Awaiting the Moon (43 page)

Perhaps he was even now on his way home; perhaps he was taking a shortcut through the forest and was close enough to save them. With an odd thrill racing down her back, she felt his presence with her; if she needed him, he would come, she was sure of it.

“Nikolas,” she cried out, peering back into the forest in the hope that aid was coming, the sense of his presence was so powerful. But then she looked back at the clearing and shrieked at the sight that greeted her eyes.

THE WOLF convulsed and writhed on the ground, paws stabbing at the air, eerie howls rending the night.

“Nikolas, help!” Elizabeth shrieked again in desperation as Gerta tried to bend to help the wild creature.

But it snapped and snarled and convulsed again, twisting and writhing wretchedly in the beaten snow; even Gerta suddenly staggered back, screaming in fear. In horror Elizabeth watched as the creature swelled, becoming larger, longer, even as the snout shrank and the fangs, too. The wolfskin split and changed, hanging in rags from the body on the snowy ground.

The human body. A man lay curled in the snow, his hands over his face. But then he stretched and knelt and stood up, a ragged wolfskin kirtle that reached to his muscular thighs his only clothes. It was Nikolas, and with an enigmatic look at Elizabeth he caught his sister and murmured to her in German, then lifted her cloak off the ground. Gerta had gone limp with the reaction of horror, and he surrounded her in the cloak and said, his voice harsh in the silent forest, “Elizabeth, I know you are shocked, but you must help my sister. There are villagers…

hunters… near; I saw them leave the village as I came through, but I could not stop them and they are after blood. Take her up to the castle, and I will follow.”

Elizabeth stood staring at him, uncomprehending, her mouth covered with her quivering hands. Nikolas? Nikolas, with whom she had lain and made love, and whose tender hands had unclothed her and touched her, and he was .. an inhuman beast? She backed away and stumbled, her legs trembling and weak with horror as she retched convulsively.

“Elizabeth! Listen to me!” he shouted. His arm over his sister’s shoulders, he moved forward, urging Gerta on, protecting her with his strength. A dog barked in the distance and his eyes widened. “Elizabeth,” he said again, but his tone was pleading, filled with urgency. His eyes were silvery in the moonlight and glittered oddly. “You are the only one I can rely on. Now you have seen the worst and know what I am. But…” His voice softened. “Help Gerta, for her sake, for the sake of another woman. For her children. She is only sick, not what I am. Help her.
Please
.”

Elizabeth still stared, and he pushed his cloaked sister towards her and then backed away, as if he knew she couldn’t bear for him to be near her. Gerta sagged against her and Elizabeth supported the other woman’s weight with difficulty.

“I will draw them away, but you must help me… or help Gerta,” he said. “Please, Elizabeth, I am begging you.” Then with one long, sad look over his shoulder at her, he walked back into the forest. Then he began to lope, and as he melted into the dark woods Elizabeth saw a flash of silver-tipped fur.

Dogs barked and bayed, closer now, their wailing cries echoing through the forest. Hunters from the village! They had to retreat before they were found, Elizabeth knew, or they could be killed. Elizabeth gathered up the scattered garments, roughly took Gerta by her narrow shoulders, and guided her back out, supporting her when she stumbled, urging her to move faster, following their footsteps in the snow that still lingered there, in the depths of the woods, as she searched for the path to the castle.

The torment of what she had seen would tear at her gut, Elizabeth knew, but now her duty was clear: get Gerta out of the woods and back up to the castle without anyone suspecting what horrors had occurred that night. With the hounds sounding even closer and fear pounding through her veins, she urged the woman on.

IT was over… it was all over. He had done what he had to do and had drawn off the hounds and the hunters, back towards the village. He hoped he had confused the dogs so much that the men would give up and return to their homes. Trembling from exhaustion, Nikolas crouched at the edge of the forest, having reclaimed his human form once more and his clothes, too. He gazed up at the gray front of his home, his inheritance, his legacy; bitterness filled him and bile erupted into his mouth. He crouched, retching into the snow, spitting and heaving as the horror of his life overwhelmed him.

