by S. A. Swann
“Your God will forgive you?”
“What?”
“Your God will forgive your sins?”
“If I truly repent and do penance.”
Lilly looked up at him with shimmering green eyes. “You are the only God I have. Will you forgive me?”
Erhard took a step back from her. “Don't speak such blasphemy.”
“I'm giving my life in penance for my sins. Are you so cruel to deny me absolution?”
“You cannot ask for absolution.”
“Why?”
“Because animals have no souls.”
Lilly looked down at the floor.
“Why?” Erhard repeated. “Why did you escape?”
“Because I am an animal,” Lilly said. “Because I have no soul. Because I am beyond the forgiveness of even the men who raised me.”
“Lilly—”
“Kill me and be done with it!” she screamed. And in that moment, Erhard didn't see the creature he had trained, the wolf thing that Brother Semyon had bequeathed to him. He couldn't see the emotionless thing he had taken from battle to battle.
What he saw was all too human.
No, the Church ruled on what they were. Just animals ...
But the pope had changed that ruling. What basis did Erhard have now to say what she was? If she could ask to receive God—
“The bishop is right,” he whispered. “You are born of the Father of Lies. You've twisted me against the Church, against God. You are the work of the devil.”
Lilly shook her head. “You did this to me!”
“I have been misled.” Erhard backed to the door, staring at the naked succubus, beating down every sympathetic impulse, every merciful thought.
“You told me I was serving your God!”
Erhard didn't trust himself to say anything more. He knocked on the door so the guard would let him out.
The confusion in Lilly's face was painful to see. Erhard turned away from her as the door opened. As he left, he heard her call out, “If I belong to the devil, it is because you gave me to him!”
Then the guard closed the door behind him and Erhard was able to breathe a sigh of relief. But only for a moment.
“Brother Erhard,” spoke a painfully familiar voice.
Erhard looked up. “Your Grace.”
The bishop stood in the hallway, his rich clothes and jewels giving him the appearance of a grotesque apparition in the plain stone corridor. He smiled at Erhard. “I see your Sergeant Günter spoke truth. The beast is again in your hands.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I heard some of your conversation.”
“I see.”
“You've satisfied yourself of your error?”
“Your Grace has proved wiser than I in this matter.”
The bishop chuckled to himself. Erhard couldn't help but think it unseemly.
“I am about to order her execution,” Erhard said.
“You forget that I now dispense authority in Johannisburg. I shall direct the disposition of any prisoners.”
Erhard bent his head. “Forgive my imposition. What would you have me do?”
“She will meet her fate with those who gave her succor. My inquisitor has identified the family that fed and clothed her, and they will all face the flames as one.”
When the bishop said that the family belonged to the young man, Uldolf, Erhard found that he was not surprised.
***
“Come with us.”
In response to the broken Prûsan, Uldolf looked up from the floor and saw a quartet of armed men. The one speaking wore the black cross of the Order. Uldolf stared a moment at the unfamiliar knight and said, “I am supposed to see my family.”
“You will see them, in time.”
He looked at the four of them and realized that this was not going to go well. But since there was little else he could do, he stood and said, “Take me, then.”
The four men arranged themselves on both sides of him, making sure he followed precisely where they led. Uldolf asked them where they were going, but the men were unresponsive.
He was only partly surprised when they took him outside, across the bailey, and toward the keep. He looked across at the mass of Prûsans still gathered here. Seeing the prisoners extinguished whatever small hope he had that giving the Germans their monster might have ended this nightmare. He saw a few faces he recognized—mostly farmers for whom he had done leatherwork.
More frightening was what was happening on the other side of the bailey, by the walls of the keep itself. A rough platform had been erected about waist height off the ground. In the middle of the platform, four stakes half again as tall as a man formed the outline of a diamond. Men piled wood around the base of the platform and the stakes. Uldolf looked from the stakes, back to the crowd, and saw in his countrymen's eyes all he needed to know.
For the briefest instant, as the stone pile of the keep towered over him, he considered trying to run for it. It was only the briefest of flashes. Even if there weren't four guards escorting him, there was nowhere to run to. Then they led him through the door to the keep, and he lost even the illusion of escape.
Chapter 29
Uldolf...
Ulfie ...
The bishop's words, from beyond the cell door, burned into Lilly like acid dripping on her skin. They were going to kill Ulfie and his family for the crime of helping her. Because of her, Ulfie was going to be hurt again.
She closed her eyes and wished she had the ability to simply will her heart to stop beating. She curled into a shaking ball, the stone floor cold against her skin.
“Stop it.”
She surprised herself by speaking. She froze a few moments waiting for the other one to take over. It took a few seconds to realize that there wasn't another, not anymore. She sucked in a deep breath and thought back, remembering herself.
Rarely did she try to think back on what she did. The killer was someone else, something else.
But it wasn't.
She was that bloodthirsty thing that killed without thought or remorse. And worse, the thing was here with her now—Lilly could tell because the thought of the guards she had beaten earlier made her smile.
