“Peter?” Valerie took a step back from him. She saw that his face was bruised, a purple bloom, and that he had a candy-red cut over one eye. He reached for Valerie, but she stiffened, her eyes intent on something. His hand . . . both hands. He was wearing gloves. Soldiers’ gloves.
Valerie’s thoughts turned back to
the Wolf, its paw singed from crossing onto holy ground at the church.
“Thank God you’re all right,” she
said, reminding herself it didn’t matter.
He scuffed at the ground with his
boot, then looked at her. She saw the falling snow glimmering white in the blacks
of his eyes, lighting them up.
“Where were you?” she ventured. It
was only then that Peter could see the fear flash across her face like the
flicker of a struggling flame.
“They had me locked inside that
thing of theirs, that stupid metal elephant,” Peter protested, growing
indignant.
Valerie looked from his dark brown
eyes, the eyes she knew so well now, to the bruises that darkened his skin.
“You don’t believe me?” Peter said,
stepping forward, willing her to change her mind.
“Don’t come near me,” she said, the
strength of her own voice surprising her. She didn’t feel strong; she felt
weaker than ever before. Her fear was overpowering her heart.
When Peter reached to touch her
face, Valerie bent down and slid her hand into her boot. Trying to be brave but
feeling very small, she brandished her knife in front of her as she stepped
back.
“Please don’t,” she implored.
But he did.
And so she saw herself do something,
saw the knife in front of her, a bright line of red across his skin. He doubled
over in pain. She turned and tried to get far away before he had a chance to
look up.
The gnarled tangle of trees became a
blur as Valerie ran, at once feeling every emotion and none at all. She hadn’t even
realized she was crying until, out of breath, she could run no farther. She
stopped, her heartbeat throbbing at her temples. She watched her tears break
the even surface of the snow, plunging through to the ground beneath.
Slowly, she turned.
Was Peter gone, or was the snowfall
just too thick for her to see him?
It doesn’t matter, she decided.
She would continue running; she would train herself to take whatever came. She turned
toward Grandmother’s house, toward the dark woods.
“Grandmother?”
Valerie pounded her fists against
the door. “Let me in!”
“Pull the latch, dear,” she heard
from deep in the tree house.
Valerie did just that. She rushed
inside, slammed the door shut, and chained the bolt all in one motion. She set down
her basket and heaved herself into a spindly rocking chair to survey the room
she knew so well.
It had always been an enchanted
place for her, an indoor forest where everything grew to its fullest, luscious
and beautiful, where nature was allowed to run its course. A pot of stew was
simmering on the fire. The cottage was quiet, like a painting. How strange it
was that nothing had changed in Grandmother’s home, as if Valerie had entered a
perfectly contained miniature world. The room was bathed in the firelight glow.
She didn’t see her grandmother.
“Are you all right?” she called in
the direction of the bedroom.
Grandmother didn’t respond, so
Valerie felt she needed to explain herself.
“I had a nightmare.” Valerie felt
silly saying it aloud, but her embarrassment quickly became terror. Valerie
blinked as a dark shape darted by, headed for the bedchamber.
She followed and then stepped closer
to Grandmother’s bed. Another step, and then another, until she was close enough
to peer through the gauzy silk curtains. She angled herself and, gripped by
fear, saw what she’d known, in her heart of hearts, she would find all along.
Its sharp eyes gleamed golden in the
dark, a shock to behold. The Wolf.
Then a match flared and a candle was
lit — illuminating Grandmother’s blurry face. It was not the Wolf — it had never
been the Wolf. It was only Grandmother.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she said.
Valerie could just barely see
Grandmother through the curtains, rubbing her eyes, smoothing her nightgown.
Valerie steadied herself against the
bedside table, trying to rein her emotions. She reached up to feel her head
where it had been wounded.
“I” — Valerie shivered and reminded
herself to keep it together — “I think the Wolf is out there.”
Grandmother did not seem concerned.
“It’s all right, darling,” she said in a voice that was as placid as a lake at
dawn. “We’re safe in here. There’s some stew cooking. Remember: All sorrows are
— ”
“ — less with bread,” Valerie
whispered. She halfheartedly ladled out a bowl of stew and stoked the fire.
Grandmother laughed. Her face looked
strange through the curtains, and her voice sounded different, her laugh new.
But she was the same, Valerie told herself. She had to be.
But Grandmother’s voice was muffled
and deep, almost masculine. “That’s right. Eat up, my dear.”
Valerie wasn’t hungry, but she
didn’t want to be rude. She felt strange. She was usually able to be her
natural self with Grandmother. Just as Valerie raised a spoonful of soup to her
reluctant lips, something nudged her leg.
