“Where did it come from?”
Lara looked up. “What?”
“The wolf. Where did it come from?”
The wolf they had tracked, the one these men had butchered. “I don't know. He didn't tell me.”
“Not him. He is destroyed and doesn't matter.” The Bishop reached out and pressed a finger into her sternum. “The wolf here, inside you. Where did it come from?”
Lara went very still. How did he know? What possible answer could she give?
The man at her side hissed in her ear. “Answer the Bishop.”
She turned stony. The Bishop 's face creased into something like a smile and he stepped back. Reaching into a pocket, he withdrew a heavy glove. Thick burled leather that he tugged on and curled his fingers into a mailed fist. Divots of metal were studded into the knuckles, giving the piece a brutal menace.
The Bishop nodded to his guards. “Grip her stout, lads. This one may hold out on us.”
The metal studs of the Bishop's glove distracted her from what was happening. It took a moment before she realized what was so distinct about the studs. They were solid silver.
~
“He's dying.”
“No, he isn't,” Silas rebuked. His mother had not left his brother's bedside all day, praying over him but now her head was bowed in grief as if already mourning the boy. “He's going to be fine, mother. You can't give up on him.”
She winced at the sting of his scolding. His father turned on him sharply. “Don't speak to your mother like that, Silas. I don't know where you've groomed this wicked tongue but it is cruel and unwanted. I expect more from you.”
Shamed, Silas fell silent and looked down on the pale figure of his brother. Jacob's eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling but there was no life inside them. Silas had tried to force the eyelids closed but they rolled back up again in that eerie stare of nothingness. To make matters worse, the boy's jaw had begun to flicker open and shut like a fish suffocating on dry land. It was awful to behold and Silas was forced to look away. Something evil had slithered into his brother's blood and it was killing him before their eyes.
His father leaned over the bed and peeled back the gauze laid across his wounds. Then he turned to his wife. “Mother, this poultice needs changing. Will you fix another?”
The woman rose and quit the room without looking at her eldest son. Silas’s guilt over his hurtful words tweaked up another notch and he looked up at his father. “I'm sorry.”
His father reached up with both hands and clamped his brother's snapping jaw shut, holding it in place for a time. When he took his hands away, the jaw resumed its mindless popping again. “I haven't seen anything like this in a long time. I fear we may lose poor Jacob. We need to be prepared for the worst.”
“Don't lose faith, father.”
“This is beyond my faith. Yours too. All we can do is be prepared. If your brother passes, your mother will collapse into grief. You and I cannot. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Silence crept into the room. The only sound was that of barn swallows flitting outside the open window. That and the popping of Jacob's teeth.
“There must be something we can do,” Silas said.
“It's in God's hands. We need to concern ourselves with his soul now.”
Was that the truth? Silas thought back to the English locked up in the stockade. The injured man was not in the same state that Jacob suffered now. The outsider had color and was resting peacefully. He had no eerie death stare nor did his teeth clamp up and down in that terrible snapping. What was it that the Englisher had said? The girl had cured him. The girl who had saved his life. Amy. She had treated the injured man in a manner that flushed the corruption from his body.
Would she help his brother? Silas watched the boy’s jaw undulate. There was no other option. The English girl had to help his brother, even if she had to be coerced into it.
Father would be a different matter. Under no circumstances would he allow an outsider to step foot into his house, let alone accept her help. Father would declare it to be witchcraft and refuse. He would have to do this without his father's knowledge. It would be wicked and unfaithful but needs must as the devil drives. Turning to leave the room, an unsettling stone of guilt plunged to the pit of his stomach at the prospect of what he was about to do. Perhaps the evil bedeviling his brother had wormed its way into his blood as well.
~
This was all wrong. The wolf coiled inside her heart lay dormant and refused to come out. Under normal circumstances, it could be roused from its den by sharp emotions; fear or anger especially. Both of these triggers were hot as the silver-studded fist knocked her senseless but the wolf refused to come out to play. If she was careful, she could harness a little of the lobo's ferocity and knock her tormentors into a wall but there was no wolf, no supernatural strength to summon.
It was as if the wolf had died inside her. It was simply gone. Was it the silver pummeling her flesh or was it this place? She hadn't felt right from the moment she stepped across the barricade that protected the little town. The Bishop had said that the hex signs kept the wolves away. Were they also dampening the lobo in her heart?
Another blow from the fist knocked the thought from her skull. Why was she holding out? Lara spat blood onto the stone floor and gritted her teeth against the pain. “Prall. His name was Ivan Prall.”
The Bishop lowered his mailed hand. He wasn't even breathing hard. “Who?”
“The wolf that infected me,” Lara said. “His name was Ivan Prall.”
“Good.” The Bishop tugged at each finger until the heavy glove slipped free and he shook the blood from his hand. “Tell me about him.”
One of the Bishop's men brought her water and she rinsed the blood from her mouth and then drank. Then she told the man all that had happened. About her former life as a detective and the suspect who turned out to be a werewolf. How she had been mauled and went into a coma and awoke to find herself cursed with the same affliction. How she had fled into a self-imposed exile for fear of hurting anyone as the wolf. How another wolf named Edgar Grissom had tried to coerce her into joining his pack. The stand-off that occurred in the ghost town not far from here where her old partner and friend had set off an explosion that destroyed most of the pack and burned the tinderbox town to the ground.
