Seneca wasted no time. Charlotte and her Wolves were, of course, in hiding with Jolie, and of the other Primes who had sat at the table in the Aegidian Building that day, Elsbietka and Cotton were dead, and Seneca was leading the pro-Aegidius faction. The others had certainly been playing both sides, hoping for Giles to make some mistake, but, well aware of the dangers of direct rebellion against the Wolf King, had not committed themselves to Jolie's rebellion, either. This equivocation was brought to a forceful end, however, when Seneca sent Marcos with the Wild Hunt against them. Alexander surrendered, throwing in his lot with the Wolves at his door. Simon resisted and was torn apart, his Wolves co-opted; Sarah fled.
"Shall we hunt her out?" Marcos asked.
"No," said Seneca. "She is of little consequence right now, and there will be time enough later. We must bring all our force against Jolie."
And this they did, with blitzing speed. Safehouse after safehouse was raided and closed down in rapid succession, all in one night. Wolves in Jolie's faction began to be caught in attempting to desert and flee; they were killed. And in hardly any time at all word came that Jolie, having given up any idea of eliminating Seneca or Giles, was gathering the remnants of her forces in one last attempt to flee. Seneca sent word to Giles: "We may have her pinned down." Then the Wolf-King, who had remained aloof from all else, came in person.
The last safehouse was a well-built old house, preserved for some obscure reason by a historical society; it was large without being particularly showy and in comparison to other houses in the area it did not stand out in any way. Tucked away on a small estate surrounded by a tall stone wall, one could almost miss it from the street, since the street was almost more of a lane lined with trees and hedges, and the estate was situated at a peculiar angle to this lane so that it presented nothing obvious to the street except for an iron gate of singularly uninteresting make. It certainly did not seem to be a lair of monsters.
It is also true, however, that from the street with the iron gate you would not have had any indication that forces were gathering to crush those within. That street was deserted, as were several streets over. The speed of the Wild Hunt is furious, like movement in a gale or a nightmare; on all sides it gathered quietly, unobtrusively, blocks away and out of sight. But perhaps not unsensed?
"There is certainly a large group of Wolves there," said Seneca. "Even I can feel them. Jolie is likely to be there."
Giles tilted his head, as if listening to some distant sound. "Jolie is definitely there," he said. He turned to Seneca. "I am pleased that you can sense them, but if you can sense them, there is a possibility that she can sense us. You can waste no time."
Seneca signalled the Wolves to begin moving in, and turned to follow, but stopped when Giles, who had tilted his head again, suddenly said, "Sen!"
"Yes?"
"They are certainly underground, and I imagine that Jolie has not been so foolish as to lock herself in a cellar. Look for tunnels."
Seneca nodded and was gone, leaving Giles standing alone, gazing quietly up at the burning stars. It was a dark night and the moon was new, so, despite the light from the city, the heavens seemed to be a vast congregation of tiny silver and gold fires. At first there was no sound, but as the wind began to pick up, the branches of the trees began to wave, great boughs creaking and little branches chittering, so excitedly that the shushing leaves began to join in.
"True," Giles said. He was no longer staring up at the sky, but out into the distance.
"No," he then said. "I have already told you. She is useful." There was a pause, and then he put his hand to his mouth as if considering something. Then he shook his head. "No, that is not the way. Everything must be done according to order -- pondus, numerum, et mensuram, to a nicety. You have your end. Leave the means to me." Then came a long sentence in a language I do not know, sternly spoken. Then he smiled and said, "Then we are in agreement." And he, too, was gone.
For such a prize as Jolie the Wild Hunt had left off all subtlety and stealth. The iron gate had been torn from its hinges, the door of the house ripped out and tossed aside, every window broken open, every room turned over. The prey, however, was not discovered. It took only a few seconds, however, to find the descending stairs behind the sliding panel off the pantry, on the other side of the wall from the ascending ones. At the bottom, however, they found themselves stymied by a door. It was not like any other door, but more like the door to a safe, solid steel, very thick, unbudgeable. Busting the wall on each side of it only discovered more steel. Seneca sent Wolves around to try to bust a hole through somewhere, but although they made a great ruckus tearing up the floor, they seemed to have no luck. It was at this point that Giles arrived.
"Stand aside," he said, descending the stairs. "And be quiet."
He closed his eyes and set his fingertips lightly on the door. A moment went by, then another, and then he murmured quietly -- only Seneca was near enough to hear him -- "Yes, the very same, as you are the very same." And at that he opened his eyes and hit the door hard with his palm.
There was a great metallic tearing sound as the door fell inward. Giles and Seneca stepped into the room as the Wolves streamed in behind them. This was no cellar, but simply a little annex room of steel and thick concrete, with four tunnels heading off in various directions. Giles tilted his head as if listening. Then he pointed to one of the tunnels, and said to Seneca, "You will need most of your forces through there, but a good minority went through there." He pointed to another tunnel. Then to another. "Don't bother with that one. And the last one is for me alone. Don't forget that I want Charlotte and Eric alive." And, without waiting for any response, he was in Wolf form, moving swiftly down the last tunnel.
