Nancy a collins, p.17
Nancy A. Collins, page 17
It was an eye.
My wife’s eye.
“What’s the matter, Billy?” Jones leered at me from his side of the table. “She was good enough for you liveain’t she good enough for you dead?”
With a roar of anger, I overturned the table. My roar grew longer, higher; become a howl as the knot of hatred and rage and guilt inside me unravelled, wrapping my body in the painful joy of the change. Witchfinder Jones was on his feet, his revolver free of its holster. Even though I knew it was loaded with silver bullets, I did not care. It did not matter to me if I died in that lonely, snowbound mountain cabin. What did I have to live for, anyway? My wife and child were dead. My friends were dead. All I had known as a boy had been swept away in a cloud of gunsmoke, dust, and lies. I had nothing to lose. And all I wanted in the world at that precise moment was to tear my half-brother to shreds with my bare hands.
The first shot went wild. The second one went through my right side, just above the hip. The pain was immense, but such things no longer meant anything to me. When I struck Witchfinder it was like running into a solid wall of muscle and bone. I had never experienced anything like it before, and I’d brought down grown buffalo in my time.
He seemed surprised that I was still on my feet, so I used his confusion to my advantage, digging my talons into his wrist, forcing him to let go of the gun. Swearing in a language I did not know, he grabbed for the knife sheath on his belt. I leapt back just in time to see the silver blade cut an arc through the air where my throat had been only a second earlier.
“I don’t know why those silver bullets didn’t drop you, and I don’t care! I’m going to take real pleasure in gutting you, brother,” he snarled through bloodied lips. “I think I’ll turn you into a pair of boots. Maybe a nice fur hat.”
“Go ahead and kill me,” I replied. “I don’t care if I die. But I’m going to drag you to hell by the scruff of the neck like the sorry half-breed cur you are!”
Witchfinder’s face crumpled inward, as if I’d somehow dealt him a painful blow, then bellowed like an angered bull and charged me, knocking me backward, into the pot-bellied stove. The stove tipped backwards, disconnecting it from the flue and scattering red-hot embers in every direction. Clubfoot Charley’s cabin was small and cluttered. There were bundles of oily rags and everywhere. Within moments the cabin was ablaze.
Witchfinder came at me with the knife again, roaring wordlessly. His face was distorted by a bloodlust that was beyond anything I had ever seen in a human. He was in the grip of a fearsome animal rage that knew no mercy, gave no quarter. And that suited me just fine.
We circled one another in the middle of the burning cabin, growling like wild beasts, looking for the first sign of weakness in order to attack. Jones made the first move, lunging at me with his knife. I surged forward to meet him, grabbing his hand and twisting it one-hundred and eighty degrees, while driving the talons of my other hand into his face.
Jones screamed as his forearm shattered like a green branch. He dropped to his knees, his face a mess of blood and lacerations. His dead eye lay against his cheek like a limp dick. I twisted his arm again, turning it almost completely around in its socket.
“You’re real good at killin’ when you’ve got yourself up a posse of Mexicans or Mormons or whoever the hell you can talk into hirin’ you, ain’t you? And you’re real good at killin’ from a distanceor butcherin’ helpless women and children. But when it comes to fightin’ one-on-one with a full-blooded vargr you ain’t nothin’ but a sorry sack of shit! Our father was right to shun youyou’re nothing but a mad dog!”
Witchfinder looked up at me with his remaining eye and spat a bloody wad of saliva that struck me square on the chest. “Fuck that shit. I’m just like you, Billyexcept I wear the same skin all the time!”
“The hell you are!”
Just then Jones went for his fallen knife, with his good hand but he was too slow. I snatched it up and plunged it up to the hilt in his empty eye-socket, twisting it a full turn. Although this would have killed a normal human right on the spot, Jones’s vargr heritage gave him the strength to lurch to his feet, clawing at the knife-hilt jutting out of his head. He knocked me down as he blundered blindly around the burning cabin screaming at the top of his lungs.
As I moved to tackle him and tear out his throat, there was a loud sound and the roof collapsed, burying me under burning rafters and a ton of snow.
I’m uncertain as to how long I remained buried under the remains of Clubfoot Charley’s cabin. While I was unconscious I was visited by a number of friends and family. All of them dead. First there was Sitting Bull, who looked in far better shape than when I last saw him. He was travelling in the company of Medicine Dog. I really wasn’t surprised they’d hit it off in the Spirit World.
“Medicine Dog told me of how you tried to help me,” my friend said. “Perhaps you could have changed things. Perhaps not. I appreciate the effort, though.”
“Am I dead, uncle?”
“No. Not for good, anyway.”
Someone touched Sitting Bull on the shoulder and he moved aside, allowing them to come forward. It was Digging Woman. Beside her stood our children, Small Wolf and Wolf Legs, holding hands. Although Small Wolf was the elder of the two, he looked to be half his younger brother’s age.
“I bring you a gift, my husband,” she smiled, lifting her right hand. Six glittering silver bullets fell onto the snow. “While you confronted my killer, I used my spirit-self to exchange his bullets with those of common lead.”
I struggled to speak, but every breath I took made my ribcage feel as if it was trapped in a vise. “Digging WomanI’m sorryI’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect youto save youI failed you”
“Yes. That is true. But I still love you, Walking Wolf.” She reached out to smooth my pelt, as she had often done as we lay curled together under our buffalo robes, but her hand had no weight and passed through me, making my skin tingle the way a leg does when it falls asleep. “I must go, my husband.”
