I turned the flash on myself. Marmiadon whimpered as I changed shape. It’s well I was in a hurry. Wolf, with wolf passions, I’d have torn his throat apart for what he’d done if there’d been time. Instead, I went out in a single gray streak.
The pair of monks didn’t see me through the gloom until I was almost on them. They were beefy for sure. One carried a stick, the other a forty-five automatic. I darted between the legs of the latter, bowling him over. His buddy got a crack across my ribs with his cudgel. Pain slowed me for a moment. A bone may have been broken. It knitted with the speed of the were condition and I dashed on. The pistol barked. Slugs whanged nastily past. If they included argent rounds, a hit would stop me. I had to move!
Up the stairs I fled. The friars dropped from sight. But an alarm started ahead of me, bells crashing through the hymns. Did my pursuers have a walkie-talkie ball with them? Produced at Nornwell? I burst into the first-floor hallway. There must be other exits than the main door, but I didn’t know them. A wolf can travel like bad news. I was through the curtain which screened off the choir vestry before any nightshifter had glanced out of an office or any sleepy monk arrived from another section.
The church was in a boil. I cracked the door to the aisle sufficiently for a look. The chant went on. But folk ran about in the nave, shouting. More to the point, a couple of them were closing doors to the vestibule. I couldn’t get out.
Feet slapped floor in the corridor. The Johnnies weren’t certain which way I’d skited, and were confused anyhow by this sudden unexplained emergency. Nevertheless, I’d scant time until someone thought to check here.
A possible tactic occurred to me. I didn’t consider the wherefores of it, which a wolf isn’t equipped to do. Trusting instinct, I slapped the switch on my flash with a forepaw. The blue entry-room lights didn’t interfere with my reverting to human. Darting back to the vestry, I grabbed a surplice and threw it over my head. It fell nearly to my feet. They stayed bare, but maybe no one would notice.
Ascending to the choir loft in record time, I stopped in the archway entrance and studied the situation. Men and women stood grouped according to vocal range. They held hymnals. Spare books lay on a table. The view from here, down to the altar and up to the cupola, was breathtaking. But I’d no breath to spend.
I picked my spot, helped myself to a book, and moved solemnly forward.
I wouldn’t have gotten away with it under normal conditions. Conditions not being normal, the choir was agitated too, its attention continually pulled down to the excitement on the floor. The song kept wandering off key. I found a place on the edge of the baritones and opened my hymnal to the same page as my neighbor.
“Mephnounos Chemiath Aroura Maridon Elison,” he chanted. I’d better make noises likewise. The trouble was, I’d not had the rehearsals they gave to laymen who wanted to participate. I couldn’t even pronounce most of those words, let alone carry the tune.
My neighbor glanced at me. He was a portly, officious-looking priest. I oughtn’t to stand around with my teeth in my mouth, he must be thinking. I gave him a weak smile. “Thatis Etelelccm Teheo abocia Rusar,” he intoned in a marked manner.
I grabbed at the first melody I recalled which had some general resemblance to the one he was using Mushing it up as much as I dared, I studied my book and commenced:
In the general counterpoint, not to mention the uproar below, it passed. The cleric took his eyes obi me. He continued with the canticle and I with “The Big Red Wheel.
I trust I may be forgiven for some of the other expedients I found necessary in the hour that followed. An hour, I guessed, was an unsuspicious time for a lay singer to stay. Meanwhile, by eye and ear, I’d followed roughly the progress of the hunt for me. The size and complexity of the cathedral worked in my favor for once; I could be anywhere. Unquestionably spells were being used in the search. But the wizard had little to go on except what Marmiadon could tell. And I had everything protective that Ginny, who’s one of the best witches in the Guild, was able to give me before I left. Tracing me, identifying me, would be no simple matter, even for those beings that the most potent of the adepts might raise.
Not that I could hold out long. If I didn’t scramble; soon I was dead, or worse. A part of me actually rejoiced at that. You see, the danger, the calling up of every resource I had to meet it, wiped away the despair at the core of hell which I had met in the crypts. I was alive, and it mattered, and I’d do my best to kill whatever stood between me and my loves!
After a while the main entrance was reopened, though watched by monks. I’d figured out a plan to get around them. After leaving the choir and disrobing, I turned wolf. The north corridor was again deserted, which was lucky for any Johnnies I might have encountered. Having doubtless posted a guard at every door, they were cooling their chase. It went on, but quietly, systematically, no longer disruptive of religious atmosphere. Lupine senses helped me avoid patrols while I looked for a window.
On the lower levels, these were in rooms that were occupied or whose doors were locked. I had to go to the sixth floor-where the scent of wrongness was almost more than I could bear—before finding a window in the corridor wall. It took resolution, or desperation, to jump through. The pain as the glass broke and slashed me was as nothing to the pain when I hit the concrete beneath.
But I was Lyco. My injuries were not fatal or permanently crippling. The red rag of me stirred, grew together, and became whole. Sufficient of my blood was smeared around, unrecoverable, that I felt a bit weak and dizzy; but a meal would fix that.
The stars still glittered overhead. Vision was uncertain. And I doubted the outer gatekeepers had been told much, if anything. The hierarchy would be anxious to hush up this trouble as far as might be. I stripped off what remained of my clothes with my teeth, leaving the wereflash fairly well covered by my ruff, and trotted off to the same place where I’d entered. “Why, hullo, pooch,” said my young friend. “Where’d you come from?” I submitted to having my ears rumpled before I left.
In Siloam’s darkened downtown I committed a fresh crime, shoving through another window, this time in the rear of a grocery store. I could compensate the proprietor anonymously, later. Besides the several pounds of hamburger I found and ate, I needed transportation; and after humanizing I was more than penniless, I was naked. I phoned Barney. “Come and get me,” I said. “I’ll be wolf at one of these spots.” I gave him half a dozen possibilities, in case the pursuit of me spilled beyond cathedral boundaries.
“What happened to my broom?” he demanded.
“I had to leave it parked,” I said. “You can claim it tomorrow.”
“I’m eager to hear the story.”
“Well, it was quite a night, I can tell you.”
XXVIII
My detailed relation I gave to Ginny after sneaking back into our house. I was numb with exhaustion, but she insisted on hearing everything at once, whispered as we lay side by side. Her questions drew each last detail from me, including a lot that had slipped my mind or that I hadn’t especially noticed at the time. The sun was up before she fixed my breakfast and allowed me to rest. With a few pauses for nourishment and drowsy staring, I slept a full twenty-four hours.
Ginny explained this to our FBI man as the result of nervous prostration, which wasn’t too mendacious. She also persuaded him and his immediate boss (Shining Knife had gone to Washington) that if they wanted to keep matters under wraps, they’d better not hold us incommunicado. Our neighbors already knew something was afoot. They could be stalled for but a short while, our close friends and business associates for a shorter while yet. If the latter got worried, they could bring more to bear in the way of sortileges than the average person.