Midnight in Berlin (11 page)

The asshole looked right past me. “Silke, it’s time.”

Chapter Ten

I spun guiltily. I’d forgotten Silke was even with us. She was standing there hugging herself, looking miserable. I guess turning into a big hairy freak isn’t going to be too high on any young girl’s list of what makes a good night out.

It sure as hell didn’t figure on mine.

“Silke…” There was a warning in Christoph’s tone. Then he sighed, and spoke more softly. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Forget what your father told you.”

She nodded—and started to strip. Completely. Hell, not only was she into basking in the moonlight, it seemed she was worried about tan lines. I realized I was staring and turned my muzzle away hurriedly—but seriously, what the fuck? The grungy jeans and sloppy T-shirt she’d been wearing would’ve accommodated the change, easy.

And then she looked up at the moon, and started to change, and I realized I’d been wrong about that.

Dead wrong.

As her face changed, as her skin got hairier, her whole body shape altered too. She whined, like it hurt her, as her legs shortened and her head went back. She landed on all fours. Then she whimpered, and grew a fucking tail.

She was a wolf. Silke was a wolf.

I don’t mean like Christoph and me, some kind of half man, half monster out of an SFX guy’s store cupboard. I mean she was a
wolf
.

What the fuck?
I tried to say it, but I hadn’t gotten the hang of speaking with a mouth that was the wrong shape and a tongue that was too long and way too fucking many teeth. It came out like more of a yelp.

“She is a throwback,” Christoph said. Either he was real good at interpreting wolf-speak or he’d just read my mind again. “At least, that is what Schreiber said.” He still hadn’t changed. I felt like a dork, standing there all hairy, and started to change back without even trying to.

“You think he was lying?” I asked when I was mostly human again, although it still came out kinda rough.

“Did he ever give you any reason to trust him?” Christoph was watching Silke. Hell, she was a treat for the eyes. She seemed massive to me, although I guessed she was probably small for a wolf, and she had a thick silver coat, which she shook as we watched. She put her nose to the ground, sniffing, then padded softly over to where we were standing.

I reached out a hand to touch her, still not quite believing what I was seeing. Her fur felt soft beneath my fingers, the warmth of her skin underneath muted but still there. I wanted to touch that thick, bushy tail of hers, but it was tucked firmly between her legs as she whined softly again. Christoph petted her gently, and she straightened her back and lifted her head a little.

It was incredible. Envy knotted up my guts. Throwback? No fucking way. This is what the rest of us should have been, not this fucked-up halfway house, neither human nor animal, just wholly a monster. I realized I’d started to change again, and I snarled aloud as I let it take me.

Silke turned her head to the moon and howled.

It wasn’t fair.

Christoph turned to face me. His face looked like it’d been filmed in black-and-white. If it hadn’t been for the scars, the resemblance to some old-time movie star would have been complete. Even with them, though, he didn’t look so bad to my altered eyesight. Like they were just marks, not scars, you know? Like he’d had them tattooed on, or something. Okay, they didn’t exactly make him look any better, but somehow they didn’t make him look any worse, either. They were just there.

He smiled, like he knew what I’d been thinking.

I looked away, embarrassed, as his face morphed. Then I looked back, curious. His scars didn’t disappear, like I’d half thought they would—instead, they changed shape as his face did, stretching with his skin. I wondered if it hurt. I figured it must have—they still looked raw and angry when he was done changing. Like the half-healed wounds they were.

I found myself rubbing my shoulder with a paw. How come my bite wound had healed so quickly but the claw marks on Christoph’s face were taking so much longer? Was it something to do with him being in the cage? Or had Schreiber done something to make them heal worse? Say, dipped his claws in silver nitrate, or silver plated them like that goddamn cage, or whatever the hell psycho werewolves did whenever they wanted to make a point? There was an herb or something called wolf’s bane, wasn’t there? Maybe, like the silver, that wasn’t just an old wives' tale. Had Schreiber used that on him?

Shit. Should I have gotten Christoph to a doctor? Maybe something could have been done to minimize the scarring, although I was damned if I knew what. Wasn’t it already too late after they’d started to heal?

