Only the Moon Howls

by Connie Senior

  “Let’s get back,” she said with more urgency. They were close to the camp now, passing by the main entrance to the Petrosna Caves in which they had begun setting up their equipment. From the dark cave mouth came scuffling noises and low growls—definitely not made by graduate students, even at their worst. Mike had a flashlight, which he turned on and pointed into the cave.

  “Don’t—don’t do that,” Lamia began haltingly.

  “Why not? I want to see if the equipment’s okay.”

  Light played over cardboard boxes and hulking shapes covered by tarps just inside the entrance. Lamia gripped his arm hard enough to make him wince. There. Greenish-orange discs flashed back at them. Two—no, four. There was more in the cave than equipment.

  The luminous circles vanished, then reappeared suddenly as eyes. At once heads materialized around the eyes, erupting from the darkness like twin rockets on a jet fighter. No dogs, these were wolves, very large ones that were coming at them fast.

  Mike threw the flashlight at the attackers, but it bounced ineffectually to the ground, leaving them with nothing but the light of the moon. Lamia could see just fine, and she saw one wolf, the smaller one, leap at Mike, knocking him to the ground.

  The wolf was as surprised as Mike by what happened next. Lamia grabbed the snarling beast by its shoulders and pushed it backwards, yelling something in Romanian. She stepped in front of her downed companion and stood glaring at the two animals. They seemed to be reappraising her, sniffing at her while growling softly. After a moment, they backed away, hackles raised, and then abruptly fled back into the caves.

  She helped Mike up, staring into the darkness after the departed wolves all the while. Damned wolves, she thought, I shouldn’t have come here. I should have known there’d be wolves.

  “What happened? What did you do?” Mike stammered semi-coherently, lacking his usual glib physics-student persona.

  “I don’t know,” she replied distractedly, still occupied by her own thoughts. “Scared them away, I guess.”

  “You sure yelled something that worked. What language were you speaking, anyway?”

  “What? Oh, Romanian, I guess.” Funny how a language she hadn’t spoken for fifteen years still lurked inside, so ready to come out when she least expected it. “I think I said something like ‘Go away, stupid dog.’ I’m not really sure. We’d better get back to camp and check on the others.”

  Mike searched for his flashlight in the dark. He was starting to stumble and Lamia swiftly found the flashlight and turned it on.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said with a sharp intake of breath. “It didn’t bite you, did it?”

  “How did you—” Mike gasped too, as Lamia shone the flashlight on the triple trace of blood running down his left forearm, the track of the wolf’s claws. “Jeez. It’s quite a scratch,” he said bravely as he inspected the wound. He glanced up to see a frozen mask of what looked like terror on Lamia’s face. Her unblinking eyes fixed on his arm and the flashlight nervously danced in her hand. Suddenly, she dropped the light, turned, and ran.

  “Just a little blood,” he muttered as he picked it up and made his way more slowly back to their camp. “What’s wrong, Lamia? Am I going to turn into one now? Transylvania,” he muttered. “One day and I’m already a werewolf.”

  15. Fools Rush In

  The full moon came and went, without any rumors of attacks on villagers that Caleb heard about. Then he was dragged into an arduous, three-day vampire hunt with Alexandru that left them both exhausted and edgy. The old wizard refused to say precisely who Cuza was, or why he was hunting him so assiduously, and the old church in Catunescu where they’d holed up for twenty-four silent and tense hours yielded no further clues.

  The moon was in its second quarter before Caleb got around to visiting the cliffs above Albimare. A rainstorm had erased any possible trails or paw prints, and he didn’t know where to begin looking. Tired, hungry, and frustrated, he wandered past the cliffs and took a circuitous route into the village via one of the paths that he’d warded some time ago. Maybe he could put magical shields over the individual streets, if need be, but he’d never tried that. The smaller the area, the easier it was to build a ward. What he really hoped to find was one single, narrow access point into the village that could be taken care of with a three-foot-wide barrier.

