The Ultimate Werewolf (11 page)

"How do you know?"

Her lips thinned. She looked away.

"You
do
remember."

"I do his laundry."

He reached across the table and touched her hand. "Amelia, do you remember?"

"No," she said, and her face tightened. In a whisper, she said, "Maybe." Louder, "Everything he does, he does just to torture me. He knows all the things I hate and he does them all. Things I can't even think of. Things that make me throw up. Things my mother told me would make God strike me dead on the spot."

Her mother? How'd her mother get into this? "Still, just three nights out of twenty-nine or so days."

"Would you say that if I told you I murdered people on my Curse Nights? Just three people a month?"

"Uh—no, nope, I guess you're right."

She looked toward the window. It was still light out. In the streets below children played a game that involved shouts, racing footsteps, and the slap of a ball against asphalt or wall.

"Mr—Kelly, will you help me?"

"I still don't think this is your final answer, Melia."

"Maybe I can find some other answer, if I just have this . . . breathing room."

▼▼▼

Before moonrise they sat naked side by side on her living room rug and waited, not sure how change would take them. Joe had been fed and diapered and put to bed, the birds circling above him. The lullaby played faintly from the closet behind them. "I don't know," Amelia said. She had her knees up and her hair down, concealing everything a bathing suit would have covered, though he had seen and touched most of her already. "Maybe if I just start acting more like—like him, he won't come anymore. Maybe if I like doing what he did, he wouldn't do it anymore because he couldn't hurt me that way."

"Do you think that's possible? That you could like it?"

She slanted a look at him. "You smell good," she said. A silence. "I almost liked it," she said. "I'm not supposed to. I know I'm not supposed to. Mother said . . . But I think—"

Silver flame flared through him. It was Second Night, the night of no refusal. For an instant he tried to resist; but resistance made it hurt. He relaxed into it.

Moonlight spilled into the room through the open window. Wolf and woman stared at each other. She lifted a hand, and he nosed it. She stroked his head. "I think I can learn," she said.

Kim Antieau

▼▼▼

BUSHES and saplings grabbed me as I hurried through the starless moonless forest. M. Gamier had warned me to return to the chateau before dark, yet I had foolishly hunted until dusk and now I was lost. I stopped for a breath and shouldered my musket and game bag. Once night falls, Gamier had told me, the beasts come out.

In the distance, a wolf howled, a lonely cry which made my bones ache. I started forward again. The surrounding night reached into me. I felt like a child, untouched and alone in a darkness filled with malevolent shapes, instead of the man I was, sent from my father's house to shake the melancholy which had gripped my soul these many months. Now I was far from the world I had known all my life. Far from the world most men knew. The forest whispered to me in a language I could not comprehend. Some manner of beast awaited me behind each shadow. I shuddered.

"I will never find my way back," I said out loud.

My voice startled an owl off its perch in an old oak, and the air quivered as the bird fluttered its huge wings.

Near me, leaves crackled. Bushes shook. What thing sought me out in these woods? My heart pounded in my throat.

Suddenly, a small hand grasped my hand.

"This way," a woman whispered. She led me through blackness, and I welcomed her guidance. The forest parted as she moved ahead of me, like the sea parting before the bow of a ship. Leaves and ferns stroked my arms, calming my racing heart. For the quarter of an hour that the woman held my hand, the forest became familiar, like the woods surrounding my own distant home.

Then suddenly, the woman's hand pulled away from mine, and she was gone. I stepped out onto the lawn of the chateau.

"Jean-Jacques? Is that you?" Louis Gamier became a shadow in the entryway, framed by the dim gold light of an inside fire. "At last! I was afraid the beasts had gotten you. My old friend Rieux would have never forgiven me if I had allowed his only begotten son to come to harm!" Gamier motioned me inside. "Come," he said as I came toward him, "show me what you have killed this day."

▼▼▼

The following morning was bright and cool. After I dressed in a shaft of warm sunshine, I joined Gamier downstairs for breakfast.

"Have you recovered from your adventure last night?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, sitting across from him. "It was strange. I have lived in the Auvergne district all of my thirty years and I have never gotten lost before." I took a breast of quail from the platter and began to eat.

