Sorrow. Rage. Respite.
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The black wolf fur disappeared. The claws shrank back into nails. Even the gaping wound on his side healed over, forming back into pale flesh. Apparently his legs hadn't torn his slacks away completely, because they rested comfortably, although tattered and bloody, on his legs. His bare torso was unmarked, like we hadn't even touched him.
But even more frustrating was the smug certainty of victory on his face. The delight with which he looked at Lero's crumpled body, and the satisfaction in his gaze when his eyes washed over me.
I hated him. I would not let him win.
"Dead. Good." The Baron was walking towards me where I was bent over Lero's body. "One fewer impure breed walking around. Now as for you—"
I didn't let him say another word. I leapt at him, roaring, howling, slashing. I couldn't say if it was words or pure, unintelligible rage spilling out of my throat. But Eaves was clearly not ready for my sudden outburst. I was able to lay a good, long slash across his face, and one through his chest, before he could defend himself. I smelled his blood in the air and wanted more.
More!
"Enough!" Eaves lashed out with a stone fist, but I was running on something new now. Hatred. Hatred mixed with instinct and pure, unbridled bloodlust. He might as well have been drugged for how slow he looked to me in my rage. I dodged his fist and bit into his arm, tasting that delicious blood, drinking it, worrying more out of his flesh.
He beat me on the head and forced me off of him, but I just scampered to the side, running along the wall, until I was behind him. He turned, Lero's unmoving remains at his rear. His bleeding face wore a scowl.
I ran at him with my claws up, but he grabbed both my arms and held me at bay. His incredible strength hadn't dissipated at all, even in human form, even as he bled from the deep slashes of my claws. He held my deadly muzzle inches from his face, pushing back at me. He squeezed my hands, trying to crush my bones, and I squeezed back, digging my claws into the back of his hands.
"I'll kill you if I have to, Myra," he growled at me, forcing me backward inch by inch. "Don't think you're safe, little grayfur. You think you're the only one in the world? I'll crush your throat here and find another. Or you can be part of the sire of a new beginning. It's a lot better than death."
"I am going to eat your bones," I snarled, my voice throaty and guttural, thick with fury. "There will be nothing left of you!"
"Charming. And your friend said that I was the monster."
I opened my mouth to roar something at him, but the words got stuck in my throat. Because over his shoulder, I saw Lero changing. Like the Baron had. The fur sliding into his skin; his bulk growing smaller; his wolfish features retreating into the face I had first seen. He was going back to human.
And if the Baron had been healed by his change...then...
Instead of fighting the Baron, I let him push forward and get off balance. And when he took that step into me, I closed my jaws around the hollow of his neck and shoulder, bit down hard, and used that brief moment of momentum to toss him back behind me, swinging around. I sent him flying, rolling on the ground, and I went right to Lero.
Human, yes. He had changed. But not breathing. Not breathing...
Wait! There! His breath. I could hear it. Lero stirred. His eyes opened. He looked at me.
"You're alive," I said simply. Softly. Gratefully.
"It's hard to...kill a werewolf," Lero said, and despite that truth, he sounded weak. "The...Baron?"
I stood and stared at my prey. He was standing, only now half his torso was sticky and red with his blood. He saw Lero sit up on the ground and his face twisted in disgust.
"You changed back. Coward! Die with dignity, if nothing else."
"I didn't do it on purpose," Lero admitted quietly to me from his spot on the ground. "It must have happened on its own, on the brink of death."
"I think you were a little closer than the brink," I whispered. Then I shouted, "You're weak, Baron! You can't even kill an inferior werewolf. You're reduced to begging him to die for you."
Lero started to stand up, inching away from where his blood had soaked into the carpet. Even though his wounds were healed, he was still weak. I could only imagine; I was amazed that he was able to stand at all. Yet his eyes were as full of life as they always were.
The Baron glared, just standing there and bleeding. If Lero was weakened, he must have been, too. Maybe not as much, but enough for us to be able to take him on. This would be our one last, best opportunity to finish him.
And then Lero collapsed where he stood, and I dropped to catch him before he could hit the ground again. His eyes were closed; fluttering. His color was weak. I held him and looked toward the Baron, who was smirking. But he didn't look as confident as he had been before.
"Tend to your worthless pup," the Baron said. "I'm finished with the both of you. He can die and you can rot. I'll find myself another grayfur back home." And just like that, he turned and began to walk away.
