
“Just so you know,” says Olivia, “I do appreciate how hard this is for you”.
“Are you sure you don't want to go down instead?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “You understand that I can't let you be in charge of the rope, don't you?”
“But you expect me to trust you while I go down there?”
“It's a bum deal,” she says. “But we have to find out what happened at the bottom of the pit, and Matt needs help”. She smiles. “Come on, the sooner you get down there, the sooner you can get back up and we'll know what to do. Deal?”
I nod slowly. “Deal,” I say with uncertainty.
It takes me a few minutes to inch my way down the rope, but finally I arrive at the bottom with Matt. He's already started taking samples from the soil and examining the cracks in the wall.
“These are old,” he says, turning to me with a look of alarm in his eyes. “The wolf escaped from the pit quite some time ago, he's been loose for a while”. He hands me the torch. “I need you to hold this while I do some tests”.
I aim the torch at the cracks and Matt slowly scrapes away some dust.
“What's that gonna tell you?” I ask.
“For one thing,” Matt says, “it'll show us exactly how long ago the wolf started to climb out. For another, it'll help us come up with a way to make sure he never manages to get out again. Once we've got him back in, that is”.
I look over at the side of the pit, and see a small door.
“What's that?” I ask.
“That's the door to the Lost Throne,” Matt says. “It's the only way in, and the only way out. That's what the wolf has been guarding”.
I stare at the door for a moment. “How do we know he's not just in there?” I ask.
Matt smiles. “He's not. Trust me. Take a look if you want”.
“Me?” I ask, surprised.
“It's your only chance,” Matt says. “Probably the only chance any human will ever have again”.
As Matt continues to examine the walls, I walk to the door and slowly open it. Matt comes over and shines the torch inside, and I see a large chamber with nothing in it but what appears to be a stone throne at the far end.
“This used to be the throne room of the werewolves,” Matt says. “Long ago. Now it's just abandoned”.
“What happened?” I ask.
“There was a deal,” Matt says. “The werewolves agreed to leave London in exchange for their continued safety”. We stare at the empty room for a moment. “Pretty tragic,” he continues, then he pulls the door shut and turns to me. “We should get out of here”.
We walk back over to the center of the pit.
“Hold the torch for me,” Matt says. As I shine the light at the floor, Matt collects some scrapings and puts them into a small bag. “We're done,” he says, and we turn to grab the rope.
But the rope is gone.
Matt glances at me, a clear look of concern on his face.
“Hey!” he calls up. “Send the rope back down!”
Nothing. No word from Olivia. No sound at all.
“Hey!” Matt calls out.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Hang on,” Matt says. “Olivia! Hey! The rope!”
Silence, and then slowly we see Olivia peer over the edge of the pit, a look of horror on her face.
“Send the rope down!” Matt says. “We don't have long!”
Olivia stares at us. “I can't send the rope down,” she says. “And you know why”.
“What's going on?” I ask Matt, but he just looks at me with a clear sense of panic.
“I can't bring you up,” Olivia shouts down. “You're the wolf! I can't let you out of the pit!”
Duncan
He's here. Standing alone in the dark, I can sense his approach. He's angry, and he's set for revenge. He has been keeping his emotions in check, but now he is turning, ready to strike once again. And this time he is more powerful than ever, because he has had time to heal completely. I know now that I cannot possibly kill him. He is too strong, too determined to live. He has a life force that I cannot summon. This is it. One of us will live, and one of us will die.
I start walking through the darkness. Though I can see almost nothing in this low light, I know exactly where I am going. I am returning to the chamber, to the pit, where I must ensure that he remains for eternity. I know that my Master would approve of my mission, that he would recognize that I am finally facing up to my responsibilities. The pit has to contain a wolf. And
if the obvious candidate will not take the role, perhaps someone else will have to be entombed there.
I can hear them now. Talking. Arguing. Not understanding that their enemy is one of them. They are confused, and desperate. Even the wolf himself does not know his own name right now. That moment will come, though. And while I profess to have no care for humans, there is a part of me that wants to ensure that Jess survives. I can't even explain it. It's just... for the first time, ever, I care about the life of a human.
My Master would kill me if he knew.
Jess
Matt stares at me. “You can't be,” he says slowly.
“Me?” I ask. “There's no way I'm a wolf”. I can't believe that he could even be considering the possibility that I'm something so bizarre, so inhuman. But he doesn't say anything, he just keeps looking at me. “I saw the wolf!” I shout at him. “I ran from him! He tried to kill me, I can't be him!”
“Displacement,” he says, clearly shocked. “You can't acknowledge that you're the wolf, so while you're in wolf form you create a fantasy to cover the fact up. While you thought you were running from the wolf, you were actually becoming the wolf yourself”. From the way he's staring at me, I can see that he's starting to believe it, he's looking at me as if I'm some kind of monster.
I shake my head. “That's bollocks,” I say. “I'd know if I was a fucking werewolf”.
“Not necessary,” Matt says, stepping back. He's eying me suspiciously, as if he's making some great realization “Werewolves don't always know what they really are. We've studied them. They can suffer from denial, and...” His voice trails off as he just stares at me.
“I can't be a wolf,” I insist. “Look at me! There's just no way I could be anything other than... Look at me!” I hold out my hands. “I know what I am!”
“It's not her!” Olivia shouts down.
Matt looks up. “What?”
“It's you!” Olivia says. “You're the wolf!”
Matt stares up at her. “You know that's not true,” he says. “You know me! You've know me for years! Let us up so we can talk about this”.
