PART II

The rain was falling fairly hard now, which was good, as it helped wash some of the blood off of my face and neck.  It was time to go.  The bodies had been sanctified so that if the wolf returned, it wouldn’t be able to eat them.  Rowtag did a 911 call from his cell phone.  Let the police find and dispose of the corpses properly, return them to their families.  The Clan of the Ghost Wolf had gone undiscovered since time began, and now was not the time to be found out.  It wasn’t the type of organization that wanted team T-shirts and jackets floating around.  That was for vain Americans who thought Werewolves only existed in the movies.

We had only gone a few feet when a young woman’s gasp stopped our progress.  I had forgotten Stacey was meeting me here as well.  Arriving late, she’d been spared the confrontation—and probably her life.  She was looking past us at the two corpses.  Then she bent over in a way that made me think she was going to vomit.  I started to walk towards her, but Wolf reached out and grabbed me.  “Whoa, boy!  You know her?”  His eyes rolled in the direction of Stacy.

I nodded.  “We grew up together with the dead white man over there.”  I pointed at Cain.

There was a strange look on Wolf's face, but his hand slid off my shoulder.

Stacy was fixated on the dead bodies.  That much gore would fixate anyone.  I’d never seen her cry before.  It bothered me.  Putting an arm around her shoulders, I helped her walk towards a park exit.  She was staggering and looked like she was going to pass out.  “I’ll explain it all in a while,” was all I said.  Still surrounded by the Clan, I put her in a cab, handed the cabbie a fifty dollar bill, and told him not to stop driving until he reached her school.  I told Stacy to stay in her dorm, lock the door, and I’d call her in a day or so.  It was nearly four o’clock as the cab pulled away, and the sun was growing dull.

“Fifty bucks?  You must have a hell of an after school job, Paleface!” Bear grunted at me.

“Nah.  Insurance money,” I mumbled, starting to chill as the adrenaline wore off.

Gray Wolf was still watching the cab drive away, though it was two blocks gone.  “Let’s get outa here, guys.  When the sun falls, that thing is going to be very angry we stole its food, completely healed, and ten times more powerful under the moon.”

We traveled through crowded New York City streets toward an unknown destination.  After all I’d seen, I was expecting some mysterious cave, forgotten subway tunnels, or the Fortress of Solitude.  I was more than a little surprised to be walking into a hard-hat bar by a construction site.  There was still enough light from the setting sun outside to make the tavern seem darker than it was, and my eyes lost focus.  We pushed two small square tables together and sat as Wolf waved to the waitress, a very pretty dark-skinned girl wearing an “Abenaki Indians Rocked” sweat shirt.  “Suzy!  Two pitchers.  Paleface is payin’.”

I was taken by surprise.  “I am?”

“You think your life is worth two pitchers of beer?”  Gray Wolf had leaned in across the table.  “Mine’s worth at least that, and High Back Wolf was worth at least four or five.”  His voice was tinged with anger and frustration.

“That’s enough, Gray Wolf.  The Paleface has been carrying the weight of Hell’s pet by himself.  He doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand.”  Wolf looked at his fellow.

His eyes fell.  “Sorry, Paleface.”

I shook my hand at Gray Wolf to let him know I wasn’t offended.  I poured a beer and pushed it towards him.  We all sat in stillness and drank, the stillness spreading through the room as quickly as the evening gloom.  Even though darkness was falling, the high-steel workers hadn’t come off the job yet to break the silence we’d carried in.

I was engulfed in a cloak of shock that was slowly wearing off.  As the waitress brought another round, I realized I was fairly covered in gore.  I was pulling my splattered clothing to try and hide it from the waitress.  Little Wolf put a hand on my shoulder.  “Don’t worry, she’s used to it.  We were twice as many three years ago.”

“Nobody asks where they went?  Nobody wants to know why you’re covered with blood, Wolf?”

