PART I
I have always thought that of all the creations of God’s hand, a full, round, radiant moon shinning so brightly in the night sky over a New York City skyline, or the tops of mighty trees or vast oceans, was by far God’s best work. It paints whatever it touches in a warm glow. Lovers kiss under it, little children peer to see the man in it, old religions made prayers to it, lunatics fall under its spell and howl at it with the coyotes, dogs, and wolves. Most are frightened by that cry of solitude, but I have felt it as a shout to confirm that a creature does exist somewhere under the night sky.
Since I was a child, growing up on a small dairy farm in upstate New York, the full moon of October—the harvest moon, the brightest of all moons—was always my favorite time of the month. I have always counted three nights of the moon at full and the nights before and after, it sharing its glow well and best on those nights. Even as a boy, it was the silvery moon of the harvest—the one in the song, peeling a soft silver color off on everything it shed its light on—that called most strongly to me. I could feel the hair on my neck tingling as early as August. By October, it was standing on end.
When I was twelve, I sneaked out of the house and spent the night in a field just watching it. My parents did not approve. A large mountain lion, the likes of which had not been seen in well over a century, attacked two cows, ripped them to shreds, and devoured the tastier parts not fifty yards from where I had sat. The Fish and Game Department ranger (or some such) that came down to examine the scene thought I must have fallen asleep, and in so doing was spared by the beast. As I lay there motionless, it passed by. Fine. Only I couldn’t remember falling asleep; I thought I was up all night.
They examined the cows and what tracks were left after an Adirondack rain, and decided that it had been a very big cat, despite the fact that what prints were left behind appeared more canine than feline and that there had not been a big cat of any sort in these hills in over two hundred years. But there hadn’t been a dog-like creature that large since the long-extinct dire wolves, so it had to be a cat! They combed our property for weeks with their mighty hunters and found not a single other sign of any animal large enough to do that kind of damage to a creature as big as a milk cow. It was as if the creature fell off the moon, killed the cattle and escaped right back to it.
What these mighty hunters had forgotten was that a creature’s paw print was actually a species’ finger print. There wasn’t a cat that large, outside of an African lion, anywhere! So the Department of Fish and Game decided it was “over;” the lion must have caught a bus back to Africa or Canada, and they let it go at that. My parents, however, decided it wasn’t over and didn’t let it go at that. No more moon watching for me! I was imprisoned in my room by sundown to sunrise until the end of the school year with nothing to do but study.
How strange it was to me. It bothered me to no end that I couldn’t get to the moonlight, but at best only watch the full, holy moon through a bedroom window. Watching the moon from a window hadn’t the same feel as standing in its light. The pull of Luna was constantly on me at the rising of the moon. For a week before, I became sad, angry, anxious, nauseas, weak, strong, and a whole range of emotions young boys are not noted for, unless they were disturbed people. I was snapping angrily at my friends at school and my parents at home. My folks wouldn’t relax my punishment, fearing that if the beast was somewhere still in the area I might not be so lucky if I pulled that moon-watching stunt again. But no more cattle were found torn up for the rest of my incarceration.
So for one week out of the moon… I mean month… I was uncharacteristically aggressive and vicious. My father, not having gotten a rational answer from me for a while, asked a local priest to come and talk to me. I almost threw him out physically. There was something about the man that irritated me beyond comprehension. I think it was made worse by his visit coinciding with the visit of the April full moon. The minute he sprinkled me with his blessed water, I jumped at him and struck him in the chest. The priest, a Jesuit over six feet tall, was picked up off the ground and bounced through the closed bedroom door.
Even I had to admit I was acting strangely. The incident with the priest scared me. I exploded at him with an animal’s anger. At first I told myself “that’s not me,” but a little voice inside whispered, “You know it is!” Yes. I did. But not why!
With the full moon of June, my imprisonment ended. The beast had not reappeared and was considered “gone.” So long as I was home by eight, I was free to walk in the moonlight, letting its pull on me fully free my spirit. By July of that summer I was changing again, but in very subtle ways. My job at the dairy was to take the cattle away and let them out to pasture after milking. Those old cows could be stubborn and a real problem for me to move. Now they seemed to turn and run from me, hurrying to the open pasture where, often, I did not follow. My old dog had always preferred to stay under a shady tree while I toiled. Nowadays he was always at my heel. We looked like a small pack of wild dogs, running through the fields and woods. I did most things on the run these days.