The Bishop’s eyes were closed as he listened, interrupting twice to clarify a point. When she finished, he opened his eyes. “How long has it been since you were bitten?”
“Nine months,” she replied.
His eyes narrowed. Leaning in close, he crinkled his nose to smell her. He pressed two fingers against her throat to gauge her carotid pulse. “That can't be. You must be mistaken.”
Lara met his stare. “What is this place? How do you know about the wolves?”
“The wolves are always at the gates.” The Bishop turned to his men and nodded at something behind him. “Manacle her. Then leave us.”
Lara was led backwards until she felt the wall flatten against her. Rusted iron cuffs hung from chains on the wall and these were locked around her wrists and ankles. The chains tinkled as she tested their strength. The guards nodded at their Bishop and turned smartly from the dungeon.
The Bishop rubbed the knuckles of his right hand where the skin was broken. Popping a handkerchief from his vest pocket, he dabbed the blood away. “The wolves have always been with us. Since the earliest time of our community. They were brought into this world by a man named Melchior Bratenburg. The founder of this order.”
27
“IN THE WINTER OF eighteen fifty-nine, Bishop Melchior Bratenburg ventured out alone to face the wolves that were slaughtering his nascent church. When he crawled back three days later, something within him had changed.”
The Bishop patted his knuckles with the handkerchief. He looked at the blood soiling the fabric and slid the cloth back into his vest pocket.
Lara hung in her chains, the iron cuff
s biting into her wrists. She desperately wanted to lie down, to rest. “What kind of wolves?”
“Timberwolves. As far as I know, there was nothing supernatural or diabolical about them. Just wolves.” The Bishop removed his hat and wiped the back of his clean hand over his brow. “Bishop Bratenburg was an exceptional man. Pious and fearless and, above all else, protective of his flock.
“He was born in Deutschland but came to the new world with his family during a violent wave of Mennonite persecution in Europe. He became a church leader in time but disagreed with the elders when they began assimilating with the English here in the new world. Calling out their infidelity to the faith, he formed his own band of faithful and broke away, traveling further west to find an Elysium that God had shown him in a vision. The going was hard, ten families traveling over hostile wilderness, and when they came to this place, the Bishop fell to his knees and declared this was to be their new home. Here they would establish a new community of faithful, here they would be simple hewers of wood and drawers of water. The vast wilderness would protect them from the vile world of the English.”
Lara shifted her weight, trying to find a position that lessened the pain. She studied the man before her. With his head bowed and his hat clutched in both hands, the Bishop recited his story with the hushed reverence of a prayer. “They pitched their tents and put their shoulders into the backbreaking work of clearing land. They worked hard to dig in and fortify their encampment before the winter months but when the snows came, so did the wolves.
“They howled through the night, sending chills down the spines of all who heard and in the morning they would find another oxen slain, another goat butchered. As winter set in harder, the wolves became bolder, making sorties into the perimeter in the daylight. Scrounging around the outer edges of camp for the weak or the lame. The first to go was a child of eight, snatched away while he collected firewood with his brother. The Bishop led a rescue party to save the boy but they were too slow, too late. What they recovered of the child, there was little left to bury. After that, the wolves became relentless. They circled the camp night and day, charging into the village in raids and dragging away the unfortunate. Not just children anymore, but adults. Grown men were taken down and ripped apart. The snow all around the village was dark with their blood.
“Some began to lose faith in Bishop Bratenburg, to question his leadership. He told them they would find a paradise but they seemed to have planted stakes into an outer circle of Hell. One elder openly denounced the Bishop as a fool and packed up his family to seek refuge at an English fort three days travel from here. They were a league past the gate before the wolves came down. Father, mother, children; the beasts took them all.
“Bishop Bratenburg prayed to God for guidance while the elders around him whispered mutiny. God did not answer so Bratenburg forced His hand. Arming himself with a few simple weapons, he told the elders that he would go out alone and face the wolves. God would either allow him to drive off the monsters or He would let the wolves take him. He told his followers to be ready to flee. If he wasn't back in three days, they were to leave en masse for the English fort. The Bishop took an axe and a pike and quit the gates, marching north into the wilderness.
“He was gone for three days. The elders presumed him lost and prepared for the long march to the fort. On the third day, the Bishop returned. Stumbling through the snow, bloodied and driven half-mad. But alive.”
Here the Bishop fell silent. Somewhere outside the prison walls, an owl cried in the night. Lara shifted against the irons. “What happened to him?”
“He fell into a deathlike sleep for days. The elders debated whether to flee the encampment or stay and hope for Bratenburg's recovery. Of the wolves, there was no sign. It appeared that the Bishop had kept his word and driven the pack off.”
Lara mulled over the tale, the familiar pattern of events. “Did he recover?”