"Don't let it trouble you," Gamier said. "The Apcon forest is unlike any other place. Not many journey this far into it. Even our good King Francis does not venture here often!" He laughed heartily. Then he looked beyond me and the laughter died.

"Good morning," a familiar voice said quietly. My savior from the forest! I turned. I wanted to thank her then and there, but something about her timid gaze kept me silent.

"Marie," Gamier said. "Please, join us. Jean-Jacques Rieux, this is my wife, Marie. She was resting yesterday when you first arrived."

I stood and bowed slightly. Marie returned the bow and then sat next to her husband. She was small with golden hair pulled away from her face and curled so that it fell down her back in a way I had not seen in other women. She was more a girl than a woman, perhaps eighteen. I glanced at Louis Gamier. He could have been her father.

"Her parents were killed when she was a child," Gamier said. "They were distant relations of mine. I took Marie when they died."

"My husband is a generous man," Marie said. Gamier glanced at her and then down at his food again. Marie picked up her goblet with her child's hand and sipped the water slowly.

"How long can you stay with us?" Gamier asked me.

"Through the week if that is convenient for you and Mme. Gamier," I said. "I wish to be far from the world for a time."

Marie twisted the heart-shaped ring on her little finger. She did not look at either of us, yet I sensed she was intensely interested in the conversation.

"No inconvenience," Gamier said, his voice merry. "It will be good for Marie to have someone around closer to her own age. In this forsaken place, she has only me and her wretched Gypsy as companions."

Marie looked at Gamier and smiled. "Yes, it will be good to have M. Rieux stay." She reached out to touch her husband's arm, but he quickly moved it out of her reach.

"Hurry and eat, my dear," Gamier said. "You have lessons. I must go into the village today, but I will want to hear your recitations when I return."

"I am finished," Marie said. She had not eaten anything. "If you will excuse me?" I nodded. Marie quietly left the room.

"Troubled child," Gamier said.

"How so?"

"You cannot see?" he said. "She has the mark of the beast on her."

"I'm afraid I do not understand." I had seen no birthmark on her. No sign of the devil.

"Her parents were killed within this Godless forest," he said, "by a man-wolf. Marie almost died, too. She was mauled by the beast."

"Are you saying her parents were killed by a werewolf?"

Gamier pushed away from the table. "Yes, such things live in these forests. We convicted a man only last week for crimes he committed while he was in the shape of a wolf. I go to town today for his execution."

I had heard stories of werewolves, but I had regarded such tales as mere gossip—a way to damage a man's good name.

"These are treacherous times," Gamier said, his voice rising. "The plague devastated our village ten years ago. As we try to rebuild, we have witnessed a degradation of moral character which must be stopped. The man we are hanging raped and killed a young girl! A rope will snap the devil out of him. It will break the beast's back."

"What does this have to do with your wife, sir?"

"My wife is an emotional . . . sensual girl. She must be on her guard or the beast she carries within her will be unleashed." He looked out the window at the forest. "I married her so no one else would."

I stared at him, not understanding how he could speak so about his own wife.

He sighed and slapped the table. "Well, enjoy yourself today. 1 will return before dark."

As Gamier left the room, Marie wandered into view outside. An older woman with shiny black hair followed her. They talked in friendly whispers. Marie laughed and touched her companion often. When she bent to sniff a rose, she saw me watching. She bowed slightly. I nodded. Perhaps later I would get an opportunity to talk with her.

Clouds covered the chateau soon after Gamier rode away. The rainfall was heavy and I was in no mood to hunt. Instead, I explored the chateau. I walked about for some time admiring the woodwork and paintings. Then I grew hungry and wanted to return whence I had come. I soon realized I was lost. I wandered down a long empty corridor cursing myself. First the forest and now the chateau.

I heard laughter coming from one end of the passage and I went toward the sound.

"Raynie! That's cold!" Marie's voice.

I stopped at the entrance to the room. The two women had their backs to me. A fire burned in a huge stone fireplace. Near to the fire, Marie sat on the polished stone floor, naked, her knees drawn up toward her breasts. Her eyes were closed as the old woman stroked her back with a wet cloth. Tiny pools of water around her buttocks and feet reflected the fire and her whiteness. I remained still, startled by the beauty of the scene. I watched the cloth move up and down. With her other hand, the old woman stroked Marie's hair.

