The Passion (15 page)

That, at least, was what my brother had always taught me.

Outside the tal window a squabble erupted over a fresh kil ; there was snarling and snapping and the smel of wild goat's blood. The sight, the smel , the sound stirred the embers of fire in my blood and quickened my pulse, and I was drawn to the window as though polarized. The moonlight was bright and the scene surreal y etched not a half-dozen steps from where I stood: two big males, one brown and one black, disputed ownership of the carcass, which was so fresh that steam stil rose from its open throat. My nostrils flared to catch the scent through the glass, excitement tightening in my bel y. I was sated, but I was suddenly and intensely hungry; my mouth fil ed with saliva and my stomach cramped with yearning.

And when the big black swooped in, teeth bared and voice raised, to drive off the brown, and when lithe, fierce bodies twisted in battle and savage cries split the night, my eyes went sharp and a growl started in my throat that was purely involuntary. I could taste the fur in my mouth, feel hard flesh yield to the snap of my teeth; my muscles strained to join the fray and my heart raced, fierce and free with anticipation of victory.

Denis stood close beside me, adding his own powerful perfume to the sensory orgy, his own heat to the fire in my loins. He murmured, "Ah, yes, little brother, tonight we feast." His fingers clasped the tight muscles at the back of my neck, and his hot breath tantalized my ear like the whisper of a lover.

His fingers massaged my neck; the power of his heartbeat commanded my own. The ferocity that swel ed within me was violently sexual, intensely savage, and, fueled by the close proximity of a werewolf as powerful as Denis, was the most thril ing, dangerous and almost uncontrol able sensation I had experienced in recent memory.

The two mighty creatures outside met in a final brutal clash of teeth and claws and victorious snarls; then a spray of pink snow frosted the windowpane, and the brown streaked away with a fur-covered haunch in his mouth. The black watched him go for a brief, barely interested instant, then sank his teeth into muscle and bone and tore open the chest cavity of the goat.

I turned from the windowpane, my breathing quick and my pulses roaring. A female was standing there with a robe in her hands. It was black, and hooded, and woven of a heavy wool to keep out the bite of the wind. Upon the left shoulder was an insignia which only the eyes of a werewolf, trained to look for it, would see—a half-moon, black on black.

The robe was mine. I had worn it on the occasion of my last visit here, and many times before.

The fever began to leave me.

Denis took the garment and held it out to me, smiling. "Come," he invited. "Let us go meet our brothers."

It is very difficult to control the rhythm of one's heartbeat, or the scent of fear-laced adrenaline, before a werewolf as powerful as Denis, especial y in the state I was in just then. I thought I was prepared for this moment; I had been preparing for it since before I left Paris. Stil , I knew I could not deceive my brother, not completely, and not for long.

He could sense the cooling of my blood, hear the slight change in the rhythm of my pulse which, although it did not slow, grew heavy with alarm. I lubricated my throat. I found my voice.

"Alas," I said, more smoothly than I had thought possible, "I'm afraid I would make poor sport tonight.

I'm stil footsore from the journey, and a little drunk.

Another night,
n'est-ce pas
? We have many before us."

I saw the sharpening of his gaze, the flare of his nostrils as he smel ed uneasiness on my skin. And yet, in a moment, he let it pass. "Of course," he said, and his tone was as unconvincing as mine had been. Werewolves, when they lie to each other, make pathetic spectacles. "I forget from whence you came. Sleep tonight, grow strong. You'll be back to what you once were in no time at al ."

Instead of the robe, I took from him a lamp to light my way upstairs. This was an insult without apology, for only a poor werewolf indeed needs a lamp to find his way in the dark. But I accepted it in good grace and was glad that was al I had to deal with that night.

Chapter Six

There are those who might say it would have cost me nothing to run with them that night. There was a part of me, in fact, that yearned to do so, and I sat awake in the glow of the fire for a long time, listening to the sounds that drifted across the night-frozen miles and struggling to suppress my own passions. The pack run is one of the most exhilarating, liberating, and actual y necessary elements of a werewolf's existence, and why had I come here if not to enjoy the freedom afforded by this place to indulge my instincts to the ful est?

