Previous Post Christmas 1872     The big city was big. There were more people in the Finger Street Railway Terminal than lived in her home town. Despite herself, the runaway couldn’t help staring round at the vast iron and glass construction, at the milling crowd, at the busy platforms with their steaming trains.     The young woman glanced behind her, but there was no sign of pursuit yet. Either she hadn’t been found yet or her enemy was biding his time.     She left the railway compartment reluctantly. She’d never travelled by rail before today – never travelled more than ten miles from home, actually; leaving the carriage was the definitive step. Once she was on the platform she’d have definitely run away.     The idea that she might be too scared to do it forced her to stride out boldly.     She handed in her ticket to the man in the smart uniform. She’d half expected him to question her reasons for coming to Gothametropolis York, but instead he just touched his hat to her and let her through a metal turnstile. She realised that she was being foolish, and didn’t like it. Why, that man probably saw dozens of people coming off trains every day.     The marble grandeur of the Finger Street station portico opened up onto the city itself. The runaway stepped outside and stood on the slushy sidewalk, fascinated and appalled by the noise and activity. Carts and wagons trundled past in a constant stream, churning the snow black. Pedestrians wove between the vehicles, crossing from corner to corner with no regard for their own lives.     A pair of loafers watching the station for new arrivals noticed the young woman clutching her travel bag and exchanged smirks. The girl spotted them and turned in the other direction, bundling her thin coat around her and heading off down Eisner Street towards the heart of the city.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What next?” she wondered to herself. The plan had run out when she’d reached Gothametropolis. She’d not really expected to get this far.     She inventoried her situation. She has almost a dollar in small change, carefully hoarded for many weeks. She had a canvas holdall with a change of clothes and a sewing kit. She had a smaller satchel for her special equipment. She had a tattered 1862 street map and guide – now ten years old and worse for wear.     And she was being followed.     She didn’t turn round but she looked to see whom it was. That meant just closing her eyes and using her other sight. She was relieved when she sensed it was only the two bravos from the railway station.     She pushed her mind out further, but cautiously. Overt use of her skills might betray her whereabouts. She caught something else out there, but in the chaotic jumble of unfamiliar impressions from the big city she couldn’t pinpoint it.     She turned a corner and slipped down an alley between a delicatessen shop and a cobbler’s store. She hoped her pursuers wouldn’t see where she’d gone. If they did, at least she could encounter them somewhere quiet.     They saw. They were well versed in following new arrivals to the city and they knew all the tricks. At least they thought they did.     It was a blind alley. The young woman turned round and faced them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Walk away,” she advised.     The men snickered.     The runaway was just considering how best to hurt them without giving herself away to her enemy when someone struck a match on the alley wall; someone neither she nor the bravos had realised was there.     The light of the lucifer played across a hard craggy face with thick eyebrows and a high widow’s peak. The men swung about and now they had flick knives in their hands.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You heard the lady.” The stranger’s voice was deep and gruff and it resonated right into the hindbrain. The knives didn’t bother him.     One of the men dared to slash with his blade. Something fast and bloody happened to him and he went down screaming. Something else happened and he went silent.     His partner dropped his weapon and fled for his life.     Then the stranger turned to the girl.     Her first thought was that he was a servant of her enemy, sent to drag her back – or worse. But there was a different aura of menace about this one. She looked harder, with more than her eyes, then gasped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That mark!” she exclaimed, trying to interpret the livid scar carved onto his forehead. It wasn’t visible with normal sight and it was very old.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about it?” the stranger growled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a curse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think I hadn’t noticed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a royal curse. An ancient curse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know. I was there when it was gouged onto me.”     The girl tried to reach into her workbag surreptitiously. She wasn’t sure she had anything in there that could cope here without significant preparation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If I wanted you dead you’d be dead by now,” the stranger promised.     He was blocking the alley. There was nowhere to run.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not easy prey,” the runaway warned. “I told them and I tell you…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not interested in threats.”     