Furthermore, as the skin had been found without the body, and, as, from the spot where it was found a peasant reported to have heard someone speak the words: “O God! take my life! I give it gladly, if only by my death I may give back life to her whom I have killed,” the priest declared openly that Thibault, by reason of his sacrifice and repentance, had been saved!
And what added to the consistency of belief in this tradition was, that every year on the anniversary of Agnelette’s death, up to the time when the Monasteries were all abolished at the Revolution, a monk from the Abbey of the Premonstratensians at Bourg-Fontaine, which stands half a league from Preciamont, was seen to come and pray beside her grave.
Such is the history of the black wolf, as it was told me by old Mocquet, my father’s keeper.
THE HUNTER’S MOON, by Michael McCarty and Terrie Leigh Relf
She ran naked through the woods. Huge trees occasionally blocked her path, but she simply circled around them. Running. Running. Running.
But to where? The only thing she knew for certain was that she was alone in a dark, strange forest. Not a good place to be.
She kept running.
The wet grass and mulch chilled her feet. She could see her breath in the air. Her heart was burning inside her chest, beating against her ribs with such force—she thought it would burst through at any moment. But she did not dare stop running.
She heard a noise—a wheeled metal vehicle rushing down the road. She hit the ground, laying low. The lights of the vehicle came closer, glaring.
She pressed her body into the earth. Her lips brushed against rough dirt. What sort of creatures, she wondered, coiled and writhed inside the alien machine? She felt cornered, trapped. This was surely the end.
The vehicle hurried by and kept on moving.
She was safe—for the moment. Still cautious, she stood slowly and watched as the lights on the back of the metal machine faded into the night.
* * * *
Just a few hours before, she had been the commander of a starship, passing through the planetary system of a star known to her people as Ka. Rogue energy-waves from a passing comet had knocked out the ship’s navigational computer, necessitating an emergency landing on Ka’s third planet.
Out of control, the starship had swirled into the rocks at the bottom of a deep lake. Her two crewmates, stationed in the front of the ship’s top deck, were killed in the crash. Her workstation in the back of the lower deck had sustained less damage and so her life was spared. She managed to escape the submerged ship, opening a hatch to a flood of cold water.
She was covered in mud when she finally made it to the lake’s shore. Her work garments were torn, wet and filthy, so she removed them and threw them back into the water.
She looked around. Dark woods lay ahead of her, so she did the only thing left to do.
She ran.
* * * *
Standing on a hillside, she stared up at the low orange moon. It was so strange to only see one. On her world, there were three moons—one blue, one gray, and one dusky red—in the night sky. Sometimes the red moon would take on a bright orange glow, and her people would call that the Hunter’s Moon, since it gave the night-creatures more light to pursue their prey.
This planet also had a Hunter’s Moon.
Even though she was feverish from running, the night’s cool air chilled her skin. Her body felt strange—hot on the inside, cold on the outside.
As if she had willed it to be so, she suddenly spotted a dwelling down in a nearby clearing. The same vehicle she’d seen earlier was stationed next to the dwelling. Her instincts told her to run in the opposite direction, to rush as far away as she could. But still, she needed to find shelter. Her only choice was to explore whatever options the dwelling might provide.
She crept up to the dwelling, peered through the side window, and saw a male humanoid. He was tall, dark-haired, and wore tight garments that accentuated his body’s firm musculature. She felt another kind of heat rushing down to her groin.
She sniffed and licked her lips. He was drinking a beverage from a glass container as he sat in front of a small, flaming portal. She could hear the crackling of the fire, smell the aromatic smoke, and taste the smooth, spicy drink inside his mouth.
One part of her wanted to rip his flesh from his body; another part wanted to rut like a wild beast. She kept watching the humanoid, trying to control her impulses. Only a few hours earlier, she had been the commander of a spaceship. Who was she now?
* * * *
In the morning, she awoke covered in blood.