He would almost have given his life rather than have Elizabeth see what she had seen.

But worse, he must now make his way up to the castle and resume his burden, make sure his sister was all right, and try to see Elizabeth, to reassure her that he was no danger to anyone…

or at least not to anyone who did not harm his family.

Aching within and without, a searing pain in the empty cavity where his heart should have been, he trudged up to the castle and entered, wet, cold, and miserable, through one of the two doors that led to the secret passages. Heinrich, Cesare, and Melisande’s father he had left behind in the village inn, for in truth when he learned as he came through Wolfbeck that the hunters had headed to his castle, he had not known what he would find when he got there.

Melisande’s father was in terrible condition, beaten, barely well enough to be carried to an inn and back to the carriage as they traveled, and Nikolas could not deal with any more burdens that night. They would be safe in the village until the next day.

His silent servant, Heinrich’s son, bustled to his aid when he entered his own chamber through the sliding panel, and he let him know he would need clean clothes and hot water, as well as some wine. He needed a restorative before he dealt with the consequences and exigencies of that night.

Dressed in warm clothes, he sat by the fire in his room, allowing himself one minute, knowing from messages sent and received that Gerta was safe up in Uta’s suite, where Mina, too, was being cared for, having been drugged, which explained his sister’s escape. She was becoming crafty in her madness, and he faced the awful possibility that for her own good she would have to be confined or surrendered to someone else’s care.

He bowed under the terrible thought; perhaps he had failed after all this time.

ELIZABETH slipped into Nikolas’s room, only her steely determination and need to speak with him forcing her to go beyond the horror and fear of what she had witnessed. There, by his fire, he was, his head buried in his hands, his shoulders slumped in defeat. His shaggy hair, threaded with silver, gleamed in the firelight, his long fingers thrust through it as he clutched his head. How could she feel such overwhelming tenderness and such loathing at the same time? With the knowledge of his duality, her conflicting emotions had erupted, too, and they warred in her breast. One would win, and she feared it would be the loathing of his inhuman side; for how could it be otherwise?

“Nikolas,” she whispered.

He bolted to his feet and instinctively she withdrew a few paces, searching his face for traces of the beast he had been.

“Elizabeth,” he whispered, holding out one hand. Then he let it fall to his side. “I will not approach you, I promise,” he said, his voice breaking.

“How long?” she asked, staying a good distance from him. “How long have you been—”

“A werewolf?” he said, perhaps knowing she could not utter the word. “Fifteen years.”

Her eyes widened. “Fifteen years?” Was he then involved in me deaths fifteen years ago? No, she knew that was not so. Or… did she? So many things she had thought she knew were now proven wrong. And yet beneath it all was the knowledge that everything he did in his life he did for his family; he was no murderer. “Explain… I don’t understand…”

“This is no time to explain. I need to know—”

“Just tell me!” she cried out. “Tell me why!”

“Why I am as I am?” He shook his head and shrugged.

“Every von Wolfram male has the potential within him, but it does not always come out. In most cases it is only to protect our family that we begin to transform.”

“How does it happen?”

“Elizabeth, there is not the time necessary—”

“Yes, there is! Gerta is safe; I saw to her myself, and you know after this she’ll sleep the night away. Just answer me! Please, Nikolas, help me to understand.”

He collapsed back into his chair and rested his head in his hands again. “After all, what does it matter?” he muttered. He took a moment and then began. “Many years ago, I began to feel…

to feel different. I knew all the old stories, but I thought… God help me, I thought it was ignorant folklore. But then, one night… the fire.”

Elizabeth trembled, waiting, watching. Still keeping her distance, she circled and watched from the hearth. He didn’t look up. “The night of the fire,” she prompted him.

“It was summer. I was on my way home from Italy; we— Cesare and I—made it to the village, but I was anxious to come home to the castle. So, leaving Cesare behind in the village to bring up my trunks the next day by cart, I was coming by a path through the woods in the full of the moon. I saw a figure near an old abandoned cottage; the fire started, I heard voices calling for help, and I tried to save them. I tried. I tried to beat down the door, but it was impossibly locked, I still do not know how, nor who it was I saw move away in the shadows that night. I ran after him… or her, and then towards the castle, for I needed to get help. As I ran I felt this change come over me. But I did not transform. I did not yet know how.”

