Wolf and Raven

II

By the time we made our way through the tunnels to my part of town, the cold had soaked into my bones and I was shivering. I knew, without a doubt, that the cuts in my side were infected. I needed antibiotics and bandages, as well as dry clothes, dry shoes, and the better part of the arsenal I owned. Fortunately all those things were available in my apartment.

The full moon had risen far enough above the horizon that the ball no longer looked huge. Lynn and I returned to the surface through a grate in a storm culvert one street over from my apartment house. With it still being early evening and the neighborhood being on the peaceful side of residential, not many folks were out and about. I took that as a good sign-in these parts "neighborhood watch" meant folks kept score in gun-fights. If no one was out looking around I could allow myself to assume there was no trouble brewing.

Once we made it into the lobby of my apartment house I felt a lot better. I checked the security door down the back hallway and saw it was closed tight. With me in the lead, we ascended the stairs as they angled their way up and around three floors. Each flight had twelve steps, forty-eight steps between floors, and we took each one as if it was our last. I kept looking up and down the stairwell core and saw nothing.

Giddy is the only way to describe how I felt when I reached my door. I was tired and achey and stank like raw sewage, but that was all secondary to the happiness I felt in reaching sanctuary. Lynn clearly felt the same way and even the Old One yipped inside my head to signal his pleasure at returning to our lair.

I keyed the lock, opened the door, and reached inside to turn on the light. I tapped the switch and nothing happened. That struck me as unusual, but not dire.Blown bulb I told myself, and stepped into the darkness.

Looking up I saw two red eyes burning balefully about two meters above my eye level. A hand closed about my forearm, covering it from elbow to wrist. Suddenly I found myself yanked off my feet and flying through the darkness into the middle of my apartment. As I whirled through the air I saw the silhouette of a troll eclipse my vision of Lynn.

She screamed, the Old One snarled, and I hit a knot of bodies in the dark. The Old One filled me with strength and dulled my pain. I lashed out left and right, connecting solidly. I heard grunts and groans, then I slipped off balance and began to back-pedal in the darkness. Something shoved me and I exploded out into the night through the apartment window.

Longtooth, we are falling!

If you were a raven or a hawk, we could be flying!

Landing precluded further discussion. I faintly recalled something about martial arts and breakfalls. I used one, but broke my left arm instead of my fall. The rest of my body slammed into the ground a second later, the breakfall not withstanding. The impact knocked the wind from me and reduced my left side to one huge bruise.

Pain blazing through my body, stale air burning in my Kings, I lay on my back staring up at the jagged black hole in my apartment window. Lynn screamed again and I could do nothing. I fought to clear my head and tried to roll up to my feet, but I only slumped back. My left arm hit the ground again, sapping all the strength I had.

You must get up, Longtooth. They are coming for you.

I can't.

Youmust.You must fight them.

I'm in no shape to fight anyone.

Then I must fight them.

No!

It was too late. With the full moon in the sky, the Old One was at his most powerful. At these times of the month the control I can exert over him is stretched thinner than a politician's sense of self-restraint. The Old One no more wanted my consent to what he was going to do than he thought he needed it, but we both knew my concession would make things easier.

Just not the woman, Old One, not the woman.

I will not harm your bitch, Longtooth, just those who would harm her.

The transformation, when I fight it, is a horrible experience. Now, having given my body over to the Old One, I heard my bones breaking as he recreated me in his image of what we should be. I felt the pain, but it seemed distant-like music heard in the background of a telecom call. I could feel it, and I knew it was pain, but there was not enough of it there to hurt me.

My facial bones broke and jutted out into a muzzle. My arm bones telescoped inward, shortening them so my muscles could exert greater leverage in strikes. My hands became blunt-fingered paws that ended in claws. My feet stretched out and my ankles shifted so my legs took on a characteristic lupine shape. Fangs, elongated ears, and a thick gray pelt completed the transformation.

I had becomehis creature. With the Old One at the helm, concepts like discretion, sanctuary, and ambush were all tossed into a bin markedcowardice. The Old One could be as murderous as Kid Stealth, and with two bullets blowing the lock out of the security door that led into the apartment complex's backyard, I felt no inclination to restrain him.

One of the Weenies kicked the door open and light from the hallway splashed out in a narrow stripe down the center of the barren yard. "Hey, Wolf's not here!"

Had I been in control, the Halloweenies would have had a smart remark's worth of warning. The Old One has no taste for humor. He stepped us into the light so they could behold the monster they had helped create, then he set about building an even stronger correlation between learning my secret and premature death.

The Old One doesn't view killing as performance art, but he did leave a number of abstract sculptures in the apartment's hallway and yard. Most were still identifiable as human and, no, noteverything tastes like chicken. In fact, a couple of the chromed guys tasted like Harley-Davidsons in sore need of an oil change. Regardless, the Old One boiled through them before most had drawn their weapons-which he took as great evidence of his skill, but I put down to misguided orders to take me alive.

The Old One's transformation had not healed the wounds I had taken earlier. While the transformation did fracture bones and knit them back together, the process could only heal the damage it caused. My pelt remained ragged where the gillette had cut me, and I still nursed a broken arm and ribs. His rage and power still pushed the pain away, but even he kept my broken arm hugged to my chest.

We bounded up the stairs to my apartment so quickly we didn't even pause to snarl at some of the neighbors sticking their heads out of the doors to see what was going on. Someone said something about calling Animal Control, but that just made the Old One howl with glee. I saw images of him summoning a grand canine army to storm through the concrete forest of the metro-plex, and part of me liked the idea of being Napoleon Roverparte.

