25

WOLVESRUNTOGETHERJOHN

The cunning man… or maybe I should say cunning werewolf… smelled like rosemary and hemlock. Seriously. He was sweating in the noon sun and it wasn’t very warm outside. His sweat smelled clean, but his pupils weren’t dilating normally and his heart was beating fast even for a werewolf. I wondered if he’d just taken some kind of stimulant.

“Phoenix,” he said gravely, offering his hand.

Phoenix? What kind of tool calls himself Phoenix?

“Is that your first or last name?” I took his hand and shook it.

“It’s just my name.” His voice was strangely low and reedy at the same time. I think he intentionally pitched his words from deep in his chest because his voice was naturally nasal and he didn’t like it. “Phoenix. And you are…”

“Unicorn,” I said. Being horny makes me grumpy.

Gabriel tried to cover a startled laugh, and Phoenix gave me a dirty look.

I relented even though he was a cunning werewolf. The expression on his face had real hate in it, but real hurt too. “Sorry. I’m John Charming.”

Phoenix didn’t have a light touch with sarcasm. “Yeah, because that name’s not strange at all.”

“Truth,” I admitted.

Bernard came back from seeing the Jeeps off and easily picked a large rucksack off the ground with one hand. I looked at him and maybe managed to keep my tone neutral. “So why is Phoenix here?”

He clapped Phoenix on the shoulder. “You said that this bakaak’s lair would have hunting magic. Phoenix is the Clan’s magic expert.”

“So, you didn’t kill Nikolai because he was famous,” I summarized. “You didn’t kill me because I’m a knight. And you didn’t kill this guy because he’s a cunning man. Hell, Bernard, don’t you have any standards?”

Nikolai was behind me, the way he usually was when Bernard was around, and he actually chuckled. Phoenix glared. Gabriel twisted his mouth. Bernard laughed delightedly. “You sound like Groucho Marx. He didn’t want to join any club that would have someone like him as a member.”

Yeah, I remembered.

We said some boring and obvious things and then proceeded to climb up the rock face.

“I’ll stay down here and rearguard,” Gabriel called from behind us.

“I don’t think so, brother of mine,” Bernard said sternly. “If there’s any lingering Native American presences, you might be the only one here they wouldn’t object to.”

“I don’t believe in any Great Spirit,” Gabriel said irritably. “And I don’t want to have anything to do with any other kind. That’s why I’m here with you palefaces, remember?”

“We all do what we have to do for the Clan,” Bernard growled. “Hell, man, I even married your sister.”

Gabriel unexpectedly grinned. It made him look young for real, not just physically. “Well, if you put it that way…”

We didn’t need any mountain-climbing gear, at least not yet. There was a path of sorts, though it was steep and winding, and the bakaak hadn’t bothered to mask its scent. Almost any animal but us would run away from its smell, anyhow.

We followed the path to a crevasse concealed by a dust-covered hide. It blended with the rock face almost perfectly.

“Let me perform a cleansing ritual.” Phoenix started to walk forward, and I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s clear those rocks up there first,” I said dryly, pointing up toward several boulders that were positioned like billiard balls.

“What rocks?” Phoenix squinched his brow dramatically. I guess he was looking for giant bowling-ball rocks that were directly overhead.

“Trust me, that’s a deadfall trap,” I said. “Even if it’s a natural one.”

Phoenix looked around some more, again overdoing every gesture. “If it’s a trap, where’s the trigger?”

“I don’t know.” I was already walking away. “That’s why we should go up there from the side and clear the boulders.”

Phoenix made a rude noise, but Bernard was shaking his head and the others were already following me as I made my way west out of the avalanche line. They all still had fresh memories of the kind of traps a bakaak was capable of.

“This is why John’s here,” Bernard told Phoenix. “You’ll get your turn.”

Cunning werewolves. Maybe I should have just moved to the side and kept my mouth shut.

