Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 109
109
Jonah rattled off the story in less than a minute. As terrible as it was, there really wasn't all that much to tell. Many good Foxes dead, Foxes who had tried to help, and a crazy Wolf, wandering through the woods this very moment, headed south.
"That's why we need Wolves to come with us, something to even the odds," he said, speaking in a strangely disturbing monotone, but why it was so disturbing was something Ander couldn't quite place. Looking at Jonah was like looking at someone through a warped pane of glass. You could still make out who it was without any difficulty, but the moment you moved your head you saw something different, something twisted and stretched just far enough to turn a face that should have been familiar into a screaming ghost with slits for eyes and a hollow trench for a mouth.
He turned to Nilia. "You used to be a warrior. That means you have to help us." Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to Sorrin, standing in the corner with his mate, his face even more grim and set than normal. "You, too. You're the strongest pair of arms we have, and that means you have to help us." He swivelled around like a weathervane, his eyes dancing with a mix of outrage and something else, something cracked, something broken, and came to a stop on Ander. "You have to help us, too." It was unclear whether this was a plea or an order. "You fought him once before, so you know him better than anybody. You have to help us kill that bastard. Kill him dead."
Kill.
Dead.
There was a line of blood slowly trickling from a cut in Jonah's neck, just beneath the curvature of his jaw. His collar was soaked in it, and every time he swallowed, even more would come flowing down his throat, fresh and wet, shining in the gloom with a grim, bronze sheen, but he didn't seem to be aware of this. He just kept staring at Ander with eyes that seemed warped and stretched, elongated into something that shouldn't be - a deep pair of dark, empty holes in his face, seemingly going all the way down into the depths of his soul. Or at least what was left of his soul after Banno had gotten a hold of it.
In the silence that followed Jonah's request, Ander was able to listen to what was going on outside. The small group of Foxes had grown into a miniature mob, and they were getting more riled up by the second, talking to each other in loud voices, asking what had happened, why it had happened, and how it had happened. The same explanation was being repeated over and over by different mouths at slightly different speeds, creating an echo effect that bled into a single damnation: A Wolf has killed seven of our sons.
Somewhere in the background, beyond all the shouting, a vixen was crying. Ander did not recognise her voice, but he knew the suffering in each wailing sob. Someone was trying to comfort her, but to no avail. She had lost a husband, or a brother, or a son, and for her there would be no comfort for a long, long time.
"Why are you so quiet, Ander?" Jonah asked, speaking in that same, oddly disturbing monotone. "Do you think it insensitive of me, asking you to help us murder your brother? Is that it?"
A Fox tapped him on the shoulder. "Jonah, I don't think -"
Jonah shrugged him off angrily. "No! You didn't see what happened in the pass! None of you did! But I was there for every second! I saw what it did! I saw all of it! I watched my friends die! I watched it tear Dean's head right off his shoulders! I watched it claw Devin's chest wide open! I saw it rip Peter's throat out with its teeth, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it... except be grateful it wasn't happening to me!"
"Good gods..." Whispers travelled through the crowd. Near the back, a single Fox stumbled away, his hands clasped over his mouth, and vomited into the bushes.
"We have to kill it," Jonah continued. "I know it's your brother, Ander, but you weren't there. You didn't see what it was like. It wasn't even a Wolf anymore. It was an animal. No, less than an animal. It was a monster. You have to believe me."
"I believe you," Ander said. His voice felt flat and lifeless inside his throat. "I've known him my whole life... I ended his life with these hands..." Ander looked down at the scarf lying across his lap - Hezzi's scarf - and ran his fingers across the dry, flaky surface. The blood had soaked into the weave, making it hard and stiff, not anything like what a scarf should be.
Hezzi was still unconscious, all stitched and wrapped up in layers of white bandages. The little table at his bedside was covered in bloody, sodden rags, but on the other side, in stark contrast to this, Renna was holding one of his hands in both of hers, keeping it warm, waiting for him to squeeze back.
It felt like everything was coming back together in this single moment, like a torrent converging into a maelstrom, taking everything and dashing it to pieces. It felt like every drop of blood spilled this night was a direct result of his own inability to end it on that stormy night half a year ago, when his older brother had looked him in the eye from inside the maw of a raging river.
