Determining that I was momentarily safe by the lack of scent around me – this apart from an odd decaying scent that I feared came from our cave – I focused all of my energy into the bond. I pushed my consciousness through it. Abelard had told me it was possible to see through another’s eyes in the bond... I would uncover whether or not he had lied to me. If he had, he would pay for making me a fool.
Eyes closed, all I saw was darkness. I heard Martin calling again
(help me they mean to kill me)
I felt a sharp sting in my side, and I opened my eyes to look. No mark. I closed my eyes again, and concentrated.
A thrumming shuddered throughout my body, and my muscles had this feel of running – similar to if I were dreaming of running and woke up suddenly. No images. Nothing but a wince of pain in my side and twitchy muscles.
I opened my eyes and, feeling the tug of where my brother was being attacked, ran.
All I saw was red.
-25-
Despite my anger, I did not reach the hunting party and rip Abelard to shreds. I met Martin first, arriving with all the urgency that proved this brother’s loyalty. Martin slowed when he saw me, sides heaving. His fur was matted with blood, though from what I’d seen, it did not affect his running much.
(you’re hurt)
He sniffed the air.
(I’ll live)
(I will kill them)
Martin cocked his head.
(They are coming. We can easily outrun them... there are too many for the two of us to kill)
He began running, and with a glance back in the direction of the hunters, I followed.
That night, I began to have the distinct feeling that Martin knew... something. He paced the cave and watched me when he thought I wasn’t looking. As for myself, I thought only of revenge. I wanted to rip out Abelard’s throat and watch his choke on his own blood while his wife and sons watched. I wanted him to live just long enough to see his precious family become part of my pack.
That revenge so consumed my thoughts that I barely noticed when Martin left the cave. He went out during the day, and returned at night, until one day when he went out and did not return.
-26-
I followed his trail. It led directly north, which made me instantly suspicious. He had stayed to the forest, with a few forays out which I avoided. Rather I stayed on the direct path, knowing and dreading that this path led home, to Soissons.
When I tried to feel Martin through the bond, I heard but a curious emptiness. It was as if I could feel his presence, feel that he was alive, but could not go beyond that. A wall. He had walled me off from his thoughts. I had no wish to speak to him, given that he had run off, and run toward home.
Over a year had passed since I had made this journey. It had seemed like I had come so far, when I had ended up in Gèvaudan; now, running with stronger muscles used to being a wolf, I made the journey in only two days.
The smells hit me before I even saw our home. Familiar scents, pine and fur and smoked meat. I looked down on our little cabin from the forest. How strange that once I lived in such a small space with eight others. The wind had changed, and now the stink of them was overpowering.
Martin, I could smell, had reached home.
I approached the house as wolf. I heard not a voice within. When I reached the windows, still hearing no voices, I put my paws up on the wall and peered inside.
Five faces looked back at me. I dropped down, blinking. My mother, my brothers, all there? All waiting... for me?
“Turn human and come inside, Georges,” Maman said. She had not raised her voice, but my sensitive wolf ears heard it all the same.
Shame inflamed my body. I did as she asked, automatically, a reflex from so many years of youth and not even time on my own. Then I entered the house through the back door.
They sat around the dining table, three brothers on one bench, three brothers on the other, and Maman at one head of the table. All eyes followed me as I entered and took the seat at the other end of the table. The worn wood where my father sat for twenty years every night felt warm against my bare legs.
Martin sat to Maman’s left. He glared at me with red-rimmed eyes.
My rage gathered up beneath me. Martin believed I had betrayed him. The others, they saw me as an enemy. And what had I done? I had done things in the natural order, and they had turned me into a villain.
It was Jean-Pierre who spoke, seated at Maman’s right. “It has become clear that we made a very poor decision in allowing you to leave,” he said.
“Perhaps if you were a real alpha wolf, who won his position by being the strongest fighter and wisest leader, it never should have happened,” I retorted. “I am only happy you have finally realized that I am your true alpha.”