The bakaak was shooting an arrow into a creature I’d never seen before. It was a huge humanoid a bit like a wendigo but less hairy, gaunter, and longer-limbed. The target was trapped in some kind of quicksand or swamp. Was it possible that it was a hidebehind? I looked at the cave painting a little more closely; I’d seen a hidebehind’s bones once, but I’d never seen a picture of a living one. The creature was casting a shadow in the wrong direction—was that a clue?

“You’ve been studying these paintings ever since we got here.” This from one of the people who had accompanied Phoenix, a short, middle-aged-looking bleached blonde with low bangs. She was supposed to take pictures of everything we found, but her camera wasn’t working. I was mentally referring to her as Photoshop; I’m not sure why. Photoshop gestured at the paintings on the cold gray cavern walls around us, none of which showed dogs playing poker. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“I know you’re going to have to get a very old camera if you want to take any pictures here,” I said. An undead thing had resided where we were standing, maybe even passed back into our world from this very location. The shadows seemed a little darker for it, bottomless and baneful. The walls were suffering from some kind of electromagnetic hangover. “I’m talking about the kind that uses copper plates instead of film.”

“Why don’t I just get out a stone tablet and a chisel?” she muttered.

We were in a large, roughly oval cave low lit by a large bonfire. The flames took a little bit of the chill off my skin, at least the chill that was temperature-related. Unholy has its own vibe, and the place gave me a serious case of the creeps.

“What’s so interesting about the pictures?” Nikolai was helping Bernard tend the bonfire and generally not saying much. He was still processing the death of the men he’d sent out to track the bakaak, and the memory wasn’t going down easily.

“These paintings tell stories about how to hunt supernatural beings.” I took a sip of hot chocolate from the red mug I was holding. One of the advantages of hanging with Bernard was that we ate and drank a lot better than my paw had. The hot chocolate wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that weak, watery stuff that most campsites wind up drinking, either. “If there’s something useful to learn, I want to know it.”

“I don’t see stories.” Photoshop gave up and shoved her camera down in her purse in disgust. “I see scenes from stories, maybe.”

“Then you’re not looking closely enough. Come over here.” I pointed to the most recent painting, which showed the bakaak smashing a werewolf’s brains out with a war club. Unlike most of the paintings in the cave, this one was still fresh enough that I could smell the wild onion skins and walnuts and pokeberries that the pigments had been extracted from.

“Check out those blazing footprints walking toward the Clan sentry.” I pointed them out. “We assumed the bakaak burned your crops after it attacked, but these indicate that it burned the crops first, so that the smell would conceal it while the blaze drew your sentry forward. And see how the moon is positioned and how specific the stars are? It tells the time of the attack.”

“How did it have time to come back here and paint this?” Nikolai wondered.

“It didn’t paint this after the attack,” I said a little impatiently. “It painted it before. That’s how hunting magic works. It’s a way of giving the universe a little nudge, encouraging it to make possibilities work out a certain way.”

“What’s with the bobcat-shaped cloud?” Photoshop wondered.

“See how the rain looks like it’s coming from the bobcat’s crotch?” I indicated the drops. “We know it wasn’t raining that night, but rain cleans and conceals tracks. It’s a metaphor. I think the compound the bakaak came up with to break down scent molecules was distilled from urine it took out of a bobcat’s bladder.”

“WHAT?!?” Phoenix’s voice came from farther down a cave passage. “Hold it! Wait!”

The cave passage he was traversing wasn’t precisely convenient. A larger man would have had to squeeze through at least one tight patch, then another that forced him to crouch down as he ascended or descended. We could see the light of the lamp Phoenix was carrying bobbing while he climbed.

Phoenix rushed into the chamber and urgently grabbed me by the upper arm, his eyes wild. Definitely on stimulants. He was looking right at me, but he might as well have been looking at a chair or a doorknob. “Have you found any more paintings that have clues about how the bakaak makes things?”

For some reason, Bernard’s primary interest was the paralyzing poison that could even affect werewolves. The cave den Phoenix had just been in had a ceramic pot with remnants of the stuff in it. His assistant, either a botanist or a chemist or both, was still down there.

I ignored Phoenix and addressed Bernard. “Are you sure you want to try to duplicate that poison, Bernard? If it affects werewolves, wouldn’t it be better to destroy it?”

