Night Tale - Chapter 9

cryptocrown (11)in #writing • 8 years ago (edited)

Everything had to happen at midnight, on a full moon.

According to Vulnar, at this time, a werewolf is experiencing an involuntary change of appearance. This is the moment of his greatest weakness.

An experienced werewolf spends the first hour after midnight in a safe den. And only then gets out on the hunt.

In the dreams of his brother Vulnar Black saw his lair. In reality he found him among the mountain ranges - a cave with a wide but inconspicuous entrance from a distance.

There Vulnar the White waited at midnight. There, an hour before midnight, I was waiting for him, sitting near a heap of brushwood, placed by Vulnar the Black in the form of the correct rune of Ingus.

I was wearing a mask of tanned wolf skin. "So he wasn’t able steal your face," said Vulnar.

The gun was on my lap. Greased with wolf fat and charged with silver shot. In the darkness, the trunk, butt, and the hook exuded the threads of its own radiance. I covered the Killer under a fur coat, so not to betray myself before the right time.

My watch has been standing since the plane crashed. I didn’t know how long it was before midnight.

I sat, sipping from the flask cooked by Vulnar the Black braga. And I waited.

He appeared in the silence of falling snowflakes, not giving himself with a single sound. It is inconceivable how such a giant might walk along the rocky cornice, without even creaking his boots.

He stood at the entrance to the cave with his back to me, shaking his sleeves. The fur of his coat and the thick mop of his hair were silver from the snow and frost.

Looking at the motionless, like a mountain, back, I groped the Killer's trigger.

"You're not from the village," he said suddenly.

It was Vulnar's voice.

"Who are you?" He asked, turning to me. "Was bist du?"

About his face it was impossible to say "resembling ". Like a brother looks similar to a brother or a son similar to a father. it was the same person. Vulnar the Black's face.

Only hair and beard - it's not snow painted them, but gray hair. White Vulnar earned his nickname.

"Who are you?" He sucked in the air. "I feel the iron. Are you a woodcutter? Hunter?"

"Hunter. Der Jager."

"Hunter," Vulnar the White repeated. "And I'm the Master. Der Meister. You have gone far from home. The hunter shouldn’t do this. Blizzard sweeps away traces. A hunter may not find his way home."

"My house isn’t here."

"Your house is on the other side of the fog. I saw it in a dream. In the last moon, when my brother sent a wind to break your iron bird."

My finger froze, not lifting the trigger to the end.

"Who sent the wind?"

"My brother. Vulnar the Black. Blacksmith of Fate."

The Baron looked upset.

"It's unfortunate that we couldn’t help you, Frau Nagel."

"You did tell me one good thing, Baron," Erica said. "The man is dead. We are confronted by the beast. Sly, tenacious, dangerous. But just a beast. If it hadn’t been so stupid. If he chose a different method of suicide, he could cut his own veins, for example. We would face a creature many times more terrible. Along with some human properties, it would have acquired the ability to take on the face of its victims."

"Doppelganger steals the image of the victim with its soul. A werewolf steal only appearance. It removes the skin from the victim and adds it over his own. Until the skin begins to decompose, it is almost impossible to distinguish it from the original.

The Baron wrinkled his forehead.

"I read about it!" He announced joyfully. "Report of the group of Toyber. One thousand nine hundred and ninth year. The Ripper from the Black Forest. Seven victims. The only survivor is a little girl." He frowned again. "I cannot remember what her name was..."

Gaspard van Rihthen coughed nervously.

"Erica Braut," said Erica Nagel, a special member of the van Rihthen Clinic for the Treatment of Mental Illness. "A year later she died of tuberculosis in the shelter of the Van Rihthen Foundation."

"Yes, yes, you are absolutely right," von Stolz was shaking his head. "Poor girl. So much to survive and die from tuberculosis..."

"Would you prefer a werewolf to eat the baby?" Erica asked with irony.

"No, no, no," the Baron blushed. "I mean…"

"Time," Gaspar said, looking at his watch. "It's time for you, Erica."

In the depths of the park, the bells of the Albrechtsberg Castle struck midnight.