Wolf in Shadow-eARC (18 page)

“The Isle of Anglesey, in Wales?” Rhian asked.

“Yah,” Frankie replied. “Druidism was the only religion, that the Romans utterly destroyed. They were a pragmatic people mostly about their subjects’ religions but Druidic magic was something else. Have you never wondered why the Roman Republic collapsed after subjugating Gaul, and all the early rulers of the subsequent Empire went mad?”

“Can’t say I have,” Rhian replied, suppressing a smile.

“Watch
I Claudius
,” Frankie said. “Anyway, the center of Druidism was at Mona, the Isle of Anglesey.”

“But how does this relate to my pendant?” Rhian asked, wishing Frankie would get to the point.

“I am coming to that.” Frankie said. “The Romans invaded Britain in 43 to destroy the Druids. By ad 60, General Suetonius Paulinus was in a position for the final strike on Mona. The Roman historian Tacitus described the invasion. Listen to this.”

Frankie pushed her glasses back on her nose and began to read out loud.

“On the shore stood the opposing army with its phalanx of armed warriors, while between the ranks dashed women, in black attire like the Furies, with hair disheveled, waving brands. All around, the Druids, lifting up their hands to heaven, and pouring forth dreadful curses, scared our soldiers by the unfamiliar sight, so that, as if their limbs were paralyzed, they stood motionless, and exposed to wounds. Then urged by their general’s appeals and mutual encouragements not to quail before a troop of frenzied women, they bore the standards onwards, striking down all resistance, and wrapped the foe in the flames of his own brands. A force was next set over the conquered, and their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed. They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails.”

“Yuk!” Rhian said

“Quite,” Frankie replied, primly. “And this is where Boudica comes in. She led the massive revolt against the Romans in 60 ad. It was supposed to be timed to protect Mona by drawing off the Roman Army, but she was too late. Suetonius Paulinus was just too quick. The Druids always underestimated the speed of a Roman advance because they were not used to dealing with professional armies. Mona was destroyed and Boudica’s rebellion doomed to fail, but it was a close-run thing. That brooch of yours was made by the Druids as a weapon for Boudica.”

“This history lesson is all jolly interesting, but how does it help me?” Rhian asked, trying not to be curt with Frankie but getting increasing impatient with her academic flow.

“Don’t you see, Rhian? Now I understand how the brooch was made, I can modify it to ease the transformation process so it is less painful,” Frankie said.

“Oh,” Rhian replied, feeling a little foolish.

“I bet the transformation was much easier in the Otherworld,” Frankie said.

Rhian nodded. “And I got to keep my clothes.”

“Yesss,” Frankie said, pursing her lips as she drew out the word.

Rhian knew Frankie was thinking of Max and felt her cheeks burning, which was ridiculous. She hadn’t done anything with him.

Frankie smiled. “That is just a question of including them in the transformation. I can tweak the spell.”

Rhian took a deep breath and when she spoke it took a special effort to keep her voice calm and even. “Is there no way to transfer the wolf back into the pendant permanently?”

“You created a strong bond between the wolf spirit and your soul when you deliberately used the shiffoth to kill,” Frankie said gently.

Guilt washed over Rhian. Not a new feeling, but not one that got any better either.

“I hadn’t used any magic,” Rhian protested. “It just happened when my blood covered the brooch in the moonlight.”

“Yes, the power of human blood. Boudica’s brooch was created by Celtic blood magic, so it was triggered by your blood, as you intended,” Frankie said. “The wolf spirit is locked deep within you. You appear entirely human, but it’s there.”

“So the magic can’t be reversed,” Rhian said, blinking back tears.

“Not easily. I can’t banish the wolf,” Frankie said. “The Commission witches could; in fact The Commission would insist upon it if they discovered you. That’s their job, you see, plugging holes in reality.”

“Then I can escape the wolf?” Rhian asked.

“Oh, yes,” Frankie replied. “But there is a catch.”

“Like what?” Rhian asked.

“The spell will kill you.”

