“Well, my French isn’t all that good, and he was in a state. But I believe that that was what he said, before I shot him dead.”
Becker observed Sir Stanley with suspicion. “Well. Had you?”
Sir Stanley was affronted. “Well, certainly not. It’s the Parisians who have resorted to cannibalism during the siege, not us. P’raps I didn’t fully understand him. You should understand: One instant I was furiously at work on Mimi or whatever her name was; the next, a crazy Frenchman kicks in the door and begins shooting his revolver at me. Yes, and another thing I recall. He called me Bertrand.”
“So, then. A quarrel of some sort. The wrong room. The wrong man. Now we are caught between the Communards and the Prussians. This is not good.”
Colonel Adrian Becker, late of the Army of the Confederacy under General Quantrill, had found it expedient to leave the Confederate States of America shortly after the truce was declared in 1868. Born during the tumult of an emerging Germany to a Bavarian countess and a Prussian officer, Becker had returned to his fatherland to join a Prussian Uhlan regiment. His experience had taught him the suicidal futility of cavalry charges against Gatling guns – in this case, mitrailleuses. As the siege of Paris reached its inevitable bloody conclusion this May of 1870, Becker looted the regimental treasury while the rest were looting Paris.
In the process Becker had freed Sir Stanley Sutton, supposedly of the something Lancers and a British observer. While none of the above credentials could stand the test of evidence, it was proved that Sutton was a spy of some sort, and he was awaiting the firing squad when Becker killed his guards. Becker had known him as British liaison to Quantrill’s Army of the West near the close of that war. Becker also knew him as a ready adventurer and an expert killer, and Becker needed help robbing the regimental treasury.
A stray shell – French or Prussian, Becker never decided – had blasted their wagon and its concealed treasure. With whatever gold they had earlier pocketed, the two had crept into the wreckage of Paris. In civilian clothes and with enough gold to buy anything they couldn’t steal, or bribe anyone they couldn’t kill, Becker reckoned they could blend into the chaos of looting and destruction until time to slip away to England. Becker had seen towns sacked from Lawrence to the burning of Washington, and he knew how to blend.
Then a crazy Frenchman had shot Sir Stanley in the arse while they were enjoying themselves in a sporting house. Sutton couldn’t sit a horse or walk a dozen steps. Becker was a ruthless killer, but he wouldn’t leave a comrade. They needed a carriage or wagon, and instead they were hiding out in a shelled-out cathedral in a Paris that was in its death throes.
Becker wondered which side would try to kill them first. He wasn’t even sure how many sides there now were, at work at the slaughter. The cathedral was ringed with the bodies of priests and nuns shot down by the Communards before the shells had struck.
“What’s that howling?” Becker peered through the ruins of an eleventh-century window.
“That’s a dog, Adrian.” Becker had given Sutton a bottle of brandy he’d found in the rubble. Sutton was killing his pain with liberal swallows.
“No. It’s a wolf.” Becker had lived in the Harz Mountains as a child.
“Wolf or dog, it’s more likely to be the wind. The Communards have eaten even the zoo animals. Have you priced rat meat?”
“And I say that it is a wolf. I know that sound.”
Adrian Becker was in his late twenties, but years of war on two continents had aged him, as surely as the saber cut that faintly scarred his left forehead. He was tall – just over six feet – and had the broadshouldered, hardmuscled swagger of a cavalryman. His face was handsome enough to the ladies, although just now his blond hair and goatee were unkempt. His eyes were of a blue-grey shade, and their full stare was unnerving. He had been trained in martial skills since a child in 1848, after his parents had fled the failed revolution. Sutton had seen Becker draw, but he could never see the movement of his left hand between the instant of deciding to kill and the impact of his bullets.
“Why did he call you Bertrand?” Becker had drawn one of his pair of .36 Colt Navy revolvers and was wishing for a Henry rifle.
“Who knows? All cats are grey in the dark.”
Sutton had readjusted his clothing and was feeling quite a bit better, thanks mostly to the brandy. At least he’d had the presence of mind to snatch up his clothing as they’d fled. While the wound had bled profusely, his trousers, clutched under one arm, had been spared. The cathedral had been close by, and, with Becker supporting him, they had reached its cover just as the shelling resumed. Sutton doubted anyone would have pursued them in the ensuing chaos.