I developed a wander lust, going deep into the forests. I always knew where I was, where I was going to, even though I’d never had the courage to go this far into the forests before. I seemed to sense when I was not alone in the woods, and whether what was on my “turf” was human or animal; man or bear or dog, I knew where they were going or what they were doing. I could smell campers lighting a grill three valleys away; burning beef, pork or chicken from two miles away. And I knew how not to be found when it was… inconvenient to be found. But no matter how far I roamed, I always returned before the supper hour, which protected me from my parent’s suspicions, though I needed little food and less sleep. More and more I’d wake in a cold sweat and sit on the edge of my bed and just stare at the blossoming moon so high and far away. Often, I would slip out my bedroom window and climb easily to the roof.
By the light of the August moon, the creature returned. It killed and ate two more of our dairy cows, ripping them mercilessly and spraying blood fifty yards in all directions. Then for dessert… it pushed its way through the screen door of our kitchen, ripped my parents to shreds in a blood-lusted frenzy the likes of which the State Troopers had never seen, again spared me, and returned to the moon. Their screams had been heard in the next farmstead, a mile away. Oddly, I never heard a thing.
I spent my high school years at the tiny local school. Of the nineteen senior graduates, three of us traded the forests of the Adirondack for the jungle of New York City colleges. Cain Turner and Stacy Conklin had academic scholarships. I had the insurance payoff from my parents’ unfortunate demise. I had stayed with the farm, though I no longer operated the dairy. I got rid of the cows and gained an old maiden aunt so I didn’t have to go to foster care. To the old girl’s credit, when most people were terrified to even come into the house, she was willing to spend her last days taking care of me… and sleeping with a loaded twelve-gauge next to her bed. In my senior year, when I was legal and adult, Aunt Claire died of a sudden heart attack. She’d been in perfect health for a seventy-four year old woman. The doctor said it was as if she had seen or heard something that had scared her to death.
All through those years, I kept quietly changing, spending whole nights sitting in a field studying the moon. At odd intervals the creature would return, eat a cow or two or maybe the odd farmer or camper, then disappear without a trace. It got a mention in the local press, another Adirondack Big Foot, and became an attraction for crackpot TV monster hunters. Be that as it may, my senior year Guidance Counselor, who knew of my passions for the night sky, suggested I major in Astronomy at NYU. It was logical.
That last summer on the farm was an eye opener for me. Aunt Claire was gone, my parents, even my old dog—Rover went as a hors d’oeuvre for the creature; I was alone in the world. The emptiness of the house at time made me feel like I was entombed, and I’d take off to spend the night in the forest. I could breathe freely in the wooded dimness. Darkness no longer bothered me. I saw quite well in it, I suppose from the many dark hours I spent in the forest at night. I began to worry about what would happen when I was set adrift in a world filled with people and no forests to escape into. I felt myself, though, getting stronger and more aggressive with every passing moon. And while there were no more cow killings or murders, I could almost sense a dark presence near and around me. Once, the second night of July’s full moon, I was certain it followed me through the night woods right to my front porch. When I turned to look, there was nothing but shadows behind me.
My freshman year at NYU was an astonishing thing. I did well in all my subjects, but it was Comparative Literature and a half-crazy professor that took me to a higher level of thinking.
That October Moon, on Chelsea Piers, there was a triple murder of a local worker and two tourists from Jersey at three in the morning. Evidently, they had hung around after The Chelsea Brewery had closed to absorb the ambiance of the grand old city. It was the worst mistake of their young lives. Even hard-core New Yorkers were appalled by the berserk carnage; heads and arms ripped off and bodies split open, not with a sharp-bladed instrument like a knife or machete, but raked by some sort of huge claw—except for the faces, which seemed to have been caught in clamp-like jaws, crushed, and held until their necks broke or they suffocated. What really rattled the NYPD was the third victim, who had probably still been alive when whatever it was that had attacked started eating her.
