Becker now had six silver bullets. He decided to risk the first three and began to load his revolver, hoping that the wadding would protect the black powder from the hot metal.
The werewolf’s growl was like that a mastiff might roar out, if he were the size of a bull.
Sir Stanley yelled out and fired pointblank, as the beast suddenly burst through a shattered window. The remnants of medieval glass tore at its hairy flesh, inflicting as little harm as did Sir Stanley’s bullets.
It reared there for a moment amidst the debris, snarling at them – its wolfish muzzle showing carrion-smeared fangs. It was like a great hairy ape with a wolf’s head – and yet, there was a red glow of depraved humanity in its eyes. It regarded its three victims, taking in their positions as a diner selects a slice of meat from a buffet, then rushed for Sir Stanley.
The heavy .44 calibre slugs from Sutton’s Adams revolver staggered the creature momentarily, but they had no further effect. Unable to run, Sutton swore and flung the useless weapon at the charging beast.
Jacqueline ran toward him with a pair of firebrands.
Becker charged the chambers with powder and rammed home the silver bullets. He had learned well to reload quickly while riding with Quantrill, and the percussion caps were already in place on the revolver’s cylinder.
Jacqueline threw herself between the werewolf and Sir Stanley – thrusting the blazing firebrands into its face.
Roaring more in rage than fear, the werewolf reeled back for an instant, striking away the firebrands with one taloned paw. Jacqueline spun away, just avoiding its claws. Sutton shoved her clear. The werewolf reached out for him.
“Bertrand!” Becker shouted.
As the creature turned at his shout, Adrian Becker shot him three times through the heart. There had not been time to load the other chambers. It wasn’t necessary.
Putrid smoke boiled forth from the werewolf’s chest as the silver bullets tore into him. Flame gushed from the wounds, suddenly setting his entire mass of flesh on fire. Bertrand howled hideously – his bestial roar rising into a human scream. Staggering backward, the creature lurched across the ruined cathedral, crimson flames eating through its flesh. Blackened bones were already poking forth from charred skin as it pitched backward like an obscene sacrifice into the crypt.
Becker and the others gazed down upon the creature. In a short time there was little more than ashes.
“I told you we must have silver,” Becker said.
By daylight the shelling had stopped, and most of the fighting had moved to another quarter of Paris. Sir Stanley was still weak from loss of blood, but he insisted that he could walk with assistance. Becker thought they had best press on, before either the French or the Prussians restored order here.
As they passed through the churchyard, they met an aged priest. The tears on his face testified to his feelings upon viewing this scene of massacre and ruin. Nonetheless, he greeted them – then gazed curiously at Jacqueline’s petticoats, exposed beneath Sutton’s coat.
Sir Stanley noticed his look. Always the gentleman: “She was attacked by the Communards, Father. We were able to drive them away in time to spare her, and sought refuge here. As for me, my wound is nothing.”
“Bless you, my children. Such bravery is rare in these terrible days.” The old priest gestured toward the massacred victims, then wiped away tears.
“God has gathered these in. Stones may be restored. But here in the crypts of this ancient cathedral is said to be hidden the Holy Grail – the very cup from which Our Lord drank before his betrayal – a silver chalice won by the blood of the crusaders and kept here in secret throughout the centuries.”
His age-worn face implored them. “Will you not help me search this ruin for it? Those who guarded its secret are all slain. Perhaps its power could bring an end to all this senseless slaughter.”
Adrian Becker exchanged glances with Sir Stanley Sutton.
“Yes,” said Becker. “To some of it, certainly.”
Brian Mooney
SOUL OF THE WOLF
Brian Mooney’s first professional short story sale was “The Arabian Bottle”, which appeared in the London Mystery Selection in 1971. Since then his work has been published in such anthologies and magazines as The 21st Pan Book of Horror Stories, Dark Voices 5, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural, Fantasy Tales, Final Shadows, Kadath, Dark Horizons and Fiesta.
