The Wolf of Haskell Hall

by Colleen Shannon

  Was it only last night that he’d awakened to find Delilah hovering over him as she cut his bonds free? He stared blindly into the bright new day, seeing only the image of his blessing and his curse. Why had he not been strong enough to send her away?

  Because she, with her smile, her golden hair, and her inherent optimism, was the very essence of the light he both craved and feared. And her lovemaking….a weary smile stretched his lips. That lovely, feminine body, life incarnate, was more than a repository for his male urges. She was a reliquary, too. A keeper of earthly treasures and intangible dreams.

  In her body, he found peace. Surcease from the torment of his mind and soul.

  And how had he repaid her gift? He knew from the slight ache in his ankles and from a fractured memory of shattering glass that he’d jumped through the tower window.

  A drastic step he’d have taken only if threatened, which meant he must have been attacking the very woman who’d given him such pleasure only a few hours before. He could always remember the beginning of the change. He’d shoved Delilah off like an unwelcome blanket, stupidly watching the hairs grow on the backs of his hands, feeling his fore legs form, his spine lengthen.

  Then a flashing memory of stunned green eyes staring at him in shock and horror. Then…nothing. From that moment to this.

  But as he dug up the small bag of gold he’d hidden for just this emergency, he reflected wearily that at least there was one good thing to come of this debacle. Now that the truth was out, he certainly couldn’t go back.

  He’d never have to face that look again in those lovely, steady green eyes.

  Fear. Or the knowledge that he’d put it there.

  Taking his few belongings and the money pouch with him, he turned to follow that tiny, winding path through the bogs, but then he stopped abruptly and turned back. He couldn’t leave the girl’s body exposed to the elements and scavengers. He didn’t dare take her back to the village, either. But if he just buried her, her family would never know what happened to her.

  He dragged the body down the path to a soft, moss-covered patch of earth, removed her bloody, tattered blouse, and dug a shallow grave in the appropriate manner.

  With his hands. Like a dog.

  When he was finished, he piled up some stones and fashioned a crude cross from a split tree branch. He tied the girl’s bloody, tattered blouse to the cross. He stood, head bowed over her grave, and said a quick prayer. As he stared down at the grave, for a moment he was struck with a feeling so powerful that he staggered.

  Envy. At least she knew the peace that passeth all understanding.

  Bleakly, he stared at the enormous bog lapping almost at his feet. Almost, he stepped into it, knowing he’d sink without a whimper. But he couldn’t do it. Suicide was the act of a coward, and whatever he’d been and done in his lifetime, he’d never been that.

  Shouldering his rucksack, he turned away and mechanically got on with the business of living. One foot steadily in front of another, he fled the scene of his crime. At least this time, he walked upright. Where he went, he was not certain.

  What he would find, he hadn’t a clue.

  But one thing was certain….He was lost, as lost on these moors he knew like the back of his hand as he’d once been in the jungles of the Amazon. This labyrinth offered no thread to guide him out. No Ariadne. Not even his temptress Delilah.

  In this labyrinth, he was the beast. With every monthly gestation of the moon, the creature that was born consumed, piece by piece, all that remained of Ian Griffith.

  For two more nights, the moon was full….

  Late that afternoon, Delilah pulled the stableboy’s breeches over her full hips, ignoring Safira’s continual moaning as she rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. The boy’s boots were a bit large, but padded with two pairs of socks, they’d have to do. Pulling on a shirt, a sweater, and an old jacket, Delilah appraised herself critically.

  “Well, Safira? I don’t look terribly appetizing, do I?” Lil stuck her hair up under the boy’s cap and nodded in satisfaction. How much more practical and comfortable were these clothes than all the laces, frills and corsets her gender were forced to wear.

  Safira only moaned louder before she managed, “M-mistress, do not do this thing, I implore you. How will Jeremy and I get home if something happens to you?”

  “You silly goose. Of course I’ve provided for you in my will. Look on the bright side. If something happens to me, you shan’t have to cast the bones for me, argue with me, worry about me–”

  Safira’s moaning stopped on an indignant hiss. She leaped to her feet so fast that her turban went crooked. “And a fine friend I should be if that’s all I cared about!” She nibbled her full lower lip with white teeth, watching her employer warily.

