Wherein we meet the Wolf of Wolves.
It was a bad-tempered September evening when Eric Masters received the Bite. When he had chosen the weekend for camping with his girlfriend Joanne it had seemed auspicious enough. The weather reports had all been excellent, promising sun and slight cloud, nothing worse. And those promises were fulfilled up to about noon on Friday, after which it grew cloudier and cloudier as evening approached until Masters began to prepare for a wet night. Since Joanne had pitched the tent and Eric could never quite bring himself to trust her on such matters, he double-checked that it was pitched correctly and, for good measure, used a tarp to put up a make-shift extra roof to prevent rain from beating directly down on the tent fabric. It did not take long, but it was wasted effort; it never rained that night and, if it had, I suppose it would no longer have been a matter of concern to him.
By this point it was getting dark quickly. He crawled into the tent, where Joanne sat beside a lantern and said to her, "Well, that's about as secure as we're going to get it."
Joanne, who had no illusions about Eric's real purpose in making one last check, said, "Aren't you lucky to have a girlfriend who can pitch a perfect tent?" They both heard a low rumble outside, like thunder in the distance.
"Absolutely," said Eric, kissing her with a feigned sincerity that fooled no one. Joanne laughed. It was a high-pitched laugh, but at the same time somewhat more like a donkey's bray than a human laugh should be. People hated Joanne's laugh. For that matter, Eric hated Joanne's laugh, too, and had spent most of their first year of dating making every effort to avoid it. Unfortunately, she was a cheerful person and her laughter came freely and easily. Eric had simply had to get used to the perpetual donkey bray, although it had been surprisingly easy once he had set out with a will to do it. And aside from that she had much to recommend her; she was somewhat pretty, very good-tempered, and liked the outdoors; and while Eric himself grew bored with them if exposed to them for long periods, he was, it must be said, quite taken with the general idea of a woman who liked the outdoors. The thunder rumbled again.
Eric leaned over to say something to Joanne but was interrupted with an intense thump against the side of the tent that made them both jump.
"It's the tarp," said Eric; "it must have come untied."
Joanne laughed. "Would you like me to go out and tie it right?"
"No," Eric said testily, moving to the tent door. "I'll fix it."
Outside it was dark, but still not pitch black: the kind of liminal darkness to which the eyes can barely adjust but which still allows you to see, in which everything is shades of black and gray. He went over to the flapping corner of the tarp and grabbed it, peering as best as he could at the cord that had held it and had been thumping against the tent. Something wasless than right about it.
"Joanne!" he shouted. "Light!"
She crawled out of the tent with the lantern and went over to stand by him.
"As I thought," he said to himself. Then to her: "Look at this. It's almost as if someone had cut it."
"If you tie something so that it rubs against something sharp in the wind, it will do that," she said drily.
"I did no such thing," he said coldly. "And this wind isn't that strong. Besides...."
The thunder sounded again, but outside the muffling walls of the tent, it was clear enough that it was no thunder. It had enough rumble to it, a low tone, deep and powerful, that seemed to pass through the air and resound inside one's head, but it was not the thunder. The sky itself was quiet; this sound seemed to come horizontally, or even through the ground, not from above. And while the volume of it was like distant thunder, its source was clearly very close. There was a rustling in the bushes off to their side.
"Give me the lantern and go back to the tent," he ordered. Joanne opened her mouth to say something, but then simply shut it and obeyed. Eric edged forward toward the bushes, but had hardly taken two steps When Joanne shrieked behind him. He turned and froze.
At the edge of the lantern-light, not far from where Joanne herself, frozen with fear, was some kind of great, hulking animal. It was difficult to make out in detail; mostly what one saw, or perhaps what one remembered seeing, were the eyes, glinting reddish gold in the light, great, inhuman eyes, bestially cruel but cunningly intelligent. But one also remembered the teeth, a row of sharp teeth, gleaming white, and snapping. If you suddenly saw a great dog, or any other fierce animal snapping out you, you would see the snapping almost before you saw the animal, and it is that which would stick in your mind. So it was here; it seemed to be almost nothing but glinting eyes and snapping teeth. The beast had a human-ish form, but its movements were too quick to make out anything with precision, and it stayed out of direct light, snapping in the barely enlightened darkness around Joanne without actually snapping at her. Or so it was for the first few seconds; it soon lunged directly at Joanne, who tripped and fell backward. It threw itself on her.