He explains that the idea for the following story came to him while he was watching a nature programme about wolves on television: “One of the wolf experts was an elderly American Indian who, in passing, mentioned an old superstition about cutting a dead animal’s throat to release the soul. It was one of those all too rare instances where the plot just leapt into my mind almost the way it came out on paper . . .”
Prelude: Trophies
There was an abundance of trophies, heads with frozen eyes which stared down upon Nugent as he sat at his desk in the weapons room. Almost every game animal in the world was represented there; some had been obtained expensively under licence, most had been killed illicitly and even more expensively. Many of the animals were drawing near to extinction but Nugent cared not a jot. He would begin to worry when there was nothing left to hunt.
On this evening, Nugent was smugly content. Sipping from his crystal glass of very old malt whisky, savouring the liquor’s smokiness on his tongue, he reached out his other hand to touch, caress even, the laminated card which lay exactly in the centre of the desk’s exquisite antique leather surface.
That card, a licence to kill yet another animal of a rapidly dwindling species, had taken him many years to obtain, years of sucking up to sleazy politicians and their fixers, years of bribery and blackmail and corruption.
Taking his whisky, Nugent arose and began to stroll around the huge room, looking at the trophies gracing the panelled walls, admiring his extensive collection of weapons in their display cases. Here an ancient Malay kris, there an early AK47, next to it a stone axe-head. Doc Holliday’s Greener shotgun, used to cut down Frank McLaury at the OK Corral, nestled side-by-side with a rusted Saxon shortsword. Nugent smiled at one favourite: a well-honed, ivory-handled open razor, reputedly owned by an early twentieth century gang-leader in the Scottish city of Glasgow. There was a time when he had taken that razor and . . . well, never mind, that was history. A smile flitted across Nugent’s hard face as he reminisced.
And there, on a small side-table, was the leather case which contained his latest hunting rifle, the one which he would use for this new kill. Nugent ran a fingertip along the hard, polished surface of the case and felt a small thrill in his breast.
Christ damn the Greens, he thought. Bastards just about had the world sewed up these days. But not completely, as that licence showed. What harm was he doing? He was genuinely puzzled. Animals have killed each other since time began. Hell, a man had all the money in the world and more, he should be able to do what he wanted. Right?
There were times Nugent wondered what it would be like to hunt men. He would love to take a party of those namby-pamby bastards out into the wild and show them how much better life could be when the adrenalin flowed and you knew that each minute might be your last. The hunt, oh the hunt . . .
(The pack ran free in the mountain forests and plains, wisps of grey mist loping steadily in pursuit of their prey, revelling in the wind and the scents on the air and the sheer exuberance of life . . .)
Item: Wolfhunt
The huge timber wolf was majestic, still and quiet against the gloaming as if it was a sculptured part of the slab-like boulder on which it stood.
The animal’s head tilted back slightly as it delicately sniffed the evening air, redolent with the scent of the ubiquitous pine forest. The great body sloped down from the shoulders to where the bushy tail rested between muscular hind legs. Nugent slightly adjusted the telescopic sight and the image of the beast became sharper.
Although almost choking with exci
tement, Nugent compelled himself to the state of relaxation necessary for a perfect shot. The Remington’s weight was comforting, the walnut stock cool and silky against his cheek, its touch as sensuous as a woman’s fingertips sliding gently on bare skin.
Behind and to the right of where the wolf stood the sun was sliding into daily oblivion. Soon, probably, white, damp mist would creep down through the forest, impenetrable and seemingly alive, to fill the valley far below. But for the moment the air remained clear and sharp enough to sting the cheeks and ears.
The man’s thumb reached out to ease the safety catch forward and his breathing shallowed. His nostrils wrinkled as he caught an acrid whiff of body odour from the Chinook lying beside him. Nugent could feel the Indian’s humid warmth, had an instinct to flinch away. Christ, someone should drag these goddam primitives into the twenty-first century.
Nugent swallowed his distaste. If it wasn’t for the Indians, it was unlikely that he would have gotten anywhere near the wolf. And this trophy had become a near obsession with him.
