Bad Wolf Chronicles, Books 1-3

by McGregor, Tim

  The Bishop stood atop an apple crate issuing orders in a voice so hoarse that Silas couldn't make out what the man was bellowing. His throat hitched when he saw the remaining prisoners dragged forth and shoved up against the poles. The young man and woman, outsiders who had accompanied Amy, were lashed to the posts as firewood was piled at their feet.

  The man had gone mad, plain and simple. And mad was dangerous for a man with as much power and control as the Bishop. Silas considered his options. There were few. If caught, he too would be declared an enemy and God only knew what the Bishop would do to him then. The other option was to flee. He should have left with Amy when he had the chance.

  “Silas!”

  The cry froze the blood in his spine. It was too late even for that. Silas turned slowly, expecting an onslaught of black guard. To his relief, it was only one person, and that a boy. The blacksmith's son, James Halford, was thirteen years old. He sat perched on an old iron stove deeper inside the shed.

  “James,” Silas blew with relief. “What are you doing?”

  “The Bishop's looking for you,” said James. He picked at a callous on his filthy hand. “He decreed an order for your arrest.”

  Silas gauged the boy's mood, wondering if he would cry out. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  The boy shrugged, looking out on the tumult in the square. “The devil has come to town.”

  “Is that why you're hiding out in here?”

  “I'm hiding from them,” James said, nodding his chin towards the watchmen in the street. “The Bishop ordered every able bodied man to bring his weapon to defend the town.”

  Silas looked the boy over. “Men, James. Not boys.”

  “He's throwing recruits at the wolf. They made me put this on.”

  The boy was wearing the dark tunic of the watchmen. A size too big, the sleeves of the uniform swallowed the boy’s hands.

  “They put that on you?”

  The boy raised the drooping cuffs. “They took it off Hess. His blood is still on it.”

  Silas grimaced at the foul stain. “Has the Bishop lost his mind?”

  “He declared marshal law. He's already had six men jailed for disobeying his orders. Your father included.”

  “My father?” Silas scanned the crowd in the square. Dust roiled the air, kicked up by so many pounding heels. “Why was my father arrested?”

  “For questioning him. The Bishop sees enemies and traitors everywhere.”

  Silas pinpointed the man now among the throng at the gate. The Bishop barking orders, the watchmen scurrying to carry out his demands.

  “If I were you, Silas. I would run.”

  Silas passed James as he crossed to the back of the shed. “Good luck, James.”

  “Godspeed,” said the boy.

  Silas pulled his hat low over his eyes and quit the shed, darting from one house to another. If his father was arrested then he would be held in the silo jail. But that was on the other side of town. Difficult to get to without being seen. Unless he circumvented the town by going outside the walls. But the wolf was out there.

  The Bishop had lost his wits, seeing apostates everywhere, but who could stop him? If he could lock up his own father, an elder of the town, without so much as a peep of protest, what chance did anyone have of standing up to the man?

  Perhaps he should heed the Halford boy's advice and just run. Flee this town and never look back. Could he do that? He knew nothing of the English world. He wouldn't last a day in that foreign country.

  Silas leaned back against the sun-faded clapboard of the house and closed his eyes over his dim prospects. Damned on all sides. When he opened them again, he caught sight of a figure darting between the houses, much the same as he had just done.

  It was Amy. What was she doing back here? She was supposed to be long gone. He waved his arm, trying to flag her attention but the girl didn't see him. She flit across another yard, taking shelter briefly before moving on again.

  Darting into the open again, she ran straight for the shadow of the Bishop's house.

  ~

  The plan was simple and Amy cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. But while plans always seem sound on paper, it is the execution of them that kills us. She had made it back inside the village and was a stone's throw from the Bishop's narrow house when something slammed into her from behind and took her tumbling into the raspberry brambles.

  She lashed out hard with her fist until she heard her assailant's voice.

  “Amy, stop! It's me.”

  Silas rolled off of her, one hand up to ward off the next blow. “What are you doing back here?”

  “Why did you tackle me?” Amy grunted. “That hurt.”

  “I couldn't call out. Not without raising an alarm” He dabbed at his lip where she had punched him. “Why did you come back? You should be halfway to town by now.”

  Amy brushed the dirt from her knees. “Change of plans. I need to get inside the Bishop's house.”

  “Why?”

  “My gun is there. I saw it earlier. I need it.”

  “You need to get out of here. No one's safe. Least of all you.” He craned his neck, scanning about to see if they had been spotted. “What the devil do you need the gun for?”

  “To kill the monster in the pit,” she said. “The old wolf.”

  His eyes popped. “What will that accomplish?”

  “It will save Lara's life. Or her soul.” Her knee popped as she got up. “I can't explain it right now.”

  “Did you lose your wits out there? That's insane.”

  “I'm not asking you to help, Silas.”

  He blew out his frustration in a long sigh. “You want to break into the Bishop's house. Steal back your gun. Then break back into the dungeon where you saw this monster in a pit?”

  “Yep.”

  “And kill it?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  A wisp of a smile tugged at Amy's eyes. Silas had a sense of humor after all.

