Abomination (17 page)

Wulfric stood amidst the carnage, recognizing every grisly detail of it, and reached the inconceivable yet inescapable conclusion: the nightmarish visions that had come upon him as he slept had been no dream. What, then? Some form of premonition? But to what end, if it had come too late for him to prevent it from becoming reality? What did—

Cwen. The baby
. Wulfric turned toward his cottage on the village’s outskirts and ran. His every bone and muscle rang out in protest, as still his body ached from head to toe, but he did not slow. The dream—or whatever it had been—had ended before any harm had come to them, hadn’t it? As best he could remember, it had, but much as with a dream, the memory of the vision was already growing foggy, specific details and moments becoming increasingly difficult to recall, until only the dreadful, uneasy sensation with which Wulfric had woken remained.

His cottage was the farthest from the center of the village—perhaps the creature had passed it by as it departed, perhaps it had been sated by the slaughter of so many others. But perhaps not.
Please, let them be alive. Please
. These were the thoughts still racing through Wulfric’s mind as he flung open the door to his cottage and rushed inside.

It was as though the entire cottage had been painted red. What was left of Cwen was spattered and streaked across the walls and spilled on the floor, the residue of violence beyond imagining. Even the ceiling dripped with it. An ear, a finger, a torn and tousled mop of wheat-blonde hair stained blood red were the only identifiable pieces of her that remained. The barbarism required to do something like this was past anything Wulfric had ever seen, even from the most mindless and savage of Norse berserkers. Brutality like this was beyond the capacity of any man. But then, no man had done this. If it had been a man once, it had been twisted into something hideous and unrecognizable by Aethelred’s foul magick.

In the corner was his daughter’s crib, its wicker stained dark with Cwen’s blood. Overcome, Wulfric stumbled toward it, hoping beyond hope that somehow the little one had been spared. But it was not to be. Inside, where the baby had slept, was now just so much flesh and blood and bone, butchered beyond recognition. Even the merest glance was more than Wulfric could bear. He wheeled away, staggered back outside into the light, and collapsed to the ground, unable to breathe. As he fought for breath, he looked up and saw that not even Dolly had survived. The horse’s body lay on its side where Wulfric had hitched her to the post beside the house the night before, head severed and belly ripped open.

Finally, Wulfric’s horror, confusion, and disbelief gave way to grief that hit him in an all-consuming wave. He cried out in anguish, his tears began to flow, and he descended into racking sobs so great his entire body convulsed. For an hour and more he wept, until he could do it no more. Then he sat in silent despair, to any who might observe him a hollowed-out, vacant husk of a man.

Inside, his mind was racing, desperately trying to comprehend the truth of what had transpired here. Where had he been when all this had happened? Why had the cries of the other villagers not woken him? And why had he awoken so far from where he had fallen asleep—in a horse barn, of all places? Even if he had the answer to all these questions, surely none of them could explain the nightmare and its dreadful portent. How could it possibly have—

It was then, as Wulfric gazed, lost in thought, at the ground outside his house, that he found his wedding ring. Except it was no longer a ring. Picking it up, he saw that the band had been snapped and bent grossly out of shape, into a mangled strip of gold. As he turned it over in his hands, trying to fathom what could possibly have torn it from his finger in so destructive a manner, he suddenly knew. Immediately, instinctively
he knew
.

It had not been a dream or a foreboding. Not an imagining of any kind. It had been
real
, all of it. Every other detail of his
nightmarish vision had been all the more unsettling for its unwavering clarity, yet the beast itself was the one thing never fully seen by Wulfric. Because he had experienced it all through the beast’s own eyes. Because he
was
the beast. Or somehow had been. He was human now, but his body, racked with pain and reeking of sulfur, told the truth. He felt, he now realized, as though something had burst from within him, splintering bone and tearing muscle and sinew as it broke violently free from its human cage. And then somehow, it was gone, leaving only the cage, made whole again.