“The bar is owned by a Mohawk of Kahnawake, an Indian reserve outside of Montreal.  When these creatures first appeared centuries ago, it wasn’t far from your parents’ farm, or so our traditions tell us.”  Wolf turned and reached into a sack the priest wore.  He pulled out an rolled animal skin, amazingly old, on which a map had been sketched.  “This is roughly New York State in about 1700.  Look.”

The map was broken down into tribal lands.  The Mohawks controlled thirty percent or more of the land the twelve tribes divided throughout the state.  The Mohawk lands ran south from nearly Delaware, north to almost the Canadian border, and right through the heart of Hamilton County where my parents had our home.  “These wolves, as far as we can tell, first appeared eons ago, and people still tell of how in ancient times, just one wiped out almost half a good-sized village in one attack.  The warriors had never seen such a wolf.  It was more than two years before they realized it was as much human as wolf.  It possessed traits of the wolf, going downwind before attack, but it thought like a man.  So they stopped hunting it like a wolf and tracked it down as they would an enemy or a man possessed of evil spirits.  Ten thousand years later, as far as we can tell, it’s still the best way to catch them.  Anyway, the New York Mohawks got good at werewolf hunting, so the creatures seemed to migrate north into Canada.  Canadian Mohawks know all about the man-beast.”  He waved to the bartender.  “We’re welcomed and safe here.”

I was staring at Wolf.  He looked up from the map.  “What?”

“So now, you guys hang out in a downtown New York bar to plan your moves?  I would have thought at least the Bat Cave, dancing half-naked around a fire!”

Little Wolf put his palms on his face.  “I bet this guy thinks Indians stay in teepees all day stringing beads and eating buffalo meat.”  His hands dropped.  “Paleface, you need to take this seriously.  This Hell-dog killed my kin with one swing of a claw, a claw as big as your head.  He’d be eating him right now if Priest hadn’t sanctified the body.  Get as serious as death, white man.  This creature wants you dead.  We can’t kill it, only you can!”

“For whatever reason, for the last fifty years werewolves have been migrating down south from the Canadian forests back to their homeland.  So far we’ve trapped and killed all the Canadian transplants.  This is the first American wolf we’ve crossed.  High Back Wolf knew he was probably committing suicide protecting you.  His spear missed the creature’s heart by an inch, which might have killed it—stop the heart, you stop a life.  It was the only chance he had.  But he crippled it, badly.  That’s why it ran.  Paleface, it’s all up to you now.  You’re the only one who can completely kill it.  This wolf’s different from anything I’ve encountered!  You?”  He looked around the tables where all the warriors were shaking their heads.

“Why me?  Why do I have to kill it?”

“It’s kill or be killed!”  His voice was angry—more at the werewolf than me, I think.  “You are to it as it is to you!  We don’t know how, we don’t know why.  It’s as if the universe blinked when it was deciding if it needed another werewolf and it went all yin and yang.  It’s hell to kill these creatures, but we can do it.  But this one, no!  We tried when it was still roaming your farm.  And I gotta tell you, Paleface, you were our number one suspect.  Then Old Kaniehtakeron, our witch man, said ‘no,’ you were a reflection in a mirror to fool us.  Since the first time it appeared, you’ve felt its presence growing ever stronger.  Yes?”

“Yes.”

“You have many of the wolf’s gifts.  Senses most folk don’t.  Yes?”

“Yes.”

“You lose consciousness when it is killing, if it’s near.  You had little or no remorse at the death of your family, your aunt.  It can hide your true feelings.  And tell me you weren’t thinking you were doing these killings!  It’s a part of you, and if you don’t stop it, you’re dead already.  You felt your power growing as its power grew.”

I nodded.  A cell phone rang in Priest’s sack.  He answered it and rose.

“Central Park.  Let’s go!  Billy sent a police van.  It’s outside now.”

