The Howling II

30

THE PAIN CAME BACK first. Pain in her throat. In the instant before she regained consciousness, Karyn was a little girl again. She was lying on a high, white bed in the hospital, and the doctor had just taken her tonsils out. In a moment she would open her eyes and her mother would be there. And Daddy. And they would let her eat all the ice cream she wanted, and before long the pain would go away.

Karyn tried to reach up with a hand and touch her throat where it hurt. But the hand would not move. Her lungs heaved, pulling in air, but it did not have the sharp, clean smell of the hospital. The roughness against her back was no bed.

She forced her eyes open. No loving faces looked down on her. It took only a moment for her to realize where she was. In the gypsy's cabin. The light from the fire pit cast grotesque shadows throughout the room. Karyn was sitting in the chair with no back. Her ankles were tied to the legs of the chair, her wrists tightly bound behind her. The roughness against her back was the log wall of the cabin.

She turned her head. It hurt her throat when she moved. Beside her was the pile of old rags where Philina the gypsy had sat talking to her and Chris such a little while ago. Beyond the rags she could see another torn bundle. Only the clawed hand, lying limp and palm up, told her that it had once been human.

Karyn looked away quickly. Through the open doorway the world outside was in deepening twilight. Someone stepped between her and the doorway. A tall, slim silhouette with flowing black hair that was shot through with silver.

"Marcia!" Karyn's voice was a rasping whisper.

"I see you remember me. I'm glad. You will have much time for remembering in the hours before dawn."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to hurt you, Karyn. I'm going to hurt you very badly."

Karyn squinted in the darkness, trying to get a better look at the woman. "Why? Why are you doing this? Why are you persecuting me? You took my husband from me back in Drago. What more do you want?" She broke off as the effort of talking hurt her throat too much.

Marcia took a step toward her. The fire pit lay between them. The tall woman knelt so the light of the fire shone full on her face. "You want to know why, do you? Then look!"

She raised a hand to her forehead and ran long fingers through the white streak in her midnight hair. "This is why. I have this mark to remind me of the night you put the gun inches from my head and fired. I will never forget the agony of that moment and the long months that followed. In those months, Karyn, I thought of you above all else. I have lived for just one thing — to give you some measure of the pain I felt. And finally to see you die."

"I had to shoot that night," Karyn whispered. "I saw only a wolf. I couldn't know it was you."

"You lie!" the other woman spat. "Just before you pulled the trigger I heard you speak my name. Oh, yes, you knew."

It was true, Karyn realized. In that long-ago night when she fired the silver bullet into the head of the sleek black wolf, she had known full well it was the woman Marcia. Lura. What a tragic shame that the creature had not died.

"I have had much time to think," Marcia went on. "In that time I have imagined many ways for you to die. In all of them you suffered greatly. And now things have worked out even better than I could imagine. Now I can kill you in a most appropriate way."

Marcia reached down to the edge of the fire pit. There the taped ends of a long-handled pair of pliers protruded from the fire. The other end, with the pincer jaws, was buried deep in the glowing coals.

"In the Middle Ages," Marcia said, "there were many interesting ways of dealing with people suspected of being witches. Or werewolves." She lightly caressed the taped handles of the pliers as she spoke. "One of the ways was to use a red-hot pair of tongs to pull the flesh from the body of the victim. A pinch at a time. It takes a very long time for someone to die that way. Very long, and very painful." She looked up and the fire struck glowing red sparks in the deep green eyes. "That, Karyn, is the way you are going to die tonight."

Karyn pulled her eyes away from the woman, and from the vicious tool jammed deep into the coals. She looked toward the open doorway. Outside the twilight had deepened to the charcoal gray of approaching night.

Marcia saw the direction of her glance. "If you're expecting help from your friend Chris or anyone else tonight, you're going to be disappointed. Even if he does learn where you are and foolishly comes after you, he will never reach us. There is only one trail to this cabin, and someone is waiting for your friend on that trail. Someone you and I both know very well."

"Roy!" The name tore at Karyn's throat as she spoke it.

The other woman smiled. A slow smile of triumph. "Yes, Roy. Your husband once, but

not any more. Now he is mine. He belongs to me more completely than ever he did to you. He will be there to meet anyone who comes up the trail, and he will see that you and I are left alone."

Karyn stared at the dark woman. Fear rose like bile in her aching throat. Slowly, slowly Marcia drew the long pliers from the fire. The cruel pinchers glowed a bright red-orange.

Without warning, one side of Marcia's face jerked for an instant in a tic brought on by violent emotion. She threw one quick look over her shoulder, then came around the fire pit toward Karyn. She gripped the handles of the pliers and thrust the glowing-hot jaws before her.