The Wolfman

by Jonathan Maberry

  Sir John pressed his palm to his chest where the silver rapier had stabbed him. He held out his palm to show that it was red with blood. There were splatters of it on the floor. “The wound won’t stay closed as long as the beast is caged.”

  “I should have aimed better!”

  That made his father laugh. “Do you know what wolves do to their unfit young?”

  Another coughing fit tore through Lawrence.

  “It’s purity, really.” Sir John’s eyes were no longer human. The irises had taken on an unnatural yellow tint. As Lawrence watched, his father’s ears grew into points, and when Sir John smiled his fangs gleamed in the moonlight. “Untroubled by conscience. Oh God . . . to be free of it.”

  “Father . . .”

  Sir John opened his eyes. “Sweet animal oblivion.”

  “Lawrence!”

  The cry came from outside the house, drifting through the thick smoke. Sir John and Lawrence both turned toward the sound. Sir John smiled; Lawrence’s mind tottered on the edge of the abyss. No! She could not be here. Not here.

  “Gwen? . . .” He murmured.

  Sir John laughed aloud, and his voice was like thunder. “This is perfect, boy! Now everything will be as it should be. A true pack. An alpha, his pup . . . and now the alpha will have his bitch.”

  Lawrence knew that his father meant it. Sir John’s covetous lust for Gwen had led to Ben’s death and to the damnation that now faced Lawrence this night. Now that he had decided to let the beast have total murderous freedom, Sir John would take whatever he wanted. He had the will, the coldness of mind, and the power to do it. Nothing human could stop him.

  Nothing.

  Something suddenly snapped in Lawrence’s mind. The fear and despair that were wrapped like barbed wire around his soul broke. Weariness dropped away like a discarded garment and all that remained was a towering rage that gave him the power to get off his knees and climb to his feet.

  Sir John was not impressed and mocked him with laughter that shook the heavens.

  Gwen. It was the only thing in Lawrence’s mind. Everything else had been burned down to a screaming howl of bloodlust.

  Sir John’s smile faltered as he saw his son’s eyes change from brown to a yellow that was hotter and brighter than the flames that rose all around them.

  Then Lawrence threw himself at Sir John, slamming into his chest with hands that had already begun to shift and change. The impact was far more savage and powerful than Sir John expected and it drove them backward a dozen steps, sliding and slipping in the blood. Lawrence grabbed his father’s throat and pressed forward with his thumbs, trying to crush Sir John’s windpipe—but his father’s throat thickened beneath his fingers, the tendons expanding to force Lawrence’s hands apart. With a grunt of effort Sir John shoved Lawrence back, and as he did so his own eyes flared from ice blue to hot gold. He snarled with black lips as sharp teeth began tearing through his gums.

  “Lawrence!” Again Gwen’s voice cut through the smoke and the roar of the blaze.

  “The bitch is mine, boy!” Sir John bellowed in a voice that had lost all traces of humanity.

  “Be damned!” Lawrence shouted back and slashed at his father with the claws that had sprouted from each finger. He opened up rents in his father’s clothes and droplets of blood seeded the air. For the first time, Lawrence wanted the change to happen; he willed the monster to emerge so he could tear this man . . . this true monster . . . apart before he could bring harm to Gwen Conliffe.

  But the beast had lived in Sir John far longer than it had in Lawrence.

  Even as Lawrence tore at him, Sir John transformed. Sir John’s chest and shoulders suddenly swelled with enormous muscles, silver-gray hair erupted from his skin, and the gaping mouth elongated as wicked fangs grew to needle points. One moment Sir John stood there and in the next it was the Werewolf.

  Monstrous, huge, and with the fires raging behind it, the creature looked like the Beast of Hell itself. The Werewolf roared its challenge and lashed out with a backhand swipe that was so shockingly hard and fast that Lawrence never saw it. The impact broke a huge bell in his head and suddenly he was flying through the air, smashing furniture to kindling, rolling and tumbling until he crashed into the blazing stone fireplace. Smoke billowed up around him and the flames glowed like hell-fire.