The Jolie-wolf had a head start, and she moved swiftly, but somehow it was not swiftly enough. It came through the darkness, clear and ruthlessly cold, a single inexorable command: "Be human." You have yourself no doubt experienced, or can imagine, how a comment spoken out of the darkness seems to come from every side and pierce you sharply, especially when you are tense or stressed. So here. But there was more to it. When you are dreaming and suddenly forced awake, one reality sweeps away another. The dream may cling, may resist, in an attempt to endure, but the waking world simply pushes it aside like curtain. Perhaps, too, it sometimes happens that within a dream, one dream shoves another aside, so that a mild dream becomes a nightmare, or a nightmare becomes suddenly peaceful. What happened at the command was much like this. It was not merely a command to be obeyed, it was a reality of its own, sweeping aside the reality of Jolie-as-Wolf as completely and cleanly as one dream might sweep aside another, or the waking world might sweep aside the world of dreams. It was not merely a command to be obeyed: it was a command that could not be disobeyed.
So it was that Jolie found herself lying on the ground, inexorably, inevitably human, as Giles, in human form, stepped out of the shadows into what, incomprehensibly, given that they were underground, seemed to be full moonlight. So it was that her light eyes looked defiantly up into his dark ones. What she was thinking, I do not know. Perhaps she was thinking about how swiftly it had all fallen, like a house of cards. Perhaps she was puzzling over how he had caught up with her. Perhaps she was wondering what it would be like to die. I do not know. What I do know is that the Wolf-King, smiling cheerfully, and standing over her with all the nonchalance of a friend meeting a friend in the park, spoke:
"Jolie, I am glad to see you again. We have much to talk about, you and I."
Monday, June 25, 2012
Capitulum Quartum Decimum
"Aveline!" said Giles cheerfully as he greeted her at the door of the mansion. "A delight to see you. I trust your flight went well."
"Exceptionally," Aveline said. She was dressed in black with a large brooch sparkling like fire just below her neck, all quite expensive.
"Normally such an important visitor would be driven by Marcos, but we are in a bit of disarray preparing." Giles waved her inside. "Which reminds me, before I forget, that Marcos has been pulled off his normal duties, so, alas, you will not eat as well as you normally would. But he prepared a sideboard for you, and insists that you try the crepes. Also, he has put out two bottles of wine, and insists that you enjoy both, but save him a glass; the best from the DRC. I refuse to remember the year, but he insists it is a good one."
Aveline laughed. "He is a funny thing. I am sure the wine will be excellent."
"Of course, it will; his choice in wine is always flawless. He grew up on a vineyard, you know, and has had a little more experience with wines than most people manage. You should have seen him when the region he grew up in received the Denominación de Origen; it is fortunate for him that I was in a good humor that week, since I had to listen to him bring it up in every single conversation."
They walked down a hallway in silence for a moment, then Giles turned serious. "You have heard about Elsbietka, of course?"
"Yes," said Aveline. "Frankly, I will not miss her. But I can understand that it would leave you less flexibility than you would usually have."
"Exactly. I have plenty of Wolves, but there are things that I can only trust to my most dangerous Wolves. Hence Marcos; I need someone to play the beater to Seneca's hunter, should the game play hide-and-seek. No one is as good at that as Elsbietka was, but Marcos will do. And it will give him experience. But in the meantime, I need someone to watch the fort, which would normally fall to him. And that is where you come in."
"How long until they are brought down?"
"Difficult to say," said Giles. "We know all her major hiding places, so we could force the issue, but the best thing would be for Jolie to play her hand. She has been moving very quietly and slowly, though, mostly attempting to build forces, making alliances, pick off stragglers, that sort of thing."
"Strange."
"No," Giles said with a distracted shake of his head, "it is the right thing to do, whether or not she fully understands why. And she is not like you, with a taste for jugular assault; she favors bluffs and feints until she finally comes at the prey from an unexpected side. But we have been closing off her options. She is at the point where she needs some clear victory; the allies she does have are pressing for it, and without one she cannot gain more. And 'clear victory' can only mean the capture or death of Seneca or myself."
Aveline stopped suddenly. "Tell me you are not planning to be the bait in the trap."
"Of course. Seneca is too methodical ever to make convincing bait. But she thinks I am arrogant and hubristic."
"It is hubristic to go on your own when Jolie is out to kill you. She is out to kill you, I am sure you are aware; she would not risk the dangers of merely capturing you." She resumed walking.
"Of course," said Giles. "That simply makes it better. She knows that I think I am the Invincible Wolf, and so she intends to exploit that weakness. As it happens to be true that I am the Invincible Wolf, however, it is no weakness at all, and therefore she will initiate her own destruction."