  From a small café on the edge of town he could see the stone cliffs, every bit as sheer as he suspected. He knew the werewolves weren’t using magic to descend them—they hardly knew any in human form. Munching on a chunk of black bread softened by a rather thin and greasy red-pepper soup, he continued to gaze out the window, hoping to find a clue in the jagged rocks with their clouds of oddly flitting birds.

  But no, he realized suddenly, they weren’t birds at all. They were bats, and they were coming and going somewhere in a clump of aspens just by the base of the mountain. Leaving the waitress an extra-large tip because she looked hungry, Caleb left the café and made his way quickly to the stand of trees.

  He had to get down on his belly and crawl through the dense grass and wildflowers to find where the bats were coming from. Sure enough, it was the mouth of a cave, about half the height of a man: or exactly the height of a wolf. Sticking his head into the darkness, he sniffed—then, feeling stupid, conjured a small flame. A nose would be much more useful than eyes here, but even this inferior sense told him everything he needed to know.

  Just inside the mouth of the cave was a nearly skeletonized body, and beside it, a gnawed leather satchel. The largest bones had been fractured and the marrow sucked out, and the imprints of the teeth on the bag were too large for any ordinary wolf. In addition, the bag had been systematically ripped apart with obvious cunning. Only a few of the contents remained, some dried fragments of herbs…vervain and moonwort, two magical species that had to be harvested at the full moon.

  If he’d had the wolf’s 100,000 odor receptors he would’ve been able to say just which member or members of Pack Six had been here. With less than a tenth that, all he knew was that the cave stank of bats, decay, and wolf pee. Did the tunnel continue upward and emerge somewhere above the cliffs? He increased the light from the flame, but that helped little in the velvety darkness. The path did continue on, but it stayed narrow, and he found himself crawling more than once. This wasn’t the ideal form for worming his way through low-ceilinged passages.

  The occasional bat skimmed past him, startled by the light and movement. Bats didn’t bother him, after years of prowling the local caves with Arghezi. Even as a kid, he was more fascinated than frightened by the bats encountered in the old houses on the Maine coast. René had been scared of bats, Caleb remembered, with a sudden vivid image of his friend’s scarred, lopsided face and that silly amulet he always wore.

  A voice from the darkness completed his thought. “Hola, Dog Boy. The gang’s all here.”

  Caleb sat back on his heels, astounded, not caring that he scraped his head along the roof of the cave. He had heard that voice in his dreams so many times that he was almost unsurprised, as if the five years since his best friend’s death had shrunk to an instant. “Toby?” he whispered, feeling too foolish to say it aloud.

  “The very same,” the voice replied. A face, still as young and insouciant as ever, appeared grinning in front of Caleb.

  His instincts told Caleb to watch out, that something was wrong, but irrational hope won out. “You’re here? You…escaped? Or are you here, exactly?” Was Toby powerful enough to escape the Community? If he was that powerful, there was no telling what he could do.

  The boy showed his teeth and laughed easily. “You might say we all escaped.” He smiled. “Look behind you. Know who that was?”

  Caleb remembered the body at the entrance. “No, of course not.”

  “No, of course not,” Toby mocked, cackling. “Great gods, are you stupid. Would a little flesh and blood help?”

  The skeleton sat up, and pieces of sinew and skin seemed to appear patchily over
its bare bones, leaving a face cratered with scars. Caleb recoiled in disgust as he recognized this decaying version of his old friend René.

  “B-b-but that can’t be,” Caleb stuttered, brain working furiously as he looked for some contradiction to which he could cling, like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver just beyond his fingertips. “René was burned to ashes in the fire.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” Toby cackled. “René was smarter than any of us thought. I tried to tell you, you moron, but you were too busy playing at being a good little MIT student. Pitiful, really.”

  Caleb’s hope crumbled, and he realized in a flash that this wasn’t Toby. He didn’t know what it was or what it wanted, but he knew he had to get out of the cave and fast. He felt lost and disoriented, unable to remember where he had come in. He thought he had turned to run, but somehow he found himself crawling towards the specter, over and over again. It taunted him and mocked him, but if it wanted to kill him it didn’t seem to quite know how.