The cross-hairs of the scope centred on a spot just below the wolf’s ear and Nugent’s finger took first pressure on the trigger. A final slow exhalation and then the second pressure. There was no recoil as the killing missile, a tiny hypodermic filled with a destructive potpourri of toxins, sped from the rifle’s muzzle.
The wolf just crumpled as if sinew and bone had dissolved. Nugent breathed in and then exhaled again, a fierce, triumphant grunt. At last, at last . . . The coveted wolf, and with neither mark nor injury on the handsome carcass. And then Nugent let out an angry yell, “What the hell’s Two-trees doing?”
The second Chinook, the younger one who had been so self-effacing, so quiet in the background, was now running at full tilt towards the fallen animal, a long-bladed hunting knife in one hand. As he ran, moccasined feet kicking up dirt and pine needles, the Indian cried out, a weird, mourning ululation.
Nugent scrambled to his feet to give chase but already the older Indian, Jackson, was ahead of him. “What’s he doing?” cried Nugent again, “Stop the bastard!”
When the wheezing Nugent reached the Indians, the senior was restraining his companion. The two were having a frenzied argument in their own tongue.
“All right, what is it?” gasped Nugent.
Jackson looked embarrassed. “Two-trees wants to cut the wolf’s throat, boss.”
“Is he crazy?” Nugent spat to clear his mouth and wiped sweat from his face. “What does he want to do that for?” He turned a snarling face to the younger man. “Well, why?”
A sullen Two-trees muttered briefly in his own language. Jackson shrugged. “It’s an old superstition, boss, common to a lot of tribes. It’s to release the wolf’s soul. You’ve got to understand – our people revere the wolf, look on it as a brother hunter. It’s okay to kill the wolf, but you must honour it as a warrior. You cut the throat straight away, it releases the soul for the hunt in the other world. Don’t release the soul, in time the wolf will take revenge somehow.”
“No way.” Nugent prodded Two-trees in the chest. “No goddamed way! I paid a hundred thousand credits for the hunt licence and I paid another thirty thousand for this specially adapted Remington so that I wouldn’t make a mess of the skin. You are not going to cut its throat, sonny, not for some damned crazy superstition.”
Two-trees expostulated angrily with the elder Chinook. Jackson grimaced. “He says it’s almost too late now, boss. Let him do it immediately, things might be okay.”
Nugent hefted the Remington slightly. “Tell this damned savage that if he goes anywhere near that wolf, I’ll shoot him.”
Mouth twisted in disgust, the young Chinook thrust his knife back into its sheath. As he turned away, he said in English, “Your responsibility, Mr Nugent. This damned savage tried to do what was right. I just hope you can live with what you’ve done.”
(The mountains and the forest were dappled silver and black as full moon and smothering darkness vied for supremacy. A young Indian stood on a vast platform of rock which dominated a timber-free clearing, naked and unadorned save for strange splashes of paint which gave an animal-like appearance to his stringy body. Around the rock, still and uncanny in their watchfulness, sat the grey shadows of the wolf pack.
The Indian drew breath and began a low, keening wolf howl, gradually lifting and throwing back his head until, as his howl reached its crescendo, he was staring straight into the face of the moon. The circling wolves, too, threw back their elongated heads as they joined the dirge . . .)
Item: Ceremony
In a small cave amid the towering mountains, five Indians gathered in conclave around a smoky fire. Two were dressed in denims and mackinaws, were shod in stout climbing boots. One, the elder, was ill-at-ease, the other inflexible and determined. The remaining Indians were old men, leathery bodies naked save for necklaces of bone and teeth. One of them clutched a small drum, as yet silent, between his knees.
In accordance with the old ways, a pipe was being passed around the men, from hand to hand, lip to lip, a pipe which contained something more than tobacco, something which dilated eyes and lightened heads and limbs.
When all had drawn upon the pipe several times, it was laid to the ground with reverence by the most wrinkled of the three naked men. He turned to the disquieted man, deferring to him as the senior visitor.
“This white man, this Nugent, you say he offended against the laws of the hunt?”