"It is too dangerous. Better Jolie than Elsbietka, but God help us all if she manages to kill you by accident. The girl is insufferable; she will want to change things."
"Ye of little faith. You are just like Seneca. But I forget that even you have not seen me in full rampage; when you received the Bite we were already finishing up. There has been so little need for me to unfold for so long, and with Vseselavich vanished and Bitka dead, Giuseppe may be the only one left who remembers what I am like when I do not hold back. You will see. In the meantime, we must be patient and vigilant. If we begin this last push, there is a danger of accidentally killing her. If she begins it, I can manage things to a finer degree of precision."
Aveline stopped again. "You are planning on letting them all live?"
"Do not be so harsh a judge. I recall having let you live on a certain occasion."
She blushed, but said, "Jolie is rather more a danger to you now than I was then."
"True," Giles said. "But you will recall that I did the same with Bitka, who was hardly bunnies and rainbows. Twice, in fact. But you both overestimate and underestimate Jolie. She cannot beat me, and we can come to an agreement, as I did with Vsesalevich, and Giuseppe, and Charles-Louis, and Bitka, and you, and as I will someday have to do with Seneca and Marcos. So turns the wheel of Fortune. Besides, I would prefer not to lose yet another one of my best Wolves; my collection is looking a bit thin, and good quality is rare in the breed, and seems more rare as time passes. When Wolf eats Wolf, it is a hard winter. Of course, there is a possibility that she will give us no option, but we will give her the chance to let us be merciful. As for the others...." He smiled pleasantly, but he shrugged.
***
It was two at night, a very dark night, when Jolie sprang. A gang of ten Wolves cornered Giles walking alone in some God-forsaken part of the city; becoming Wolf, a great night-black mass with eyes of silver flame, he slipped through and fled, but they chased him down, cornering him again in a blind alley, dim with indirect light from the street. His back against the wall, he simply sat down and watched them advance with some amusement.
The first Wolf leaped at him, but something when very long in the split second of flight, because he did not leap very far, and ended up sprawling on the ground, no longer Wolf but man. Then another Wolf became human, and another, and another, until it was no longer ten Wolves against one Wolf but ten human beings who had unfortunately cornered a Wolf. In confusion they fled, but, leaping ahead of them, he blocked their way, and now it was ten human beings cornered by a Wolf. And in a short time, there was only Giles Scott, human again, a pale-and-black form in a dim alley, dusting some invisible hair or speck of dust off of an immaculate suit, strolling back to the street, as nonchalantly as if he were early for a bus and not a killer ten times over.
A black sedan turned the corner and stopped by him. He opened the door and climbed in to face Seneca, who had a disapproving expression on his face. "We are in motion," Giles said pleasantly.
"You look like you are enjoying yourself." And indeed Giles was practically a-glow, his pale face looking even more feverish than usual, a broad smile on his face, and his eyes, darkly savage, radiated what can only be called cheer.
"Of course," said Giles. "It was not quite old times, but a light holiday re-enactment always has its nostalgic pleasures. Mehercle!" he said, leaning back. "I had almost forgotten how good it feels to have enemies bloodied and broken at one's feet. I have not enjoyed myself as much since that time we went down to Germany."
Seneca's disapproving expression had not changed, although there was perhaps a quirk at the corner of the mouth at this last sentence. "At least we have this out of the way. I don't know what good it was to wait, or put yourself in such danger for such a small result."
"Hardly a small result, Sen. As long as she did nothing directly against me, Jolie could at least hope for stalemate. But that slight possibility is gone, and she will be checkmated."
Seneca merely looked out the window, while Giles looked at him with considerable amusement. "Tell me, Sen. Who is the Scion of Lykaios?"
"You are."
"And what was Lykaios?"
"The Invincible Wolf."
"And who is the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf?"
"You are."
"But you are thinking that since Lykaios the Invincible Wolf was conquered that he was not so invincible at all? You would be wrong. He won every fight, every battle, every war against any Wolf who attacked him first, and he survived every one, whether he began it or not. I do not know how he gained the privilege; he himself did not know, so lost was it in the depths of his memory, but the moon favored him. Regardless of the circumstances, no matter what the conditions were, the moon in her madness took him to be immortal, and her madness is stronger than anything else. To kill him I had to convince the moon that I was just like Lykaios, that I too was the Invincible Wolf. Thus when I killed him it was still true that the Invincible Wolf always survived and always won."
"You know as well as I that I have no patience for riddles."
Giles's smile deepened and he pointed his index finger at Sen like a gun and played at shooting him. "And that, my friend," he said, "is why neither you nor Jolie, nor anyone else at present, can topple me, and why I have already won before anyone else has even made a move. For anything as ancient as I am, all the most important things are riddles. But cheer up, Sen! Unleash the flood. Take down her allies, break open her safehouses. Bring Jolie and Charlotte to me. And, much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy, because I have unfinished business with him. Better yet, pin them down, and I will bring in Jolie myself."
