Hair of the Wolf

by Peter J. Wacks

  She stood, a faint black outline against the lights of the cityscape. “This is about survival, not just happiness.”

  Head tucked into his hands, Jonathan sat on the building’s edge, shoulders shaking. “We said till death do us part. Till death.”

  “We already spoke of this. The vow isn’t ‘until cessation of conscious thought.’ It was death. Jon, I’m sorry. Don’t look for me. I will find you when I am ready to talk again.”

  “So that’s it? You’re just going to disappear into the night until you decide to come back to me? No way for me to do anything about it?” He was answered with silence.

  He slammed a fist into the wall beside him, cracking the bricks. The reality of it hit home. He was alone. Wiping at the tears running down his face, he sucked in a breath and straightened his back, refusing to succumb to the depression that threatened to reduce him to a quivering pile of crying vampire.

  ***

  Clotho the Moirai

  Stars glittered below their feet as the three sisters walked the Web of Fate. Something was amiss, not right. Strands were thrumming that should be still and others were outright disappearing.

  “What is this?” Clotho knelt, holding her staff firmly to stay balanced.

  Atropos bounced in place as the threads vibrated, clutching her shears. “Sisters, what shall I snip, what is going on?”

  Clotho grunted, watching Lachesis frantically struggle with her bag of threads, looking for something to adjust the pattern. “It is an anomaly.” The crone spoke to her sisters. “A mortal has altered our design and the entire pattern is trying to adjust.”

  “Dammit!” Lachesis held a strand up, studying it briefly before discarding it. “I can’t find a bridge thread! It’s that damned Crowley! He is directly altering his own Fate! You should have let me at him ten years ago, I would have had him too tied up in afterglow to pull a stunt like this.” She threw away another strand, digging for more.

  “No running with scissors!” Lachesis barked at her youngest sister.

  Atropos froze in her tracks and quickly hid the shears behind her back, the expression crossing her face proclaiming innocence. She looked up shyly. “No snippity snip?”

  Clotho chuckled. “We gave him the thread so the pattern would be beyond our control, and therefore beyond the control of the other who would manipulate it. It was a gamble, and we knew it would cause problems for us.”

  Lachesis responded. “No, Clotho, you were right to spin him his own thread. His actions being beyond our control is the only way to change the design. It’s just annoying.” The Web continued to vibrating, the thrums of Fate being altered gaining intensity.

  Clotho lightly brushed her fingers across the strands, gazing at the stars beyond. “Damn fool mortal is about to get himself killed.”

  The other two sisters froze in shock. Lachesis gasped. “No. He can’t!” Her frantic digging through the threads in her purse doubled in intensity.

  Clotho frowned. “I see the design. The threads yearn to be woven …” a sigh escaped her frail frame. “Farewell sisters.” Lachesis stepped between the threads of the Web of Fate to the stars beyond, vanishing.

  The other two sisters stared in shock. She had left the pattern to alter the world physically. None of the three had ever done that before. Atropos and Lachesis stared at each other.

  “Bugger that!” Lachesis stepped off the web. “Come on, little sis.”

  ***

  Robert Crowley

  Robert pulled his hand out of his jeans pocket, uncurling his fist as he brought it up to his chin, and blew. Silver dust mixed with salt, blessed by ritual for a fortnight, puffed into the air.

  Elizabeth Bathory shrieked, recoiling from the powder. “Asshole! That stung.” Fog swirled in the empty space where Bathory had been standing.

  Robert blinked. Did she really just move that fast? On instinct along he lunged forward. The fog was just fog now that he had broken Vlad Tepes’ hypnotic gaze. Bathory’s foot clipped the back of his ankle as she tried to sweep kick his feet out from under him. The force shattered his ankle and he collapsed.

  “Ready to die, food?” The female vampire spat at him. Just a few feet away, Tepes was curled into a ball moaning in pain.

  Robert filed away the reaction Tepes was having to the broken gaze while responding to Elizabeth. The pain was illusory, easy to ignore for him. The peyote button he had taken earlier had raised his state beyond the physical. “You seem fixated on calling me food. You may have an eating disorder, you know.”