The girl took a breath. “And I’m not scared of big bad wolves.”     The stranger took a step forward. “But you’re scared of something, right? I can smell it on you. Something terrifies you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not your business.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It could be,” the stranger offered. “I need some help. You need protection. That’s the basis for barter.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A deal with a skinshifter? With an elder werewolf? I might as well let you eat me now.”     The stranger seemed impressed. “You’ve got the sight, then. I was told you would have, but I wasn’t sure how strong it might be.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Told by whom?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“By an interfering old Cailleach who sees too much herself.”     The runaway’s eyes opened wider. “The… the Cailleach? The Cailleach?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On her bad days, yeah. So when she tells me to find a girl off the 11.36 to GMY I take the trouble to turn up.”     The girl couldn’t press herself against the bricks of the alley end any more. A werewolf was troubling. An elder werewolf was extremely troubling. An elder werewolf set on her by the Old Woman of Winter, the Hag of Destiny…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t care who you are, or who sent you. I will not yield to you!”     The grizzled man could look menacing even when he leaned back against a wall and folded his arms. “Fine. No yielding. I got that. But do you really want me to walk off now and leave you to what’s tracking you down?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you really think that when he catches up with me you’ll make any difference?”     The werewolf shrugged. “One way to find out, sweetheart.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not your sweetheart!” the runaway snapped. “Not his either. Never his! No matter…” She swallowed hard. “Never.”     She was shivering. Her thin summer coat wasn’t suited to an East Coast winter. The great wolf slipped off his own box-coat and wrapped it round her shoulders. It was animal-hot; it warmed her bones.     The hairy man sniffed the air. “Come with me. I don’t like the smells coming down Eisner.”     The runaway made a flash decision. “Very well,” she agreed. “Your protection for my aid if I can give it. A bargain.” They clasped hands in the old way, hand and wrist, to bind the promise.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They call me Tanner,” the werewolf said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am Hagatha, of the Clan Darkness. I am a witch.” ***     The pursuers caught up with them in Toth Square, where tall townhouses looked out onto a tiny railinged public garden. There were five of them, not men at all but rather smears of blood twisted into humanoid shape and given semblance of life.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bloodmorts!” breathed Hagatha. She dived into her satchel. “Fennel, rue, mallory and woundwort,” she rehearsed.     Tanner tore the first creature to shreds and hurled it at the others. “Save your herbs,” he growled from a throat that wasn’t designed for speech. His hands were hairy now, the fingers clawed. He hooked them through the bloodmorts with a feral ease, tearing the creatures to mere gobbets of plasma that splattered over the slushy cobbles.     By the time Hagatha had found the right ingredients the werewolf stood alone. “I hate sorcery,” he snarled, examining his red-blotted shirt. “It’s lucky I have a good laundry.”     Hagatha opened a small flask of spring water and sprinkled her simples into it. She fused them with a sympathetic binding spell to create a cleansing medium and hurled the potion over her protector.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What the…” growled Tanner, soaked to the skin.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just because you tore the creatures apart didn’t stop them being mystically active, Mr Tanner. He’s clever than that. He would have tracked us by the blood-spots on your garments.”     The werewolf was slightly mollified. “A little warning, next time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And give him time to shift the enchantments elsewhere?” the witch scorned.     Tanner realised he wasn’t going to win an argument with this girl, possibly ever. He bustled her away from Toth Square, along Severin Street then down Orlando Alley.     The snow began to fall again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not natural,” Tanner smelled.     Hagatha didn’t shudder from the chill. “I hoped if I escaped using an iron railroad he wouldn’t be able to trace me,” she admitted. “Silly of me, really. I don’t think there is any escape.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why bother?” Tanner asked. “Only reason to run is to find a better place to fight. You found it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where?” The runaway looked around the unfamiliar labyrinth of tangled city backstreets. This wasn’t her place.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Next to me,” growled the big bad wolf.     