"And everyone else?"
Giles Scott looked out the window at the passing street scene. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "It has become increasingly clear that people need to be reminded that the Will of Aegidius must be obeyed. If they cannot understand that on its own, they must be given an example whose point they can understand. Tear their hearts out."
"Exceptionally," Aveline said. She was dressed in black with a large brooch sparkling like fire just below her neck, all quite expensive.
"Normally such an important visitor would be driven by Marcos, but we are in a bit of disarray preparing." Giles waved her inside. "Which reminds me, before I forget, that Marcos has been pulled off his normal duties, so, alas, you will not eat as well as you normally would. But he prepared a sideboard for you, and insists that you try the crepes. Also, he has put out two bottles of wine, and insists that you enjoy both, but save him a glass; the best from the DRC. I refuse to remember the year, but he insists it is a good one."
Aveline laughed. "He is a funny thing. I am sure the wine will be excellent."
"Of course, it will; his choice in wine is always flawless. He grew up on a vineyard, you know, and has had a little more experience with wines than most people manage. You should have seen him when the region he grew up in received the Denominación de Origen; it is fortunate for him that I was in a good humor that week, since I had to listen to him bring it up in every single conversation."
They walked down a hallway in silence for a moment, then Giles turned serious. "You have heard about Elsbietka, of course?"
"Yes," said Aveline. "Frankly, I will not miss her. But I can understand that it would leave you less flexibility than you would usually have."
"Exactly. I have plenty of Wolves, but there are things that I can only trust to my most dangerous Wolves. Hence Marcos; I need someone to play the beater to Seneca's hunter, should the game play hide-and-seek. No one is as good at that as Elsbietka was, but Marcos will do. And it will give him experience. But in the meantime, I need someone to watch the fort, which would normally fall to him. And that is where you come in."
"How long until they are brought down?"
"Difficult to say," said Giles. "We know all her major hiding places, so we could force the issue, but the best thing would be for Jolie to play her hand. She has been moving very quietly and slowly, though, mostly attempting to build forces, making alliances, pick off stragglers, that sort of thing."
"Strange."
"No," Giles said with a distracted shake of his head, "it is the right thing to do, whether or not she fully understands why. And she is not like you, with a taste for jugular assault; she favors bluffs and feints until she finally comes at the prey from an unexpected side. But we have been closing off her options. She is at the point where she needs some clear victory; the allies she does have are pressing for it, and without one she cannot gain more. And 'clear victory' can only mean the capture or death of Seneca or myself."
Aveline stopped suddenly. "Tell me you are not planning to be the bait in the trap."
"Of course. Seneca is too methodical ever to make convincing bait. But she thinks I am arrogant and hubristic."
"It is hubristic to go on your own when Jolie is out to kill you. She is out to kill you, I am sure you are aware; she would not risk the dangers of merely capturing you." She resumed walking.
"Of course," said Giles. "That simply makes it better. She knows that I think I am the Invincible Wolf, and so she intends to exploit that weakness. As it happens to be true that I am the Invincible Wolf, however, it is no weakness at all, and therefore she will initiate her own destruction."
"It is too dangerous. Better Jolie than Elsbietka, but God help us all if she manages to kill you by accident. The girl is insufferable; she will want to change things."
"Ye of little faith. You are just like Seneca. But I forget that even you have not seen me in full rampage; when you received the Bite we were already finishing up. There has been so little need for me to unfold for so long, and with Vseselavich vanished and Bitka dead, Giuseppe may be the only one left who remembers what I am like when I do not hold back. You will see. In the meantime, we must be patient and vigilant. If we begin this last push, there is a danger of accidentally killing her. If she begins it, I can manage things to a finer degree of precision."
Aveline stopped again. "You are planning on letting them all live?"
"Do not be so harsh a judge. I recall having let you live on a certain occasion."
She blushed, but said, "Jolie is rather more a danger to you now than I was then."
"True," Giles said. "But you will recall that I did the same with Bitka, who was hardly bunnies and rainbows. Twice, in fact. But you both overestimate and underestimate Jolie. She cannot beat me, and we can come to an agreement, as I did with Vsesalevich, and Giuseppe, and Charles-Louis, and Bitka, and you, and as I will someday have to do with Seneca and Marcos. So turns the wheel of Fortune. Besides, I would prefer not to lose yet another one of my best Wolves; my collection is looking a bit thin, and good quality is rare in the breed, and seems more rare as time passes. When Wolf eats Wolf, it is a hard winter. Of course, there is a possibility that she will give us no option, but we will give her the chance to let us be merciful. As for the others...." He smiled pleasantly, but he shrugged.