“What happened?” she asked. “Did you get help?”

He nodded. “I got Johannes and others, but it was far too late. It was a terrible, terrible night.

We got the fire out and then discovered the bodies inside… the bodies of Anna and Hans. I never spoke of the figure I saw, for I feared…” He shook his head and didn’t finish. “The clearing where the cabin was is still where Gerta goes, every time she is in her awful state.”

“Oh,” Elizabeth said, understanding finally some of his fears and worries. There was silence for a long moment. But then she said, “How does it feel to be… to be… and is it voluntary?

Do you control it?”

He looked up at her with exasperation. “How can you ask this? Why do you want to know?”

When there was no answer, he sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “Now I control it; I learned how. Uta… she sensed a change in me, even more so after Johannes died, and she told me then that the old family tales were true. In the chapel was hidden a relic, the wolfskin kirtle.

She gave it to me but told me to use it wisely. At first I was fascinated by the ability and I shifted often. I ran in the forest, glorying in my power.”

“Is it not dangerous for you… the other wolves… the forest?”

“No. No, it is not dangerous. They know me… they… they fear me. I am like them, but not like them, and they know I could kill them in that state. They sense the difference and stay away from me.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling a shiver run down her spine. His world was dark, different, filled with sensations she could not even imagine.

“It is why… the first night of the full moon I go into the forest… I run. It drives the other wolves away… it warns them. But it was a fertile year for them. They have increased in numbers, and their fear wanes. It is why they have begun to watch us… Gerta, you… even me. They will never attack
me
, but if you or Gerta appear to present a danger to them, they might hurt one of you.”

There was silence for a long minute, then she said, “You were telling me… how you began to… to glory in the power of the change.”

“Yes. I began to enjoy the power and the secret. And that was when I discovered the danger.”

“You enjoyed it? How can that be?” Elizabeth asked, horror welling up in her again. “And is that the danger?”

“Of course that is the danger!” he said roughly. “How could I not enjoy it? There is an intoxicating power to being a wolf. It is life as no man has experienced it; one can smell things, feel things… and one is swift and sure, and there is no question in one’s mind about what is the right thing to do, no moral ambiguity.” He sagged, his gaze drifting. “That was when it came to me that I had to stop or…”

“Or?”

“Or it would take me over. That is the danger. Man is a creature full of contradictions. We think of everything, ponder the moral implications of our actions. The animal and the human war in our breasts, and that is how we are meant to be… it is what makes us human, that war between instinct and reason. It is the only thing that tempers our behavior, and without it, with only our intelligence and our instinct to dominate, our drive, we would be the most dangerous beasts that live. A wolf does not do that, does not question its behavior. One protects one’s family pack, even if it means killing another to do it. It is seductive, that sureness, for as a human we weigh things, make decisions, then ponder those decisions. But a wolf… once a course of action is begun, he never thinks again of the right or wrong. It just… is.”

“Is anyone else in the family… afflicted?”

He flinched at her choice of that word. “Not to my knowledge, though I fear for Christoph. It is why I am so harsh with him; I must make him my subordinate… he must fear me a little.

Until I am sure of him, I cannot let him become as I am, or I fear he would be lost to the seduction of it, of being an animal. It is why I wanted him in the army; that ruthless discipline over oneself, that is what is needed.”

She thought how lonely Nikolas’s life must have been, all these years, carrying his secret. It explained much about his aloofness, his rigid self-discipline, his… aloneness. “Does anyone else know?” she whispered.

“Adele knows, though she has never asked for anything, any confirmation. Uta knows… she is the holder of all the old stories. She knows, and as I said, gave me the kirtle… told me to use it wisely. Cesare knows. He is the only person in this world I trust implicitly.” He glanced up at her. “Or he
was
the only person.” He gazed back down at the carpet.