XXXIII - The Werewolf Strikes Again

  The afternoon of the third day dragged by with agonizing lethargy. Sybil tried to pass the time by showing Finn how to fire her crossbow, but he seemed tired and uninterested in the lesson, and soon left her alone to her training. She did her best to distract herself, but in her solitude, it was so easy to yield control to her many frantic, anxious thoughts.

  Her mind went back to their return to the forge earlier that day.

  “And you are certain that the writing is Amabel’s?” the blacksmith had asked after the Plague doctor had given his report.

  Vlad nodded. “As certain as I can be, given the circumstances. Certain enough to pursue this lead further, at the very least.”

  “I trust your judgment, Ibis,” Avice said, “but I still find it difficult to believe that Amabel could be involved in this.” She paused. “How exactly do you intend to pursue this lead, then?”

  “After the recent slaughter, I would very much favor facing the lycanthrope in its human state. If Miss Cook is in league with the beast, then we may be able to get her to reveal its true identity so we can confront this individual in the daylight, before they can transform.”

  Avice crossed her arms in front of her chest. She looked skeptically at her old companion. “By what means? Because I very much dislike any that come to mind. I have seen your methods of forcing nosferatu to talk.”

  Vlad frowned, looking at the very least mildly offended. “Do you truly believe me capable of utilizing such deplorable methods on a living, breathing human, Avice? I may be old, but I have not yet given up so much of my own humanity as to stoop to such tactics against our own kind. Even if Miss Cook is in league with the werewolf, she is still a person, and thus she shall be treated as such.”

  “What is your plan, then?”

  “I intend to keep a watchful eye on Miss Cook,” he said. “If good fortune gazes upon me, she will lead me to the whereabouts of the lycanthrope, and I will be able to slay it quickly, before it transforms—possibly even before tonight.”

  “I wish you luck with that,” Avice said. “Ever since she inherited the tavern, the poor girl barely even gets an hour away from the place each day. She is practically a prisoner to her livelihood—even more so now that the werewolf has slain her assistant.”

  This revelation surprised Sybil. “I didn’t realize such a thing had happened,” she said. “So Sir Randolph is not the only person she has lost to the lycanthrope?”

  Avice nodded. “Aye. Two of the victims were associates of hers. She has lost more to this beast than most others have—another testament to her innocence in this affair.”

  “On the contrary,” Vlad said, “I believe this fact to only further implicate her. And I would not be so certain that she is unable to find time to slip away. Miss Cook has said herself that she has far fewer guests than usual ever since the lycanthrope attacks—a reality made even worse by the recent slaughter. I am sure she will find herself with plenty of disposable time in the days ahead during which she may very well visit this friend of hers. Either way, she must leave her tavern eventually. And when she does, I shall be there in the shadows, watching her every move, even if it takes several days of constant scrutiny. It will only be a matter of time before she leads me to her lycanthropic friend.”

  “Will you take me with you, Mr. Albescu?” Sybil asked.

  Her mentor shook his head. “While I would appreciate your company, Night Owl, I think it best that you stay here. I am far more capable of being furtive when on my own.”

  She nodded. “Alright. If you believe that to be best.”

  And so he had gone alone, departing in the early afternoon of that third day. Sybil did not know when he would return, only that he would most likely not stay out past dark; his goal was to discover the werewolf in its human form, not confront it as a beast, and thus to stay out later than the sun would be of no benefit to him. Having this limitation in place did not help to quell Sybil’s anxiety, and as the afternoon crept on, and the day drew closer and closer to its end, she only felt the heaviness in her stomach continue to expand until its weight became almost unbearable.

  Her training suffered; she no longer found herself able to focus enough to hit her targets with her crossbow, and so she switched to her new whip. The mental stimulation of practicing with the newer, less familiar weapon helped to distract her mind slightly, but it continued to wander to her absent mentor, and her ability to focus on the task before her continued to slip.

  As the sun started to set, she felt her anxiety begin to turn into panic. She fought with all of her strength to keep it at bay, but the closer that night drew, the more it began to overwhelm her. Sybil continuously cursed herself for not insisting on going with her mentor. She didn’t know what help she would have been to him, and in fact she was sure that she likely would have only gotten in his way, but she would have preferred anything over all of that dreadful, horrible waiting.

