He shifted a leg to take another impossible step, but again he could not move. Vines had come, thorny brambles reaching from the solid hedge to take hold of him, to dig into the fabric of his trousers, and under that his skin. The pain pricks of a thousand little needles. A growl caught in the back of his throat. A threat, a show of anger. Wolf, wanting to rise up. Wolf could escape this, if the human was too stupid to.
Teeth bared, Fritz jerked his leg forward, then the next. His trousers ripped, as did his skin. Blood trickled down his legs. Still the brambles climbed, reaching for his middle, grasping for his arms, pulling him away from the cottage. He twisted, lunging one way and another, hoping to break away, and it worked. Vines ripped, he progressed another foot or two, and his momentum carried him full around—and when he faced away from the cottage, the brambles vanished.
For a long time he stood and looked across the clearing to the straight pines of the forest, all quiet, all peaceful. He could move freely—as long as he moved away from the cottage. It was all illusion. His breath caught.
He really had no choice about what path to choose. He could not fail in his mission. He could not take the coward’s route. But when he turned back to the cottage, the brambles returned, the battle resumed. His wolf’s strength let him fight on when a normal person would have been overwhelmed, succumbing to the blood and pain of the thorny wall. He wrenched, pushed, twisted, and growled, until the last strand of vine broke away, and he was through, close enough to the cottage to touch.
His wolf’s agility meant he sensed the ground give way a moment before it did. A hole opened—no, a trench, or a moat even. A cleft in the earth, circling the cottage, splitting open and falling to darkness. Fritz sprang back, balanced as if on a wolf’s sure paws, to keep from falling backward into the vines, or forward into the pit. His toes pushed a stone and few bits of brown earth forward, and the pieces rattled down the sides to some unseen bottom.
Colonel Skorzeny had not told him that Maria Lang was a witch. The cleft widened, the edge nearest him crumbling further, forcing him to inch away until the brambles with their reaching thorns threatened to claw into his back. This was impossible. This also made him furious. He wasn’t a boy, a feckless common soldier, he was a wolf. Hitler’s werewolves, the colonel called them, and they saluted with their heils and expected victory.
Fritz dug his booted toes into the earth, called on wolf’s strength, imagined the light of the coming full moon filling him further, giving him power. He took a single running step and jumped. Crashed to the ground on the other side of the pit, rolled once, hit the cottage’s front door, and slumped to a rest. His ears were ringing, his muscles ached. He’d only traveled a few feet but felt as if he’d run for miles. For a moment, he couldn’t remember why he’d come here at all.
The door opened, and the woman stood on the threshold, looking down on him. His information said she was in her thirties, but he couldn’t decide if she looked old or young. Her hair was black, tied under a blue kerchief. Her lips were full, but pale. Laugh lines creased her eyes. Her hands were thin, calloused.
“Boy, would you like some tea?” she said. Her voice was clear, amiable. Something like an aunt, not so much like a grandmother, and nothing like a witch.
“But I am a werewolf,” he blurted, perhaps the first time he had ever stated this aloud.
“Yes, I know,” she answered.
He looked over his shoulder at the way he’d come. The clearing, the garden, the forest and hill beyond—all were normal, utterly ordinary, the way they had been when he arrived. He looked at the gun in his hand, and the woman who didn’t seem at all afraid. Sighing, he climbed up off the ground and followed her inside.
She showed him to a straight-backed, rough-hewn chair, and obediently he sat. She had an old-fashioned open hearth with a fire burning, and already had a kettle set to boiling water. He watched as she used a dish cloth to move the kettle from the fire, pour water into a
teapot, and scoop in herbs from an earthenware jar.
He looked around. The place was filled with herbs, jars of them lined up on a shelf, bundles of them hanging from roof beams, mortars and pestles sitting on a work table in the center of the room, all dusted with herbs. The pungent smell, strong as a Christmas dinner, made him sneeze. Stairs led up, probably to an attic bedroom. The whole cottage was as cozy as one could wish for, insulated and warm, filled with signs of home. Fritz was surprised that his wolf wasn’t complaining about the closed space and the shut door. His wolf did not feel trapped, but instead had settled, like a puppy curled by a fire.
He blinked up at the woman, confused. “They told me you were a nurse.”
“Healer, not a nurse. They couldn’t tell the difference, I’m sure.”
“You’re a witch.”
She smirked at him. “You are very young. Here, have some tea.”
And just like that she presented him with a teacup and set it in his hands as she slipped the gun away from him. He didn’t even notice until he’d taken a long sip. The tea warmed him, and the warmth settled over him. Citrus and cinnamon, and hope.
Then he stared at his hands, his eyes widening. She set the gun on the worktable out of his reach and left it there as she poured herself a cup of tea.
“What have you done to me?” he cried.
“I haven’t done anything.” Her smile should have been beautiful, full lips on a porcelain face, but the expression held wickedness. Mischievousness. Tricks. “I have nine layers of protection around my home, knowing people like you would come to kill me. You should have dropped dead—even you, with your half-wolf soul—should have dropped dead before you reached my door. Do you know what that means?
“You never truly meant to kill me. You thought you did, perhaps. You might have held the gun in your hands and pressed the barrel to my chest, but you could not have killed me. Everyone would call you a monster if they knew what you were. But you have a good heart, don’t you? What of that, boy?”
He didn’t know. He took another sip of tea and kept his gaze on the amber surface of the liquid. She wasn’t even wolf, and he was showing her signs of submission. He was useless.
“Then what am I to do?” he said. He knew what happened to those the SS no longer had use for. Skorzeny knew how to kill werewolves.
“It’s the night of the full moon,” she said.
A window in the front of the cottage still showed daylight. The ghosts of his wolf’s ears pricked forward. No, it wasn’t quite time, not yet.
She said, “They wanted you to come tonight, on the full moon, because they thought your wolf would make you a killer. Make murdering easier.”
“I tried to explain to them, it doesn’t work like that—”