Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Gartier did not flinch at my unresponsiveness to his silent invitation. He kept his ungloved hand outstretched.

I knew his welcome was anything but sincere. But I also knew I didn’t stand a chance against his pack. Were it not for the opportunity to find Maximo, I would’ve bolted away and tried to outrun them. Instead, I stepped forward to accept my fate.

Gartier turned before I reached him and led me at a slow pace deeper into the forest.

The pack instinctively formed a circle around us, moving with quiet menace to show they were prepared for anything I might try.

The path soon became very steep, and I wondered that Gartier did not abandon his clothes to take his werewolf form. But in a moment, he turned into an outcrop of rocks and disappeared from sight. Following his steps in the snow, I found a well-disguised cave entrance and proceeded into the dark. I followed the muffled echo of his boots on the well-worn path that wound erratically into near pitch black. I felt the others advancing behind in the tight space they afforded me.

The further I stepped, the warmer the air became. After one last turn, the passage straightened, and I saw torchlight ahead of me in the distance beyond Gartier’s silhouette. Soon the walls spread, and we stepped through a carved stone hearth that opened into a massive chamber.

They’d filled the space with fat candles, nearly the height of a man, each standing around the perimeter to bathe us evenly in their warm glow. The rock walls here had been carved meticulously and adorned with reliefs depicting the alpine forest above us. These works reminded me of the entry doors of Castello Palatino. Over the sculpted mountain peaks was also a glorious depiction of the moon and stars.

Other passages led from this chamber, but I sensed Gartier had brought me as far as I would be allowed to enter their domain.

At the center of the space stood Maximo, flanked by two other werewolves. His arms were bound together behind him with heavy iron chains. Strapped around his neck was a leather collar affixed with a double-headed pronged fork. One end of the instrument pushed into the underside of Maximo’s jaw, and the other into the base of his throat. It was a simple device that forced him to raise his head up to the ceiling to avoid puncturing himself. I didn’t need confirmation to know that this forced posture must be agony for him.

“He’s truly dead then?” asked a voice in our native tongue from across the room.

A woman stood in a tall carved doorway. She wore a hooded cape of black wool, but I could see curls of red hair emerging from beneath it.

“I couldn’t see Sempronio’s demise, not clearly before this one managed to shut his mind against me,” she said. She gave an emotionless glance at Maximo. “But I need not see the living memory. I will know if you tell me the truth.”

I didn’t respond but stared sharply, doing my best to stifle a threatening tremor in my chest.

“Answer me,” she said impatiently.

“Our father was murdered,” I answered.

The woman exhaled deeply with a glint of delighted marvel in her gaze.

“And who does our race have to thank for this legendary accomplishment? Whose name shall I mention with gratitude to the Lord?”

“His son,” I answered with quiet anger. “Our alpha. Don Alfredo Lupofiero.”

The woman’s eyes lit up with perfect joy, and she laughed triumphantly, almost cackling with her raspy voice.

“Oh, but that is too perfect!” she gleamed. “To think it was one of us—one of his own. Could anything taste as sweet?”

I felt something akin to rage as she spoke, but I kept the fire at bay, unwilling to lose whatever opportunity we might have left to survive our capture.

“He was assisted by Duke Sforza of Milan,” I added.

“Was he?” she scowled. “He isn’t someone I’d care to call a friend. Sforza is just as corrupt.”

She seemed lost in thought for a moment, then returned her attention to me.

“Well, one mustn’t allow the means to spoil the reward, I suppose. It’s done, and the world is grateful. But what is to come of you both, then? I presume you have not fallen on your knees to Don Lupofiero.”

“He hunts us,” I answered. “We are his sworn enemies.”

“And you fled to the alps of all places?”

“We fled west purely to escape his realm. We do not have an eventual destination that draws us.”

The woman approached us, stopping beside Maximo. His guards instinctively retreated two paces back to give their mistress a respectable space. She ran her pale, lithe hand through Maximo’s chestnut hair to hold his raised jaw with mock tenderness. She then continued down, lazily feeling his broad shoulders and massive chest.

I didn’t allow myself to react, bent on waiting for a genuine opportunity to present itself. I would do nothing that might risk Maximo’s life.

The woman then ran her hand between his legs, which caused him to startle, and the two sentries stepped forward to seize hold of Maximo’s arms. She took hold of his cock and balls, cupping and tugging on them as if she meant nothing more than to examine livestock for its breeding suitability.

“My beta has orders to kill anyone who stumbles into my den,” she said, releasing Maximo. “Indeed, you were never meant to walk away from Val d’Isère. But the news you’ve brought me has found me feeling more generous than I could have expected. Perhaps I should show you both mercy? Perhaps there’s a place for you here? We might have been family once had I not fled from that infidel’s hold.”