Her senses on alert, she saw blood spattered all over the wooden walls and floors of the dwelling. Where was the male humanoid? She looked down to discover she was lying on what remained of him, his once-soft garments now stiff with dried blood.
She ran her tongue around in her mouth. It tasted foul, coppery. She spat out gore. Her groin was slick with strange seed—and her mind was a blank. How could she not remember killing or mating with the humanoid? Apparently, she had done both.
There was something wrong with her body’s chemistry. Something more than simply the crash-landing had changed her, albeit briefly. The existence of a wheeled vehicle, as well as the various small machines she could see within the dwelling, indicated that this was a technology-based world, inhabited by a humanoid race—and orbited by just one moon. It had to be that single moon in the sky that was messing with her bio-systems. She’d never had amnesia after eating or fornicating before. And she’d certainly never devoured a lover before.
She looked around the dwelling. It was a gruesome mess. But still, it held possibilities. She could stay here until she met up with another starship. Her people would come for her, eventually.
She looked down at what was left of the humanoid. A pity. He had been rather attractive. Once.
Until she had this new world figured out, she had better be careful. It wouldn’t work for her to draw undo attention—especially since this planet’s technology might have spotted her starship. Perhaps they would be able to locate her starship…and her. Maybe the aliens were already coming for her. She would be hunted, detained—and worse.
The dwelling was already starting to smell of decay, so she took the remaining chunks of the humanoid and hid them out in the forest. She found a stream and washed the blood from her body. It felt good to be clean again.
Later, she examined every machine, every object in the dwelling for hours, hoping to learn more about this strange world.
Eventually she fell asleep.
When she awoke, she felt—strange. But it wasn’t a bad feeling. She looked down and saw that her body was now covered in gray fur. Again: strange. And yet somehow, it felt very right.
She no longer had hands, but she managed to open the door of the dwelling with her jaws and paws. The moon was full in the night sky. The Hunter’s Moon.
She heard a resonant howl. Turning swiftly, she saw a pack of other gray, furry night-creatures—and they weren’t in attack mode. They happily waggled the red tongues that lolled from their long, dark muzzles.
She was being welcomed.
As the night-creatures started running through the forest and into the night, she joined them.
For an odd moment, she worried about whether or not her people would ever be able to find her. But then a strange new part of her mind assured her that everything was fine, fine, fine.
She was with her people now.
WEREWOLF OF THE SAHARA, by G. G. Pendarves
The three of them were unusually silent that night over their after-dinner coffee. They were camping outside the little town of Sollum on the Libyan coast of North Africa. For three weeks they had been delayed here en route for the Siwa oasis. Two men and a girl.
“So we really start tomorrow.” Merle Anthony blew a cloud of smoke toward the glittering night sky. “I’m almost sorry. Sollum’s been fun. And I’ve done two of the best pictures I ever made here.”
“Was that w
hy you burned them up yesterday?” her cousin, Dale Fleming, inquired in his comfortable pleasant voice.
The girl’s clear pallor slowly crimsoned. “Dale! What a—”
“It’s all right, Merle,” Gunnar Sven interrupted her. “Dale’s quite right. Why pretend this delay has done you any good? And it’s altogether my fault. I found that out today in the market. Overheard some Arabs discussing our expedition to Siwa.”
“Your fault!” Merle’s beautiful face, and eyes gray as a gull’s wing, turned to him. “Why, you’ve simply slaved to get the caravan ready.”
Gunnar got to his feet and walked out to the verge of the headland on which they were camped. Tall, straight as a pine he stood.
The cousins watched him; the girl with trouble and perplexity, the man more searchingly. His eyes, under straight upper lids, flatly contradicted the rest of his appearance. He was very fat, with fair hair and smooth unlined face despite his forty years. A sort of Pickwickian good humor radiated from him. Dale Fleming’s really great intellectual power showed only in those three-cornered heavily-lidded eyes of his.
“Why did you give me away?” Merle demanded.
His round moon face beamed on her.
“Why bluff?” he responded.
“Snooping about as usual. Why don’t you go and be a real detective?” she retorted crossly.
