Snow dusted the forest. The northern wind promised brutality, but still the soldiers remained.
October waned. The sky darkened, burdened with clouds. And on one morning, as Mikhail returned from hunting with a freshly killed rabbit in his jaws, he found the enemy less than fifty yards from the white palace.
There were two of them, both carrying rifles. Mikhail darted into the brush and crouched, watching the soldiers approach. The men were talking to each other, something about Moscow; their voices were nervous, and their fingers clutched the triggers. Mikhail let the rabbit slide from his mouth. Please stop, he told the soldiers in his mind. Please go back. Please…
They didn’t. Their boots crushed the foliage down, and every step took them closer to Wiktor, Franco, Alekza, and the child. Mikhail’s muscles tensed, his heart pounding. Please go back.
The soldiers stopped. One of them lit a cigarette, cupping the match from the wind. “We’ve gone too far,” he said to the other man. “We’d better get back, or Novikov’ll skin us.”
“That bastard’s crazy,” the second man observed, leaning on his rifle. “I say we set the whole damned woods on fire, and be done with it. Why the hell does he want to set up a new camp in this mess?” He looked around at the forest, with the awe and fear that told Mikhail the man was a city dweller. “Burn it to the ground and go home, that’s what I say.”
The first man blew plumes of smoke from his nostrils. “That’s why we’re not officers, Stefan,” he said. “We’re too smart to wear stars. I’ll tell you, if I have to dig another damned trench, I’m going to let Novikov know where he can stick his-” He stopped, smoke whirling past his head, and stared through the trees. “What’s that?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“What’s what?” Stefan looked around.
“There.” The first man took two more steps forward and pointed. “Right there. See it?”
Mikhail closed his eyes.
“It’s a building,” the first man said. “See? There’s a minaret.”
“My God, you’re right!” Stefan agreed. He instantly picked up his rifle and cocked it.
The noise made Mikhail open his eyes again. The two soldiers stood not fifteen feet from him. “We’d better tell Novikov about this,” Stefan said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going any closer.” He turned away, hurriedly striding through the woods. The first man flicked his cigarette butt aside and followed his companion.
Mikhail rose up from his crouch. He could not let them get back to their camp. Could not; must not. He thought of bones being wrenched from the Garden like fragile roots, of Renati’s skull being blown to pieces, of what these men would do to Alekza and Petyr once they returned with their guns and explosives.
Rage burned in him, and a low growl started in his throat. The soldiers were crashing through the woods, almost running. Blood was still in Mikhail’s mouth from the dead rabbit; his body darted after the soldiers, a black streak through the gray forest. He ran silently, with the tight grace of a killer. And even as he closed on the two men and judged the point to begin his leap, he knew a simple fact: a wolf’s tears were no different from a human’s.
He sprang up and forward, his hind legs like iron springs, and he landed on the cigarette smoker’s back before the man even knew he was there.
Mikhail drove the man down, into the dead leaves, and clamped his jaws on the back of his neck. He wrenched the head violently left and right, heard the sound of bones splintering. The man thrashed, but it was the death throes of nerves and muscle. Mikhail finished breaking his neck, and the man died without a sound.
There was a shuddered gasp. Mikhail looked up, his green eyes glittering.
Stefan had turned, and was lifting his rifle.
Mikhail saw the soldier’s finger tightening on the trigger. An instant before the bullet left the rifle Mikhail leaped aside, diving into the underbrush, and Russian lead kicked up a gout of Russian dust. A second shot rang out, the bullet passing over Mikhail’s shoulder and thunking into an oak tree. Mikhail swerved left and right, sliding to a sudden halt on a carpet of dead leaves, and heard the soldier running. The man bellowed for help, and Mikhail went after him like silent judgment.
The soldier tripped over his own boots, scrambled up, and kept going. “Help me! Help me!” he screamed, and spun around to fire a shot at what he thought was coming up behind him. Mikhail, however, was circling around to cut him off from his camp. The soldier kept running and screaming, dead leaves in his hair, and Mikhail burst out of the underbrush and started to leap but in the next second there was no need to waste the energy.
The ground opened under the soldier’s feet, and the man went down into the dirt and leaves. His screaming stopped, on a strangled note. Mikhail stood carefully on the trench’s edge and looked down. The soldier’s body twitched, even with seven or eight sharpened stakes piercing him. The smell of blood was very strong, and that coupled with Mikhail’s rage, caused him to spin around and around, snapping at his tail.
In another moment he heard shouts: more soldiers, rapidly approaching. Mikhail turned and sped back to where the first man lay dead. He gripped the corpse’s neck between his jaws and struggled to haul the body into the brush. The body was heavy, and the flesh tore; it was a messy job. From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of white; Wiktor came to his side and helped him drag the corpse into the darkness beneath a thick stand of pines. Then Wiktor snapped at Mikhail’s muzzle, a signal for him to retreat. Mikhail hesitated, but Wiktor roughly shoved him with a shoulder and he obeyed. Wiktor crouched down in the leaves, listening to the sounds of the soldiers. There were eight of them, and as four pulled the dead man off the stakes the other four began to stalk through the forest, their rifles cocked and ready.
The beasts had come, as Wiktor had always known they someday would. The beasts had come, and they would not be denied their bloody flesh.
Wiktor stood up, a ghost amid the trees, and ran back to the white palace with the foul scent of the beasts in his nostrils.
5
A hand gripped Mikhail’s shoulder, rousing him from a restless two hours of sleep, and a finger pressed against his lips.
“Quiet,” Wiktor said, crouching next to him. “Just listen.” He glanced at Alekza, who was already awake and clutching Petyr close, then back to Mikhail.
“What is it? What’s happening?” Franco stood up, with the help of his staff.
“The soldiers are coming,” Wiktor answered, and Franco’s face blanched. “I saw them from the tower. Fifteen or sixteen of them, maybe more.” He’d seen them in the deep blue predawn light, darting from tree to tree, thinking they were invisible. Wiktor had heard the squeak of wheels; they’d brought their machine gun with them.
“What are we going to do?” Franco’s voice quavered on the edge of panic. “We’ve got to get out while we can!”
Wiktor looked at the low-burning fire, then slowly nodded. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go.”
“Go?” Mikhail asked. “To where? This is our home!”
“Forget that!” Franco told him. “We’ll have no chance if they catch us down here.”
“He’s right,” Wiktor agreed. “We’ll hide in the forest. Maybe we can come back after the soldiers clear out.” The way he said it told them all he didn’t believe it; once the soldiers found the pack’s den, they might move in themselves before the first snow. Wiktor stood up. “We can’t stay here any longer.”
Franco didn’t hesitate. He cast aside his staff, and gray hair began to scurry over his flesh. Within a minute he was changed, his body balanced on three legs. Mikhail would have changed, too, but Petyr still wore human skin and so Alekza couldn’t change either. He elected to remain human. Wiktor’s face and skull began the transformation; he threw off his robe, sleek white hair emerging from his chest, shoulders, and back. Franco was already going up the stone stairs. Mikhail grasped Alekza’s hand and pulled her and the child after him.