The werewolf hissed with fury as it raked him with its claws. Only the thick fabric of his greatcoat saved him from being eviscerated, but even so he felt lines of burning pain across his chest and the whole front of his coat disintegrated into ribbons.
Lawrence fought. This was the last moment of his life and he knew it, but still he fought. With all of his fury and all of his hate, he fought. For Benjamin and the others who had died today, he fought. For his own soul, he fought. He punched at the thing, smashing his fists into its throat and mouth and eyes. He could feel its bones grind and he could feel his knuckles splinter. He smashed at it and drove his knee up to try and dislodge it. He even bit at it, tearing away a chunk of flesh and fur. He fought and fought and fought.
And then the werewolf swatted his hands away as if they were nothing and with a growl of dark hunger it lunged forward and buried its fangs into his shoulder.
The pain was so vast, so monstrous, that Lawrence was thrust into a world of red hot insanity. The creature shook its head, worrying at him, gnawing on him until finally it reared back and ripped flesh and muscle from Lawrence’s shoulder. Blood sprayed the monster’s face and blinded Lawrence. It splashed into Lawrence’s mouth and he tasted it—hot and salty, smelling of copper and fear.
The creature swallowed the meat and prepared for the final bite. The killing bite that would end all of this pain and madness.
Then—BANG!
Something struck the werewolf and knocked it to one side. Lawrence, dazed beyond thought, could hear it scream—more in anger than pain. There was another bang, and another. More. A volley of gunfire.
Shouts. Men yelling in a language he didn’t know.
More gunfire.
And then crushing weight of the beast was gone. It leaped from him and ran into the mist as bullets burned and buzzed like hornets and knocked chips from the stones.
Lawrence lifted his head and saw shapes filling the circle. Men. Gypsies. Many of them. Some of them still shooting into the mist. One of them lifted the little boy and kissed his face, his eyes, his brow, his cheeks. Others came to him and crowded around. They touched him. Were they helping? Were they killing him? . . .
Lawrence was losing touch with reality. The mist was spreading, filling his eyes, filling his head. Lawrence looked up into the sky and the huge white face of the Goddess of the Hunt filled his eyes, dominated his mind . . . and then it, too, faded to mist and darkness.
But before his mind collapsed into the great well of shadows he heard the voice of the creature rise above the forest with a single, long howl. Not of pain, not of defeat, but of ferocious triumph.
Lawrence Talbot sank beneath that sound and plummeted into a darkness that had no end.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The man should be dead. His wound was terrible. The ground beneath where he’d lain was soaked with blood, and the bandages the men from the camp had put on him were already drenched.
Maleva lit a cigarillo and studied the face of Lawrence Talbot, who lay on a pair of wooden cases that had been lashed together and covered with a clean blanket. His features were drawn, his skin gray and streaked with sweat and gore, his eyelids fluttering open every now and then but there was no sense or understanding in his eyes. The man was dying—should be dead—but Maleva knew better. And it broke her ancient heart.
The men of the camp had come back with the boy, who was unhurt but deeply traumatized by his ordeal. They brought the boy to her first, and though they had all seen the medal around his neck, they wanted reassurance from her. She checked the child over and then kissed his forehead.
“Fate has been kind to this little one,” she told them, speaking in the Romany dialect of their tribe. “Even if she has been so cruel to so many others.”
The dead of the tribe had been laid out in a row. Six men of the camp; three women. One child. And the five men from the town—the four with shotguns and the policeman. All of them lying in a row, their broken bodies covered with cloths. Some were missing arms and legs. The Rom scoured the woods to find the missing pieces, but even when this grisly task had been completed what had been assembled did not add up to ten of her people. The beast had fed as it killed.
The man on the makeshift table groaned and in his delirium he tried to move, but he had lifted his wounded arm no more than an inch when pain exploded through every nerve . . . and he screamed. His eyes opened wide and Maleva saw that the pain had awakened his mind. He stared at her with clear comprehension of what had happened, and the reality of it was close to unhinging his mind.
She motioned for her apprentice, a lovely woman who was not yet twenty-one but who was already deep in the practice of the healing arts.
“Hold him, Saskia,” ordered Maleva. “But have a care.”
Lawrence was thrashing and screaming, but the young woman pressed Lawrence gently but firmly down, whispering soothing words in Romany. Lawrence jabbered at her in nearly incoherent English, which the woman did not understand. His panic was like a storm in the narrow confines of the vardo. Maleva stepped close and took a bowl of mingled herbs, struck a match and dropped it into the bowl. Instantly, blue smoke coiled upward, filling the wagon with a powerful scent.
“Hold your breath,” said Maleva, and Saskia did as ordered; then the old woman held the smoking bowl under Lawrence’s nose and with each desperate panting breath he drew the herb smoke into his lungs. Within seconds his screams died to a confused moan and his eyes lost their focus. In half a minute he sagged back against the blanket and was still except for his labored breathing, but soon that slowed, too. Maleva opened the door and dumped the burning herbs into the dirt, and then opened the windows so that the cold night air swept the drugged smoke away.