“Billy Big Feet said it grabbed and devoured two small children.  It ate them right before the crowd at the zoo while the mother was pounding on its back.  Billy said it turned, drove both front paws through the woman, and split her in half like he was splitting a tangerine.”  Priest rested his head against the van’s window.  There was the forlorn look that only senseless death could bring to the face of a Holy Man.  “This one is out of control.”

I was sitting next to Wolf.  He was handing me the necessities of the job: my radio and a short-barreled .44 magnum.  “Ever use one of these?”  I nodded.  “This is more for you than the wolf.  Don’t pull the trigger unless you’ve got the muzzle pressed right between its eyes or over its heart!  If you live long enough to get close enough to be in touching range, that is.”

The expression on my face got a collective chuckle out of the tribe.  Rowtag reached over and patted my knee.  “Don’t worry, Paleface.  The only help you are to us right now is as bait!  So we’re not expecting too much.”

“You’re a magnet,” Wolf explained.  “A compass.  You’re drawn to it, and it to you.  The tightness in your chest tells you it’s near.  How many times have you felt like you were being followed?  You know when it’s near, so we’ll know when it’s near.”  Wolf was looking hard into my eyes.  “Either you kill it tonight, or it kills you tomorrow… or the next day, or the day after that.  But now that you’re aware of it, it has to kill you.”

Bear was sliding into a chain mail shirt, but stopped and looked over at me.  “I don’t how you stayed alive this long, Paleface.  This thing likes you.  Or used to like you!  Wolf said it was snapping at your face pretty good.”

My hands went slowly to my cheeks.  Bear was right.  It was an inch or two away, snapping at my face.  “It could have taken my head off with one claw!” I mumbled pensively.  “Why didn’t it?”

“Wolves usually seize prey by either the muzzle if he gets at you from the front, or the rump if you’re running away.  Taking your head off would have released all the blood in your body.  My guess is that you were a planned meal, and it wanted you juicy.”  At the sound of the word “juicy” my stomach turned and I went white—or whiter, as it were, with the thought of being chewed on by the horrible thing I’d seen.

“Look out!” Little Wolf shouted, “He’s gonna hurl!”  Five pairs of hands grabbed me as a sixth pair lowered the window.  I was pushed halfway out the speeding van, but I never “hurled,” so they let me back in. 

When the color returned to my face, I looked at Wolf.  “How the hell am I gonna kill this thing, Ga’dammit?  You guys are the experts, and there’s nothing you can do…”

“Don’t worry, Rowtag wasn’t kidding.  You didn’t pick your path; you’re not a warrior.  All we need you to do is draw it in.  We’ll trap it, you’ll kill it.  We’ll show you how.”

It sounded so simple.  I’d be trusting my life to men I had known less than five hours.  I was willing to believe they knew what to do to stop this thing.  There were no other choices.

“Well, Paleface.”  Little Wolf grinned at me.  “Ya think you got what it takes to be a Brave in the Ghost Wolf Clan?”

“I’ll tell you, Little Wolf,” I replied, “I would have felt a little more secure if you’d picked a name like ‘Hawkeye’ or ‘Lone Ranger.’ ”

The police moved the barricade to one side as the van pulled to the curb.  I stepped out and moved aside to let the tribe gather.  The moon shed a silvery light which bathed Central Park and made it look beautiful and peaceful… except for the two hundred cops running around in riot gear.

Billy Big Feet was actually Detective Captain William Cray.  He was tallish, thinish, had a Marine quality flat top, a sports coat sans tie, and was a full blooded Indian warrior, though I didn’t know from what tribe.  I was to learn he’d worked with the Ghost Wolf Clan many times before, helping to move cops and civilians out of harm’s way.  He also shielded the Clan from discovery.  Wolf waved me over to meet him.

“Paleface, Red Two, meet a crook’s best friend, Captain Big Feet Cray… we call him that ’cause he once made it from East Harlem to Little Italy on foot in twenty minutes at the rush hour chasing a wolf.”

The cop shook his head and with no smile and said, “Don’t mind him, he’s just nervous about dyin’ tonight.”  The cop extended his hand.  “Bill Cray, Mister Red Two.”