Wulfric’s hand drifted to his chest, to the scarab-shaped burn Aethelred had left him with the day before. The memory came rushing back to Wulfric now—the evil, knowing glare in the archbishop’s eyes as he had muttered that final incantation, each unintelligible word laced with hatred, and the malevolent grin spreading across his face even as Wulfric’s blade sank deeper and life left him. As though he knew this would not be the last of it; as though he knew that he would yet have his revenge.

Was it possible? To transform a man into a monster such as those the archbishop had conjured so many times before—and then back again?
He was attempting to further his understanding and command of the magick he had learned
, Cuthbert had said after studying the dead man’s writings.
To develop it to a higher, more advanced level
. How it might have been done was beyond him, but Wulfric could not deny the torn and broken bodies all around him, everything his own agonized body was telling him, what his own mind was
screaming
at him.
He had done this
. Not some unknown monster. The monster was him.

This was Aethelred’s revenge—to implant this curse within Wulfric so that it would take hold only after he had returned home to his loved ones. So that he would slaughter them all in a mindless fury, only to then be restored to his human form, his soul returned to him so that he could bear witness to the full horror of his own crime. So that he could be tortured by it for the rest of his days.
So that Aethelred, even from the fires of hell, could look upon his anguish and laugh.

Wulfric was still lost in his daze, trying to grasp the fullness of what he now knew to be true, when from the distance, beyond the hillside, came the sound of horses approaching. He panicked. What would it mean for him to be found here like this? Would anyone believe his story? Would he be taken for a sole survivor or a murderous lunatic? He did not know, nor even care, such were the depths of his despair. But what little presence of mind he still possessed told him that now was not the time to let his fate be decided by others. As the sound of the horses drew closer, he grabbed a woolen blanket and threw it around him, then stole away through the village, into the dense woodland that lay not far beyond, and was gone.

The rain fell across the countryside in hard, driving sheets. It had been like this for weeks. The sky was the color of iron, the earth reduced to rain-sodden slop that buried each footstep up to the ankle and left wagons mired on even the best of roads. Farmers had brought what they could of their crops inside, where they themselves now waited, hoping that the rains might abate and the sun return in time to make something of the season. But for now most of southern England was a landscape of unrelenting gloom and desolation, even its busiest market towns and highways eerily deserted. Quiet permeated the land, with only the rainfall’s monotonous, ever-present thrum, punctuated by the occasional rumble of distant thunder.

It was exactly as it should be, Wulfric thought to himself as he strode grimly across the moor, hunched over and leaning into the rain, blown hard against him by a freezing wind. Each step squelched as his foot sank into the swamp-like earth and again as he pulled it free. Hard going, but the roads these days were seldom better, and Wulfric wanted little to do with anyone he might encounter there. More than anything, he hated making excuses to those few who would take pity on him and offer him shelter. Even on a day like this he must refuse.

Wulfric slipped, then steadied himself as he scrambled down the shallow incline of the moor to meet a road that snaked through
the valley. It was little more than a narrow footpath of gravel and mud, but the footing was slightly surer here, and Wulfric was tired. He looked left and then right to be sure there were no other travelers. Then he picked a direction, although it could not have mattered to him less, and continued on.

Though the going was far easier along the road than it had been on the marshlands, Wulfric moved at a slow, deliberate pace; the rain was still falling hard, and his heavy woolen cloak drank in the water, adding to its weight. But Wulfric did not grumble or complain. On the contrary. He knew he did not deserve fair weather, nor comfort, nor respite.

Soon he would need to find a place to sleep for the night. He had seen nothing but open country for most of the day, and he was beginning to regret leaving the relative safety and seclusion of the small copse where he had slept the night before. As it was within earshot of a well-traveled road, Wulfric had thought it less than ideal and had moved on at first light, hoping to find something better, but so far nothing had presented itself. He needed a wooded area, far from any town or thoroughfare. Somewhere with strong, deep-rooted trees. Somewhere—

“Hold, friend.”

Wulfric stopped and looked up. He had been lost in thought, gazing only at the ground as he tramped through the mud. He saw now, in the mist up ahead, three men, and a small encampment by the side of the road. A few tents, some meager supplies, a campfire with a kettle suspended over it, although there was no way to keep an open flame in this weather.