Phoenix ignored the fact that I was ignoring him. “You can’t destroy knowledge!”

Which pretty much summed up the reason why knights and cunning folk hate each other right there. Knights spend their entire lives getting rid of magical evidence, and cunning folk spend their entire lives trying to piece it back together and document it.

“I can try.” I indicated the cave paintings with a head shake. “It was messing around with this kind of magic that created werewolves in the first place.”

The amusement in Bernard’s voice was eloquent. “And that’s such a bad thing? If I weren’t a werewolf, I’d have died of old age by now. Instead, I’m trying to help good people not think of themselves as monsters and contemplating making a s’mores.”

“Maybe you should write a self-help book,” I noted dryly. “For Better or Curse.”

I would say that Nikolai scowled, but it would be more accurate to say that his expression didn’t change. Bernard chuckled, though.

“Even if all that stuff you said is true, we’re talking black magic, and nothing good ever comes from messing with black magic,” I continued. “Have you noticed that every time somebody stumbles across one of the components of the original werewolf spell, it’s almost always toxic or lethal?”

Phoenix rolled his eyes, and I could tell he was about to go off on some tangent about how no magic was white or black, but Photoshop interrupted him. “What are you talking about?”

“The reason wolfsbane works against us like a normal poison is because it was a component of whatever spell created us way back before written history,” I said. “There’s probably some ingredient in this paralyzing poison that was part of that spell too.”

“The paralyzing poison has other applications, John,” Bernard said patiently.

“Like what?” I demanded. “Anesthesia? I’d rather take the pain. Or are you looking for more efficient ways to subdue our own kind?”

“It would be nice to be able to subdue out-of-control werewolves without ripping them to shreds,” Bernard said gravely. “But that’s not what this is about. The poison slowed poor Kenneth’s change. What if the drug could be developed to keep people from changing until a full moon was over?”

Whoa. I gave that some serious thought. “You mean, werewolves wouldn’t have to change into wolves?”

“No, John, I like that we change into wolves,” Bernard said patiently. “But what if we could keep our pregnant women from changing until they came to term? Or keep children from changing until they were old enough to handle it without dying? I’m tired of being an evolutionary dead end.”

I was speechless. It’s a fact of life that a werewolf fetus dies during the first full moon. The fetal sac can’t handle all the tearing and shifting. The idea of werewolf children? It took a few moments to even wrap my brain around the possibility.

“I want children,” Bernard said. “And I want a world where I could raise them safely.”

“That’s a nice dream,” I admitted. “But history is full of people who went down dark paths, thinking they could accomplish good things with bad magic. Hell, look at the people who rediscovered how to create werewolves back at the turn of the seventeenth century.”

In the late 1590s, there was a werewolf epidemic in France, kicking off thousands, maybe tens of thousands of werewolf trials. A lot of it was caused by the rediscovery of the potion or salve that created the first werewolf. There was probably more to it than that… chants and gestures and symbolic times and places and crap… but a lot of serial-killing werewolves like Pierre Bourget and Michel Verdun were caught with a mysterious ointment. It became the catalyst for a new wave of inquisitions.

“I am looking at them.” Bernard stood up by the fire and stretched. “The Gandillons were a werewolf family. They had sons and daughters.”

“A family of cannibals and human sacrificers,” I pointed out, giving Phoenix a not-so-subtle look. “Werewolf cunning folk.”

“You’re missing the point.” Bernard walked over to where Phoenix and I were squaring off. “I’m not arguing that there have never been bad werewolves. That would be like saying there have never been bad humans. That’s all we are, John. Humans with bells and whistles.”

“I’m not missing the point,” I assured him. “I’m disagreeing with it.”

“You’ve been studying these walls, trying to learn from them for the past twenty-four hours,” Bernard pointed out. “How is that any different from what Phoenix is doing?”

“…” Damn. That was a good point.