Sir Stanley Sutton, as he styled himself, was half a foot shorter than Becker and rather leaner. He had a polished military bearing that came of being drummed out of several crack regiments, and an easy aristocratic air that came of being born into a noble house whose name he had agreed never to disgrace by claiming it as his own. He had wavy brown hair, a bristling beard, innocent hazel eyes, and a brooding romantic face that the ladies would swoon for. His skill with pistol and sword had kept him alive thus far in his twenty-some years, although luck had helped a great deal. Which was why, instead of having faced a firing squad, Sir Stanley Sutton was merely holed up in the rubble of a Paris cathedral with Colonel Adrian Becker, a bullet hole in his bum, shells falling all about, with the certainty that either side would happily shoot down the both of them.
Becker fired his pistol twice. Sutton drew his Adams double-action revolver and strained to see what his friend was shooting at. Knowing Becker, it was either dead or dying.
“Where are they?” Sutton whispered, seeing nothing.
“There was something by the break in the wall there,” Becker said. “I could not have missed. The full moon backlighted him.”
“How many?”
“Just the one, I think. He did not fall.”
“Use my fifty-four bore,” Sutton suggested, holding out his Adams revolver. “More stopping power.”
“Same bullet as the American .44 calibre,” Becker said. “I think the .36 ball is more accurate.”
“All right then, Adrian. Where’s your Communard?”
“I’ll just go finish him.”
Becker stepped carefully over the rubble, pistol cocked, and leaving Sutton a line of fire. There had been something wrong with that silhouette. The man had crouched like an ape, then had sprung away when shot, as though he were unhit. Becker was certain of his aim.
A shell screamed through the night. Becker flung himself headlong beneath a pew. The cathedral foundations shook, hunks of debris pelted through the breached wall, dust and slabs of plaster scattered across the pew. Almost deafened by the near hit, Becker barely heard the scream of the next shell in time to burrow deeper beneath the pew. This shell struck cleanly through the Norman Gothic arches and exploded somewhere about the altar.
Large things fell upon Becker’s scant shelter. One of them wore many petticoats and smelled of gardenia perfume.
Becker wiped away dust and petticoats from his face, still holding his pistol which he had managed not to fire. The next shell struck some distance away. Stunned by the concussion, Becker became vaguely aware that he was being held by an equally dazed woman who had parted from her outer dress at some point. She was a lovely mass of lace and stockings and corset, and she was clinging to him fiercely. For an instant, Becker wondered whether she might be an angel, dragging him to Heaven. However, this seemed an unlikely destination for him, and no angel would wear a whore’s perfume. Besides, he recognized the face beneath the grit and tousled black hair.
“Jacqueline?”
“Oh, Adrian!” She clung to him with far more ardor than she had shown him earlier that night. “It is horrible out there! I followed you when you two fled. There was much blood!”
Becker lowered the hammer on his Colt. He struggled upward, dragging both of them to their feet. His ears rang, and his head
throbbed. From the shudders beneath his feet, he sensed that the shelling was moving away – for now.
“You should have taken refuge in the cellars.” Becker was trying to ascertain Sir Stanley’s earthly presence. The lantern had somehow remained intact and alight. Something was stirring amidst the debris.
“Bertrand was hiding there!” Jacqueline hissed.
Lucky for him,” Becker said. He led Jacqueline over to where Sutton was cursing, and he pulled away some wainscoting that had probably been in place for five centuries until a minute ago. The Englishman was unhappy but unhurt. He thanked Becker with scant courtesy, then favored Jacqueline with a begrimed smile.
Jacqueline pressed back against Becker. “It is not Bertrand! But with his beard he looks like Bertrand!”
“Sehr Gut,” said Becker, still stunned and struggling with his English. “At least we have one thing here tonight settled. This Bertrand. Who is he that someone shoots my friend by mistake?”
Jacqueline’s eyes widened. “Bertrand is a . . . loup-garou!”
“I . . . I believe she means werewolf,” Sir Stanley supplied.
“Is there any of that brandy left?” Becker asked.