The slipped out onto one of the walkways that looked out over the salt flats between Gothametropolis York and the bay. All Saints Cemetery ranged out before them, its marble charnel-houses and rows of crosses strangely comforting to Hagathas’s eyes. Beyond that was the thin smudge of river and haze-covered new construction on the further shore.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Parodiopolis, it’s called now,” Tanner told Hagatha. His voice was thick with scorn. “New mayor, new money, new ideas.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t like it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Towns should grow, not be planned. They should be places people live, not traps. That place’ll be trouble, you mark my words.”     Hagatha frowned. She didn’t like the city over the water. It was alien to her, even stranger than Gothametropolis York. The stones here were old and worn, long-rooted. The tunnels and towers were settled. Magic had crept back. But across the river everything was sharp and new. Science and technology ruled as much as magic, and whatever slept far beneath was matched by what the future waited to unveil. The witch turned away.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Tanner. “Someone else’s story.”     They hurried on. ***     The fugitives slipped down another alley, narrower than the last, so thin that the snow didn’t even land there. A cheap lodging-house lurked at the end of the lane. Tanner hammered on the door until a sleazy hunchback answered it. The werewolf handed over two dollars and won admission.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Remember that checkouth’s at eight,” the landlord lisped, leering at Hagatha in a most unpleasant fashion. He managed to get more innuendo into that one sentence than the girl had heard in all her young years.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Remember that if I catch you spying I’ll rip off something you can’t stick back on, Mortimer,” Tanner warned the Carpathian immigrant.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You won’t catch me thpying,” the hunchback promised. “Take room thix.”     Tanner shook his head. “Check your calendar, bud. I need the cellar.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The thellar? That’ll be an exthra two dollaths, then.”     The werewolf leaned over the landlord. “Really? You don’t want to give me the room with the cage tonight?”     Hagatha realised that it was a full moon. She felt it coursing through her. And if it throbbed with arcane energy in her witch’s blood, then what must it be doing to a Diana-cursed creature like Tanner?     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The thellar, then,” agreed Mortimer, cringing away while holding out a rusty key. He glanced at Hagatha. “Thupper?”     The runaway was starting to rethink her alliance with the werewolf. He was pact-sworn to protect her, but an elder curse might sunder even that oath. If he changed tonight and hungered…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This way,” Tanner called, and led Hagatha into the dingy basement.     The witch wrinkled her nose at the stench in the cellar. “What are these… devices?” she asked with a shudder. “No, I don’t really want to know.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not the only folks Mortimer Flapjack hires his rooms out to,” the werewolf replied. He pulled back a curtain to an alcove with a clean double bed. He detached the leather straps from it and tossed them away. “See that cage in the corner? That’s strong enough to hold me when I change. And the arcane noise I make when I’m in a wild full moon phase will be enough to drown out any kind of trace anyone has on you.”     Hagatha realised that would probably be true. “So you lock yourself away when it’s time for your… alteration?”     Tanner shrugged. “Most of the time I can handle the beast. We work together. Full moon… that’s when we part company. That’s when the curse really bites.”     Hagatha examined the Celtic rune on Tanner’s brow. “This is very ancient work - powerful and skilled. What did you do to warrant a royal geas like this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I broke a vow,” the wolf said tersely.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How? Why?”     Tanner shrugged. “It was a long time ago. The memory cheats.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You said that you wanted my aid. You need to tell me what I have to know to help you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you said you wanted protection. So fill me in on who I’m protecting you from.”     Werewolf and witch stared at each other across the shabby mattress. Outside the snow began to pile.     Hagatha spoke first. “He’s called Tempestus,” she conceded. “I’m pledged to him in an arranged marriage.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Arranged by whom?”     The witch scowled. “That’s the nasty part. Arranged by my mother – Tempestus’ mistress.”     Tanner frowned now. “That is nasty. What did you pa have to say about it?”     Hagatha swallowed. “I think… I think Tempestus is my father.”     A low growl escaped from Tanner’s throat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tempestus is a great sorcerer,” the runaway explained. “Maybe that’s how he beguiled my mother. Women of the Darkness line have great abilities that would be of use to a magus. Or maybe she really loves him. Either way, she’s besotted – and obedient.