XXXVIII - Rage of the Werewolf

  The lycanthrope barreled through the chapel toward its prey with such primal, animalistic fury that it smashed directly into the campfire without so much as a second thought. The beast’s contact with the blaze caused it to slow down slightly, giving Sybil just the edge she needed to barely dodge the incoming blow as sparks and embers rained down from the rafters and began setting the building on fire. Sybil, acting on reflex, pulled her dagger free and slashed at the monster as it prepared to launch a follow-up blow. Her edged silver slice into the beast’s arm and forced it to growl with sudden, burning pain. The girl rolled away from a swift counter attack and came to a stop behind the meager safety of a nearby pew just as a thick manus made an angry swipe at her head.

  Sybil vaulted two more pews as the werewolf, disoriented by the haze of smoke and ash that was filling the building, frantically searched all around for her. Unable to rely on its nose through the smoke, it was forced to use its inferior eyesight to locate its intended prey, and by the time that it finally did, Sybil had already put significant ground between the two of them. And so the beast, once again, charged. Blinded by smoke and fury, the monster missed her without her having to so much as sidestep its ravenous blow. It smashed through ruinous pews and toppled the decaying altar at the rear of the chapel as it attempted to cease its momentum and turn back toward its intended quarry.

  Sybil used this opportunity to run. She swerved to avoid rotting pews and burning detritus alike, coughing as she went while the smoke and fire both continued to spread. She heard the signs of the lycanthrope’s frantic pursuit behind her; Sybil was too terrified to look back but was all too aware that the hungry creature was coming ever-closer, even as she drew nearer to the building’s sole exit. She thought she could almost feel the beast’s breath on the back of her neck, and for a long, dreadful moment she was certain that it would soon snatch her with its powerful jaws. But then she heard the sound of something crashing from the rafters above, and a moment later came the wolf’s surprised shriek. Something must have come loose in the fire and struck the lycanthrope as it fell. Sybil silently thanked the Mother for the opportunity that She had given her as she burst through the chapel’s threshold and into her first gasps of fresh air in what felt like so many long hours.

  Sybil, her lungs burning as they greedily swallowed the outside air, came to a stop in front of a patch of wolfsbane. She clumsily snatched up a handful of flowers, and, dagger in her other hand, turned to face the burning chapel. For a moment nothing came from the door save for a curtain of smoke, and for an even briefer spell Sybil thought that maybe the beast had been trapped inside of the chapel and was quickly consumed by the fire. Evidently the Mother did not intend to offer her another kindness so soon, because the beast’s hulking form soon came crashing out of that thickening layer of smoke.

  The lycanthrope stood catching its breath through a series of heavy, powerful gasps that heaved its entire body, its tongue hanging limp from the side of its jaw like that of a dog on a hot summer day. Upon spotting its quarry, it clenched that same jaw into a tight sneer before it dashed on all fours with a renewed sense of vigor.

  “Stay back, Finn!” Sybil cried. “Please! I know you are still in there!”

  The lycanthrope ignored her plea. Sybil planted her feet; she raised her dagger to her bouquet of wolfsbane and waited an impossibly long time for what she hoped and prayed would soon arrive. She wanted nothing more than to turn and run, but she knew to do so would be fruitless—the beast would only wind up catching her with her back turned, and that would be the end of her. All she could do at that point would be to hope for a hasty demise. And so she remained still as the werewolf continued to draw near. Each step brought it that much closer to its prey, and Sybil that much closer to her unavoidable doom.

  But then, at long last, it came.

  A mighty gust of wind swept up from behind her, so powerful that its force almost caused her to stagger. Sybil finally began hacking into her bouquet with her dagger. Dozens of purple and red petals rode the wind, the gust taking them toward the galloping werewolf. The petals pelted the beast in the face and stuck to its body; it came to a grinding halt as it desperately snatched at the irritants, its thick fur already lumpy with a rapidly forming rash, its white eyes growing red and watery as its nose began to leak twin streams of chunky, yellow mucus. Its rapid tearing at the petals was interrupted by its sudden need to retch, and it wound up violently vomiting more mucus onto the cold ground. The liquid quickly began to freeze at its feet.

