Operation Chaos

XVI

My gaze swept down the slope to the drop-off. The sea was a wan glimmer beyond. More of my wits came back. Maledicto had adroitly removed me from the scene, perhaps murdered me: if I were the untrained unspecial Homo sapiens he assumed. But I had a little more in reserve than he knew, such as witch-sight. I mumbled the formula and felt the retinal changes. At once I could see for miles. The view was blurred, of course; the human eyeball can’t focus infrared wavelengths very well; but I could recognize landmarks. I set a general course and made for home.

With nightmare slowness. Maledicto had gone faster than human.

Nearly full, the moon broke over the hills.

The change was on me before I had overtly willed it. I didn’t stop to undress, bundle my clothes and carry them in my mouth. My wolf-jaws ripped everything to rags except the elastic-banded shorts, and I went shadow-swift over the mountainside. If you think a giant bobtailed wolf in shorts is ridiculous, you’re probably right; but it didn’t occur to me just then.

I couldn’t see as far with lupine eyes. However, I could smell my own trail, in bruised vegetation, vivid as a cry. I found the path and drank another scent. Now I knew what the undertone of Maledicto’s odor had been.

Demon.

I’d never caught that exact whiff before, and my wolf brain wasn’t up to wondering about his species. Nor did it wonder what he desired of Ginny. There was only room in my narrow skull for hate, and for hurrying.

The lodge came into view. I sprang onto the patio. No one was about. But the master bedroom faced the sea, its window open to the moonbeams. I went through in a leap.

He had her in his arms. She was still pressing him away, resisting, but her eyes were closed and her strength faded. “No,” she whispered. “No, help, don’t, Amaris, Amaris, Amaris.” Her hands moved to his throat, slid to his neck, drew his face to hers. They swayed downward together in the gloom.

I howled, once, and sank my teeth in him.

His blood did not taste human. It was like liquor, it burned and sang within me. I dared not bite him again. Another such draught and I might lie doglike at his feet, begging him to stroke me. I willed myself human.

The flow of transformation took no longer than he needed to release Ginny and turn around. Despite his surprise, he didn’t snarl back at me. A shaft of moonlight caught his faerie visage, blazed gold in his eyes, and he was laughing.

My fist smashed forward with my weight behind it. Poor, slow man-flesh, how shall it fight the quicksilver life of Air and Darkness? Maledicto flickered aside. He simply wasn’t there. I caromed into a wall and fell down, my knuckles one crumple of anguish.

His laughter belied above me. “And this puling thing should deserve as lively a wench as thee? Say but the word, Virginia, and I will whip him to his kennel.”

“Steve . . .” She huddled back in a corner, not coming to me. I reeled onto my feet. Maledicto grinned, put an arm about Ginny’s waist, drew her to him. She shuddered, again trying to pull away. He kissed her, and she made a broken sound and the motions of resistance started again to become motions of love. I charged. Maledicto shoved with his free hand. I went down, hard. He set a foot on my head and held me.

“I’d liefer not break thy bones,” he said, “but if thou’rt not so gentle as to respect the lady’s wishes—”

“Wishes?” Ginny broke from him. “God in Heaven!” she wailed. “Get out!”

Maledicto chuckled. “I must needs flee the holy names, if a victim of mine invoke them in full sincerity,” he murmured. “And yet thou seest that I remain here. Thine inmost desire is to me, Virginia.”

She snatched a vase and hurled it at him. He fielded it expertly dropped it to shatter on me, and went to the window. “Oh, aye, this time the spell has been broken,” he said. “Have no fear, though. At a more propitious hour, I shall return.”

There was a moment’s rippling, and he had gone over the sill. I crawled after him. The patio lay white and bare in the moonlight.

I sat down and held my head. Ginny flung herself sobbing beside me. A long time passed. Finally I got up, switched on the light, found a cigaret, and slumped on the edge of the bed. She crouched at my knees, but I didn’t touch her.