***
It was two at night, a very dark night, when Jolie sprang. A gang of ten Wolves cornered Giles walking alone in some God-forsaken part of the city; becoming Wolf, a great night-black mass with eyes of silver flame, he slipped through and fled, but they chased him down, cornering him again in a blind alley, dim with indirect light from the street. His back against the wall, he simply sat down and watched them advance with some amusement.
The first Wolf leaped at him, but something when very long in the split second of flight, because he did not leap very far, and ended up sprawling on the ground, no longer Wolf but man. Then another Wolf became human, and another, and another, until it was no longer ten Wolves against one Wolf but ten human beings who had unfortunately cornered a Wolf. In confusion they fled, but, leaping ahead of them, he blocked their way, and now it was ten human beings cornered by a Wolf. And in a short time, there was only Giles Scott, human again, a pale-and-black form in a dim alley, dusting some invisible hair or speck of dust off of an immaculate suit, strolling back to the street, as nonchalantly as if he were early for a bus and not a killer ten times over.
A black sedan turned the corner and stopped by him. He opened the door and climbed in to face Seneca, who had a disapproving expression on his face. "We are in motion," Giles said pleasantly.
"You look like you are enjoying yourself." And indeed Giles was practically a-glow, his pale face looking even more feverish than usual, a broad smile on his face, and his eyes, darkly savage, radiated what can only be called cheer.
"Of course," said Giles. "It was not quite old times, but a light holiday re-enactment always has its nostalgic pleasures. Mehercle!" he said, leaning back. "I had almost forgotten how good it feels to have enemies bloodied and broken at one's feet. I have not enjoyed myself as much since that time we went down to Germany."
Seneca's disapproving expression had not changed, although there was perhaps a quirk at the corner of the mouth at this last sentence. "At least we have this out of the way. I don't know what good it was to wait, or put yourself in such danger for such a small result."
"Hardly a small result, Sen. As long as she did nothing directly against me, Jolie could at least hope for stalemate. But that slight possibility is gone, and she will be checkmated."
Seneca merely looked out the window, while Giles looked at him with considerable amusement. "Tell me, Sen. Who is the Scion of Lykaios?"
"You are."
"And what was Lykaios?"
"The Invincible Wolf."
"And who is the Slayer of the Invincible Wolf?"
"You are."
"But you are thinking that since Lykaios the Invincible Wolf was conquered that he was not so invincible at all? You would be wrong. He won every fight, every battle, every war against any Wolf who attacked him first, and he survived every one, whether he began it or not. I do not know how he gained the privilege; he himself did not know, so lost was it in the depths of his memory, but the moon favored him. Regardless of the circumstances, no matter what the conditions were, the moon in her madness took him to be immortal, and her madness is stronger than anything else. To kill him I had to convince the moon that I was just like Lykaios, that I too was the Invincible Wolf. Thus when I killed him it was still true that the Invincible Wolf always survived and always won."
"You know as well as I that I have no patience for riddles."
Giles's smile deepened and he pointed his index finger at Sen like a gun and played at shooting him. "And that, my friend," he said, "is why neither you nor Jolie, nor anyone else at present, can topple me, and why I have already won before anyone else has even made a move. For anything as ancient as I am, all the most important things are riddles. But cheer up, Sen! Unleash the flood. Take down her allies, break open her safehouses. Bring Jolie and Charlotte to me. And, much as I hate to say it, Pretty Puppy, because I have unfinished business with him. Better yet, pin them down, and I will bring in Jolie myself."
"And everyone else?"
Giles Scott looked out the window at the passing street scene. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "It has become increasingly clear that people need to be reminded that the Will of Aegidius must be obeyed. If they cannot understand that on its own, they must be given an example whose point they can understand. Tear their hearts out."
Capitulum Tertium Decimum
I woke with a start, as from a terrible nightmare, with my heart beating wildly in my ears and with sweat on my skin. Despite the fact that the curtains were drawn, the whole room seemed flooded with moonlight. Giles Scott sat in the chair across the room, staring at me with that disconcerting gaze.
"Are you here to kill me?" I asked.
He did not answer for a moment, then said slowly, in the way people do when their thoughts are far away, "No, I am still in the process of fulfilling my promise."
Perhaps a minute passed while he continued staring at me -- in actuality it seemed more like he was staring through me. "Why are you here?" I finally asked.
He continued to stare for a moment, then smiled briefly and looked off to the side. "I am hunting for Joanne's killer. When hunting through dreams it helps to start with dreams that have certain similarities, and you also knew Joanne." The gaze returned to me. "Do not worry, your time will come soon enough."
Having so much of his stare on me made me finally realize why it was so disconcerting. It is easy enough to imagine a stare that is both savage and cold, as with some inhuman creature. One can also easily imagine one that is cold yet still definitely human, coolly indifferent and mocking. And one can easily imagine one that is savage and definitely human, like someone in the grip of a slowly building rage. But a gaze that is savage, cold, and human all at once is unnatural; the mixture of the three should be inconsistent. How can anyone look out from eyes that are simultaneously human and inhuman? How can anyone feel coolly indifferent rage? It is an impossibility. And yet there he was.