Why was she so frightened of herself? The single greatest regret of her life, what she had done to Uldolf and his family, didn't happen because she was a monster. No, she might be a bloodthirsty animal, but she had hurt Uldolf because she had been weak. She had been too weak to say no to her master. If she had been stronger ...
She realized that she was being weak now.
She had given up.
Uldolf deserved more.
She deserved more.
And dear master Erhard certainly deserved more.
She wiggled and brought herself up into a sitting position. Uldolf had done a very good job of restraining her, enough that the Order hadn't elaborated upon it. Thick leather straps wrapped her legs from the knees down, painfully tight. With a little leverage, she might have been able to pull apart one or two thicknesses of it, but not a dozen.
So she wouldn't force it.
She rolled on her back, lifting her legs up and folding them over. With her arms bound behind her back, it was difficult, and she had to rock back and
forth several times, almost falling over twice. But eventually she got the top of her feet to touch her forehead, and she grabbed a length of the horse-flavored leather in her teeth.
Even her human jaws regularly chewed through bone, so gnawing through the leather was not terribly difficult. It was more difficult contorting herself to reach the straps with her mouth. But by the third one, the binds loosened, and she was able to scissor her legs apart, leaving the greater part of the leather to spiral off of her legs.
She panted from the exertion and lowered her legs to the ground. Sweat covered her legs and torso, and she tasted blood and shreds of leather in her mouth.
Her arms were still tightly wrapped, bound behind her back, the leather tied too hi
gh up her forearms to allow her to pull her arms around in front of her.
Time was leaking away and she had committed herself. She couldn't be half free when the guards came for her.
She sat up, felt around, and found the massive staple in the floor that had once held the chains binding her leg. She backed up to it and grabbed the ring with both hands and thought of her options.
With a grip on the ring, she could force her arms the wrong way over her head. It would be painful, but she would heal from the damage. Only she didn't know how quickly. Losing a foot wasn't too critical, but severely dislocating both arms? Thinking of her foot made her aware of another option. If she lost one hand, wedging it in the ring and pulling her wrist free, that would give her some slack to pull her arms loose. But that had the same problem; her hand might not grow back before they came.
If she could only change. As strong as she was now, as the wolf she was stronger. It was the silver wrapping her neck that truly bound her. She could remember vainly stabbing at this tore with the dagger. The cuts the silver blade had made in her neck still stung with her sweat. It had taken Uldolf prying at the hinge to get it off.
But this was the same tore, wasn't it? It must have been weakened.
She felt the iron staple anchored into the stone floor of her cell. It was hard—harder than the silver she wore. She slid down, the grit on the floor digging into the skin of her legs and her backside. She stopped when she was on her back, the back of her neck resting on the staple as if it was some torturer's pillow.
The hinge was on the back of the tore, and she did her best to center it on the staple. She sucked in a breath and slowly sat up, stomach tensing as she pulled her torso up and bent forward as far as she could.
It would be bad to miss.
“But,” she whispered to herself, “I am not going to miss.”
She sucked in a deep breath, tucked her chin to her chest, tensed her muscles, and threw her torso back as hard and as fast as she could manage. The back of the tore slammed into the iron staple with a force that cracked her neck like a whip. The impact reverberated through her skull, throwing dancing lights across her vision.
She lay there, stunned, every muscle and tendon between her jaw and her shoulder blades locked in a blinding spasm of pain. Then the tension slowly
released, allowing her head to sag backward. Several moments passed before she could manage to unclench her jaw, and several more before she could sit upright.
When she did, the tore slid off her neck and down across her chest, into her lap. It was too dark to see if the trail it left was sweat or blood.
Even though it hurt, she managed a small smile.
She tried to stand, but was still dizzy from the pain induced by the impact and fell over on her side, the tore rolling off into the darkness.
It's fine, as long as the metal is no longer touching me—
She closed her eyes and willed the wolf into her body.
In response to her desire, her heart hammered, every beat forcing more and more blood through her body, the pulse a pressure against tightening flesh. Her muscles tensed, pulling against lengthening and twisting bone, and began to slide under her flesh with an instinct of their own. Her skin itched as every hair on her body became alive, lengthening, thickening, rippling across her flesh. She felt her teeth grow and sharpen as her jaws pressed outward.
Her breath quickened, and she groaned even though she was trying to be quiet.
There was pain as her body tore at itself and knit itself back together— pain that vibrated through her skin and every fiber of every muscle. Pain that she felt deep in the core of her body. Pain that she welcomed. It tore her apart, but with it also came a blinding ecstasy that could only compare to the climax she'd felt with Uldolf.
The binding of her forearms heightened the pain. She could feel her growing bone, muscle, and flesh pushing against the straps. The leather held her arms against the movement of her joints, trying to tear her arms out of her broadening shoulders. She felt her skin begin to tear, and blood drip onto the fur of her wrists. She heard an anguished creaking sound, and didn't know if it was the leather holding her arms or her own body.