  But Lil was touched, not angry. “You know that, all too often, you and Jeremy have been my only friends. Certainly the only two I trust.” She straightened Safira’s turban. “Now, listen to your own advice. You are ever going on about destiny, and how we can flee it only so long before it catches up to us. Well, I merely choose to face it on my own terms. If I am to suffer the same fate as the other heiresses, I prefer to look death in the eye and thumb my nose at it rather than cower in the house and wait for it to claim me.” Giving Safira a brisk hug, Lil went to the door.

  Trailing along, Safira murmured, “And Jeremy?”

  Lil stopped dead. “Of course. Once he gets wind of this, he’ll be like a shadow. You must distract him, Safira. If he follows us and scares the wolf away again tonight, it won’t be the wolf who eats him alive.” She and Safira exchanged a wry glance.

  Her rare, lovely gurgle of laughter filled the air. “Miss Holmes will likely make a meal of him, ‘tis true.”

  Laughing, they walked out together. As if their thoughts had conjured him, Jeremy blocked the hallway, legs spread as they’d often been on the quarterdeck, hands propped on scrawny hips. “What mischief be ye brewin’ now, me girls?” His suspicious gaze narrowed on her inappropriate attire.

  Lil glued an innocent look to her face and looked out the window at the darkening gray sky filling with clouds. She stuck the tip of her finger in her mouth, then held the digit up in the air, as if even inside the house she could feel the wind blowing up in a gale. “From the feel of the humidity, there is a storm brewing. You’d best stay in tonight. This is a ladies’…soiree only.”

  Jeremy was not amused. “Hmph! And who be a hostin’ yer party? The devil himself?” When Lil looked away, Jeremy added severely, “The brewin’ storm ain’t got naught to do with the weather. Now see here, ye addlepated miss–”

  Lil walked straight toward Jeremy. When he stood firm, she faked in one direction and went the other. Then she was running down the stairs, ignoring his stern call to wait. She heard Safira’s voice and knew there wasn’t a moment to lose as Jeremy wouldn’t be distracted long.

  She dashed into the salon and found Shelly awaiting her. “Come, quick! Jeremy’s going to try to follow us.”

  Looking as if she’d been stung by a bee, Shelly bolted up and ran out the door the butler barely managed to open in time. In the courtyard, Lil looked around for her curricle, but saw only two horses, saddled and waiting. One the old mare, the other a spirited gelding. Lil looked between the horses and Shelly.

  “You cannot drive a curricle where we’re going,” Shelly said firmly. “In fact, some of it we may have to manage on foot, but at least we can start on horseback.” When Lil opened her mouth to protest, Shelly concluded grimly, “You can ride and keep up with me, or you can stay behind.”

  Lil’s mouth snapped closed. “Who is owner here, might I ask?”

  “You might. If there were time for such games.” But a smile played about Shelly’s lips.

  “Oh, very well. But if I fall off, I shall really slow you down.” Taking a deep breath, Lil approached the mare that looked like a mountain to her. The mare turned her head. The soft brown eyes seemed to give her an encouraging look, a
nd the creature even snuffled at her hand.

  Lil’s fears lessened as she patted the velvety muzzle. “Why are some of them so mean?”

  “Why are some people so mean?” Shelly countered, cupping her hands to offer Lil a step up. “Horses are all different in personality, too. With the exception of stallions, perhaps. They’re rather like rakes. They have two thoughts in their head.”

  As Lil moved to step up, she whispered, “Sex? Or food?”

  “Both. And usually in that order.” Shelly heaved on Lil’s laughter, and the moment was made far less scary for Lil than it might have been.

  Then Lil was straddling the saddle. Shelly adjusted the stirrups as Lil looked around, fascinated. She wasn’t accustomed to being so high, and the mare was so gentle and still that her pounding heartbeat slowed enough for her to tease back, “You know they say something similar of us, do you not?”

  “No doubt. Let’s see…they’d say we think of shopping and eating. In that order.”

  “Sometimes it’s a wonder we share the same earth, much less the same bed.” Lil blushed as she realized what she’d said, but Shelly only nodded and took her own seat.