“Boy, you must really rate!  A real name?”

“I’m Apache, not Mohawk…”  He never finished his sentence.  Central Park is about 900 acres in size, with lots of places to hide.  Unless you’ve been there for a visit, you wouldn’t believe how immense it is.  From somewhere in the middle of it, a howling arose that stood up the neck hair of two hundred New York cops in riot gear.

“Billy, take your people down to the Midtown West exit,” Wolf immediately said to the detective.  “Tell ’em… we’re Mohawk trackers, and we’ll drive the wolf towards them, okay?  Get these park lights out.  And for God’s sake, post the snipers on the roofs; you know how these things climb trees.”  The head cop nodded.  Wolf grabbed me by the arm and led me back to the van, where the others were digging out spears and lances hidden under the vehicle.  I could hear Billy Big Feet talking to his policemen.  I reached out for a lance, but Rowtag slapped my hand away.  “Not for you, Paleface.”

They checked their radios and walked off into the now-dark park—all except Wolf and I.  He handed me a cup of coffee and we waited in silence by the van until both cops and Mohawks had vanished.  I’d never watched the New York City moon as I had the moon back home.  It was the same moon… but how different it looked!  I knew it to be discolored with the blood of men.  There was so much light pollution from the city that most of the surrounding stars were gone from the city sky, and New Yorkers had lost the feeling of how huge the universe was.  The moon was not so bright here, but I still felt its pull.  What light there was came from a silvery moon, but the silver was tarnished and seemed to be illuminating the park poorly.

There was an unnerving stillness in the air.  I could hear neither birds nor small animals nor people in the park.  I felt Wolf begin to move, and I moved right behind him.  As soon as we were far enough into the park to not be seen, the knife and the stone ax were in his hands.  I’d been hunting many times before, and I recognized that Wolf had assumed the walk of a hunter: low, cautious, and looking in all directions.  Most Americans in cities know little or nothing of the art of the hunter.  What they do know, they know from the television, and television knows little that is true about hunting.  Though I’d hunted with a rifle, I preferred the bow.  Because of the reduced distances, your skills had to be sharper.  Many times I’d get so close to a deer, Mother Nature’s Convenience Store, I could smack its rump with my bow.  Which I usually did; if I didn’t need the meat, the idea of killing just to kill repulsed me.

“There!” Wolf whispered, pointing to a stand of three fairly wide trees pressed closely together.  “We’ll wait for it there.”  I looked around.  I’d been so lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed how deep in the park we’d trekked.

We sat quietly as the midnight air grew colder.  We had the trees protecting our backs, but we were facing a path.  “Hey, Wolf,” I whispered in my lowest voice.

“You don’t have to whisper.  We’re not hunting it, it’s hunting you, remember?”  His voice was soft but quite normal.  “You feelin’ anything, Paleface?”

I shook my head and leaned back.  “Wolf, where do these things come from?”

He shrugged.  “There’ve been tales of human children being raised by wolves since the dawn of time.  Every culture on the planet tells a tale of how a punishing god turned a man into an animal, hated by all.  Maybe it’s a reflection of some kind of rabid contagion.  I just don’t know, Paleface.  What makes these things so hard to pin down and kill is that they’re as much man as beast.  It reasons and plans, same as you or me.  That’s what makes the Mohawk so good at killing them; we realized that centuries ago, and reasoned out ways to deal with it.  But it did take us a century or two!”  He leaned back and fractured the first rule of hunting, lighting a cigarette.  In the woods, you could smell the smoke a literal mile away.  “Wolves hate werewolves as much as people do.  The Ghost Wolf Clan has many tales of a warrior being saved by a pack of wolves ripping a werecreature to shreds before the werewolf could bite him.”

“So it’s true?  A bite spreads the disease?”