  Sybil knew that this was her chance to strike. While the beast was incapacitated by the wolfsbane, she could easily lunge forward and puncture its exposed chest with her hungry silver edge. All it would take was a moment of resolve, and the monster would be dead at her feet, the nightmare over at long last.

  Her mind flashed to images of Finn, and she immediately knew that to slay the beast now would have taken a resolve that she did not possess.

  And so she turned and ran.

  She ran until her legs began to burn, and her lungs started to scream for mercy. Soon she heard the werewolf’s enraged howl echoing through the trees, and she knew that it, having largely recovered from its ordeal with the wolfsbane, was back on the hunt. It would surely pick up her scent on the worsening wind slicing through the air all around her, and when it did, it would not be long before it caught up to her.

  Sybil was so distracted by her terror of the lycanthrope that she lost focus on the path ahead of her. She did not even notice the quagmire until her left leg was almost knee deep in marsh and pulling her downward, and even then it did not dawn on her what was happening until she had almost hit the ground. She landed in the muck and the mud with a frigid, violent splash, and would have impaled her face on her own dagger if her head had landed mere inches more to the right. Refusing to think about her foolish brush with death, Sybil began to rapidly half-swim, half-crawl through the icy grime in a desperate attempt to find more solid ground. Her body was already exhausted from her earlier flight and was growing numb with the cold of the surrounding mire. For a long while she thought she was destined to sink into the muck and drown, but her determination proved to overpower her fatigue, and she soon found herself crawling onto more stable, frozen earth.

  Her body shook and heaved as she desperately gasped for air. She was too tired and heavy with muck to rise to her feet, but, knowing that the lycanthrope was approaching, she forced herself to crawl onward until she found the base of a large, sturdy tree. She sheathed her dagger, and with weak, wobbly arms managed to pull her loaded crossbow free of her back. She then turned around so her back was pressed against the trunk of the tree, and she waited.

  Sybil did her best to listen for the approaching beast, but the ever-worsening wind made great effort to restrict her hearing. She became acutely aware of how loud her breathing was, but in her exhausted state she struggled to control her respiration. Some of her strength returned to her and she eventually managed to calm her desperate lungs, but it took great effort to finally stifle their greed.

  Several long minutes passed. Snow began to fall, which got whipped around by the violent wind. Soon Sybil found the strength to stagger to her feet. She kept her crossbow at the ready in front of her, but her arms, influenced by fear or fatigue, shook slightly, hindering her aim.

  At long last, she heard it: the sound of the werewolf snorting and sniffing as it slowly made its way through the snow and the sludge, searching for its prey. Searching for her. And it was quickly closing the distance. She heard its feet shuck through the cold grunge of the swamp, growing louder and closer with each sinister stomp. Soon she was certain that it was just on the other side of her tree, and that if she even slightly peeked around the trunk, she would see its crystalized breath in the air.

  Then came the silence. The beast suddenly stopped lumbering, even appeared to stop breathing. Long moments passed where the stillness continued to persist. The only thing she heard was the wailing of the winter wind. Had the creature passed her by, missing her tree entirely? Was it walking away from her even now, and she had missed the sound of its departure due to the wind whipping past her ears? For a long time, Sybil was too terrified to find out.

  With a deep breath, she slowly slid along the side of the tree. She kept her crossbow trained in front of her, gripped by trembling arms that she was certain now shook entirely with fear instead of with cold or exhaustion. And yet the cold was not to be discounted—the mud and the muck that clung to her sapped more heat from her body with every passing moment, so that soon she would become completely numb. She wondered if she would even be able to pull the lever of her crossbow as she began to lose the feeling in her hands.

  Sybil crept slowly, the whole time acutely aware of every sound that she made: her shallow, fearful breaths, her boots trudging through the wet, swampy ground, all of her equipment gently clinking and rattling with each noisy step. Guided by the empowered moon, she continued to edge her way around the natural wall of her tree, risking everything just to get a single glimpse into the waiting darkness.