Not so different... after all...
"I don't know how..." Ander said, squeezing Hezzi's scarf between his fingers, "but he managed to claw his way out of hell. He'll want revenge for what I did to him, but he won't stop with me. He'll just keep going and going until he drops dead, or he's tasted the death of every single living thing in this world. And after that... he'll turn your cousin into his second 'Vallah'."
Mellah gasped and folded her arms around Renna's chest, hugging her to her body. Sorrin looked calm enough (on the outside, at least), but the way he was slowly opening and closing his fists, like he was trying to crush the very air between his fingers, betrayed what was going on beneath the surface.
Aisa watched all this from her little spot in the corner, slowly chewing her claws down to nubs. So close, and yet so far away, it almost seemed like she was trying to melt through the rippling walls of the tent.
"We need to get moving soon," Mateo said through clenched teeth. Bethany was dabbing at his wounds with a rag that reeked of rubbing alcohol, and the way Nilia was crushing his hand probably wasn't very pleasant either. "We'll catch him in the fields. He'll have no cover out there, and we'll hit him with so many arrows he'll look like a hedgehog. Even that bastard will go down if we hit him enough times. He might be crazy in the head, but he's still flesh and blood."
"What if we don't make it in time?" Bartholomew said. "That thing is crazy fast. If it makes it to the house, we'll be forced into a standoff, and what then? We're no match for it in close quarters, you saw the way it tore through us in the pass."
"If it gets into the house, then..." Mateo bit down on his lip, trying to think of a plan, but he needn't have bothered.
Michael squeezed his way through the crowd, still wearing the stained apron he had been given to help out with the soup line, walked up to his son's bedside, and in a voice just as calm as it was terrifying, he said: "We'll burn it to the ground."
Mateo's eyes widened in shock. "But Father, that's our home! We can't just -" He turned to Sarah. "Mother! Are you hearing this?"
Sarah stood up, brushed the wrinkles out of her dress, and put a hand on his shoulder. "If the creature that tried to kill both of my sons finds its way inside my house, I would watch it burn with a smile."
"Mother! Holy gods!"
Michael bent down and pinched his cheek. "We can build another house, Mat. It's just wood and stone."
"But we can't build another you," Sarah said, "and neither can we replace the Foxes that Wolf has taken from us. If it's to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, then a single burnt house is a small price to pay."
"Burning alive is no less than he deserves." Sorrin stepped forward, filling the entire space with his presence. His voice shook. His fists shook. The anger radiated off him like heat from a stove. Everything about him seemed to be on the verge of exploding. "He killed my daughter. I loved my baby girl more than anything in the whole world, and he took her from me." He put his hands on his mate's shoulders. "Mellah loved her just as much as I did. Maybe even more. I had to watch her die inside, piece by piece, day by day, while that monster put on a false face and pretended to care. I don't regret digging up all those other Wolves. Maybe they deserve a second chance, and maybe they don't, that's not for me to decide. But Banno... if there's a Wolf who deserves to die a thousand times, it's him. He deserves to drown. He deserves to suffocate under a blanket of snow. He deserves to burn. He deserves to have his head cut off and mounted on a pike. Anything you can think of, he deserves to have it done to him a thousand times over, and still it won't be enough for me. Every day I pray that there's a special place in hell for the kind of monster who would hurt an innocent little girl, and every day I pray... every day I pray that I may be the one to send him there." He looked around the tent, at all the tired faces gathered together. "If you need a Wolf to go after that baby-killer, I'm in."
"All right, let's go!" Mateo said, but just as he was about to stand up, three different pairs of hands pushed him back down - Nilia, Sarah, and Beth.
"Oh no you don't!" Bethany huffed.
"What? They need a tracker!"
"You're injured!"
"You mean this?" Mateo gestured to his head wound. "It's just a scratch."
"It's multiple lacerations! Maybe a concussion! You'll need at least a dozen stitches!"
"Just strap a piece of cotton on there and it'll be fine, so let me go!"
Lying on a bed of his own a little farther down the line, with rolls upon rolls of bandages wrapped around his head like a bandanna, Rufio clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. "You can forget about talking your way out of this one, boy."