"This reminds me of when I was a child," Marie said. "When you would take me to the river. Remember?"

The old woman nodded. She leaned forward. Her hand moved up over Marie's shoulder until the cloth and her fingers cradled Marie's small breast.

I nearly gasped. Marie's mouth opened slightly. The pleasure was so apparent in her features that I almost became ill. Gamier had been right. The fire illuminated her lustful features. She
was
a sensual creature.

The woman's hand moved again. Marie giggled.

"That tickles!"

I stared at Marie. She was merely a young woman enjoying the innocent caresses of her servant.

I stepped away from them and leaned against the wall. It was I who was lustful, I who had seen what was not there, I who had stared at another man's wife while she bathed!

"I cannot bear Louis's coldness," Marie whispered. "He thinks I am some kind of monster."

"Shhh, child, you are not a monster."

"I want to be touched. Loved. Is that wrong?" Her voice trembled. "I remember when your people used to visit us once a year." Her voice became happy again. "How we danced! Each person held me in his arms for a moment before whirling me forward. I am sorry Louis won't allow them on his land anymore."

"We will sneak away to see them sometime soon," Raynie said. "They have only just arrived, did I tell you?" Raynie's voice was gentle and affectionate, stroking away her mistress's despair.

I hurried from the women, down the passageway and the stairs, and somehow found my way back to my own room.

Gamier was late getting home. We ate alone. I was both disappointed and relieved that Marie did not join us.

"He cried out for forgiveness," Gamier said, describing the hanging. "We told him to beg the Almighty Lord for mercy."

"Tell me," I said, watching the reflection of the candle flames in the side of my goblet, "how did you know this man was a werewolf?"

"He confessed."

"Convenient."

"Easier, yes," he said. He picked up a pheasant leg and began pulling off the meat. "We caught a werewolf in his wolf shape once. Someone shot him and he immediately became a man again. Injury sometimes makes them revert, but death
always
makes them become what they truly are—men who have strayed."

We ate in silence for several minutes. Then Gamier said, "I must excuse myself to listen to Marie's recitations of the holy word. Tomorrow we will go hunting."

"Yes, I look forward to that."

I sat in the near dark sipping my wine. I shrugged away visions of the hanged man, and instead thought of Marie by the fire. How could Gar- nier see the mark of the beast on her? She seemed to be an innocent. Only a girl.

Suddenly, I heard shouts. A moment later, I heard muffled sobs. Raynie ran past the dining room. I followed her into the passageway. She stood near the closed doors with her head in her hands. Garnier's shouts grew louder. Raynie looked up at me.

"Is he hurting her?" I asked.

"Do you mean is he beating her? No, he does not touch her." She moved toward me with sudden familiarity. I stepped back. "He never touches her. He pretends he has no desires, yet he leaves her several nights a week for his whores. When he returns, he is more brutal than ever because they could not satisfy him." Her eyes were intense. "You saw her. You know the only beast in her is the one he will bring out!"

I backed up against the wall. Did this woman know I had been watching them? Did she know I had seen her naked mistress? I felt hot and ashamed.

"He pushes her as only a monster would," she said.

The doors flew open. Raynie disappeared around a corner. Gamier strode by me. When the sound of his footsteps had faded, I went into the room. Marie was by the fire. At first I thought she was stretched in front of the flames, languishing like a cat before the heat. Then I realized she was sobbing. I knelt next to her. Without looking at me, she moved closer. I reached out to touch her.

Raynie came in then. I dropped my outstretched hand and moved out of the way as she took Marie in her arms. I hurriedly left the room and went upstairs. I lay in bed, sleepless, wondering what I could do to help Mme. Gamier.

The next morning, Gamier was out behind the chateau examining his roses when I came downstairs.

"There you are," he called as I walked across the lawn toward him. "Did you eat? I must apologize for last night. I’m afraid Marie is not a very obedient girl, but we should not have quarreled with guests in the house. It is the influence of that old Gypsy." He bent slightly and broke off a rose blossom from its bush. "Not quite the right shade of red." He tossed away the flower. "So I sent the woman back to her Gypsies. She left this morning before Marie awakened. I thought it would be easier that way."