But another instinct, from a much different source, was tugging at me that night. It was the smal , stil voice of reason, and it whispered to me to be careful. It was with a rare display of good sense that I listened to it.

As difficult as it is for us to keep secrets from one another in human form, it is virtual y impossible to do so in wolf form. The language of posture and stance, of scent and gaze and rushing breath, has no vocabulary for falsehood. They would have sensed my uncertainty, known my vulnerability.

There were certain secrets I was not quite ready to reveal.

This was no casual invitation issued by my brother.

This was no ordinary run and the werewolves on this plain were no ordinary members of the pack.

The run would be a declaration of commitment, the kil a triumph of teamwork.

Afterward they would resume their human forms and don their black hooded robes, each bearing the crest of the dark half-moon. They would gather in a clearing protected from the wind and let words give shape to their intent, and the words they spoke would be words of war.

This I knew.

Stories abound of the Brothers of the Dark Moon. I suppose they have been with us in one form or another since the beginning of time. They have been variously cal ed Human-Haters, Wolf Lovers, Moon Worshippers. Their goals and philosophies have varied across the ages, but for the most part they advocate the superiority of the werewolf species (a premise with which it is difficult to argue) and a return, by whatever methods are necessary, to a state that wil permit the werewolf to claim his position of natural dominance on the planet. They have never, as far as I know, consumed human flesh or attempted to mate with a wolf, and I don't believe their religious leanings, if any, involve the moon at al . They have throughout our history been a covert group often scorned and occasional y feared, with pockets of disciples here and there in every part of the world.

At the end of the nineteenth century the group had come together in one place for the first time in centuries. The organization had its headquarters in the heart of Siberia, with my brother Denis as its head.

Denis had always had a talent for persuasion, for inspiring crowds, for taking grand ideas and making them manifest. He had also always been a rebel, even an anarchist, and in his early twenties he had already been preaching the doctrine of the Dark Brothers in every major city of Europe. Our family was humiliated and did everything in its power to disassociate itself from him. Sancerre, the pack leader, was alarmed enough to assign an entire detachment of guards to monitor Denis's movements. Denis wisely realized that few revolutions were successful without the blood of martyrs to fuel them, and he was not ready to offer up his own blood for that purpose yet.

He was stil a young werewolf when he made his decision to reassume our ancestral name and return to the plain from which we hailed—and where, as far as Sancerre was concerned, he and his fol owers could do little harm. I was young, too, ripe for adventure and inspired by my brother's nobility and by what seemed to me a desperately romantic lost cause when I joined him. In werewolves as in humans there is a time when rebel ion for rebel ion's sake is as inevitable as it is irresistible, and the philosophies of the Brotherhood were designed to fire a young warrior's heart. I soon got over my passion for anarchy—as soon as I returned to Paris that summer, as a matter of fact, and met up with Stephen for a month-long voyage upon the Mediterranean—but Denis did not. And he never was able to accept that the more the years separated us, the less we had in common. Or perhaps it was that I simply never tried very hard to make him see.

We were Antonovs, the Ancient Ones, the rightful heirs. The old ways were the only ways, and they were the ways of the Brotherhood. On what grounds could I possibly argue with that?

The Brotherhood of the Dark Moon was and always has been an outlaw organization. The penalty for belonging was exile, which in our culture is a punishment far worse than death. But that was not why I wanted to separate myself from them. It was simply a matter of what we each held to be true, and it was difficult for me to embrace any philosophy that had at its center a declared hatred of humans.

I knew the time was coming when I must make this truth known, final y, inarguably and without qualification, to my brother, the werewolf I most admired in the world and the only one whose approval I had ever sought. Surely I could not be blamed for wanting to postpone that inevitability for as long as possible.

