Night Tale - Chapter 12

cryptocrown (11)in #writing • 8 years ago

Stepping forward, White Vulnar waved his iron claws in front of the very nose of the bear. The beast backed away, growling.

I got up, threw off my fur coat. I pressed the butt to my shoulder. The silver patch burned on my cheek with cold.

The master turned to me. He bared no longer like a human.

"Little hunter," hissed in his throat. "Too late. It was necessary to think earlier."

His face changed. The jaw crawled forward and the forehead back. Sharp tips of ears showed through the hair. Slouching, Vulnar became less tall and more massive. His hands hung at the level of his bent knees.

Midnight has come. The transformation began.

She smelled it long before they were on the same path.

Alien embedding in the scent of the park. It felt like a roughness under the fingers. Tickling in the nose. The taste of alcohol and metal on the tongue.

He smelled with an old overcoat, tobacco, schnapps, and rifle grease.

Smells of a human.

"Frolain," he said, confidently aiming at her from the old Manlicher. "Do you know that you are walking through a territory specially protected by the state?"

"And that's an excuse to point at me with your gun, Mr. Schmid?"

"Excuse me, Frolain, but the time is late... do we know each other?" The watchman said.

An elderly man, however, his stature and a rifle attached to the shoulder - a former soldier, for sure. Yes, he could sleep in a warm little room, but he dragged himself into this darkness and cold.

"I read it from your badge," Erica said.

Immediately she realized that the watchman wouldn’t believe her. In the dark, at this distance, it was almost impossible to read the tiny letters.

"I wanted to call firefighters," she heard the approaching voice. "And the phone, curse it, is silent."

Three, four, five.

"I went to check the wire, but it's, what you think, is gnawed."

"Gnawed? Are you sure?"

Six, seven.

"Of course. There the winding is thick and there are marks of the teeth. And traces around are trampled by wolf. I'm an experienced hunter, I know."

"Fresh footprints?"

"Yes, a moment ago he was there, a wolf. Even the water in footprints didn’t have time to sink. I thought to look for the beast and saw you. And I thought, maybe you are another wild animal..."

Eight, nine, now.

She carefully lowered the gun next to the coiled body. She checked the old man's pulse.

The watchman had an enviable reaction. He managed to shoot. Once. The bullet got stuck in the trunk of a tree.

In return, Erica gave him fifteen minutes lying on the cold ground.

Even if he catches a cold, it's better than being eaten by a werewolf.

"If you won’t wait and shoot, while he's a man, my brother will kill you. If you wait for too long and he turns completely into a werewolf, my brother will kill you."

Your time is sixty heart beats between yesterday and today, when man's strengths have left him and the strength of the wolf hasn’t yet come to him. Neither before, nor later, and then you must strike."

Gray Wolf, the Master of the Wild Hunt, lapped the water that drained from the witch's glacier. In a dream, he saw the future.

Vulnar the White was ready for our fight.

One word of reincarnating lips and fire again rose to the ceiling. Reliably separating me and the Wolfs’ Killer from the transforming werewolf.

The heat was eating my eyes. I groped for the icy metal of the flask on my belt. And I recollected, how Vulnar the Black flooded a burning rune of Ingus. Valkyrie milk and bear blood?

I poured the drug into the fire with a swing.

An incredible thing happened. The fire wall didn’t extinguish, but it formed a "break". Just where the braga poured onto the bonfire.

Into this "break" I stepped, lifting the gun to my shoulder. My heart beat intense in my rib cage.