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And he can make bloodmorts,” the werewolf noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And much worse. He’s a puissant mage. Tempestus De Soth usually gets what he wants.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that’s you?”     Hagatha refused to answer. “Hold it. I’ve done my part. I told you who’s chasing me. Now your turn. What do you need from me that the Cailleach sent you for?”     Tanner turned round like a beast in a cage. “I need all kinds of things, honey. Redemption and vengeance and death. The curse lets me feel pain, but I can’t die. The moon pulls me back. But what I need from you – what I need most of anything after so very long – is control. Once a month I’m lost and the wolf wins. The Old Woman said you might help me in that fight.”     Hagatha was puzzled. “I’ve never even met a… a werewolf before. Mother told me something of skinshifter lore, of course, and I have some recipes that work well with werewolf pelt or blood or teeth, but…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we won’t be using those, darling.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, no. Absolutely not. But other than that, I’m baffled what I can do. What’s the exact nature of your elder curse?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not sure,” the wolf admitted. “I was kind of being beaten to death with whitethorn druid rods at the time. The priest was screaming something at me but my attention was more on the searing agony than the small print.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A little more context might be helpful, Mr Tanner. Maybe I can suggest a loophole.”     Tanner snorted. “Yeah, maybe. A ghoul Abyssal and an ancient dragon couldn’t find one. The blind Bookeman couldn’t find one. Samhain, Destroyer of Worlds couldn’t find one. Visionatus Improbablus was baffled. But you can.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t say that. Why are you being so defensive about what happened to you? Why are you being so grumpy?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I have a primal bloodlust coursing through my body, clawing to get out, and its been struggling there for the best part of two millennia, and I’m tired of holding it in. Because I’ve been paying for one choice for more time than I can count. Because the damned moon calls to me even here in this cellar, and she’s rising, and my skin’s too small for me and everything around me is prey! That’s why I’m grumpy!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What choice did you make then?” asked Hagatha practically. She was a young witch, but she knew how to see to the heart of things.     Tanner closed his eyes. “She was called Graille,” he confessed at last. “She was kind and innocent, with green eyes and hair so pale and fair it was like moonshine. She was a Maiden of the Cup, a keeper of the chalice of life.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A virgin priestess, then,” the witch guessed. “I thought the Chalice was departed to the Dreary Dimension?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This was a long time ago. Graille was the Cup Maiden and I was Tanaise of the People, designate to be king when my uncle’s rule was done. He reigned. I was his champion. And Graille… Graille was destined to be his queen.”     Hagatha winced. She was young, younger than that Chalice Keeper had been when she had met a handsome young Tanaise, but she could guess the forbidden passions that had enmeshed them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Tanner, following her thoughts. “Graille didn’t want to go to Uncle, though that was what the law and our faith demanded. She didn’t want to give him the sacred vessel to renew his reign. And I didn’t want her to. So I broke my holy oath, my kinship vows, and Graille’s maidenhead. My Uncle didn’t react well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He had you cursed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He stabbed me with a six-foot bastard sword. And I tore his throat out with my teeth. Family arguments were a lot more candid in those days.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Graille?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Died trying to get between us,” Tanner answered bleakly. “Her blood mingled with mine when the king’s sword pierced me. And there, with the violated Chalice Priestess laid dead on the Kingship Stone, while I was pierced with the Sword of Kings, the priests pinned me with the Cursed Spear and pronounced my doom. They took my name from me and made me a beast. They set me loose against friend and kin until none were left. Then they granted me sanity to know what I had become. I slaughtered them for it.”     Hagatha found she was holding her breath. “So we both have family issues,” she acknowledged at last.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Chalice was lost then, the Hallows scattered. They’ve all taken different guises now. The Cup went to the Dreary Dimension. The Sword has turned up a few times in legend. The Stone ended up in some weird other version of Canada. The Spear got buried under some insane asylum. I hunted for them once, hoping that if I reassembled them I could break a curse cast with their combine power, but I know now it doesn’t work like that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m a virgin,” Hagatha told the werewolf hesitantly. “That’s why Tempestus de Soth wants me. There are powerful magics can be done with maidenhead, as your Uncle must have known. There are wards on me to prevent any from taking my virtue save my betrothed husband.