  A massive, hairy paw swiped at her from out of the shadows. It smacked into the trunk beside her, sending huge splinters of bark and timber gushing from the tree like gore exploding from a fresh wound. Sybil’s scream was lost to the wind as she staggered away from the lacerated tree with all of the speed and dexterity that her tired legs could give her. She immediately found herself stumbling into a nearby mire; she tripped as she forced her way back onto solid ground, and though she managed to stay on her feet, she noticed that her numb, exhausted arms had lost their grip on her crossbow. Sybil only took the briefest of moments to search for the dropped weapon before she had to address the beast that now loomed before her, stomping toward her menacingly with a wicked, saliva-ridden snarl on its scrunched face. It emitted a low growl that managed to pierce through the wind that wanted so badly to whisk the sound away into the unknown.

  “Stay back, Finn!” she begged the unhearing monster as she continued to inch her way backwards. “Please, just stay back!”

  The lycanthrope paid her no mind. Its snarl only grew louder as its mouth widened, exposing its massive fangs to the glistening moonlight, which bounced off of the sinister teeth as if they were a set of finely polished mirrors.

  Another step.

  “Stay back!”

  Another step. Then another. Each stride further closed the distance between them.

  And then the beast decided to charge.

  “I said to stay back!” Sybil pulled her whip from her belt, and in the same motion uncoiled it with a vicious lash at her barreling foe. The length of silver struck the lycanthrope across its face; the beast yelped and came to an immediate standstill as the blood from its newly opened wound splashed into the snow at its feet. Crimson liquid ran down its snout and dripped off its nose, but it hardly seemed to notice. It stood in place, watching her with rage boiling behind its white eyes, but it did not immediately resume its approach.

  The whip’s blow had instilled the creature with a new sense of caution, and the girl with a new sense of confidence. She held the weapon at the ready, watching her foe closely as she anticipated what would come next. Wait for the beast to move first, or beat it to the punch? Which would be more advantageous? As it would turn out, the monster would make the choice for her. It attempted another lunge, seemingly wanting to overwhelm her with its explosive speed and power, but it could not close the space between them before she struck again. Her whip opened a fresh laceration in the werewolf’s shoulder, which caused it to stagger, likely more from surprise than from any actual force put behind the blow. Sybil’s confidence swelled; she lashed at the beast again, catching it in the chest before it could recover. A third blow intersected with the second, creating a vermillion X across the werewolf’s chest. It roared with fury and frustration, but for the first time, its cries did not frighten her. Instead they told her that she actually held the advantage.

  It was only well after she had attacked again that she realized to do so was a mistake. She should have waited, should have anticipated the flow of the battle, but instead she had chased a momentum that she was certain would have led her to victory.

  The chain wrapped around the beast’s massive forearm. Its silver caused the lycanthrope to howl with pain as the metal burned through fur and flesh. The werewolf then yanked on the whip with all of its strength; Sybil, quickly realizing its intention, managed to loosen her grip just in time to prevent her arm from being torn from her body. Instead only the handle of her whip was lost to her, but it fled from her grasp with such burning fury that it opened her glove and sliced a gash into her hand as it went. She clumsily staggered forward, her tired, wobbly legs barely able to stand up to the momentum that her stumble had created. The lycanthrope wrestled with her whip for a few moments before it managed to get its arm loose; it tossed the weapon away and immediately charged at the off-balance youth, who could do nothing but desperately dive out of the way of the speeding monster.

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  Sybil just barely managed to avoid the incoming blow. She landed on the ground with a painful crash, her shoulder crying out in agony as it struck a half-buried boulder that waited there for her. She lay stunned in aching, throbbing pain for what felt like hours, but what must have only been a handful of seconds, because when she finally opened her wincing eyes, she saw that she was still alive. The lycanthrope, having recovered from her flurry of whip blows, approached her slowly as blood dribbled from its several wounds. It looked to still be cautious of her, despite her being disarmed, but it would not be long before its rage and bloodlust forced it to move in for the killing blow.