Jean-Pierre slammed his fist on the table. “You are no one’s alpha!”
“I am your true alpha,” I said quietly. “I killed Papa. You belong to me. The fact that you chose to deny this,” I looked around at all the faces, “that ALL of you chose to deny this, shows how cowardly you all are.”
“You are not any true alpha.” Maman’s voice was quieter even than mine.
I stared at her.
As she stood, many thoughts crossed through my mind, most about how I had killed her husband. I had killed her mate. I deserved her scorn.
“Your father was not the alpha of this pack,” she said. “A fact which you might have known had you allowed him to live.” Upon seeing the blank look on my face, she added, “Do you know who the alpha is now?”
I recalled my brothers begging me to spare Papa’s life. How they had told me it was not necessary. I had known so little about what it meant to be alpha, or the ranking of wolves in a pack. I knew so little still.
“You are the alpha,” I said to my mother.
She dipped her head. “I am.”
I rose to my feet and gazed at her across the table, she in her brown work dress and apron, and I wearing nothing but skin. “Then you are who I need to kill.”
-27-
Jean-Pierre jumped to his feet, along with Etienne and my third-eldest brother, Jean-Baptiste. “You will do no such thing,” Jean-Pierre growled. Etienne and Jean-Baptiste simply began unbuttoning their shirts.
“Did you know, Maman, that Papa begged me to kill him?” I asked her. Her eyebrows widened in surprise. “Yes. He told me he could not live with this shame. Was it the shame of one of his sons finally defeating him?” I cocked my head. “Or was it the shame of being second to a woman?”
Maman’s mouth tightened. “You are ignorant,” she spat. “You know nothing of history. You call upon the backwards customs of humans and think they apply to us?” She laughed, cruelly. “You are a spoiled, stupid child.”
“And you are an old woman,” I managed to say before my mouth widened and lengthened and became incapable of speech.
In a flash I was beast, the Beast, and I ripped out the throat of my brother Etienne, who had not even begun to turn. Next it was Bernard’s blood I spilled across our dinner table. By the time I reached Jean-Baptiste, my vision had turned red. Three brothers remained to fight me and protect Maman.
Jean-Pierre sank his teeth into my back as I lunged at Jean-Baptiste. With my teeth in one brother’s throat, I used my claws to slash at Jean-Pierre. One ear tore loose, causing Jean-Pierre to howl in agony – and release me in the process.
I pulled out Jean-Baptiste’s trachea, his blood trickling down my throat. I imagined his blood lending me strength, and I darted behind his falling body, using it as a shield.
Martin finally stood before me.
Martin’s red fur, his red-tinged eyes, his six toes: I hated him. He was the betrayer, not me. He was the child killer and the rapist. But he was also weak.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jean-Pierre rising to his feet, the side of his head matted with blood. Then Maman appeared behind those two, looming like
a great silver ghost. Her wolf was enormous, a behemoth.
For a long moment they allowed me to realize that the odds were not in my favor. Three to one, and I was the youngest and least experienced of them all.
Then I leapt at Maman.
She reared up and caught me in her paws. Fang to fang, we danced, until Martin and Jean-Pierre began attacking my sides and back. Luckily, my vulnerable belly was safe against Maman’s. She snapped her teeth at my muzzle, most likely aiming for my neck just as I twisted my head to get at hers.
I got my mouthful of the ruff of her neck. She had a hold on mine as well, but she didn’t have the wall at her back. Using my hind legs, I pushed off the wall and then used my full body weight to pull her down. Jean-Pierre was crushed under me, and I rolled and dragged Maman around so that she knocked Martin off of me, his teeth slipping from my fur though his claws still dug into me.
In a frenzy I twisted and fought and got a choke hold on Maman’s neck. She raked my chest with her claws. Martin’s teeth sank deep into my thigh but I refused to cry out in pain and release Maman, whose frantic movements told me she could not breathe. I swatted Jean-Pierre away, feeling a soft squelching as I gouged out one of his eyes.