  The sky burned orange with the swan song of the day. Sybil, foregoing any facade of training, left the battered dummies where they stood and spent some time tending to Elpis. She brushed the horse’s mane, changed her water, and fed her oats from a burlap sack in the coach. The darkness of night was quickly enveloping the firmament by the time she was finished, and she found herself no longer able to ignore the voice shouting in her mind, telling her that Vlad was in danger. In fact, Sybil was already formulating a plan to follow after him when her mentor finally returned.

  He approached Avice’s forge just as the final trickles of orange sunlight escaped from the sky. Sybil felt a sudden wave of relief as her mentor drew closer and she was able to identify him. A torrent of questions filled her mind, most of them seeking the reason he had remained absent for so long, but she ultimately decided upon the most general, all-encompassing query that she could muster. “How did you fare?”

  Vlad stopped in front of her and offered a grim smile. “Well, Avice was certainly correct about one thing: Miss Cook does not often find time to escape from that tavern of hers. Indeed, the place seems more to be her prison than her livelihood.”

  “She didn’t leave a single time all day?”

  Vlad shook his head. “No. And I cannot say that I noticed anybody of particular interest—nor anybody in general, for that matter—entering her tavern, either. That is not to say that neither event shall ever occur, though. I shall try again tomorrow and hope for a more favorable result.”

  “What if she only leaves after dark?”

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  “I suppose that is possible,” he said, “but unlikely. If she is in league with the lycanthrope, it would do her no good to meet with it after it has already transformed, unless she wishes for it to tear her limb from limb. The beast makes no distinction between friend and prey when cast beneath the moon’s influence.”

  Despite her relief at seeing her mentor unharmed, Sybil frowned. “I suppose there is nothing else to do but try again tomorrow, is there?”

  “On the contrary, there is much else to do,” the Plague doctor said. “We can enjoy a warm supper, allow ourselves a good night’s rest, and awaken reinvigorated so that we can tackle this ordeal anew.” He paused only slightly, and when he spoke next, Sybil detected the slightest shift in his voice to match his more ominous words. “We can only pray that the beast does not take another life in the meantime.”

  ___

  Her mentor’s prayer was answered when the werewolf took no victims on the third night. Vlad set out early the next morning and was gone until a similar time that evening. Sybil felt less anxious than she had the day before, but that ball of discomfort remained there in her stomach, and it kept itself tied as tightly as it could until the man returned.

  “Perhaps you should consider abandoning this lead of yours, Vlad Albescu,” Avice said over their supper that night. “It is quite clear that Amabel is far too busy nursing that fool of hers to have any time to leave during the day, even if her suffering patronage may award her more leisure time than she is used to having.”

  “Aye,” Vlad said, “I can agree that things would appear that way, but then, her tending to Mr. Dupont is also the perfect shield to disguise any other activities that she may want obfuscated.”

  Avice frowned as she ate. “You’re still convinced that the poor girl is involved in this, aren’t you?”

  “The fact is that I do not have enough evidence to be convinced of anything else. I need to pursue my lead with Miss Cook until I can be certain that it has been thoroughly and completely exhausted.”

  “And how long until you’ve exhausted it?” she asked. “Because while you so narrow-mindedly pursue this single inkling, other crucial facts and clues are likely passing you by.”

  “I recognize this,” Vlad said, “and I understand that I cannot pursue Miss Cook in this way until the end of time. Soon I will have to abandon this inquiry and start from the beginning, as dreadful as such a thought may be. That said, I believe I can afford myself one further day in this pursuit before I consider it wholly finished.”

  Avice took a large bite of her dinner. She looked entirely unconvinced. “Alright, then, Ibis. I suppose it is your investigation, after all. You can go about it how you see fit.”

  “I am going about it the only way that I am able, given my resources,” Vlad said sharply, his sudden, bubbling frustration nearly making Sybil jump. “I am but one man. Had I another seasoned Plague doctor to aid me, one who is experienced in the slaying of werewolves… Well, we’ve already concluded that discussion, and there is nothing to gain by revisiting it.”

  “Perhaps the beast is already dead,” Finn said quickly, as if to defuse the tension between the two mentors. “Sybil did say that it took considerable damage on the night of the slaughter—and it has not been active since then. Is it not possible that its injuries were enough to kill it?”