  Sybil heaved herself up to her knees. She tried to climb to her feet, but she was still stunned by her fall, and her body protested every effort that she made to avoid her approaching fate. The werewolf, emboldened by her lack of action, increased its pace, and within seconds it was rushing toward her on all fours, a frenzy of fury overtaking it. Sybil continued her fruitless efforts to rise, to run, to escape, but her body failed her with each attempt. Soon her foe would be upon her, and her suffering would come to an end.

  The lycanthrope, looming over her now, reared up onto its hind legs and prepared to crash down upon her with all of its might. Sybil wanted to look away, but she forced her gaze forward so that her final memories would be of the opponent that she was unable to save. She owed it to Finn to face her failures, even at the very end.

  A figure launched itself in between the girl and the werewolf. In one hand it held a burning torch which doused the surrounding world in both brightness and shadow; in the other, a longsword that shimmered beautifully in the bright moonlight. It shoved the torch forward, shouting at the beast to stay back with a powerful voice that Sybil immediately recognized to be that of her mentor.

  “Mr. Albescu…” she croaked pitifully.

  The werewolf, likely remembering the fire that had consumed the chapel, recoiled in the presence of the torch. Stygian shadows cast the creature’s massive body behind dancing streaks of darkness. While the flame kept the beast at bay, Vlad stole a glance back at his apprentice. “Flee, Night Owl!” he yelled. “You must away from here while I slay this wretched beast!”

  “But you can’t!” Sybil pleaded. “Finn is the werewolf, Mr. Albescu! It was him all along!”

  “I know,” he said gravely, “but the only thing we can do for him now is provide him with the release of death. I shall be the one to complete the task. You must make your way to safety.”

  Vlad turned back to face their foe before Sybil could respond. He continued to thrust the torch at the beast, but it was clear that the creature was quickly losing its fear of the blaze. She knew it would not be long before it would disregard the torch and overwhelm her mentor. Sybil, her mind spinning and her body on fire, looked around desperately for anything she could use to aid him. She soon spotted her crossbow lying in the snow a handful of meters from where she sat, looking as if it were several miles away. Despite her body’s protests, she forced herself onto her hands and knees and began to crawl toward her lost weapon.

  ___

  The werewolf lunged at Vlad with a swiping hand which knocked the torch from his grip. It fell to the cold earth and was quickly deprived of its flame, becoming nothing more than a smoking piece of wood.

  “No longer fearful of fire, are you?” Vlad said. “No matter. This length of silver shall spell your end just fine. This I promise you!”

  The furious lycanthrope swiped its powerful left paw at the Plague doctor. Vlad, easily predicting the clumsy attack, dodged the incoming blow and countered with a quick slash across the creature’s forearm. The beast roared and backpedaled away from the blow; it glared at Vlad, but there was caution mixed with its growing anger.

  “Hardly a graceful creature,” he taunted. “Very much unlike your strigoi constituents, aren’t you? But then, I suppose you have not had much time to grow into that new form of yours. Fortunately for us both, you shall never have the chance to.”

  The lycanthrope, though not understanding his words, lashed out with its opposite manus in a strengthening fit of rage. This inelegant blow was even more telegraphed than its last, and Vlad also avoided the attack with relative ease. He once again countered with a strike of his own, but this one was far more decisive; he plunged the tip of his sword into the beast’s outstretched forearm and slashed the blade up the length of the limb with as much force as he could muster. Blood geysered from the ruined limb, and when Vlad pulled his dripping weapon free, the arm went limp at the werewolf’s side.

  The creature howled with the agony of its wound. It awkwardly staggered away from the blow, its useless arm running crimson streams into the snow and earth as it went. Vlad, pursuing this advantage, took his sword into both hands and lunged it toward his opponent’s exposed chest, hoping to put a quick end to the beast’s reign of terror. His attack would have connected if the werewolf did not bring up its one remaining arm in defense; it swiped the powerful limb at the incoming blade and knocked the weapon away even as its forearm opened in another streak of hot blood. Vlad lost his grip on his sword, which flew from his hands into the darkness. The blow nearly dislocated both of his shoulders and caused him to stagger wildly. It took all of his balance and focus not to tumble into an adjacent quagmire.