Then Maman’s claw found a weakness, and with her dying breath she ripped open my belly.
My stomach plummeted - queasiness overcame me as my stomach literally fell. I would not release her. I pressed one paw to the gelatinous mass of offal bulging from my belly, and with the strength of pure adrenaline, I pulled with my teeth.
Maman’s neck ripped open. The kitchen where I had grown up and taken meals with my family was showered with her life blood.
Martin howled and released my leg to attack my face. The adrenaline and the shock of my own sudden blood loss had crystallized my vision. I saw him coming as if in slow motion, and I simply pulled back my paw and sliced his neck open.
Behind me, Jean-Pierre was gathering himself again. Clearly, so clearly, I saw the sledgehammer leaning against the wall, the one Papa once used to crack open animal skulls in order to remove the brains for cooking. I needed a human hand, and in amazement, my paw became my hand as I reached for the weapon. Grasping it, I was already swinging it toward Jean-Pierre, who could not see what I was doing. The heavy head of the instrument blasted through his skull and knocked it off his spinal column so it bent at an unnatural angle.
Now fully human, I staggered to my feet, one arm still curled around my stomach, containing that which should remain inside. Martin. Where was Martin? I could not smell him over the scent of so much death. Then I saw the back door open. Of course. The coward would run from me.
I lay down on the floor, allowing gravity to pull my inner organs back to their places. My fingers, slippery with blood, pushed at the edges of the skin until they met again.
Our house was not so large, and Maman’s sewing basket was nearly within my grasp. Growling in agony, I forced the fingernails on one hand to grow into claws and dug them deep into my skin, holding the wound closed. With my other arm, I rose to my elbow and pushed with my feet to slide closer.
Yes. Needle and thread, needle already threaded. My head fell back as I silently thanked whatever god there was.
The sewing hurt less than the wound and the claws holding my skin together, but the task was made difficult by the blackness creeping in at the edges of my vision. Soon it began pulsing in and out in the rhythm of my heartbeat. As I pushed the needle through for the final stitches, an odd sensation began deep inside of me.
My stomach was growling.
-28-
Jean-Pierre’s leg sprawled closest to me, and I pulled it -and the rest of him - toward me. Meat. He smelled like delicious meat. I craved it. And I did not allow myself to think anything more. My body writhed and shuddered and twisted into something half-man and half-wolf, with sharp teeth and an insatiable appetite. I stripped my brother’s leg to the bone, and then, feeling better and hungry still, I crawled to his torso and tore into that soft tissue. He could not stop his innards from spilling to the floor. The rich, dense tissue of his kidneys and pancreas and liver slid down my throat in a delectable stew with a thick broth of blood.
I had not eaten on my journey from Gèvaudan to Soissons, and now I gorged myself. All those choice cuts of meat I often did not eat while growing up because my parents and brothers took them before me, I ate those from my brothers and my mother. The innards followed, and from Jean-Pierre I devoured pure brain matter. I ate until I became concerned that my stitches would burst, then I flopped down on the floor and slept.
I know not how long sleep took me. I only know that I awoke at morning’s first light, my belly sore and a thick worm of a scar grown beneath the stitches. Sitting up, I felt little pain.
Martin’s scent became clearer when I exited the house. He had been bleeding, and that helped. It only occurred to me after a mile of walking that I was fully naked and covered in blood. I laughed.
Then I turned wolf.
I followed the trail down to Septmont, moving a quick trotting run. My brain caught snatches of Martin’s thoughts, as if he tried to hide them from me but could not. Once I reached the outskirts of Septmont I saw why. He had attacked a pregnant woman, whose corpse lay upon the ground amidst a crowd of people. I could smell the ripeness of her. There was so much blood that I nearly could not believe my coward of a brother had actually killed a woman in this way. Then I saw that one of the men was a priest, and in their hands they held a tiny, bloody baby, and they were baptizing it.
