The beast leapt forward, dripping talons raised, foul jaws wide, any moment about to snap down upon Henry. He cried out and stumbled backwards, his head striking the wall of the house, his mind spinning. An acute pain shot down into the base of his skull and surged across his shoulders. For the second time in twelve hours darkness poured into his vision but this time he fought it off, his consciousness burning, desperate just to stay alive. He raised his arms to his face in a feeble attempt to defend himself from the monstrous wolf.
He could smell the stench from it, its hot breath on his face and neck. He cried out Sandrine’s name in a pathetic attempt to warn her away from returning home and stumbling into the same fate that was clearly going to be his.
And then, suddenly, with a high pitched shriek like the sound of a dog triggering a trap, the creature threw itself back. At first Henry thought he was dead, the shriek his point of entry into heaven, or hell. But he was aware of sounds around him, light on his face, the smell of the house. He drew his arms away from his eyes and looked on the wolf, shuddering and trembling against the far wall. Before him, the creature began to change, slowly and indefinable in its transformation, but certainly changing. Its talons shrivelled away on its fingers, the glowering of its eyes cooled, the fetid coarse hair covering the beast’s body receding and sinking back into beautiful cream skin. As the quivering grotesque of twisted stretched limbs shrank down to the elegant perfection that was Sandrine, the trembling slowed and then stopped. Within an instant, the transformation was over. The feral wolf had shrunk and slipped back and in its place Sandrine lay naked and exhausted on the floor of the house, her white skin shimmering with a fine coating of sweat.
Henry gazed on in bewilderment. The palms of his hands were flat to floor, his back pressed tight against the wall. He was aware of a throbbing in his skull and a fogginess in his vision. But there was no doubt what he was looking at now, and what he had seen. Sandrine lay prickled with sweat across the floor, unmoving, save for her sharp breaths, as if she was wounded. He stared and he stared, unable to take in just what he had witnessed. The wolves. The murder and carnage. The decimation of his men.
Sandrine? Surely not her?
He was aware of a searing heat on the skin of his throat. His hand shot to his neck and tightened about the pendant of Francis of Assisi about it, the circle of metal feeling hot in his sweaty palm. At once it cooled, Henry feeling its indentations and marks against his palm. He was aware of his breathing, loud and urgent, the cool of the metal seeming to pass like a shiver through his body. He trembled and stared.
Sandrine slowly raised her head. Her face was crimson and dashed with the blood of the Major. Her eyes were dark and deep, like coals awaiting fire’s touch. She was breathing hard. They stayed as they were, Sandrine prostrate on the ground, her eyes turned to Henry; he with his back hard to the wall, hand on the pendant, eyes fixed to hers for what seemed an age before finally they spoke.
“What are you?” he cried, fear in his eyes and in his voice as he pressed himself as far into the wall as possible. “What …” Henry started again, trying desperately to find the right words. But they didn’t come.
“I’m not like them, Henry,” she said, still prone on the floor. “You must believe me.”
Henry tried to reply, but his head span and his tongue was still. His eyes fell on the bloodied remains of a body, the lower torso, legs still attached, a bloody mincemeat mess to the side of the room, its arms cast nearby in the frenzy of feeding. He turned his head away, his eyes closed, repulsed by the vision. There was blood up the walls, dashed like paint thrown wantonly from a paint pot. He thought he was going to be sick, but the sensation soon passed when he closed his eyes. He breathed in deeply and asked, “Was that – was that your handywork?”
“It was,” Sandrine replied without hesitation. “It was Major Pewter, he came looking for me, came to try and take what I wouldn’t give him before.”
The fear began to leave Henry’s eyes. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you,” Henry retorted, exhaling and inhaling deeply.
“Don’t joke,” Sandrine hissed.
“I’m not,” Henry replied, putting his head slowly back against the wall. The back of his skull pounded with pain. He used the feeling to focus himself back on the room, back to his discovery and the revelations about Sandrine, to stop himself from collapsing into unconsciousness. He let go of his pendant and put his hand gingerly behind his head, nursing the wound.
“Francis of Assisi,” Sandrine muttered on seeing the pendant fall free. Slowly she moved, easing herself up. She sat, resting on an arm for balance, her left leg crossed under her. She gave no consideration to the fact she was naked in front of Henry. She raised a hand and smeared the drying blood from her face. Henry couldn’t stop his eyes from falling onto her dark nipples, tracing the line of them down to her belly button and the dark forest of hair further below. “Your pendant.”