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A magical chastity belt,” mused Tanner.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes. But listen… An elder cursed monster might be able to survive the consequences of violating me. You could take me and then Tempestus…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not going to happen, sweetheart,” the werewolf replied. “First off, you’re just a kid. I’m old enough to be your great-grandfather’s ancient ancestor. Second, you deserve better than a grizzled mixed-up pug like me. A luminous girl like you, you need a knight in shining armour, a hero with a heart full of courage and love. And third, I doubt that losing your cherry would make you useless to this De Soth guy. Wicked wizards always have a back-up plot. He’d still find used for you and they wouldn’t be nice.”     Hagatha felt a wave of relief that she wouldn’t have to rut with the wolf – and a pang of regret. “I thought, though,” she confessed, “that maybe that might have been the key to your curse, too. There has to be one. No spell can be that powerful without a get-out clause. It’s the rules. Maybe if you found another maiden to…”     Tanner chuckled. “Oh, I’ve found other maidens, honey. There’s something to be said for animal magnetism. If that cured me I’d be long gone by now. No, I don’t think getting kissed by a princess’ll turn me back to a man. It was fun testing the theory though.”     Hagatha blushed. “Then I’m at a loss, Mr Tanner. I can’t help you and I don’t see how you can save me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me neither, kid. Maybe we…. Agh!” The shapeshifter winced and clutched his belly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mr Tanner?”     He got up quickly. “I need to be in the cage,” he warned the witch. “The change is coming. Lock me in and fasten this silver chain round the lock. Don’t let me out until dawn even if I tell you to. Even if I seem to change back to human and talk rationally. Even if I seem to die. The wolf is a beast but he is clever too. Do not stray from the path. Do not talk to him. Do not believe his lies. Do not let him taste your blood. And never, never… aaghh…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never what?” Hagatha asked, trying to control her panic.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never let him distract you!” Tanner said in an unpleasant triumphant tone, shifting and growing as he spoke, turning mad red eyes upon his prey.     Hagatha slammed her best Sunday hex into the beast. He was hammered back into the cage. She slammed the door shut and sealed it before the monster could recover.     The wolf was ten feet tall. It came at the bars with the fury of ancient winter, red of tooth and claw.     The cage held.     Hagatha sat with her back to the wall in that bleak cellar in that unfamiliar city and watched a terrible beast of feral malice try to tear itself through iron bars to get at her.     She still felt safer than she had when Tempestus de Soth had visited her at home in Covenant House. ***     The blizzard hit Gothametropolis hard, catching last minute shoppers and workers hurrying home, soaking them to the skin and chilling them to the bone. Howling winds snapped flurries of sleet at the cowering citizens. The bells in the steeples clanged warning. The streets choked with snow.     Inside his cage, the Wolf became quiet. At last he settled, listening. Then he unfolded himself again, and he was a man.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hagatha,” he called to the girl sitting vigil on him.     The runaway didn’t answer. She knew better than to talk to the beast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A sensible little girl doesn’t talk to a wolf, it’s true,” agreed the monster. “But then again, you’re not a little girl any more, are you? You’ve started to bleed like a woman. I can smell the fertility in you. Your mother’s lover wouldn’t want you if you hadn’t bloomed.”     Tanner was tall and muscled, with thick hair curled on his chest and limbs. Hagatha tore her gaze away from his hairiest part, blushing again. The prince was nude. Hagatha stared at the wall.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A sensible young woman should beware the wolf ever more, I suppose,” the beast went on. “Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth, they say, and wolves devour pretty young things in all the wickedest ways.”     Hagatha closed her eyes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But witches?” the Wolf went on, “witches are not little girls, or sensible young women. Witches stand on the edge, between the light and darkness, where shadows lie. Witches do not fear to speak with gods or devils. Is that not true, Hagatha Darkness?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suppose it is,” Hagatha admitted. “What do you want to say to me?”     The Wolf chuckled as if he had won a round. “I’d like to tell you my side of the story.