“Fionn Bharr and I, we attended University in the East, we fought in the second Great War, much to the chagrin of our own father. We both returned without having revealed our true nature to the world. We would take turns, affecting the change, when necessary, whilst the other kept a close eye to keep the wild one out of harm’s way.
“Your grandfather, as I say, was quite an intelligent man, a man of science. When we returned, it was with technology and modernization, the promise of wealth and prosperity from the land around us, without despoiling the nature we so cling to. He created a way to extract the essence of the trees, without destroying them, to create a copious amount of pine essence with the most minimal of effort. Something we have long exported throughout the world to great success from our little hamlet to little or no investigation. It allowed us to build this place for the family, to provide for ourselves, for the town of Pitamont below.
“Being a scientist, and a man of rational mind, Fionn Bharr long sought an answer to what he called our curse, what I call our gift. He was a hard man, and cold in some ways. He and your father, Bairre, especially. Always at each other’s throats, as it were. Your father took his wife, fat with child, with you, and built that little house out in the woods, the house you recall from your dreams. They were happy there. You, my boy, were very happy there.”
I see it in my mind, swirling with the music, dancing through the white curtains, imagining the yard, thick with grass, white sheets flapping all around me. Around us. Little Emma and Little Finn.
“Fionn Bharr,” Arthur continues, still playing his soft melody, “was quite taken with a girl from the town. She worked with us at the factory, for all it was a factory, as your grandfather’s assistant. Secretary, if you will. She was a lovely girl, soft and pale, gamine legs and luxurious chestnut hair. Your grandmother had passed two winters earlier from a rare case of the pox. Fionn Bharr and the girl from town—Nancy, I believe her name was—planned to run away together. Fionn Bharr was mad with lust, and fighting his natural proclivities did nothing to stem the furies building in his system. One night he changed, mid-coitus, you understand, and tore the poor girl to ribbons. Fionn Bharr was mortified at what he had done and took his own life. Your father found them the next morning.”
His voice had flattened, and the tune had taken an ominous turn, each pinging note echoing around the chamber, ghosts floating after his words.
“We secreted the bodies, spread word that they had run away together. Still, gossip spread throughout the town. Monsters in the woods, it was said. Evil loose in the night. That sort of thing. The children were most affected. Your father and his sister Oonagh, Emma’s mother, were especially distraught. They, and Oonagh’s husband, my own son, Sean . . . they forged a pact. For your sake, for the sake of Emma, they would fight the change and learn to rule their baser instincts. So as to teach you the secret of living a purer life, such was their rhetoric. It did not end well.”
THE MUSIC COMES to an abrupt stop, as a new voice, dark and velvet, enters the room.
“No. Didn’t end well at all, did it?”
I’m afraid to turn around. I know who it is. Somehow I know. Something about her smell, the timbre of her voice. I know. I’ve seen her almost every night of my life, a little girl with olive green eyes and dark pigtails, the only thing tethering me to this place, this life, and my own history. The rainbow in the dark, leading me here. She can’t possibly be that after so many years, can she? What if it breaks the spell? What if it sends me careening back to that other place, that other me? To Jimmy Finn, swallowed up in black.
“So you’re Finn?”
She leans in the doorway, arms crossed tightly at her chest, a small grin curling at one corner of her thick pink lips. A wrinkle forms at a tiny scar above the right side of her mouth as the grin evolves into a sneer. Her eyes, the same eyes from my dreams, wide set and lined in black. They’re harder and full of years, but still that same olive green—deep as the forest around us, gleaming in the pale moonlight of the whites that surround them. Her dark hair is no longer in pigtails, it is cut to her jaw, and surrounds her face with thick, dark curls.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, stepping into the room, her heels clacking against the hardwood floor. Slim legs, sheathed in dark blue denim, stomp past me and carry her to the bench where Arthur sits.
She whispers something into his ear, keeping her eyes on me, intense and unforgiving.
