Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (12 page)

hundred yards away and watched for the next hour until she opened

the front door. He had good vision, a wolf’s vision, and even from the hilltop he could see his target. Standing on the threshold of her doorway, she wrapped a woven shawl more tightly over her shoulders and looked out. Not searching for anything in particular, not bent toward any chore. Just looking.

When her gaze crossed the hill, her eyes seemed to meet his, and

he started.

Smiling before she ducked her face, she went back inside and

closed the door. She had seen him—or she had not. If she had,

perhaps she believed he wasn’t a danger. Some hunter lost in the

woods. A boy from the village.

If she did not believe he was a danger, he could simply knock

and shoot her when she opened the door. In loyal service to the

Fatherland. Keeping low, moving quickly, he made his way toward

the cottage.

He could not explain the feeling of dread that overcame him as

he left the shelter of the trees and approached the clearing where the garden plot and semi-tamed brambles spread out. The setting

still appeared idyllic. A curl of smoke rose from the leaning stone chimney, indicating warmth and comfort inside. These were like the CARRIE VAUGHN [89]

cottages at home. This should be easy. But he took a step, and he

could not raise his foot again. As if the ground had frozen, and his boots had stuck to the ice. As if his bones had turned to iron, too heavy to shift. The cottage before him suddenly seemed miles away.

The sky grew overcast, shrouded with clouds, and a wind began to

murmur through the trees.

His wolf scented magic and told him to run.

The memory of Colonel Skorzeny and his silver bayonet urged

him on, and Fritz forced another step. Forward, not away. Only a

few steps, a knock on the door, and he could finish this. The gun was already in his hand.

Next came the voices, a scratch-throated chattering descending

over him like a fog and rattling his ribs. He put his hands over his ears to cut out the noise, and looked up to see ravens. Glint-eyed, black, wings outstretched and blurred as they flapped over him, and their nearly-human croaking seemed to call,
away, away, away
. They banked and swooped and tittered, brushing his hair with wingtips

before dodging away. He snapped at them, teeth clicking together,

and swatted with fingers curled like claws. Wolf would make short

work of them. But he had vowed to stay human. The gun sat coldly

in his hand.

He ignored the ravens, which settled in surrounding trees and

cawed their commentary at him. They smelled like dust and spiders.

He shifted a leg to take another impossible step, but again he

could not move. Vines had come, thorny brambles reaching from the

solid hedge to take hold of him, to dig into the fabric of his trousers, and under his skin. The pain pricks of a thousand little needles. A growl caught in the back of his throat. A threat, a show of anger.

Wolf, wanting to rise up. Wolf could escape this, if the human was too stupid to.

Teeth bared, Fritz jerked his leg forward, then the next. His

trousers ripped, as did his skin. Blood trickled down his legs. Still the brambles climbed, reaching for his middle, grasping for his

arms, pulling him away from the cottage. He twisted, lunging one

way and another, hoping to break away, and it worked. Vines ripped, he progressed another foot or two, and his momentum carried him

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full around—and when he faced away from the cottage, the brambles

vanished.

For a long time he stood and looked across the clearing to the

straight pines of the forest, all quiet, all peaceful. He could move freely—as long as he moved away from the cottage. It was all illusion.

His breath caught.

He really had no choice about what path to choose. He could not

fail in his mission. He could not take the coward’s route. But when he turned back to the cottage, the brambles returned, the battle

resumed. His wolf’s strength let him fight on when a normal person would have been overwhelmed, succumbing to the blood and pain

of the thorny wall. He wrenched, pushed, twisted, and growled, until the last strand of vine broke away, and he was through, close enough to the cottage to touch.

His wolf’s agility meant he sensed the ground give way a moment

before it did. A hole opened—no, a trench, or a moat even. A cleft in the earth, circling the cottage, splitting open and falling to darkness.

Fritz sprang back, balanced as if on a wolf’s sure paws, to keep from falling backward into the vines, or forward into the pit. His toes pushed a stone and few bits of brown earth forward, and the pieces rattled down the sides to some unseen bottom.

Colonel Skorzeny had not told him that Maria Lang was a witch.

The cleft widened, the edge nearest him crumbling further,

forcing him to inch away until the brambles with their reaching

thorns threatened to claw into his back. This was impossible. This also made him furious. He wasn’t a boy, a feckless common soldier, he was a wolf. Hitler’s werewolves, the colonel called them, and they saluted with their heils and expected victory.

Fritz dug his booted toes into the earth, called on wolf’s strength, imagined the light of the coming full moon filling him further, giving him power. He took a single running step and jumped. Crashed to

the ground on the other side of the pit, rolled once, hit the cottage’s front door, and slumped to a rest. His ears were ringing, his muscles ached. He’d only traveled a few feet but felt as if he’d run for miles.

For a moment, he couldn’t remember why he’d come here at all.

The door opened, and the woman stood on the threshold,

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looking down on him. His information said she was in her thirties, but he couldn’t decide if she looked old or young. Her hair was black, tied under a blue kerchief. Her lips were full, but pale. Laugh lines creased her eyes. Her hands were thin, calloused.

“Boy, would you like some tea?” she said. Her voice was clear,

amiable. Something like an aunt, not so much like a grandmother,

and nothing like a witch.

“But I am a werewolf,” he blurted, perhaps the first time he had

ever stated this aloud.

“Yes, I know,” she answered.

He looked over his shoulder at the way he’d come. The clearing,

the garden, the forest and hill beyond—all were normal, utterly

ordinary, the way they had been when he arrived. He looked at

the gun in his hand, and the woman who didn’t seem at all afraid.

Sighing, he climbed up off the ground and followed her inside.

