Abomination (16 page)

Daughter
. As it ran through Wulfric’s mind, even the word itself sounded more unwieldy, more . . . complicated.

“Are you disappointed?” Cwen asked.

“No,” said Wulfric, realizing in that moment that he was not, that it didn’t matter. If anything, it only made the love he felt toward the child all the greater. She would need his protection more than a boy would have—and that he knew how to give. Beyond that, he had no idea how to be a father to a daughter. But once he had had no idea how to be a warrior, either. This might prove to be the greater test, Wulfric suspected, but he would meet it. He would learn. For now, just to be here with her, to hold her close like this, was enough.

I am a father. I have a daughter
.

Yes, it was more than enough.

Wulfric’s home sat on the outskirts of a small, close-knit farming village, and word of his return spread rapidly. When he had first come here to set up his home, many villagers were wary of him; they knew something of his bloody past despite his best efforts never to speak of it. But in time, all came to know him as a good neighbor, a good friend, and a man many found it hard to believe had ever raised a hand in anger. This was where he had met and fallen in love with Cwen. They were married within a month, and though the date had fallen at the height of harvest, not a single hand worked the fields that day; all were in attendance.

And together they now came again. The village square was bathed in torchlight as dusk turned to moonlit night and Wulfric’s friends and neighbors gathered to welcome him home and congratulate him on his new fatherhood. Those who knew an instrument were hastily assembled so there might be music for dancing; food and wine were laid out in abundance; and after a conversation
with Arnald, the village baker, Wulfric ensured that there were elderberry scones aplenty.

He danced with his wife long into the night, drinking in all the music and laughter and love that surrounded him. Such were the depths of gloom felt during the long days and nights hunting Aethelred that to be this happy again so suddenly was dizzying. It was such an intense and overwhelming feeling that he almost felt guilty. Did he really deserve to be this happy? What had he ever done to have earned such good fortune as this? Such a loving wife, so many good friends, so beautiful a child? It seemed wrong somehow to be rewarded for a life of bloodshed with such—

No
. He pushed those thoughts from his mind. He would not allow himself to spoil this moment. He had never relished the slaughter, as so many others he knew did. He had done it only because it was necessary to protect his homeland, and he had asked for nothing in return. Whatever reward the fates sought to bestow upon him should not be cause for guilt. He had earned this, the life he had dreamed of, at long last. And he would not give it up. The promise he had made to Cwen he had made also to himself: he was done with blood, done with war, done with service to the King. If Alfred’s messengers should ever call on him again, they would return only with a message of polite but firm refusal. This was his life now, for all the rest of his days. Home. Family. Peace.

Wulfric had not partaken of any wine—he wanted to remember this night clearly—but still he found himself feeling drunk and giddy as the festivities began to wane and Cwen led him back to their cottage. He was certain that for the first time in many weeks, a good night’s sleep lay ahead—but not quite yet. In the darkness of their bedroom, Cwen pressed him against the wall, and her hot breath was close against his chest as she pulled apart his shirt and slipped her hands inside. Wulfric flinched when her fingertips played across his chest and found the coarse patch of scarred tissue where Aethelred had seared the scarab pendant into his flesh.

Cwen knew every one of Wulfric’s battle scars—this one was new. But the story of it could wait; for now she simply gave thanks that her man had been returned to her with no worse a wound than this.

“I’ll be gentle,” she assured him.

“Why start now?” said Wulfric before clamping his mouth over hers and kissing her with all the passion of their first night together. Cwen’s tongue danced with his as her hands slid lower and unbuckled his belt.

“What if we wake the baby?” Wulfric said as his heart pounded ever faster.

“I will be very disappointed if we don’t,” she whispered in his ear, and her hand reached inside his britches and closed around him.

An hour later, Wulfric and Cwen lay naked, tangled in one another, the sweat cooling on their bodies. But the restful slumber Wulfric had so long awaited, and that he was sure awaited him after so many sleepless nights in pursuit of Aethelred, never came. Instead, he was plagued by the most intense, most visceral, most horrifying nightmare he had ever experienced. And Wulfric was no stranger to night terrors; many times at war, he had woken in the small hours gripped by panic after the memory of some past encounter in battle had haunted him in the form of a horrific, blood-soaked dream. But this, this was something altogether more harrowing, more vivid.

In the dream, one of Aethelred’s abominations came to Wulfric’s village in the dead of night as those within slept. The vile creature moved from house to house, slaughtering men, women, and children in their beds. A woman woke to find it ripping her husband to pieces. It turned on her next and tore out her throat. Her screams roused nearby villagers, who ran from their homes
with torches and pitchforks to find the beast emerging into the pale light of the moon, slavering and slick with the blood of its first victims.

