Wolf's Cross (36 page)

Behind her, the last of the servants escaped out the rear entrance to the kitchens.

In front of her, past Josef, she heard the sound of booted feet and mail. The arch into the corridor suddenly filled with armed men wearing surcotes bearing the black cross of the Order. Two of them had crossbow bolts nocked.

“Brother Josef! Clear us a shot!”

The Germans were armed with silver, and she knew her horrible new body would not shrug those bolts off. The only reason she still lived was because Josef’s insane rage blocked their aim. But she was nearing the end of the tables, backing toward the blazing hearth. In two steps, she would have no choice but to move left or right, or allow Josef to close on her.

She needed to shield herself.

As she stepped back past the end of the tables, she ducked to her right, grabbing the end of the table and lifting. The monster was strong, but the weight of the table—twenty paces long—sent pain shooting down her arms, her legs, and her back. As she
lifted, she tilted it toward Josef and the Germans. It knocked him back, and she felt two crossbow bolts slam into the table’s surface.

She toppled the table into their path, then ran for the rear entrance.

I
t spoke his name in Maria’s voice, and Josef went mad. This monster had deceived him—. No, that was a lie. He had deceived himself. He had always known, but the Devil had seduced him into not wanting to know. Now all the blood that this thing—that
she
—would shed was upon his hands. He had defied his vocation, and he had violated the memory of his dead betrothed by thinking—

He attacked blindly, furiously, with no thought of defense or of the wound in his belly. He swung at her, pressing the black wolf thing back, inviting a counterattack. Wanting one. In the complex storm of emotions, he wanted her to strike out, to punish him. He had sinned so gravely that he didn’t deserve to survive. Something in him felt that her claws might tear this blot off his soul.

And if she attacked him, it would justify the rage.

But she didn’t. She backed away from him, dodging his blows, her too-human eyes showing a grief and loss he didn’t want to recognize.

His brothers were screaming at him and the monster was ducking under the long table to his left before his rage ebbed to the point where he realized that he was driving back a demon with nothing more than a steel sword.

He should be dead.

The table came up, shedding bread, baskets of vegetables, and an earthen jug that shattered in a pungent explosion of vinegar
when he deflected it with his sword. Then the broad surface of the table angled toward him and he scrambled back—dazed more by the thoughts running through his head than the blockage of his path.

He backed into the arms of his brothers in the Order.

He should be dead. She could have disemboweled him a dozen times, but she hadn’t as much as struck out to knock him down. They had chased her into the heart of the stronghold, into the midst of unarmed servants, and the only blood shed had been hers.

The horrifying thought was that the beast he had seen was still Maria, which meant that everything else he had known or thought he had known was wrong.

God help me
.

Other knights ran around the edges of the kitchen, avoiding the mass of timber blocking the center of the room. “Josef, are you all right?” asked one of the men holding him upright.

“I am fine,” he lied, bracing against the pain in his gut to follow his brothers.

M
aria ignored the screams and the panicked flight of the people in her path. She had to get out of this place, away from these people. In the confined spaces of the stronghold, she couldn’t outrun the booted feet that chased her. Their pursuit drove her higher into the stronghold.

Toward the sound of Darien’s growls.

Five stories up, she pushed through a door, out into open air rank with the smell of blood. She stood on a causeway that looked over the inner wall of the castle, meant for defenders to fire arrows or drop debris down on an attacking force.

But that attacking force had made it up here. She stepped out onto the narrow balcony and the pads of her feet made small tearing sounds as they stuck to the blood-soaked floor. Three swords were cast down at random, one still grasped by a naked forearm that had been torn free at the joint.

She turned to face the growls—down the causeway, toward the opposite end of the stronghold.

He stood there, his back to her, rippling muscle and blood-soaked fur, his gore-drenched muzzle snarling, claws tearing the life from the remaining defender.

“Darien!”

The man in Darien’s claws lived long enough to scream as he fell over the wall.

Darien turned to face her, a grotesque lupine smile slashing his face. “You have returned to me.”

“What are you doing? Stop it!”

“Stop? Did anyone yell stop as they put my family to the fire?”

She stared at him, her breath burning in her throat. The mist chilled her skin, even under her fur. She breathed deep and could smell the extent of the slaughter. She could distinguish the blood from five, from ten, from a dozen different men.

“You have me,” she growled at him. “There’s no need to go on with this.”

He licked his gory muzzle and said, “For what they’ve done to me, for what they’ve done to you, everyone in this place must die.”

Then Darien leapt at her.