She showed him to a straight-backed, rough-hewn chair, and

obediently he sat. She had an old-fashioned open hearth with a fire burning, and already had a kettle set to boiling water. He watched as she used a dishcloth to move the kettle from the fire, pour water into a teapot, and scoop in herbs from an earthenware jar.

He looked around. The place was filled with herbs, jars of them

lined up on a shelf, bundles of them hanging from roof beams,

mortars and pestles sitting on a work table in the center of the room, all dusted with herbs. The pungent smell, strong as a Christmas

dinner, made him sneeze. Stairs led up, probably to an attic bedroom.

The whole cottage was as cozy as one could wish for, insulated and warm, filled with signs of home. Fritz was surprised that his wolf wasn’t complaining about the closed space and the shut door. His

wolf did not feel trapped, but instead had settled, like a puppy curled by a fire.

He blinked up at the woman, confused. “They told me you were

a nurse.”

“Healer, not a nurse. They couldn’t tell the difference, I’m sure.”

“You’re a witch.”

She smirked at him. “You are very young. Here, have some tea.”

And just like that she presented him with a teacup and set it in his

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hands as she slipped the gun away from him. He didn’t even notice

until he’d taken a long sip. The tea warmed him, and the warmth

settled over him. Citrus and cinnamon, and hope.

Then he stared at his hands, his eyes widening. She set the gun on the worktable out of his reach and left it here as she poured herself a cup of tea.

“What have you done to me?” he cried.

“I haven’t done anything.” Her smile should have been beautiful,

full lips on a porcelain face, but the expression held wickedness.

Mischievousness. Tricks. “I have nine layers of protection around my home, knowing people like you would come to kill me. You should

have dropped dead—even you, with your half-wolf soul—should

have dropped dead before you reached my door. Do you know what

that means?

“You never truly meant to kill me. You thought you did, perhaps.

You might have held the gun in your hands and pressed the barrel to my chest, but you could not have killed me. Everyone would call you a monster if they knew what you were. But you have a good heart,

don’t you? What of that, boy?”

He didn’t know. He took another sip of tea and kept his gaze on

the amber surface of the liquid. She wasn’t even wolf, and he was

showing her signs of submission. He was useless.

“Then what am I to do?” he said. He knew what happened

to those the SS no longer had use for. Skorzeny knew how to kill

werewolves.

“It’s the night of the full moon,” she said.

A window in the front of the cottage still showed daylight. The

ghosts of his wolf’s ears pricked forward. No, it wasn’t quite time, not yet.

She said, “They wanted you to come tonight, on the full moon,

because they thought your wolf would make you a killer. Make

murdering easier.”

“I tried to explain to them, it doesn’t work like that—”

“Especially when they have made us a world where men are the

monsters, and the wolves are just themselves. Would you like one?”

She offered him a plate piled with sugar cookies, wonderful, buttery CARRIE VAUGHN [93]

disks sparkling with sugar, and where had she found butter and

sugar in the middle of the war? He recalled the story of the witch who fattened children up to eat them.

“No, thank you,” he said. Smiling, she set the plate aside.

“Do you know what tonight is, boy? Besides a full moon night?”

He thought for a moment and said, blankly, “Tuesday?”

“All Hallows Eve. The night when doors between worlds open.

And a full moon on All Hallows Eve? The doors will open very wide

indeed. Where would you like to go? This is a night when you might be able to get there.”

I want to go home.
That was a child’s wish, and he was ashamed for thinking it.

She might have read his mind.

“The home you knew, you will never see again. Even if I could

transport you there this moment, home will never mean what it did.

Germany will never be the same. We might as well all have landed

on another planet, these last years.” She went to the table, wiped her hands on her apron, and began to work, chopping up a sprig of

some sweet-smelling plant, scooping pieces into a mortar, grinding away, adding another herb, then oil to make a paste. The movements seemed offhand, unconscious. She’d probably done them a thousand

times before. She spoke through it all. “They, your masters, are intent on harnessing the powers of darkness, but they do not remember the old stories, do they? The price to be paid. They have forgotten the lessons. They put werewolves in cages and think because they have a bit of silver, they are safe.”

He leaned back in the chair, sipping his tea as worry fell away from him. He was a child again, listening to the stories of his grandmother, the old ones, about dark woods and evil times, bramble forests and wicked tyrants. He was sure he didn’t close his eyes—he remembered the fire in the hearth dancing, he watched her hands move as she

chopped, mixed, ground, and sealed her potions up in jars. He saw

his gun sitting at the corner of the table and remembered he had

come for a reason. But he no longer cared, because for the first time in ages, the wolf inside him was still.

“Some of us still have power, and some of us can fight them,” she

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said. “We do what we can. Your masters, for example. Just seeing you, here, I’ve learned so much about them. They think their werewolves will save them. Even without the true wolves like you, they think that they can act like wolves to strike at their enemies. They think that they can control the monsters they’ve created. But I will curse them, and they will fail. Keep this in mind when you decide what to do,

and which way to run.”

He saw an image in his mind’s eye of endless forest, and the

strength to run forever, on four legs, wind whispering through his fur. His voice tickled inside him, not a snarl this time, but a howl, a song to reach the heavens.

“Boy.” He started at her voice, suddenly close. She stood before

him, arms crossed. “The moon’s up. It’s time for you to fly.”

The world through the window was dark, black night. The trees

beyond the clearing glowed with the mercury sheen of the rising

moon. Both he and his wolf awoke. Marie took the teacup from him

before he dropped it.

He could change to wolf anytime he liked, but on this night,

this one time each month, he had no choice. The light called, and

the monster clawed to get out, ribs and guts feeling as if they might split open, the pinpricks of fur sprouting from his skin, over his whole body. His clothing felt like fire, he had to rip free of them. His breathing quickened, he turned to the door.

She opened it for him. “Goodbye,” she said cheerfully as he raced