The Wolfman (29 page)

“I love you,” he said.

“I—” she began, but her words became another gasp of need.

Urgency sang in their nerves and with every heartbeat the cadence of their bodies built and built; Lawrence’s breath rasped in and out of his lungs and Gwen’s cries became sharper and louder with each thrust.

“Lawrence,” she shrieked. “God . . . Lawrence . . .”

The intensity mounted and mounted as they soared toward that sweet precipice.

“Lawrence!” Her voice was sharper now, louder in his ear.

The bed banged against the wall, the springs squealing under their weight.

“Lawrence!”

Her tone changed and he lifted a hand to her face, to brush a strand of hair from her eyes . . . and the whole world changed to madness. His fingers were long and gnarled, coated with dark bristling hair, and at the end of each finger was a claw that tapered to a deadly point. And every claw was drenched with hot blood.

Lawrence arched off of her and stared in raw horror at Gwen’s body. Every inch of her sacred flesh, from thighs to throat, was torn open. Blood welled from a hundred jagged gashes and her screams were now those of terrible agony. Gwen stared at him with hopeless eyes, her fingers scrabbled at him as if trying to make this reality into a fantasy, but with each beat of her heart blood spurted from her chest and mouth and . . .

. . . L
AWRENCE WOKE IN
rage and torment, screaming Gwen’s name, cursing God Himself. He was crammed into a corner of his cell and he scrambled to get his feet under him so he could make a dash for the door, but he only made it two steps before something grabbed him by the throat and dragged him back. He grabbed at his throat and found the unyielding solidity of a cold iron collar clamped around his neck and a heavy length of chain leading from it to a massive ring set into the gray stone wall. He was chained like a dog.

And he was awake.

Somehow he knew that this was the real world, that everything else had been phantoms in his brain created
by the drugs and the water torture. This . . . the chain, the hard stone under his bare feet . . . this was real.

Lawrence sank to his knees and beat the floor with his fist, cursing this place, cursing Heaven, cursing his own life. He bent his head until his skin was pressed against the moldy floor.

He remained there for a long time, sobbing, feeling totally lost and alone.

But he wasn’t alone.

Someone was on his cot. It wasn’t the feral boy. It wasn’t Gwen.

Sir John sat there, one leg folded casually over the other, a coffee cup cradled between his palms, smiling the coldest smile Lawrence had ever seen.

“F
ather,” Lawrence pleaded, “
why?”

“I contracted the disease in India,” said Sir John quietly. “In the Hindu Kush. Singh and I had heard tales of a remote valley where no white man had ever set foot and where the game was as astonishing as the natural beauty of the place. After wasting many months on dead ends and expensive guides, we finally found our Shangri-La.”

Lawrence shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me this?”

His father put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Just listen, Lawrence. This is your real heritage.” Sir John sipped his coffee and set the cup aside. “We bartered our way into the good graces of the native hunters. The valley was everything the tales spoke of. The game was exceptional, the country fantastic beyond words. And the locals . . . well there is no greater, more primal bond among men than that formed by hunting together. We swapped stories. Customs. Beliefs. Among theirs was the strange belief in a rite which would grant the devotee enormous powers. Powers of hunting, and of the sexual kind.”

Sir John’s eyes twinkled with a mischief that made Lawrence want to gag.

“No animal or woman could resist whoever partook of his black magic. None of the natives could boast having
undergone the rite, as they viewed it the prospect would be too . . . fearsome.”

“ ‘Rite’?” Lawrence echoed in a hollow voice.

Sir John laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “Of course I didn’t believe a word of it, but nevertheless I was intrigued. So, the natives directed me to a cave high up in the mountains where, according to legend, lived a strange creature. After a great many days of climbing, searching, finally, I came upon it. I
found
it . . . the cave. And the strange creature that lived there.”

Lawrence straightened. Even with the lingering effects of the drugs he now had every ounce of his being focused on his father.

“It was a boy.” Sir John laughed and shook his head. “It was a wild, feral boy who attacked me.”

“He . . . bit you?” Lawrence asked in a whisper.

“Oh yes. I was bitten. By him. I returned to my hunting companions thinking I had been made the butt of a joke.” He cocked his head as if looking at the memory. His cold smile never wavered. “I soon learned otherwise.”

Lawrence stared at him with a growing horror that was far bigger and more terrible than the story his father was telling. The revulsion and heartbreak threatened to tear open his chest.

“My mother . . .” he breathed.

