XXIX - Apprentice vs Werewolf

  Sybil watched the carnage with a pair of unblinking eyes. She was frozen in a glacier of fear, unable to move as the beast went about its terrible rampage. First came its attack on Gaston, then its brief bouts with Poniard and Fiora, and finally the unfortunate man whose face was ruined by the strike that appeared to have been born of impulse, little more than a deadly afterthought. She watched it all unfold. And she did nothing to stop any of it.

  Her arms quivered with the weight of the crossbow in her grip; its trigger, pressed so accessibly against the palm of her hand, seemed at the same time to be so very, very far away. This was the moment she had been preparing for, not only since first arriving in Fenwick, but from the very beginning of her time as the Plague doctor’s apprentice. Now was her chance to put all of her training to the test, and she found herself completely unable to act.

  The werewolf pressed its weight against the struggling Arne, furiously trying to reach its quarry on the other side of the battle axe’s shaft. Sybil knew that the armored man, as burly as he was, would soon lose in his struggle against the mightier lycanthrope. Soon either his arms or his armament would give out, and that would be the end of him. Without her help, Arne was doomed.

  Sybil knew that she needed to act.

  The Plague doctor’s apprentice raised her crossbow, swallowed a steady, deep breath of air, and fired. Her quarrel leapt from her weapon at incredible speed and soared through the air toward the rear of the unsuspecting werewolf. Her heart turned to ice in her chest as she watched it soar; for a brief, hopeful moment she actually believed that it would find its target, but then the bolt sailed harmlessly over the beast’s head, missing it by several feet and vanishing into the shadows of the looming buildings beyond.

  Her glaciated heart shattered. For a moment she nearly fell to her knees in despair, where she would have surely groveled in self-hating misery until it was her turn to be slain by the lycanthrope, but the image of the struggling Arne staved off her drowning feelings of defeat long enough for the flame of vigor to reignite itself within her. Acting with haste, Sybil lowered the front of her crossbow to the ground and, placing her boot on top of its prod, began to pull with both arms against its bowstring. Realizing that the effort of reloading her weapon would take too long, she abandoned the crossbow at her feet and drew her dagger, then ran in the direction of the struggling man and beast. She only made it halfway before the thump of the body hitting the ground brought her to an immediate halt.

  Sybil was unable to make out the identity of the body lying prone in front of the church; the nighttime gloom kept its visage hidden from her. Arne, having heard the sound of the body’s impact on the ground, tilted his head back as far as it could go. He called the name “Piers!” hardly a moment before his arms finally gave out, and the werewolf’s gargantuan maw closed around his head. Arne died in silence, even as the lycanthrope’s powerful jaws crushed his skull like a well-placed boot would an overripe orange.

  The corpse of Piers groaned something unintelligible, prompting Sybil to realize that the man was not a corpse at all. He had landed on his side, with his feet facing his companion and the werewolf, and he had managed to lean up slightly in order to look in the direction of his freshly slain friend. The werewolf continued to gnaw on Arne’s face as it clawed at his armored chest, grotesquely reminding Sybil of an excited dog hard at work tearing apart a tough portion of meat given to it by its master.

  Two villagers, a man and a woman who had been cowering in the shadows of the church, stood near the archer now.

  “Are you alright?” the woman asked.

  “Can you stand?” The man knelt next to the fallen werewolf hunter. “Give me your arm. We still have time to get inside of the church.”

  “You fools,” Piers croaked. “Escape… while you can…”

  The lycanthrope’s ears twitched. It turned its crimson snout in the direction of the helpless Piers and the two villagers trying to rescue him. When it realized that there was fresh prey about, the beast quickly grew tired of its new plaything and abandoned Arne’s corpse, taking off in a chaotic four-limbed sprint toward its new victims. It reached them in no time at all.

  The heroic villagers realized the gravity of their error far too late. The man was the first to die, his chest being torn open by a single swipe of the beast’s claws. His corpse had not yet even fallen to the ground when the werewolf latched its jaws onto the woman’s neck, a weak, gurgling shout briefly escaping from her mouth before the creature began whipping her all about like a ragdoll. It flung her away after a few moments, her blood streaming from her ruined throat as she tumbled through the air, before it turned its attention to the archer at its feet.

  “Stay back,” Piers begged. He struggled in vain to squirm away from the ravenous monster. “P-please!”

  The werewolf did not heed him. It lowered itself to the ground and immediately dug its fangs into Piers’ calf. The archer evidently still possessed feeling in his legs, because the scream that forced itself out of his mouth was so visceral, so raw, so filled with agony and terror and regret, that Sybil knew immediately upon hearing it that she would never in her life forget the sound of it.

