Just beyond the dancing circle Lawrence saw a big cage on wheels in which a lumpy animal squatted dispiritedly behind the stout bars: the dancing bear the publican had mentioned. But Lawrence sneered inwardly, knowing that this mangy old beast could not have caught his brother, let alone killed him. The poor creature looked more than halfway into its own grave.
The boy led him to one vardo that sat apart from the others, tucked farther back under the boughs of a diseased maple whose leaves had been chewed to lace by moths. A pair of lanterns hung from posts beside the short stairs that led up to the colorful door of the wagon, and tapestries of almost regal beauty were hung on lines to create a palatial setting. Whoever this Maleva was, he thought, she must be of great importance.
The boy stopped just outside the spill of lantern light from the wagon. He pointed to a figure seated on a stool outside of the vardo and then, without a further word, he retreated back to the music and noise of the main camp. The boy wasted no time in leaving the vicinity of the figure seated in the shadows.
Lawrence had no such reservations and he strode straight toward the figure. From twenty feet away he could tell that it was a woman, but as he drew close it was clear that the woman was ancient. Maleva sat hunched over, a colorful shawl pulled close around her bony shoulders. A thin cigarillo bobbed between her lips as she hummed along with the distant music. She heard Lawrence approach but without even turning her head she said, “You wish to have your fortune told?”
He stopped a few feet away and held out the medal of St. Columbanus. He stood silent, waiting for Maleva to turn. As she did the bored expression on the old woman’s face darkened and when she raised her eyes from the medal to meet Lawrence’s gaze she gave him a look of mingled dread and sadness. Maleva slowly reached out a thin and wrinkled hand to take the medal.
She held it for a moment, then closed her eyes and pressed the medallion to her chest. Maleva bowed her head, nodding to herself as if confirming a dreaded suspicion.
“You had better come inside,” she murmured.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The vardo looked like a junk shop to Lawrence. Strings of cheap beads hung from the rafters, dozens of bad imitations of holy relics overflowed from drawers and chests, and a pot of “good luck” coins had cracked and spilled its contents onto the floor. But past this debris there was another layer to the décor made up entirely of boxes of herbs and pots of compounds made from roots and exotic flowers. Strings of wrinkled plants and strange fruit hung drying in the corners, and streamers of animal hide were nailed to the wooden walls. Maleva waved Lawrence to a three-legged chair and he had to move aside several bolts of beautiful fabric to give himself leg room on the other side of a small divination table.
Maleva laid the medallion on the tabletop, and after studying it for a few moments leaned back in her chair and puffed her cigarillo. The flare of the coal showed her face: wizened, pinched, filled with age and pain, but Lawrence was long practiced in looking at actors and actresses made up to look old. He could easily imagine the face she had once worn many decades ago. She was probably beauti ful once, perhaps arrestingly so. The bone structure was there, and there was still some fire in her old and rheumy eyes.
She handed Lawrence a deck of old tarot cards and asked him shuffle, then she took the cards, cut them and began laying individual cards in a row. She rambled on for a few moments about pain, dark omens and the pain Lawrence felt for his dead mother. Lawrence wasn’t impressed. Everyone in this county knew that Sir John was a widower.
“. . . and you try to find solace in the women who pass you by, but this pain never goes away. It gnaws deeper—”
He placed his hand on hers, stopping the flow of meaningless words.
“That’s not why I came here,” he said. “And you know it.”
The look in her eyes was sly and careful.
“Tell me about my brother.”
Maleva lowered her eyes to study the back of Lawrence’s hand. She took it in both of hers and turned it over to study the palm.
“There is a picture in your mind,” she said, and this time her voice lacked artifice. “A terrible picture. It cannot be erased. It hides from you, but you know it’s there. Which makes it more terrible . . .”
“The medallion I showed you. It was found on my brother’s body.”
“But he was not wearing it.” She said it as a statement rather than a question.
Lawrence narrowed his eyes. “How do you know this?”
She said nothing.
“Your caravan showed up two weeks before three men were killed. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
Maleva smiled thinly. “There are no coincidences. Only Fate. But she plays a hidden hand. What part we have in this we won’t know till the game’s up.”
“What exactly is ‘this’?” he said, irritated by the parlor mystic performance. He wasn’t a believer and this felt like more Gypsy nonsense to him. But then he narrowed his eyes as another thought occurred to him and he leaned forward, placing his palm on the table. In a low and dangerous voice he demanded, “Did someone here kill my brother?”
If Maleva was intimidated by Lawrence’s tone or words no flicker of it showed on her face.
“Darkness comes for you. You must leave Talbot Hall,” she said in a voice as soft as a midnight whisper. “You must flee Blackmoor.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve only just arrived.”
Outside there were shouts and screams.
“And you have come too late. . . .”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lawrence leaped to his feet and dashed outside, expecting the worst and hoping for it. He wanted the killer to be there . . . to be here. He wanted to catch the bastard in the middle of one of his murderous attacks; he wanted him red-handed so that no one could say that he was innocent. Lawrence was hungry for blood, he wanted—needed—to be face to face with Ben’s killer.