  Sashaying up to Robert’s prone form, her white suit practically glowing, Elizabeth stood over her prone prey. “You won’t bait me so easily, little human. I am a centuries old creature of the Night, infinite in my experience and wisdom. You may be cunning, but you only have the experience of one lifetime to guide you.”

  Grinning, he replied, “Is that so?”

  She knelt over him. “Yes, food. That is so. You are a helpless mortal, whereas I am practically a god.”

  Robert felt warmth spread from his neck as she leaned in close and licked it. Perfect. He ripped the talisman from his neck and jabbed it into her eye. Blood and ichor sprayed out from her face as her eye exploded.

  Elizabeth jerked backwards, screaming. Ash floated from her head as the skin on her forehead, temple, and cheek ignited, burning away the right side of her face.

  Robert grunted, forcing himself up to his knee. Dammit. That should have killed her.

  The Vampire thrashed on the ground and Robert hobbled his way towards her. The peyote button wasn’t doing the job it should be, and he was fighting his body to keep it cooperating, but he pushed through. It was time to finish the job. Standing over her, careful not to let her thrashing form take him back to the ground, he raised the talisman.

  A grip like steel closed around his wrist and a soft voice spoke next to his ear. “Never turn your back on a Lord of the Night, foolish little snack.” Vlad’s other hand came around from behind him and clamped around his throat. The talisman fell from his grip and clattered to the ground as Robert felt himself lifted into the air by his wrist and throat. “I hope you are prepared to meet your maker.”

  “Megr Hr lred … Hrg tggt m n oo ologgg …” Robert choked.

  “I suppose I can grant you last words,” Vlad loosened his grip slightly. “Now what did you say?”

  Gasping for air, Robert spoke while reaching for his pocket. “I said, I met him already. He taught me not to monologue.” He slapped Vlad’s hand, and the powder he had grabbed, against the chokehold. Rather than getting dropped, as he had hoped, Robert found himself hurtling sideways through the air. Bushes caught his calves and he fell to the ground.

  Vlad yelled and shook his hand wildly as it erupted in fire. The fire was covering Vlad now, but not consuming him. Robert grinned—the salt and silver combination was special. Years of preparation had gone into it as he had traveled the world, gathering water from holy places to infuse the mix. The powder may have just been a small mix, but psychically it was the equivalent of bringing a tank to a knife fight.

  Robert did his best to recover quickly. Taking quick stock of the situation, he saw that Elizabeth was struggling to get up, though not very successfully, and Vlad, while injured, was far from down for the count. He grunted, struggling against the pain in his ankle through the peyote haze. He had to recover the talisman. Letting his thread fall into someone else’s hand would be disastrous.

  ***

  Clotho the Moirai

  Stars soared by as Clotho hurled towards the reality below. Gods travelled through concepts, not space. The time to get from the concept of racial memory to a single conflict at night was vast, like trying to spot a falcon while staring at a sunny sky. Fate was different though. Fate didn’t have to spot the falcon, Fate just had to know where the falcon would be, and keep a watchful eye out. The Spinner of the Threads of Fate had very good eyes indeed.

  ***

  Elizabeth Bathory

&nbs
p; Fire raged across her face and through her veins. Every effort made was a fight against the pain. Whatever that damned food had stabbed her with hurt like a bitch. She struggled to her knees and opened her good eye. Vlad was dancing in pain like a madman, shaking his hand. She could smell the silver and salt on him from here, but there was something more in it. Something deadly.

  Food shouldn’t know about tricks like that. Her Lord, Vladimyr Tepes, had sent Renfield into the world to have that stupid book written just so that they could avoid these situations. The food should have tried garlic or something else equally ineffective. Speaking of food …

  She looked around, struggling to ignore the pain in the right half of her face. There he was, fighting to stand up, tangled in the shrubbery next to the sidewalk. Focusing her will, she fought her way up to her feet. The food would pay, and dearly at that. Stumbling forward, she began to move towards the prey. Every step gave her more strength.

  She stopped briefly by Vlad, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “Will you be okay, dearest?”

  Vlad recoiled a little when he saw her face. “I shall. And you?”