He gave a comfortable chuckle, but his eyes were sad. It was devilishly hard to watch her falling for this Icelander. Ever since his parents had adopted her—an orphan of six—she had come first in Dale’s affections. His love was far from Platonic. Gunnar Sven was a fine creature, but there was something wrong. Some mystery shadowed his life. What it was, Dale was determined to discover.
“Truth will out, my child! The natives are in terror of him. You know it as well as I do! They’re all against helping you and me because he’s our friend.”
“Stop being an idiot. No one could be afraid of Gunnar. And he’s particularly good with natives.”
“Yes. He handles them well. I’ve never seen a young ’un do it better.”
“Well, then?”
“There’s something queer about him. These Arabs know it. We know it. It’s about two months now since he joined forces with us. Just after my mother decamped and left us in Cairo. The cable summoning her home to Aunt Sue’s death-bed arrived Wednesday, May 3rd. She sailed May 5th. Gunnar Sven turned up May 6th.”
“All right. I’m not contradicting you. It’s never any use.”
“You refused to wait for Mother’s return in Cairo, according to her schedule.”
“Well! Cairo! Everyone paints Cairo and the Nile. I wanted subjects that every five-cent tourist hadn’t raved over.”
“You wanted Siwa Oasis. Of all God-forsaken dangerous filthy places! And in the summer—”
“You know you’re dying to see the oasis too,” she accused. “Just trying to save your face as my guardian and protector. Hypocrite!”
He roared with laughter. The Arab cook and several other servants stopped singing round their cooking-pots to grin at the infectious sound.
“Touche! I’d sacrifice my flowing raven locks to go to Siwa. But”—his face grew surprizingly stern—“about Gunnar. Why does he take such enormous pains not to tell us the name of the man he’s been working for?”
“I’ve never asked him.”
“I haven’t in so many words, of course. But I’ve led him up to the fence over and over again. He’s steadily refused it. With good reason.”
“Well?”
“He works for an Arab. A sheykh. A man notorious from Morocco to Cairo. His nickname’s Sheykh El Afrit. The Magician! His real name is Sheykh Zura El Shabur.”
“And what’s so earth-shaking about that?” asked Merle, patting a dark curl into place behind her ear.
“He’s a very—bad—hat! Black Magic’s no joke in this country. This Sheykh El Shabur’s gone far. Too far.”
“I’m going to talk to Gunnar. He’ll tell me. It’s fantastic. Gunnar and Black Magic indeed!”
Dale watched her, amused and touched. How she loathed subtleties and mysteries and tangled situations!
“She’d waltz up to a lion and pull its whiskers if anyone told her they were false. As good at concealment as a searchlight.”
* * * *
Gunnar turned from the sea as Merle walked purposefully in his direction. He stood beside her—mountain pine overshadowing a little silver birch.
“H-m-m!” Dale threw away a freshly lighted cigarette and took another. “Merle and I wouldn’t suggest that. More like Friar Tuck and Maid Marian.”
He was startled to see Gunnar suddenly leap and turn. The man looked as if he’d had a tremendous shock. He stood peering across the wastelands stretching eastward, frozen into an attitude of utmost horror.
Dale ran across to Merle. She broke from his detaining hand and rushed to Gunnar’s side.
“What is it? What do you see? Gunnar! Answer me, Gunnar!”
His tense muscles relaxed. He sighed, and brushed a hand across his eyes and wet forehead.
“He’s found me. He’s coming. I had hoped never—”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
She shook his arm in terror at his wild look and words.
“He said I was free! Free! I wouldn’t have come near you if I’d known he lied. Now I’ve brought him into your life. Merle! Forgive me!”
He took her hands, kissed them frantically, then turned to Dale with burning haste and fairly pushed him away.
“Go! Go! Go! Now—before he comes. Leave everything! Ride for your lives. He’ll force me to…go! Go!”
“Ma yarudd! What means this, Gunnar—my servant?”