  It was the skeleton, resting at peace once again, that finally saved him. He knew its feet pointed towards the entrance and, gripping onto its shoes to keep from losing his sense of direction again, he heaved himself out of the cave mouth to lie panting in the aspens. Night had fallen. His head hurt abominably and his stomach churned so that he felt as though he’d never eat again.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there, but the waxing moon was halfway to setting by the time he was finally able to get to his feet. He vomited twice on the way home, arriving at the castle at the end of his strength. Alexandru was just taking a nightcap; he made Caleb sit down at the table and had Mihail bring him a bowl of soup.

  Caleb’s stomach revolted at the sight and his head spun. After an embarrassing dash for the bathroom, he returned apologizing and tried to tell the old wizard about what had happened.

  He’d expected the story to sound weak, but instead he saw Alexandru’s face grow pale. Mihail whisked away the soup and brought over a tightly capped blue bottle. “Drink this,” Alexandru told him.

  Caleb removed the stopper and sniffed. “Who? What—?”

  “Do as I say,” Alexandru commanded in a voice edged with panic.

  The potion tasted of old tea and grass, not at all unpleasant, and Caleb swilled it willingly. He didn’t feel any different afterwards, but saw the others relax visibly as he drained the bottle.

  “That was not your friend you found in the caves,” Alexandru told him at last, gesturing to Mihail for a cup of herbal tea. “It was perhaps the Darkest creature that these mountains hide, and I hope that it will not have lasting effects on you.” His panic subsiding, he became scholarly again, stirring two creams and one sugar lump into the thick black brew. “Quite odd indeed that a leptothrix should take the form of your old friend. They are usually local around here—victims of one of the many massacres to plague this region.”

  “A leptothrix?” Caleb wondered. He smacked his lips; the potion had a funny after-taste, like tuna fish. “Is that some kind of ghost?”

  Alexandru shook his head in disbelief. “My boy, I think the only reason you escaped is that you didn’t know what you were up against. Some kind of ghost, yes.”

  “But he—it knew things about me, about Toby and René and Lilac House.”

  “A leptothrix is the ghost of someone strong and talented who has died unfairly with ambitions unfulfilled. He then feeds off these traits in others. It usually takes no more than an hour before they have taken everything from a man—his memories, his strength, his hopes and dreams—twisting everything he loves into something he hates.” Alexandru paused and frowned at Caleb. “Lilac House? What did your friend have to do with that cursed place?”

  “You know it?” Caleb stared open-mouthed as memories erupted from the dark corners where they’d been chained since the day of the trial.

  “Know it?” Alexandru snorted. “I was the one who created the wards fifty years ago after the local wizards botched things. I had only recently come to America, and Fintonclyde had the sense to ask me to help him. I don’t think he could have defeated that nest of vampires on his own.” Alexandru’s dark eyes drilled into Caleb. “What do you know of this place? You’ve never mentioned it before.”

  “I’ve been trying to forget it for the last five years.” Caleb sighed and told Alexandru the parts of the story he knew, or thought he knew. He realized as he spoke that he had stayed in Romania to keep these memories at bay, and that they still hurt as acutely now as they had when he was a naïve seventeen-year-old.

  Alexandru rose from the table and paced while Caleb talked. Mihail hovered in the background and regarded his master as if he were about to explode.

  “The whole house burned to the ground, you say. Are you certain?”

  “Nothing was left standing, or so I heard. No one should have been able to get out alive. And yet, the next day, a couple of people were attacked in Southwest Harbor. No one would say it out loud, but they thought it was a vampire.”

  “Perhaps local gossip was wrong, my boy,” Alexandru finished grimly, “because if not…let’s just say that you were lucky to leave Maine when you did. Those are no ordinary vampires. All of the wizards in the area could not succeed in doing more than containing them behind walls—walls that we hoped would last many lifetimes.”

  Alexandru sat down and signaled Mihail for more hot water. “The more immediate problem is the leptothrixes. Those caves are probably crawling with them, and you should consider yourself lucky to be alive and sane after your encounter.”

