9
Clyde spent the rest of the morning talking to Hilary. She wasn’t very helpful, and Clyde felt that he was wasting his time. Mike had said he was going for a beer and would be back before midnight. They hadn’t been fighting. Nothing unusual had happened that week. Everything had seemed perfectly normal, and Mike was looking forward to taking a couple of days off to do some fishing.
Drake’s frantic mother wasn’t much use to him either. Drake had been on his way to a friend’s house, and the two of them were planning to hang out and watch a movie. When Drake hadn’t shown up, the friend just figured he’d forgotten and watched the movie without him. The woman had absolutely nothing to add except that Drake was a good son and wouldn’t just take off like that on his own. And he certainly wouldn’t abandon his beloved car.
Feeling that he had accomplished nothing, Clyde returned dejectedly to the store hoping that Terry was having better luck. They never spoke of Terry’s powers, and Clyde hadn’t known the first thing about warlocks except what he’d heard growing up. They were evil. They loved to torture the night creatures, especially the werewolves who they considered to be brutish and ignorant. And most of all, they couldn’t be trusted.
The weeks with Terry had changed all that. He was gentle and thoughtful, a passionate lover and loyal friend. Clyde believed with all his heart that he had finally found the man he needed at his side, even if a warlock wasn’t at all what he thought he’d been searching for. He knew with conviction that he would do whatever it took to keep the pack from his lover’s throat, even if it meant banishment. Terry was all he needed if his brothers were too blinded by hate to accept their love.
As he made his way to the gathering place, Clyde heard the distressed cry of a wolf in pain. The wretched howling was coming from up ahead and he began to run towards the clearing. As he emerged from the woods, he could see a figure on the ground, half-wolf and half-man, writhing in agony. Terry stood facing the river, arms held high over the piteous creature as he chanted in a voice Clyde hardly recognized.
Approaching the two, Clyde realized in shock that the werewolf was young Drake, suspended at the peak of a shift when the pain coursing through his body would be at its most unbearable. He was stunned, incapable of processing what his eyes were seeing. The sun hadn’t yet gone down, and the full moon had waned. How could the boy be shifting?
Clyde was overcome with gratitude as he watched Terry working his magic to reverse the change. Yet the more Terry chanted, the weaker Drake seemed to become, curling in on himself until he lay motionless and silent. It was only when Terry chuckled that Clyde could make sense of the awful scene before him. The warlock wasn’t helping. He was reveling in his power to bring forth this horror.
“Terry,” cried Clyde in a strangled voice. “What are you doing?”
The warlock turned to face his lover and gave a crooked smile, his lips forming the shape of a ghastly kiss. He moved as if to speak, but fell instead to the ground, unconscious and unrepentant.
Clyde darted swiftly to Terry’s side, searching for any explanation that would absolve him of this unforgivable act. Drake wasn’t breathing, and Clyde moved to close his eyes and bless the soul that had passed to the great beyond. He shivered at the sight of the corpse, neither man nor wolf, frozen during transformation into a hideous beast that belonged to neither world.
Hearing a groan, he looked up sharply to see a wolf crawling on his belly from beneath the pines. Mike had been opened from neck to tail along his spine, and Clyde could see the white bone protruding from beneath his fur. He ran to help and seeing that the wolf would soon breathe his last, held him gently and tried to soothe his passing.
“Who did this to you?” he whispered, stroking the soft fur between the werewolf’s ears.
At first, Mike made no sound and all Clyde could hear was his tortured breathing, struggling to stay alive. Finally, the words came, pushed through a wall of pain and bewilderment.
“The warlock,” he gasped. “Your warlock”.
As Clyde lay the lifeless body to the ground, he could feel a wall of rage building with a strength unlike anything he had ever felt before. The betrayal was so sudden, so unexpected, that its sting was devastating. He turned then, lifting Terry’s body from the ground as he wept in fury.
He tore his lover’s clothes from his body and used the tattered remnants to tie him naked to the base of a tall pine. The warlock had not regained consciousness and hung immobile, his head lolling against his chest. Clyde gathered branches and pine cones from the forest floor and made a pyre at Terry’s feet, piling the kindling to the height of his knees. When he had finished, he mopped the sweat from his brow and searched his pockets for matches.
His hand emerged clenched around a small green stone and the sight of it was Clyde’s undoing. Terry had found the stone one day when they had been walking at the lake, and had given it to Clyde as a keepsake. Clyde had carried it ever since, rubbing it on occasion for luck and comfort. He hurled the jade into the woods and immediately regretted its loss. He knew then that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t watch Terry burn.
Panting with grief, Clyde threw back his head and howled, something he had never done as a man. He ached to return to his wolf form, the part of him that was separate from Terry, the part that had not been defiled. As a man, Clyde had been weak. He had let himself be seduced by a beguiling stranger and believe in his falsehoods. How could he have been so stupid? Hadn’t the others all told him he was being a fool?
The timber wolves had heard Clyde’s howling and now filled the clearing, sniffing the air for danger and catching the scent of the two dead werewolves. They approached cautiously, hackles raised, looking to Clyde for guidance. He was torn, lost in the enormity of Terry’s betrayal but unable to ask the wolves to finish the job that he had been unable to complete himself. Sensing Clyde’s indecision, they stood together and with quivering flanks crept towards the warlock.