The NYPD was not the NY Fish and Game Department. They weren’t buying the “big cat” theory. They didn’t know who or what, but they quickly figured out that it was not a cat, no matter what Fish and Game insisted.
On the second night of that full moon, something ran through an underpass in a park that sheltered several homeless men. It left a pile of half-eaten people and an old drunk who was ripped into pieces. He lived long enough to be found by a child on his way to school the next morning. The child ran for the cops—and then straight for a psychiatrist. The drunk finally bled to death before the ambulance arrived, but had time enough to beg a cop to shoot him. Some old-timers observing the cops told the press it might have been a good thing he died; there weren’t enough parts left to build even half a man.
There was an outcry to find this thing that nobody had seen or knew. I hadn’t seen, but I knew. Something stirred inside. The smell of blood, perhaps. I took to wandering the streets around my dorm at nights almost as if I was looking for something.
It was the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest piece of written human literature known, that gave me my first hint of what this thing might be. The hero Gilgamesh spurned the romantic advances of the goddess Ishtar. Ishtar, having turned one of her previous lovers, a shepherd, into a wolf thus making him the enemy of his friends, his sheep, and even his own dogs, was reason enough for the hero to give Ishtar a wide birth. The professor asked if anyone knew what this was about. I never even raised my hand. The word “werewolf” fell from my lips. The class erupted into laughter which was quickly squelched by the professor.
“Yes! Werewolf! The first real piece of written literature, and it mentions the darkest of evils. A Werewolf, a lycanthrope, the unfortunate human with the ability to shape-shift into a wolf or a wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under the curse or affliction by a bite from another lycanthrope. In Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, a voyager visits the home of King Lycaon of Acadia. Lycaon thinks that the visitor is an immortal, so he devises a test. He serves his guest human meat, a strong taboo to the Greeks. Unfortunately Lycaon was right, and his guest turns out to be the god Jupiter. Jupiter immediately recognizes human flesh, and he transforms Lycaon into a wolf. Lycaon's name and the word ‘lycanthropy’ both come from the same root—the Greek word ‘lykos,’ meaning ‘wolf.’
“In Russia, it’s bears,” he continued. “In India and China, it’s tigers, and the American Indians, even Eskimos, all have tales. Every culture on the planet has a myth or legend about the shape-shifter. Yet none offer a clear explanation of what it is, what it does, or…”
“Doctor Boreese, how does the moon figure into the myth?”
“The moon? If you ask me as your teacher, I’d say it’s ridiculous to ask that, it’s a myth. We all know it’s a myth. But ask me as a friend who’s been studying the paranormal for… a long time, and I’d tell you it depends on the species.” He paused. “See me after class. We’ll talk more.”
I really didn’t want to talk more. There were thoughts in my head I really didn’t want to share. The moment the session was finished, I bolted. I was starting to feel the same gnawing in my gut that I had felt with the priest. Talking to Boreese was not a good idea.
I’d had a roommate my first week in the dorm, but he’d found a boyfriend and had moved out. That was okay with me; solitude had become a part of my life. From my dorm room window I had a great view of the moon in all its phases. We’d past the last night of the full moon phase, so I assumed the city was safe. I sat on the edge of my bed, studied the waning phases of Luna, and tried to put together all that I knew of the beast that had killed my family. It was big. It was as fascinated with the full moon as I was. It manifested itself at the full moon, but not every moon as far as I knew. It ate most of what it killed, either beast or man, and mangled as it slaughtered. My mind went back to the classroom. “Werewolf” had been in the back of my mind for unadmitted years, and the question in class brought it right to the surface.
Watching the moon outside my window, I remember telling myself, “You don’t have to figure it all out tonight, the moon isn’t full,” and I fell asleep sitting on my bed.
Imagine my surprise when I awoke to shouts that two students had been torn apart and eaten in Washington Square Park, right next to NYU and six stories under my dorm room window.
