Franco looked at all the places he had played during more innocent times. Everything that had happened since then was a nightmare from which he could not wake.
He pushed open the door of their old apartment and was overwhelmed by the stench of rotted meat and dried blood. Franco stood in the doorway, breathing through his mouth to avoid being sick.
“Papá?” His voice was soft and tentative and echoed in the high-ceilinged space. “Sono io, Franco.”
He heard a shuffling from the kitchen, and stepped into the long corridor that led there. He was reminded of that night, when his father had found him hiding here. A strange reversal. He pushed the memory aside.
“Papá, I’ve come to bring you back home with me. Our new home.”
He held his nostrils. He remembered this same smell in butcher shops down the street. He entered the kitchen. The lights didn’t work, but there was enough light from the balcony door to see the form in the shadows at the far end of the massive room.
It was his father, his clothes ragged and his hair growing wild.
“Papá!” he said, startled by his father’s appearance.
“Hello, my son,” Giovanni said and then his voice broke and he was sobbing. “I knew you would come back to me. I felt it. And your mother…?”
“She’s safe on Uncle Vittorio’s farm, but she sends her love.”
“Dio mio, what a terrible time it has been.”
“Yes, Papá, it has been.”
Giovanni stepped farther out of the shadows. Franco gasped when he saw the bloody smears around his father’s mouth, crusted in the stubble. Giovanni blinked rapidly, as if this was too much light for him.
“I’ve been hiding here for weeks, hoping you would return. I–I’ve changed, Franco, I’m not the way I was. I get these urges; I become hungry as you’ve never known hunger. I become another person altogether, a creature. I try to control this hunger, this cursed hunger, but the moon brings it out in me. Sometimes I think I can control it, but then I cannot, and I do terrible things.” He put his head down and wept.
“Papá,” Franco whispered. “It’s all right.”
“I prayed, you know. I prayed that it would go away and leave me alone. I prayed that I could go back to that day when you were playing with your friend and I was trying to earn some money for food, and if we had both just… just come home. If we hadn’t… But it’s the past now and we can’t change it, can we?”
“No, Papá.” Tears squeezed from Franco’s eyes.
Giovanni came closer to his son. He reached out and touched Franco’s face.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “Things will be better now.”
“Yes,” Franco whispered.
“I hear the Germans are finally on their way out of the city. The Allies are only a few days’ march away. The war is almost over for us.” He spread his arms. “We can be together again, a family. We’ll go and fetch your mother.”
Franco stepped into his father’s embrace. It felt good for a few moments, like it always had. He laid his head on his father’s chest. Felt his father’s heartbeat.
Giovanni kissed his son’s cheek and caressed his face with rough hands.
“My son—” Giovanni’s body stiffened and he began to pull away. “What…? Franco, I feel… Franco?” His voice rose as the fear took him. “My son, what have you done?”
The heat must have become suddenly obvious. Franco held his father close, his strength surprising the older man, while his hand had reached behind his back where he’d tucked the dagger stolen from the priest. As soon as the blade was free of the wooden scabbard, Giovanni had sensed the heat of the silver dagger.
Franco brought it around quickly, before his father could free himself of the embrace and flee.
But Giovanni didn’t attempt to flee.
Franco buried the dagger in his father’s chest, hitting the heart on the first try.
Giovanni screamed and the wound caught fire, as did his clothing around it, and the boy plunged the blade in and out several times, the reek of scorched flesh and blood enveloping them as they embraced one last time.
The creature within Giovanni began to manifest, the hair lengthening and his face beginning to change, his mouth becoming a snout, and Franco thought his father would take him along to hell. He twisted the knife cruelly within each new wound, each twist and each stab piercing vital organs and liquefying them in a flash of silvery heat.
Franco watched as his father’s form flickered from human to wolf and back again, his eyes bulging and finally exploding in a shower of blood and gore, and his hands — which were now claws and could still have raked Franco’s face and head — spreading in helpless surrender.
The boy stepped back and his father collapsed in a burning, smoking heap onto the marble floor.
“My son,” he cried in a sickly whisper through charred lips. “Grazie…” Thank you.
And then Giovanni Lupo’s body once again resembled that of a human, no breath left in him.
Franco left him in the ruins of their old home. He walked out with a new need in the pit of his stomach, his hand gripping the dagger with a renewed sense of purpose.
He had wolves to hunt.
Jester
Jennifer R. Povey
It was a pretty ordinary sortie right up until Caveman bought it. Things went downhill from there, and the diminished squadron fled back towards the White Cliffs at full speed, pursued by a couple of Germans. Half-heartedly, because the Germans had no wish to tangle with British air defences during daylight hours.
Jester’s engine stuttered, its sound rough as it began to fail. It struggled back into life then faded out. He tugged the ejection handle, the canopy breaking away in a rush of wind, the chute threatening to pull his shoulders from their sockets as it tore him free. He knew he was going to come down closer to France than England, and hoping to come down very close — better to risk capture by the Germans than to drown. Prisoners of war could escape. Yes, that was his thought as he fluttered down into the shallow water. He cut the parachute free, leaving it to float in the still ocean, and scrambled ashore, making sure his sidearm was in his pocket.
His best chance was to find somebody connected to the resistance, some fisherman who could maybe smuggle him across the Channel. It had happened to others. A long shot. Especially once he looked around.
Jester had got lucky in terms of almost hitting on land, but not lucky in terms of the bit of land. No general would choose this place to land troops for the rumoured invasion. The beach was a thin strip of beautiful golden sand… but that was all before the vertical cliffs started. Or nearly vertical. After a moment, his eyes found a narrow trail leading upwards. He wasn’t sure if it was man-made. Looked more likely to have been created by sheep. Or maybe mountain goats. Staying on the beach, though… well, perhaps somebody would sail past. He contemplated the matter at some length; the tide was close to high, so the beach wasn’t going anywhere. At the same time, there wasn’t any food.
More critically, there was no fresh water. He checked himself for injuries, found nothing but bruises, and headed towards that horribly narrow upward trail where golden wild flowers dotted the slope above.
He could almost imagine there wasn’t a war on. Almost. He heard a buzzing overhead that was probably… yes… those German fighters returning to base. He tracked them, knowing they might see him and report his position. Or not. Either way, he probably didn’t want to be in this position much longer. With a sigh, he hiked the rest of the way to the top of the cliffs.