He kicked open the door and stared at a scene of confused activity that was not at all what he expected, and it stopped him in his tracks.
Tableau.
A Gypsy lay on the ground, his face a mask of blood, hands pressed to a jaw that was clearly shattered. Broken bits of teeth were stuck against his lips and chin. A billy club on a thong dangled from his wrist. A woman knelt over him, using her body to shield him from four big men who stood in the center of the dancing circle. They were not Gypsies—these were clearly men from Blackmoor, and each of them carried a heavy shotgun and it was clear from the looks on their faces that they were willing to use either end of their weapons. One man wiped blood from the stock of his weapon, a cruel grin of satisfaction etched onto his heavy features. Lawrence recognized him. Kirk, the publican who owned the tavern.
Kirk pointed his shotgun across the clearing where the bear cage stood. A Gypsy man stood between him and the cage. He had a ball python curled around his neck and his rough hand rested on the hilt of a curved dagger in a sheath angled to allow a quick pull. Other Gypsies—men and women—appeared out of the shadows. They were angry, some snarling curses in Romany, their dark faces clouding with confusion and rage.
“Go away,” he growled in a heavily accented voice. “You have no business here. Not tonight. Go away.”
“Give us the bloody bear, you old snake handler, or you’ll get what I gave your friend.” Kirk kicked the fallen man in the leg. The other men kept turning to cover the gathering crowd with their guns.
The Gypsy with the python pulled the knife halfway from its sheath, but Kirk leveled the shotgun at him and thumbed back the hammer with an audible click!
“Pull that pig-sticker and I’ll shorten you by a head.” Kirk was enjoying himself and wore a vicious smile as he bullied his way through the crowd and threw open the drop-bolt on the bear cage. He and the other men stepped back as the bear moved forward; it shouldered open the barred door and stepped down onto the hard-packed ground.
“There’s your killer, lads,” declared Kirk.
&n
bsp; “Nonsense!” cried the Gypsy. “He dances. That’s all.”
But the bear made the kind of noise an old man might make when sinking into a chair. It sat down heavily on the cold ground and began biting its own rump in an attempt to catch some fleas.
The momentum of the confrontation stalled. Kirk looked around as if he expected a second and much more terrifying bear to be on display. A few of the Gypsies laughed quietly.
One of the vigilantes lowered his shotgun. “Kirk, I think we might be off our mark here—”
Kirk was having none of it. His face was livid and the look he gave his companion was murderous. He swung around and leveled his shotgun at the bear. The snake handler stepped between Kirk and the bear but the moment was suddenly spinning out of control.
Lawrence had reached his limit with this nonsense. He jumped down from the vardo and shoved his way roughly into the clearing. He strode straight toward Kirk and slapped the barrel away, but Kirk took a half step back and brought the weapon up again. Several of the bigger Gypsies began closing in from all points of the circle.
“Stand back!” bellowed Kirk. “We have a right!”
“You have no rights, you idiot,” Lawrence fired back. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“You should be with us, Talbot. That bear killed your own brother.”
“Don’t be a fool! I saw my brother’s body. I saw the wounds. Only a fool would think that this pathetic creature—”
But he was immediately interrupted by a shrill whistle from the woods. Everyone turned and even the bear looked up with myopic interest as Constable Nye came wobbling into the clearing on a bicycle, his whistle caught between his teeth.
Lawrence almost burst out laughing. The moment had gone through drama nearly to tragedy and was now transforming mid-scene into farce.
“Get out of my way! Get out of my way!” Nye demanded as he skidded to a stop and dismounted. He took in the scene and blew out his cheeks like a gasping fish, then wheeled on Kirk. “Thomas . . . what the hell is going on here?”
The men with the shotguns lowered them, except for Kirk, who stood his ground.
“Thomas,” Nye said to him, “what the hell are you about?”
“We come for the bear, Nye,” said Kirk. “It done all the killing.”
Constable Nye looked from him to the pathetic creature huddled in the firelight. The bear’s hide was bare in spots and his muzzle was white as snow.
“For goodness sake, Thomas,” Nye said with exasperation, “don’t be daft. I mean . . . these poor beggars make their living off this sorry creature. It couldn’t hurt a fly.”
The bear handler nodded emphatically and reached over to stroke the bear’s shaggy head.
“You see?” said Nye. “Harmless. It’s not a—”
But his words were cut off as the threadbare old bear suddenly let out a terrible roar and rose up onto its hind legs, rising to full height above the startled crowd. There were shouts and screams—both male and female—and everyone staggered back from the bear. The vigilantes brought up their guns and the Gypsies stared in shock at the sudden ferocity of their old pet. The bear’s stubby claws were out and it pawed the air—but it did not attack anyone. Instead it let out a howl that was almost human: high and piercing and thoroughly charged with naked terror.
“Oh my god!” someone yelled at the back of the crowd and Lawrence, along with everyone in the packed crowd, turned to see what had spooked the animal. There was a flash of movement and then a splash of red spattered everyone in the clearing. The rearmost of the vigilantes, the one who had shoved a Gypsy into Lawrence, staggered forward and dropped to his knees as a geyser of hot blood shot up from between his shoulders. His head spun through the air and struck the bear full in the chest and the moment froze into insanity and impossibility.