  As Shelly paused to be sure Lil held the reins correctly, the door burst open and Jeremy exited, Safira panting at his heels as if she’d chased after him. “I’m sorry, mistress, I tried to stop him, but–”

  Jeremy blinked up at Lil. “Now I know ye’ve taken leave o’ yer senses. Goin’ out in the wilds of this heathen place with only a busybody woman fer protection, on horseback no less.”

  Shelly didn’t dignify him with so much as a scathing glance. Instead, she kneed her gelding toward the gate. The mare lurched after them, and Lil was too busy recalling the rhythms of riding–hold the reins evenly, not too tight, not too loose, move with the gentle rocking gait–to spare more than a retort. “Jeremy, you nag worse than a woman.”

  That shut him up. With a last glance over her shoulder, Lil was delighted.to see him standing on the portico, mouth gaping at the ultimate insult.

  Shelly’s honking laugh filled the courtyard. Jeremy gave one last glare at the departing women, turned on his heel in affronted dignity and stalked inside the house.

  But Lil knew him better than that. He’d probably only paused to get his gun. He hated horses, having grown up at sea, but the paths through the moor were so treacherous that, at his tireless, banty-legged pace, he’d probably keep up with them. After all, he only had to follow their tracks. “If we don’t hurry, Jeremy will catch up to us,” she said to Shelly.

  Sighing, resignation in her strong face, Shelly nodded. “He’s a bad penny.”

  “No, Shelly. He’s pure gold behind the tinpot tyrant. You just need to scratch the surface a bit deeper.”

  Shelly led the way as if she didn’t want to further discuss the matter. However, as the two women reached the moors and felt the full force of the wind, Shelly pulled her horse to a stop and turned to Lil. She stuck a hand in her pocket and brought out a handful of cinders, scraping them over Lil’s arms, shoulders, legs, but when she reached for Lil’s face, Lil turned her head away.

  Under Shelly’s disapproving glance, she pulled a looped necklace of silver leaf out of her sweater and showed it to Shelly. “See, I’m prepared, too.”

  “Your pistol?”

  Lil patted her belt. “But no silver bullets. Not that I could…bear to use them, anyway.”

  “We may not have a choice, my dear. I will turn and take you back right now if you do not agree that if it comes down to your life or the wolf’s, you’ll aim for the heart, right through the middle of the rib cage. A shot through the heart is the only way. A wound will simply anger it.”

  “But…you must have a plan beyond just killing it. How could you hope to catch a werewolf alive, otherwise?”

  Shelly hesitated, and then she drew a strange contraption out of a holder attached to the side of her saddle. It looked like a collapsing cane. As Shelly pulled, the gleaming metal lengthened in segments, each piece locking onto the next, until it was fully six feet long. Shelly fetched something else out of her saddlebag and tied it to the end. The lowering sun gleamed on the wicked tip of a syringe filled with a cloudy liquid.

  “It’s a magician’s wand,” Shelly explained. “Given to me by a master magician after I helped him design several new tricks. Can you guess what I’ve filled the syringe with?”

  “Laudanum?” Lil asked hopefully.

  Shelly nodded. “If I can get close enough, there’s enough laudanum in this horse syringe to stun three normal wolves, so surely it can stop one werewolf.”

  “But….what if it takes too long to take effect?”

  Shrugging, Shelly carefully collapsed the strange device. “Then I have my rifle, and I shan’t hesitate to use it.” She capped the syringe and put it back in her bag. “Now we’re agreed? You’ll use your pistol if you have to?”

  Reluctantly, Lil nodded. But as Shelly peered at her in the gloomy, darkening day, she didn’t meet those piercing gray eyes. Instead, she reined her docile mare deeper into the moors. It was time to lead, not follow. Shelly seemed to know where she was going, and Lil realized she was retracing her steps of the other night, hoping to come upon the werewolf in a place it frequented.

  Lil left the details in Shelly’s capable hands, but she wasn’t just along for the ride. Somehow, she had to find Ian, and show him she was all right. That even when he was fully a wolf, he’d hesitated in attacking her. Somewhere within that frightening, savage form, all sinew, hair and bone, was the soul of a poet and a dreamer.