Maleva and Saskia let out their pent-up breaths, each of them desperate for air. For a time they did nothing but breathe. Maleva was the first to move, and she opened a chest that contained the tools of her healing craft. She selected a needle and threaded it with gut and handed it to Saskia. Then Maleva fished in Lawrence’s pocket for the St. Columbanus medal and looped the chain over the dying man’s head. She placed the medal over Lawrence’s heart, and shortly his breathing came more regularly.
The young woman looked at the wound and then raised her eyes to Maleva.
“Why do you save him?” asked Saskia. The sounds of weeping and grief still filled the camp. She knew everyone who had died, and grief was a knife in her heart.
“He risked his life for one of ours. For a child that he did not even know.”
“He has been bitten! If you have compassion for this man, then you should end his misery before it begins.”
Maleva shook her head. “You would make me a sinner?”
Saskia set aside the needle and took Maleva’s hands in hers. “There is no sin in killing a beast.”
The old woman stroked Saskia’s hair. “Is there not?” she asked. “What of killing a man?”
“It’s not the same.”
“Where does one begin and the other end?”
Saskia pulled back, her face clouded with doubt. She picked up the needle and turned to address the gaping wound. The needle went into the flesh easily and Saskia’s quick, clever fingers began the process of sewing the wound shut. It was a huge wound and it would take a lot of time. As she worked she kept shaking her head.
“Speak your mind, girl,” said Maleva gently.
“Many will suffer for this.”
Maleva watched in silence for a long time before she answered, and when she spoke her voice was as soft as a heartbroken whisper. “Sometimes Fate’s way is a cruel one. But she seeks a greater end.”
Saskia looked up from her work, clearly troubled, but the old woman touched her cheek.
“Always?” Saskia asked.
“Always,” said Maleva, though she did not meet Saskia’s eyes when she said it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Maleva’s one-horse cart was small, just enough to carry bags of vegetables or stacks of
pelts for trade in the towns. She sat perched on the bench seat, her traveling cloak pulled around her, her face lit by a tiny lantern that swung from the canopy by a rusty chain. Before her, Talbot Hall rose like a dark fortress, but all of its windows were ablaze with light.
The front door opened as she pulled the cart to a stop at the base of the broad stone stairs, and a tall Sikh stepped out. He held a big oil lamp in one hand and a wicked-looking knife in the other.
“What is your business?” he demanded. “There is trouble abroad tonight and you have no—”
Her voice cut through his protests. “I bring grief to the house of sorrow.” And with that she reached back and pulled away the blanket that covered the body that was strapped to boards in the cart.
Singh cried out in Urdu and then in English. But Sir John, looking exhausted and disheveled in his leopard-trimmed dressing gown, was right behind him. He rubbed his tired eyes and then became instantly still as he stared past Singh at the body on the cart.
“Lawrence!” The name was torn from him and he shoved Singh aside and bolted down the steps. The Sikh was at his heels. They crowded around the body, examining him by lantern light.
“He’s alive,” Singh gasped.
Sir John closed his eyes for a moment as he gripped the sides of the stretcher boards. “Thank God . . .”
On her perch, Maleva watched as the two men carried Lawrence up the stairs and into the hall. The door closed with a crash and the courtyard was bathed in darkness and silence.
“May Fate protect you,” she murmured. “May Fate protect us all.”
She turned the cart around and let the horse find its way back to her people.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
For Lawrence time had lost all meaning. There was no sense of its passing. He did not know when it was—neither the day nor the hour—and only vaguely grasped where he was. He swam for what seemed like centuries in a sea of darkness that had no up or down. He was like one of those blind creatures who lived in the lightless depths of the ocean, moving through eternal nothingness, with no destination and no purpose. The only sound was that of his own breathing, which was low and deep and steady, and when he listened to it his consciousness faded back into sleep.
One time he opened his eyes to see an empty room and the slanting golden light of afternoon sun.
When he blinked it was night and only the light of a single candle lit the room. A form slept in a chair but he could not tell if it was real or if it was a heap of old coats. He did not—could not—care, and let his eyes drift closed again.
Another blink and Gwen Conliffe was there, seated in a chair by the window, sunlight on her face, a Bible open on her lap. Gwen? Why was she here? Lawrence struggled to even remember who she was, but the harder he tried the more elusive the answer became. He saw her stir and turn toward him, but he was already slipping into darkness again. If she saw him, or spoke his name, he did not know it.
A couple of times he saw men in the room. Sir John, standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, his body rigid with tension as other men spoke words that Lawrence was unable to process. He saw Singh once or twice, and he had the vague memory of a damp cloth being pressed to his forehead. Was it Singh who did that? Or his father? Or Gwen? Or was it a dream?
After a while he stopped trying to figure it out. He liked the darkness. It was better down there, swimming in the sea of nothingness, and so he stayed there as often as he could. There was no pain down there. There were no memories down there. And nothing hunted him through those shadows.
Lawrence swam through dreams as the hours melted into days and the days melted into weeks.
SIR JOHN TALBOT sipped whiskey from a glass and set it on the stone railing of his observation deck. He had stopped the pretense of going inside to covertly refill the glass from the decanter and the bottle stood next to the glass with barely an inch of golden liquid left at the bottom.