  Before Vlad could recover, the beast used its less injured arm to strike him with a powerful backhand. Its thick tree trunk of a forearm took Vlad in the stomach, and, though less powerful than it would have been at full strength, still had more than enough force to knock the Plague doctor off of his feet. Vlad tumbled through the air for a few agonized moments; he realized before even hitting the ground that the blow had broken at least one of his ribs. The wind escaped from his lungs as his back struck the cold ground, his head spinning with a fresh daze that multiplied his vision.

  The beast launched upon its downed prey before the man could recover. Vlad, knowing he would not be able to avoid the attack, frantically reached for something—anything—that he could place between him and his incoming assailant. His grip curled around a thick tree branch; he immediately brought the makeshift shield into both hands and held it out in front of himself, both arms extended. The wolf crashed its better arm into the branch and grabbed it with its mighty claw. The branch managed to hold against the weakened power of the monster’s attack, but Vlad could immediately feel that it, as well as his elbows, were beginning to buckle beneath the beast’s weight. The searing pain that shot through his arms told him that he would not be able to hold off his attacker for long.

  He only wondered if his body or his shield would be the thing to give out first.

  ___

  Sybil’s entire body shook with fatigue and cold as she finally reached her crossbow. She forced herself up onto one knee before pulling the weapon out of the swampy grime. Its silver quarrel had come free and lay on the ground beside it, but the weapon was still cocked and thankfully appeared to be undamaged, so she quickly reloaded the bolt and turned to face her mentor and their foe. Vlad lay on his back only a few meters away, the rear of his head facing her, a thick tree branch held up in his hands. The lycanthrope was pressing down upon the branch with its left arm, which ran scarlet with sanguine lines that stained the bark of the branch and dribbled onto her mentor’s clothes. Snow and wind whipped against the beast’s fur, but it hardly seemed to notice; it only had eyes for the prey that was barely managing to defend itself on the other side of the branch.

  Sybil’s body ached; the snow and the wind swirled around her and whipped against her face; but despite all of this, she knew it should have been little trouble for her to place her quarrel square into her foe’s waiting head. The youth raised her crossbow, positioned her hand beneath its lever, took a deep, cold breath, and prepared to fire. All she had to do now was pull the lever, and she would put an end to this once and for all.

  But her quarrel would not fly.

  She suddenly no longer saw the bloodthirsty werewolf crashing its weight down upon her pinned mentor. Try though she might, she could not see the crazed beast that had slaughtered so many villagers, and who would continue to do so each night for as long as it continued to live. The only thing she could see was Finn, frightened and shivering from within the icy prison of his own body, unable to resist the animalistic fury that controlled his every move.

  And she felt her aim beginning to slip.

  “Please, Finn!” she yelled over the winter wind. “Please, stop this! You must fight!”

  Vlad tilted his head back so that their eyes could meet. He saw his apprentice on her knee, crossbow at the ready, but unwilling to fire. “Finnian cannot hear you, Night Owl!” he shouted back at her. “The boy cannot be reasoned with while the beast is in control! You must put an end to him now, while you have the chance!”

  “I cannot, Mr. Abescu!” she called back. “There must be some other way!”

  The branch between man and beast started to give; the wolf’s deadly fangs sank closer to Vlad’s exposed neck. “You can, Night Owl! You can because you must! If you care at all for this boy, then you will set him free of his curse! Do it now, before it is too late!” Centuries passed in the span of a few short seconds. When she did not act, her mentor went on. “I need you, Night Owl! Please!”

  Sybil could barely hear him. Her mind was swept up in the fury of the surrounding squall, her body as helpless as the swirling flakes of snow against the suggestion of the unrelenting wind. Her trigger hand had gone numb, but no longer with the pain and cold.