The lightest spark of doubt sharpened my face, but I forced myself to relax.

“You know of Castello Palatino?” I asked.

She smirked at my question and lowered her head.

“I too was a member of the Palatino pack. Long ago,” she added with a hint of disgust. “I remember the world you come from, with its unholy ethics and unsanctified ways. If I’m honest, my heart bleeds for you, child. I doubt you understand your crimes—your transgressions against lycankind or your sins against God. How could you? I suspect you’ve always lived under the reign of that heretic?”

“What crimes?” I scowled.

“Living among humans unashamedly,” she raised her voice with disgust, “in defiance of the Lord’s plan. Allowing them in your home. Worse, serving their well-being. Your master was a heretic, rejecting the basic tenant of faith that the Maker placed us in this world to rule over all His creations. Sempronio would spit in God’s face at every opportunity. I remember it all, the immoral way he would teach his pack to live.”

For the first time, she allowed me to see her thoughts. They were memories of what she considered the end of her first life. I saw how she’d been saved by a group of lycan who’d secretly taught her the “true word.” They liberated her from the vulgar excesses of Sempronio’s dominion. Theirs was the way of the continent, and all who had defied God’s plan upon it now laid waste. All but one—Sempronius of Rome—the child born on the Palatine Hill in the ancient cradle of evil. He was the scholar of heresy who survived the condemnations of God’s children for a millennium. He was the Father of Lies who had defied the armies of God to pollute the world with the ways of his wicked progenitors.

But no more, the woman thought. The Devil is vanquished at last.

At that moment, I understood something to which so many had previously alluded. The outside world, the lycan not just of Milan but of Europe, lived under the law of religion, same as the humans did, except with one startling difference. Lycan were the true children of God, and our kind were fierce warriors of their beliefs. They lived in darkness and saw it as light.

In contrast, the master had provided his children with an education filled with logic and reason. Evidence and precedent supported each statement he made. His conclusions held the door of uncertainty wide open, welcoming his children’s attempt at analysis, debate, and revision.

But that was not enough for her. Or perhaps it was too much.

With a chill, I knew at last what I now faced—what Duccio’s cowardice had allowed destroyed.

She stared at me, this nameless lycan, and gave a look of patient resignation.

“No, I see now that my sympathies are in vain. Neither of you shall come willingly to the Light.”

She circled Maximo in silent contemplation.

“Fear not, children. I will forgive you of your sins, but first I must cleanse you of all the Devil had done.”

Her eyes almost glistened with pity, but then she turned to Galtier.

“Have the other brought to me,” she ordered, and the beta retreated out of sight.

“Take them.”

The two other werewolf sentries seized my arms. I offered no resistance as they pushed me forward behind the red-haired woman, who led the group deeper into her lair.

After turning through a labyrinth of corridors, we came to a room filled with devices I’d never before seen. At first, they appeared to make little sense. I then recognized an orderly array of double-headed pitchforks, organized by size and affixed handsomely to one wall. They were identical to the one strapped to Maximo’s neck, and everything else here soon adopted a sinister aura.

“Cage him,” she ordered.

They shoved Maximo into a narrow cage in which he could only stand. It was barely large enough for him to stand without touching its iron bars. The red-haired woman then nodded to a black iron chair at the center of the chamber, and the other sentries pushed me down painfully to sit in it.

She looked directly at me, and I felt a strange cold seep into my lungs. In seconds, my wolf disappeared to leave me in my naked lycan form.

The sentries took advantage of the change to engage the chair’s iron restraints over my limbs and neck. They clamped an iron arm around my chest, securing it so tightly to the chair back that I could hardly breathe.

When their alpha nodded again, one sentry engaged the chair’s unexpected mechanism with an ominous clank. I at once felt dozens of tiny pinprick emerge from the chair, shooting violently into my flesh. I screamed and moved as much as I could, though my lungs could not inhale enough air to make more than a strangled whisper.

“Deeper,” she commanded them.

The pinpricks drove further into my flesh with another bang, pushing into my very bones. I heard Maximo’s grunt of concerned anger over the sound of my erratic whelps. My eyes couldn’t focus through my agony to see him clearly.

“Embrace the suffering,” she implored me. “From it, you will be reborn.”

When I thought I could take no more, she nodded, and the sentry retracted the needles back into the chair. I felt hot blood trickle out from the dozens of punctures. The other werewolf unlatched the iron strap over my chest, which allowed me to breathe. Of more critical note, it allowed me to scream.

“Good, child. Let the poison drain from your body. It will cleanse your soul.”