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wolves lie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If we do, we borrow it from men. When Tanner needs to be strong and fierce he steals it from me. When I want to speak and think I take it from him. If I am deceitful or cruel then it is not of the Wolf.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tanner must be very cunning,” Hagatha considered, “for you to borrow so much of it from him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All men are cunning when they hunt. All maids learn that, to their cost. And afterwards, all men blame the wolf.”     Hagatha shook her head. “Men wrong women, it’s true. But women wrong men also, and each other. It’s…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Human nature?” suggested the Wolf. “I’m a beast, yes. But I am honest in my passions. I hate, I lust, I take joy, I grieve, without reserve or apology. How does this make me less worthy than Tanner, who has murdered and ravaged his way across this globe trying to ameliorate his torment and his guilt? Sin requires choice, and I am what I am. Tanner is the sum of all his choices.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s not as eloquent as you, for certain,” the witch decided.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, he was once. He composed and sang, danced and swived like the young sprig of royalty that he was; the perfect Tanaise. There are parts of him he threw away when Graille died. Others were taken from him with his name. He’s a very broken creature now, my prison is.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You believe yourself a separate being then?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am something wonderful, trapped inside something terrible. Hence my appeal to you.”     He did appeal to the young woman, tugging at some ancient instinct awoken in her and grown since the moon had first made her bleed. He was a child of that moon, a Wolf of Diana, a hunter. Some part of Hagatha wanted to be his prey.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what do you propose?” she asked the beast. “Do I tell you what big eyes you have?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not my eyes you’ve been peeping at, pretty witch, as well you know. You blush and turn away but you look again. And why not? Witches are not bound by the conventions of the human herd.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you want, Wolf?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What does any creature want? To feed, to mate, to be free.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so I should let you out of your cage?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You should let me out of Tanner. You heard what the Cailleach said. You are the key. Tanner might be too timid to turn that lock but I am not. Come and lie with me. Be saved from your oppressor and free me from mine.”     It was a frighteningly convincing appeal. Hagatha was on her feet before she checked herself. “Maybe not,” she told the Wolf. “Nice try, though.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t trust me. You are wise. But would you really choose the magus over me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t choose either of you,” the witch insisted. “I stand… between, as you said.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not independence,” the Wolf sneered. “That’s a threesome.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Talk to Tanner,” Hagatha advised the beast. “He’ll tell you that sometimes not making a choice is the best choice. He learned that the hard way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No. He learned that hesitating when you’ve made a choice brings disaster. Once he’d taken Graille he should have killed the King and taken his throne. Instead he let sentiment slow him down, stay his hand against his beloved Uncle until the girl died trying to calm their fight. Then he allowed remorse and grief to temper rage and vengeance, and nearly died for it. When he finally slew his foe he was too wounded to resist the priests.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that’s where you came from,” Hagatha understood at last. “Not the wolf of the forest but the wolf of rage and vengeance, the predator in human violence.”     The Wolf was silent for a moment. At last he said, “You would have become very great in your art, I deem, if you had escaped your moiré.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What fate?” the runaway asked. There was a tone in the beast’s voice that she did not like, different from his subtle menace of before.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your time is up, little girl. Your betrothed has come for you.”     The cellar door rattled. A few flakes of snow slipped under it.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How? Your aura is enough to mask a dozen witches,” Hagatha protested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m easy to find when I blaze in the moon, for those with the art of it,” the Wolf confessed, “at least when I choose to be seen. Did you think the Cailleach spoke only to Tanner? She is older and more terrible than us all. She spoke to me too, and now we know she spoke to De Soth also.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No!” gasped the runaway as the door frosted over. She scurried to her bag of charms to find what incantations she could. She knew they were not enough to protect her from Henbane Darkness’ lover.