  THE WEREWOLF STOOD there in the center of the burning Great Hall: powerful, invincible. But then it winced as pain flared in its chest. The wound from the silver rapier had not closed. It had not vanished as all of the other injuries had over the years. The Werewolf felt a tiny flicker of doubt.

  It heard a sound and turned toward the fireplace. A shadow moved weakly behind the smoke, and the Werewolf bellowed its fury. It stalked forward, swatting furniture out of the way, aching for the kill, needing it with a passion hotter than the flames that chewed the walls.

  It reached the fireplace and saw only a broken chair sagging into the flames.

  There was a guttural sound behind him and the Werewolf turned to see something huge and dark leap through the fiery smoke on the far side of the room. It crashed down ten feet away, snarling, its eyes ablaze.

  The Wolfman.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  The Wolfman stalked the Werewolf across the burning room, its claws rending the heated floor tiles. The furnace heat made steam hiss from the clothing that still hung in tatters from its powerful frame. It snarled at the creature that stood twenty feet away. The Wolfman could see the glow of blood seeping from a wound in its shoulder. It sniffed again, expecting the stink of fear to accompany the wound, but there was nothing but challenge. This was not wounded prey—this was a wounded predator. The Wolfman narrowed its eyes, its instincts igniting both caution and hatred.

  The same intensity of vigilant bloodlust was mirrored on the Werewolf’s evil face.

  The Werewolf abruptly moved sideways and began circling; the Wolfman turned to match both pace and distance. They were both massive and built for destruction; armed with fangs and claws that could tear through anything and driven by a blood hunger beyond all control. Above the Hall the Goddess of the Hunt watched as her two most powerful children began a battle unlike anything ever fought.

  Time after time the Werewolf faked lunges at the Wolfman, trying to coax its enemy into a foolish and ill-timed attack, but each time the Wolfman only slashed at the other monster. The fire grew bigger and hotter around them. All through the house windows exploded outward.

  The monsters attacked.

  They both moved at the same time, each of them becoming a blur of lethal speed. They collided chest to chest in the middle of the room, inches from the glass dome, and the light from the dome painted their bodies with fire as they slammed together. The impact was so intense that shockwaves tore tiles from the floor and the last of the windows splintered to glittering dust.

  The monsters fell to the floor, locked together in a slashing tangle of fangs and claws. They tore at each other, cutting through muscle and tendon and bone, but the wounds closed almost at once. The pain only made each of them more furious, pumping more murderous energy into their attacks. Each of them tried over and over again to go for the one injury they knew on the deepest of instinctive levels that the other could not withstand: a savaged throat. But just as they knew the best attack their instincts gave them the preternatural reflexes to avoid the fatal bite over and over again.

  GWEN LEAPED DOWN from her horse and ran toward the house, heedless of the tongues of flame that licked from the black mouths of the shattered windows. Heat buffeted her in waves as she flew up the stone steps to the front door. The doors stood ajar and she whipped them open and rushed inside.

  And then froze as she beheld a scene beyond anything nightmare could produce. There, surrounded by roaring sheets of flame, two great creatures fought. They were more dreadful, more terrifying than anything she had imagined, far more powerful than the monsters described in the books she had read. Here were her worse fears multiplied tenf
old, made all the more terrifying because of the implacable reality of it.

  The Werewolf slewed around on all fours and darted in low and fast, and it clamped its jaws on the Wolfman’s arm. Instantly it began thrashing back and forth, trying to use its mass to tear the arm from the socket. That would not kill its enemy, but it would leave it crippled and helpless for the killing attack.

  The Wolfman howled in agony as the jaws locked on its arm and snapped bones and ruptured tissue. They toppled backward and rolled, and the Wolfman bit and slashed to try and dislodge the Werewolf. But the Werewolf held on, and a gleam of malicious triumph began to blossom in its eyes.