“What was it?” I asked.

“An incubus.” Her head was bent, I saw just the red hair flowing down her back. She had put on her frilliest nightgown while we were gone—for whom? Her voice came small and thin. “He . . . it . . . it must haunt the ruins. Came over with the Spaniards . . . Maybe it was responsible for their failure to—”

I dragged smoke into my lungs. “Why hasn’t it been reported?” I wondered aloud, dully. And: “Oh, yeah, sure. It must have a very limited range of operation. A family curse on a family now extinct, so it s confined to the home and lands of that old don. Since his time, no one has been here after dark.”

“Until we—” Her whisper trailed off.

“Well, Juan and his wife, with occasional guests.” I smoked more fiercely. “You’re the witch. You have the information. I barely know that an incubus is an erotic demon. Tell me, why did it never bother the Fernandezes?”

She began to weep afresh, deep hopeless gasps. I thought that despair had combined with the earlier loss of witchpower to drive her thaumaturgic training clean out of reach. My own mind was glass-clear as I continued. “Because it did speak the truth, I suppose, about holy symbols being a shield for people who really want to be shielded. Juan and his wife are good Catholics. They wouldn’t come here without hanging crucifixes in every room. And neither of them wishes to be unfaithful to the other.”

The face she raised was wild. “Do you think that I—

“Oh, not consciously. If we’d thought to put up some crosses when we arrived, or offered an honest prayer, we’d have been safe too. We might never have known there was an incubus around. But we had too much else to think about, and it’s too late now. Subconsciously, I suppose, you must have toyed with the idea that a little vacation from strict monogamy could do no one any harm—”

“Steve!” She scrambled stiffly to her feet. “On our honeymoon! You could say such a thing!”

“Could and did.” I ground out the cigaret, wishing it were Maledicto’s face. “How else could it lay a spell on you?”

“And you—Steve—Steve, I love you. Nobody else but you.”

“Well, you better rev up the carpet,” I sighed. “Fly to, oh, I imagine Guaymas is the nearest town big enough to have an exorcist on the police force. Report this and ask for protection. Because if I remember my demonology, it can follow you anywhere, once you’ve come under its influence.”

“But nothing happened!” She cried that as if I were striking her: which, in a sense, I was.

“No, there wasn’t time. Then. And, of course, you’d have been able to bounce any demon off with a purely secular spell, if you’d possessed your witch-powers. But those are gone. Until you relearn them, you’ll need an exorcist guard, every hour of the day you aren’t in a church. Unless—” I rose too.

“What?” She caught me with cold frantic hands. I shook her off, blinded by the double hurt to my manhood, that Maledicto had whipped me in fight and almost seduced my bride. “Steve, what are you thinking?”

“Why, that I might get rid of him myself.”

“You can’t! You’re no warlock, and he’s a demon!”

“I’m a werewolf. It may be a fair match.” I shuffled into the bathroom, where I began to dress my wounds. They were superficial, except for swollen knuckles. She tried to help, but I gestured her away from me.

I knew I wasn’t rational. Too much pain and fury filled me. I had some vague idea of going to the,, Fortaleza, whither Maledicto had presumably returned. In wolf-shape, I’d be as fast and strong as he. Of, course, I dare not bite . . . but if I could switch to human as occasion warranted, use the unarmed combat techniques I’d learned in the Army . . . The plan was as hopeless as any men ever coughed forth, but my own demon was driving me.

Ginny sensed it: that much witchcraft remained to her, if it was not simply inborn. She was quite pale in the unmerciful glare of the saintelmo, she shivered and gulped, but after a while she nodded. “If you must. We’ll go together.”

“No!” the roar burst from my gullet. “Be off to Guaymas, I said! Haven’t I troubles enough? Let me alone till I can decide if I want you back!”

Another instant she stared at me. May I never again see such eyes. Then she fled.

I went out on the patio and became a wolf. The demon stench was thick on the air. I followed it over the mountainside.