In the early morning, when André heard the shouts and noise from the street, he was still sitting by the bloody corpse of his mother and the tiny baby, which was now soundly asleep.
Last night was full moon, the young man thought, and it seemed to be the first clear thought in his head in many hours. Did the villagers discover one of the pack? Are these shouts and noise exactly what Fabien had always been afraid of?
André opened his front door and peered outside. Indeed, the street was full with angry villagers, those who were just human. The pack was still in the forest, he figured. The humans however, were extremely agitated for such an early hour. They were armed with pitchforks, axes, even hammers. Many carried torches. Some dragged pieces of wood und packs of straw towards the village centre.
Before André even had the presence of mind to wonder what was going on, he suddenly caught up with what the most of them were shouting:
“Burn the werewolf!”
The young man’s heart sunk cold in his guts. He scanned the crowd and his eyes stopped at a small group: the priest, the magistrate, the innkeeper and two carpenter prentices holding a screaming and winding figure between them.
All blood rushed away from his head when André recognised the girl as Anouk Begnoche, his friend’s little sister, the cute and perky playmate from his early years…
Andrè’s feet carried him before he knew it. He had to get to her before the crowd would reach the village centre. They would kill her.
But the angry crowd didn’t want to let him through. They shouted louder and louder, shaking their pitchforks in the air, all of them facing the crossroads in the middle of the village, where some quick ones had already started to build the pyre.
André tried to push his way through but was brutally forced back by those who wanted to be in the first lines. His eyes scanned the surroundings in panic, until he saw Olivier and Aline coming together from a side street. Were they the first of the pack to return after the full moon’s run? It certainly appeared so. André saw that Olivier, tired and battered as he was after the crazy night, realised quickly what was going on as he heard Anouk’s voice filled with pain.
Olivier threw himself into the crowd. From where he was coming he might have a chance, André thought. People weren’t pushing so hard and let him through. Aline fell back, still looking around a little lost. Both she and André were watching Olivier as he used all his remained power to push people apart to get to Anouk. André was thinking hard of any way his friend could calm the people down enough to make them let her go. There was no way, whatever their reason was for having seized the girl. He couldn’t take her away by brutal force either.
To help his friend André made his way to the part of the crowd where Olivier had pushed himself through, towards Aline.
Olivier was only a few steps away from those holding the crying girl when one of the villagers – later on neither André nor Aline could tell which one it was – turned around in fury, when Olivier pulled at his shoulder, and thrust his pitchfork in front of him.
The four thin iron blades penetrated the mighty chest and pierced the big, strong, pumping heart.
Olivier looked down at himself surprised.
The villager froze in horror.
André gasped for air.
Aline, only a few steps behind André, suddenly produced a wild desperate howl.
The heart of the werewolf fought for every second, for every beat. But the spikes of solid iron were still piercing it as the villager was too shocked by what he’d done to remove the pitchfork. The unnatural heart of a demon, which was supposed to beat for many years, speed up with happiness, pump the blood with adrenaline during many full moons, beat in unison with his one true love, the heart of the werewolf couldn’t fight the mortal wound.
When the villager finally snapped out of his shock and pulled the pitchfork out, Olivier was already dead. His body, so strong and mighty just seconds ago, sank to the ground with no life in it. His eyes were still open with surprise when he disappeared from André’s and Aline’s sight somewhere by the feet of the people on the crossroads.
Aline jumped in a very inhuman manner to fight her way towards her fiancée and André had barely so managed to catch her around her middle and hold her back.
“My love!” She shouted, beating around herself. “Olivier!” Tears were streaming down her face, her fingers were shaped like claws and her ears began stretching.
André held her against himself in a rib-crushing embrace. He bit hard in her ear and whispered:
“Stay human. Stay human.”
He doubted she had heard him or even knew who he was. Aline was lost to humanity at the moment. She shook in convulsions and he could barely cope with her. She was trying for the life of her to shake him off and kill everyone in her way to get to her fiancée, and rip to shreds the one who had murdered him. Even after the craziness of the full moon night she had enough power to turn right there and then.
André, crying himself, made an effort incredible even for a werewolf to keep the young woman from massacring the crowd. He couldn’t let anyone else die today, not while he was there.
She stopped her tries to free herself after a while, when André realised her eyes, glistening with pain and fury just a minute ago, became empty. Now she was only shaking all over. She was half-unconscious. Her true love’s death took everything from her. He could understand her very well.
He loosened his grip on the girl and gave her a careful blow on a certain spot on the neck, which made her lose consciousness and sink to the ground. He would get back to her later, he promised to himself. Damn it, where were the others? Where was Nicolas, who was always so keen on protecting his sister? Where were Fabien and Emmanuel? Where the hell were the Begnoches when their daughter was being burned at a stake?
“Burn the monster!” Humans shouted. The pyre was finished quickly, and almost nobody had noticed Olivier’s death. The priest and the two young carpenter prentices dragged the poor Anouk onto it and began tying her to the stake. From where he stood André noticed a thick silver chain with a cross around her neck, the one that the priest was wearing during the Sunday mass. Her neck and chest under it were bleeding and smoking. The silver was already in her blood, André knew it. She wouldn’t be able to survive such poisoning. No matter how terrible being burned would be, maybe it would go quicker than death by silver?
André looked at her scared little face. He couldn’t do a thing to save her. She knew it, too, when her eyes found him in the crowd.
Oh, angels and demons, he cursed. How could all this be happening? His friend dead, one girl half-dead with grief, another girl burned by angry villagers, his own mother dead. What kind of a day was this for the pack?
The priest started praying loudly, when they had tied Anouk firmly enough. The crowd was so frantic now that André feared for his own life just for not being agitated with them. But he couldn’t take his eyes off Anouk. As she looked at him, still crying with terrible pain the silver was giving her, she seemed to have found some courage in her heart. His face would be the last thing she would see before her death and the only comfort he could give her now was just the tiny consolidation that she wouldn’t die alone between all these hostile people. She looked at him pleadingly. She was no child, he realised suddenly. Her eyes were much too adult for a thirteen year old girl. She knew the meaning of death, and she knew that at this point any member of the pack who would have tried to save her would be burned with her. She pleaded him to stay where he was and just be with her to her last minute.
André would never be able to forget those atrocious, barbarous moments when the magistrate tossed a torch onto the straw and it caught fire. The cheers of the crowd and Anouk’s inhuman cry of pain when the flames licked her gown and hair would haunt André for many years ahead.
He was too terrified to watch, yet unable to look away. And he wished she would die already and be spared the unimaginable torture.
It was a long, long time until the cries stopped, the flames died and the villagers calmed down, slowly leaving the crossroads. Some stayed longer to marvel on a black corpse on top of the pyre. André sank to his knees by Aline, who still lay unconscious on the grass. The two of them felt very much alike today.
Aline’s little sister Gamille was the first one to appear from the forest. She was followed by her parents. Nicolas, Manu and Cerise appeared from a different direction, looking as if they were coming from their homes. Fabien and several other pack members hurried towards their houses. Not all of them realised right away what had happened in the dusky hours of this terrible morning. None of them would recognize the body. André had no power to explain.