Jackson looked embarrassed. “I didn’t say anything like that, the guy was just ignorant of our ways. He didn’t mean no harm.”
“Listen to yourself, Jackson,” snarled Two-trees, “you might as well be a goddamned white-eyes, the way you try to make excuses for the bastards. Listen, Old Father—” turning to Jackson’s questioner, “—I told this Nugent of the law, of our ways. He sneered, called us savages. Threatened to kill me if I did what was right. So Brother Wolf’s soul has no resting place, it cries out for vengeance. Hear me, that night I went back into the forest to mourn, and the grey brothers, they all came to where I was. They offered me no harm, instead they wept with me. Help Brother Wolf’s soul, Old Father, help it.”
The old men drew closer together, muttered to each other in a tongue so old and strange that neither of the guides could understand it. Finally, hatchet faces grim in the orange and yellow flicker of the firelight, they nodded.
The one with the drum began to tap a rhythm, a steady thumping beat that inexorably enveloped the senses until it threatened to dominate the mind. The second old man took handfuls of the tobacco and drug mixture, casting them onto the fire which flared and emitted thickened skeins of acrid-smelling fumes. Within several inhalations. Jackson and Two-trees could feel themselves expanding, minds and bodies drifting like leaves on a fickle breeze.
Old Father began to chant, a strange, low song which despite its softness was soon vying with the power of the drumbeat. Like primitive paintings daubed onto the cave walls, shadows cast by the old men writhed and stretched and lengthened into monstrous shapes of an almost tangible blackness.
Then Two-trees nudged his companion and pointed with slightly trembling finger towards the fire. Awed, the two men watched the smoke twirling and dancing as it formed the unmistakable image of Brother Wolf . . .
(In a luxurious apartment amid the towering blocks of the city, a sleeping man twitched and fidgeted. For a moment, despite the efficiency of the air-conditioning, there was the slightest suggestion of acridity in the bedroom’s atmosphere, and the man’s nostrils twitched in irritation as if someone nearby was smoking a mixture of tobacco and narcotics.)
Item: Preservation
“Perfect, quite perfect.” Wallace Plumtree ran a pudgy hand over the magnificent carcass, his touch delicate and loving. “It will be a pleasure to prepare this one for you, Mr Nugent. Why, it must have been a giant amongst its kind.”
“Guess so,” said Nugent. He kept his tone matter of fact, concealing the gloating which tightened his st
omach and threatened to swell in his throat. His years of badgering congressmen and the Secretary of State, his years of making certain generous donations to party and private funds, his years of threatening those with less than pure private lives before the precious licence had been agreed, all had been worthwhile.
“I see so few truly magnificent specimens these days,” sighed Plumtree. “These damned conservationists, they’re making life so awkward for such as you and I. We are anachronisms.” He shook his head as if in despair, the mop of white curls flopping about his collar. With a huge spotted handkerchief he polished the old-fashioned eyeglasses he affected.
“We’re a dying breed, we hunters, Plumtree,” grunted Nugent, “There’s no appreciation for the stalk and the kill these days.”
The taxidermist raised an ironic eyebrow. “You’re right there, sir. Unless you’re some lowlife predator stalking and killing men on the streets. Then who cares what you do?”
Nugent nodded. “Yeah, run in a pack with switch-blades or Saturday night specials and you can rape and maim and kill as many of your own kind as you want. Nobody gives a good goddam. The cops don’t often bust a gut, and if they do the courts just give the bad guys a slap on the wrist. But you want to kill a wild animal, hell, you’re worse than Jack the Ripper.
“You know, Plumtree, there are nights when I walk the streets, the really bad streets, just hoping that some of these punks will try me. I want to see how they’d be when they meet a real predator. But nothing ever happens, know what I mean?”
Plumtree put his eyeglasses on, appraised the big, chunky man before him. He had heard of Nugent’s skill at martial arts, of the wealthy socialite’s collection of exotic weapons, of his sheer enjoyment of violence. “You don’t look like a victim, I guess, Mr Nugent.”
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 29