"Perhaps you could just not kill me," I said.
"Oh, that is not a possibility," he said. "You know far too much, and the wolfish side of me is sufficiently suspicious of you that it is a marvel I have not done it already."
"Have you no human sympathy?"
He considered this, his hand softly stroking the arm of the armchair. "I distinguish. Something certainly remains. Manet conscientia, manet rationalitas, the worm of remorse dieth not. The husk, the shell." Then he shook his head. "But only the husk and shell. The pure light of the moon is too harsh for human life; it burns it out, leaving only the frame. Very little remains by now."
He looked down at his hand. "I think I had a sister once," he said suddenly. "But I do not know for sure. The human mind does not stretch very well across the centuries, and I remember only shreds of most of my life. The moon does not forget, but she does not remember anything about me that occurred before I became a Wolf. Conceivably at some point long ago I remembered my sister, and could therefore find it again by searching the moonlight for the moon's memory of my remembering it, but if so it would take me decades to come across it. There was a time when I was fluent in Latin. Now mostly fragments remain, things my mind keeps repeating, or little sparks suddenly darting out. Quotations. Given time I could remember it all again, but time is scarce even for those of us who live for centuries. My predecessor, Lykaios, was so old he could not remember his original name, or his place of birth, or even how he had become a Wolf. He claimed he was the First, and for all anyone knew, including himself, perhaps he was. But if a man can become completely different in a few decades, how different will he be when he has been inhuman for hundreds of years? Lykaios could look like a man, but he was all beast and devil inside, with nothing genuinely human left. Conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae; rightly so, since in endless years corruption becomes endless. The human heart cannot resist temptations that never cease. And to be a Wolf is worse: human cravings come and go, but the moon burns constantly and the spirit of the wolf never sleeps."
"But if you can still feel remorse...."
"The damned feel remorse more intensely than the living, my friend, but they mean it not at all. It is the distinguishing mark, how you know that you are damned: when you can look at your life, however long you have lived, and feel remorse for nothing you have done, but only for what has happened to you. I have done things, many things, for which a man would feel remorse; but I do not feel remorse. Hence I am not a man. I am just the quotation of a man.Do not let the outer form fool you. Once I was a man, but it has been eaten away by morbid desires; now I am a monster, and what is more, I am the monster monsters fear."
"And there is nothing I can do?"
He seemed to consider this. Then he said, "Are you Catholic?"
"No."
"Orthodox? Anything similar?"
"No."
"Unfortunate. I would have recommended that you pray to the Virgin to take away my thirst for your death." He stared at me. "You have no notion of how much it hurts to stay my hand, with you so close and so easy to kill." He rose suddenly and I shrank back against the bedstead. But he did not come towards me, but simiply walked to the door.
At the threshold of the door he paused and turned. "Ah, and lest I forget. Seneca has had you watched since you first approached us, and we have intercepted a package with notes and a partial manuscript that you have tried to send someone else." His voice became icy. "Let us have none of that. You are given the time you are given simply as a boon, so that you may know that Joanne's death will be avenged. Set your affairs in order; your clock approaches midnight, when this world will fall away, and after the last stroke all will be quiet. You cannot outmaneuver me, nor is there anywhere you can run from a predator who can hunt you in your dreams. I have given you what time you have because I was impressed by your willingness to die for your friend's vindication. But if you make me regret my decision to give you additional time, you will learn what remorse really is."
And he was gone.
I did not fall back to sleep for a very long time.
****
Eric woke with a start, sweating, as from a terrible nightmare. The room was dark, but his sharp eyes could see Jolie clearly; she was sitting by the window, looking out. He got out of bed.
"Having difficulty sleeping?" he said, trying to put the nightmare out of his head.
"He is hunting tonight," she said. "Every time I close my eyes I feel him getting inside my head."
"It's just in your head. You've just been under stress; that's all. What you should do...."
Jolie, however, never heard what she should do, because she silenced him with a sharp glance. "You do not know how dangerous he is."
"So everyone keeps telling me. But in the end, he's just an old lapsed Dominican who sits around reading books."
Jolie was quiet for a while. Then she said, still looking out the window, "I had only known him for a few decades when there was a crisis among the Wolves -- a rebellion, like the one we're in now. One of his favorites, Charles-Louis, was sent as an emissary to the leaders of the rebellion, Alain and Hugh, who we knew were somewhere in the Franche-Comté and managed to find Alain, the elder of the two. Alain killed Charles-Louis and simply left the body in a narrow passage somewhere around Saint-Nizier -- throat torn out, heart torn out, a silver dagger in his temple. Quite the terror in the area. Gilles, when he heard what had happened, went cold, and called up the entire Pack, everyone who was near enough to call, and led the Wild Hunt. We hunted for weeks, systematically eliminated every rebel we could find. And finally we found Hugh, who led us to Alain.