Sir Stanley surrendered the bottle. “This is a lot of rot.”
Becker took a swallow, handed the bottle to Jacqueline. “I told you I heard a wolf. I was a child in the Harz Mountains. I do not miss when I shoot a man.”
Jacqueline coughed a bit after her liberal swallow. Sir Stanley gallantly arose and presented her with his coat. Becker was mumbling to himself in German, watching the openings in the walls.
Finally he said: “Yes. I know what a werewolf is.”
“Come on, old man!” Sutton suspected shell-shock. “This is the nineteenth century, after all.”
“Adrian is correct!” Jacqueline interceded. “I have seen this thing! He killed Yvonne! Bit her through the throat! Chewed her flesh horribly! He was Bertrand when he entered her room, but when we broke down the door, it was a wolf that leapt from her window!”
“A wolf escaped from the zoo,” Sir Stanley explained. “It was famished and lucky not to have been eaten itself by the Communards.” He put his arm around Jacqueline, purely to reassure her.
“How did you find us?” Becker asked suddenly. He was recovering from the shell blast.
“I saw in which direction you had fled. Then I followed the trail of blood. The moon is quite bright.”
From outside the cathedral echoed a long bestial howl. A shell hit in the near distance, muffling the cry.
Becker searched his pockets. “Who has silver?” He found a few gold coins and some copper.
“Afraid I’d paid Mimi in advance,” Sutton apologized.
Jacqueline had obviously fled in haste. “A cross?” Becker asked her. “Some rings?” But she only shook her head and pressed closer to Sir Stanley.
“We must have silver to kill the werewolf.” Becker looked all about. “Perhaps a crucifix from the altar?”
“You won’t find as much as a biscuit,” Sutton said. “This cathedral was thoroughly looted while the Communards were at work butchering everyone from Mother Superior to altar boy.”
Becker peered through the broken wall carefully. “Well, we’ll have to look for silver. I can’t say how long Bertrand will be content with the nun.”
“What?” Sir Stanley joined him at the breach.
The full moon glared down upon the churchyard beyond. Tombstones and funeral monuments shone white and shattered like a scatter of broken teeth. The corpses of the executed clergy lay in rows. Something was moving upon the body of one nun.
Sutton’s first thought was of a man in a fur coat. Then he saw that, while it was male, it wasn’t a man. It was a man-shaped creature, covered in dark fur. Its face was the muzzle of a beast. The nun’s habit had been ripped apart, her legs outflung. As the creature hunched obscenely between her thighs, its wolfish muzzle gnawed at her dead breasts.
Sutton turned away, stunned for once in his checkered career.
“It is Bertrand,” Jacqueline said.
“Don’t look!” Sir Stanley pulled her away.
“She is a whore in a city gone mad,” said Becker. “What now can shock her? But why has nothing been done to destroy this Bertrand?”
“We only recently suspected.” Jacqueline was in a near faint. “With all this killing, the riots . . . How easy to hide his crimes amongst so many!”
“Shoot the thing, man!” Sutton relinquished the collapsing girl and drew his revolver.
“It will only return his attention to us.” Becker pushed away the other man’s gun. “We must have silver.”
“And if we can’t find silver?”
“Then we must hope that he will be content amidst the dead until daylight. Unfortunately the werewolf prefers the blood and flesh of the living, and you, my friend, have left a recent bloodtrail. I think that very soon he will come for us, and you are unable to run.”
“Then I say give him a belly full of lead right now!”
“Sir Stanley, I tell you that I shot him. As you can see, there was no effect. Watch him now, while I search for silver.”
“And what if he moves toward us?”
“Then you must shoot him and pray that I am wrong.”
“What about fire?” Sutton wondered, watching the necrophilic feast with growing horror.
“Well, first you catch and skin him,” Becker suggested. “I’ll get a fire started to roast him over.”
“Firebrands!” Jacqueline said. “Wild beasts fear fire.”
“Werewolves are only part beast.” Becker picked up the lamp. “And they move very fast.”
Jacqueline gathered up her petticoats to follow him across the rubble. “You seem to be very well informed of the loup-garou: Have you bagged very many?”
