Walking Wolf (12 page)

“Somewhere along the line, the monster found someone else to serve him. Someone to hide and transport his body during the daylight hours. Someone else to help him do his dirty work. Or should I say, some
thing?”

Jones was staring at me, the storm clouds in his eyes about to break. I could tell by his body language he was getting ready to lunge at me. I knew I should try to get up, move away from him, prepare my own counterattack, but my dizziness had grown worse. Sweat poured down my back and my head ached horribly. He leaned forward even closer, until his hairy face was inches from my own. His wide nostrils flared like those of an animal scenting blood.

“I can
smell
an unnatural thing from a mile away, boy.”

Before I had a chance to respond, there was the sound of something heavy striking meat and Jones's eyes rolled up in their sockets. He pitched sideways out of his chair, narrowly missing the open fire. I stared for a moment at the big man sprawled on the floor as a halo of blood formed about his skull. I then turned to look up at McCarthy, who stood over the body, a hammer clutched in one hand. The older man's eyes gleamed strangely in the light from the fire. They reminded me, in a way, of Sundown's eyes when he got the hunger on him.

“Had to wait him out. Wait until he wasn't paying so much attention to me and what I was doing. Tried slippin' the stuff in his coffee the first night, like I did with you, but he was too big. Too tough. It didn't take.”

“Wh-what did you do—?” I tried to get up, but my legs gave out and I found myself on the floor.

McCarthy squatted next to me, peering down into my face. “I don't like using force,” he explained. “Usually I just dose their coffee, then they go to sleep and don't feel nothing—not even when I brain 'em with the hammer. But this one—and you, for that matter—just ain't respondin' properly. I hate it when that happens. I don't like using violence. I'm a peaceable man, by nature.”

I tried to change from my human form into my faster, stronger
vargr
skin, but I couldn't focus. The room was swimming, and everything seemed to be pulsing with a rhythm all its own. I watched, helpless, as McCarthy raised his hammer on high.

There was a rush of cold air and something black struck McCarthy head-on, knocking him backwards. I heard him scream as my savior tore into his throat. I didn't feel so sorry for McCarthy anymore.

The next thing I knew, Sundown—his mouth wet with fresh blood—was helping me to my feet. “You all right, Billy?”

“He—he must have drugged me.…” was all I could mumble.

“He must have put enough laudanum in your drink to kill a normal human three times over. I woke shortly after you placed me in the stable. I decided to check the other buildings, in case there were more humans about. There are—but they're all dead. There must be over a dozen corpses stashed in the outbuildings, in various stages of decay. I'd say the oldest was five years old.” Sundown shook his head in disgust. “Humans! And they accuse us of being monsters! But at least the madman did us the favor of ridding us of that wretched bounty hunter!”

A groaning sound came from the direction of Jones's body. Sundown and I stared, openmouthed, as Witchfinder Jones sat up. His hair and beard was sodden with blood, and part of his brain bulged outward through the crack in his head. His left eye was so full of blood that it leaked from the corners like crimson tears. His right eye was as clear as before—only angrier.

“I got you now, you stinking whore-son!” the bounty hunter bellowed, pulling his revolver.

“Run, Billy!” Sundown yelled, propelling me towards the open door. “Run!”

I stumbled forward, my limbs still numb from whatever drug McCarthy had slipped me. I turned to see what was happening, just as Jones released his initial volley. The first shot went wild of its target. The second did not. Sundown opened his mouth and vented an ultrasonic shriek of pain. I caught my friend as he pitched forward and dragged him out of the hut. Jones struggled to get to his feet, his boots slipping in a pool of his own blood.

I didn't look at Sundown or ask him if he was okay. I was too scared to do anything but run with him to the stable, where—reverting to my boyhood—I hopped on Erebus bareback and simply fled, clinging to the horse's neck with my right arm while I cradled Sundown with my left. As we charged past the front of McCarthy's hut, I glimpsed Witch-finder Jones slumped in the doorway, taking aim at me.