When I could collect my vision well enough to focus, I saw a commotion by the chamber’s entrance. Guards dragged in an unclothed human woman into the room. They’d covered her head with a burlap sack and chained together her hands.

At the red-haired woman’s signal, they uncovered her face, and there I saw that the gagged woman beneath was Hélène. Terror seized her aging eyes for only a moment before she fainted from what she saw.

“We have already delivered the other to the kitchens for butchering, but I am not without mercy for your suffering.”

The werewolves lifted Hélène’s unconscious body onto a large wooden table, then left the room. The red-haired woman took a blade from the wall and quietly slit Hélène’s throat with a deft pull.

I tried to protest, but I was too weary to articulate a word. Whatever the witch had done to soothe my dark protector, I understood now that I could not summon my werewolf.

The pitiful woman’s eyes never opened, but she involuntarily jerked for a few seconds before going limp again. Into a small bowl, the red witch collected the spilling blood. When the bowl was half full, she set it aside and sliced through Hélène’s right breast. She separated it from the corpse and continued to cut the flesh into pieces. When she was done, she set the butchered breast meat into the blood-filled bowl.

Coming to kneel beside the chair, I realized the witch meant to feed me. She swirled a carving of flesh in the pool until the skin was thoroughly soaked red, then lifted it to my mouth.

I thought I would wretch.

“The Lord has provided us this bounty,” she said patiently.

I shut my eyes, unwilling to see the carnage for a moment longer.

“This is a gift, child. Do not shame us all by rejecting the Lord’s mercy. Not after all you’ve done to offend his grace.”

Still, I refused to open my mouth. It was only when I heard her retreat that I opened my eyes again.

At the alpha’s behest, the other sentry took a pair of large iron tongs from the wall. He approached me and ripped the tip of my index finger savagely from my left hand without warning.

The pain was unimaginable, and the wounded scream that left my throat now was as much a plea for mercy as it was a warning.

“Another,” she commanded.

But as he clamped the tongs around my middle finger, my dark protector could stand for no more, and something changed altogether within me.

Without warning, my wolf awoke from the witch’s spell and took over with inexplicable ferocity. An invisible claw leapt from my mind to cast the guards away across the chamber. Their bodies crashed against the rough stone walls with such force that I heard their bones snap.

The two sentries standing by Maximo’s cage dropped to their haunches as if threatened. On my right, the red-haired witch transformed into her werewolf instantly. The transformation happened with such explosive speed that, for a moment, it mesmerized me to distraction. When the wolf’s eyes glared her intent to kill me, I exhaled one last time with a sharp focus.

From the wall, my protector’s invisible claw leapt from my mind to grab a sword, throwing it at the witch with a staggering force. She somehow deflected the attack, but not before the iron sliced through the necks of both remaining sentries on its way to her.

My wolf stared in hatred at their bodies on the floor, drawing smoke from their fur briefly before each body erupted into a blue flame. In moments, it seared noisily through their flesh to the bone.

Seeing their destruction invigorated me, and without thinking, I turned my gaze at the red wolf. With ruthless hold, my mind squeezed at the very fabric of her skin, kindling the roots of her dark red fur. She was far more resilient to my protector’s attack, but smoke soon rose from all over her body, and she howled in agony. It seemed she would move to strike me down, but receiving one last wave of my telekinetic assault, she screamed and leapt back to flee from the chamber.

The invisible claw ripped open my iron constraints, and I jumped to my feet in a rage, transforming into my physical werewolf before my feet landed upon the stone floor. I smelled the burnt remains of my victims and saw the last flames sputtered over them.

I turned to Hélène’s remains upon the table and set them alight, refusing the idea that any of the fiends might feed upon her. When the room gleamed with flame and smoke, I pulled a lever on the wall beside Maximo’s cage, disengaging the lock, and pulled the door wide open to release him. I then freed him of the collar and the red devil’s pitchfork, then unbound his arms.

Without a word, he took me by my right hand and led me from the chamber. I pulled at him, insisting we delve deeper into the caves after the wretched witch. But Maximo pulled back violently and raced us up toward the main chamber and into the dark exit path.

He ran as quickly as he could, flying through the lair and knocking over objects of every sort in his path. I sensed several wolves pursuing us but didn’t look back.

Just as we neared the cave’s entrance, the pack’s beta, Gartier, stepped into our path. With furious eyes, he summoned his werewolf transformation.

Just as his clothes ripped away set free his growing form, I roared at him with pure hatred. Thinking of the very blood in his veins, I sent a telepathic assault that made the scoundrel’s body explode from within. Blood splattered in every direction, all of it alight like burning oil. It coated the cave walls and released a terrible heat for seconds before burning off completely.

What little was left of Gartier fell to pieces at our feet.