“He did. His injuries healed up with an alarming speed. The elders took this to be a blessing from the Almighty and regretted their earlier mutinous thoughts. The Bishop said that the wolves had come out to meet him in the wilderness, circling him alone in the snow. He said that the largest and fiercest of the wolves, the pack leader, had charged at him, intent on bringing him down but he had slain it. He said that the struggle was brutal and desparate and that the wolf gored him mightily but with a prayer on his lips he prevailed, butchering the beast with his axe in a berserk frenzy. Seeing their leader cut down, the other wolves backed off, confused and cowed by the enraged man amongst them.
“Then, with their sovereign slaughtered, the wolves hung their heads and slunk their tails. They circled round the Bishop and licked his wounds, as if anointing him their new chieftain. Bratenburg said he spoke to the wolves, whispered for them to leave his flock alone and move further north to some other hunting grounds. They listened and obeyed. And the Bishop crawled back to camp.”
“Do you believe that story?” Lara asked.
“Every word.”
“But it doesn't end there,” she said. “Did the wolves come back?”
The Bishop shook his head slowly. “No, the wolves stayed away. Bratenburg secluded himself to his cabin. He said he needed time to pray and contemplate over his ordeal. A week later, the village was awoken by a nightmarish howl in the night. The awful sounds came from the Bishop's quarters and when the elders approached his door, worried he was seized in some fit, a monster broke loose and slaughtered the first among them. It was a wolf but unlike any wolf they had seen. It was enormous and hellish to behold and it tore through the village, ravaging anyone in its path. The men scrambled for whatever meager weapons they had. The Bishop's own wife emerged bloodied and raw from the cabin and she screamed at the beast to stop. The great wolf turned on her, dragging the woman away into the darkness. The people listened as her cries were carried off in the night.
“There were three deaths and more than a dozen injured and broken. A search party was formed to find the Bishop's wife and in the morning, the party found what little was left of the poor woman. And lying naked and besmirched with filth among her broken bones was the Bishop. He was unconscious but still bore the marks of the beast. His hands were claws and his teeth were still that of a wolf. One of the men raised his cutlass to slay the Bishop where he lay but the others stayed his hand. Not knowing what to do, they bore the Bishop back to camp and set about caring for their injured. When the Bishop awoke, he was told what had happened and he fell to his knees and wept.”
“He was the first?” Lara shook her head at the idea. “That doesn't make sense..”
“He didn't believe it either. The Bishop withdrew from everyone while the injured all fell into that death trance. And then they too began to change. Some were slaughtered in their sickbeds but some escaped. The ones that still slept were burned at the stake in an attempt to cleanse the village of the evil. “
“What about the Bishop? He was still infected.”
“The Bishop took to flaying his flesh to keep the wolf at bay. In time he learned to keep it trapped inside himself. He built this stone prison for the time when he could not fight it off. He would lock himself into this Penance Hole to trap the beast and keep the village safe.”
Lara leaned forward and spit the blood from her mouth. “They should have just killed him.”
“But he was their Bishop, the founder of their order. Killing him was no simple task. He had the devil under his control and, aside from that first time, the wolf did not take another life nor injure anyone in the village. And when the monsters returned, the folk needed him most of all.”
Her eyes flickered up. “The werewolves came back?”
“They all come back. They're drawn to this place. To him. When the first werewolf showed up, the Bishop laid out a plan to his elders and went out alone to meet it. He lured it out into the open where his trap could be sprung. The elders charged at it with their weapons and brought it down. Then they burned the carcass in the square for
all to see. But they knew this was not to be the last. The others would come.
“They all came back eventually. But they had spread their plague in the outer world. These eventually come here too, despite the fact that they had never stepped foot in this land before. Whether as the wolf or in the form of the cursed individual, they come. And the Bishop was waiting for them, with a troop of watchmen he had trained to take down the monsters. Generations after the fact, they still come, drawn to something they don't understand in this place. We remain vigilant until the last of the werewolves are destroyed.”
The Bishop hovered in, peering straight into the woman's eyes. “Like the beast you chased here. Like Grissom whom you put down. And the wolf that cursed you. And now you, Lara Mendes.” He took her chin in a hard grip and tilted her face to meet his. “I pray to God you are the last.”
He flung her away and turned for the door. Lara gritted her teeth at the man. “What happened to Bratenburg? Did they kill him after all that?”
The man's face darkened. He brushed a stray bit of straw from his hat and then fit it back onto his head and squared it. He stepped out of the dungeon without another word and slammed the door home with a heavy clang.
28
GRIFFIN HAD ALL BUT given up. Curled up in a corner of the prison cell, he stared at the stone floor and became very quiet. A small blessing after his marathon grousing and ranting earlier. Amy had watched him unwind through denial and rage until he unspooled into grim acceptance as the reality of their situation settled in.
Tasha wasn't faring much better. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her unconscious friend, she was rocking back and forth the way a distressed child does.
Amy had already cycled through her own anger and acceptance, circling the perimeter of the round cell looking for a loose stone or crumbling mortar in the wall to chip at. Completing another circumference, she stopped at the pallet to check on Jay. The color remained in his cheeks and his breathing was steady. The silver was working.
Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3 Page 72