I cornered Doctor Boreese at a beat up old eatery by the college the next day, pushed into the booth, and slid to the wall. He was easy enough to find. According to his tradition, he went to the same café every morning, 7/52, to read an actual newspaper, drink four cups of coffee, and smoke half of a pack of Chesterfields. He’d become famous for putting his butts out in his coffee and then drinking the coffee. That was the rumor, anyway. He put his butts out in the extra saucer they gave him. There was no smoking allowed, but there were so few patrons this time of morning, and he left such a big tip every day, that they let him sit by the window and smoke his brains out. By muscling my way in, I had distorted the rest of his tradition. But for a moment I thought he’d been expecting me to do just that. He began without a question—even a ‘Good Morning’—from me.
“The persecution of Werewolves is an integral part of the ‘witchhunt’ experience, although a trivial component. Assertions of Werewolfery are involved in only a small portion of witchcraft trials—witches riding wolf familiars, stuff like that. But it acknowledges their existence, and the human awareness of it. I doubt any real connections though, more fancy than fact. I can’t see a Werebeast offering a witch a ride. Folk have been trying to deal with these shape-shifters since our days in the cave.
“You asked about the moon,” he continued. “As much as I know, an inflicted being only initially transforms during the phases of the full moon… for about five or six years, or until he or she accepts that they are now part of a separate species and no longer truly human. In the end, they change… anytime, anywhere. They seem to draw strength from the full moon, but after the full transformation, once they’ve accepted their change, they need little of the moon to shape-shift. The creature tied to you is…”
The expression on my face stopped Doc B. dead in his tracks. I’ve never thought of this thing as being “tied” to me. I’d never even mentioned my experiences to the Doctor.
“It’s not tied to—”
“Wake up boy, an old paranormalist like me recognizes names, knows a history of families, keeps up with his Fish and Game Department reports, and IT IS tied to you—and you know it is. For all I know, you’re the Werewolf! You’ve been changing for years, right, that moon thing…” I stared at him; that gnawing feeling in my chest was growing. The man’s face relaxed. “Maybe not. Those changes might be caused by something else.”
I sat there with him in silence for a moment. Folk coming in for coffee and buttered rolls or passing by the open window were all talking about what had happened last night. New Yorkers, who thought they had seen it all, hadn’t seen anything… anything… like this.
“Doc,” I said, getting morose, “how does someone, uh…”
“How does someone kill this thing? Are you really sure you want to know?” I nodded. He pushed back in his chair until the front two legs lifted off the ground and he was sitting like an old-time sheriff in the movies.
“You probably know already…”
“A silver bullet in the heart!”
“Well, yeah, if you have the money to buy silver bullets, but lead is superior in my opinion, it expands better on contact. If you take a sharp knife and cut a cross in the bullet, it’s more effective. Most people think that it’s the cross, but it actually makes a real good dum-dum out of the round, expanding to three times its entry size on impact. When Hollywood released the first Werewolf movie, the Lone Ranger and his silver bullets were big, so they went with that. No. The same things that kill a man will kill the beast… only you need a whole lot more of it. Someone doesn’t need to know if what he’s doing will kill the Werewolf, no. The real question is whether or not they can kill the Werewolf before it kills them! A human being is tough, but he isn’t built to last; werewolves are. In their shifted shape, their muscle mass is greater, they’re faster, more of everything… including human!”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Why do you think the werecreature scares the hell out of all of us? Forget all the Hollywood crap. Inside this vile form is a human being that must coexist with it, trapped, perhaps for eternity. The beast is not fully bestial. The being inside will eventually accept and fully realize it’s another species. Until then, there’s a corrupted being inside that helps guide it, picks who to kill and who to spare… and who to turn. It hates the humanity it can no longer be a part of. The poor asshole being eaten alive sees all that hate in its eyes. It ain’t a good way to die.”
I was going to question him some more when a disheveled young man wearing an old Princeton jacket came in and walked up to the doctor. “It’s a four-hundred-pounder, at least, Doc. Went through those two students like a hot knife through butter.” Boreese’s eyes widened in an alert to the new soldier. I was pressed into the far corner of the booth. The young man hadn’t seen me.