Her heart caught.
It was just Grandmother’s black cat.
Valerie reached down and scratched its thin velvet ears with one hand. But it
wasn’t affection that the cat wanted. It licked its lips, eyeing the steaming
bowl of stew in her lap.
Valerie’s eyes went wide as she felt
the room begin to spin.
“I’m feeling dizzy. . . .” she said,
trailing off. Then she looked down at the single bay leaf floating on the
surface of the soup, obscuring the tough meat beneath. “What is this?”
Raising her bleary eyes from the
bowl, Valerie saw Grandmother stand deliberately behind the silk curtains. She
was outlined, her body shapeless beneath her nightgown, features obscured.
Valerie turned away when she saw that Grandmother was undressing, but she
looked up again when the curtains parted and the shape began to walk toward
her.
The movement, though, was not that
of an aged woman; there was too much determination in the stride. Valerie’s eyes
recognized the shadowy face as someone other than her grandmother, but her mind
wouldn’t accept what her eyes were telling her — that the figure standing
before her was her father.
It was her father, and yet it wasn’t
the father she knew. It was like something masquerading as her father, a
butterfly trying to pass for the caterpillar it had once been. He was awe-inspiring,
powerful and domineering as he had never been before. His face was Cesaire’s,
but his eyes were those of the Wolf she had faced before.
She was speechless. And yet, she had
so many questions.
“Father . . . ?”
Cesaire’s face fell.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his voice
sounding all of a sudden just like his own. “She’s . . . dead.”
Dead? What was it in
Cesaire’s voice that sounded like something other than grief? It was almost
like remorse, regret . . . guilt. With a hint of triumph.
What happened?
“I had no choice — she finally
realized what I am.”
Wake up. It’s a dream. Wake up!
“What? This can’t be. Papa, no.”
Valerie laughed awkwardly. She would not believe him; she could not. “You’re joking.
. . .”
“I wish I was. . . .”
Valerie saw clearly what seared
behind his eyes. The shame. And then she noticed his hand, burned. Like the Wolf’s
paw that had crossed through the gate.
She wanted to believe that this man
was not her papa — that her papa was a good man. And yet, she could not deny it
any longer. She was trapped with the Wolf, surrounded by his evil.
“Father. No . . .” Valerie sputtered
in what she knew was a vain protest. She had no say. She’d never had a say. “How
. . . could you? How could you do this?”
Cesaire looked at the floor, then
resumed the air of a much more powerful man than the one she had known. “Valerie,
I love you so much. I wanted you to have a normal childhood — so I lived a
double life. Hiding in plain sight. Living modestly.” He began to pace the
room, the words tumbling out of him. “I tried to keep it up, but I’ve been so
disrespected. Even by my own wife. I couldn’t do it anymore. I’ve settled for
far less than I deserved, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. I decided it was
time to leave for the city. . . . For richer hunting grounds.” Cesaire was
snarling now, a scary, powerful force. Valerie felt herself being drawn to it.
. . .
She took a deep, steadying breath.
It was not just fear that she felt. What she felt was so much more complex than
that, something she couldn’t understand. “Then why didn’t you just go?”
“Because I loved you girls, and I
wanted you to come with me. To share the wealth.”
“But you had to wait until the blood
moon.” She shook as she pieced together the awful truth. She wanted nothing more
to do with this man, but she had to work through it, try to look past her rage
and understand.
“Yes,” he said, pleased with her
effort. “By birthright, the gift went first to my elder daughter. I knew that
Lucie loved Henry, so I forged a letter and went to her as the Wolf. I told her
that Henry had already asked for your hand, but that I could give her something
better. Her true power.”
Valerie felt like she was floating,
her body gone from her.
“But when I spoke to her in Wolf
form,” Cesaire went on, “she didn’t understand me. Any offspring of mine with my
Wolf blood would have the power to understand me. Suddenly it all made
sense. Lucie couldn’t be my daughter. Your mother lied to me. But you already
know that, Valerie.”
Her legs almost gave out beneath
her. She had suspected the truth, but she had been too afraid to say it out
loud. It didn’t matter anyway, no matter who her father was — Lucie was still her
sister. And she had been murdered.
“She was so beautiful that night, in
her finest dress. After all those years of being so careful, so clever, I lost
control.”
Valerie nodded slowly, finally
understanding her father’s true nature. What she’d always thought was weakness
was really hidden strength.
“You took revenge on Mother.”
“And her lover,” he said with a
demonic pride as he passed her to cross the room.
Valerie smelled her father’s scent.
It was woodsy, musky, like onion roots and nutmeg.