  A rose of pink burned his cheek. Her hand locked onto his and they ran past the Heinrich's house and skirted the Muelbech's small cottage before sprinting the last stretch to the Bishop's abode. A lean two-story house with a wide veranda that faced south and white clapboard that needed painting. Perched over the gabled roof was a small bell tower shingled in dark cedar.

  They crept up the steps to the backdoor and Silas gripped the handle.

  “Wait,” Amy whispered. “What if someone's there?”

  “Everyone's at the gates.” He pulled on the door but it wouldn't open. “Locked.”

  “I thought no one locked their doors in this town.”

  “So did I,” he said.

  The lock was old, a skeleton like all the rest. Amy searched the veranda for a length of wire. “I need something to pick it with.”

  “Don't bother.” Silas tried the window to the left. The sash slid open with ease. “This way.”

  He hopped up and climbed over, scattering the contents of a sideboard to the wooden floor with a loud clatter. He froze, waiting for a sound but there was none. The house quiet, deserted . Amy crawled in after him with no sound or calamity. They looked over the Bishop's sparse study.

  “Where did you see it?”

  “On the mantelpiece.” She crossed to the hearth. The stone mantel held two iron candlesticks but nothing more. The gun was gone. “Damn it.”

  “Look for it,” Silas said. He tore through the shelves, knocking books to the floor. Amy rifled every drawer she could see. The hutch turned up nothing, as did the sideboard they had climbed over.

  “Here.”

  She turned to see Silas holding the big Desert Eagle. Taking the nickel-plated gun from him, she slid the magazine out. It was empty. Snapping it back in, she racked the slide open and a single round popped from the chamber. It rolled across the floor until Silas chased it down and brought it back to her.

  “Just one bullet?” he said.

&nbs
p; “Yep.”

  “Is it enough to kill that thing?”

  Amy seated the round back into the chamber and snapped the slide back. “Silver tipped hollow point and a helluva caliber. It'll take that thing's head clean off.”

  “But you only have one shot at it.”

  “Yup.”

  The smile creased her eyes again and Silas felt a shudder pass over him looking into her brown eyes. He couldn’t stop his own smile from echoing back to her.

  A low noise broke the smiles apart. Watchman Keisler stood at the end of the hallway. He swayed a little on unsteady knees, his severed arm resting in a sling. The linen swaddled over the stump was red with blood. Keisler's good hand was raised and gripped around a length of rope that trailed up towards the roof. To the mission bell in its little clapboard tower.

  He yanked the rope with a violent tug and the bell peeled sharply over the town, sounding the alarm.

  37

  THE MUTILATED WATCHMAN was no threat, injured as he was. Keisler could barely stay upright, clutching the bell rope for support. All the same Silas scrambled to unlatch the door and they fled the house with what they came for.

  They scrambled for the cemetery with the church bell ringing sharply in the air. Its peel was urgent and when Amy looked over her shoulder she saw a deputation of black guard rushing to the house with the little bell tower. She saw Keisler stumble out to meet them, gesturing with his one good hand in their direction.

  Silas harried her to run and not look back. The stone mausoleum came up fast and they collided into the iron gate, Amy already working the lock with the bonnet pin.

  “Hurry,” Silas panted as he looked back over the graveyard. The troop of watchmen was already sprinting towards them, five men strong. The tall figure of the Bishop among them.

  Rushed, Amy's hand slipped and her knuckles raked across the rough iron bar. She took a breath, worked the pick again and the lock tumbled. She swung it open and they plunged inside.

  Silas struck a match as Amy found the lantern. “Which way?” he said.

  Amy retraced her steps to the trapdoor. It creaked open and they descended the narrow stone steps into an even deeper darkness. Silas slipped twice on the slick stone, almost crashing down onto Amy. Then the smell wafted up to meet them.

  “Good God.” Silas covered his nose. “That stench.”

  “It gets worse,” Amy said as she reached the bottom and hurried along the low passageway. The reek coming at them bristled the hair on his neck and he had to fight the urge to turn around and run.

  Ducking out of the tunnel, Silas straightened up as they emerged onto the gallery overlooking the pit. The darkness was total, the watery light of the lantern revealed only the rough floor. Six paces out, it dropped away into a void of black pitch.

  “I can't see anything,” he said.

  “Give me the matches.”

  He handed the box over. Amy struck one and found the torch in the wall sconce. It flared up easily, revealing more of the stone platform they stood upon. The smell was noxious but the air was quiet and still. Their whispers drifted away in that cavernous space, leaving Silas to speculate how vast this underground pit was.

  Amy tiptoed to the edge, a sickly vertigo creeping in. There was no railing to clutch for balance and her free hand stretched out like she was balancing a beam. She flinched when his hand took hers but his grip was solid. Clinging to each other for balance, they inched forward and knelt down at the platform's edge.

  Silas dangled the lantern over the edge and they looked down into darkness. Neither could see the bottom of the pit nor anything else.

  “Are you sure it's here?” he whispered.