  The creature’s fangs sank lower. Hot, ravenous drool fell from their tips and splashed onto the struggling man’s tender neck. The branch cracked once, twice, three times now, as it quickly began to fail. “Night Owl!”

  Crack. The branch approached the end of its pitiful life. Soon it would all be over. The fangs craved the taste of flesh.

  “Sybil!”

  The storm swirling in her mind came to an immediate halt. Sybil raised her crossbow, took aim, and fired. Her quarrel flew through the darkness, slicing along the wind and blasting away the snow, refusing to stop until it was buried up to its fletching deep within the lycanthrope’s skull. The beast stiffened. Its body sagged slightly before it immediately collapsed away from its would-be victim.

  And then all was still.

  ___

  Vlad gasped for precious air as the weight of the beast fell off of him. His wailing arms collapsed to his sides, a shard of the shattered branch in either hand. His apprentice dropped her crossbow, her own arms shaking as she planted her hands against the frigid ground. Neither of them spoke as they both desperately caught their breath. The wind abated as they recovered, becoming a gentler, but still cold and cutting whistle that continued to subject the falling snow to its will.

  At length, Vlad forced himself to sit up. He looked at the werewolf lying on the ground beside him. It was on its back now, looking up past the snow and the canopy and the clouds at the bright moon with one vacant, glassy eye, the other decimated by the quarrel that now called that ruined socket its home. The thing was still alive; it swallowed feeble gasps of air as blood seeped from what was once its eye and ran down to its open mouth, staining its white teeth. Puffs of icy vapor escaped from its nostrils with each weak breath.

  The Plague doctor would waste no more time. He knew what needed to be done.

  Vlad hefted himself onto his knees and shuffled over to the incapacitated beast. He drew his dagger and, taking it into both hands, raised the weapon high over his head, ready to bring it down onto the creature’s slowly heaving chest.

  “Wait.”

  Vlad turned at the sound of his apprentice’s voice. She was on her feet and limping her way toward him and the fallen wolf, her own dagger in her hand. Her thick, sweaty hair lay flat against her face and partially obscured one of her eyes, but she did not care to move it aside.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  Vlad frowned at her. “Are you certain, Night Owl?”

  The young woman nodded once. “Yes.”

  Vlad looked at the beast, then back at his apprentice. The Plague doctor sheathed his blade. “Very well.”

  He moved away from the werewolf. Sybil fell to her knees in his place. She stared down into the beast’s one white eye, which looked back at her with a cocktail of emotion that should have been impossible for the orb that had once known nothing but fury and hunger.

  Sybil placed a single hand against the lycanthrope’s face, briefly touching the base of its snout right below where her bolt had destroyed its eye. She then took her dagger into both hands and lifted it above her head with a pair of shaking arms. The werewolf stared up at her, and her eyes locked with its single white globe once more. It appeared to raise its chest upward, toward the blade that would soon fulfil its destiny.

  The Plague doctor’s apprentice brought her dagger downward with all of her strength. She punctured the werewolf’s chest in the center of the X that she had earlier created with her whip. The wolf violently arched its back, its body briefly going stiff again before all of its muscles relaxed at once. Blood gushed from its mortal wound and escaped from its mouth on either side of its jaws. As the werewolf died, its body began to shrink and morph: its fur receded into its flesh, its snout shrunk back into its head, its muscles atrophied into oblivion. Finn fully regained his body just as the light left his extant eye, and his head sagged for one last time. Sybil closed his open eye; she silently prayed to the Mother that his final moments were spent behind the gaze of a human, and not of the beast that had controlled him for so long.

  And then, as an odd sense of relief flooded her body, Sybil began to weep.

  Vlad sat against a nearby tree and watched his apprentice for a long time as she leaned over Finnian’s lifeless form. Icy tears escaped from her eyes and landed on the boy’s tattered body. The Plague, overwhelmed by the sight of her mourning, eventually decided to shut his own eyes while liquid heartbreak fell from those of his apprentice. He wished he could do the same to his ears.

  The wind moaning through the trees sounded like a constant, sorrowful howl.