“My father was a Wolf, too. Our
scent, the scent of a werewolf, is still on his clothes.” Cesaire ripped open
the lid of the hope chest, grabbed one of his father’s shirts to his face, and
inhaled deeply. “My mother never knew what it meant until the moment before she
died.” His teeth ground against one another as he clenched his jaw. Valerie saw
that he was fighting back tears.
“I loved my wife and my daughter
both. And she was my daughter. I never wanted to hurt them.” He dropped the shirt
back into the chest.
It wasn’t true. He had meant to hurt
them, and he had hurt
them. Valerie took a step toward her basket.
“Come with me.” He turned toward
her. “One bite and you’ll be like me.”
“Why don’t you just force me?” she
spat out.
“I need you as an ally, not a slave,”
he said, as if he were being gentlemanly about the whole thing.
“I won’t do what you do. I can’t.”
“Yes, you can, Valerie. My blood
already courses through your veins.” He loomed over her, forcing the truth upon
her with a smile that was grim and toothy.
“It’s a gift. A gift my
father gave me — that I can now give you. I’m stronger than he was. And you’ll
be even stronger than me.”
Valerie felt how easy it would be to
give in.
“The world will lie at our feet.
We’ll be invincible,” he said in a dark, alluring voice.
Valerie tried to resist. But now,
after all the hardship, all the betrayal, the only thing she wanted was to be
taken care of. It would be so easy.
Her thoughts turned to those who had
cared for her: her mother, her sister, Grandmother. To all the good there
was, to the good that had been shown to her the night before in the church
courtyard. To the strength of love. The Wolf was not in her nature — that much
she knew.
“There must be a God” — she braced
herself — “because you’re the Devil.”
“And you’re the Devil’s daughter,”
he sneered.
Before Valerie could reply, she saw
that Cesaire had tilted his head to listen, like a dog . . . like a wolf. Her
eyes flicked to the door as an axe blade tore through the wood, snapping open
the latch. The door swung open, revealing Peter.
In one glance, Cesaire assessed the
situation, seeing foreground, midground, background; Valerie knew by the way his
eyes scanned.
“You’re not so terrifying when the
sun is up,” Peter whispered with a burning intensity.
He charged at Cesaire with his axe.
Valerie breathed in relief; this would be the end of it. But Cesaire reached up,
moving faster than fast, and stopped the blade an inch from his forehead.
“How would you know?” he growled,
face clenched in anger.
Valerie had backed against the wall,
her hands pressed hard against the rough wood. What could she do? She felt
woozy still from the wound on her head and from the aroma of the stew.
Across the room, Valerie saw that
Peter was locked in combat with Cesaire, forcing himself forward, his sinewy neck
thrusting out of his collar. The two men grappled in silence, but it was a taut
silence, tense with the desire to kill. Cesaire punched Peter hard. Storms of
dust brushed up from the floorboards as they shuffled. Peter lunged for Cesaire,
swung back, and connected with Cesaire’s jaw. Valerie did not wince; her whole
being had been given over to a mechanical impulse to kill. Cesaire was no
longer a father, a man, or a Wolf; he was only a mass of evil that needed to be
destroyed.
Peter raised his weapon with two
hands to slam it into Cesaire’s head, but at the last moment Cesaire ducked under
Peter to whip him around and fling him across the room, sending him smashing
into the shelves next to the loom. Glass jars shattered across the floor as
Peter slumped to the ground. Cesaire advanced, kicking Peter viciously, again
and again and again.
“Father?”
Cesaire stopped and slowly turned to
face her.
His daughter looked like an icon, a
girl from a fairy tale. Just as he had seemed to her the ideal father, she was
now exactly the daughter he’d always wanted her to be. Her red riding hood was
loose over her head, and she held the basket out in front of her.
“I have something for you,” she
said, her voice like silk.
“What is it?” He stared, transfixed,
panting, but was hesitant to approach her.
“I’ll show you,” she said, speaking
gently.
He looked to Peter, who was lying on
the ground, then back to Valerie proudly.
“Let me see it.” He wiped his mouth
with a rag.
Valerie held out the basket, opening
the top just slightly. As Cesaire peered inside, Valerie glanced at Peter, then
cast her eyes to the axe just a few feet away, giving him an order. Cesaire,
leaning forward to make out what was in the basket, did not see Peter’s
impossibly quick movements.
Peter reeled back and used the
momentum in the air to land the axe square in Cesaire’s back, cleaving his
shoulder blade so that it stuck out like a crooked angel wing.
Cesaire reared in anger and reached
behind him with both hands to pull out the axe. A growl sounded roughly from
within him, from a place deeper than the back of the throat, vocal cords
gesticulating like plucked rubber bands. It was the beast within him fighting
to split through the human surface, but Valerie was quick.
