The Curse of the Wolf Girl (12 page)

“The twins are.”

“Are Yum Yum Sugary Snacks playing again soon?” Verasa stumbled over the band’s name.

“Not yet. I’d like them to be a little more competent before setting foot on stage again.”

“Would it be a good thing to appear in some less fashionable location, for practice? Like a show touring the suburbs before reaching the capital?”

“Perhaps,” said Dominil, unsure of where this was going.

“Doctor Angus’s grandson visited the castle only last week, and apparently he’s involved in putting on concerts—or gigs as you’d call them—at small venues in Edinburgh.”

Doctor Angus was a venerable werewolf, respected throughout the clan. Dominil hadn’t been aware that he had any family.

“Cameron is a medical student. He heard about Yum Yum Sugary Snacks from some of the younger werewolves in the castle—Beauty and Delicious did make quite an impression—and he asked me if they’d like to play in Edinburgh.” The Mistress of the Werewolves stopped, looking unsure of herself. “Of course, this might be of no use to you.”

“It might be,” said Dominil. “Do you know any more about his promotions?”

Verasa admitted she didn’t, but told Dominil that Cameron would be arriving at the castle tomorrow, and she’d introduce them.

“It might be a good idea. I’ll talk to Cameron.”

Verasa was pleased to have done Dominil a favor. A moment later, she looked troubled again. “I just can’t understand why Decembrius won’t come to council meetings. Lucia is mortified. What can he possibly be doing in London?”

“Perhaps he’s hoping to bump into Kalix,” suggested Dominil.

“Why?”

“He’s attracted to her.”

“Attracted to Kalix?” Verasa looked puzzled. It seemed strange to her that anyone could be attracted to her waif-like, troubled daughter. “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

The Mistress of the Werewolves said no more about it, but later, reflecting on Dominil’s words, she wasn’t pleased. It was bad enough that the outlaw Gawain had formed a relationship with her daughter. Decembrius was hardly any better. He’d supported Sarapen against the wishes of the Great Council. He was neither respectable nor trustworthy. She didn’t mind him being on the Great Council where she could keep an eye on him, but she didn’t like him sniffing around Kalix.

Verasa had a brief yearning for Kalix to settle down and live out her life peacefully on the family estates. It was very brief. The Mistress of the Werewolves always wished the best for her family, but really, she couldn’t see Kalix coming to a peaceful end.

Kalix sat upstairs on the bus feeling small, lonely, and hopeless. She didn’t know what she was going to say to Gawain. She didn’t even know if she should be going to meet him. In the days since she’d received his letter, she seemed to have gone through every possible emotion: joy at hearing from him, rage at the memory of his betrayal, and misery at the knowledge she might be about to experience it all again. Unable to sort out her feelings, Kalix became depressed. As often happened, this led to serious anxiety, so that, by the time she set out for Camberwell, she hadn’t eaten for days, hadn’t slept properly, and was existing mainly on laudanum and Daniel’s beer.

She shuddered in her seat. If only Gawain hadn’t slept with her sister. She could have forgiven him anything else. But not Thrix. It was too much to take. Since then, Kalix’s feelings towards Thrix had vacillated between hatred and a dull, hopeless antagonism. As for her feelings towards Gawain…They had begun their relationship when Kalix was just fourteen. That wasn’t quite as taboo amongst werewolves as it would have been amongst humans, but it was still too young for the liking of the Thane. Gawain had been banished from the castle.

Kalix stared at her boots as the bus trundled through South London. Camberwell wasn’t far from her home in Kennington. She’d be there soon. What was Gawain going to say? Was he going to tell her he still loved her and ask her back? What would she say then?

Kalix remembered how Gawain had put his life at risk by returning to the castle to look for her. She also remembered how he’d secretly made the journey to Kennington to watch over her while the clan was trying to capture her. Even when Gawain knew Kalix hated him, he’d carried on the silent task of protecting her. He’d fought at her side during the great battle with Sarapen. He’d told her how much he loved her. But then he also started an affair with her sister.

Kalix just didn’t know what to make of it all. She felt herself trembling even though she’d dosed herself liberally with laudanum. She gnawed at her lip. To divert herself from her anxiety, she turned to look out the window. The pane was heavily graffitied, not with ink or paint, but with scratches. There were names deeply embedded in the glass. Kalix couldn’t read them. The jagged letters were too stylized for her to make out.