Sir John waited.

“She didn’t kill herself . . . did she?”

Sir John Talbot’s smile grew colder still. “No,” he said. “I suppose I did.”

Lawrence screamed . . .

. . .
AND HE WAS
back there, back in the rain on that dreadful night, back by the reflecting pool with the
bleak walls of Talbot Hall looming above him. The clouds above were thinning, the rain slowing to a gentle fall like tears, and above it all the moon emerged like a predatory creature, watchful and hungry.

Lawrence Talbot stood twenty feet from the pool, dressed as he was in the Asylum. He knew that this was a dream, but somehow he had become a part of it, just as he knew that what he was seeing now was what truly happened all those years ago. He was a witness to his own memory, to something he had never been able to fully remember since the event blasted him into shock and madness.

He saw his mother lying sprawled in the arms of his father. They were in silhouette, Sir John’s back to him. There was a cry in the night and Lawrence turned to see his own younger self, a frail boy of nine years old, standing in the doorway of the glass house garden. In the continuous flash of lightning young Lawrence’s forehead was knitted in consternation and uncertainty.

“Mother?” whispered the boy, taking a tentative step outside.

A wail tore through the night, rising upward from the kneeling figure as Sir John raised his head and screamed to the storm. As he did so the body in his arms shifted and Lawrence—the child and the man—saw Solana’s arm fall limply down, her hand striking the wet ground. The black rain flowed from her, from her arm, from her body, from her skin. A river of darkness that washed from her and across the flagstones toward Lawrence.

“Mother? . . .” young Lawrence said again, and this time his father heard his plaintive little voice. Sir John turned, still cradling Solana to his chest. As lightning flashed Lawrence could see the lines of terrible, impossible
grief carved into his father’s face. His father’s eyes were dark, a red that was filled with grief and fury and rage and an impossible loss.

But that was not how it was. Not really, and Lawrence the man, standing now in this grand theater of memory, saw a different version of the scene play out.

Lightning flashed and Lawrence could see his mother’s body. He looked for the wounds where she had slashed her wrists, but even as he looked Lawrence knew that those wounds would not be there. Other wounds would.

He stepped closer, standing right behind the boy, and as lightning flashed above them he saw his mother’s lovely face. So pale and still. And he saw her throat. It was a red, torn ruin. The wounds on her chest and arms and legs were not the pristine cuts of a razor. They were bites. Savage and brutal.

Sir John threw his head back and screamed.

Only it wasn’t a scream. It was a howl.

And it wasn’t Sir John.

It was a werewolf.

The boy screamed.

Lawrence screamed, too. . . .

S
IR JOHN PICKED
up his coffee cup and took a sip, watching with icy interest as his son bent forward over the knot of pain in his heart and buried his face in his hands. The sound of his scream echoed off of the walls of the stone cell.

“You
bastard
!” growled Lawrence. He raised his head and spat at Sir John, but his father wiped the spittle from his jacket. “You said you loved her! You knew what you
were and yet you . . . you . . .” He shook his head, trying to dislodge the truth. “You should have killed yourself.”

Sir John grunted. “I cannot tell you how often I have considered it. I suppose you would have been a happy little family, just you and your brother and your mother. . . . Ah, but life is far too glorious, Lawrence. Especially to the cursed, the damned. Every night of the full moon, for many years, I’ve been locked away in that crypt. Singh does it. My faithful servant for twenty-five years . . . but then
she
came, didn’t she?”

“ ‘She’? . . .”

Sir John’s voice trembled. “Hot, burning like the face of the moon. Like your mother. Like your mother. And out of reach.”

Lawrence gasped. “Gwen . . .”

“Yes,” said Sir John gently. “Gwen. She would have taken your brother away and they would both have vanished into the night. And, although I was resigned to it, the beast in me was not. You understand that now, Lawrence, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Lawrence. “You talk about the beast as if it’s not you.”

“One can’t control what it wants. What it does.” Sir John paused. “The night Ben died we had a terrible quarrel. Terrible. It was a fight really. Ben, you understand, had come to tell me he was resolute in his decision to leave Talbot Hall for good. I got drunk and violent.” He sighed. “Extremely violent. I even struck out at Singh, who was trying to restrain me. I knocked him out cold.” He gave Lawrence a rueful smile. “Poor old Singh. I used to be a bare-knuckle prizefighter, back in the good old days . . . long time ago.”

Sir John got up and walked across the cell and stared out of the tiny window.