  She rushed past Arne’s corpse and came to a stop only a few meters from the lycanthrope and archer, where she planted her feet, readied her dagger, and forced herself to do the most foolish thing she had ever done: she drew the creature’s attention away from Piers.

  “Stop!” she yelled as loudly as she could, her vocal chords trembling with the effort. The lycanthrope suddenly turned its head in her direction, taking a chunk of Peirs’ leg with it as it did. She did her best to ignore his fresh cries of agony as she spoke again. “Leave him alone.”

  The werewolf, seeming to either understand her challenge or enjoying the thought of pursuing its next victim, immediately shifted its body and charged at her, bounding on all four limbs once again. Sybil quickly sprung out of the rampaging beast’s path; the barreling werewolf missed her entirely, and, its rage only strengthened by the agility of its quarry, it turned and launched at her again. Sybil, readying her blade, stood her ground and waited for the werewolf to draw closer. As it did, the beast lunged a hungry, clawed manus in her direction; instead of attempting to avoid the monster again, Sybil slashed at the incoming limb with her dagger. Her silver blade connected, opening a thin, bubbling line of vermillion along the creature’s thick, furry palm. The werewolf snarled with this fresh pain as its flesh sizzled, a thin line of smoke escaping from the wound. It began licking at the gash that continued to bleed and bubble for many long seconds without showing any sign of closing itself back up.

  “Can’t heal from that wound as quickly, can you, beast?” Sybil said.

  The werewolf glared down at her with its pair of blank, furious eyes. It charged her again, raising its non-damaged arm to strike, but its worsening anger made it easier to predict. Sybil, being smaller and lighter than her foe, was able to avoid the lycanthrope’s next slash even more handily than she had the first. She lashed out with her dagger again, this time slicing along the beast’s bulky forearm. It roared with this new pain again as its flesh popped and blistered. This time, Sybil would not give it a chance to recover. She darted toward the lycanthrope as it licked at its bubbling arm, her mentor’s words ringing in her mind as she went.

  Always strike quickly…

  She came up right below the werewolf’s towering form and prepared to lunge her dagger upward, into the beast’s exposed chest.

  … and always strike for the heart.

  A thick, powerful forearm suddenly slammed against Sybil’s chest. The breath fled from her lungs, and she did not know oxygen again until after she had spiraled several feet through the air and slammed her back into the ground. Her entire body ached, but she did not have time to wallow in the pain; her dagger had fallen from her grip when she hit the ground, and Sybil forced herself to sit up and begin searching for it. It did not take her long to spot the blade, which lay on the ground between her and the approaching lycanthrope, well out of her reach. She grabbed for it anyway, knowing that her effort would be in vain, and watched as the werewolf inadvertently kicked the blade as it charged toward her, its face distorted with blind fury. It only required a few short strides before it stood over her and prepared to bombard her with the full force of its unquenchable rage. Sybil held up her arms to block her face, and even though she realized that to do so would only prolong her suffering by a matter of moments, she refused to lower them. She did not want to see what came next.

  But what came next was not her death. What came next was the sound of gunfire.

  The werewolf staggered as its hip was torn open by the musket ball that embedded itself there. It roared with this unexpected pain, and continued to stumble as it struggled to maintain its balance, blood escaping from its side with every step that it took. Sybil looked past the injured werewolf and saw Gaston Dupont, leaned against a hedge in the middle of the square, his smoking musket in his hands. In the bright moonlight, she could see the blood that caked his torso and ran down the side of his face in long waves, matting his hair and moustache. He panted with the exertion of even sitting upright, but despite the agony that he surely felt, he still managed to have his shot strike true.

  Sybil returned her attention to the beast in front of her. She spotted her dagger near its feet, which it must have moved closer to her when it kicked it during its rage-induced charge. Ignoring the screaming pain that racked her body, Sybil leapt for the dagger and took its hilt into her grip. She then lunged upward, exploding to her feet with the motion, aiming the tip of her blade for the monster’s heart. The beast managed to side-step the incoming blow, either knowingly or as a part of its clumsy staggering, preventing her dagger from piercing its chest, but she managed to stab the blade into its exposed shoulder.

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  The werewolf snarled and pulled away from Sybil, taking her weapon with it as it went. It swatted at the dagger, knocking it out of its shoulder with a spray of blood, and began a frantic, four-limb sprint for the safety of a nearby alleyway. Gaston’s musket ball was discharged from the monster’s wound as it went, allowing it to move faster as its hip wound quickly healed itself. Within a matter of moments, the lycanthrope was gone, lost to the shadows of the surrounding buildings.