I dug my heels deep into Erebus' flanks just as a silver bullet whizzed past my ear. I heard Jones bellow something into the storm that might have been a name, but it was quickly snatched up by the wind and made meaningless.

It was a half-hour before I was willing to slow my pace enough to check on Sundown's condition. I had him pressed between me and the horse's neck to keep him from falling.

“Sundown? Sundown—? Are you all right?”

No answer.

“Saltykov?” I prayed he would at least respond to his true name.

No answer.

I gingerly touched my friend's shoulder, hoping to rouse him enough to at least groan. To my horror, I felt the bone and flesh inside his shirt crumble like chalk.

I tossed back my head and howled for my father, whose pelt now covered his killer's back. I howled for my mother, whose breast now served to carry her murderer's tobacco. I howled for my friend, now reduced to ashes and powdered bone, caught by the wind and scattered across the frozen prairie. But most of all, I howled for myself, lost in the wilderness.

Chapter Eight

After the death of the Sundown Kid at the hands of Witchfinder Jones, I reckon I went a little crazy. I wandered the high plains for several days in a feverish delirium, and at times I thought Medicine Dog rode beside me, his blind eyes undaunted by the snow. Other times I fancied I saw Sundown standing on the horizon, waving me on, Whatisit's moronic laughter echoing from the darkness.

On the third day after Pilate's Basin, poor, faithful Erebus literally dropped dead underneath me, spilling me back into reality. There was little I could do but eat the horse, which strengthened me enough to press on. I continued on in my true skin, preying on antelope, the occasional buffalo calf, and any other four-legged creatures that crossed my path. It was easier to survive the winter as a werewolf than it was a man.

At the end of each day, I would find an outcropping of rock, or dig out an abandoned prairie dog burrow in order to shelter myself from the unceasing winds. I listened to the true wolves howling from the distant hilltops like lost souls mourning their expulsion from Hell. Sometimes I would take up the howl, only to hear confusion and mistrust in their reply. Even without seeing or scenting me, my wild cousins knew an unnatural thing when they heard it.

I moseyed westward without planning it that way. Before I knew it, I was leagues beyond my old tribe's hunting grounds, moving towards lands undreamed of when I was a boy tending Eight Clouds' horses. I have no way of knowing precisely how long I spent in the wilderness—at least two seasons, perhaps three. I steered clear of both Whites and Indians during that time.

Since leaving the Comanche, I had found little joy in the White Man's world. And while I had known a kind of friendship with the likes of Praetorius and Sundown, I knew their types to be few and far between. Buffalo-Face and Medicine Dog were right—it was best not to trust them on general principles and give them as wide a berth as possible. As for why I kept my distance from the Indians … well, it seemed to me I was cursed. Everyone I had ever loved or befriended in my short life—for I was still shy of my twentieth year—had ended up dead, some by my own hand.

But there's only so long anyone—human or
vargr
—can spend alone before anger gives way to loneliness. And loneliness, left untended, can sour into madness. I thought of McCarthy, isolated until his mind turned in on itself like a fox in a snare, and began to fear that I would lose control of myself and slip back into the red-eyed savagery that had cost me everything. I decided it was time for me to leave the wilderness and seek out others. Since the odds of my hooking up with one of my own kind were slim to none, I had no choice but to seek out the company of humans.

I smelled the wagon train before I saw it.

Its scent came to me on the wind, causing me to prick up more than my ears. I could smell female, and plenty of 'em. There was also the distant odor of a campfire and something strangely familiar that I could not name. Intrigued, I set out in search of what could produce such interesting odors.

Three miles later, I crested a small butte and found myself looking down on four covered wagons yoked to oxen, and a couple of horses and mules. One of the wagons had a busted wheel, and the train had halted in order to repair it.

From my vantage, I could see a man dressed in the apron of a wheelwright laboring beside the disabled wagon. He was large and fleshy, his head and face completely devoid of hair. I could almost see the sweat trickling down his smooth pate and dripping from his thin eyebrows. But what truly caught my interest were the women—there was at least a dozen of them, all young and healthy. Some tended the cook fire, while others were mended clothes and laughed amongst themselves. Except for one or two young girls, all of them were pregnant.