“I brought you this.”
Valerie lifted the handkerchief,
revealing what was in the basket. Solomon’s hand, the fingers curled around the
air in rigor mortis, clutching at nothing. She looked up and met her father’s
panic-filled eyes.
How much simpler it would have been
to become a beast than to live through this, Valerie thought.
Before Cesaire could react, she made
a move she could not take back. She grabbed the cold hand and jabbed the sharp
silver fingernails into his gut. She forced herself to hold it there, steady,
as the silver raced through his body.
For a glimpse, she caught his eyes,
like a glint in a mirror. She could hear his breathing, labored, like a
child’s. Then he fell, forever dead, for always.
Valerie stood with tears in her
eyes, her world in tatters. Peter stepped toward her and wrapped his arms
around her slender frame, holding her close until her rage began to pass.
Valerie stared not at the body of the beast that had killed so many she had
loved, but at the body of her father. She felt destroyed; there was nothing
left.
“Get me out of here. Please.”
Peter took Valerie’s hand, but
winced when she took his arm. He pulled away.
“What?” She looked at him,
questioning, as he pulled back his torn sleeve.
“He bit me,” Peter spat out, barely
able to say it.
His arm bore a bite mark, deep and
infected, his blood curdling already with the evil infection. They looked at each
other, understanding.
“Peter . . .” Valerie stood,
stunned.
He shook his head, not wanting to
believe. “When the blood moon rises, I’ll be like him. A beast.” Peter charged out
the door, half climbing, half stumbling down the tree, horrified at the
corruption growing inside him.
She followed him as he stumbled
through the snow in agony. It was one of those magical days, the moon still
visible in the bright blue, sunlit sky. The storm was over.
The snow tugged at their boots,
trying to hold them back. He fell to his knees, and she fell before him. They reached
desperately for each other, tears streaming down Valerie’s face as their lips
found each other’s. Spreading out her cloak, he laid her atop it, a stain of
red on the white snow.
The snow crunched as they tumbled
through it, the cold hugging their feverish bodies. The horror of what they’d done,
the hormonal surges of shame and triumph were what moved them. Peter had done
everything for her, and she had doubted him. Now there was only one thing left to
do. And that was to love him. His heavy hand moved over her body and found her.
She followed, his hand guiding hers. Tangled up in each other’s bodies, they
gave each other warmth in a cold world.
Valerie and Peter made their way slowly to the half-frozen river, Peter pulling the body under a cloth in a wheelbarrow and Valerie stooping to collect the most beautiful, smoothest stones.
“They can never find his body. You’d
be deemed a witch.” Peter reached to touch Valerie’s face. She nodded solemnly.
On a dock, Valerie looked away as
Peter laid the body into a rowboat and then cut a deep slice into Cesaire’s belly.
She handed him the stones, one by one, keeping her eyes averted. In the cold
air, the rocks chinked against one another, small sounds that screamed in
Valerie’s ears. But then they were inside Cesaire’s body, and the noise they made
was warm and muted.
When she reached the last stone, she
brought it to her lips. It felt cool and made her lips tingle. She handed it to
Peter and then fed dark thread into a needle and passed that to him as well.
When Peter finished his task, they
climbed into the boat and floated to the middle of the river. Cesaire’s shirt
fluttered in the wind, revealing the jagged line of thread, his belly
misshapen, packed tight with rocks. Peter moved for the body, but Valerie
stayed his hand.
She thought of the father she had
known, the odd, gentle man who had poured hot water into her bath, who had taught
her how to bandage a wound, who had laughed, running, when they’d set loose a
nest of hornets.
Papa, Papa, where have you gone?
As the boat rocked, the stones
shifted like heartbeats.
Valerie finally nodded to Peter, who
gently lifted her father’s body and let it slide into the river. It went
slowly, his hand trailing last of all, a final salute to the daughter he had so
adored.
Peter rowed the boat back to the
dock, and Valerie stepped out. She turned, but Peter was already rowing away.
“Peter?”
He couldn’t look at her. Instead, he
stared down at his poisoned arm.
“I could do terrible things to you,”
he cautioned her sadly. “I have to leave you. You won’t be safe with me until I
learn to control myself.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
Finally, when he felt the strength
of his conviction, of her conviction, he turned to her, allowing her in for
just a moment.
“I thought you’d say that.”
But then Peter could not look
anymore and turned toward the flat gray of river and sky, the empty future.
Valerie watched him disappear, until she could not tell if his boat was a swell
or a swell his boat.
And then she headed home to wait . .
. for her love . . . for a Wolf.