She closed her eyes. "Gilles had us take them to an abandoned farmhouse, leagues away from anyone else. They were to be tied up and closely guarded until he had completely uprooted what was left of the rebellion. They were almost finished as it was; there were only a few scattered strays left. None of them survived, and at the end of three days Gilles joined us.
"'What do you have to say for yourself, Alain?' he said. Alain spit at him, but Gilles simply stood there with that enigmatic smile on his face. 'You have done me a great favor, helping me to cull the useless. For that I might have spared your life. But Charles-Louis was useful to me, and for that you must pay.'
"'Do your worst,' said Alain. 'Torture us as you please, and you will never have our submission.'
"'Your submission is no longer of interest to me,' said Gilles. 'You have already failed to submit to the Will of Aegidius; and I, Aegidius, consider neither your submission nor your life of any value at all now.' And at that he simply touched both Alain and Hugh on the forehead and left.
"It started slowly. The first thing we noticed was the twitching and flinching. It grew worse and worse until, suddenly, they began to scream. They screamed about spiders, and about rats eating their flesh, and about snakes writhing inside them. They were insane, raving, and they screamed without stop for two full days. Had they not been Wolves, their hearts would have given out from terror long before that. At the end of the second day, Gilles returned and killed them both in the way Charles-Louis had been killed.
"Nobody knows how he drove them mad. Nobody knows how he does most things. He is old, yes, old enough to know things about being a Wolf none of us have yet had time to learn. And he is cruel, and he is ruthless, and there is nothing human in him except an impenetrable mask. If we fail, we can expect no better than Alain and Hugh."
"Oh," said Eric, "I know his brutality; I saw him torture that one Russian, remember? I'm not saying he'll be easy. But he's got his weaknesses as much as anyone else. And who can find them better than you?" He swooped down for a kiss, but when Jolie pushed him away impatiently, he shrugged and went back to bed.
"Are you here to kill me?" I asked.
He did not answer for a moment, then said slowly, in the way people do when their thoughts are far away, "No, I am still in the process of fulfilling my promise."
Perhaps a minute passed while he continued staring at me -- in actuality it seemed more like he was staring through me. "Why are you here?" I finally asked.
He continued to stare for a moment, then smiled briefly and looked off to the side. "I am hunting for Joanne's killer. When hunting through dreams it helps to start with dreams that have certain similarities, and you also knew Joanne." The gaze returned to me. "Do not worry, your time will come soon enough."
Having so much of his stare on me made me finally realize why it was so disconcerting. It is easy enough to imagine a stare that is both savage and cold, as with some inhuman creature. One can also easily imagine one that is cold yet still definitely human, coolly indifferent and mocking. And one can easily imagine one that is savage and definitely human, like someone in the grip of a slowly building rage. But a gaze that is savage, cold, and human all at once is unnatural; the mixture of the three should be inconsistent. How can anyone look out from eyes that are simultaneously human and inhuman? How can anyone feel coolly indifferent rage? It is an impossibility. And yet there he was.
"Perhaps you could just not kill me," I said.
"Oh, that is not a possibility," he said. "You know far too much, and the wolfish side of me is sufficiently suspicious of you that it is a marvel I have not done it already."
"Have you no human sympathy?"
He considered this, his hand softly stroking the arm of the armchair. "I distinguish. Something certainly remains. Manet conscientia, manet rationalitas, the worm of remorse dieth not. The husk, the shell." Then he shook his head. "But only the husk and shell. The pure light of the moon is too harsh for human life; it burns it out, leaving only the frame. Very little remains by now."
He looked down at his hand. "I think I had a sister once," he said suddenly. "But I do not know for sure. The human mind does not stretch very well across the centuries, and I remember only shreds of most of my life. The moon does not forget, but she does not remember anything about me that occurred before I became a Wolf. Conceivably at some point long ago I remembered my sister, and could therefore find it again by searching the moonlight for the moon's memory of my remembering it, but if so it would take me decades to come across it. There was a time when I was fluent in Latin. Now mostly fragments remain, things my mind keeps repeating, or little sparks suddenly darting out. Quotations. Given time I could remember it all again, but time is scarce even for those of us who live for centuries. My predecessor, Lykaios, was so old he could not remember his original name, or his place of birth, or even how he had become a Wolf. He claimed he was the First, and for all anyone knew, including himself, perhaps he was. But if a man can become completely different in a few decades, how different will he be when he has been inhuman for hundreds of years? Lykaios could look like a man, but he was all beast and devil inside, with nothing genuinely human left. Conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae; rightly so, since in endless years corruption becomes endless. The human heart cannot resist temptations that never cease. And to be a Wolf is worse: human cravings come and go, but the moon burns constantly and the spirit of the wolf never sleeps."
"But if you can still feel remorse...."