  She’d reach the best of Ian Griffith even if it meant going through the worst of her own fears.

  Some distance back, Jeremy followed the horse tracks, his rolling gait covering the ground swiftly. He had a shotgun strapped to his back, a brace of pistols at his belt, and a sword in one hand. He still felt naked, and none too happy that the sun was tiring of escorting the whirligig earth. But at least that daily dance was something that could be counted on, unlike the whims of a woman.

  Much less two women.

  Especially two women too smart for their own good.

  He’d known the moment he laid eyes on her that Miss Holmes was trouble. It was hardly any wonder the old biddy was a spinster. He tried to picture bedding a woman who spouted theorems instead of nostrums, and wore pants instead of skirts. Even as his mind scoffed at the notion, his lower quarters pricked up in interest, but he only quickened into a lope, as if he could outrun his own thoughts.

  He’d never admit it to himself, much less to anyone else, but Jeremy had always had a soft spot for independent, smart women. Mayhap because he was more than a mite that way his own self. That was why he’d followed Delilah back to England, after he’d sworn never to set foot again in the land of his birth. The miss needed him to keep her in hand.

  As tonight proved, independence could cross the line into stupidity. How could such smart women set out alone on their merry werewolf hunt?

  But they’d be happy enough to see this old salt, he told himself grimly, veering away from a bog just in time, when he pulled their bacon out of the frying pan.

  He just hoped he didn’t land in the fire in the process….

  As abruptly as it blew up, the wind calmed. Normally Lil would have been glad that the threat of rain had ended. But this was not a normal night. It was her first horseback ride in years, her first venture onto the moors…and the first time she hunted a werewolf.

  Eerie stillness descended. The clouds dissipated as night crept through the landscape, shading stagnant pools and marshy ground alike. If not for Shelly’s lead and the mare’s surefootedness as the animal instinctively kept to the firm paths through the quagmires, Lil knew she would have already fallen into a bog.

  But as time wore on, the moon peered above the horizon, and the shadows scattered under its glowing smile. Tonight, it had a tinge of orange. Succulent, it offered both sustenance and surcease from the weary embodiment of the soul that took
such awkward shape in these two-legged, upright creatures. Why do you come into my domain? it seemed to ask, peering down on the interlopers.

  Clamping down on her thoughts, Lil forced herself to look away from that fascinating, glowing orb. Her nerves were stretched to the limit. They’d already reached and passed the place where Shelly had seen the wolf last night, and so far, they’d found no trace of tracks. With the moon so bright above, it was easy to see the marks of deer, and birds, even what looked like fox tracks.

  But nothing large enough, or deep enough, to be wolf tracks. Still, with every rustle of grass and call of night bird, Lil jumped. She was accustomed now to the mare’s soothing gait, and without that fear to distract her, other fears clamored more loudly.

  Was she mad, to come out here after so many others had died on these desolate wastes?

  If she met Ian again in his present form, would he hesitate this time, or go straight for her throat? And if he did, would she be strong enough to shoot him?

  Yet as loudly as common sense protested, her other instincts were more insistent. She could not leave him to his fate. The thought of him awakening, alone, naked, no money, no food, nowhere to go, was enough to keep her facing firmly forward in the saddle. If Shelly’s plan worked, they could take him back to the stables, pen him up in one of the steel-barred stalls until the lunar cycle ended.

  After that? Well, where there was a curse, there was a cure.

  Somehow, she’d find it. With Shelly’s help.

  Shelly drew to a stop so quickly that Lil jolted forward in the saddle as her mare also stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Lil whispered.

  With a shushing finger to her mouth, Shelly cocked her head, listening.

  This time, Lil heard it. A wolf. Howling. They both visually tried to pinpoint the location. Lil’s heart sank. It was over a slight rise, straight past a bog that didn’t look to have any path around it.

  But Shelly was undaunted. She dismounted, pulled her rifle over one shoulder and fixed her strange spear, holding the syringe at the ready. “Stay here,” she mouthed, walking toward the bog. It seemed she was going to immerse herself in the foul mud, but then she turned slightly to the side, and Lil made out a narrow sliver of firm ground, shining darker in the moonlight.