“Don’t gostaystay with medon’t leave me alone” Digging Woman smiled and suddenly she was as young as when we first met. “I will love you forever, Walking Wolf. In this lifeand all that follow.”
“Digging Womanno” I raised my hand in a feeble attempt to grab her ghost and make her stay, but it was no use. She was gone. In her place were two shadowy, indistinct figures that moved just outside my field of vision. One stood upright, while the other seemed almost to move on all fours. They seemed uncertainhesitantthen one that stood upright stepped forward, kneeling beside me. It was a woman, her hair the color of gold, her scent warm and familiar. I lifted my head and tried to get a better look, but her features remained fuzzy and indistinct. “Mama?”
The second figure made a snuffling noise and my mother reluctantly pulled away, following my father into the dim haze of the afterlife.
When I woke up it was to the sound of something digging at the snow covering me. I was pinned under a charred rafter, my pelt was scorched, I had more broken ribs than whole ones, and there was a bullet in my hip, but outside of those injuries, I was relatively unscathed. Opening my eyes, I found myself muzzle-to-muzzle with a lone timber wolf. When I groaned and moved, it danced away, watching me warily from a safe distance as I climbed out of my frozen tomb. The timber wolf, recognizing me as being an unnatural thing, quickly quit the scene.
After extricating myself, I started digging out the ruins of the cabin.
I did not find Witchfinder Jones’ body, nor did I find the shirt made of our father’s pelt. However, I did manage to locate the tobacco pouch that had once been my mother’s left teat. I also found six silver bullets laid side-by-side in the snow.
* * *
EPILOGUE
I took what was left of my ma and, come the spring thaw, I cremated it along with Digging Woman and Wolf Legs. I spent the rest of that winter in my true-skin, fending for myself as best I could, shunning all company, human or otherwise. During that long, cold, lonesome season I traveled so deep into grief and madness I came out the other side. The world I once knew no longer existed. Hell, it’d begun to disappear long before Sitting Bull’s murder. In many ways I had still been innocentif not in deed, then at least in spirit. But after Digging Woman’s death, I was a changed man. Or werewolf, if you would. Once I saw to it my loved ones got a proper send off into the Spirit World, I left that part of the country for good. With my friends and family dead, there was no reason for me to hang around, so I struck out west. I eventually made my way to California, and I eventually settled in the San Fernando Valley. Truth to tell, I own a good chunk of it, under various names and holding companies. No one would ever guess my wealth by looking at me or my house. I live modestlysome would even say austerely. I’ve discovered it pays to keep a low profile when one does not appear to age. But, then, the area’s penchant for plastic surgery has provided me with camouflage for the last few decades.
I stand still as the years race pass, like a rock in the middle of a swift-running stream. I have seen fortunes made and lostdynasties rise and fall. I’ve watched the White Man’s magic expand beyond all known boundaries. Electricity. Antibiotics. Moonflights. Genetic engineering. Atomic energy. Indoor plumbing. I still don’t trust them, of course. They’re all still crazy. Maybe even crazier than before.
As for other vargr… I have made it a point to avoid them. They suffer from the same madness that afflicts the Whites. Not surprising, considering they are from the same world.
As for Witchfinder Jones: I do not doubt that my elder brother survived the battle in Clubfoot Charley’s cabin. If he’d crawled away to die, I would have found him.
Although it’s hard to imagine anyone taking such a wound and surviving, my brother is an uniquely tough individual. As much as I still hate his guts, I can’t deny him that.
I suspect he managed to hole up somewhere after the fight and nurse himself back to health. But what would have been left of him after having his frontal lobes chopped into mincemeat? Is he able to remember who he is ormore importantlywhat he is? Is he still an infernal engine of retribution, hunting down the monsters he so envies? Or is he drooling in his beard on a street corner somewhere, destined to an eternity of selling pencils? Or is he finally at peace with himself and settled down with a family of his own?
It’s been one hundred and five years since we last met. I have yet to catch sign of him, although I have had ample opportunity to witness the atrocities of others of his misbegotten clan. Hitler, Manson, Dahmer, Rifkin… This century had been rife with the bloody misdeeds of the esau. And even though I have not seen or heard of him in over a century, I still keep an ear cocked for the sound of his tread on my porch. Creatures such as my brother do not give up the hunt lightly. Nor do they forgive.
Maybe its time I went out looking for him. Sitting down and writing out all the things that happened to me as a boy has made me nostalgic for the open spaces I once knew. It’s been a long time since I wandered the countryside as I did as an youth. Digging Woman’s newest incarnation is only six years old. It’ll be another fifteen or twenty years before I can properly reintroduce myself to my wife. (We’ve been married twice since her death in 1890.) I’ve got the time, the opportunity, and the money to wander if I like. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I like it. It is time for Walking Wolf to stride the plains again.
What will I do if I find my long-lost brother, you ask?
Will I forgive him his trespasses and embrace him as my only living blood kin? Or will I show him the same mercy he gave my wife and child? And there is the matter of our father’s pelt to be resolved. So, what will I do?
I ask you, dear reader; am I my brother’s keeper?
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
Walking Wolf, Nancy A. Collins