“We’re really not that different, you and I,” Bernard continued. “I’ve probably killed more werewolves who went insane or were just bad people to begin with than you have. It’s why I’m working so hard to change the world that creates werewolves like that. I don’t like killing. Do you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But none of this changes the fact that I’m standing in a seriously messed-up place that smells like death and crazy while you talk about werewolf Lamaze classes.”

“You need to start showing some respect,” Nikolai said ominously from his place by the fire.

“He’s allowed to question me, Nikolai.” Bernard seemed amused. “You do it all the time.”

Nikolai didn’t take his eyes off of me. “I earned it.”

Nikolai started to add something else, but Bernard spoke first: “You and Nikolai don’t have to be friends, John.”

“Oh, I think we do,” I said earnestly. “I think this is the start of one of history’s great bromances. I just get that vibe.”

“You and Phoenix don’t have to be friends.” Bernard continued undeterred. “You and I don’t even have to be friends, although I hope we are becoming so. But you told me you’d give your clan initiation an honest effort. Is your word good or not?”

I didn’t get a chance to not know how to respond to that, because Phoenix interrupted. I’m not sure he’d actually been listening for anything but a pause where he could jump in. “Keep looking over these paintings for clues! I didn’t know knights could think abstractly. Keep it up and I might even consider making you my apprentice. Show you that wizards aren’t so bad.”

He was serious.

Bernard anticipated the smart-ass response forming in my mouth and said my name like a warning. “John.”

I waved him off. “I got it. I’ll keep working on my bakaak merit badge.”

“Good man.” Bernard clapped me on the shoulder even while he was looking significantly at Nikolai. “The Clan needs you.”

“Bernard,” I said, suddenly tired. “I’m the last thing your clan needs.”

That got his complete attention. “Why?”

I gestured at Nikolai. “He’s right. Even if I agree with everything you’re doing, as long as I’m being driven by a geas, I’ll always be a ticking time bomb. If you do something that I think is seriously threatening the Pax Arcana, I’ll start getting compulsions to stop you.”

“Exactly,” Nikolai growled. “And that’s the best-case scenario.”

“Your clan and I had a good thing going for a long time,” I persisted. “I was distracting the knights on the left. You were distracting the knights on the right. We didn’t even know each other, and we were dividing their focus. Just let me go, and we can go back to helping each other like that.”

“Except,” Nikolai stated grimly, “you might wind up getting captured and telling the knights everything you’ve figured out about us. And I had a problem with that even before you started solving murder mysteries and going all Da Vinci code on cave walls.”

So, it was coming down to blood after all.

Bernard smelled that reaction and put his hands on my shoulders. “Stop it! You’re a wolf! That’s stronger than any geas.”

I stilled. All of me. Inside. Outside. My soul held its breath. “What do you mean?”

He smiled. “I know you’ve felt it. That’s why you were running from Mayte that day. You’ve gotten so used to fighting your wolf impulses that they freak you out.”

“What’s going on with me?” I asked hoarsely.

Phoenix laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh, and Bernard shut him down with a look so intense that it practically had sound effects. “Why haven’t you tried to kill Nikolai, John?”

Nikolai growled.

“Because you said he was an accident,” I said slowly. “And he’s clan.”

Bernard grinned. “And why aren’t you trying to destroy the Clan?”

I was having a hard time forming words. “Because I’m not sure the Clan is bad for the Pax. I think maybe the knights are the ones threatening the Pax in this case and don’t even know it.”

Bernard laughed delightedly and slapped my shoulders, looking at Nikolai with a See? I told you so! kind of look. “The strange feelings that you’ve been feeling are just race memories. Phoenix is right; you’ve been dealing with them your whole life. They’re just amplified among others of your own kind.”

I nodded slowly.

“Wolves are meant to run together, John,” Bernard said firmly.

“Yeah,” I said. “But not like candle wax.”

Bernard chuckled and released my shoulders. “God, you’re stubborn. Who’s going to make me laugh if you leave us when your initiation is over?”

“I tell one hell of a knock-knock joke,” Nikolai suggested from his place by the fire.

I smiled while I thought, A man’s soul is his own, and you’d better not forget it, buster.