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let me out,” the Wolf urged. “I can still save you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“By mating, eating, and running free?”     The Wolf grinned. “You’d enjoy it.”     Hagatha shook her head.     The door began to open.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Last chance,” the Wolf told her. “You know what time it is.”     What time is it, Mister Wolf? Hagatha knew it was time to decide what she would be. Was she the wolf’s meat or her betrothed’s sacrifice? Or something else.     She hurried to the cage and snapped the silver chain around the lock. She fumbled the key into the hole and turned the tumblers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” smiled the Wolf, with such big teeth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not you,” Hagatha told him. “I’m letting Tanner out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah, but even a man who’s pure at heart and says his prayers at night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is full and bright. Tanner’s not here any more. Only me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re present when he’s here. That means he’s present when you are. He once saved a maiden from a man she didn’t love, though it cost him everything. If anything of that hero remains then I call him out now. Master the beast, Tanaise. He is rage and violence. You are a man. Rage and violence are only some of your tools. I need you to use them all.”     It wasn’t a little girl who called, or even a victim maiden. It was a witch, of the line of Darkness, daughter and grand-daughter of witches, scion of a thousand generations back before men counted years. It was who Hagatha Darkness chose to be, and now the power that had lain quiet in her all these years burned bright, like the moon itself, like Diana, Queen of Witches, like destiny incarnate.     The door shivered to frozen flinders. Tempestus De Soth stepped over the threshold. “Did you really think to escape me, Hagatha?” he sneered.     The werewolf burst from his cage and leaped at the magus. Cursed claws tore at layered arcane warnings, shredding magical defences that could have stood against anything but the might of the holy Hallows. Claws like the sharpest Sword of Kings, skin like the Stone of Destiny, blood searing like the red fluid in the Chalice of Life, teeth as deadly as the Spear of Doom.     Turn every curse inside-out and there is a blessing.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She is not yours, Wolf,” Tempestus scorned. He slammed magics into the shapechanger before him. Dealing with werewolves was something he’d been taught at his father’s knee.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s not mine,” Tanner replied, “and I’m not the Wolf.” The spells burned off him. His flesh renewed itself.     Then Hagatha knew why the Cailleach had told Tempestus where to find her. The Old Woman was not kind, but she was clever.     Tanner hurled the sorcerer back. Great gashes on Tempestus’ side welled red, betraying the failure of his abjurations. He unleashed everything he’d got at the lycanthrope that came at him, channelling the elemental forces of ice and storm at Tanner to freeze and shatter him.     Tanner howled. He couldn’t prevail. His body shook as it failed. Gory lumps of him tore away.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You need the Wolf too,” Hagatha told him. “Don’t fight him. Make him part of you again.”     Tanner swallowed up the Big Bad Wolf.     Then he came for Tempestus. His claws tore into the screaming sorcerer. His teeth closed on the mage’s throat.     Something slithered out of De Soth. It was shaken loose as the magus died. Hagatha saw it for a moment, the most handsome man she had ever seen, and she yearned for him. She knew in a flash that it was this Demon Lover who had seduced her mother, not the De Soth who had sold himself in pact to house this malevolence. In other guises he had seduced her grandmother, and her mothers before her. This Demon Lover bred the Darkness line, and Hagatha was his next brood-mare.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or not,” the Darkness Witch decided. “On your way, laddie. You’ve bred every generation of my family stronger than the last, seeking the time when we’re ready to birth you as male child you can use to rule the world. Well I’m not going to your bed and you don’t have a magus-slave to ride in any more so get back to the abyss and good riddance to you!”     The Demon Lover smiled at her as he faded. He blew her a kiss. He’d see her again some day when his vitality returned.     Tanner stood up and spat Tempestus’ spine onto the floor. His body was fully-furred now, his head lupine. Hot red eyes turned to Hagatha.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tanner?” she ventured. “Are you in there?”     The moon tugged at then world, stirring up magic, calling to the lunatics, inspiring lovers, summoning the wolf.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m here,” Tanner growled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And… am I about to die?”     Tanner considered it. “No,” he decided at last. “After all, you addressed the curse.”     The rune was still there, above his muzzle, sharp as his teeth and more terrible still; but the curse had evolved. It was different.