I didn’t know, and I figured now wasn't the time to ask. I wondered if later on, when he’d healed, he’d just have lines of white fur over his muzzle to show where the scars were. I hoped so. Christoph stared at me, tongue lolling, for a moment. I wished like hell I knew what he was thinking. Then he jerked his head at me, and ran off into the darkness, the moonlight on his back now gleaming on sleek grey fur, not tanned skin.

I followed, a silver-white wolf bounding easily by my side. I sniffed the air—it was full of the smells of the city, with exhaust fumes almost overpowering, but I could still make out the clean, fresh scent of water underneath it all. We were heading for the lake.

Part of me was thinking, this is crazy. We were in a city park—they’re never deserted, not even at ass o’clock on a weekday morning. There’d be homeless guys, drunks sleeping it off. Gay guys who’d hooked up, and those too desperate or stubborn to accept they wouldn’t be getting lucky tonight. People who’d been out partying all night and were killing time until the first train home. Maybe not so many of them, though. City parks at night are scary places, full of scary people.

Nobody scarier than us, I figured. Although we weren’t exactly people. Not anymore.

If there was anyone else around, they must have had Special Ops training. I didn’t see a soul—didn’t even smell anyone, although I was getting more and more distracted the closer we got to the lake. I had a flashback to the night when I’d first met Christoph, and I’d sat in his car shedding feathers.
What did you get, duck or goose?
I could smell both of them up ahead, not far from us now. I started to salivate.

We hit the lakeside like a SWAT team. The waterfowl were roosting on the banks, laid out like a fucking smorgasbord. Shit, hadn’t anyone ever told them about foxes? I wondered what a fox would taste like, and swore to myself I’d find out one day.

Maybe not one that lived in the city and ate out of garbage cans, though.

Geese were honking, ducks quacking like the apocalypse was kicking off. Hell, I guess for them, it was. I saw Silke pounce on a goose, snapping its neck with her jaws, and I drooled reflexively. Christoph’s muzzle was dark with blood already. I realized I was wasting time here. I lunged into the melee, seizing a duck as it waddled in panic, too stupid to fly away. Killed it with a bite to the neck. The first taste of it sent me wild, and I tore at it with my fangs, biting through the feathers, through the skin to the sweet, juicy, fatty meat beneath. The warm flesh slid down my throat like manna from heaven.

I didn’t look up again until all that was left was bits of wing and a cloud of feathers. Christoph was crouching down, wiping his muzzle with one hairy arm. I couldn’t see Silke anywhere, so I figured she must have chased something into the trees. All the birds had gone from the lake shore. It was just us.

The hunt was over, but my heart was still racing. My belly was full, but I was hungrier than I’d ever been in my life.

I took a step toward Christoph. He stood up slowly. The moonlight gilded his form, showing its muscular contours, the subtly nonhuman shape of his chest, his limbs. His strength radiated out, almost burning me, yet I wanted more. As I took another step, he gave a low growl. His teeth gleamed white as he bared them, and his clawed hands hung ready by his side. My head was telling me to stop, but my feet weren’t listening. I fought the urge to bow my head and looked Christoph in the eye. He snarled. My throat felt naked, exposed, and I grasped at memories of him biting me back in another life, but they slipped through my mind like blood through a wolf’s jaws.

I needed him. To fuck me or fight me, I didn’t have a clue which. Maybe it was all the same, anyhow.

I took another step—and then Silke bounded out of the trees, a limp carcass in her mouth.

I swallowed, the mood broken. Christoph stretched out a paw toward her, and she padded up to him, laying the dead bird at his feet. It was a swan, which seemed kind of fitting at the time, although when I thought about it later, I was damned if I could say why. He petted her on the head and neck.

Then he knelt down beside the carcass and ripped it open with his claws. He shoved a paw inside its body, and it came out clutching something I realized must be the swan’s heart. I stepped forward again, but he offered it to Silke. She gulped it down as a pain burst in my chest, and for a moment I felt more alone than I ever had in my life.

Christoph straightened again and jerked his head over in the direction of the zoo.