"We concur," the twins added in perfect unison, somehow still sounding almost identical despite the thick wads of cotton stuffed into Nicholas's bloody mouth.
"Mateo?" Nilia said, her voice dripping with honey. "Could you lift your arm for me real quick?"
"M- My arm? Why?"
"Just do it. If you can, that is."
"Suuure?" Mateo slowly lifted his right arm. He actually managed to get it past the halfway mark before the strain started to show on his face. "S- See? I'm fine. I don't know what you're -" Nilia gave him a quick hard tap right in the ribs and he doubled over in an instant, clutching at his side. "OOW son of a mother!"
"I knew it the moment I held you," she said. "You've got a broken rib in there, don't you?"
"Well _now_I do!"
"You'll be next to useless out there as you are now. The pain will only get worse the more you move, believe me. You can't track, you can't run, and you most certainly can't fight."
"It's only a scratch! An internal scratch... of the bone... so..."
Nilia stood up and her shadow practically engulfed him. "Banno tried to kill Ander, the Wolf I look up to. He tried to kill Kiana, the vixen he loves and the daughter of the Fox who welcomed me into her home with open arms, the same Fox who saved Hezzi's life not once, but twice, the crazy ball of energy I've come to love like a little brother. And now... now he's tried to kill you, Mat. That promise we made goes both ways, and I will not allow him another chance to hurt any of my friends again, even if it means I have to hunt him down myself." She turned towards the exit and the smattering of Foxes peeking inside, making her hair flip back across her shoulder. "I'm in."
And then suddenly, all eyes were on Ander, the last battle-ready Wolf, the one responsible for this whole mess in more ways than one, waiting...
Waiting for his answer.
They want me to help them kill Banno...
It was such a simple thought, such a huge thought, a thought that shouldn't be giving him any pause at all, a thought that rooted him to the spot, a thought that sped up his heartbeat, a thought that slowed time to a crawl, a thought that made him sick to his stomach, a thought that made him want to bow his head and weep, a thought that made him want to scream.
I don't want to kill anymore... I've killed enough... more than enough... I just want it to end!
I've killed before, up close and at a distance, directly and indirectly. Family, friends, strangers, I've killed them all. And Banno... I've killed him twice. Once by water and once by snow. The fact that he survived both is irrelevant. I was there with the arrow in my hands, I was there with the horn to my lips.
A third time. I have to face him a third time. I have to... I have to kill him.
He is my brother.
He is a monster.
Not so different... after all...
That feeling... that horrid, wretched, miserable feeling... the knowledge that he had gone against everything he believed in, that he had taken a life out of this world...
Banno lives only to kill. A Wolf like that doesn't deserve to live.
I've killed more than he has... I've seen the bodies out there... their blood is on my hands... Every terrible thing I could say about Banno to justify this, every terrible thing anyone can say, they can also say about me...
Not so different... after -
"Ander." He felt a hand touch down on his shoulder. He looked up. It was Kiana, wearing the saddest smile he had ever seen. "You're doing it again, aren't you?"
He blinked. "What?"
"You're thinking about how you're to blame, about how you should have done things differently, about how much pain and suffering you've caused. But you never stop to think about what you've really done, what impact you've really made in our lives. You're not the one to blame, Ander. You're the one to thank. You've already done things so much differently than anyone else could have. You're not the one causing pain and suffering, you're the one sparing us from it. Maybe one day you'll realize that, you giant lug, and I hope that day will be soon. Because, well..." Her eyes briefly flicked down towards her stomach before coming back up to fix on Ander's once again. "We're kind of running low on time."
Everyone else would think that she was talking about this very hour right now, that she was talking about the monster blundering through the woods, increasing its lead by the second, but Ander knew what she was truly talking about.
She was talking about the baby growing inside of her, and that was what made him different from Banno.