Lilly roughly exhaled as the transformation completed. She rested her muzzle against the floor of her cell, panting. Her forearms were still bound behind her, even more painfully now. She could smell her own blood. And her limbs were so tightly twisted that she had no motion in them at all. Her hands had gone numb.
It felt as if even the wolf in her didn't have the strength to break these bonds.
Lilly entertained a brief thought: attacking the guards as they entered, just as she was. She could do a lot of damage just with her teeth.
But as much as she despised her master now, he had trained her better than that. They would have a choke point at the door, and have five or six men, armed with silver. These men would be prepared, aware of what she was and what she could do. They would look in the cell before opening the door, and if she wasn't docile and bound as they'd left her, they would probably just shoot bolts at her through the door until she stopped moving.
If this was going to work, she couldn't just be stronger than they were. She had to be smarter.
She still heard faint creaking, and now she was sure it was the leather.
Maybe this was enough.
She pulled the wolf back inside herself. It was hard, firing a desperate hunger inside her. Even as her skin pulled back into its human shape, it felt as if she could keep deflating, falling into the burning cavity in her stomach. She realized that she hadn't eaten since yesterday. And now she had changed twice since ...
Even in the dark, she could tell that she was thinner. She could feel the nubs of her spine against her wrists. It was inevitable. Her body had only so many resources. The next time she changed, she was going to be weakened by hunger.
She closed her eyes and told herself that it was just another thing she was going to take into account. It wouldn't matter if she couldn't free herself.
She sucked in a breath and tried to move her arms.
Her transformation didn't break the bonds, but the leather had stretched just enough to allow her now slightly thinner arms to worry themselves free.
She flexed them in front of her, then hugged herself. She only spared a few seconds to allow the freedom of motion. She didn't know how long it would be before they came for their monster, and when they did, she had to be ready.
She felt around the cell floor until she retrieved all the leather straps, and after a few uncomfortable minutes, the silver tore. As she did, she formed the basis of a plan ...
***
Erhard silently prayed as he led seven men back down into the dark halls underneath the keep. Despite a decade believing otherwise, he now knew that as Bishop Cecilio had said, they were about to retrieve an agent of Hell itself. The fact that Lilly had shredded Christian flesh as readily as she had pagan should be enough to show the devil's hand. Erhard knew that now.
“You are the only God I have ...” she had said.
No, she wasn't an animal. An animal cannot blaspheme.
In his heart, Erhard wanted to finish this all now. One quick stroke separating head from shoulders would be enough to end this threat to body and soul. However, God and the bishop had decided to multiply his trials. He could not end things so simply now.
It was punishment for his pride. In his hubris, he had held some hope that if he could just talk to Lilly, she could give him an explanation. She could give him a reason that might acquit him of his role in raising her.
Not until she started uttering such evils did he realize how grave a sin he had been committing. Not simply ten years of nurturing her kind. For that sin, at least, he had the mitigation of his own deception—a deception that extended all the way to the pope. No, his sin, and what he now paid for, was the fact that he sought absolution, and forgiveness, in the eyes of Satan. Instead of looking to God, he had turned to Lilly.
Instead of praying for guidance, he had placed his faith in the words of a demon. He had wanted her to say something that would let him believe that the bishop was wrong, something that would let him believe that he hadn't spent the last decade in the service of the devil.
That arrogance, placing his own will before that of God, weighed now on his soul. A weight that might not be lifted even when he bore Lilly to the pyre, demonstrating the ultimate triumph of God to the Prûsans confined to the bailey.
Erhard was sick at the thought. Not for Lilly's sake, who in Erhard's mind was already consigned to the Lake of Fire, but because Erhard believed the bishop was erring for the sake of spectacle. God commanded that praise and glory be given unto Him, and making such a public display smacked more of giving praise and glory unto Bishop Cecilio.
Perhaps there would be a point in forcefully correcting any errors of the Prûsan natives. However, the bishop wasn't confronting some unrepentant pagan village, recently conquered. These people had all pledged their fealty to the Lord and the Order.
But in the end, what grounds did he have to critique the righteousness of Bishop Cecilio? If they were on a road to Hell now, was Erhard not the one who laid it?
His procession stopped at the end of the corridor to Lilly's cell. Erhard stood and took a few deep breaths. He was not going to allow any more mistakes. Restrained or not, Erhard knew how deadly Lilly was.
The deference she had once shown him would be gone. Even with eight men, there was no room for any sort of complacency.
“You two”—he pointed at two crossbowmen—“take your aim.”
The two men nodded and knelt, bracing one on either corner of the short corridor. The silver heads of their crossbows glinted in the lamplight. They were the best marksmen present at Johannisburg Castle, and Erhard didn't doubt that if they fired, each bolt would find its mark.
Halfway to the door, he told the other men, “Draw swords and hold here for a moment.” He advanced on the door alone, carrying a lantern. He would be the only person in immediate reach when he opened the window and looked into the cell.