As I watched the drama unfold, I saw Martin race out of trees nearby and attempt to attack a boy standing near his mother, not three hundred feet from the first victim.
(Fool)
I watched as Martin registered my presence. The surprise allowed the woman and her boy to easily deflect his attack. By the time Martin would figure out where I was, I had disappeared from view.
For the rest of that day, and the following, I watched as a ghost while Martin blindly attacked. His thoughts were disordered. I could not begin to know what had been the turning point for him; I only knew that whether it was the indignity of young Portefaix, or my betrayal, or watching his family be murdered, Martin had gone mad. He attacked men who easily fought him off, two young boys together whom he only managed to wound. He moved from Septmont to Courcelles to Bazoches, where the villagers began to see the urgency of the situation and set up ambush. One girl wounded ran screaming for help. He fought a chained dog, who broke the chain and chased Martin into a barn where he killed a cow and a servant therein. He nearly ripped a girl’s head off.
I knew not where he was running to, though I began to surmise that he ran from me. He could sense me coming for him and he had panicked. The villagers believed him to be a rabid wolf. Finally, one man cornered Martin in a narrow lane with only a pitchfork. Martin sprang at him, but the man stepped aside then pinned my brother’s head to the ground. My own throat constricted, feeling the ache of pain that surely must have been fiery agony to Martin.
This man waited an agonizing fifteen minutes before the villagers arrived to help him kill the beast. The whole time Martin struggled to stand, a pitchfork tine piercing straight through his neck into the ground. The whole time, he could see me watching him from the forest.
I left before they killed him, but I knew the moment he died.
It felt like a splinter being removed.
-29-
Now freed from Martin and the shackles of my family, I returned to Gèvaudan. Along the way, I killed here and there, for I found that I felt weak if I did not. I killed violently and without mercy.
As I neared Longogne, my pace slowed. My ears constantly twitched, scanning for sounds of an enemy, my nose close to the ground to pick up any stray scent that might warn me of danger. I knew there was a new captain of the hunt, a Captain D’Enneval. And I knew Abelard Loupe could still be looking for me.
In a river I turned h
uman long enough to scrub off most of the blood that still clung to my skin. Two miles later, I stole clothes drying on a line outside.
Then I made my way into town.
The spring evening was unusually warm, and the townspeople were enjoying the good weather. The streets were full of men and women who had spent the long winter cooped up and shivering. They laughed and the sound brayed in my sensitive ears.
Abelard’s tavern was full of happy drunks sloshing their beer around in steins and pulling long draughts from wine bottles. When I walked through the door, the volume became muffled. Abelard had seen me, or smelled me, instantly.
Heads turned to look.
I knew Abelard had somehow influenced them. Rage boiled over from his person and infected all in its path. He slammed the beer glass he was washing down on the counter, but with his eyes bulging and veins throbbing in his neck, he was incapable of speech.
I raised my arm and pointed at the bartender. “This man,” I announced, “attacked me!”
Pulling at the hem of my shirt, I revealed the grievous wounds which were now scars painted with drying blood.
The crowd had gone completely silent. A few patrons turned and looked at Abelard questioningly.
“He did not attack me as a man!” I continued. “But as a beast! This man is the Beast of Gèvaudan!”
That set the crowd to talking again. Some shrugged and returned to their liquor. Others whispered the words “werewolf” and “beast” and squinted their eyes at Abelard.
“Clearly those are old wounds,” Abelard said, not bothering to raise his voice. “Look, they are nearly healed!”
“When did this attack happen?” someone asked.
I ignored the question.
“If you look in his barn, you will find the evidence. He wears a belt made of wolfskin to turn into the beast. His sons help him.”
Fallon emerged from the kitchen. “What are you doing, Georges?” he asked.
“You had best leave now,” Abelard said. “You are clearly drunk and speaking lies.”