CastoffCaptain
Obsess. Hunt. Manipulate. Repeat.
Homo homini lupus.
One night to end them all, I woke up in pieces, pieces on the floor.
Black dog running by my side, keeping time.
He couldn't smell her from the hilltop. The tang of her monthlies had tortured him since sunrise, when he and the rest of the pilgrims had taken to the road leading to Holywell. She'd started last night-- that much he'd heard through the tavern walls with the help of his newly-enhanced hearing. The girl's nurse had crowed her pleasure at the girl's blossoming womanhood, what with the upcoming wedding-- but now, with the evil inside him heightening his sense of smell in addition, simply being near the group of eight had been driving him mad. The wind swept down from the north across the fields, carrying with it the scent of the sea, and for a moment, Father Henry was given a moment of respite.
Her name was Agnes and she was barely fourteen, a bride-to-be promised to a minor lord of Northumberland. Sweet-tempered, gentle, and kind, Agnes was loved by all in the small party, and it was easy to understand why a parent would be reluctant to let her out into wilds of England. Two knights accompanied her in addition to her nurse, well-armed killers meant to keep her safe from brigands and thieves along the way. Henricus--Father Henry to his friends-- wiped the sweat from his brow and pulled his black robes closer around his body.
It wasn't thieves she needed to fear.
He exhaled. His hands shook. He could go on sitting on them, as he had done for the first half of the break the group had taken for lunch, but instead he stared at his fingers. They'd changed; his pointer, ring, and pinky digits now matched the length of his middle ones, a hideous and shameful mark of evil that had been brought about by that night. The night of blood and terror, fleeing the enraged giant of an animal who'd pursued him through the cathedral and out into the communal kitchens, where he'd squeezed himself down a garderobe shaft and escaped death. Not before his back had been opened by the fangs and claws carrying the poison which now flowed through his body, however. That was the night which had led to later nights of transformation under the silver-slick light of the moon.
The stories weren't true, though. It wasn't just a full moon that could turn a man into wolf. The days leading up to it could be as bad.
He raised his eyes to the heavens; their blues matched, although there were far more clouds in the priest's gaze than in the afternoon sky. He would have to trail even farther along behind the group now that Agnes had become a woman, at least until her bleeding had stopped, because if the pattern of the past two and a half months held fast, it wouldn't take the full moon to send him into the Darkness. Just the hint of crimson, the flash of silken flesh, a vein throbbing in an exposed throat, and he would be lost.
Henry clamped his fists shut. He would be lost, and she would be dead.
Lying back on the rain-sodden hillside, the priest spread his arms wide and waggled his sandaled feet, watching a hawk wheel above him.
Well. A giggle wormed its way up from his throat. At least she wouldn't have to worry about that boor of a bridegroom anymore.
"Stop it!" He hissed at himself, appalled by the thought. Even his mind had been poisoned. So much so that it wasn't until he was halfway down the hill that he realized he was striding toward the travelers, toward her, one hand fisted at his side while the other gripped the copper pilgrim's badge pinned to his cloak. The emblem of St. Christopher bit into his palm: the saint, his head raised in prayer, frozen in his holy struggle with a wolf.