“Yeah, well… the movies got that part right, at least.  Many a Mohawk has taken his own life after being bitten rather than inflict himself on others.  Thank God it takes a bite and not a scratch.”  He pulled his collar away from his neck.  In the moonlight, his scar stood out clearly.

“I didn’t want to say anything.”

“Most people don’t either, Paleface.  Big gray wolf up by the Canadian border.  It jumped up at me and swung at my throat.  High Back Wolf, God rest his soul, caught it right in the chest with a Cheyenne lance, and Little Wolf took its head with a tomahawk.  For the first time in five or six thousand years, the Ghost Wolf Clan took in people who weren’t Mohawk.”

We leaned back, bathing in the light of the silvery orb in the sky.  The night air was chilling even more, and I was beginning to shiver.  I could feel my spine tightening and tingling with every cold breeze.  Soon my entire body was beginning to shiver and shake, and my hair was beginning to stand up.  Wolf put his hands on my shoulders, pressed down, and it stopped my shaking.  He put a finger to his lips and my eyes fell to it.  In a slow, easy motion he began pointing it in an up and down motion.  Then I remembered: werewolves were great tree climbers!

Wolf had carefully climbed into a squat, resting on his haunches.  In an explosion of motion he grabbed me by my collar and my belt, and we blasted from the trinity of trees that I thought had been our protection.  We tumbled about five feet as a four-hundred-pound man-beast fell ten feet down and sat up on its hind legs.  In the poor light of a New York moon, I couldn’t tell if it was meant to stand on four legs or two.  It easily filled the space we had hastily vacated.  In the dim light, it seemed to blend into the very wood itself.  For a frozen moment, Wolf and I stared into the burning yellow eyes of a psychopathic slaughter machine.  In the silver moonlight, those eyes seemed to glow, and there was hatred and hunger in them that scared the hell out of me.

It leapt at us and death was riding its back.  But it never left the space of the trees.  I was lost in a frenzied flurry of violent activities.  There were whoops and hollers and bodies moving as giant rope nets jumped off the ground and trapped the man-wolf tightly against the trees.  Mohawks were moving in all directions as the animal howled, thrashing furiously, snapping and growling.  And then it stopped.  Except for exhausted breathing, there was no sound, not even the wind.  Its chest heaved slowly and rhythmically against its bonds, and those evil yellow, yellow eyes fixed on me and never moved off.  It knew I was its executioner.

I have seen wounded animals in the hunting forests acknowledge their defeats.  Squirrels, rabbits, deer, even bears, knowing that there was no escape and being unable to fight, had become submissive and waited for death.  When I looked at this wolf of wolves, not even straining against its bonds anymore, I saw just that.  And for the first time on this day, I felt my body relax… too soon.

Bear and Fire were securing the nets in place and Little Wolf was inspecting the head of a Cheyenne lance as Powaw blessed the werewolf so that the man trapped inside the beast would sleep forever under a bloodless moon.  Little Wolf was turning to hand the lance to me, as it was my place to kill the beast, when all hell came to Central Park.  Out of the corner of my eye the trees trapping the werewolf seem to flex and bend.  With a sudden jerk of its head, it managed to get its jowls through the netting.  The look on Bear’s face told me they had never seen a creature this strong.  The net was bitten apart enough to allow it to get its paws up.  That released a series of vicious snaps as the thick ropes shattered apart.  It was freeing itself.

There was no fear in Little Wolf’s eyes.  He had a tight hold on the lance and wouldn’t release his grip.  His body faced in two directions, below the waist towards me and above it towards the beast.  He threw his body weight into the lance and dove at the monster.  It went into the creature mid-chest, drove straight through it, and stuck eight inches into the tree behind it.  I have never heard, before or since, a more frightening shriek come out of any living thing.  The wolf drove itself forward, slashing and snapping.  It caught hold of Little Wolf as it walked itself off the lance, bit off a side of the Indian's face, picked him up, and tossed him ten feet in the air.  He landed hard.  He bled badly.

