Walking Wolf (20 page)

“Howler thought he could come to this country and escape his past. But I made the bastard pay, with his hide and his woman. He would have paid with his son, but I somehow overlooked you that day.”

“I understand why you might harbor hatred for my father. But what harm have I ever done to you that would justify what you did to my wife and child?”

“You're seeing this all wrong, brother. Things like us, we aren't meant to be husbands and fathers. Me, I never had a friend in my life. I'm too much of an outsider—even before my head got split, normal humans could tell I was trouble just by looking at me. And as for women—I can't get it up unless I hurt 'em, or worse. Besides, I did you a favor. That whelp of yours was
esau.
He must have been, sporting all that hair on his shins. He wouldn't have amounted to much when he grew up.”

Jones picked up the empty tin plate set in front of Clubfoot Charley and went to the stove, where he ladled up some brown, savory stew. He set the plate down on the table and pushed it in my direction. I was salivating despite myself.

“I just wanted to put you on my level. The way I see it, it ain't fair that you should have those things I can't. But to show you I ain't all bad, I'm willing to share my grub with you. You must be hungry after all this time.”

Jones was right on that account. I was starving, and I don't mean figuratively. The initial adrenalin rush from confronting him had blunted my hunger, but now the smell of the stew was making my gut rumble and my mouth fill with water. I automatically reached out and drew the plate toward me. But as I looked down at the proffered food, I saw something peculiar amongst the lumps of meat, carrots, potatoes and onions. It was an eye.

My wife's eye.

“What's the matter, Billy?” Jones jeered. “She was good enough for you live—ain't she good enough for you dead?”

With a single bellow of anger, I overturned the table. The knot of hatred and rage inside me unraveled, wrapping my body in the painful joy of the change. Witchfinder Jones was on his feet, his revolver free of its holster. Even though I knew it was loaded with silver bullets, I did not care. It did not matter to me if I died in that lonely, snowbound mountain cabin. What did I have to live for, anyway? My wife and son were murdered. My friends were all dead. Everything I had known as a boy had been swept away in a cloud of gun smoke, dust and lies. I had nothing left to lose, and all I wanted in the world was to tear my half-brother to shreds with my bare hands.

Jones' first shot went wild. The second went through my right side, just above the hip. The pain was immense, but such things no longer mattered to me. When I collided with my brother, it was like running into an unmovable wall of muscle and bone. I had never experienced anything like it before, and I'd brought down grown buffalo in my time. He seemed surprised that I was still on my feet, so I used his confusion to my advantage, digging my talons into his wrist, forcing him to let go of the gun. Swearing in a language I did not know, he grabbed for the knife sheath on his belt. I leapt back just in time to see the silver blade cut an arc through the air where my throat had been a second before.

“I don't know why those silver bullets didn't drop you, and I don't care! I'm going to take real pleasure in gutting you, brother,” he snarled through bloodied lips. “I think I'll turn you into a pair of boots. Maybe a nice fur hat, too, if there's some left over.”

“Go ahead and kill me,” I snarled. “I don't care if I die! But I'm going to drag you to Hell by the scruff of the neck like the sorry half-breed cur you are!”

Jones's face crumpled, as if I'd somehow dealt him a painful blow. He bellowed like an angered bull and charged, knocking me backward into the potbelly stove. The stove tipped over, disconnecting from the flue, and scattered red-hot embers in the small, cluttered confines of the cabin. Within moments, everything was ablaze.

He came at me with the knife again, roaring wordlessly. His face was distorted by a bloodlust that was beyond anything I had ever seen in a human. He was in the grip of a fearsome animal rage that knew no mercy, gave no quarter. And that suited me just fine. We circled one another in the middle of the burning cabin, growling like wild beasts, looking for the first sign of weakness in the other before we attacked.

Jones lunged at me with his knife, and I surged forward to meet him, grabbing his wrist and twisting it one hundred and eighty degrees while I drove the talons of my free hand into his face. He screamed as his forearm shattered like a green branch. Jones dropped to his knees, his dead eye laying against his cheek like a limp dick. I twisted his arm, turning it completely around in its socket.

“You're real good at killin' when you've got yourself up a posse of Mexicans or Mormons or whoever the hell you can talk into hirin' you, ain't you? And you're real good at killin' from a distance—or butcherin' helpless women and children. But when it comes to fightin' one on one with a full-blooded
vargr,
you ain't nothin' but a sorry sack of shit! Our father was right to shun you—you're nothing but a mad dog!”

Witchfinder Jones looked up at me with his remaining eye and spat a bloody wad of saliva that struck me square on the chest. “Think what you want. But the truth is I'm just like you, Billy—except I wear the same skin all the time!”

I snatched up his fallen knife and plunged it up to the hilt in his empty eye socket, giving it a twist for good measure. Although this would have killed a normal human right on the spot, Jones's
vargr
heritage gave him the strength to lurch to his feet. He clawed at the hilt jutting out of his skull as he blundered blindly around the burning cabin, screaming at the top of his lungs. As I moved to tackle him and tear out his throat, there was a loud sound and the roof collapsed, burying us both under burning rafters and a ton of snow.

While I was buried under the remains of Clubfoot Charley's cabin, I was visited by a number of friends and family, all of them dead. First there was Sitting Bull, who looked in far better shape than when I last saw him. He was traveling in the company of Medicine Dog. I really wasn't surprised they'd hit it off in the Spirit World.

“Medicine Dog told me of how you tried to help save my life,” my friend said. “Perhaps you could have changed things. Perhaps not.”

“Am I dead, uncle?”

“No,” Sitting Bull assured me. “Not for good, anyway.”