There were few reasons to be out by the road on a day like this, Wulfric knew. Either you did not care, like him. Or you were desperate. Like them.

They were cutthroats of the lowest order. Even among scum there was a pecking order, and the best highwaymen claimed the broadest and busiest roads, the trade routes that gave up the richest pickings from farmers bringing their goods to market and
other traveling merchants. That left the less-traveled footpaths and trails to dregs like this. These were the more dangerous. Out here on the back roads, it was rare to encounter anyone worth robbing, and so in lieu of money or goods, the lowlier thieves often took their satisfaction by beating, raping, or killing.

These were such men. Wulfric had met their type before. Once, his father had told him, centuries ago, during Roman rule, there had been law. Banditry and other crimes were effectively deterred by the harshest punishments, and there was little incentive to steal; under the Romans there was always something being built, and honest work not hard to come by. But decades of unrelenting Danish brutality had shattered and displaced entire communities, creating widespread poverty and engendering a new culture of anarchy and violence even among England’s own. The three men standing before Wulfric now were born of that culture, as their fathers likely were before them. Their gaunt frames and animal eyes spoke of a hunger no man deserved, but one which far too many in these times knew. Wulfric’s guess that it had been a week since any of them had eaten anything of substance was not far from the truth. There was another truth he did know—that men so hungry were capable of anything.

“This is a toll road,” said the tallest of the three men as the others fanned out on either side of him, brandishing crude cudgels and sticks. “To pass, you have to pay the toll.”

“I have nothing of value,” said Wulfric. Though not entirely true, it would not be difficult to believe. As ragged as the three robbers were, Wulfric looked poorer still. They at least had shoes; though plastered with mud, Wulfric’s feet were bare, his hands and face filthy with encrusted black grime.

“Then you don’t pass,” the tall man said.

Wulfric studied the men barring his way. They looked as tired and worn as he, with no appetite for a worthless struggle or violence for its own sake. But whatever passed for pride in men like these would not permit them to step aside either. Wulfric’s choices,
then, were simple and few. Turn back, or kill them. He could do either just as easily, but only one would leave intact the vow he had made to himself years ago.

He gave the tall man a humble nod and turned away, back the way he had come. What did it matter? Soon he would have to venture off the road again anyway, back into the wilderness, in hopes of at least putting some distance between himself and anywhere another person might be found before night fell. But as he turned, something made a sound beneath his cloak. A soft metallic clink, muffled beneath the sodden layers of wool, but the tall man heard it and started toward Wulfric, calling after him. “Not so fast!”

Wulfric halted with a sigh, knowing the sound had betrayed him. The three men promptly surrounded him. The tall one, the leader, came around to face him. He looked Wulfric up and down and saw it now, the strangeness about this man. He was too bulky under the cloak, oddly misshapen, and he had lumbered along as though encumbered by some unseen weight.

“What have you got under there?”

Wulfric said nothing. The tall man drew a dagger—little more than a sliver of sharpened iron, really—and dug it under Wulfric’s chin. “I won’t ask a second time. If you have nothing of value, show me.”

“It is nothing of value to you,” said Wulfric.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Take off the cloak.” The tall man shifted his weight and pushed the dagger’s point a little closer, close enough to draw blood, though still Wulfric did not flinch or shy away from it. It unnerved the tall man a little; it was not natural.

“I should warn you I am naked under here,” said Wulfric. “Perhaps it would be better, for all of us, to let me pass.”

The other two men glanced at one another and chuckled, but a sharp look from the tall one put a stop to it. He had grown tired of this. He drew back the dagger from Wulfric’s chin and plunged it deep into his belly. Wulfric let out a gasp of air and fell to his knees as the other men converged and set about him with their sticks
and clubs, their own violence triggered by the sudden explosion of it from their leader. Wulfric remained still, making no attempt to deflect or shield himself from the blows that rained down upon him until finally he lay on his back, wallowing in the mud, welted, bloody, and semiconscious. Chests heaving from the exertion, his assailants stepped back and looked down upon him, bemused.