  With a shriek of pain and anger, the Wolfman got its legs under it and rose to its feet, dragging the Werewolf with it. Nothing alive should have been able to rise up with that amount of injury and bearing such ponderous weight, but the Wolfman was drawing on energy that tapped an unbelievable reservoir of darkness. Once upright, the Wolfman began driving its enemy backward toward the fireplace. The Werewolf buried its claws in the Wolfman’s shoulders and dug its toes into the floor, and though it slowed the push it did not stop it.

  The Wolfman grabbed the wounded and still bleeding shoulder of the Werewolf and gouged deep into the rapier wound with its claws. With a snarl it tore at the puncture, rending it, widening it, tearing away chunks of meat.

  The Werewolf could not bear the pain and it opened its jaws and threw back its head to howl out its agony.

  And in that instant the Wolfman struck!

  It lunged forward and buried its powerful teeth in the Werewolf’s throat and bit down with every ounce of fury and power it possessed. Then it picked the Werewolf up and threw it against the stone edge of the fireplace. The creature was instantly wreathed in flame, tearing a howl of pain from its damaged chest.

  The Wolfman bent low into a crouch and roared at its fallen enemy. Then it grabbed the burning monster with its mighty hands and pivoted, turning with all of the power of its hips and shoulders and hurled the Werewolf away. It vanished into the smoke and crashed down out of sight.

  UNSEEN DURING THE battle, Gwen Conliffe stood in the doorway, unable to move, unable to even blink at the horrific spectacle playing out before her.

  THE WOLFMAN WAITED for the death cry . . . but the moment stretched.

  Then out of the smoke, blazing like the sun, the Werewolf came stalking forward. It was entirely engulfed in flame. With each step it burned a print into the tiles. Its clothing and hair turned to ash and still it came. With a titanic bellow of hatred, it threw itself through the air, and the Wolfman bared its fangs and stretched its claws out to meet this impossible attack.

  And the Werewolf crashed down onto the floor a yard short.

  The Wolfman took a step forward, expecting a trick.

  The burning creature got shakily to its feet and came forward, tried to leap once more at its enemy, and once more fell short. Sparks flew around it as it collapsed.

  The Wolfman held its ground, still wary of a trick.

  The Werewolf struggled to stand but could only rise to its knees. It was being consumed by the fire. It was the fire. Layers of flesh ran like tallow down its body. Muscle fibers peeled away. Heat contracted its lips, making the creature’s grin more hideous and frightening.

  It reached out a hand that was now no more than a tangle of burning sticks. The nails were charred and cracked, the tendons of the wrist contracted from the evaporation of all moisture, leaving the hand curled into a futile parody of its own killing claw.

  The Werewolf dropped to all fours. It was diminished now, its mass boiling away in steam and hot ash. It managed one more single step forward, and then it collapsed to the floor.

  DEEP, DEEP INSIDE the mind of the beast, almost completely submerged in red shadows and primitive instincts that existed without conscious thought, Lawrence Talbot somehow looked out through the eyes of the Wolfman. He saw the beast that had been his father. He watched as the withered limbs twitched and twisted in the flames and the Werewolf became the husk of Sir John. The process took seconds, and those were the last seconds of Sir John Talbot’s life.

  When the transformation was complete, Lawrence could see the wreck of his father lying bloody and dead not fifty paces from the spot where his mother died—where his mother had been murdered—all those years ago. The same spot where he, himself, had perished; where the innocent boy he had been was torn out of a normal life, driven into insanity, reclusiveness, bitterness and cynicism. That spot was where the world had completely changed for Lawrence Talbot. It was there that he had ended . . . and now, just removed from that sacred and yet unholy place, was where his father ended.

  As he watched he could feel a dark joy boil up in his heart, but almost at once it was overwhelmed and then wholly consumed by the beast. As the Wolfman threw back its head to utter its victorious howl, Lawrence felt himself disintegrate into nothingness.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Gwen Conliffe stood twenty feet from the monsters—dead and alive—staring in horror at what had just happened. The thing that had been Sir John was gone now and she instinctively knew that it was gone for good. She looked at the creature who had been Lawrence. Was any of him still in there, or had the beast consumed him just as the flames had consumed Sir John? She raised her hand toward it, knowing the gesture was futile, and her lips were parting to call his name once more when the air behind her seemed to explode and she saw the Wolfman spin away from the burning corpse in a spray of blood.

