Wolf's Cross (26 page)

If she truly cared for him, she had to tell him what she was.

B
y the time she left, it was after dawn. When Władysław chose to escort her, she didn’t object. They walked for several minutes in silence, as birds sang under a cold, overcast sky. After a long time, Maria stopped and said, “I am sorry I hurt you.”

“What?”

“When we were children.”

“Oh, it wasn’t serious—”

Maria placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, Władysław, it was. I love that you care enough for me to pretend, even to yourself, but I might have killed you.”

Władysław chuckled uneasily. “You were only three years old.”

Maria looked at him and said, “Would it be so remarkable for a three-year-old wolf to kill a five-year-old child?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mother explained things to me.”

“You’re not making sense.”

Maria squeezed his shoulder. “Just remember, whatever happens to me, I love you and I’ll never do anything to hurt you or our family.”

“I know that—”

“I swear it, Władysław,” she said. “I swear on the graves of both my parents that I would give my own life before that happened.”

He stared into her eyes and asked, “What did Mother say to you?”

“She said I take after Father’s mistress.”

Then she told him what she was.

Władysław, of course, didn’t believe her. “Do not make such jokes, not on our father’s grave.”

“Here,” she said, and handed him the silver dagger.

“What is this?”

“You are the head of the household; you need to protect our home. There may come a time when you need this. I don’t think I will.”

They reached the edge of the woods and stepped into the shadow of Gród Narew. He still seemed half angry, half confused. “Why do you spin such a tale? And give me this?”

“Tell Mother that I am doing what I can to keep our family safe.”

And she left before he could ask her more questions.

W
hen she came with Josef’s meal, he was dressed and standing by the window, staring out over the stables. She set down his breakfast and said, “You are looking well.”

He nodded, his expression grave. “I am healing, and I wish to be able-bodied when we ride forth again. You should stop coming here, even in daylight.”

“Josef—”

“The Wojewoda Bolesław led a band of men out yesterday, looking for signs of the beast. The Duke has sent more men to search for them. They haven’t yet returned.” He looked at her, and the concern she saw there made her want to weep. “I need to know you’re safe.”

“What do you know of these beasts you hunt?”

Josef frowned, as if her words confused him for a moment.

“You know what kills them. You know they can look like men.”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever spoken to one?”

“What?”

“If they become human, then they can talk, explain themselves …”

“Don’t speak such nonsense.”

“Nonsense?”

“These are demonic monsters that have no conception of—”

“This is not nonsense!”

Josef’s expression froze.

“How is it you know that these creatures are demonic?” Maria asked, “What makes them so much more horrid than any wolf in these woods?”

“Have you not seen what it has done? To me, my brothers? You haven’t seen the ones it has killed—”

“Worse than men have done?”

He opened his mouth to answer her, but a shadow played across his expression.

“What you hunt, Josef—is it because of what it has done, or because of what it is?”

Josef grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “What do you mean by this? Why do you speak of such things?”

She looked at the growing terror in his face and felt her heart sink. “I pray to the same God you do,” she said. “Doesn’t Christ offer forgiveness to all who follow him?”

He stopped, as if she had struck him.

“Is it what this creature has done, or what it is?”

He let her go. “It is different. This thing is not human.”

“But it walks abroad in human skin.”

“Maria, you don’t understand—”

“Is there such a difference between a wolf who becomes a man and a man who becomes a wolf? Does a man lose his soul because of such a thing?”

Josef shook his head and said, “Such things have no souls.”

Maria had to restrain the impulse to strike him. Instead, she backed away from him. “So you know God’s mind on this?”

“It is a demon, a spawn from the fiery pit—”

“And you beat upon it with swords? Where are your priests, your rites of exorcism?”

“I shouldn’t have told you. You don’t underst—”

He was interrupted by calls from outside. “Make way! Make way!”

Josef turned toward the window and looked out. He took a step back and muttered something in Latin, his face draining of color.

Maria stepped to the side so she could see past him. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She reached up and clutched her cross so hard her hand hurt.

Past the stables, she could see the inner wall and the main entry gate. Rolling through the gate were a pair of wagons drawn by shaggy plow horses. In the carts she saw indistinct lumps covered by rust-spotted canvas. But the spots weren’t rust. Even at this distance, the scent of blood stabbed through the earthy smell of the horses below them.

She saw Bolesław’s nephew, Telek, run out to the lead cart and jump on board with an urgency that belied his girth. He reached down and cast aside one end of the canvas to view what was beneath.

Bolesław
, she thought.
It is Bolesław himself
.

Even at this distance, she could see the expression freeze on Telek’s face. Her own breath seized as she watched him stare down at his uncle’s body. Time stopped as neither she nor Telek moved.

The men who had gathered the bodies had been respectful enough to place the lord’s head back in proximity to his body, but there was no hiding the fact that there was no connection between
the two anymore. There was only an awful dark hollow where Bolesław’s throat should have been.

A hush had fallen across everyone in the courtyard. Even the horses fell silent enough that Maria could hear Telek speak. The words came quietly, almost as if he were conversing with his uncle: “This shall not stand.”