When the bus arrived in Camberwell, Kalix crept off with her head bowed. A few passengers downstairs looked curiously at her as she passed. Though spring was near, it was a chilly day, with gray skies and a cold wind that tugged at Kalix’s hair as she crossed the open expanse of Camberwell Green. The streets were lined with small shops, bars, and cheap letting agencies, and the streets were busy. Outside a sports supplies shop Kalix had to pause as another bus pulled up and a great crowd of passengers surged towards it. She found herself jostled by a group of youths, young boys and their girlfriends in tracksuits and sportswear who shot Kalix contemptuous glances, not liking the look of her shabby clothes, or her mass of hair, or the ring through her nose.

Kalix ignored them and hurried on round the corner. As she trudged on, she felt like a great weight was crushing her into the ground. She turned the final corner and halted abruptly. It struck her that, no matter what, she was still in love with Gawain. She experienced a moment of confusion and panic, then her anxiety lessened. At least she had some idea of what she felt. She was still in love with him. She remembered again that, before Gawain had taken up with Thrix, he’d thought that Kalix herself had formed a new relationship. It didn’t excuse his behavior, but it made it not quite so bad.

Kalix found the house. It was an old building, subdivided into small apartments and bedsits. Inside the porch there were a lot of doorbells, one for each apartment. Beside each was a small name tag, most of them illegible. Kalix didn’t know which one to press, so she tried pushing the front door. It swung open. As she made her way up the dark staircase, she put her hand in her pocket and clutched Gawain’s letter for comfort. She could smell Gawain’s werewolf scent and followed it up the stairs.

At the top of the building, she paused. This was it. She raised her hand to knock on the dark, stained door then halted. Something was wrong. The smell wasn’t right. Kalix knocked on the door. And then, without waiting for an answer, she smashed her hand into the wood, just above the lock. The door gave way, buckling under her tremendous strength. Kalix leapt inside, scared of what she might find.

She didn’t have far to look. Gawain was lying in the hallway, face down. A great pool of dark blood had congealed around his body. Kalix threw herself at him, taking him by the shoulder and turning him over. Then she was forced to acknowledge what really she’d known before she broke down the door. She’d scented too much dried blood for it to be otherwise. Gawain had a terrible wound in his heart. He was dead, and he’d been dead for some time.

Kalix sat down beside the body, took hold of Gawain’s cold hand, and started to cry. She didn’t think about what might have happened or what she should be doing; she just sat and cried.

She was still sitting by his dead body when a werewolf hunter kicked open the front door and rushed into the small flat. Kalix leapt to her feet and flew at him, kicking him so savagely in the midriff that he doubled over and crashed to the floor. She raised her foot to stamp on him. Even as a human, she was strong enough to kill him. At that moment, another hunter appeared at the door with a gun in his hand. He reacted quickly, aiming his pistol, but Kalix was too fast. Before he could squeeze the trigger, she’d tackled him, and they crashed back into the hall outside the flat, with Kalix using her fists to beat him to the ground. The hallway was dark, but it lit up suddenly as someone threw the switch downstairs, and there was the sound of many heavily booted feet running up the stairs. Kalix hesitated for a second. Though always ready to fight, she was not quite as reckless in combat as a human as she was as a werewolf. She knew she was at a serious disadvantage in the open against so many armed hunters.

She turned and ran, arriving back in the apartment just as the first hunter was rising to his feet. Kalix struck him with her forearm and he slumped again to the floor. She slammed the door shut in the face of a group of hunters who’d appeared at the top of the stairs, and managed to bolt it. She sniffed the air. Winter was passing but the days were still short. The moon was already visible, a tiny sliver in the sky. Soon night would fall and she could transform. Then she would kill them all. Kalix had no thought of fleeing. She was going to kill every one of the hunters who’d killed Gawain.

The hunters started beating on the door, shouting out to their companion who lay at Kalix’s feet. The door shook as they tried to force it open, and Kalix desperately used her strength to hold it shut. She had to survive till night fell. She held the door shut with all her might, but though she was strong, her stamina was limited. As a werewolf, Kalix was imbued with ferocious power, but as a girl, she wasn’t. She didn’t take enough care of herself. She ate too little and took too much laudanum. Her human muscles quickly began to tire, and the door began to splinter under the weight of blows.