Kiana nodded, as if privy to his every thought. "I don't know Banno as well as you, but I've met him, I've listened to him speak, I've looked into his eyes as he came crawling through the mud to end my life. I've even felt him. When he comes near, it feels like the air around you is filled with millions of baby spiders, and they're crawling all over your body, digging through your fur, trying to get at the skin so they can bite down with their horrid little fangs and inject you with their venom. And just like a spider, Banno kills for himself. He does it because he derives some sick, perverted pleasure from it. He does it because he is obsessed with death, so obsessed that he strives for nothing more than to taste it on his tongue. Even now, while he's dying himself, I'm sure he's saturated with a filthy ecstasy. He hates everyone and everything, and he loves being that way." She ran her hands across his cheeks, gently forcing him to meet her eyes, making it so he couldn't look away. "But you, Ander... you did not kill for yourself. You did it to protect the ones you love. You do not derive any pleasure from it. It pains you. It gouges bloody divots into your heart. Life is precious, the most precious thing in the entire world, and that's why you killed, because you had no other choice. It was either kill, or stand back and allow even more to die. It is a terrible thing that weighs heavily on your shoulders. Killing to preserve life. It is a nonsensical, illogical thing, but sometimes it is a necessary thing in this world that can be just as evil as it is wonderful."
Ander swallowed. "But... But it's still -"
"It is wrong." She beat him to the punch. "There is no arguing against that. It is wrong. But knowing it is wrong, feeling it is wrong, is what makes you different from Banno.
It is what makes you capable of killing one last time. Even though it is wrong. One last time, Ander. Just one last time and it'll be over. This night can finally end. Just one... last... time..."
Ander reached up to wipe his face, but instead of his own cheek, his fingers brushed against the fabric she had torn from her dress to cover his eye. Some parts were smooth to the touch, while others were hard and crusted over with dried streaks of blood.
This world can be just as evil as it is wonderful...
Ander stood up and put his hands on Kiana's shoulders, bending down slightly so he could be on eye-level with her. "Kiana, please help Beth take care of Hezzi and the others. I don't know when I'll be back, but I promise you, I will come back. Okay?"
Kiana nodded, and a single tear shimmered in the corner of her eye, not quite ready to be born.
He kissed her, straightened up, and started down the narrow aisle between the two rows of beds. Innumerable sets of eyes followed his every step. He walked past Wolves he could barely recognise, their faces wrapped up in layers of bandages. He walked past Eric, lying on a blanket on the ground, his clothes soaked in the blood of his friends. He walked past William, barely conscious, curled up in a tight little ball and clutching his midsection, breathing in quick, painful gasps. Past Danado and Layla. Past the twins. Past Rufio and his broken pipe. Past Bethany. Past Nilia and Sarah and Michael. Past Mateo, looking forlornly at the crossbow hanging from his bedpost. Past Mellah, holding Sorrin as if she would never let go. Past Aisa, looking so out of place in this cramped tent, chewing on her claws and looking from face to face, not knowing what to do. Past the bundle of blankets with a red streak across the neck. And finally...
Ander knelt down at Hezzi's bedside, opposite Renna. She looked at him over their clasped hands, her eyes swimming and her breath hitching in her throat, but she didn't say anything. She didn't need to.
Hezzi was lying almost perfectly still. There was no movement save for the rise and fall of his chest, so slow he could have easily been mistaken for a corpse were it not for the occasional wisps of steam issuing from his slightly parted mouth. There were bandages around his neck, carefully wrapped, with a single spot of blood shining through, no bigger than the width of his thumb. Such a small thing. Such a seemingly inconsequential thing. The scratches across his forehead had looked so much worse than this, and yet they were only skin-deep.
Ander reached out and ruffled his hair, half-expecting him to shy away and tell him to quit it, but still sort of smiling as he did.
But there was no reaction. Just the slow rise and fall of his chest.
Ander swallowed. It felt like his throat was on fire. "Hey, Hezzi," he said, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice and failing miserably. "I have to leave for a while, but I promise I'll be right back, okay? You don't have to worry about anything. Bethany, Kiana, Layla, Sarah and Renna... they're all going to take good care of you while I'm gone."
Renna sniffed and squeezed Hezzi's hand, her lip trembling with the effort of keeping it all in.
"Goodbye, Hezzi." Ander laid the bloody scarf down on his brother's chest, leaned over, and kissed him on the forehead. "I'm so sorry."
He stood up and turned to face the crowd and the endless darkness at their backs, beyond which lay what would hopefully be the last horror of this endless night.
"I'll go."
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