Constantine
Tristan says that Magnus must remain in this form for a while. How long, he can’t say, but his body is too weak to go through another change. It will take time spent wild to recover from all those years spent dying.
Nobody much feels like talking. Eudemos and I lift Magnus while Tiberius pulls out the blood-covered sheet and balls it up with Tristan’s discarded apron. He hands it off to two waiting werewolves to take to the laundry while Tristan helps slide a fresh sheet under him. Eudemos and Tiberius scrub the floor until only thin wisps of blood flow into the drain. Tristan washes the equipment.
I take a blue paper towel from a pile of them next to the sink and dampen it. Then I try to wipe away the blood and gore around his mouth and muzzle, but he whimpers and I stop, having gotten nothing but a few brown flecks.
“I’m leaving this for you.” Tristan holds up a big syringe, making sure that I am watching when he puts it next to the pitcher. “He needs water but be careful. He won’t know how to use his tongue.”
He heads for the door, his hand over the light switch. “Off or on?”
“Off.”
It seemed like hours ago that I first came to Medical, but the early summer sun has a few more degrees yet before it sets. The low light makes the room shimmer with the shadow play of leaves. Finally, one pale-blue eye, the color of thick ice, opens. “Sorry, Mags.” I don’t know what I’m sorry for. For his pain. For the lost years. For not having understood.
His tongue flaps loose, feeling for the points of his teeth. He breathes in through his open mouth and his nose wrinkles. Using the syringe, I drip water into his mouth. Most of it dribbles into his fur or onto the pillow, but he gets a little and closes his eyes again.
I open the window on the off chance that he will hear the heartbeat of birds, or the scent of the wind will make him feel like he’s part of something bigger and make it all seem worthwhile. Then I settle back onto Tristan’s rolling chair, my hand perched on Magnus’s foreleg, moving in time with the labored rise and exhausted collapse of this wolf’s chest.
There is a “B” tile on the floor. Two points.
Benison. Blessing. Benediction.
“You will thank me, Constantine of the Evil Look. In time, you will see it as a blessing.” August might be right, but not in the way he thought. If it weren’t for his broken promise, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Varya. I would not have warned the Great North. I would not have brought Magnus here. “In time,” I will discover whether this was a blessing or if I’ve simply condemned Magnus to die harder.
As soon as the sun goes down, the Alpha howls, like she does every evening. I’ve never seen her do it, but I’ve heard it. The low resonance that just as it starts to rise is joined by other wolves right across Homelands. It rolls down the mountains and settles into the valleys, pulling the howls of wolves with it.
Constantine.
I play it over and over in my mind, the way it sounded on her lips, the way it lay down a path through the maze of guilt and anger. The way it shimmered like a silver string.
The way it led me out.
Magnus whines, stretching his nose toward the open window. His breathing seems a little stronger, and with each rise of his lungs, a claw scrapes against the plastic-covered mattress. This is not where he should be, not surrounded by the smell of antiseptic and the touch of plastic and the sound of metal and cement.
“I’ll be right back.” Taking two of the doctor’s blue paper towels, I fold them up, using one to prop open the door to Medical, the other to hold the screen door leading outside. For a moment, I stand in the cool air, my face up.
He is too easy to lift. I felt it before when I picked him up so the sheet could be changed. I move carefully so that I don’t jostle his carved-up paws or anything else. With a quick kick to the screen door, I dislodge the makeshift wedge and it closes behind us with a thunk. I left my boots, but at least I can feel the dips and hollows of the ground, the dampness and dryness, the changing density of the ground cover as I move deeper into the trees until I find a little space in front of a big trunk and slowly lower myself and Magnus to the ground. There’s a star-filled hole up above and a smattering of sucklings down below.
Magnus pats at my hand with his front paw, leaving blood on the cuff of my sweatshirt.
Once when he was very young, I told him to wait in the car while I ran an errand. Then we’d go to White Castle. I will never forget Magnus’s eyes when he stared at the cuff of my shirt, which had gotten not so much bloodstained as blood-soaked. There was no more talk of White Castle.
I was always careful after that to clean up, no matter what. Showered, clean clothes, because I needed to be sure that I’d gotten rid of every trace. But this is his blood, and I lay my hand on his thin shoulder and sit with him. Soon when the wind blows over his fur, it releases a raw fragrance that is both green and bitter.
He sleeps again.
I’m sorry, Magnus, for that. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry we sliced into your fingers and toes to make way for claws. I’m sorry we pulled your teeth out of your skull to make way for fangs. Most of all, I’m sorry for telling you that what was best for you, what you needed, was to be human.
Magnus’s eyes are closed but his ears start moving: one way during an outburst of song (whip, whip, whip, whippp), another way as bats flit across the oculus onto the stars, this way again toward the distant wheezing of frogs.
The next time they rotate, he lifts his head, staring expectantly over his shoulder until a burly gray-and-beige wolf emerges from the woods.
I know—as surely as I do that a .22 LR with a suppressor is the best choice for a silent kill at intermediate distances—that this is Eudemos. His eyes on Magnus, he moves, crouched close to the ground, his shoulders rolling. I watch him carefully as he sniffs at Magnus’s feet, his paws, and then he starts to lick. Magnus kicks at him with short jerky blows, but Eudemos growls and keeps licking. I can feel Magnus stiffen, until with each stroke at his tortured paws, the tension eases. His eyes close and his head sways until he collapses back against me. Eudemos moves on to the next paw and the next and the next, and each time, the tension and resistance at the beginning is shorter and the relief more pronounced.
After, Eudemos moves closer, holding his muzzle next to Magnus’s. He does nothing, but I can feel the tension until Magnus lowers his eyes and his head, and with his tongue, Eudemos cleans away the blood that I with my blue paper towel could not.
Benison. A blessing, a benediction. 3, 1, 1…9 with a double-word score…18.
When he is done, Eudemos pushes his head under Magnus’s chin resting on my thigh, thumping him once, twice, three times until Magnus starts to hobble up, awkward and stumbling. He turns to look at me but underestimates the length of his muzzle and bops me in the eye.
The forest twinkles with the green lights of wolves’ eyes gathering closer as Magnus struggles toward them. As he swings his head back toward me, his eyes are a little closer than the rest but in all other ways the same. Glowing green in the dark.
Trusting neither the steadiness of my voice or my smile, I lift my hand. Then all the green lights turn and the wolves close around him.
I stare at the matted boughs for a long time.