Arthur turns on the piano bench and takes her hand. “I fear our young Finn has had a hard time of discovering himself, all alone out there in the world,” Arthur says. “He has a right to know, Emma.”
She crosses her arms again, the black leather of her sleeves creaking.
“But what is he doing here? Now. After thirty years.” Then, directly to me, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
It hits like a bullet right between my ribs.
“I . . .”
Arthur leans back from the piano and gives her solemn look.
“Language, please, Emma! We do not disparage or disallow the misfortune of family.”
“We have enough misfortune in this family without him.”
She stomps past me again. There is something false about her rage, something off about the smell of her. Something delicious and enticing. I close my eyes and see bare legs running with fresh blood, I feel some new fire rage through me, some new hunger, something bubbling and roiling from the middle of me. I want to reach up and grab those legs. I want to pull her to the floor and melt into her. Instead, I watch her disappear through the door and around the corner, totally disregarding the giant bear looming outside, ready to strike.
Arthur is at my side, a hand on my shoulder to warn me back.
“I apologize, my boy. Emma is the jewel of my existence, but she is also a very strong-willed young lady.”
“We’re not so young anymore, you know. If I’m thirty-five . . .”
Arthur unleashes his wide, maniacal smile again.
“That would depend on how long you live then, hmm?”
Those wild eyes are dancing, waiting to unleash one more secret.
“How old are you, Arthur?” He’s spry for a great-uncle, or a grandfather to a thirty-something. A spry seventy-something?
“I am one hundred and twenty-six years old.”
The number of teeth behind his lips seems to double. My own teeth feel like they’ve dropped out of my mouth en masse and lodged in my throat.
“There are many advantages to being a member of this family, Finn. Many advantages.”
He pats my shoulder and leads me back to the piano.
“You mustn’t let Emma bother you. She was very fond of you when you were children and heartbroken when you were taken from us. You had a special bond. Very best of friends.”
“Finish the story. What happened to my father?”
“Your father is the least of the story, my boy. He eventually came to his senses. Too late, I’m afraid, to mend broken fences, but he at least survived his madness. You see, if we deny our nature, if we don’t embrace the change, it will take us regardless of our will. By my own estimation, every seven years or so. We are overcome with our animal urges and succumb to a fever of the mind. Violence, misery, and terrible misfortune are bound to follow. Oonagh and Sean, they succumbed. Your father? He was never the same, but he survived to learn that lesson.”
Madness. Monsters in the woods. Evil loose in the night. Dressed of fur. Fierce of tooth.
Monsters. Not heroes.
21
“GET OUT HERE, bitch!”
Arthur stops playing again.
“NOW, Emma!”
I know the voice. I feel the heat in my crotch and remember the anger, the eyes so much like my own.
Arthur pops up from the piano bench, a look of outrage on his face.
“My word!” He growls, reaching for his cane and limping off into the hallway faster than I can follow, “What on Earth has gotten into this family to
day!”
I join him at the wide window, overlooking the front of the house, where cousin Jules, fully dressed but no less furious than when I’d last seen her, is screaming profanities. There are two younger male versions of her—lithe, blonde—standing on either side, twelve years old, maybe. Twins. They could be photocopies of my own younger self. Black birds—ravens, starlings—dot the lawn around them, scrambling, pecking at the ground.
“Your cousins,” Arthur whispers over his shoulder.
“Yeah, we’ve met. Jules, anyways. Very . . . umm . . .”
“Quite forceful, that one. Much wilder than the rest.”
“That’s Kevin and Jamie? The brothers?”
The two boys stand, quietly curious more than anything else, their heads moving in unison as they regard their surroundings, on the lookout for something. Sniffing at the air, eyes bouncing to their periphery.
“Indeed. Good boys. Quite unlike their sister, dare I say, much less malevolent. Quiet. Especially since their mother’s passing.”