The sight of so many women made my groin ache. I did not know whether to be excited or disgusted. I had been with only one woman in my life, and that was Flood Moon. Part of me—the part I had come to think of as my
vargr
self—wanted to go down and do to the women what it had done to Flood Moon. The temptation to succumb to my wild self's desires was strong—but then I forced myself to remember my dead wife's screams and how she had looked at me with hate and terror in her eyes, and my ardor weakened. Still, I found myself scanning the encampment for sign of any males beside the wheelwright.

A second man, as chunky and bald as the first, emerged from the back of one of the covered wagons. He had a rifle in one hand and a knife stuck in his belt. None of the women paid him any attention. A third man, younger and not as heavy as the others, but equally hairless, rode up on a mule and dismounted beside the man with the rifle. They bent their bald heads over what looked like a map, looking up now and again to point in various directions.

My attention was drawn back to one of the females, who appeared younger than the others and did not appear to be pregnant. Her hair was long and unbound, hanging almost to her waist. She had a habit of tossing her golden mane over her right shoulder, like it was a veil of spun gold, that I found captivating. Perhaps it was her youth, or perhaps it was simply that I had gone so long without a woman, but I fell in love with her instantly.

I was so bedazzled by this vision of loveliness that I did not realize I was being watched until my attacker was almost on me. Just before he struck, I got a strong whiff of the scent that had seemed familiar, yet I could not place. I spun around, just in time for something to land against the side of my head. All sound and vision fled—but not before I realized what it was I had caught the odor of.

It was the scent of my own kind.

A cold rag on my brow brought me back to my senses. As I started awake, the first thing my aching eyes happened on was one of Reverend Near's angels smiling down at me. Then my vision cleared, and I realized I was looking at the young girl with the long blonde hair I had seen tending the cook fire. I also realized was trussed hand and foot on the floor of one of the covered wagons, and that I was in my human form, and stark naked, to boot. I blushed. The girl giggled and drew her hand back from my brow.

“The intruder is awake,
mon seigneur,”
she called out, in heavily accented English.

“Excellent, Lisette,” replied a male voice. “Leave us. I wish to question him alone.”

As the girl vacated the wagon, the man who had spoken climbed in past her. He was dressed rather extravagantly for being in the middle of wide-open nowhere, sporting a single-breasted frock coat, dress trousers, and an Inverness cape. With his long hair curled and brushed upward and parted in the middle, and his bushy mustache, he looked more like a dude on his way to the opera than a settler headed West.

The dude pulled a thinly rolled cigar the color of mud from inside his breast pocket and eyed me intently. “What pack do you run with, cub?” Like the girl, he spoke with a accent, although his English was better.

“Pack?”

The dude bit off the end of his cigar as fast and as clean as a guillotine, displaying strong white teeth. “Don't play stupid, cub. It won't work with me. Who is your Master of Hounds?”

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about, Mister—” My head rocked back from the force of the blow to my jaw. As he moved to strike me again, I bared my teeth at the dude and growled.

“My, aren't we the brave and loyal dog,” he commented dryly, staying his hand. “Well, don't show your fangs at
me,
little wolf—unless you mean business.” With that, he thrust his face into mine. Before my eyes, the dude's features flexed and twisted upon themselves, as if something inside his head were trying to break free. His whiskers and muttonchops spread across his cheeks as his nose grew longer and broader, transforming into a snout.

I cried out then, not in alarm as one might suppose, but in surprise and delight. For I was finally face to face with that which I'd been seeking. “You're like me!”

The dude dropped his wolf-face, resuming his human guise as easily as a man adjusts his johnson on a hot day. “Of course I am, you wretched lout! What did you expect?”

“I—I wouldn't know, Mister. I was raised by humans from an early age.”

The dude fell silent, narrowing his eyes and fixing me with a strange look. He leaned forward, sniffing the air like a bloodhound trying to pick up a scent. “You smell vaguely familiar. Perhaps your sire was known to me. Do you know his name?”