Out of the corner of his eye Giovanni saw one man shoot a wolf and the animal went down, screaming in rage, trying to reach around its back and bite the smoking wound. The tall man who had been behind him on the staircase leaped onto the wolf’s back, a silver blade flashing, and stabbed it twice in the neck before slitting the animal’s throat.
It all happened in mere seconds, but Giovanni swore he saw the wolf catch fire and squeal in agony as its blood seemed to boil. And then its body blurred, and impossibly, became a naked man, a human, whose greasy hair the tall partisan grabbed with a fist and pulled up, using the glowing blade to sever the head. The partisan tossed it aside with a shout of fury and victory.
Giovanni opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. What he had seen, it was not possible…
The battle had degenerated into single shots and snarls, screams of terror and pain, and gurgling sounds of bloody death.
And he heard the tearing of bone and tissue, the howling of victorious wolves.
How many are there?
He turned in time to see a giant wolf leaping for his throat. With no time to sidestep, he brought up the Beretta’s barrel and let loose a burst.
The bullets stitched across the wolf’s body and head and should have cut him to pieces, but Giovanni was horrified to see that the deadly lead barely knocked the animal off its stride. Its weight smashed into him and slammed him to the ground, jaws snapping at his neck.
The Beretta flew out of his grasp, and he threw up his hands to avert the wolf’s continuous attacks. Giovanni risked one hand and scrabbled for the revolver tucked in his belt, the other hand desperately fending off the wolf’s fangs. Its raging eyes seemed red in the near-darkness.
He brought up the pistol by feel and shoved the barrel under the wolf’s jaws. Those red blazing eyes seemed to roll crazily, and held his as the wolf gathered for a final push. Giovanni pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. The bullets ripped through the fur, bone, and skull.
Giovanni sucked in air and started to throw off the dead animal’s weight.
In the moonlight, the wounds caused by his bullets began to close up and disappear. The wolf’s red eyes found his and it seemed to smile at his shock and terror.
Then he was awash in a gush of gore as an anonymous hand bearing a flashing silver blade slit the wolf’s throat just before it could press its advantage and bite off Giovanni’s face.
It was the tall man from the tunnel who’d done it, a grim smile on his face as he nodded and then jumped to the aid of another partisan locked in a struggle for his life with yet another impossible animal. The tall man’s blade slashed, opening the wolf’s throat. The animal’s shriek of pain and rage as the blade burned through its flesh and tendons would haunt Giovanni to the moment of his death. And so would the sight of this dead wolf blurring into a dead human. To his right, where his lupine attacker had been, now sprawled a dead man. The tall partisan severed both heads with grim efficiency.
“Must make sure, eh?” he said gruffly.
Giovanni got to his knees unsteadily. The battle was over, won apparently, by Corrado and his men, but at a terrible cost. A half-dozen partisans lay dead, their bodies scattered near the side of the building, grotesquely disemboweled. Five naked, decapitated men marked where the wolves had died. Several uniformed German soldiers also lay dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.
Corrado was alive, his coat covered with splattered blood.
“Thank you, Turco,” he said, clapping a hand on the tall man’s shoulder. “Without you, I don’t know—” He stopped, his haunted eyes finding Giovanni’s. “You fought well. You’re one of us now. We saved the shelter, this time. But now you must not watch. Turco, I don’t envy you this job.”
The tall man shrugged. He moved to each of the dead partisans and stabbed them in the heart before sawing off their heads.
Giovanni thought he had been horrified by everything up to now. But this was too much!
He was too hoarse to shout, but almost did. “What sacrilege are you—?”
“It’s necessary, believe me,” Corrado said, making a half-hearted sign of the cross. “We must be sure they are dead, and that they were killed with that blade. Otherwise there’s a possibility…”
Turco was finished with his task. The two rallied the surviving partisans around them. Wounds were inspected. Most were minor, and Giovanni noticed that Turco remained nearby, the unsheathed silver blade touching every survivor — including himself.
Corrado noticed Giovanni’s questioning look. “We have learned to look after ourselves,” he explained, but it was no real explanation as far as Giovanni was concerned.
Exhausted, his body aching and his mind still reeling at all he had seen, all he wanted to do was climb down those stairs and see his wife.
And then he would go find his son.
Se Dio vuole, he thought. God willing.
3
Corrado had shucked his bloody coat and now wore a thin, once-white dress shirt. He shivered in the night’s chill, present even here in the shelter.
“Now you know what we are up against,” he told Giovanni. “Since late last year, the Germans have sent those things against us, night after night.”
“But… what are they?”
“Do you not remember the stories your parents told you when you were young? They are wolf-men, just like the legends.”
“It’s just too… It’s impossible.”
“You saw it with your own eyes. But for Turco, one would have torn you apart. We know what they are, but they are almost impossible to kill. The Germans are retreating, but they have deployed a rear guard made up, partly, of this Werwolf Division of theirs. The monsters have done their worst in the hills and used to stay out of the cities, mostly, but now they are being used against us here as well.”
“You said you can’t kill them? But they did die.”
Corrado snorted quietly. “Sure, but at what cost. They can be killed, but it takes special…” He leaned over and whispered even more quietly. “That man there, hunched in the corner?”
Giovanni saw a man whose look was haunted. His eyes seemed feverish, his skin pale. He hadn’t been part of the gun battle.
“He’s a priest. He has fought with us. He is a Jesuit. You know what that means?”
Giovanni shrugged. He knew who Jesuits were, of course, but…
“He has done exorcisms. He has faced evil before and survived. And he has brought us more than just his own fighting spirit. From Rome, he has brought us a weapon.”
“Rome?”
“From the Vatican.” Corrado scratched his stubble. “You want to talk with him? Will it make you feel better about what you have seen?”
Giovanni’s eyes unfocused as he stared at the priest. Then he nodded.
“Hey, Babbo, this guy wants to talk to you,” Corrado called out across the room.
The priest stood and moved as if uncertain of his footing. As if his feet were submerged. He looked to have been muscular and then run to fat, but now the fat had dissipated and his skin was sallow and bag-like.
He came to a stop near Giovanni and Corrado. His priest’s collar was long gone. His eyes were glazed by lack of sleep or war-weariness. Both.
“You’re that new one,” he said. “You have a pretty wife.”
Giovanni nodded. “Yes, and a son. But I don’t know what happened to him. I wanted him here with me, but he’s missing. And now I’m not sure I want him here. I don’t know what I want. Except… I want to know that what I saw out there cannot exist.”