  Silence filled the square, falling like a blanket over the scene of carnage. Sybil felt as if she had suddenly gone deaf. Her ears rang with the blow that she had just been dealt, and her body ached with the screams of her throbbing bones. When she brought her hand to her nose and pulled it away, she found that her glove was now marked by her own blood. But she was alive. Somehow she had both encountered and battled the lycanthrope, beneath the light of the Celestial Curtain’s bright moon, and she had lived to tell the tale. It pained her heart to know that there were others who were not nearly as fortunate.

  She looked around at the many corpses: Fiora, whose throat was a crimson ruin; Arne, whose skull was crushed beyond recognition; the villagers whose names she did not know, who were so carelessly snuffed out by a creature that barely even considered their existence. It was then that she remembered Piers, and she immediately looked toward the man. He lay motionless, his blood pooling beneath his back, and she was certain that the man had succumbed to his injuries. Sybil could not save him after all, just like she had been unable to save all the others. They had all perished in ways that no person ever should have, and it was all because Sybil had initially been too frightened to fight for them. Her heart continued to ache, its private agony far worse than what the rest of her throbbing, miserable body could ever know.

  It was there, amongst all of the carnage, while she silently lamented her many failures, that her swimming mind slowly began to calm. She suddenly heard the soft, feeble sounds of the groaning swashbuckler nearby. Snapped back into her body, Sybil rushed to Gaston’s side with all of the haste that her gnawing legs could provide her. He lay sprawled against his shrub, his musket having fallen to the ground near him. Blood stained his shirt and pooled beneath him—so much of it that Sybil was surprised that he was still alive at all. But against all odds, the man was conscious, and he managed to look at her as she approached him and knelt at his side.

  “Mr. Dupont!” she said. “Are you alright?”

  Sybil immediately realized how foolish the question was. In his agony, Gaston evidently had not, and so he answered her sincerely. “As alright as I can be, given the circumstances, Miss Plague doctor. I believe I may appear worse than I truly am. Thankfully the beast’s blow was not an immediately fatal one.” He paused. When he spoke next his voice was laced with barely concealed panic. “And where is that wretched thing now? Is it close?”

  “The beast fled,” Sybil said.

  “Great be the Goddess,” he sighed. “Then we are safe—for the time being.”

  “You mustn’t move. We shall find you a doctor. Somebody will be able to treat you, but we must find a way to stop your bleeding.”

  “Plague me!” he croaked. “Do not even bother. I deserve the death that awaits me after what I have caused to transpire here today.” Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, and he shook his head as if to chase them away. “So many lives lost—all of my companions, who respected me and trusted me—even my most loyal canine, Poniard—all of them were slain, by the lycanthrope, yes, but they truly died because of me. It might as well have been my own hand that took their lives. And I deserve nothing more than to accept their judgment in the afterlife.”

  “That may be so,” came a familiar voice. Sybil quickly turned in its direction; approaching from the gloom, shivering and damp, was the Plague doctor Vlad Albescu. “But you do not get to escape the consequences of your actions by fading away to a quick death. You will atone for what you have done, one way or another.”

  “Mr. Albescu!” Sybil said. “You’re alive!”

  “Aye,” he said, “and I am relieved to see that you are as well.” He spoke as clearly as he was able to, but it was obvious that he fought desperately to mitigate his shivering, which would take over his entire body if he allowed it to.

  A quadrupedal figure limped out from the alleyway behind the Plague doctor. A few moments of terror passed during which Sybil thought that the creeping form was the werewolf, returned to finish its rampage, but then she quickly recognized the battered, bruised, and yet still living form of Poniard. When the dog saw Gaston, her tail began to wag feebly, and she hastily hobbled her way over to her master. Upon reaching him, she buried her head in the nape of his neck and began to whine, her tail never ceasing in its momentum.

  “Oh, Poniard!” Gaston said, the tears flowing freely now. “I thought I had lost you!”

  “Enjoy your time with your pet,” Vlad said, “because if I can help it, you will not have many days left as a free man.”

  Villagers, realizing that the danger had passed, crept out from their hiding places and made their way to Gaston’s side. A handful of them took the man and his canine away, while others surveyed the other nearby corpses. Somebody vomited, and many others voiced audible prayers to the Mother.

  When the swashbuckler was gone, Sybil, now back on her feet, turned toward her mentor. “Please show Mr. Dupont mercy, Mr. Albescu. Were it not for his swift action, I might not be alive right now.”

  The Plague doctor looked her over and frowned. “Well, you certainly appear worse for wear. But you are relatively well, then, all things considered?” She nodded, and he sighed. “Thank the Goddess. That coward, upon his defeat at my hand, pushed me into the frigid river while I was distracted by the howl of the werewolf. It took me some time to finally crawl out of the rushing torrent. I came here as quickly as I was able, fearing the worst, only to learn that the battle with the Lycanthrope had already passed. You must tell me all that has transpired here in my absence.”