Half-man, half-wolf in form, but fully lupine in spirit, we recognized and sorted out the various scents still lingering in my home instantly. The musty smell I knew as the odor of a troll-the tall thing that had originally tossed me about. At once I felt fear and anger: fear because they are purported to be hideously powerful creatures of a particularly malignant bent. The anger came because the troll's scent mixed with and masked Lynn's scent. The co-mingled scent trail led to the broken-out window, showing me how the troll had gotten out of the building while I raced up the stairs.

Beneath the troll's scent I discovered that of another foe, and hackles rose on my back. Charles the Red had been in my domain. He had undoubtedly orchestrated the earlier ambush and this battle under orders from Mr. Sampson. My bestial mind did not concern itself with why Charles had been here, or what he had hoped to accomplish. It only cared that he and the troll had taken Lynn. The Old One demanded that both of them die quickly and I was ready to taste their blood.

Under the Old One's tutelage, my decisions were easy. Like a gargoyle, I perched for a moment in the moon-washed hole in my apartment's exterior wall, then leaped into the night and stalked my enemies.

Their scent trails died at the street where a vehicle picked them up, leaving me no clear way to follow them. Whereas a man might have been frustrated by this, the Old One was a consummate hunter. He started us loping in a big circle around the apartment house, and halfway through it we cut across a fresh trail containing the acrid edge of extreme nervousness. We followed it like a shark trailing a bleeding fish. I wanted to hurry to catch and destroy the person, but the Old One held us back.

He knew we were following a Halloweener, and as we trailed him I managed to intellectualize what the Old One picked up by instinct alone. The lack of spectators in my neighborhood meant that either nothing was going on,or people had been frightened back into their homes. The Halloweeners had obviously stationed lookouts in various places who then tipped Charles and the troll to my arrival. The lookouts took off, their role in the events finished, and I had managed to cut across the trail left by one of them.

We lowered our muzzle to the ground at the entrance to an alley that led to a warehouse. This fact I knew from previous encounters with all sorts of low-life scum.Yes, Charles is here. Lynn is here. My heart started beating faster yet than it had before I crept forward.

Through a rent in the warehouse's corrugated tin wall I saw Charles addressing two dozen Halloweeners- including two ogres4. Their presence-and the addition of a troll-meant that Mr. Sampson had brought some serious power to the Halloweeners. We had no idea what his game was, or why he was using the Halloweeners as a power base, but I got the distinct feeling he wasn't some exec slumming for cheap thrills and a flea bite or two.

The Old One snarled, fending off my attempt to insert reason into his thought process.He had come to kill those who had stolen my bitch. He considered thoughts aboutwhy the Weenies were present to be a matter for forensics experts to piece together later. He wanted to create a crime scene and rescue Lynn, and he didn't see the need for rational thought in accomplishing that end.

Unthinking-a state in which the Old One operates most comfortably-he sprinted us forward and through an open side door. Announcing me, he howled in a low and cruel voice that brought all of the henchmen around to look at us, and drained the blood from many of their faces at the same time. Charles looked about ready to stroke out and took several steps back away from me.

Only Mr. Sampson, looking self-possessed as he stepped from the small office in the corner of the warehouse, did not seemed shocked or even surprised. He gave me a perfect smile. "Ah, our guest has arrived. Welcome, Kies. Your woman lives."

The Old One bared our fangs, giving me a chance to croak out a sentence. "She'll be the exception to the rule here in a minute!"

The Old One launched us into the knot of gangsters.

Ogres are about as rare as hen's teeth, and the presence of two of them meant Sampson had serious juice. / knew that, but the Old One just thought hunting had suddenly gotten very good. and ripped away with ecstatic abandon. My right hand punched through the chest of a Weenie and ripped his heart out. I crushed it in front of him, all before his eyes had informed his brain that I had closed to striking range. I slammed my left elbow against a gillette's face and felt his facial bones crumple beneath my blow. My right paw flicked out again, shredding another man's face. He reeled away, desperately trying to piece together the fleshy puzzle I'd made of his handsome looks.

The Halloweeners had just enough brains to recognize the fluid their buddies were leaking and broke. Charles tried to stem the tide of their retreat, then allowed himself to be swept up in it and carried back toward Mr. Sampson. The ogres, befuddled and surprised, backed away faster than the Halloweeners and took up positions behind their leader.

Mr. Sampson looked at his cowering henchmen, then at the bodies lying at my feet and clapped his hands like a theater patron applauding a virtuoso performance. "Excellent!" Then his face and voice filled with menace. "Golnartac, deal with our guest!"

I never would have forgotten the troll.

The Old One, on the other paw, had decided he would save the troll for last.

Those who would be last were put first, and that put us in a world of hurt. The troll came in from behind and moved with a speed that should have been impossible for such a massive creature. I spun, but only barely got my right arm up in time to block the punch that would have taken my head off. The troll's fist smashed my arm back into my head and I saw stars.

Snarling wildly, I launched myself and buried my fangs in his forearm. My teeth sliced through dry, leathery flesh, but the troll didn't react. I bit harder, hungering for his blood and a cry of pain, but I got nothing. Furious, I tore at the troll, ripping my head to the right in an attempt to take a hunk of flesh out of him.

I succeeded and defiantly spat the mouthful out, but it made no difference. I looked up at the thing looming over me and saw only amusement in its dull eyes. I felt Golnartac's left hand close like pliers on the back of my neck. He plucked me from his arm as if I was an insect. Effortlessly he hurled me across the warehouse and into a shipping crate.

I don't know what was in that crate, but it was a tad harder than my skull. Mr. Sampson's laughter ringing in my ears, I struggled to free myself from the crate. I got to my feet. Then, as the troll eclipsed the overhead lights, his fist surged in and bashed me into unconsciousness.