Wolf and his fellows were did not take well to Little Wolf’s wounding.  It brought out their Mohawk in a big way, and they trapped the wolf in a circle of lance tips, jabbing and stabbing and keeping it at bay.  Bear jumped on its back, an arm around its throat, choking and hanging on and stabbing at the monster’s heart with the other arm.  The wolf spun and spun and spun until Bear flew off into space towards the moon.

Bear’s absence made a small gap in the wall of spears and the beast slipped through it in a heartbeat.  It was badly, badly wounded by the points of Little Wolf and Bear, but it didn’t run.  It turned on the warriors to fight more.  Neither did the warriors run, but also turned to fight with raised weapons and war shouts.  I stood behind them, the pistol clutched tightly in my hand, looking for a clear shot that never came.  Both lines froze, snarling at each other and marshalling their strength for a final clash.  It never came.

Powaw pushed his way through the line of warriors.  There was anger on his face, and with clenched fists lifted to the silver moon and in a voice that roared like thunder, he bellowed at the beast.  “Hache hi, Hache hi!” he shouted at it.  “Wolf, wolf!  You have no power here!  We are the Clan of the Ghost Wolf, and we will hurt you badly and kill you!”

It howled at Powaw in answer, turned, and disappeared into the park.

Wolf looked at Priest as if to ask, Why did you do that?

Priest put his hand on Wolf's shoulder.  “It would have killed us all, and then Paleface.  And you know that, Wolf.  Have you ever seen this strength in a dark creature?”

Before a response could be offered there were shouts from Machk and Rowtag.  Little Wolf was still alive and struggling to sit up.  I started to move towards him, but Wolf held me back.  “Just watch,” was all he said.  Powaw walked slowly towards the fallen warrior.

In the pale silver moonlight the Priest knelt to be on eye level with the fallen man.  I saw him hand the young man something from his pouch.  Before I realized what it was, Little Wolf drove it into his throat.  Blood, turning from red to black in the poor light of the moon, sprayed and gushed as the Brave fell forward onto the blade, driving it deeper into his throat, almost severing his head.

“A man bitten by the wolf takes part of its spirit inside him.  Little Wolf, by his death, by cutting its head from its spine, repulsed the wolf’s spirit,” Priest said.  “His soul will guard the night sky of this place forever.  The beast cannot stay here any more; it must leave the park for fear of Little Wolf.”  There was more he wanted to say, but a voice coming from the radio in his pocket cut him off.  “Yeah, Billy, it’s over,” he answered.  “It got away.  One dead.”

Old Kaniehtakeron was witch man of the Ghost Wolf Clan.  I was told that in his youth he had taken many wolf heads in the Canadian forests.  He held to the old ways and rejected the white man’s God.  This grandfather of the Clan had been taught the ways of the Ghost Wolf by his grandfather, who was one of the few left who remembered when the Mohawks were a truly mighty nation, who in turn had learned the ways of killing from his grandfather who remembered when the Mohawk fought against the blue coat yang’ee.  On the taxi ride down East Broadway to the Lower East Side I was told of the wisdom and greatness of Old Kaniehtakeron.  When we arrived at his home, the old man looked at me with dark eyes as if measuring me for the horrific task now upon me.

“Ya wan’ a beer, Paleface?  I got Foster’s in the cooler.  It’s good!  They make it in Canada now!”

I looked at Wolf, who shrugged.  “Go ahead, have a beer.  It’s the end of a long day and it takes the old guy some time to warm up his Native American wisdom.”

The old man chuckled and called Wolf a “smart ass.”  He toddled the length of the room and dug through a drawer, extracting a small stone knife.  “Here, put this in your pocket, Paleface.  There’s power in the stone, so don’t hack!  You’ll just break the damn blade.  All you gotta do is get the blade in.  This is some wolf ya got here, white boy.  It’s too much man-beast for yer first time out.  How’re ya tied to it?  Brother?  Cousin?”