I was torn. Clearly, he was too weak to fight, or he'd have killed us both right there. He didn't think he could beat me one on one. Maybe he couldn't. But in order to chase him, I'd have to leave Lero. And he needed help. He needed protection. What if another wandering guard came to finish him?
But the Baron...! Gone, around the corner already. If Lero was awake, if he could talk, he would tell me to go after Eaves. He would tell me to leave him and chase after the prey.
But Lero wasn't awake. And each second took both him and Eaves further away from me. If I chased Eaves, killed him, and came back here to find Lero dead, would it be worth it?
No. Not at all.
So I let him go.
I picked Lero up in my arms, and he was so light. It probably had a lot to do with how strong I was in my werewolf form, but it was still shocking. It felt like he had been drained. He was breathing, but barely.
I held him close to me and I left the bloody windowed walk, back into the foyer, where the grand doors were to my right and the bloody massacre of the Baron's men was to my left, flickering in weak torchlight. The playful shadows made it look like there was some semblance of life among the pile of corpses, but all I smelled was death.
I was alert for the Baron, my ears and eyes on watch. But there was nothing. He had retreated, a tactical move from his warped perspective, surely, but a cowardly move. Even if it saved his life today.
There was nothing else for me in these stone walls. With Lero in my arms, I slipped through the opened doors and out into the daylight. It was warmer outside than inside the castle. It felt good, in a faraway sense.
I thought that we might be chased by some of the Baron's guards, but we were alone. Perhaps they weren't too eager to fulfill the wishes of a man who had slaughtered their comrades. Or perhaps there were none left to give chase. Either way, I carried Lero across the lightly sloping grass and back to the forest, the same way we had come. The same way I had run away the night before. I might have been stepping in my old footprints and never known it.
I got us back into the trees, my ears careful to listen for anyone coming after us, and also to make sure that Lero was still breathing. He was, but was it growing fainter? He was heavier in my arms. I gently set him down onto the dirt once we had a good few trees behind us.
"Lero," I whispered, to him and to myself. I put my hand on his chest, and I noticed with little surprise that I was changing back to human, which explained why he had started to get so heavy. The battle was over. My prey wasn't in my jaws, but he was gone, all the same, and I was tired. Exhausted, really, in so many ways. I was happy to leave the werewolf form behind as the fur shrank away and I became myself again.
There was never a pleasant time to be transformed. It was only for bloodshed and fighting.
"Lero," I said again, and this time I was talking to him, pleading slightly for him to sit up and be okay. "We're safe. We're out of the castle. Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?"
He did. He opened them to look up at the sunlight poking through the leaves of the canopy. He opened them to look at me, and he breathed in a lungful of the fresh forest air, and I almost burst with relief.
He must have seen the weight fall from my face, because he said, "It's nice to have someone care about me as much as you do, Myra."
I smirked. "Don't praise me yet. The Baron...I let him get away. I...couldn't leave you."
Lero closed his eyes again, but his breathing was better. "It's my fault," he said. "I'm not as strong as I should be. I didn't...wasn't thinking clearly. I was in a rage."
"Eaves said he was going home," I told him. "That he would find a new grayfur there."
"Home..." Lero tasted the word. "That can only mean Dorria. Especially if he means to find another way to sire his poisonous line."
I let out a breath. "He's going to go all the way to Dorria?"
"Unless he's lying. And we have to be sure he isn't." Lero sat up and groaned, leaning against a tree. "My whole body feels like a bruise."
Somehow, that got a laugh out of me. I sat down next to him and pressed up against him arm, gently. "How do we make sure he's not lying?"
"If he leaves," Lero said, "and he's going all the way back to Dorria...this, all this, is getting left behind." He gestured toward the castle. "No sense in him starting his little empire so far from the homeland. And if the castle has no Baron, it will have no staff. No guards."
I nodded. "We have to watch the castle. And if the halls clear out...then we'll know. We'll know he's gone."
"Yes." Lero took my hand in his. "And if we stay on this path, we can be sure he doesn't go to attack The Hole, as well. Although I doubt he would bother, with his plans so shattered." He smiled. "For now, we can rest."
So we did. Both of us were beaten and bruised, and for the next few days we got back up to strength. We made a small camp in the woods, deep enough in to stay hidden, but close enough to the castle so that it would be easy to keep an eye on things. I stole into town as late as possible to purchase some supplies to keep us afloat for our time in the woods, using the small bit of gold I had hidden outside of The Hole.