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s going to happen now?” Hagatha wondered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll need to give Mortimer an extra five dollars to get rid of the body in his cellar,” the werewolf considered. “And then… I think it will be a bad time to be a mugger or a pimp in Gothametropolis York tonight.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That entity inside Tempestus… He’s defeated for the moment but he will come back some day. He’ll come to find me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then get strong, Hagatha Darkness,” Tanner advised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And find a knight is shining armour?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Knights are fine,” the werewolf said, “Being strong enough to look after yourself is even better.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Men lie,” Hagatha recalled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sometimes. And sometimes they’re heroes. Witches stand between them all, somewhere on the edge, where the shadows lie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I’m a witch. A Darkness Witch. The Darkness Witch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, ma’am. I think you are now. So there’s only one thing I can do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that is…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Run!” the werewolf cried. He turned and pelted from the cellar on all fours and vanished into the blizzard.     Hagatha went over to Tempestus de Soth and fished out her athame. After all, there were some very useful spell components on a dead wizard… *** Footnote Ye Merry, Gentlemen: As may be evident to long-term readers, this episode fills in some of the history of two staple supporting characters of the Parodyverse, Hagatha Darkness, now usually seen as the formidable crone grandmother of the Lair Legion’s Sorceress Whitney Darkness, and Tanner, resident werewolf at Mr Li’s Laundry of Doom. A hundred and forty years ago things were rather different. Other characters of note are: The Cailleach is a terrible old woman representing winter and doom. Versions of her appear in many mythologies, from Atropos who cuts the thread of life for Greek men and gods to the Baba Yaga of Russia’s snowy forests. The Cailleach is the Celtic version, and when she’s not rending the unwary with her iron talons she’s washing dead men’s clothes in fords waiting to encounter those who are about to die. In the Parodyverse she’s working at Mr Li’s laundry doing much the same. Uncle Mortimer of the Carpathian Flapjacks debuted in Untold Tales #199, a relative of the Lair Mansion’s disgusting major domo Flapjack. Tempestus De Soth is an ancestor of the mostly-wicked sorcerous De Soth family who plague the Parodyverse today, and of their disinherited white-sheep, jobbing occultist Vinnie de Soth. The De Soths’ power comes from a variety of demonic pacts, so offering Tempestus as a host for the Demon Lover who breeds the Darkness Clan is pretty much par for the course. Henbane Darkness, Hagatha’s mother, made her literary debut in Untold tales #150, which takes place a few years after this story and reveals what happens when parent and daughter meet up again. Tanner’s consultants have included the Abyssal Greye, dean of the scholar-ghouls under Gothametropolis, the blind Bookeman, one of a line of specialist librarians who are dotted throughout history, Samhain, the first Destroyer of Tales that the Lair Legion encountered (back when they were the League of Regulars) and battled, and Visionatus Improbablus, whose strange tale may yet one day be revealed in The Da Visionary Code. The Hallows, sword, cup, spear, and stone, appear in many guises in mythology, and even on our standard deck of playing cards. In the Parodyverse, the Cup of Life played a major part in the story of Valeria of Carfax, slave-girl from the Dreary Dimension, who eventually became the Keeper of the Chalice after many issues of Untold Tales. The Stone appears to have migrated to Candia, the alternate-universe version of Canada from which Rabid Wolf originates. The Spear of Destiny is rumoured to lie beneath Herringcarp Asylum, which is surely worrying for those who know of… the Hooded Hood! Further stories, including those mentioned above, at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Details of these characters and many more in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Map and location details in Where's Where in the Parodyverse More writing from HH in his other identity at I.A. Watson’s Homepage *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2012 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2012 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

Sorry for the delay in reading and replying to this... The holidays were a long, tiring but mostly enjoyable thing around here, and the extended family didn't actually make it home until last weekend.

Quite a moody tale about dear old (young) Hagatha and Tanner, who has apparently been kicking around for quite a few centuries. Nice to see a mutually beneficial arrangement come about between them, and seeing a de Soth get gutted is always a bonus. I especially enjoyed their musings on the formation of Parodiopolis... That place truly is nothing but trouble.

An excellent Christmas present, and I regret not unwrapping it sooner!