“Right, Charley. Run along and I’ll meet you at Uncle Merl’s after class.” The young man nodded and ran out, buying a cup of coffee on the way. Doctor Boreese began repacking the books and papers spread from corner to corner of the table back into a satchel that had never been designed to carry that much information. “I’ve got a class. Just remember, the things that will kill a man will kill a Werewolf—only you need more of it, a lot more. A bullet to the chest won’t do it; emptying a thirty round magazine twice… might! Sharp pointy things like knives, swords, and spears will work if you hit ’em right, but you’ve got to get in close to use them, meaning it’ll kill you before you get a chance. If you do get a point into it, you’ll probably just piss it off and it’ll hurt you more before it devours you. Drowning it, burning it, electrocution… all workable, if you can trap it in a cage—which is an impossibility. Don’t waste your time with poison, they can smell it. Whatever you try? Be confident, but don’t get cocky. Overconfidence kills more Werewolf hunters than Werewolves! But remember—we’re talking hypothetically, there are no such things as Werewolves, right?”
“So there isn’t a ‘best way’ or a simple formula to stop this thing?”
The man rose and leaned forward across the table until were almost face to face. “Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Drop a safe from the top of a bank. It’s basic physics; the heavier the safe is, multiplied by the quicker the safe is falling, equals the greater possibility of a dead Werewolf… if you can get it to stand still long enough for the safe to land.” He smiled, nodded and turned to go, but stopped. “Oh. A high-quality sniper from a good distance might work if he can get off a head shot. Sever the brain from the spinal cord, sweet. If he misses, he’s dead. Especially if he’s shooting from the branches of a tree. Werewolves are great tree climbers.”
I cut my first classes after talking to Boreese that day. I left and wandered the streets, eventually finding myself in a blood-soaked Washington Square Park. I had seen this creature’s work before in my own house. It was mayhem. But looking around, what little finesse it’d had was either lost or disregarded. I could see by the patterns laid out that it had also lost any fear it might once have had for humans. Under the light of the October sun I could see that this beast, under cover of the darkness, had rushed in to murder the pair, rip them apart—and before anyone could catch a glimpse, tore off his favorite parts and dragged them away at an unbelievable speed to a place where he could eat undisturbed. It wasn’t until the rising of the sun that the bloodstains that led away could be seen on the ground, and the cops had followed the trail to a pile of gnawed bones. It had watched the screaming people and frantic cops… and judged them unworthy of its attention.
By early afternoon, I had walked across Central Park to the Upper West Side, to the Museum of Natural History. The little voice inside told me that there was something there to find. What I found there were two very shady looking characters that I’d seen as I wandered past the Central Park Zoo. They were dark skinned, denim clad, and one had a deeply-cut scar running from ear to ear that screamed “knife fight.” They reminded me of the Mohawk Indian high steel workers I’d seen when I’d first come to the city. They made no attempt to disguise their interest in me. So before they “rolled” me, I hailed a cab back to the dorm.
The answering machine in my room had all kinds of messages. My friends from home, both of whom I had known since Kindergarten, had called several times, worried about how these tragic nightmare murders might be affecting me. Stacy had gone to the Manhattan School of Music, and Cain to City College. Both schools are off of Broadway about fifteen blocks apart, so they were neighbors, sort of. They saw each other at least twice a month. I was up by 4th Street and Washington Square Park; it was quite a hike, so I’d had to settle for phone calls.
All through High School, I had slowly developed a soft spot for Stacy. She was a shyish girl who watched over me like a sister, especially after the murders of my parents. A couple of times we’d dated, and while I think she wanted more, nothing came of it. She was an all around good person. For that matter, so was Cain Turner. He was the town athlete, scholar, lover… and, I supposed now, he was the big man on campus. But back in the day, Cain almost beat the cops to my house after the murders. His folks lived in the nearest farmstead to us. Cain heard the screams and came running. I admired him for that. Even in my more anti-social phases, Cain had kept an eye on me and stayed close. Often I ran into him in the forests. Sometimes I wondered if he was following me, or watching out for me.
I returned the calls. Stacy was home, Cain wasn’t, so I left messages expressing my well being.