I was able to postpone it, in fact, for two weeks. In this I had an unexpected al y, which was the simple reality of Denis's loneliness. There is an ancient adage that warns us against the dangers of growing too attached to either of our forms, for, it says, "to neglect the body is to grow worms in the soul." It is al wel and good, in other words, to indulge one's physical nature—to chase the moon, to rol in the grass, to snatch the meat steaming off the bone—

but to forget the discipline of one's human form is to be but half a werewolf. Denis lived a life enviable to many: changing at whim, accountable to no one, in complete command of his own destiny. But with whom was he to play chess, or read poetry, or debate the ancient philosophies? The answer was, for the next fortnight at least, me.

Denis was avid for news from the world beyond and had peppered me with questions since my arrival: What was the last play I had seen? Had I been to Vienna last season and had the symphony orchestra performed Wagner? Who had danced the lead in this year's
Gisel e
, and was it our own exquisite Marguerite de la Theophile? Strange pursuits, one might think, for a werewolf who had upon my arrival accused
me
of growing soft, but music, art, the theater—especial y music—these are life's blood to a werewolf, protein for the soul. I almost pitied my brother that he should have to live so deprived.

I did not imagine there should be a more devious reason for his interest in life as it existed beyond his boundaries. I should have. But I did not.

I arose that day two weeks after my arrival to a morning too fine to ignore. I smel ed a bounteous breakfast of hot milk and roasting rabbit, boiled and sugared grains seasoned with fat, goat kidneys and salted venison. But there were other, even more compel ing scents on the air and they cal ed to me from beyond the window—fresh snow and evergreen, a mountain stream rushing, the musk of a big cat, an elk munching branches. Werewolves at play. Ice in deep shadows and pale pink sunshine on snow. It was a morning to run.

I pushed open the door and walked naked onto a balcony covered with powdery new snow. The cold withered my testicles, numbed my toes, and the air bit into my lungs as I drew it in. Snow fog lay low over the tops of trees, some bare and some laden with long green needles drenched in white. The branches groaned and whispered to themselves; smal creatures scurried and chattered as their claws scraped back layers of snow in search of breakfast. I could hear the rustle of a bird's wing two kilometers away, while the sun hung poised on the horizon, barely more than a promise, in a lemony haze. On such a morning was al creation born.

I fol owed the balcony toward the steps that led to the ground, smiling as I remembered how Denis and I, as reckless youths, used to try to leap from the balcony, change in midair, and land on the ground in wolf form. We had both broken legs more than once, and were fortunate to have done no more damage than that. Only the exuberance of a pup could excuse such a feat, or expect to survive it.

I stretched to embrace the dawn, throwing back my head with a cry of sheer pleasure, and leapt from the balcony. I landed on al fours in wolf form, my fal cushioned by the snow, and shouted my victory.

I took off at a ful run, fil ed with the glory of the day and the wonder, the marvel, the absolute miracle of myself.

The cold air stung my eyes and combed back my fur; it tasted like nectar on my tongue. Trees and roots and amorphous snow shapes swept by. I chased a rabbit and caught it in a flurry of blood and spraying snow, devouring it lustily. I broke the ice from a shal ow brook and drank my fil . And then I smel ed werewolf on the air.

My ears pricked for the sound of his heartbeat, and my hackles rose until I identified it. A hundred sensory impressions flooded me as I circled for his trail, found it, and fol owed. The heat of his blood, the sound of his breath, the scent left by his paws in the snow—familiar and good, a welcome invitation.

And now he was joined by another, a female whom I didn't know; she excited me. In a moment I picked up their tracks and by that time she caught my scent and cal ed a greeting. I announced myself and, hearing no objection, ran after her.

Denis was lying in ambush position behind a snow-covered fal en tree. I like to think that, had I not been so distracted by the female, I might have noticed him, but he had always been better at this game than I. He charged and knocked me off my feet before I ever caught his scent. We rol ed, snow flying and excitement surging, and I got him by the neck. He threw me off. I ran. He caught me again and tumbled me to the ground. I kicked with my hind legs and clawed with my front and threw him off. I lunged and got him by the forearm. Snow and fur flew and the female paced and postured excitedly while we wrestled and snapped and snarled and turned each other on the ground. He let me get his throat, though not without a hard, muscle-straining fight. The female leapt into the fray, nipping me playful y on the shoulder. I gave chase, and so did Denis.