“A spirit tied to the land, maybe?” Wolf answered.  “We don’t know, Kaniehtakeron,”

The old man pulled the tab on a cold Foster’s oil can and took a long sip.  “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”  He pressed the knife into my hand.  “Go home.  It’ll go where it thinks you’ll be.  It knows, it’s you or him, Paleface.”  The old man shuffled to a window and looked at the moon.  “You boys hurt it bad.  It’ll use the moon to heal itself.  We should all be safe until tomorrow.”

Wolf, Gray Wolf, and I took a cab back to my dorm and, with no resistance at all, I got out alone.  It told me I was already being guarded.  It was about three thirty in the morning.  I was covered in old, crusting blood, dirt, and sweat.  I was body tired, but my mind was still alert.  I got to my room, took my clothes off and threw them out, salvaged my jacket (bloody, muddy, but leather) and showered.  I stepped into the shower stall and maxed out the hot water.  The steam rose and filled the room with a near-impenetrable mist.  The heat and steam eased the stress I felt in my muscles, but I was still all lit up and very much awake.  As the mist got thicker and thicker, I just stood under the hot water looking into the mist.  I guess I hoped the heavy mist would slow my mind down.  It was about twenty minutes before I turned off the faucet.  The mist was so thick that I couldn’t see the bathroom sink from the shower.  There was a thud from the hall.  I rested against the shower stall listening for any sound. A drunken jock bouncing off the wall, no doubt.  I dragged myself out of the mist, toweled off, and found an old sweat suit.

My dorm room was two floors below the roof, which sat twelve floors above the sidewalk.  I was so wide awake, the roof was the first place I thought of being still wide awake.  I had discovered the route up in September, and it seemed to bring me closer to the night sky.  There were always students up there in the daytime, but only a few insomniacs like me at night.

I stepped on to the roof, and by the light of the silvery moon reflected on the shadows that were my life.  I’ve felt this thing in my world for years and never known it was there, never known that somehow I was part of it.  It had tried to kill me today, and strange men from an entirely different culture saved me at the cost of two of their lives.

I was alone in the light of the moon’s glow.  I stood at the edge of the roof, my toes touching the bricks of the two-foot wall that lined the old building’s perimeter.  If I shut my eyes, the wind in my face carried me back to the mountains of my home upstate.  There was a familiar smell in my nostrils, imagined enough to seem real, so I gathered it in: an ornate odor, like mountain flowers or a young woman’s intoxicating perfume.  It was that smell that brought me out of my reverie.  It wasn’t imagined.  I wasn’t alone.  I had smelled the smell many times in the forests of home.

When you hear the expression, “frozen with fear,” think of me.  It was as if bringing the thought of a Werewolf clearly into my mind’s eye had brought it into reality.  I could not turn.  I could hear heavy paws dragging across the tar paper roof and felt hot mouthfuls of air pulsing on the back of my head.  The smell of flowers faded into the putrid smell of stale blood and undigested flesh.

It was like watching a grenade at your feet with the pin pulled and wondering when the explosion would happen.  And it happened.  There was something on me and instinctively, as any other prey would, I struggled violently.  In the tangled swirling mass, as Beowulf had taken hold of Grendel, in great anger I grabbed hold of the wolf.  It was a macabre dance done by two vengeful lovers who knew that by the end of their dance, one of them must die.

We had not danced for the blink of an eye when something slammed into us, sending us both over the wall towards the street below.  I was snatched by an unseen hand, the claws of the wolf raking my body as momentum hurled it to the concrete below.  I watched the abomination hurtle down to its death, unaware of my own situation, until other hands from above were laid on me.  As I was lifted I saw the faces of Mohawks, Bear and Wolf.

I was deposited on the roof to see the Ghost Wolf Clan gathered.  I was a bloodied mess.  Wolf squatted down in front of me.  “Did it bite you?” he asked.

I looked at myself.  It all had happened so fast I didn’t know.  I shrugged.

He drew his knife and offered it.

TO BE CONTINUED...

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