Someone touched Sitting Bull on the shoulder and he moved aside. It was Digging Woman. Beside her stood our children, Small Wolf and Wolf Legs, holding one another's hands. Although Small Wolf was the elder of the two, he looked to be half his younger brother's age.

“I bring you a gift, my husband,” she smiled, lifting her right hand. Six glittering silver bullets fell onto the snow. “While you battled my killer, I used my spirit to exchange his bullets with those of common lead.”

I struggled to speak, but every breath I took made my ribcage feel as if it were trapped in a vise. “Digging Woman—I'm sorry—I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you—to save you—I failed you—”

“That is true,” she agreed. “But I still love you, Walking Wolf.” She reached out to smooth my pelt, as she often did as we lay curled together under our buffalo robes. Her hand had no weight and passed through me, making my skin tingle the way a leg does when it falls asleep. “I must go, my husband.”

“Don't go—stay—stay with me—don't leave me alone—”

Digging Woman smiled and suddenly she was as young as when we first met. “I will love you forever, Walking Wolf. In this life—and all that follow.”

I raised my hand in a feeble attempt to grab her ghost and make her stay, but it was no use. She was gone. In her place were two shadowy, indistinct figures that moved just outside my field of vision. One stood upright while the other moved on all fours. They seemed uncertain—hesitant—then the one that stood upright stepped forward, kneeling beside me. It was a woman, her hair the color of gold, her scent warm and familiar. I lifted my head and tried to get a better look, but her features remained fuzzy and indistinct.

“Mama?”
I whispered.

The second figure made a snuffling noise and my mother reluctantly pulled away, following my father into the dim haze of the afterlife.

I woke up to the sound of something digging at the snow that covered me. Opening my eyes, I found myself muzzle to muzzle with a lone timber wolf. When I groaned and moved, it danced away, watching me warily from a safe distance as I climbed out of my frozen tomb. My pelt was scorched, I had more broken ribs than whole ones, and there was a bullet in my hip, but outside of those injuries, I was relatively unscathed. The timber wolf, recognizing me as being an unnatural thing, quickly quit the scene.

After extricating myself, I started digging out the ruins of the cabin with my bare paws. I did not find Witchfinder Jones's body, nor did I find the shirt made of our father's pelt. However, I did manage to locate the tobacco pouch made from my mother's left teat. I also found six silver bullets, laid side by side in the snow.

Chapter Twelve

I took what was left of my Ma and cremated it. I spent the rest of that winter in my true skin, fending for myself as best I could, shunning all company, human or otherwise. During that long, cold, lonesome season I traveled so deep into grief and madness I must have come out the other side. In many ways, after Digging Woman's death, I was a changed man. Or werewolf, if you will.

When I returned to sanity, it was to find the world I once knew no longer existed. Hell, it had started to disappear long before Sitting Bull's death. Since all my friends and family were dead, I saw no reason for me to hang around, so I struck out West. I eventually made my way to California and settled in the San Fernando Valley. From there I stood still as the years raced past, like a rock in the middle of a swift-running stream.

I have seen fortunes made and lost—dynasties rise and fall. I've watched the White Man's magic expand beyond all known boundaries. Electricity. Antibiotics. Moon flights. Genetic engineering. Atomic energy. Indoor plumbing. I still don't trust them, of course. They're all still crazy. Maybe even crazier than before. But I have done well for myself, buying and selling tracts of land over the decades under various names and holding companies. No one would ever guess my wealth by looking at me or my house. I live modestly—some would almost even say humbly. I've discovered that it pays to keep a low profile when one does not appear to age. But, then, the modern era's penchant for plastic surgery has provided me with convenient camouflage for the last few decades.

I have made it a point to avoid other
vargr
as best I can. They suffer from the same madness that afflicts the Whites. Not surprising, considering they sprang from the same continent. As for Witchfinder Jones, I believe he walked away from the battle in Clubfoot Charley's cabin. Although it's hard to imagine anyone surviving such a wound, my elder brother is one tough bastard. As much as I still hate his guts, I can't deny him that.

But what is left of him, now that his frontal lobes are chopped into mincemeat? Can he remember who he is or—more importantly—
what
he is? Is he still an infernal engine of retribution, hunting down the monsters whose lives he so envies? Or has he been reduced to drooling in his beard, selling pencils on a nameless street corner? Or is he finally at peace with himself, settled down with a family of his own?

It's been more than a hundred years since we last met, and I have yet to catch sign of him, although I have had ample opportunity to witness the atrocities of others of his misbegotten clan. Hitler, Manson, Dahmer … The past century has been rife with the bloody misdeeds of the
esau.
Yet, I still keep an ear cocked for the sound of his tread on my porch. Creatures such as my brother do not give up the hunt lightly. Nor do they forgive.

Maybe it is time I went out looking for him. Sitting down and writing out all the things that happened to me as a boy has made me nostalgic for the open spaces I once knew. It's been a long time since I wandered the countryside as I did as a youth. Digging Woman's newest incarnation is only six years old. It'll be some time before I can properly reintroduce myself to the latest version of my wife. I've got the time, the opportunity and the money to wander if I so choose. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like it. It is time for Walking Wolf to stride the plains once more.

What will I do if I find my long-lost brother, you ask? Will I forgive him his trespasses and embrace him as my only living kin? Or will I show him the same mercy he gave my wife and child? And there
is
the matter of our father's pelt to be resolved.

I ask you, dear reader—am I my brother's keeper?

Find out more about Nancy A. Collins at:

truesonjablue.blogspot.com

hopedalepress.blogspot.com

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Nancy Collins

ISBN: 978-1-5040-1537-0

Distributed in 2015 by Open Road Distribution

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