CHAPTER 10
THE HUNTER

It was always different. Sometimes the transition into the Otherworld was so gradual that one was hard pressed to define where the change occurred. Other times it was like stepping through a door from one universe to another. This was one of the latter times.

Jameson walked through a gloomy forest of dead, rotting trees. The stink of decay thickened the air to the point where he could taste the rot. The boggy ground squelched with every step. He held the bulky bolt pistol double-handed, close to his chest. This was the ready stance developed by Churchill’s Special Operations Executive in World War II. He rotated through three-hundred-sixty degrees, gun ready, but nothing moved. Where the hell was Karla?

She tapped him on the shoulder with a clawed hand, laughing at his alarm.

“Don’t do that,” Jameson said. “I could have shot you.”

Karla laughed again, eyes flashing emerald with delight. She was a hunter; she lived for the chase, for the kill. Jameson found himself smiling back. He was a hunter too.

“Where the hell are we?” Jameson asked.

Karla shrugged. “The Otherworld, does it matter?”

“No, I suppose not,” Jameson said.

The trees were splintered as if they had been smashed by giant hammers. The land was a waterlogged swamp. Streamlets overflowed from one pool to another, meandering gently between tussocks of grass. Slimy red-brown algae ringed open water so that ponds lacked defined edges. Thick-stalked plants rose from the water to a height of two or three feet. Leafless, they were topped by bright yellow flowers with overlapping petals, like tulips.

What struck Jameson was the stillness of the air and the silence. Londoners were enclosed by the constant bubble of the city. The buzz of cars, planes, trains, and the sound of seven million people living their lives. Here there was nothing, no movement, no sound, not even a whine of insects.

A ripple in the pond crashed over the silence like breaking surf. Jameson whirled, extending his pistol. A green, flat snout parted the algae in a nearby pool, and an oversized frog climbed out. It squatted in the slime, observing Jameson stolidly. Orange warts decorating its olive-green skin lent a surreal effect. Jameson kept his pistol leveled but the frog made no move, hostile or otherwise.

“I guess that isn’t our quarry?” Jameson asked, rhetorically. Karla did not bother to answer.

The swamp came slowly to life as if the frog had broken a spell. A cacophony of rustles, clicks, and chirrups started, like an orchestra tuning up before a performance. Jameson’s attention was drawn to grass moving in rhythmic patterns about twenty meters away. A reptilian head on a long neck as thick as Jameson’s forearm lifted into view. It was eyeless but a thin tongue flickered from a slit mouth tasting the air. The yellow head waved from side to side like a radar scanner before centering on Jameson. It dropped down into the grass and was hidden from sight.

The waving grass pattern headed for him, resolving when closer into a yellow snake body pushing against grass tussocks to glide through the mud. A black saw-tooth pattern ran down the spine like the markings on a British adder.

Karla watched the snake intently. It ignored her, its tiny snake mind focused entirely on Jameson. Perhaps she did not register as food so was no more important to the snake than a dead tree trunk.

She moved to intercept and the snake stopped, its head flicking towards her uncertainly. Karla froze, still as a granite boulder. Jameson flicked the safety catch of his gun with a click and deliberately stamped his foot. The snake refocused its attention on him.

Karla moved so fast she was a blur. The snake swung back towards her, opening its mouth wide. Hinged fangs swung out but it was too slow, way, way, too slow. She grasped its neck with both hands, talons digging in, so it couldn’t get its head around to bite her. It spat something into the air and Jameson jumped back. Grass blackened where the venom splashed.

Karla twisted her hands in opposite directions, trying to wring the snake’s neck. Its muscles knotted and its eyes bulged, but the neck wouldn’t break. Her hands slipped, talons tearing through scales and flesh. The snake thrashed against her legs with its coils, and she lost her footing on the mud. She fell backwards, hitting the soggy ground with a slap of displaced fluid.

She kept a tight grip on the animal, struggling to keep its head pointed away from her face as it thrashed and twisted. Jameson couldn’t get a clear shot, so he jumped in close and smacked the snake with the heavy pistol. The blow slapped its head away. Karla took the opportunity to sink her fangs deep into its neck. Its spinal column snapped with a crack and the snake whipped in death agony. Karla threw it into a pond, where it coiled and writhed aimlessly, churning the water into brown-green foam.