Right. Time to go. I swallowed my pain and went toward him, my tongue lolling, still tasting blood and meat and feathers on the air. As I glanced down, I saw my pants were covered in feathers, especially around the knee where they’d gotten damp. I brushed at them with my paws. A memory of the night I’d met Christoph socked me in the gut and winded me for a second.
What did you get?
he’d asked, seeing me covered in feathers. Huh. If he’d realized the truth a little earlier, how different would both our lives be now? He’d have dropped me off in Charlottenburg, and maybe he’d have come up to my room at the hostel and maybe he wouldn’t, but he’d have disappeared afterward anyhow. He’d have gone back to his house by the Wannsee, maybe lain low for a while longer, and taken out Schreiber when the time was right.

Or died trying, I guessed. And I’d never have known, either way.

Somehow, despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to wish it had happened that way.

I looked up to see Christoph staring at me with something like hunger in his eyes. Spooked, I took a step backward without meaning to. He broke eye contact and ducked his head briefly, and my heartbeat slowed to something approaching normal. Then he changed back to human form, and the sight of him bare-chested ratcheted my pulse right up again. “We should clean up in the lake,” he said. “And you should change form before we go.”

I realized I was still staring at him with my tongue hanging out, and managed my quickest change yet before making a dash for the lake to hide my embarrassment.

We did our best, but there’s only so much you can do with brackish lake water that’s thick with algae, feathers and bird shit. We sure as hell didn’t smell any better afterward. Christoph grabbed his shirt and slung it on loosely, so I did the same. I was fairly sure we wouldn’t be the only half-dressed guys wandering around the park tonight anyhow. I was about to grab Silke’s clothes for her, but Christoph stopped me with a touch to my arm. “Leave it. We’ll come back.”

So she’d be staying in wolf form for the duration, then, I guessed. Maybe the change wasn’t so easy for her? It’d looked kind of painful. Maybe we had the advantage there, but it seemed a poor trade to me—an easier transformation against the ability to change into a real wolf.

We got into the zoo by crossing the footbridge over the river and climbing over the perimeter fence—at least, Christoph and I did. Silke just backed up and took a run at it, ending with a fucking awesome leap. She looked like she was flying, and God, I hated the
thing
I was while I watched her.

“Come on,” Christoph urged me, and we scaled the iron railings together in human form. As we reached the top, he paused. “Change before you drop to the ground. Your wolf form will absorb the impact better.”

I did as he’d asked, hoping like hell he was right. Funny how high fences always seem so much bigger on the way down than on the way up. We landed on the footpath near the camel enclosure, which they didn’t seem too happy about, waking up with a jerk and scrambling to get away.

A zoo at night is an eerie place, although I guess we weren’t improving it any. I don’t like to think what the hell we must have looked like, two bloodstained freaks wandering around with their pet wolf. The place was full of faint animal calls and strange rustlings. Like walking on a concrete track into the jungle. And God, the smell of it. The air was so full of the mingled scents of all those animals crammed in tight, it was like wading through soup.

No wonder Christoph had made sure we’d eaten before we came.

The animals seemed to find us plenty interesting. The herbivores—prey, my wolf-brain reminded me—scattered while the other predators prowled restlessly, promising us a messy death if we were stupid enough to invade their enclosures. Although I’d be willing to bet we’d give them a run for their money. The apes went—hell, apeshit, throwing themselves against the front of the enclosures and whooping at us. We had to back out of there real fast before security came over to see what the hell was going on.

And then we got to the wolf enclosure, and I figured out what Christoph had meant about this being good for Silke. She was a wolf—and wolves are pack animals, right? She had to be feeling the lack of her own kind like a missing limb.

At first, there was nothing to see. I realized I didn’t have a clue what real wolves did at night. Would it hold true in a place like this anyhow? They didn’t have any hunting to do, so would they be sleeping? Prowling? Fucking?

My answer came as Silke sniffed sharply, her ears pricked and alert. Somehow I knew just where to look for the wolf that slinked out of the shadows to stare at us from behind that double fence. Silke padded up to the outer fence and poked her nose through, sniffing. The wolf on the inside did the same, like this was some animal equivalent of a prison visit. It’s always struck me as fucked up how you can see your loved ones but you can’t damn well touch them. Like an open casket at a wake where you’re so close to the person you love it hurts, knowing you’re forever separated yet seeing them here with you—but not with you. I thought about giving Silke a boost over the fence, but I figured she wouldn’t thank me if the real wolf bit her nose off.