“Shoot through the door!” someone shouted. Seconds later there was a loud explosion, and a bullet tore through the woodwork, zipping past Kalix’s ear. The young werewolf gasped in fear and anger. It was unusual for werewolf hunters to use silver bullets against a werewolf in human form. Kalix let go of the door and leapt backwards, but not before another bullet had ripped through the panel. It went straight through Kalix’s left hand. She screamed in pain. The silver, so deadly to werewolves, burned as it penetrated her flesh. As the front door burst open, Kalix hurdled Gawain’s body and sprinted for the back of the small flat, ending up in a tiny kitchen with a small window so dark that whatever was outside couldn’t be seen. Kalix heard another gunshot and carried on running. She leapt straight for the window. The glass and wood disintegrated, tearing her flesh as she went through. Next moment she found herself in midair, rapidly descending towards a small concrete yard three floors below.

That instant, the sun dipped below the horizon, and night fell. Kalix instantly changed into her werewolf form and landed on all fours, shaken, but undamaged. There were shouts from above as the hunters leaned out of the small broken window, looking for her.

“She’s escaped!”

Kalix flattened herself against the wall then jumped a long way in the air, grabbing hold of the roof of what appeared to be a garage. From there, she leapt onto a drainpipe then again towards another pipe. Now out of sight of the hunters, she made her way up to the roof. Kalix could no longer feel the pain in her damaged hand, nor the bruises from her fall. She’d entered her state of battle madness and could feel only the overwhelming desire to destroy her enemies.

She ran across the roof with the vague notion that there might be some sort of skylight. Finding none, she hurried to the edge of the roof and leaned over. She could smell the hunters downstairs and hear their excited voices behind the broken window. Further off, there was a hubbub of voices, but Kalix ignored them, focusing on her prey. The werewolf swung herself off of the roof and took one leap towards the drainpipe and another towards the shattered window. She crashed back into the tiny kitchen, where she was confronted by a startled-looking hunter, a very tall man who looked down at her with dismay. Kalix could still smell Gawain’s blood from along the hallway. It maddened her even more. She swung her claw at the hunter, and her brutal strike almost decapitated him. As he fell, his blood spurted over Kalix, covering her face as she rushed past him to find more victims.

As she arrived in the hallway, the two remaining werewolf hunters were still taking their guns from their holsters. The first one never got any further. Kalix leapt on him, put her teeth around his throat, shook him like a doll, then threw his body at the remaining hunter. Both crashed backwards. The second hunter had by this time got his gun out and fired but it discharged harmlessly into the ceiling. Kalix leapt on her prey, first biting the wrist that held the gun then stamping with her taloned foot on the man’s chest with such power that his ribs caved in and blood rushed from his mouth. Kalix took the other hunter in her jaws, tossed him against the wall, then slashed his throat with her claws. Satisfied that he was dead, she turned to deal with the remaining hunter and was disappointed to find that he was dead as well. She growled and ripped her talons through his throat anyway, just in case.

The dull hubbub of voices she’d heard earlier intensified, and there were footsteps on the stairs outside. Kalix looked up, an insane light in her eyes, hoping that more hunters were going to arrive so she could kill them. They all deserved to die for what they’d done to Gawain. The thought of Gawain pulled her back a little from her battle madness. His body still lay in the hallway. Kalix crossed again to his side and stared down at his body. Surely she couldn’t just leave him here.

There was a violent knocking from the end of the hallway.

“Police! Open the door.”

Had the police arrived a few seconds earlier, Kalix would have killed them, unable to differentiate between them and the werewolf hunters. But the sight of Gawain lying dead in the hallway had helped bring her back to reality. She looked around despairingly at the carnage everywhere, at the bodies, and at the blood over all the walls and carpet, and she felt the blood dripping from her own talons and jaws. She couldn’t let herself be found like this. The repercussions of confronting the police as a werewolf would be endless. The trouble would never go away. She’d never be able to avenge Gawain. Kalix already intended to exact a terrible revenge for his death.