The deep guttural voice seemed to come up from the bowels of the earth. The three turned as if a bomb had exploded. A figure loomed up not ten feet away. Merle stared with wide startled eyes. A minute ago the level wasteland had shown bare, deserted. How had this tall Arab approached unseen?
Gunnar seemed to shrink and wither. His face was tragic. The newcomer fixed him for a long moment in silence, staring him down.
“What means this, Gunnar, my servant?” Once more the words vibrated through the still night.
The Icelander made a broken ineffectual movement of his hands, and began to speak. His voice died away into low, vague murmurings.
“For this you shall account to me later,” promised the tall Arab.
He strode forward. His black burnoose rippled and swayed about him. Its peaked hood was drawn close. A long face with pointed black beard, proud curving nose, and eyes dark and secret as forest pools gleamed beneath the hood.
Merle shrank back. Her fingers clutched Gunnar’s. They were cold and limp in her grasp.
Dale leaned forward, peering into the Arab’s face as a connoisseur examines an etching of rare interest.
“You speak very good English, my friend. Or is it enemy?”
The whole demeanor of the Arab changed. His white teeth flashed. He held out welcoming hands, clasped Dale’s in his own, and bowed low to the girl. He turned last to the Icelander.
“Present me!” he ordered.
* * * *
Gunnar performed the small ceremony with white lips. His voice sounded as if he’d been running hard.
“Zura El Shabur. Zura of the Mist,” translated the sheykh. “I am your friend. I have many friends of your Western world. The language! All languages are one to me!”
Dale beamed. “Ah! Good linguist and all that! Jolly good name yours, what! Gave us quite a scare, popping up out of the atmosphere like Aladdin’s djinnee!”
El Shabui’s thin lips again showed his teeth.
“Those that dwell in the desert’s solitude and silence learn to reflect its qualities.”
“Quite! Quite!” Dale gurgled happy agreement. “Neat little accomplishment Very convenient—for you!”
“Convenient on this occasion for you also, since my coming prevented the inhospitality of my servant f
rom driving you away.”
“No! You’re wrong there. Gunnar’s been our guardian angel for weeks past. Given us a wonderful time.”
“Nevertheless, I heard that he urged you to go—to go quickly from Solium.”
Dale burst into laughter; long, low gurgles that relieved tension all around. “I’m one of those fools that’d rather lose a pot of gold than alter my plans. One of the camel-drivers has made off with a few bits of loot. You heard the thrifty Gunnar imploring me to follow him.”
Merle backed up the tale with quick wit. “Nothing of vast importance. My silver toilet things, a leather bag, and a camera. Annoying, but hardly worth wasting hours to retrieve.”
She came forward, all anxiety to give Gunnar time to pull himself together.
El Shabur made her a second low obeisance and stared down into her upturned vivid face. “Such youth and beauty must be served. Shall I send Gunnar after the thief?”
The idea of separation gave her a shock. Intuition warned her to keep the Icelander at her side for his sake, and for her own. Together there seemed less danger.
Danger! From what? Why did the word drum through her brain like an S.O.S. signal? She glanced at Gunnar. His face was downbent.
“No.” She met the Arab’s eyes with effort and gave a valiant little smile. “No. Indeed not. We can’t spare him. He’s promised to come with us, to be our guide to the Siwa Oasis.”
“Hope this won’t clash with your plans for him. We’ve got so dependent on his help now.” Dale’s cherubic face registered anxiety.
“So.” The Arab put a hand on Gunnar’s shoulder. “It is good. You have done well.”
The young man shivered. His eyes met Merle’s in warning.
El Shabur turned to reassure her and Dale.
“Now all goes well. I, too, will join your caravan. It is necessary for my—my work—that I should visit Siwa very soon. I go also.”
Dale took the outstretched hand. “Fine! Fine! We’ll make a record trip now.”
* * * *
In his tent, Dale slept after many hours of hard, concentrated thought and intellectual work—very pink, very tired, younger-looking than ever in his profound repose.
The Werewolf Megapack Page 61