“Oh, that? Yes. A gift. From my grandmother. To keep me safe.”
“She is a wise woman.”
“Maybe,” he said. He winced and pulled his hand in front of his face to inspect his crimsoned fingers. “What makes her so wise?”
“Assisi. The tamer of wolves.”
“Is that what you are, Sandrine? A wolf?”
He asked it like the question was a dart to be thrown, dead straight, with no deviation or doubt.
Sandrine looked at Henry hard. “I’m not one of them.”
“Then what are you?!” he cried passionately, looking back to the remains of Pewter and then away, wrenching his eyes to the side.
“I am a ‘half wolf’.”
The answer more confused than helped him. He looked back at her, his attention caught, for the moment.
Sandrine sat up, pushing her hair from her face. “I was born of human and werewolf. My father was a werewolf, a ‘true wolf’, as they are called by some. My mother, she was his sweetheart, when they were both … human.”
The word appeared to stick hard within Sandrine’s throat. She rose onto her feet and padded slowly to the kitchen, Henry turning to look away out of decency to her. She returned wearing an apron.
“It’s all I could find,” she said, recognising how ridiculous she looked with her front partially covered, her buttocks and back entirely exposed, save for a tie around the spine of her back.
Henry felt his face crack a little in mirth, but his features tightened when he remembered the scene into which he had walked, the blood lust and violence by the woman in front of him, if indeed she even was a woman.
“Your mother,” Henry began, still trying to find the words, “she loved a werewolf?!”
“You do not understand, Henry.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You stare at me with such cold eyes, Henry. All our lives we have felt this look. It is not fair.”
“Try telling that to Pewter. Try telling that to my men!” His voice cracked as he cried the words.
“Are they all dead?” asked Sandrine, quietly.
Henry nodded. “We’re the only ones left.”
“How did you …? Oh, my dear Henry!” Sandrine sobbed, beginning to weep. “I thought you were dead?”
At first Henry resisted the urge to come forward and console her. But as she broke down and wept uncontrollably, he saw, for the first time, the fragility within her. Without hesitation any longer, he scrambled forward from the wall and took Sandrine into his arms. His mind swam, his skull cried, his heart felt fit to burst. If she changed before him now into the beast; if this was merely some ruse to fool him into her arms so that she could devour him, to hell with it! Let it be so! Everything Henry had known, or thought he knew, had crumbled and fallen like sand through his fingers. In that moment he knew he was as ignorant and as helpless as a newborn baby. All he knew, the only thing he felt, was that the woman whom he held crying and whimpering in his arms he loved; he loved her with all his heart and his passion and every part of his being. So if this was a trick, let him be ripped asunder and devoured, bones and skin and all. For if she did not love him or she would not let him love her, then he would rather be dead than live never knowing. He thrust his arms around her and held her tight. He felt her body shudder beneath him and he refused to pull away for a long time.
When he did, he cupped her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. He wiped the tears from them with the tips of his fingers and kissed her gently on the lips, holding her tightly into his chest.
“I was on a machine-gun post. The wolves, they came up the trench. One of them leapt for me. Caught the gun in its mouth. I pulled the trigger, the gun exploded. I was thrown backwards. I went down into a hole. I hit my head. I remembered no more. I awoke covered in debris. Clearly the fall saved me. I am sorry. I speak of the werewolf as it. It might have been your father.”
“No, it can’t have been my father,” replied Sandrine, drawing herself into a tight ball within Henry’s arms. “For my father is dead.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
The dark haired woman shook her head, as if his death was not of importance or had passed too long ago to affect her now.
Sandrine reached forward and took the pendant into the tips of her fingers.
“Your grandmother,” she asked, “did she know of the wolves?”
“If she did, she never said anything.”
“Rescue me, O Lord,” Sandrine began, “from evil men. Preserve me from violent men, who despise evil things in their hearts, they continually stir up wars. They sharpen their tongues as a serpent. Poison of a viper is under their lips.”
“You know your bible better than me.”
“Francis of Assisi,” replied Sandrine, reaching forward and tracing the contours of Henry’s face with her fingers. “He asked for it to be read as he died. Henry,” she said, a serious and august look on her face, “let me tell you about my people.”