The speed at which this all happened was almost too fast for the mind to take in, and without any thought at all, Eric dropped the lantern and rushed at the beast and Joanne. It was too late, however; the beast in a great leap sprang over Eric's head in one smooth motion, and as Eric reached Joanne he saw in the light of the lantern that she was covered with blood. He crouched and cradled her head in his hands as she drew a last few gasping breaths, and as the living eye of Joanne took on the unseeing stare of the dead. When he pulled his hands away, they were wet with blood.
But things were still moving too quickly. Behind him there was a cracking sound and the lantern went out. Eric, again with no time to think, only to react, fled. In the ever-increasing dark he stumbled; but each time he rose and fled again. But it was futile, for he would hear the rustling and twig-cracking of the beast behind him, then ahead of him, then off to his right, then off to his left, as if it were somehow everywhere at once, or as if it were moving so swiftly that it was running circles around him as he ran. Now and again the rustling would transform into the snapping beast itself, and Eric would flee blindly in the opposite direction. All of this had taken just a few minutes, but it felt to Eric as if he had been running for hours when the beast tired of the sport, and suddenly appearing in front of him, threw him to the ground and bit him hard on the shoulder right at the base of the neck. He screamed. The world went red, then it went black. The last he remembered before he actually blacked out was the beast letting go and the shouts of human voices.
He drifted in and out of consciousness for some time, sometimes seeing faces or vague forms but mostly just dreaming strange dreams. The dreams were mostly feverish nightmares of rumbling man-beasts, or of Joanne's face with the staring, dead eyes, or of his hands covered with blood. But one recurring dream, although the simplest, was the worst of all. In it he saw the moon, shining so brightly that it seemed to pierce not just cloud but rock and earth. It simply radiated brilliance, shining and shining and shining until he felt that he would go mad looking at it.
At the end of about a day and a half, he woke as from a restless sleep and found himself in a beautifully furnished room he had never seen before, with gauzy curtains blowing in a pleasant breeze and the sun pouring through the window. Everything in the room seemed to stand out in feverish colors. There were birds raucously arguing somewhere outside the window, and the breeze carried in a deep scent of flowers. The sun was too bright. The walls were too straight. The flapping of the curtains in the breeze was too noisy. Everything seemed relentlessly distinct from everything else, as if it were shouting to be noticed.
The door opened and a man walked into the room. He was small and wiry, and his light sweater vest and bowtie, both apparently quite expensive, were brightly colored, standing out cheerfully against his dark skin. "I thought you might be awake," he said. his voice, though quiet, was strong and clear.
"Where am I?" Eric asked.
"You are in one of the guest rooms in the house of Giles Scott," replied the man. We found you suffering from the Bite and Giles had you brought here to recover."
Eric tried to clear his head, but everything was still pushing at him. "You are not Giles Scott?"
"No," the man said. "My name is Seneca Lewis. I am what you might call an associate of Mr. Scott." The man looked intently at Eric for a few moments. "It looks like you need more rest. Just relax. We will send for you this afternoon when you are more fully recovered, and we will talk through what happened." He left and Eric sank back into the pillows and tried to close his eyes against the pushiness of the room.
He woke with a start several hours later and found Seneca Lewis standing by the door as if he had just walked in. "Come along," he said. "Mr. Scott and I would like to talk with you."
They walked down a long hallway with paintings on the wall, both right and left, and many doors, then down a small stairway at the end, then down another long hallway to something like a waiting room, which they walked through. Seneca pushed through a large mahogany door into a large office or study. Old leatherbound books lined the wall; there was a plant in one corner and some statuary in another; and at one end of the room there was a desk, around which were gathered three chairs on one side and one chair on the far side. That chair was occupied by a man.
He was not an imposing figure, although there was something striking about him. He had black hair, slightly curly, and large, startlingly dark eyes with long lashes, and he was thin. He was dressed immaculately in a suit that probably would have cost most people half a year's salary or more. What was most noticeable about him, however, was his pallor. He was pale, so pale he seemed almost ill, especially given his thinness. He had no ravaged or sickly look about him, and indeed had a sort of youthful boyishness in his face, but he seemed too pale for health.