  Vlad shook his head, but he smiled at the youth, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost its edge. “I’m very much doubtful of that, Finnian. Lycanthropes are quite resilient beasts—almost as resilient as vampyres, in their own way. I do not think the thing has succumbed to its injuries, but rather it has been waiting until it can fully recover its strength. It is possible and even likely that the werewolf has been unable to transform due to its wounds, and will not be able to attain its wolf form again until it has had sufficient time to heal. When that time will come to an end, though, is not something I am able to speculate on.”

  Vlad, had he chosen to, would not have needed to speculate for long.

  ___

  The snow covering the streets of Fenwick was painted scarlet in the night. When the villager awoke, they soon discovered four more bodies lying half-buried, cold and tattered, in that frozen blanket of white.

  Sir Godwin inspected each corpse personally, taking in every sanguine detail of their mutilated forms. He studied their gaping wounds, from which entrails spilled like grapes from a tipped over bowl, as well as their crimson stumps where limbs had once lived. He stared at what remained of each of their faces, and did not shy away from the sadness and the terror and the betrayal that stared back at him from behind those empty eyes. Their lifeless gazes told the captain that they blamed him for the fate that had befallen them—that they knew his inability to stop the slaughtering of his people is what had ultimately led to their gruesome, untimely deaths. This belief was far from the sole characteristic that he shared with the deceased, but it was certainly the greatest commonality between them.

  The composition of the grim quartet disturbed him. Two of the corpses belonged to a man and woman who, for unknown reasons, had seen it fit to brave the village after dark, despite all that had happened in recent memory. The other two, however, had every reason to be out on the streets that previous night—because both of them were performing their duty as village guards. Both were men that Godwin had known and had spoken to, even if only briefly. One of their spears had dried blood on its tip, implying that the man had at least managed to damage his foe, but the other’s weapon was found to be as clean as the day he had first been given it. If it had seen combat at all before its owner was slain, it showed no signs of it.

  So the beast is coming after us now, is it? Godwin thought. Surely it understands the threat that weapons pose after its recent encounter in the square, and yet it has only become more bold than ever.

  It took Godwin a few moments to register the thought that had just involuntarily passed through his mind. What followed was an immediate and intense rush of shame. How could he have even entertained the notion that the thing slaughtering his people was actually some sort of intelligent beast? How could he, even if accidentally, have so readily stooped to the same foolish mindset of those charlatans Vlad Albescu and Gaston Dupont?

  Godwin shook his head, silently vowing to perish that line of thought forever. But even though he intended to keep this unspoken oath, there was one truth to what he had just pondered that remained in his mind, unable or unwilling to die with its compatriots: This killer, whoever or whatever it was, was becoming more bold. It was growing in confidence with each passing day.

  And with that torrent of confidence would come an even greater deluge of blood.

  Godwin walked along the blood-smeared alleyway that held the night’s fourth victim. Normally Lucia would have flanked him, but he had left her behind to tend to that most recent body’s removal, and so he was on his own. He was alone with his shame—alone with his unyielding guilt and his eternal misery. An early morning breeze tumbled past him and easily chilled his body even through his armor and clothes, but he did not feel particularly inclined to shiver. His entire world was enveloped by ice now; what difference did one winter gust make anymore?

  He was snapped out of his self-pity when his eyes locked onto a familiar sight ahead of him. A figure, which he was quickly able to identify as Vlad Albescu, stood in the shadows of an adjacent alleyway. He did not appear to notice the knight, who approached him from an angle not quite within the Plague doctor’s field of view, and instead kept his gaze fixed on the building opposite the alleyway. Godwin moved his own eyes toward this building, and recognized it to be The Dusty Pumpkin. Vlad, leaning against a wall, kept his gaze fixated on the tavern, and continued to watch it as if nothing else in the world existed.

  Surely the fiend was up to no good—nothing positive ever came from skulking about in the darkness with your eyes so intently focused on one object in particular. Godwin would have liked to see how the rapscallion attempted to explain his behavior when he had the point of a sword pressed firmly against his back. The knight took a step toward the Plague doctor, his hand gripping the hilt at his side, but then he paused. It was no secret that Vlad Albescu was a devious one; he most certainly could conjure up some fast excuse for his current circumstances that would render Godwin as the unjust aggressor in this encounter. To strike now would surely rob him of his chance to rid himself and his village of the Plague doctor forever. The knight took a step back, hiding himself in the shadows of his alley as his hand came free of his waiting blade.

  And, much like his quarry, Sir Godwin waited.