  She nodded. They turned towards Robert, amused through their pain at his feeble struggles to untangle himself. And both froze.

  A light, as intense as a thousand suns, though only about six feet around, appeared between them and the food. Disembodied and apparently coming from the light, a voice echoed, “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit ohshitohshit …” Something vaguely human sized pulsed in the light.

  The concrete below the contained explosion cracked loudly, then shattered and erupted outwards. Detritus went flying in every direction and the light refracted, splitting in two and floating gently to either side of the crater.

  An old woman, clutching a walking stick for balance, stood from the impact. “Hello dearies.” She glanced left and right, then sighed, obviously put upon. “You followed me. You weren’t supposed to follow me.”

  Much more gently the light that had drifted to the right of the crone pulsed once and a woman in her thirties—with the sparkle of mischief in her eyes—stepped out. “Well, you didn’t tell us not to, did you?” She smirked and started digging through her handbag.

  Bathory didn’t wait for the third light to reveal its occupant. She knew what was coming and lunged straight for it.

  Vlad had the same idea as her, though he went for the crone. “Welcome to Earth, sisters Moirai!”

  A little girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, stepped from the third light just as Bathory landed in the space. The Vampire tackled the child Goddess, the two going down in a tangle of limbs. While the two scrapped, Vlad squared off with the two elder sisters. The food lying in the shrubs was frozen in shock, barely visible on the edge of the thickening fog.

  Vladimyr, fended off a swift swat of Clotho’s cane, put his back to Bathory, facing the two Moirai, crouching low. With a flick of his wrists, his fingernails extended, becoming six inch long razor sharp poisoned blades. “Shall we dance, ladies?” The Vampire snarled.

  Clotho smacked her cane against the ground, crossing her wrists and folding her hands over the cane’s head. “Go help your little sister, Lachesis, I’ll handle this.”

  The middle sister nodded curtly, “Yes, ma’am.” She started to move past Vlad, challenging him with her eyes.

  Vlad quickly looked down, watching the feet of the divinities. “You think you will catch me in a Gaze? Ha.” He darted to the side, swiping deadly claws at Lachesis.

  Bound by mortal law while on the physical plane, Lachesis couldn’t let herself be hit with those claws. Pirouetting in place, she spun in a low circle that matched the trajectory of his attack, lightly raising a hand to deflect the claws. Lightning arced from the brief touch between Vampire and Goddess.

  Vlad ducked to the side, dodging an attack from Clotho, rolling quickly out of the way as a knitting needle slashed through the air where his head would have been. The tricky bitch of a crone had attacked him from behind. Planting one hand on the ground, he flipped out of the roll and stomped down on Lachesis’s knee. They were fast, but he was faster.

  The Goddess screamed as her knee smashed into the sidewalk. Both knee and concrete slab shattered. Vlad spun around and caught the needle Clotho was slashing at his back with. “Bitch. You can’t fight in the real world. Go back to your smoke-and-mirrors house in the stars.”

  Struggling against his iron grip, trying to free the needle, Clotho gasped. “There is something you are forgetting about old women who knit, Vladimyr Tepes.”

  He stomped down again on Lachesis, breaking her femur with a loud crack. The Goddess sobbed, immobile in the face of physical pain, a sensation she had never before felt. “And what is that, crone?” Vlad taunted Lachesis.

  Clotho flicked the fingers of her right hand and jabbed forward at the Vampire’s wrist. “We tend to carry two needles to knit with, deary.”

  Vlad screamed in horrified agony as the second needle pierced his wrist. Fire erupted from the wound, gouting around the impaling knitting needle. She jerked the needle out and jabbed forward again, catching him in the forearm. Jacket and limb aflame, Vlad cradled his useless left arm. “Bitch!” he spat.

  Clotho froze in shock, her body stiffening. Vlad hunched back, watching her suspiciously. The crone gasped, weakly slamming her cane once in the ground. “To safety with you,” she gasped. Robert, Lachesis, and the light behind her vanished. The old woman, suddenly showing her eons of age, stumbled forward.

  Elizabeth Bathory, sans one eye and with her skull showing through the ravaged right side of her face, rose from behind the stumbling Goddess. Clotho fell forward to the ground.