Where the hell was I that everyone was dropping like flies, going mad, and ravaging townspeople? It’s like a goddamn Frankenstein movie. Next thing I knew there’d be fat, pink waitresses with torches and pitchforks coming over the hill, shouting religious motivational slogans. God Hates Clinical Lycanthropy
“I’m going out there.”
Arthur lays his cane across my path.
“I would not, Finn. No good can come of it.”
“She’s nuts. Somebody has to talk her down.”
Arthur nods toward the window, where the top of Emma’s head pops into sight on the veranda.
The brothers suddenly stand a little straighter, widening their shoulders and fluffing at their hair. Cute.
“What do you want, Julie?”
“What did you call me, cunt?” Jules shouts.
“Well, I didn’t call you a cunt, did I, Julie?”
Jules’ eyes widen with rage, her fists balled at her sides, shoulders hunched. I’ve seen this stance before.
I’m not about to let Emma get tossed around like a piece of furniture in a strip club store room.
I bounce down the stairs before Arthur can get another word out.
As I hit the doorway, Emma framed in harsh daylight in front of me, there comes another voice, deeper, refined. Calm and soft, yet darkly commanding. Properly English.
“Now, ladies,” it says. “Let us not say something we might regret.”
Jules shouts across the yard, “You said he was mine! What the fuck, Simon? You said he was meant to be my mate, not hers!”
Jules swings a manicured nail toward Emma, “You hear that, bitch? He’s mine! You’re not the fucking Alpha around here anymore.”
The birds take flight and swirl overhead, scared by the noise or stirred by her fury. I can’t tell.
“Jules,” the stranger coos, “I am sure that we can address this matter in private. Why don’t you and the boys head home now, and allow me a few moments with my wife?”
Wife? Who? Emma?
I step out into the light, blinking against the glare and quietly present myself, more to get a look at this new player than anything else.
“Ah! At long last,” he says, stepping up to wrap an arm around Emma, whose arms immediately drop to her sides, limp, before reanimating and climbing like snakes to wrap around this man.
“Simon!” Jules is hollering. Nobody is paying attention.
He is especially tall and thin, draped in a long black coat, tailored to fit close, making him look even taller. He has a wild mane of black curls and a long face. His nose and lips seem large, but they give his face a plasticine kindness. He’s like an overgrown Goth kid, all gangly limbs and black Doc Martens.
“Mister MacTyre,” he says to me, extending a hand full of long, bony fingers. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Simon Magus, Master of Bensonhall.”
“Another cousin?” I ask, staring at the narrow palm of his hand, noticing that there are rings on every one of his fingers.
“Not quite. Not in the biblical sense, if you will.” He laughs, a genuine and gentle sound that puts me off guard. “I am Emma’s husband and, thereby, lord of the manor, as it were.”
My heart sinks, but something else takes its place, something hot and prickly, spikes piercing the skin and forcing their way out into the air, radiating the heat from inside me. The human part of my brain wants to like this man, wants to immediately accept him, but the other part of me . . . I look into his dark eyes and past the unassuming face. I sniff at the air round him. I smell it, hidden and secret. He smells like death, and rot.
I take the hand, holding firm, letting my new-found power find its way into my fingers.
“Quite a grip you have there, Finn,” he says.
I flash the family smile, mad and toothy. I want this man’s life draining at my teeth.
I see a glint of doubt behind his black eyes. He backs away, still gripping Emma to him.
“Well, where are my manners? Welcome, Finn. Welcome!” he says, waving his free arm around the place. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here with us. I believe you’ll find we’ve provided every amenity.” He smiles, a quiet, unassuming smile.
“Hey! Motherfucker! What are you going to do about this? You lying sack of shit!”
The birds are still whirling overhead, but they don’t seem to come any closer to the house than the edge of the drive.
He keeps an unsure eye on me as he turns to Jules, still fuming in the driveway, still flanked by her brothers, silent eyes shooting daggers at the thin man.
He waves a long hand at Jules, and the rage seems to dissolve from her, into the air.