As they prepared to attack their prey, Terry’s head jerked back and he stared with cold dead eyes into the approaching line of wolves. Clyde thought for a moment that he might beg for mercy, but Terry only smiled and shrugged off his bindings as though they were made of strings. Raising his arms, he enveloped the wolves in a glittering mist that locked their joints and sent them hurtling backwards to the very edge of the river.
He began to laugh then, a low joyless sound that was more terrifying to Clyde’s ears than any words he could have uttered. With each strained chuckle, Terry’s body seemed to lose substance until he was barely more than a translucent outline, shimmering in the light of the moon.
Clyde tried to move but he could no longer feel his feet. His entire body was weighted to the ground.
“Well little wolf,” a voice chortled, “I see you haven’t learned from the lessons of the past after all.”
It had been a long time, but Clyde had never forgotten the voice of his tormentor, the witch who had killed his father.
“Beatrice,” he hissed. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why does anyone do anything?” she laughed, standing in front of Clyde and surveying the frozen tableau. “It gives me pleasure, just as my Terry brought you yours. And he is my Terry, little wolf, mine to create and mine to destroy.”
“No,” wailed Clyde. “You may have controlled him with your enchantments, but he was never truly one of yours.”
“Control?” asked the witch angrily. “You think I controlled him? I made him, Clyde, especially for you. I have watched you these many years, amused to see you shift every night while hoping your pack would reject you. They surprised me. I had no idea you hairy brutes could show such compassion.”
Clyde struggled helplessly against his invisible bonds but the witch continued as if he were listening in rapt attention. “Your taste for men was a weakness, and one I found I could exploit. This pack is an irritant to me. I wish to settle a coven in these woods and the presence of werewolves is an intolerable distraction. It seemed so much easier to let the wolves rip each other apart than attract the attention of the peacemakers by killing you all myself.”
“That’ll never happen,” said Clyde with more conviction than he was feeling. “The pack will rally.”
“Really?” asked Beatrice in amusement. “I don’t think so. You fell for the bait and it has spread its poison just as I expected. Your pack is already divided, and this will create a rift no silver tongue can repair. You will be blamed for the carnage here, and the others will rip out your lungs. I give your uncle a day before he comes for revenge, and doubt there will be any left to mourn their passing.”
Clyde’s eyes widened in horror as he looked into the terrifying future she foretold. He knew that she was right. The pack members would fight until the last wolf was left standing, alone and unguarded. The forest would be hers.
With a mighty howl, Clyde pulled at his feet, stretching his calf muscles until they burned. He managed to get one foot off the ground, but this served only to enrage the witch even further. She stretched a finger to his chest and he felt a cold envelop his heart. It stopped beating for ten interminable seconds before he felt the warm rush of blood through his arteries.
“Try that again and it will stay stopped,” she hissed. Gathering her cloak to her body, she began to move away but was stopped by the sound of a wolf shaking his mane. Turning in surprise, she saw that several of the wolves appeared to have thrown off the spell and were now trying to control their trembling limbs.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, raising her hands and pointing to the wolves. “Be still,” she commanded.
The wolves kept moving and the witch blinked hard. A shield had materialized over their backs, a mirage that protected the wolves from her increasingly frantic efforts to subdue them.
“Your powers are great, but I fear they may prove more effective than you intended.” Clyde had almost forgotten about Terry as the witch was speaking, but he now appeared before them in a ring of bright light, emitting a smoldering heat that made the wolves retreat in terror.
He smiled tenderly at Clyde, who was filled with a liquid and comforting warmth. “I may be but a projection of your hatred,” he said quietly to the witch, “but you created me for a purpose. I was made to care for this man, and in that you have succeeded beyond your wildest expectations. I love him with all of my borrowed heart, and with every sinew of my transient body. That part you could not control, and Clyde was deserving of all I could give him in our short time together. If you had wanted to ensure my loyalty, you should never have sent me to love a man like this, a man who is everything I could ever have wanted in a mate. You made me to love him unconditionally, and that is exactly what I intend to do.”
Beatrice snarled and raised her arms, desperate fingers stabbing at the night air. The sparks that flew from her nails grazed the surface of Terry’s protective dome before falling safely to the ground. As the wolves regained their strength, they realized that the witch had been rendered harmless by the warlock’s superior powers and gathered in a loose semi-circle. Clyde watched as the first among them leapt at her throat.
The witch emitted a piercing scream and stunned the lead wolf with a blow to his head. She was no match, however, for those that followed. They set upon her in waves, tearing the flesh from her bones as they howled in frenzied unison. Even when her remains were spread across the breadth of the clearing, they continued to yelp, unable to shake the remnants of her noxious spell.
Throughout the massacre, Clyde never took his eyes off Terry’s face. The bright light that had surrounded him like an unearthly halo began to fade as the witch’s life blood drained into the cold ground. Terry lifted an arm as if to wave farewell and his features dissolved against the starry heavens. Long after the other wolves had retreated to their den, Clyde howled his grief into the night. The first snowflakes of winter fell lightly on his tongue. His lover was gone.