  Amy squinted but there was simply nothing to see. She strained her ear to listen but there was no sound. A faint drip of water coming from somewhere in the dark. Had the monster vanished? Was there some other cavern down there that the lobo had vanished to?

  A noise came, but not one they expected. It echoed from the tunnel behind them. The clang of the iron bars, the stomping of jackboots on stone. The watchmen, already pounding down the winding steps towards them.

  Amy felt her hand crushed in his. And then the wolf came.

  It shot up out of the darkness of the pit like a great white breaking the surface of the water. Its massive jaws open wide and snapping shut, snatching the lantern from Silas's hand. They both reared back in a panic and the monster dropped down into the darkness once again, taking the light with it.

  Amy heard him curse something in German but didn't bother asking for the translation. His face was a white dish of horror. “Get the torch,” she said. “Quick!”

  The racket from the passageway grew louder, their pursuers moments from bursting in on them. Silas swung the torch over the edge of the floor. Amy gripped the heavy gun in both hands and they peered down into the pit.

  A soft orb of light glowed within the darkness. The lantern, spit out by the wolf, had landed without breaking and offered a dim beacon in that abyss of night. The great wolf skulked the walls of the pit in a slow circle, its gnarled snout looking up at them.

  Silas gasped at the thing. The gray fur clotted in blood and filth, whole swaths of pelage missing in spots to reveal the poky slats of its ribcage. Its enormous head was malformed and twisted and, to Silas, looked more demon than wolf. The horror of it shut down his mind. More than that, the evil deception of it hammered home. How long had the monster been kept here? How many Bishops had kept this awful secret from the community they were sworn to protect?

  “Shoot it,” he seethed through his clenched teeth. “Kill it.”

  Amy steadied her hand and tracked the monster over the bead on the end of the gun barrel. Like shooting fish, she told herself.

  “Amy, hurry!” Silas darted his eyes in a panic between the pit and the doorway at their backs. “They're here!”

  One silver round left. Make it count. She held her breath and squeezed the trigger in a slow, even draw.

  Nothing happened. The trigger piece stuck, glued to the loop of the guard. Misfire. The load frozen in the chamber.

  Then the watchmen burst into the room.

  Silas pivoted on his heel, swinging the blazing torch at the oncomers. The black uniforms filed in one after the other, each one ducking the swing of the flame. There was a moment, a blink and no more, where Silas leered as he kept the hated watchmen cowering before the fiery torch but another blink and it was all over. A halberd clattered into the side of his head, pitching him leeward into the oncoming fist of the guardsmen on the opposite side. The torch fell and Silas went down and the watchmen swarmed over him, kicking him down under their heels.

  Watchman Becker lunged for the girl but was stopped cold by the butt of the gun hammering his temple. His eyes rolled over white as he fell. Amy swung for the next man but the watchmen were on her like piranha, beating her to the stone floor with their mailed fists. A bootheel stomped her gun hand and her knuckles exploded in pain. The big weapon fell from her hand and a boot kicked it over the side where it sank into the darkness below.

  It was over. There was nothing left for her to do but curl into a tight ball to protect herself from the blows. Pinpricks of light popped her vision after another kick to the head. She caught a glimpse of Silas, his teeth clenched as one of the bastards in black kicked his stomach in.

  The punishment ceased all at once. Amy thought she was going to vomit from the pain. Rough hands locked on and yanked her sharply to her feet. When the world stopped spinning, she found the figure of the Bishop looming over her like a buzzard.

  “The little swallow returns.” His neck craned down as he sought her eyes. “For what reason? Why did you come down here, girl?”

  Amy let her eyes fall to the floor. The guard holding her answered for her. “She stole the gun from your house. She tried to kill the old wolf.”

  The Bishop snatched her by the hair and tilted her face up to meet his. “Is this true?”

  “Get your hands off her,�
�� grunted Silas. Held upright between two of the watchmen, he looked like a low thug rooked between two cops.

  “Lad, how deep do you intend to dig your own grave?” The Bishop turned back to the man holding the girl. “Where is the gun?”

  The guard nodded to the drop at their feet. “In the pit.”

  “A fitting place for it,” said the Bishop. He turned his eyes to the girl again. “Little sparrow, despite your blasphemy I will offer some clemency to your wayward soul. Repent now and beg the Lord for forgiveness and you may live to earn your way back to the light.”

  Something hot flared in Amy's blood. The Gallagher side of her, inherited from her father. Her hatred of the buzzard before her was whole and complete. She spat in his face and advised him to go to Hell.

  The Bishop flushed red. Snatching the girl away from the guard, he marched her towards the sheer drop and pushed her over the edge.

  38

  DEATH SHOULD HAVE BEEN instant. Whether her skull split in two upon impact or the wolf snatched her up in its monstrous jaws, she expected to die quickly. But death has its own mandate and delights in confounding every notion placed in its lap.

  Amy collided into something soft, spun backwards and crashed onto what felt like a pile of dry sticks. The wood tinkled and slurred underneath her like water as she scrambled to get upright. The lantern that had fallen in still glowed and its thin light washed over the kindling she swam in. It wasn't wood. The floor of the pit was a carpet of dry bones. Thousands of them.