The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“I can’t do it,” Reuben whispered. “They’re cowards,” he whispered. “But I can’t—.”

“Yes, the ignorant and thoughtless clientele of these slave traders,” said Margon under his breath, “the very tide of appetite that supports this foul business. They’re everywhere in this house.”

“But what do we do?” asked Reuben.

Stuart stood helplessly there, waiting for the command.

Below people were running and screaming. Ah, now there was the scent, there was the old stench that galvanized Reuben and sent him flying down the staircase. Evil, hate you, kill you, full-blown evil, reeking like a carnivorous plant. How easy it was to take them down, the hard-bitten, the scum, one after another. Were these the old habitual predators, or their servants? He didn’t know. He didn’t care.

Gunshots rang out in the plaster rooms. “Chupacabra, chupacabra.” Wild volleys of Spanish burst forth like the crack of artillery.

There was a car starting out there in the night, and the roar of an accelerating engine.

Through the broad open doors of a terrace, Reuben saw the giant figure of Sergei bounding after the car and easily overtaking it, springing first on the roof, and then dropping down in front of the windshield as the vehicle swerved, screeched into a circle, and came to a halt, glass exploding.

Another one of those craven men knelt right in front of Reuben with his arms up, his bald head bowed, wire glasses glinting, prayers issuing from his lips, Catholic prayers, words tumbling out of him meaninglessly and like the mumblings of a maniac.

“Holy Mary Mother of God, Jesus, Joseph, and all the saints, dear God, please, Mother of God, God, please, I swear, no, please, please, no …”

And again, no clear and unequivocal stench of evil, no scent that commanded it, made it clear, made it possible.

People were dying above.

Those men were dying above, those men that Reuben had left alive. Over the staircase railing fell one of those bodies, landing on its face, or what was left of its face, blood streaming from it.

“Do it!” whispered Margon.

Reuben felt he couldn’t. Guilty, yes, guilty, soaked in shame, yes, and fear, unspeakable fear. But wholly evil, no, by no means. That was the horror. This was something else, something more rank and hideous and defeating in its own way than purposeful evil, the purposeful break from all things human, this was something boiling with helpless hunger and agonizing denial.

“I can’t.”

Margon killed the man. He killed others.

Sergei appeared. Blood and blood and blood.

Others ran through the gardens. Others were rushing out the doors. Sergei went after them and so did Margon.

Reuben heard Stuart’s tortured voice, “What can we do with these children?”

Sobbing, sobbing everywhere around them.

And the clusters of women, accomplices, yes, terrified, damaged, defeated, down on their knees too. “Chupacabra!” He heard it woven into their prayerful pleading cries, “Ten piedad de nosotros.”

Margon and Sergei returned, the blood clinging to their fur in gouts.

Sergei paced before the terrified group on its knees, murmuring in Spanish words that Reuben could not catch.

Women nodded their heads; the children prayed. Somewhere a telephone rang.

“Come, let’s leave here. We’ve done what we can,” said Margon.

“But the children!” said Stuart.

“People will come,” said Margon. “They will come for the children. And the word will spread. And fear will do its work. Now we are going.”

Back in the ruined villa of the Morphenkind Hugo, they lay on the mattresses, sweating, bone weary, and tormented.

Reuben stared at the blotched and broken plaster ceiling. Oh, he had known this moment was coming. He had known it had all been too simple before, the Brotherhood of the Scent, the brotherhood that acted like the right hand of God, incapable of error.

Margon sat cross-legged against the wall, his dark hair loose over his naked shoulders, his eyes closed, lost in his meditations or his prayers.

Stuart climbed up off the mattress, and paced back and forth, back and forth, unable to stop.

“There will be such times,” Margon said finally. “You will encounter them, yes, and situations even more baffling and defeating. All over the world, day after day and night after night, victims tumble down into the abyss with the guilty, and the weak and the corrupt who don’t deserve death pay with their lives one way or another for what they do and what they don’t do.”

“And we leave,” Stuart cried. “We just leave the children?”

“It’s finished,” said Margon. “You take the lessons with you.”

“Something was accomplished,” Sergei said, “make no mistake of it. The place is shattered. They’ll all clear out; the children will have some chance for escape. The children will remember. They will remember that someone slew the men who had come to use them. They will remember that.”

“Or they’ll be shipped to another brothel,” said Stuart dismally. “Christ! Can we make a war on them, a consistent war?”

Sergei laughed under his breath. “We’re hunters, little wolf, and they are the prey. This is not a war.”

Reuben said nothing. But he had seen something he would not forget, and he marveled that it hadn’t surprised him. He had seen Margon and Sergei slay at will those who didn’t give off the fatal scent, those ugly, compromised souls driven by unholy appetites and inveterate weakness.

If we can do that, he thought, then we can fight amongst each other. The scent of evil does not make us what we are, and once we are beasts we can kill like beasts, and we have only the human part of us, the fallible human part, to guide us.

But these ideas were abstract and remote. Only the recollections were immediate—boys and girls racing in terror, and the women, the women screaming for mercy.

Somewhere off in this filthy villa, Margon was talking to the mysterious Hugo.

Had a plan been made to destroy the seaside brothel?

No doubt it was deserted by now. Who in his right mind would have remained?

He fell asleep, hating the dirt and grit of this mattress, waiting for the car that would come before daylight to take them to the luxury hotel where they would bathe and dine before the flight home.

17

IT WAS SATURDAY EVENING about 9:00 p.m. when they returned, and never had the property looked more warm, more welcoming, more beautiful. Through the rainy mist as they came up the road, they could make out the lighted gables along the front and the neat squares and rectangles of three stories of windows.