Great hunters of a generation, human, werewolf, or other, sought to win their honor or prove their courage-and they died. Some came to visit vengeance for lost loved ones. They died. Even the fools who didn’t understand, who were unlucky enough to venture too close to the monster, they died, too.
Then one day, or so he’d heard, Bran had walked out of the wilderness, his son at his side. No more berserker, only a harper, a teller of tales, and lone wolf.
Given enough time, even the most horrific story drifts to legend, then nothing. Asil was pretty sure that he was the only one, except for Samuel, of course, who knew enough to understand just what it was that the witch had done.
She thought she had the Marrok under her control. But then, Mariposa had always rewritten reality to suit her.
“What did you say?” Mariposa was white and visibly exhausted, but her leash was strong and unbreakable.
“Beowulf,” he told her. “Roughly translated it is, I believe…‘from his eyes shone a flaming, baleful light.’ I’m not a poet to do the translation in verse.”
She looked suspiciously at Bran, but saw only eyes so dull they were more brown than amber. Asil knew it, because he kept looking himself.
Death would flow through the world as it had not since the Black Plague, when a third of Europe had died. And there would be no peace for a werewolf in this world ever again.
“You are afraid,” she told him. “As you should be. For now I allow you to be yourself-but if you continue to trouble me, I will make you my pet, as I have made him. Pets are less useful than Sarai, incapable of responding to anything except direct orders-I had planned on making you a guardian, like Sarai. You’d best be careful I don’t change my mind.”
She thought he was afraid of her. And he had been, until the monster she had created surpassed her. She had no idea.
She took two steps toward Asil, then slapped him hard. He made no move to defend himself. She was hampered somewhat by her size, but she hit him at full strength, Sarai’s strength. Reflexively, he licked the blood from his lip.
“That is for lying to me about who this werewolf was. It is the Marrok, not some stupid lesser wolf. You knew, you knew-and you let me believe him to be someone else. He might have hurt me. And you are supposed to keep me safe, have you forgotten? I was given into your keeping so you could make me safe.”
Eventually, old wolves lost touch with reality. The first crisis was when all the people they had known died, and there was no one left who had known them when they were human. The second came at different times to different wolves, when the change in the world left them no place where they could feel at home.
And Mariposa had never been stable, even before she killed Sarai. However, if she thought he wanted to keep her safe…truly she was mad.
“But your betrayal didn’t really matter,” she told him with a girlish toss of her head. “I can keep myself safe, too. This one is mine.” She glanced at Bran. “Change. I want to see your face. I’ve never been able to find a photo of you, Bran Cornick.”
Asil found himself holding his breath as his Alpha obeyed. Would the pain of the change be the straw that allowed the monster to break free of her chains?
They waited in the cold, Asil, his shadow-mate, and the witch as the change happened. Their breath rose like steam, reminding him for some silly reason of the time, years ago, that Bran took the Marrok pack, all the wolves who belonged only to him, in a hired bus to stay at the big hotel in Yellowstone Park in the dead of winter. He’d rented all the rooms so they could run and howl all night in the snow-covered geyser basin with no one to see them but a few buffalo and elk.
“You can’t hide in your hothouse all the time,” he’d told Asil, when Asil politely requested not to go. “You have to make new memories sometimes.”
Asil closed his eyes and prayed for the first time since Sarai had been taken from him-though he’d once been a truly devout man. He prayed that Allah would not allow Bran to become such a monster that he destroyed his careful creation of a home, a haven for his wolves.
When Asil opened his eyes at last, Bran stood naked in the snow. He wasn’t shivering, though it was only a few degrees above zero, well below freezing. His skin was pale and thin, showing the blue veins that carried blood back to his heart. There were a few scars, one that ran across his ribs and one just under his right arm.
“Pretty enough body,” said Mariposa. “But you all have those, you wolves. A little more delicate than I like my men.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I was expecting something…a little more impressive. A Marrok should be…” She looked at Asil. “More like Hussan. A man other people turn their heads to watch. A man who makes other men walk wary. Not one who needs his son to impress visitors and do his killing. You see, I’ve done my research. When I heard that, I knew that you were too weak to hold all those packs on your own.”
She was trying to goad Bran, Asil thought incredulously. Testing her hold to make sure there was no more independence in her slave. Hyperventilating wasn’t going to help matters, Asil told himself a little desperately. Couldn’t she see the monster inside the still exterior?
The only thing that kept him from panic was the knowledge that her assessment of him was more likely to amuse Bran than enrage him. Of course, Bran was not exactly himself anymore.
“Can you change back?” she asked Bran when he made no response to her judgment. “I don’t have shoes for you, and I’d prefer not to have to cut off your feet because of frostbite.”
“Yes.” Bran slurred the word, dragging out the last sound, almost as if he were drunk.
She waited for him to start, but finally gave an impatient sound, and said, “Do so.”
Before he had completed the change she motioned Sarai to her and climbed on her back as if her guardian were a donkey. Asil bit back his anger, anger that was too large for the small attack on Sarai-who-was-not-Sarai’s dignity. He glanced nervously at Bran and tried very hard to be calm.
“When he is finished changing, the two of you catch up with us.”
Sarai brushed against him, leaving behind a flood of affection and worry. As soon as she was out of sight, he felt that insidious anger ramp up-as if Sarai’s presence had helped calm Bran, as if she were still the Omega she had once been…and why not?
He dropped to one knee and bowed his head, hoping against hope that when the other werewolf arose, he would still be bound, by the witch or his own will.
Though he dare not do it with the proper motion, and it had been a long time since he’d been a good Muslim, he could not stop the impulse to pray. “Allaahu Akbar-”
THE witch flung out her hands, and even as far away as Charles was, he could feel the stain of her magic- corrupt and festering magic, but powerful. Very powerful.
Charles saw his father fall-and then Bran was gone.
He froze. Breathless with the suddenness of it. The cool presence that had been there for as long as he could remember left a huge, empty silence. His lungs didn’t want to move, but suddenly he could get air in and all Brother Wolf wanted was to howl to the heavens.
Charles fought and fought to keep Brother Wolf quiet, but there was an odd undercurrent of savage rage that he’d never felt before, deeper and darker than the usual violent urges; and he understood, or hoped he did.
Bran wasn’t gone. He was Changed.
His father mostly talked of the present or near present. Ten years, twenty, but not a hundred or more. It was something Charles had grown to appreciate as he himself grew older.
But Samuel could sometimes be persuaded to tell stories to his younger brother. And Bran as berserker had been one of his favorite stories until he’d grown old enough to understand that it wasn’t just a story. If it weren’t for that story, he might have been tempted to overlook the darkness seeping into him, he might have thought that Bran had truly been broken.