J
osef was at the rear of the cadre of knights as they chased the monster up through the halls of the stronghold. He slowly fell behind, hampered by his injury. Every fifty steps or so he paused to check himself, to make sure he hadn’t again torn open the wound in his gut. But despite the throbbing, the new stitches held.

She had held him together throughout the night.

He forced himself not to think about that. It had all been a deception. She was a creature of Satan.

Then why was he still alive? And why had they passed a score of men and women, all panicked and yet unharmed?

Why did she flee?

She was a creature of Satan, but she had worn a silver cross. She called herself Christian.

As he caught up with his brothers on the other side of an
arched doorway, a breeze blew in, carrying the chill misting rain, the smell of blood, and the sound of growls. He saw a pair of brother knights step out, swords drawn, as a low monstrous voice said, “Everyone in this place must die.”

The two men in the lead did not have an opportunity to use their weapons. A yellow blur leapt across the open doorway and one man went tumbling, screaming, over the wall. The other sailed backward through the open doorway, scattering the brothers and falling at Josef’s feet to stare up at him with half a face. Josef bent down to grab the silvered sword from the dead knight’s twitching hand.

Josef stood as the scattered brethren tried to close the gap in front of the door. Even with the silver weapons, they were at a disadvantage against the blood-drenched demon. It stood, blocking the diffuse white light from the doorway, just a pace beyond the threshold. The doorway was meant to be defensible in a breach, so it was small—shorter than the lupine silhouette beyond it. One knight could charge though it, but the choke point made a swinging attack impossible, and a charge at the thing, point first, would be suicidal even with a silvered sword.

The creature was also smart enough to recognize that passing the constricted threshold would be its own suicide. With six swords at the ready, even its speed and strength wouldn’t prevent a mortal wound.

Two seconds into the standoff, Josef knew in his heart why he had lived, and why God had spared him. He changed his grip on his borrowed sword and screamed at his countrymen, “Make way!” as he charged at the beast.

A
s Darien leapt at her, Maria crouched, expecting him to take his bottomless fury out on her. But he passed above
and to the right, landing behind her. She spun to follow his motion and saw two knights of the Order, swords raised at her back.

Darien landed between them. One clawed hand swung up between one swordsman’s legs, lifting him up and over the outside wall in a single motion. The other arm came down in a brutal backhand that clawed through the other’s face as it knocked him back through the open doorway.

A half second later, she heard a sickening crunch from below that silenced the falling knight’s screams. She felt the impact in the pit of her stomach. She had seen death, and she had seen the aftermath of battle, but neither compared to the sickness that filled her heart at such casual brutality. Darien had struck at these men with no more concern than he had attacked the elk.

Less.

The world froze except for her racing heart. Darien faced the shadows beyond the door, and her tongue dried in her mouth. If
he
was what she was to become, how could she deny Josef’s claims that she was a soulless demon?

Two words broke her paralysis. From inside, she heard Josef cry, “Make way!”

In response, Darien spread his arms as if to greet him.

“Enough!” Maria screamed. She leapt at Darien, slamming him into the floor past the doorway. “Enough of this!” She landed on top of him, her clawed hands digging into his blood-spattered fur.

She looked down at him from above. He snarled and snapped and pulled his legs up under her. His paws slammed into her gut with a tearing impact, sending her tumbling back, tripping over something, clutching handfuls of bloody golden fur.

The eight parallel gouges in her stomach were sealing shut even as she sprang to her feet. Her eyes widened when she saw what she had stumbled over. Josef had been knocked to the ground by her passage. On his knees between them, he was attempting
to push himself up with one hand, holding his sword with the other.

Darien glared at her with a fury beyond even what he had shown the Germans.
“I say what is enough!”

Darien raised a forearm to strike Josef down, and Maria leapt at him again, this time slamming him into the crenellated wall at the end of the balcony.

He growled at her, their cheeks touching, so that she could feel his lips move along the whole length of her muzzle. “Fool. You think they might return your mercy? He raises his sword against you yet.” He pushed, and they rolled sideways until she was the one pressed into the wall. Past Darien’s shoulder, she saw Josef readying to strike.

As the sword came down, Maria pushed Darien back so that they rolled again, Josef’s stroke missing Darien’s head to slam ineffectively against the wall.

Please, Josef …

“They would have your head as well as mine.” He pushed her off him again, this time with enough force that she slammed into the stronghold wall before her feet touched the ground.

She landed as Josef swung another blow in Darien’s direction. Darien moved quickly out of the way, and Maria saw Darien’s jaws open, about to come down on the back of Josef’s unprotected neck.