"The damned feel remorse more intensely than the living, my friend, but they mean it not at all. It is the distinguishing mark, how you know that you are damned: when you can look at your life, however long you have lived, and feel remorse for nothing you have done, but only for what has happened to you. I have done things, many things, for which a man would feel remorse; but I do not feel remorse. Hence I am not a man. I am just the quotation of a man.Do not let the outer form fool you. Once I was a man, but it has been eaten away by morbid desires; now I am a monster, and what is more, I am the monster monsters fear."
"And there is nothing I can do?"
He seemed to consider this. Then he said, "Are you Catholic?"
"No."
"Orthodox? Anything similar?"
"No."
"Unfortunate. I would have recommended that you pray to the Virgin to take away my thirst for your death." He stared at me. "You have no notion of how much it hurts to stay my hand, with you so close and so easy to kill." He rose suddenly and I shrank back against the bedstead. But he did not come towards me, but simiply walked to the door.
At the threshold of the door he paused and turned. "Ah, and lest I forget. Seneca has had you watched since you first approached us, and we have intercepted a package with notes and a partial manuscript that you have tried to send someone else." His voice became icy. "Let us have none of that. You are given the time you are given simply as a boon, so that you may know that Joanne's death will be avenged. Set your affairs in order; your clock approaches midnight, when this world will fall away, and after the last stroke all will be quiet. You cannot outmaneuver me, nor is there anywhere you can run from a predator who can hunt you in your dreams. I have given you what time you have because I was impressed by your willingness to die for your friend's vindication. But if you make me regret my decision to give you additional time, you will learn what remorse really is."
And he was gone.
I did not fall back to sleep for a very long time.
****
Eric woke with a start, sweating, as from a terrible nightmare. The room was dark, but his sharp eyes could see Jolie clearly; she was sitting by the window, looking out. He got out of bed.
"Having difficulty sleeping?" he said, trying to put the nightmare out of his head.
"He is hunting tonight," she said. "Every time I close my eyes I feel him getting inside my head."
"It's just in your head. You've just been under stress; that's all. What you should do...."
Jolie, however, never heard what she should do, because she silenced him with a sharp glance. "You do not know how dangerous he is."
"So everyone keeps telling me. But in the end, he's just an old lapsed Dominican who sits around reading books."
Jolie was quiet for a while. Then she said, still looking out the window, "I had only known him for a few decades when there was a crisis among the Wolves -- a rebellion, like the one we're in now. One of his favorites, Charles-Louis, was sent as an emissary to the leaders of the rebellion, Alain and Hugh, who we knew were somewhere in the Franche-Comté and managed to find Alain, the elder of the two. Alain killed Charles-Louis and simply left the body in a narrow passage somewhere around Saint-Nizier -- throat torn out, heart torn out, a silver dagger in his temple. Quite the terror in the area. Gilles, when he heard what had happened, went cold, and called up the entire Pack, everyone who was near enough to call, and led the Wild Hunt. We hunted for weeks, systematically eliminated every rebel we could find. And finally we found Hugh, who led us to Alain.
She closed her eyes. "Gilles had us take them to an abandoned farmhouse, leagues away from anyone else. They were to be tied up and closely guarded until he had completely uprooted what was left of the rebellion. They were almost finished as it was; there were only a few scattered strays left. None of them survived, and at the end of three days Gilles joined us.
"'What do you have to say for yourself, Alain?' he said. Alain spit at him, but Gilles simply stood there with that enigmatic smile on his face. 'You have done me a great favor, helping me to cull the useless. For that I might have spared your life. But Charles-Louis was useful to me, and for that you must pay.'
"'Do your worst,' said Alain. 'Torture us as you please, and you will never have our submission.'
"'Your submission is no longer of interest to me,' said Gilles. 'You have already failed to submit to the Will of Aegidius; and I, Aegidius, consider neither your submission nor your life of any value at all now.' And at that he simply touched both Alain and Hugh on the forehead and left.
"It started slowly. The first thing we noticed was the twitching and flinching. It grew worse and worse until, suddenly, they began to scream. They screamed about spiders, and about rats eating their flesh, and about snakes writhing inside them. They were insane, raving, and they screamed without stop for two full days. Had they not been Wolves, their hearts would have given out from terror long before that. At the end of the second day, Gilles returned and killed them both in the way Charles-Louis had been killed.
"Nobody knows how he drove them mad. Nobody knows how he does most things. He is old, yes, old enough to know things about being a Wolf none of us have yet had time to learn. And he is cruel, and he is ruthless, and there is nothing human in him except an impenetrable mask. If we fail, we can expect no better than Alain and Hugh."
"Oh," said Eric, "I know his brutality; I saw him torture that one Russian, remember? I'm not saying he'll be easy. But he's got his weaknesses as much as anyone else. And who can find them better than you?" He swooped down for a kiss, but when Jolie pushed him away impatiently, he shrugged and went back to bed.
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