The knife beckoned him. He reached for it as Golda watched with lazy interest. His paw touched the handle. Of course he couldn’t pull the knife out. What had made him believe he could?
He began to pay attention to the rising and falling of the sun and the passage of days. He noted the days were lengthening. The five of six. Whatever that was, it was fast approaching, and that thought made him shiver and moan. He ceased singing with the others, because there was no song in him. The five of six dominated his mind and would not let him rest. Hollow-eyed, he faced another dawn, and he went to stare at the knife in the stripped skeleton as if it were a relic from a lost world.
The five of six was almost upon him. He could sense it, ticking nearer. There was no way to stop its approach, and that realization chewed his insides. But why did it not bother any of the others? Why was he the only one who suffered?
Because he was different, he realized. Where had he come from? At whose nipples had he suckled? How had he gotten here, in Wolftown, as the five of six neared with every breath he drew?
He was with Golda, basking in the warming breeze near the seawall as the stars blazed in the heavens, when they heard Yipper give a long, quavering note from up in the rocks. Neither of them liked that sound; there was alarm in it. Then Yipper began a series of fast, harsh barks, relaying a warning to Wolftown. At once the black wolf and Golda were up off their bellies, hearing the noise that made Yipper shriek with pain.
Gunfire. Golda only knew it meant death. The black wolf knew it was the noise of a Schmeisser submachine gun.
Yipper’s shrieking stopped abruptly as another burst rattled. Ratkiller took up the alarm, and Amber spread it. The black wolf and Golda ran deeper into Wolftown, and soon they smelled the hated scent of men. There were four of them, coming down the rocks into the village and sweeping their lights before them. They fired at everything that moved, or that they thought might have moved. The black wolf caught another odor, and recognized it: schnapps. At least one of the men, perhaps the others, too, was drunk.
In another moment he heard their slurred voices: “I’ll make you a wolfskin coat, Hans! Yes, I will! I’ll make you the most beautiful damned coat you’ve ever seen!”
“No, you won’t! You’ll make it for yourself, you son of a bitch!”
There was rough laughter. A burst of bullets whacked into the side of a house. “Come on out, you hairy shits! Come out, and let’s play!”
“I want a big one! That little thing up on the rocks won’t even make a decent hat!”
They had killed Yipper. Drunken Nazis with submachine guns, hunting wolves out of sheer boredom. The black wolf knew this, without knowing how he knew. Four soldiers, from the garrison that guarded the chemical plant. Shadows stirred in his mind; things moved, and sleeping memories began to awaken. His skull throbbed-not with pain, but with the power of recollection. Iron Fist. The Flying Fortress. The five of six.
The fifth of the sixth month, he realized. The fifth of June. D Day.
He was a wolf. Wasn’t he? Of course! He had black hair and claws and fangs. He was a wolf, and the hunters were almost upon him and Golda.
A light streaked past them, then came back. They were caught in its glare. “Look at those two! Damn, what coats! Black and yellow!” A submachine gun chattered, and bullets marched across the ground beside Golda. She panicked, turned, and fled. The black wolf raced after her. She went into the house where the skeletons lay.
“Don’t lose them, Hans! They’ll make fine coats!” The soldiers were running, too, as fast as their unsteady legs could manage. “They’re in there! That house!”
Golda backed against the wall, terror in her eyes. The black wolf smelled the soldiers outside. “Get around to the rear!” one of them shouted. “We’ll catch them between us!” Golda leaped for the window as bullets whacked into the frame and splinters flew. She fell back to the floor, spun madly in a whirl of yellow. The black wolf started out through the door, but a light blinded him and he retreated as bullets knocked holes in the wall above his head.
“Now we’ve got them!” a coarse voice crowed. “Max, go in there and clean them out!”
“Not me, you bastard! You go first!”
“Ah, you gutless shit! All right, I will! Erwin, you and Johannes watch the windows.” There was a clicking noise. The black wolf knew a fresh ammo clip was being loaded into the gun. “I’m going in!”
Golda again tried to get out through the window. Splinters stung her as another burst fired, and she dropped back with blood on her muzzle.
“Stop that shooting!” the coarse voice commanded. “I’ll get them both myself!” The soldier strode toward the house, following his light, the courage of schnapps in his veins.
The black wolf knew he and Golda were doomed. There was no way out. In a moment the soldier would be at the doorway, and his light would catch them. No way out, and what would fangs and claws be against four men with submachine guns?
He looked at the knife.
His paw touched the handle.
Don’t fail me, he thought. Wiktor had said that, a long time ago.
His claws struggled to close around the handle. The soldier’s light was almost into the room.
Wiktor. Mouse. Chesna. Lazaris. Blok. Names and faces whirled through the mind of the black wolf, like sparks escaping a bonfire.
Michael Gallatin.
I am not a wolf, he thought, as a blaze of memory leaped in his brain. I am a-
His paw changed. Streaks of white flesh appeared. The black hair retreated, and his bones and sinews rejointed with wet whispering sounds.
His fingers closed around the knife handle and drew it out of the skeleton. Golda gave a stunned grunt, as if the air had been knocked from her.
The soldier stopped on the threshold. “Now I’ll show you who your master is!” he said, and glanced back at Max. “You see? It takes a brave man to walk into a wolf’s den!”
“Two more steps, coward!” Max taunted.
The soldier probed with the light. He saw skeletons, and the yellow wolf. Ha! The beast was trembling. But where was the black bastard? He took the two final steps, his gun ready to blow its brains out.
And as the soldier entered, Michael stepped out from his hiding place beside the doorway and drove Kitty’s hooked blade into the pit of the man’s throat with all the strength he could summon.
The German, strangling on blood, dropped the Schmeisser and the light to clutch at his severed windpipe. Michael scooped up the submachine gun, planted a foot against the man’s belly, and shoved him backward through the doorway. Then he fired at the other man’s light, and there was a scream as the bullets mangled flesh.
“What was that? Who screamed?” one of the men at the rear of the house hollered. “Max? Hans?”
Michael walked out the door, his knee joints aching and his spine stretching. He stood at the corner of the house and took aim just above the two flashlights. One of them weaved toward him. He sprayed fire at the Nazis. Both lights exploded and the bodies crumpled.
That was the end of it.
Michael heard a noise behind him. He turned, an oily sweat leaking from his pores.
Golda stood there, only a few feet away. She stared at him, her body rigid. Then she showed her fangs, snarled, and ran away into the darkness.
Michael understood. He did not belong to her world.
He knew who he was now, and what he had to do. The transport plane had already taken the bombs of carnagene away, but there were other crows on the field: the night fighters. Those each had a range of about a thousand miles. If they could find out exactly where Iron Fist was hangared, and…