  A series of sudden, agonized screams slashed their way through the nighttime air. All eyes in the plaza looked toward the guttural sounds, which came from the direction of the church. Piers, once as still as a corpse, now twisted and writhed on the ground with some unseen agony, smearing the stone and snow alike with his pooled blood.

  “He yet lives!” Sybil said as she and Vlad rushed toward the tortured man. “I thought he had perished from his injuries.”

  They quickly reached the agonized bowman. Vlad knelt to the ground and assessed the man’s exposed leg, which peeked out from behind the torn cloth of his ruinous pants. Blood escaped from the gouges made by the werewolf’s fangs, flowing in regular pulsations that danced with the beat of the man’s heart.

  “Were that he was so fortunate,” the Plague doctor said.

  A handful of villagers followed them, and soon they all stood over the screaming, thrashing Piers. His human cries were soon joined by animalistic snarls and growls as his lips curled back, revealing an angry sneer of sharpened teeth. With great difficulty the archer repeatedly opened and closed his eyes, which were filled with rage despite each being a blank, milky white abyss. He gripped at his chest with his hand and tore away part of his clothing, slicing thin lines into his torso with his already sharpening fingers.

  Vlad looked at Sybil. “The werewolf’s bite has infected him with lycanthropy. He is transforming.”

  “So soon?”

  “In all cases I’ve heard of, the transformation did not take effect until at least the night following infection,” he said. “Perhaps the Celestial Curtain has hastened the process, or perhaps his otherwise fatal injuries have prompted his body to undergo the transformation early so that his lycanthropic state can help him recover. I cannot say for certain.”

  Sybil looked at the turning man, then back to her mentor. “What can we do for him, Mr. Albescu?”

  “There is only one thing that is left to be done.” He pulled his silver dagger from its sheath without hesitation. “We must end his suffering before he ever has a chance to know what it means to become a werewolf.”

  Sybil grimaced. “Has it truly come to that?”

  “Aye,” Vlad said. “Much like with vampyrism, the only cure for lycanthropy once contracted is the embrace of the Mother. To postpone this man’s death would only be to prolong his suffering.”

  Sybil contemplated this for a few seconds, then nodded. “Very well.” She hesitated for another brief moment. “I… I would like to do it myself, if that is alright.”

  Vlad looked surprised. “Are you certain, Night Owl?”

  “I am,” she said. “I failed to save this man once before, but I shall not fail him a second time. I owe this to him.”

  “Very well,” Vlad said. He sheathed his blade. “I do not place any blame on you for what has happened to this man—that entirely lies with Mr. Dupont—but I shall honor your request. But you must ask quickly. Every moment that we waste is another that he spends in torment, and we do not know how long we have before he will turn.”

  Sybil nodded. She drew her own dagger, which was still crusted with the lycanthrope’s blood, and stepped toward Piers, who continued to thrash and growl and spit and scream and paint the filthy ground with his own ichor. She held her blade over his chest, tip pointed down and ready to be plunged into his heart. But then she hesitated. She looked at his agonized face, which had already elongated slightly and was thickening with a layer of fur, but despite his rapidly occurring transformation, she still saw the human that was trapped inside of him, and which stared past her with his pained ivory eyes.

  “I can’t,” Sybil said. She leaned back and pulled her dagger away from his chest, then looked up at her mentor. “I cannot do it, Mr. Albescu. I’m sorry. I wanted to offer him this final peace, but I am unable to.”

  Vlad sighed. He drew his weapon again. “It is alright, Night Owl. This is not your burden to bear. I shall do it. Step away from him, please.”

  She willed her aching body to its feet and did as her mentor asked. Vlad knelt next to Piers in her place and emulated her earlier stance, raising the tip of his dagger above the man’s heaving chest. The Plague doctor gently placed a palm along the man’s face and allowed a brief glance into his eyes, then took his dagger back into both of his hands and plunged it downward. The silver blade handily punctured muscle and bone and dug itself into Piers’ heart. He continued to writhe for only a moment more, then his body went still. Vlad slowly pulled his now scarlet-coated dagger free of the dead man’s chest, prompting a gurgle of gore to escape from the new aperture as well as run down either side of his open mouth as a pair of dark, stygian rivulets. By the time the wound had settled, Piers’ features had returned back to their human state; his eyes had lost their milkiness, his face had shifted back to its previous shape, and the fur that had been growing along his body had quickly receded. He died as Piers the man, never knowing the true torment of the transformation that he had been saved from undergoing.

  Vlad closed the dead man’s eyes. Sybil then heard him speak those words that should have been hers to say, the words that had been her duty to say, but which she had failed to live up to. They were words that she had not yet earned, and as things stood, she was not certain that they would ever belong to her.

  “You have been set free.”