For a moment they stood there, wide-eyed, frozen in place by the sheer, unbelievable horror of the thing. Then they rushed to attack it, only to be brutally savaged as it met them head-on, trampling them underfoot, shredding them with tooth and claw in a mindless fury. It was unstoppable. Axes and pitchforks glanced harmlessly off its scaly, armored hide. Fire did nothing but enrage it further.

When it was done ravaging its assailants, the abomination continued through the village, chasing down others who had been awoken by the panicked shouting and cries for help, and who now ran for their lives, to no avail. The beast was too fast for them; it ran down every one, goring them where they fell as they screamed and reached desperately for escape.

The horror of the nightmare was made greater by how acutely Wulfric experienced it. Every nauseating moment, every instant of terror was rendered with a clarity beyond that of any dream that had ever visited him before. Everything, except for the beast itself. Wulfric, too close to see its full form, only ever caught glimpses of it as it thrashed and flailed and murdered. A pincer. A claw. Six oily black legs that went
click-click-click
as the unseen thing scuttled from one victim to the next. And always the terrible, high-pitched shriek that it made each time it killed.

In other nightmares, Wulfric had always been able to will himself awake, to escape from the horror back into the waking world by telling himself it was only a dream, not real. Not this one. Try as he might, Wulfric could not make the nightmare end. He was imprisoned helplessly within it, unable to look away, as though his eyes were being held open by an unseen torturer forcing him to witness every moment. And now the beast was moving away from the center of the village, past the rent and broken bodies scattered upon the bloody ground, lurching toward the village’s outskirts,
toward the home where he and his wife and newborn daughter still slept, unaware. As the creature drew closer and Wulfric’s dread deepened, he tried to focus his mind, summoning his every ounce of will to end this torment.
Wake up wake up wake up wake up
 . . .

He woke. A great sense of relief washed over him as he realized he had finally escaped the dream’s iron hold. But that relief fast gave way to a sickening sense of unease that lingered though the nightmare was over—an oppressive, almost suffocating feeling of dread. He rubbed his eyes, then raised his hand to the side of his head with a groan. His head pounded with a dull throb, as though he had just woken from a night of heavy drinking. But Wulfric had not touched a drop. The dream was so powerful, it seemed, so traumatic, that it had left behind some residual phantom pain.

More than anything, more than ever, Wulfric needed to be close to Cwen, to feel her comforting warmth against him. He turned, reaching for her in the dark. But she was not there. Wulfric’s hand, searching blindly for his wife, found only a handful of straw. He sat up, and as his sight began to adjust to the dark, he saw that he was lying naked upon a bed of it. The whole place reeked of manure, and sulfur, and burned hay.

He was in a horse barn, lying atop a deep pile of pitch-black ash that was for some reason strewn atop the hay. He had apparently slept curled up in the center of this nest of cinders. It was the ash that stank of sulfur, and a fine coat of it covered Wulfric from head to toe, staining his skin the color of charcoal. When he tried to brush it away, he succeeded only in rubbing it deeper. And as he did, he noticed that something else was wrong. His wedding ring was missing. He had not removed it even once in the year that he had been married, but now, inexplicably, it was gone.

A single sliver of daylight cut through a gap in the barn door. Naked, Wulfric hauled himself slowly to his feet, crying out as he
did so. It was not just his head—every muscle in his body, every bone, ached worse than the day after any battle he had ever fought. Hunched over in pain, Wulfric stumbled to the barn door and threw it open, squinting and raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sunlight that poured in from outside. Haltingly, he took a step forward, into the shade of an overhanging tree, and looked. And saw.

The bodies of slaughtered villagers lay all around him. Some bloodied and gored, their limbs broken and twisted into awkward, sickening shapes. Some slit open from gullet to gut, entrails spilled across the ground. Others little more than meat, trampled into the earth, or in pieces, scattered far and wide. The entire village, massacred. Wulfric staggered backward against the barn. His mind reeled. Was he still in the dream, his seeming to have woken just a cruel trick to prolong his torment? No, the maddening, frenzied sensation that defined the dream, the helpless paralysis he felt as it played out, was gone. He could move freely, look away from the horror before him if he wished.

But he did not. Steeling himself, regaining his bearings as best he was able, Wulfric walked among the dead, taking in every detail. A dizzying realization began to take hold; the body of every friend, every neighbor, lay exactly as they had fallen in his dream. There was Leland, Wulfric’s closest neighbor and the first to come and shake his hand and welcome him home yesterday. He was facedown in the dirt, a pale and frozen ghost, his corpse bloated, innards strewn on the ground beneath him, spilled out just as the beast in the nightmare had gutted him with its demon talon. Not far from him was Arnald, the baker who had brought scones to the homecoming celebration and who in the dream had been among the first to assail the creature. It had set about him and those at his side with a flurry of flailing, scythe-like claws and torn them all limb from limb. Wulfric gazed upon the man’s severed head, eyes wide and staring lifelessly at the sky, a grim mask preserving the
terror that had gripped him at his moment of death. Just as in the nightmare.