It was a cold morning with the ozone bite of coming frost in the air, but if the cold was somehow able to bite him through the whiskey burn in his system, then none of it showed on his face.
As he stood there, looking out over the fields and the roads of the estate, watching waves of leaves pushed by the wind, he saw something dark moving in the distance. He turned his telescope and bent to the lens. A line of Gypsy vardos stood in silhouette on the far horizon, diminishing in size and clarity as they rolled away from Blackmoor.
Sir John stood, eyes narrowed and lip curled in a hard sneer. He picked up his glass, splashed the last of the whiskey into it, and stood sipping the scotch as the cold wind blew past him.
THE DRIVER OF the carriage reined the horses to a stop at the edge of the village of Blackmoor and twisted in his seat as the door opened and a passenger stepped out.
“You sure this is where you want to get out, sir?”
The man straightened and placed his bowler hat on his head. He was tall, with a heavy mustache and sideburns, a nose that had been broken at least twice, a stern mouth, and the look of a man who had spent more than a little time on the hard streets of London. He brushed the wrinkles out of his long tan coat and looked around slowly, taking in the gray sadness of the village and the dreary vista of the landscape.
“Sir? . . .”
“This’ll do fine,” said the tall man. He reached into the carriage and removed a heavy valise.
The driver gave him a doubtful look and cast a cautious eye at the village. He’d heard of this place. The London papers had been filled with strange stories of mass killings barely a month ago. Some kind of wild animal. He glanced at the sky, judging the number of hours left in the day, and wasted no further time clicking his tongue for the horses who immediately started forward as if they, too, were happy to be quit of this place.
The tall man stood by the side of the road and watched them go. He put his hands in his coat pockets, strolled to the far side of the road, and then mounted a slight rise so that he could have a better view of the land beyond the village. With the autumn trees stripped of most of their leaves he could see for miles. He could see all the way across the valley to the weed-choked fields that surrounded Talbot Hall.
He removed a cigar from his inner pocket, lit it, and stood smoking on the hill as he studied the Hall. His blue eyes were as sharp and cold as diamonds.
He smiled to himself, then turned and walked without haste toward the town.
SINGH CREPT QUIETLY along the hallway. Silence had become a habit over the last few weeks. Both the doctor from town and the specialists Sir John had brought in had insisted that rest and quiet were crucial to any chance of recovery. No noise, no shocks, no surprises. Just rest so that Lawrence’s ruined body would have some hope of recovering.
Singh balanced a tray with a pitcher of water and a fresh towel on one hand while with the other he gently turned the handle of the bedroom. After the first day, he had made sure to oil the tumblers so that the lock turned soundlessly. He eased the door open, first seeing Miss Conliffe in her usual post, asleep in the chair by the window, a book open on her lap. Poor lass had been here every day since the Gypsies brought Lawrence home. She’d stayed up until all hours of the night, watching over Lawrence, wracked with guilt because it had been she who had sent a letter to London to obtain his help in finding Ben. And she had approved of Lawrence’s decision to hunt the monster who had slaughtered him.
It made Singh’s heart hurt to think of these things. He had known Benjamin and Lawrence as children. He’d wept when Sir John had committed Lawrence to the asylum and then shipped him off to America. He and Sir John had fought bitterly about it, but in the end Singh was the servant and Sir John the master of this house. But Ben . . . he’d seen that poor lad grow up, had loved him like his own son. The heartache and bitterness over Ben’s death was as strong in him now as it had been when he’d been killed. And now it looked like Lawrence would die as well. Three weeks in a coma, no sign of comprehension, no sign of recovery.
This was a
cursed place, he told himself for the ten thousandth time.
He entered the room and crossed to the side table used for the supplies necessary to maintain a comatose patient. Light streamed into the room through the sheers and Singh cut a quick glance at the bed to see if the bandages were still—
Singh jolted to a stop and stared wide-eyed at what he saw on the bed. The tray toppled from his hand and struck the floor, the metal pitcher ringing like a bell and water splashing everywhere.
The sudden din startled Gwen Conliffe, who snapped awake and leaped to her feet, equally shocked and confused. She and Singh stood gaping.
“Lawrence? . . .” she murmured.
Lawrence Talbot sat on the side of the bed. Gray, sweating, terribly drawn and haggard. But very much awake and alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Gwen flew across the room to Lawrence’s side. “I’ll fetch the doctor,” Singh said and bolted from the room.
Lawrence felt more than half dead. His eyes were sunken into dark pits, his hair greasy and pasted to his skull, his lips rubbery and slack. There was a foul taste in his mouth and an ache that was sunken deep into the core of every muscle and bone in his entire body. He hung his head and shook it slowly back and forth like a sick bear, trying to clear his brain of the layers of fog and cobwebs.
He heard the rustle of cloth, felt cool hands touch his, and he raised his head and turned to see Gwen seated next to him on the bed. Gwen? That made no sense. And she was no longer wearing her black funeral dress.
“I . . . thought you were leaving,” he mumbled. “You’ll miss your train.”