Between the stress of thinking I might have killed and eaten my parents and all the walking I had done, I was physically exhausted and very uneasy. As the sun hid from the ascending moon, darkness began to invade my room, and again I heard only the silence of the tomb fill in what air was left. In short order my dorm room was illuminated only by Luna’s yielding glow. The softly lit darkness was oddly comforting. I sat on the edge of my bed, watching the moon rise and staring at the back of my hands, half expecting them to grow hair and six-inch claws as I watched.
My head was filled with the dark thoughts of man-beasts, blood lusts, and bizarre transformations. Doc Boreese had indicated that there was a human mind trapped in the wolf’s head directing it. Was that me? Had I done that killing? I’d heard nothing, seen nothing, felt nothing, and remembered nothing when these atrocities had been committed. Had the human part of me shut out all the evil? Boreese had said, “The being inside will eventually accept and fully realize it is another species.” Was that me? Or was this all just brutal coincidence?
The moon had risen to its zenith when I fell into a disturbed sleep, still sitting up. When I awoke, face down on the floor, this thing had killed a babysitter… and devoured two young children.
I cut all my classes on the second day and stayed in bed until noon, just turning things over in my mind. Then I called Cain and Stacy. I asked them to meet me around 3 PM at the bench we’d sat on in Central Park when we first arrived in the city. I needed to talk to people who knew almost as much as I did about the creature.
The children were taken in SoHo. It had been called “Hell’s Hundred Acres” a long time ago. SoHo had gone through some changes since the Hell’s Acres’ days of working children to death in sweatshops—now they were eaten by wolves. SoHo was a collection of popular restaurants and boutiques along with cheap NYC hotels like the Hampton Inn, where the murders had occurred. This thing wasn’t helping the New York tourist trade. I took a cab through the Park to SoHo. Finding the Hampton Inn wasn’t difficult. I got out where the cops turned the traffic away and walked the last two blocks. They’d put up barricades about half a block away, so I stood behind one of the wooden horses and watched, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Every detective in New York and half of the FBI were digging and scratching for any clue: a fingerprint, a footprint, anything. But SoHo and its metal-structured buildings weren’t giving away anything.
I was there for about half an hour when I started feeling eyes on the back of my neck. There was an autumn coldness in the air, and I could feel my backbone starting to chill, yet my palms felt hot, hotter than I ever remembered them getting. I saw a strange shadow pass me. I slowly looked behind me. About three rows back was the same man I’d seen in the park, scar and all. With him was another man; I was certain he was an American Indian, too. I waited a few minutes, started talking to a cop, and talked all the way back to his patrol car. Before my two shadows could come up, I hopped a cab and took off.
I pointed the cabbie towards Central Park. I couldn’t see past the driver’s turban, and it was making me nervous. It was a weird anxiousness I felt, like a hunter anticipating his prey, and I had to see perfectly in all directions. I had him drop me off at one of the entrances to the Park. Then I ran all the way to the bench where I was supposed to meet Stacy and Cain. I ran as fast as I could to try and lose the horrible apprehensive feeling growing in my chest. All it did was make me to hyperventilate. It was two o’clock when I reached my destination. I was early and alone.
It had been overcast all morning and now it drizzled, growing stronger into a light rain as it fell. There were few people about. I could feel that inside me. What few people were in the park were running for cover from the rain and away from me. I just knew. I sat on the bench and let the rain fall on me for the better part of an hour as the anxiety inside me grew. I had thrown away my jacket on the run. The cold, wet shirt pressing on my chest was becoming very irritating. I clawed at it and it started to tear, yet still I clawed. I stood up to my full height and frantically raised my arms above my head to make myself appear even taller and extend my muscles to their max. My eyes were not focusing, and I heard the sounds of an animal, a big animal, crush the wet plants down as it moved at a fast pace.
It was then I looked up with slowly clearing eyes and recognized my friend, Cain Turner, standing in front of me. The body fell away… and I had his head in my hand. I could feel hot blood covering my face and neck and felt my stomach turn and heard the sound of bones crushing. As my vision began to focus more, I heard jaws snapping right below my nose and felt more warm blood running down my face. What transpired next was a gift from whatever created us and watches over all.