“Reinhart,” Josef muttered. He whipped around toward her. “There! Do you see? This is the work of the Devil himself. Can it be anything else?”

Maria backed up, unable to find the anger that had been driving her just a few moments ago.

“Eight men. Eight men …” His legs wobbled slightly, and he pressed his fist into the bridge of his nose. “I should have been able to kill it.”

“Kill it?”

“If only I had more strength—”

“Josef? What did you do?”

“I stabbed it in the eye with a crossbow bolt,” he said. “A mortal wound to any other creature, but for this—”

She was suddenly aware of an awful knowledge she had been harboring, unwilling to articulate, even to herself.

“Which eye?” Maria demanded, though she didn’t want to know.

“What?”

“Left or right?”

“Are you mad? What point is there to—”

She grabbed his shirt.
“Left or right?”

“Left, but—”

She ran out of the room, leaving him with his question. Only one word filled her thoughts.

Darien
.

M
aria ran into the woods, abandoning Gród Narew. No one paid her any mind; the entire population had become an impromptu funerary procession. She pushed through crowds that pressed into the streets to follow Bolesław’s body to the main stronghold, led by Telek.

Wojewoda
Telek.

The world was disintegrating around her, but none of it mattered anymore. What mattered was what she was, and what Darien was. She ran off the path and into the trees.

“Darien!”
she called out, frightening birds into flight above her. She screamed, her fear and anger pressing against the cross hanging over her heart. She felt the beast clawing against its confines within her.

“Darien!”
She thought of the dismembered men being wheeled into Gród Narew, and of the horrible wound that Josef himself had suffered. How could she think that the thing he’d faced was anything but the Devil himself?

“Darien!”
She ran through the woods, ducking under dappled shadows, searching for some sign of him.

“Maria?” The voice was low, calm, and behind her. She stopped running and turned around to see Darien walking out
from behind a tree. His golden hair spilled to his shoulders, and he stared at her with eyes of piercing blue, the scarred eye paler than the other. “I asked for a calm heart.”

“You ask too much, after what you’ve done. What kind of monster are you?”

He smiled at her. “What kind of monster are you?”

“You slaughtered eight people—”

“And what would they have done to me?” He walked up to her, and Maria felt her pulse race as he touched her cheek. “What do you think they’d do to you if they knew what was hiding behind that cross you wear?”

She covered her cross with her hand and stepped away from his touch. “Do not touch that again.”

“Do you love your chains so much?”

“You’re evil.”

Darien’s laugh echoed through the woods around them. “By whose account?”

“I’ve seen what you’ve done.”

“Have you seen what they’ve done?” he countered. “How many of our kind they have slaughtered in sacrifice to their own bloodthirsty God?”

She shook her head and said, “Do not blaspheme.”

“Maria.” He stepped forward and cradled her chin. “Do not blind yourself to what they are. Am I the first of us you have seen? Have you asked yourself why?”

Maria remembered the tale of her mother, how she was alone of her kind.

“I had a family,” he said. “Mother, father, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins. Then one day the Order came and slaughtered every last one of my kin. They herded them into a church and set it to fire.”

Maria felt her breath catch.

“I have been alone for more than twenty years, hunted by them. Hunting them. I never thought I would find you.”

Maria looked up into his face and wondered how her mother’s fate might have been different if she had found one of her own to share her life with. Her heart pounded against the cross on her chest, and her breath felt so hot it burned her nose. She stared at the outline of his face, framed by a halo of backlit golden hair.

He lowered his head and she felt his lips touch hers. But she backed away from the contact, and he didn’t resist her movement.

“No,” she said.

“No?” Darien’s scar-bisected eyebrow gave a sharper edge to the word than found a way into his voice. “Is that why you came into the woods? Why you called to me? To say no?”

“I need to know what I am,” she said. “What you are.”

“We are the same, my dear Maria.”

She stood for a long time as her tongue slowly dried in her mouth. A bead of sweat rolled down her back, firing tiny tremors along her spine. She was suddenly very much aware of the smells of the woods around her—the sharp scent of the pine, the rich smells of the earth, and the almost intoxicating scent of Darien in front of her. She licked her lips and said, “Show me.”

“Show you?”

“Show me what it is we are.”

“Are you ready for this?” He took a step back and held out his hand. “We are not like them, Maria.”

She reached out and took his hand, “Show me. I’m ready to know.”

“Remember that.” He clasped her hand and led her through the sun-dappled woods until they came to a sunlit clearing. The grass here was high, and naked trunks pointed gray fingers at the sky, testifying to a long-ago fire. “This seems a good place,” he said.

He let go of her hand and took a few steps away before pulling his shirt off over his head. His back was turned mostly toward her, and she saw the ripples of muscle under pale bronze skin, marred only by a white scar along his side.

“What are you doing?” she said, when she caught herself staring.

He folded his shirt and placed it on the log of a fallen tree. He turned to her. “I do not wish to damage my clothes.” He reached down and pulled the boots off his feet and sighed. He flexed his toes and curled them into the grass. “What purpose do they serve?”