“Jules, please. Do behave yourself and show some regard for your long lost cousin?”
“Oh, we already met in town,” I say, letting the words drip off of my longest teeth, willing him to see what I see, his throat torn open on the ground in front of me.
“Ah!” He laughs, regaining his smooth composure. “Then I suppose you have already borne witness to her . . . precociousness?”
Jules is still standing expressionless, like she’s sleepwalking. Her brothers look confused. The birds swirl higher and then disperse, winging off in all directions.
Magus calls out, “Mister McQueen!”
A wild-looking man pops up from behind the SUV furthest from the drive, a small crossbow in his hands, which he swings onto his shoulder, casually. I know this man. I know his stench.
He smiles at me through the dark scrub that covers his face, tosses me a salute. His long dark hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail. He’s no longer covered in hospital blue, but filthy jeans and a leather vest over brown skin covered with dirt and hair.
“Hiya mate,” he winks. “Looks like you made it out of there before they roasted your ol’ chestnuts, hey?”
“McQueen,” Magus cuts him off. “Would you be so kind as to take Jules and the boys back home?”
“How long’ll she be out, boss?”
“Long enough, I would imagine,” he replies over his shoulder, grinning amiably at me.
McQueen moves off, with his crossbow on the two boys, herding them ahead of him, as he carries cousin Jules over his shoulder like a dead trophy.
The thin man laughs and steps past me with Emma still wrapped around him, like a little girl hugging her daddy. He stops, turns her face toward him, sleepy and strange.
She moans softly and presses her lips to his. I cringe.
Simon Magus turns to me, raises one thin eyebrow, and lets one side of his lips curl up.
“Welcome home, little Finn.”
22
I’M ABOUT TO tackle mister tall, dark, and full-of-himself and rip him apart, when Arthur’s cane crosses my chest, the thick, silver handle pressed into the tiny patch of exposed skin at the nape of my neck. A cool breeze seems to roll through my veins, moving out from my chest into my head and out to my extremities. My fists unclench, and the rage and the bloodthirst leave me
in a heartbeat. My head clears, and I’m looking down into the face of my great-uncle, who quickly ushers me down the stairs and across the drive, out into the grass. I can see McQueen driving his captives across the little bridge and toward the cabins on the other side.
“We should help them.”
He shushes me with his stick, pressing it to my lips. The metal is cool and immediately calming in a way I can’t explain.
“Not now, Finn. Not now. The time will come, my boy.”
“But Jules . . . That fucking ape, he’s going to . . .”
Arthur grips my arm. Pulls me close to whisper in my ear.
“He is watching us, my boy. If he suspects anything, if he chances to guess that you know more than he is comfortable with . . . nothing will save our Jules, or poor Emma. We must play along. For now.”
I glance up at a figure in the big window in the top floor of the house. Magus is watching.
“What the fuck is going on around here?”
“All will be revealed soon enough. He has, no doubt, summoned you here for his own nefarious purposes. Little does he understand what he’s actually dealing with. Strong Wolves, Finn. Strong Wolves. And a strong wolf leads from behind the pack.”
“Dressed of fur and fierce of teeth . . .” I add, almost by reflex.
Arthur steps back, looks to the window, and then pulls me along beside him as he walks, stumping along on his cane. I see it now. It’s a show for Magus. The crippled old man.
“Where did you hear that?” Arthur asks.
“Hear what?”
“That phrase—dressed of fur, fierce of tooth.”
I shrug, “My mother used to say it, I think. It’s been caught in my head for the last long while. I can’t seem to get rid of it. What is it?”
“It’s an ancient story, Finn. Ancient indeed.”
“King Airitech.”
Arthur stops again, glances around nervously.
“Yes. But what does it mean, Finn?”
“It’s a story, right? A myth? The king had three daughters who became wolves. They were speared by the hunters for eating the sheep. They lured them out with harp music? My friend Devil told me.”
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