The teeth gnashing and snapping weren’t mine, and I found myself staring into two putrid yellow eyes. Something flew by my ear and struck the jaws right at the shoulder with such force the teeth flew backwards and away from my face. The air was filled with a howl so cold to the blood that I almost let loose in my drawers. But that wasn’t the only sound filling the air. There were war cries and battle calls. The two Indians that I’d run from had tracked me. One had thrown a lance into… what?! It looked like a pug-nosed wolf. I couldn’t tell with my still-fuzzy vision if it went on two or four legs, as it was in a crouch. It was spinning like a dog chasing its own tail as it shook loose the lance. The Indian with the scar pulled me down and stood over me, a knife in one hand and a stone ax in the other. His friend bounded over both of us and, spear in hand, met the creature head-on. At point blank range, the warrior drove his lance straight through the beast’s heart and right out the back. The beast, almost as a reflex, swung its massive paw and took the warrior’s head off, blood spilling out in all directions. But the Indian had injured it severely. It howled and was gone in a flash. Almost immediately, I started feeling better. I sat up on my elbows.
The remaining Indian slid his long-bladed knife back into its sheath, though he still held the ax firmly. Reaching into the pocket of his denim shirt, he extracted what I thought was a pack of cigarettes. He raised the whole package to his lips.
“Big Red One, this is Red Three. Brave down, but Paleface has been saved. I need help NOW.” And then I heard, “Roger that, Red Three.”
The warrior with the neck scar looked down at me. “Let’s hope they get here before it comes back.” He put the device back in his pocket and filled his hand with the knife again. He pushed the head of the warrior back against its place on the shoulders and knelt beside his fallen friend. Raising his weaponed fist to the raining sky, he screamed.
In scant seconds a small tribe was running towards us. I’d crawled on to the bench. Scar stopped shaking his fist and sat down next to me. “You got any Indian blood in you?”
“Yeah, I’m the great-grandson of Chief Hokawristwatch; he was a Pawnee. See?” I held out my hands. They were whiter than marble.
I saw him grin. “Pawnee! Good one, Paleface.” I looked around; we were surrounded by Indians. I saw the grin fall off his face. “The warrior lying there dead will be remembered by the Clan of the Ghost Wolf as Shoemowetochawcawe. The name means ‘High Backed Wolf.’ He was a Cheyenne Brave. He walked across our great country with his brother to join us as our tracker. He had a gift, and he’ll be missed for that gift… and as a man and a friend.”
He circled his finger in the air as if pointing to all who had come up. “They call me Hache hi, ‘Wolf.’ We’re the Clan of the Ghost Wolf when we’re not working the high steel.”
“You’re Mohawks!” I said.
“Yup. Algonquin Mohawks. The name ‘Mohawk’ translates as ‘Flesh Eater.’ When you whites got here, you thought we ate the dead of our enemies. So our tribe, the Kanion'ke haka, our original tribal name, became Mohawk, a bad name for us to hear. Even other tribes thought we ate human flesh—though nobody’d say it to our faces!”
A short, thin young man, who had been praying over the fallen warrior, looked up. “My guess is that other tribes’ hunters would see them in the forests kneeling over half-eaten human beings and thought the Mohawk had eaten them. But the Mohawk warriors were hunting Werewolves. They’d been guardians of the human beings for centuries.”
“That’s Honiahaka, Red Seven, 'Little Wolf,' our other Cheyenne warrior and brother of High Backed Wolf. That’s Rowtag. The name means ‘Fire,’ he’s Red Four. The big guy there is Red Five, Machk, ‘Bear.’ Red Six, Mingan, ‘Gray Wolf.’ And him?” He pointed to the elderly man chanting and shaking rattles over both corpses. “That’s the Big Red One. Powaw. ‘Priest!’ Soon you’ll meet old Kaniehtakeron, our witch man. We’re not allowed our Christian names when the Ghost Wolf Clan is hunting. The wolf is still part human, and knowing our names would not be safe for our families. Mohawk warriors have done this since before the Christ, before the Pyramids, before men had laws to curb their savagery, back to a time when history was drawn on cave walls. Welcome to the club, ‘Paleface.’ There’s a killer wolf on the loose you need to help us catch. By the way, white man, you’re taking High Back Wolf’s place as Red Two.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
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