  Bathory swung pair of scissors around her finger, droplets of golden blood flying off the blades used to cut the Threads of Fate. “Well, lover. Looks like we have a new toy.” She kicked the body.

  Lightning began to spark from the prone form, mini arcs of electricity that jumped from body to surrounding shrubs and lamp posts. The Vampires looked at each other and simultaneously backed up. They watched the body between them with fascination. The wound in the center of her back, where Bathory had shanked her with the scissors, spat bursts of golden light which intensified into a fusillade of lightning bolts.

  The air began to hum. Lightning sparked. And the fiery radiance grew, enveloping Lachesis’s body. In a flash of fire the dead Goddess vanished, leaving only a burnt outline on the cracked sidewalk. The two blinked in surprise.

  Injured beyond the abilities of a mortal to survive, the two just stared at each other for a moment. Vlad broke the silence first, laughing. Had Fate still been alive to guide the story of the universe, it would have been an evil laugh of triumph. Instead, it was just the laugh of someone too hurt, too tired, and too surprised that they were still alive. He moved forward, embracing the shocked Elizabeth. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, her shoulders shook as she joined his laughter.

  The two stood like that for a while, Elizabeth’s laughter fading to tears with Vlad just holding and comforting her. He leaned back, brushing the hair away from her undamaged eye. “You okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He said. “Let’s go get some food so we can heal. What do you feel like tonight?”

  She sniffled a little, wiping at her face with her arm. Her white pant suit was wrecked, between the spatters of human blood, god blood, and dirt. She tried sucking at one of the golden droplets staining her jacket, then spat disgustedly. “That tastes foul.”

  Vlad’s brows furrowed in confusion. He had tasted divine blood once before. It had been the singular most empowering and delicious moment of his life.

  She sighed. “Let’s just have Chinese.”

  ***

  1999

  ***

  Lilith

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Lilith fumed as she stormed into the pizzeria. Time froze around her.

  Loki paused, a slice of pepperoni pizza halfway to his mouth. “Um. I don’t know? M
aybe if you gave me a frame of reference about what you are talking about. I’m not a mind reader, you know. Well, actually, I suppose I am a mind reader, when I want to waste my powers on such a ridiculous effort. It’s pointless to read someone’s mind considering that people so rarely know themselves what they are thinking. I mean—”

  “Enough blabbering!” Lilith slammed a hand down on the table, knocking over the cayenne pepper and parmesan dispensers. “Your shaman scion and that damned vampire. How could you endanger our plans by letting them know each other?”

  Loki blinked, then took a bite of his pizza, chewing thoroughly. “That was, like, twenty years ago when they met. You’re just now catching on? Wow. Just wow. You are the embodiment of woman, of cunning, of intuition, and of seduction. And you’re telling me it took you, with all those tools, two decades to pick up on that one? Not feeling like yourself, Lilith?”

  She leaned on the table, her nails digging into the Formica tabletop. “I trusted you. That’s why I didn’t notice. You were supposed to keep them separate. If you had done that, Tepes and Bathory would have been so obsessed with chasing down Jon and Mina that Bathory’s inevitable push to take out the elder generation of werewolves would have fractured them. We came up with this together, you ass, so that when we went after Kaine they wouldn’t be by his side.”

  “Actually, we didn’t.”

  Lilith’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Excuse me?”

  Loki finished another bite of the Pizza. “Nothing beats a fresh slice, lemme tell you. Just, mm.”

  Lilith slapped the pizza out of his hand. “We didn’t what?”

  Loki frowned, watching as the slice of pizza hit the frozen time of the rest of the world and froze in midair. He sighed and looked back at Lilith. “We didn’t come up with it together. You decided it, I fought against it. I tried to show you other ways, but you manipulated me.”

  Formica cracked as Lilith listened.

  “As a matter of fact, Lilith, I’m not the only one that strayed from the plan that you came up with. You think I didn’t spot you as Lilly in that coffee shop? You thought I miss you breaking Mina and Jon apart? Though, I admit, it was a good move. They are both stronger for it. So, what is your real game? Care to share? Are we still even fighting for the same thing?”