We certainly didn't see the Baron return, not that we were counting on such an overt sign. What we did see, slowly, was the trickle of people from the castle, and fewer people going in each day. Over the next week, the castle cleared out. Guards were the first to leave, and seemingly in a hurry. The rest of the staff came soon after, over the next few days. As I watched them leave to wherever they were headed, I wondered if anyone had bothered to clean up the bloody scene in the hall.
Probably not.
Cooks, maids, gardeners, masons; no one was left. For two straight days, no one went in or out of the castle. After that stretch, I decided it would be best to sneak in the following night to look around, after arguing with Lero about going alone and telling him how he would do nothing but slow me down.
"This is what I do," I told him. Eventually, he agreed, albeit with a begrudging reluctance.
It was deathly quiet in the woods, and even quieter once I got far enough away from the intermittent rustling of the leaves. Even though I was fairly certain the castle was empty, there was no reason to be careless. With the late night sky over me, I ascended the wall in silence and dropped onto the grounds. I easily found a first-floor window that was wide open to the night air and climbed into the castle. With no one inside, security was nonexistent.
The silence within the stacked stones was unsettling, like a stilled breath. I wasn't about to go running through the halls and yelling for people to come out. I made my way through the castle proper in as ghostlike a manner as I could.
I found nothing. When I went to the room where Lero and I had had our stand against the Baron and his guards, it was all the mess we had left it, save for the bodies, which were gone. Blood, broken stones, and shattered wood remained. When I went out to the hall, I saw that the bodies were gone there, too, and even though the blood had been cleaned up, its smell still hung in the air as a coppery reminder.
The rest of the castle was just as empty. No one in the quarters or the kitchens. No one in the storage or the gallery. Not even a prisoner left behind in the dungeons far beneath the castle.
As I left, I prayed that it would be the last time I would ever see this place.
"They're gone," I said to Lero, who had clearly been pacing while awaiting my return. "No one is left. Certainly not Eaves."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Lero let his gaze drift from me and to the north. "Then he really has gone to Dorria. And he's well on his way."
Now he brought those shimmering green eyes back to me, and I knew what he was going to say.
"Myra, I have to go to Dorria. I can't let him hurt anyone else."
I sighed. "Lero, if you think you're going alone, maybe you got knocked on the head harder than we thought."
Lero blinked. "When were you last in Dorria?"
"Never," I answered. "My parents left before having me, and I was raised here by someone who was supposedly my uncle but was probably just a family friend. I never knew what happened to my parents after they gave me away...and I've never been to Dorria."
"Well," he said, "it's cold there."
"We can keep each other warm," I said, with a little hint of a grin that forced the same out of Lero.
He put his hands on my shoulders. He was strong; stronger than he had been even before all this. I could feel it.
"Are you sure about this, Myra? This is a long journey. And you know the dangers."
"There's nothing for me here, if that's what you're on about," I said, not without warmth. "And even if there was...I'd leave it behind to be with you." I gave him a smile, showing my teeth. "And to see Eaves dead with my own eyes. I don't like to leave things unfinished. It's kind of how I got into this whole mess in the first place."
"Mess," Lero repeated. "Yes, that's as good a word as any."
I touched his strong forearms and ran my hands up along them. "At least one good thing came out of all this."
Lero pulled me into a kiss, holding me against his firm body, and his robust warmth spread through my lips and down my neck. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it, savoring this sweetness that I would fight armies to stay with. Wrapping my arms around him and feeling his around me. Tasting him, smelling him, and letting myself live in that moment for as long as it could last.
Lero broke the kiss but kept me in his arms, and his face was as warm as his embrace. "I could stay like this all night, But Eaves already has a good head start on us."
"You're right." I slid out of his grasp. "Every second counts." Thinking about the Baron being one step ahead of us, getting away with what he'd done, started to get me riled up almost immediately.
Lero sensed it, and he felt the same way. "Let's get moving. It's a long journey."
I looked toward the meager supplies scattered around our little camp. "At least we don't have much to carry."
And like so many other journeys, our new one started with a single step.
I was a werewolf. I was in love with another werewolf. Together, we were going to hunt our prey across kingdoms.
At that point, I had thought my life had flipped completely upside-down.
As time would come to tell, fate's trail had more curves for me yet.
THE END