  As she spun to her left, Gwen saw Inspector Aberline come striding out of the entrance foyer, his pistol barrel smoking. He raised the weapon for another shot.

  “No!” Gwen cried and she flew into him, trying to push the gun up and away, but she was a split second too late. Her attack spoiled his aim so that the bullet struck the Wolfman in the hip, knocking it back.

  Instantly the monster attacked, knocking Gwen aside and driving Aberline back and down. The inspector’s gun went skittering across the floor, and a second later Aberline screamed as the Wolfman clamped its jaws around his shoulders. Blood exploded from around the monster’s muzzle.

  Gwen bent and hastily snatched up the gun.

  “Shoot him!” cried Aberline, and Gwen turned to see the Wolfman shaking the inspector in its mouth like a terrier with a rat. “Shoot him!”

  Gwen raised the heavy pistol in both hands, but the monster was worrying Aberline back and forth with insane speed. It was impossible to get a clear shot.

  The Wolfman saw the pistol and understood what it was. He dropped Aberline to the floor and turned toward Gwen. Blood and spit dripped from its mouth to sizzle on the hot floor tiles. Aberline’s face was white with shock and twisted in agony.

  “Run!” cried the inspector.

  Gwen ran.

  She whirled and flew toward the front door, and the creature followed, but its feet were so slick with blood that it lost a moment finding purchase. By then Gwen was out of the house and running as fast as she could. The Wolfman was torn between pursuit of one prey and a meal close to hand, and it hesitated at the doorway.

  Hesitation came with a cost.

  Something struck him in the back with great force and his chest blossomed with pain. The monster looked down to see the wickedly sharp blade of a Masai spear sprouting from its chest.

  It spun toward the Hall. Its meal was far from dead. Wounded, bleeding, Aberline stood with a second Masai spear, ready to hurl.

  The Wolfman curled its long, crooked fingers around the spearhead and yanked, pulling the shaft of the weapon through his chest. It pulled again and again and then tore it completely free and flung the weapon away against a blazing wall.

  It peeled back its lips, bared its teeth and hissed at Aberline.

  A cracking sound made both of them look up. The ceiling was hidden behind roiling black smoke, but pieces of flaming plaster and timber were beginning to fall. The house could not stand much longer.

  Aberline used the distraction.
He hurled the second spear, knowing that it would do as little good as the first, and then lunged for the wall of weapons. He snatched down a heavy claymore. The sword was four and a half feet long and weighed almost seven pounds. Even without the terrible wound in his shoulder it would be a cumbersome weapon; now it was merely something to hurl as the monster began hunting him through the smoke. He flung it and saw it rebound from the massive chest. A chest that no longer showed any trace of the spear that had passed entirely through it.

  Aberline shifted away, his vision dimming from the thickening smoke and the loss of blood. His foot hit something that screeched along the tiles like metal and he glanced down to see a slender rapier with a blade that gleamed with silver purity. The weapon had a snarling wolf’s head pommel.

  He bent and swept the sword off the ground as the Wolfman came closer.

  The creature saw the rapier and froze, eyes fixed on the silver blade.

  “Yes,” wheezed Aberline, “that’s silver, you son of a bitch. Come and get a taste.”

  The Wolfman crouched, its muscles bulging for a leap; Aberline raised the point of the sword.

  And then the roof of Talbot Hall collapsed inward with an earsplitting crack of dying timbers and a dragon’s roar of flames. Tons of burning rubble plunged down through the house as if Lucifer Himself stood above the Hall and drove His fiery fist through the old house’s heart.

  The shock hurled both combatants away.

  THE WOLFMAN SLAMMED into the wall, gagging on dense smoke, snapping at the burning embers that nipped at his flesh. His prey was gone. Even his scent was erased by the smell of burning debris.

  Outside movement caught him, even in the midst of the conflagration, and he turned to see the other prey running across the lawn toward the woods.

  Instantly the Wolfman smashed through the remains of the window and gave chase.