“One is sufficient,” said Becker, and she thought she saw him shiver. It was probably only the difficulty of walking over the rubble-strewn floor, as they approached the ruined altar.
Becker held high the lamp. “Look for a crucifix, a chalice, silver plate, anything the looters missed.”
The shell had blasted the altar into hopeless debris, piercing the cathedral floor and disgorging the crypts beneath. The bones of crusaders and bishops were heaped together in shattered and moldering piles, like the wreckage of unstrung and rotted puppets. Broken swords and rusted armor lay amidst desiccated flesh and tatters of worm-eaten finery. The smell was of dust and mold – the stench barely noticeable against the greater stench of smoke, burnt powder and recent death that pervaded Paris this night.
“I can’t bear this.” Jacqueline shuddered and covered her face with her hands.
“Then hold this lamp.” Becker thrust the lantern toward her, waited until she had it in her grasp, then carefully clambered down through the rubble into the exposed crypt. He had seen far worse too many times before, and the moldering skeletal remains of the centuries-dead held neither terror nor awe, so long as they didn’t move.
“Here! Shine the light here, Jacqueline!”
The wreckage from the shelling made it impossible to be certain of anything – everywhere bones and fragments of rusted armor and rotted vestments – but Becker judged the crypts dated from the Crusades. There was a black chalice lying intact amidst the rubble, evidently dislodged from the crypt by the explosion. Becker recognized age-blackened silver, and he snatched it from the debris.
A skeletal hand clutched at its stem, refusing to relinquish its grasp. Becker swore as the chalice was pulled away from his fist. Drawing his bowie knife, he hacked frenziedly at the leathery knots of desiccated flesh and bone, prying the dead fingers one by one from their grip. Steel prevailed, and in a moment he was scrambling out of the crypt, carrying his prize.
“Now we must have a fire. Gather some of this wood, please. We must hurry, Jacqueline!”
“The beast has moved away into the shadow,” Sir Stanley warned, as Becker busied himself with his kit. “I can’t spot him!
”
“Keep looking!” For his pistols, Becker carried percussion caps, a flask of black powder, a tin of grease, wadding, spare balls, a capping tool, and a bullet mold. While Jacqueline made a fire from the smashed woodwork, Becker quickly removed powder and ball from the cylinder of one Colt Navy revolver.
With his bowie knife he hacked the ancient silver chalice into chunks. Becker was pleased to see that it was indeed of silver, a plain chalice, obviously quite old. Becker had no time to appreciate its antiquity.
By the time the fire was going well, he had recovered a rusted scrap of a crusader’s helmet from the crypt – sound enough to serve as a melting pot. Becker dropped in the mutilated chalice and waited for the silver to melt.
A wolf’s howl reminded him of the need of urgency.
“Can you see him?” Becker fanned the coals.
“The clouds are across the moon,” Sutton told him. “I can’t see anything.”
“Jacqueline.” Becker pointed to some smashed paneling. “Make firebrands!”
“But can these kill the beast?”
“They might discourage him from further courses of his dinner.”
Becker blew on the coals. Silver melted at almost three times the melting point of lead, but the fragments of the chalice were at last beginning to slump and mingle together. Looking about, he found sections of a medieval tapestry crushed beneath the rubble. Quickly he hacked away pieces with his knife to make padding for his hands.
Positioning his bullet mould, Becker clumsily gripped the glowing fragment of helmêt, removed it from the fire and poured – trying not to spill much of the molten silver. Replacing the makeshift pot, he flicked the spilled pools of silver back into it, waiting for the mold to cool.
“Any sign of the beast?” Becker opened the mold. Three glinting balls of silver shook out.
“The moon is clear, but I can see nothing,” Sutton called back.
“Perhaps Bertrand has eaten his fill,” Jacqueline said.
“While the moon is full, nothing can sate his bloodlust.” Becker poured again into the mold, then trimmed the flashing from the three .36 calibre bullets, cursing as the hot metal burnt his fingers. They must cool a bit more, or he’d risk their igniting the powder as he charged his pistol. Becker poured a little of the brandy over the hot balls. He opened the bullet mold and cracked loose another three bullets. There remained a good quantity of silver, but time was the essential matter now.
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 28
