Death Angel's Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner Read Free Book Online Page B

this way since before man first dropped from the trees and challenged the Brotherhood with his puny clubs and stores.
    The creature unlocked the gate and effortlessly swung it half open. Into the courtyard the hungry wolves filed, slipping along the shadows until they reached the lodge. Behind this door slept the detested humans, wrapped in their stolen furs and besotted with burned flesh and rotted plant juices. The leader silently stole to the door, knowing it was kept unbolted so that late revelers might stagger in. Another wave of awful burger shook through it. Now!
    Its fearfully taloned hand gripped the latch. Its red eyes shone with blood lost, and an inhuman grin of triumph exposed the gleaming rows of fangs arming its sloping muzzle. The creature threw open the door and sprang within! On its heels poured the snarling pack!
    The soldiers awoke from their dreams to find a nightmare of ripping fangs and flailing bodies. The creature howled its victory--over a dozen men for the slaughter! Out of the blackness the pack sprang upon the helpless sleepers. Gray forms struggled over the writhing victims, snarling and tearing into the warm flesh. Screams of death agony--of utmost horror--filled the lodge and overflowed into the night, mingling with the hideous triumph of the feasting wolves.
    The screams were stilled. Now! snarled the leader in command. Now, go! Before the others can come! More of this will follow for us! But now, go! The wolves wore loath to abandon their twitching prey. It was asking much to go. But the leader must be obeyed. Reluctantly the pack released their booty and pointed their gray muzzles to the outside.
    Several humans greeted them in the courtyard--the hopeless shrieks of the dying had aroused the castle. Now the humans stopped in terror to see the crimson-splashed pack pour from the lodge behind their leader.
    It was silhouetted there in the pale moonlight--a ghastly hybrid of man and wolf. Covered with white fur it was, and taller than the average human whose shape it borrowed. Cruel claws ended its toes and fingers; its arms long and legs strangely set. Atop its great shoulders was set a demon's visage--a furry head with high pointed ears and a long jaw more wolf-like than human. Its sharp tusks dripped red in the moonlight. And its bestial eyes gleamed an evil crimson with blasphemous hatred of mankind.
    The soldiers drew their weapons in desperation. But they were only four, and the wolves simply overran them--bearing their victims to the earth and slashing them to tatters. A few wolves fell before the humans died. The creature threw itself in fury upon one soldier whose blade had smashed through a gray murderer. Knocking away the human's weapon, the creature pulled him to its chest in an awful hug. Ribs and vertebrae snapped, as razor fangs buried in the unprotected throat. Then the leader tossed the husk aside and raced through the gate with the pack, as now more men with torches and weapons emerged from the castle. They vanished into the forest.
    A scene of hideous carnage greeted the belated rescue party. Those who entered the fatal lodge recoiled in horror at the sight of the slashed and mutilated carcasses of their comrades. In the trampled courtyard, one man yet lived.
    "Wolves!" he gasped out with his final breaths. "Dozens of them! It led them in here! A demon! A werewolf! Let them in so they could murder us all! A werewolf!" He died screaming shrilly of dripping fangs.
    Kane considered the man's disclosure. He had just gotten to the scene and had not seen the retreating attackers. Questioning of the men revealed that no one had had any more than a fleeting glimpse as the wolves slipped into the forest. The servants and soldiers who had slept within the dining hall had been first to the scene, and none of them could give an intelligent story of what little they had witnessed.
    In a frightened group they dared to go beyond the gate. The tracks of many wolves could be seen in the