  “How did I get away?” Caleb felt another wrench of nausea as he recalled the false Toby’s cruel taunts and how they had deadened his senses. “Do you suppose my, er, my kind are more resistant?”

  “Who knows, who knows.” Alexandru put down his teacup. “They’re too dangerous to do research on—and few would acknowledge that your kind have the positive traits on which they thrive.”

  Caleb drew a sharp breath of indignation, then thought of someone else, someone even he had perhaps misjudged. “The—er, my, um,… oh, dammit, the werewolves have been sneaking through the caves into Albimare. Do you think the leptothrixes affect them even in wolf form? Maybe that’s why their leader is the way he is—heartless and evil.”

  Both Mihail and Alexandru gazed at him with heavy irony, but at least in Alexandru’s case he recovered himself quickly and gave a reasonable response. “A leptothrix does not necessarily make one evil,” he corrected. “It leaves one empty. I imagine that evil quickly arrives to fill the void, however. Victims are said to be unconscious of what they have lost, but to grow angry and resentful, much like the spirits who were forced to leave this world too soon.”

  “I imagine that a wolf would be somewhat resistant, at least—” Caleb began.

  “Only a fool would go near those caves,” Alexandru interrupted in a low tone. “Consider yourself lucky you were able to get home at all. We still don’t know if this will take a toll on your powers or your wits. Risk them at your peril, because I will not endanger my own powers to save you.”

  16. The Calm Before the Storm

  The day before the full moon, Caleb went to work on a special project. After dinner at Grigore’s cottage, he hauled out a large canvas-wrapped parcel that he’d been keeping at the castle. The smell wouldn’t bother a human, but to a werewolf’s more sensitive nose, it smelled of death and danger. He sat in the doorway to unwrap it, but still the odor made both Liszka and Bela pinch their noses. They were the only ones in the cottage that evening, enjoying a cozy meal with the door open to let in the fragrant breeze that signaled the start of the alpine summer.

  “Daughter of Hyperion, is that what I think it is? Don’t you dare bring that into the cottage!” Liszka exclaimed, pushing away her unfinished dessert.

  It smelled vile to Caleb, too, but he had considered all his other options, and this was the best of a short list of improbable and impractical ideas for solving the mystery of the Petrosna
caves.

  “Liszka, I’m…er…trying a bit of an experiment, so maybe if you could lead the Fives this month…?”

  “Experiment? Is it dangerous?”

  He had to remind himself that she wasn’t saying this because she wanted to stop him, but because she was ready to offer to fight. “No, no,” he assured hastily. “Not in the slightest. Bela, do you remember some of the old stories about werewolves, about other ways of transforming?”

  The boy had appropriated his mother’s discarded apple cake and was jamming it into his mouth. “Uh, sure,” he said between chews. “How to be a wolf in five easy lessons, right? Like drinking a potion or putting on a magic belt.”

  “Old wives’ tales,” Liszka snorted. She left the table and walked to the doorway, looking over Caleb’s shoulder as he pulled back the canvas to reveal a dusty gray pelt. The whites of her eyes showed as she growled, “Where did you get that?”

  Caleb didn’t reply, figuring Liszka could infer all she needed to know. They had both been there last fall when the farmer’s widow had called the band of monster-hunters to figure out the noises in the barn. Pushing aside harnesses and empty grain sacks hanging on a wall, the werewolves had seen the coat that had caused the farmer’s death.

  Caleb had coughed, then made a lame remark about dust and moved away quickly before the more hot-headed of his team said something unfortunate. They did a cursory job on their task and left, most of them swearing never to return unless it was to kill and eat the widow, too.

  But Caleb later remembered the wolfskin as he pored over dusty old books in Brasov. A wolf belt could allow a man to change into a wolf at will, but accounts differed as to how one actually went about making a wolf belt. Some books insisted that a pact with the Devil was required, while others said that the belt must be made of a hairy hide, but did that mean a wolf’s hide or a werewolf’s hide? In either case, Caleb felt repulsed. He might have told Vlad once or twice that he deserved to be skinned, but he didn’t mean it literally.