Jameson held out his hand to help her up.

“I hate the taste of snake,” she said.

“If you think I’m kissing you before you clean your teeth after that . . .” Jameson said.

“Ohhh,” Karla said, pouting. She walked right up to him until her breasts touched his chest and tilted her head up.

Oh, sod it, Jameson thought, kissing her anyway.

“You’d get mud all over your clothes if we do that,” Jameson said, pushing her away.

“I’ve already got mud on them,” she said.

He was tempted, oh, so tempted, but they were hunting a monster in an Otherworld swamp, for freaking sake. Just because she got off on danger. Actually, so did he, but a healthy dose of terror-induced rationality overcame his hormones. Karla didn’t do terror or rationality. She did what she desired, living for the moment. That was her nature.

She slipped into a semi-quiescent state when unstimulated by events. In this condition she was taciturn and remote, almost machinelike. But danger and the hunt brought her alive. When Karla was up, she burned with an emotional intensity greater than any human being. Jameson was one of the few people ever to see her in this state—and live.

Suckers were only immortal by human standards of time. Over centuries, they became increasingly powerful, but their minds decayed until they were little more than vicious monsters motivated by only hunger. Commission operatives called ancient suckers Grendels, after the mythical monster slain by the hero Beowulf. Mythical? Perhaps? Except that Grendel has a very good description of a degenerate sucker, something humanoid but not human, something terrible that feeds on men, something of the dark.

The Commission never used the word vampire. Vampires were creatures from mythology, but suckers were all too real. The vampires of myth shared some of their characteristics but not all. Crosses held no fear for Karla, and people she fed on did not turn into vampires.

In truth, the Commission had never really established what a sucker was. They didn’t reproduce, but new ones turned up from time to time. The Library favoured the explanation that they were some form of alien information pattern from outside our universe imprinted over a human mind. The Coven agreed more or less but employed words like possession and evil spirit.

It was possible that they were physical manifestations from outside, but suckers seemed to be too much part of our world to be wholly alien. It was no use interrogating them about their origins as they either wouldn’t or couldn’t answer.

Karla was old when they captured her; she didn’t know how old, and they couldn’t tell. She had forgotten many things as her mind decayed and had lost context to much of what she retained, but she was still semi-rational.

That was the combination the Commission needed: Karla was an old, powerful sucker who could still respond to verbal commands. She would be a very useful weapon—if she could be controlled.

The method they chose to bind her was a love geas. It had to be attached to a person; suckers have no ideology and have trouble comprehending loyalty to anything, let alone abstracts such as The Commission or the human race. Jameson volunteered to be that person.

Up to a point the experiment was a roaring success, until Karla started recovering her mind and personality. That was the first sign that the geas had unexpected side effects. The most important of which was that it did not just bind Karla to Jameson but was reciprocal, binding him to her. That created problems when the experiment ended and the time came to terminate Karla. Jameson gave the Commission a choice, back off or kill him as well. It was uncertain which option they would select, but Jameson was past caring. Either choice worked for him, albeit in different ways. In the event, Randolph opted to continue the experiment.

Jameson knew that the problem had only been kicked down the road a bit, a stay of execution rather than a reprieve. One day Jameson would die and then what would Karla do? Stay loyal to The Commission or revert to type? But that was a problem for another day as Jameson had no immediate interest in dying.

Karla claimed to have been Shakespeare’s lover, not an impossible scenario. She had lived in London a long time. At least Karla seemed to remember The Bard, and she recalled a lover who was a poet, but it was all jumbled in her head. Jameson read English Lit. at Cambridge, and some lines in the Dark Lady Sonnet haunted him because they described Karla so well.

“
Then will I swear beauty herself is black, and all they foul that thy complexion lack.
”

“
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, and death once dead, there’s no more dying then
.”

“
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night
.”

Jameson would never know for sure but he always thought of Karla as the Dark Lady.

“Come on,” he said, “business first, pleasure later.”