Then, from the outermost edge of the camp, something huge rose up out of the darkness. Not as bulky as the bear but taller and far, far more terrible. Lawrence stood transfixed, his mind juddering to a halt as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was dressed like a man, but the shirt and waistcoat and trousers were split at the seams and hung in shreds. The thing was covered in brown fur that was tipped with silver and as it rose up muscles bunched and flexed under its skin. It stood on two legs, but the feet were gnarled and twisted parodies—part animal, part human, with claws that tore ragged lines in the hard-packed earth. It had a deep chest and shoulders that sloped upward to a bull neck and great muscular arms that were spread wide as if to gather and crush the entire crowd. The hands were dreadful, with long fingers tipped with claws that curved into wicked points. Fresh blood steamed from the tips of each wicked claw.
But the worst thing was its head, its face. Tufted ears rose above a knotted brow beneath which were yellow eyes rimmed with red. It had a short muzzle that wrinkled back as it opened its mouth in a snarl of primal animal hate. Teeth like daggers dripped with hot saliva.
Lawrence could not move, could not think; his heart slammed against the walls of his chest. He could not blink or swallow or scream. All he could do was stand there and behold this thing. This monstrous impossibility. This perversion of all sense and sanity.
This . . . werewolf.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The creature threw back its head and the massive muscles of its chest and sides flexed as it let loose with a howl so loud that it threatened to break the fragile scaffolding of Lawrence’s sanity. The sound was too loud. It exploded inside his head and though he was aware of other screams all around him, the howl of the werewolf muted them to meaningless noise. Then everything was in motion as panic swept through the crowd and pandemonium scattered vigilantes and Gypsies, young and old, like leaves in a windstorm.
The Gypsy snake handler shoved Lawrence out of the way and ran to gather up two small children; women screamed and ran, babies cried in uncomprehending fear. Horses reared and kicked the air.
The werewolf lunged forward and raked its claws across a man’s chest and Lawrence saw lungs and heart slide through shattered bone and spill onto the ground before the man could even fall. Then the werewolf leaped forward and dove into one of the vardos, chasing a Gypsy woman who had fled inside. Lawrence saw the silhouette of the creature—a form painted in light and shadow and fashioned in Hell itself—as the monster rushed the length of the wagon and pounced on the woman. As the massive arm swept across her she seemed to fly apart like a doll and the inside of the vardo’s canvas covering was splashed with dark droplets.
A Gypsy screamed a woman’s name and rushed toward the wagon, a wicked knife held in his fist, but the werewolf exploded out through the back door. The man was impaled by splinters from his own wagon before he could even attempt to avenge his woman’s death. The werewolf pounced on him, driving him into the dirt and then leaped at another man who was bent over trying to load an old cap-and-ball pistol. The werewolf clamped its jaws around his throat and tore away everything but the spine. The blood spray caught the creature in the face and for a moment Lawrence could swear that its eyes rolled high and white as if in ecstasy.
Lawrence saw Kirk—as shocked to stillness as he was himself, his shotgun pointed uselessly at the ground. Seeing that ignited something within Lawrence and he suddenly found himself moving forward, pulling the pistol from his belt, aiming wildly, firing, firing. He thought he saw one of his bullets hit home, saw cloth puff up on the thing’s shoulder, but if it was a hit the bullet did no good. The monster didn’t flinch or slow; instead it wheeled around and spotted Kirk standing nearby with one of the remaining vigilantes. The eyes narrowed and the mouth stretched in a parody of a smile as it slashed out with its paw.
Kirk tried to say something—perhaps a plea, perhaps a prayer—but then the claws struck him with such terrible force that his face was completely torn away. Eyes, nose, teeth and jaw . . . all of it gone in a red flash. The publican’s body shuddered as shock and convulsions burst through his nerve endings and he fell to the ground, dying . . .
but in a twist of perversity, not yet dead. He flopped on the ground as the monster stepped across his body toward the vigilante who had not managed to get off a single shot during the attack.
Lawrence grabbed the sleeve of a Gypsy man and bellowed at him. “Get the women and children to safety!” He hurled the man toward some of his fellows and, terrified as they were, they ran to obey.
Lawrence raised his gun and tried to fire, but as he shuffled forward for the best shot he stumbled over the dirt rim of the dancing circle and went down, his bullet firing into the campfire. He landed hard and the pistol fell from his grasp, landing in the hot coals.
The monster moved quickly past the vigilante, and for a moment Lawrence thought that the creature had chosen, for whatever reason, to ignore him, but in his mind there was an afterimage of a blurred movement and then Lawrence—and the vigilante—looked down and saw the truth. The man’s guts slid out of a gaping wound and splashed heavily onto the dirt. The vigilante’s finger flexed on the trigger and the shotgun exploded, peppering the still-twitching Kirk with buckshot. Then the vigilante fell across Kirk’s body and they both settled into a terminal stillness.