"Mr. Masters," he said, gesturing to the chair immediately in front of the desk, "please sit down." His voice was pleasant and precisely enunciated.
Eric did so, and Seneca Lewis took the chair to his right.
"You are Giles Scott?" Eric asked.
"I am."
"Why did you bring me here instead of taking me to a hospital?"
Giles seemed drily amused. "They would hardly have known what to do with you. Tell me, what happened last night?"
Eric found himself describing what had happened as best as he could; however, he was much less coherent in telling it than I was above. At several points during the telling Giles and Seneca exchanged glances. And when he was done Giles leaned back in his chair and gazed somewhat disquietingly at Eric for some moments.
"Do you have any inkling of what has happened to you?" he asked abruptly.
Eric was immediately angry. "I was bitten by an animal that killed my girlfriend. Yes, I am completely aware of what happened to me."
The man on the other side of the desk was unfazed. "Eric," he said, "you were bitten by a werewolf."
"A werewolf," Eric repeated dully.
"Yes."
"A werewolf," Eric repeated again.
"Yes. You have received the Bite."
"The Bite?"
"I quickly get annoyed with people who merely repeat what I say, Eric. Yes, the Bite, the Bite of the Wolf. Do you know what happens to people who receive the Bite?"
Eric simply stared at Giles, then looked at Seneca, who leaned forward and said, "You have become a werewolf yourself, Eric."
"And what are you? Werewolf hunters?" Eric said incredulously.
"No," said Seneca, "we are werewolves, too."
"You were the one who just told us you were bitten by a man-shaped beast-thing with sharp teeth," said Giles drily; "are you really trying to argue the point? And do you not feel it? Doesn't everything seem a little more real than it should, like it has a little too much in its muchness?" He smiled darkly. "Like a fever, or insanity."
Eric put his hand to his forehead. "Is it some kind of virus?"
Giles made a face and contemptuously dismissed the suggestion with a flick of his fingers. "Viruses cannot do what has been done to you. You are infected not with a virus but with the spirit of the Wolf and the power of the lunatic moon."
Eric remembered the nightmare about the moon and shuddered. He closed his eyes. "Why was I bitten?" He became angry again. "And why was Joanne killed?"
"Interesting questions," said Giles. "It is not supposed to happen. There is some renegade running around behind my back, and I have to tell you, Eric, that this does not please me. It will be necessary to track him down and destroy him."
"Do you know who it is?" asked Eric looking up suddenly.
Giles looked back with his dark, unfathomable eyes. "Know? But there are things happening that give us some threads to follow. There are a number of Packs of Wolves throughout the world; many of them are unaligned, but for the most part they tend to fall within three major alliances, one of which I lead. The leaders of these three alliances form a triarchy whose formal and informal agreements keep everyone else in line. Lately, however, the Siberian alliance has been somewhat restless, and we have found an increasing number of its spies about."
"And you think that one of these spies killed Joanne?"
The other man shrugged. "It is a matter that needs to be investigated."
"I want to help."
"Eventually."
"Now."
In response Giles simply picked up a large paperweight from the desk and threw it with extraordinary force and speed at Eric's head. Eric reflexively caught it, but barely.
"Good," said Giles, "but not good enough; had I thrown it just a little harder you would now have a dent in your head. Sen, I think, was a little too optimistic about how quickly you had recovered. There will be plenty of time for helping us when you have revived enough not to be a liability."
Eric put his hand to his head, which did ache somewhat, and at some invisible signal the door behind him opened.
"Marcus here will take you back to your room," Giles said. "If you require anything, simply ask the staff."
After Eric had left, Seneca turned to Giles and said, "Do you really think the Russians are behind it?"
Giles gave him a sarcastic look. "Siberian spies playing messy cat-and-mouse games with idiot campers in the middle of nowhere like in some bad horror movie, clever enough to give us the slip but stupid enough to leave someone with the Bite? You know better than that, Sen." He looked up at the ceiling. "No, there is something else going on here. But in the meantime there have been an unusual number of Siberian agents about, and truth will look after its own consistency better than any lie will, until we know how to proceed."
