DEVIL’S ROW Read online

  DEVIL’S ROW

  Matt Serafini

  “When justice is done it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.”

  -Proverbs 21:15

  “All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.”

  - Sophocles (The Sons of Aleus)

  Prologue

  July 11, 1708

  Outside the city of Oudenaarde, United Provinces

  Claude lay sprawled on his back, shivering as the July sun taunted him with warmth that he couldn’t feel.

  His chest was torn wide from a bayonet’s savagery, and the fallen men around him sang their death songs in discord: mortal groans and rattled cries that offered to play him off the stage of life.

  And so soon? He wasn’t yet seventeen and could only wonder now why he hadn’t valued things more.

  Not that anything back home was worth valuing. Long days of tending field, a father who spoke of nothing but cattle, an older brother determined to win the elder’s graces. Blistered hands, bruised body, and bored mind. Hardly enough time to unwind from the daily repetition. Just a few short hours before bed to call his own.

  It was no surprise that Claude only felt alive at night, when the cool grass rubbed his back and his eyes gazed at the stars. He imagined other worlds and opportunities beyond this, and wondered what they might offer. This wanderlust stayed buried, hidden from a father who hated that his younger son had chosen to be a dreamer instead of a laborer. At dinner, aged eyes bore into the side of Claude's face, contempt that burned hotter than summer sun, while brother regaled the table with tales of agricultural adventure. His enthusiasm was about father's placation, an act Claude could never find the ambition to compete against.

  Passion for the family trade was everywhere in the house, save for Claude's heart. He greeted each day with disdain and passed the time living inside his thoughts, performing his designated tasks with hollow capability. Leaving home was his only chance. He had always known this to be the truth. Otherwise, life would slip past as it had for his parents and siblings. On occasion, he tried to picture himself in charge, scraping by with just enough food to eke out the winter. Raising destitute children as makeshift slaves to follow in his own beleaguered footsteps. Weathering days that came and went with indifference, turning into seasons that passed as blithely as ships in the night. Then it would begin all over again.

  A repulsive thought.

  Today, the grass was at his back once more, with discarded weapons on either side of him. Fallen allies and enemies were mixed indiscriminately, as if this still mattered to anyone. The damndest thought struck him as he bled into the earth. Life might have been better back home after all. Or maybe he wouldn’t lie to himself and pretend the family business was suddenly anything but grim now that he was dying. Still, carting crop surplus into town, hoping to get enough coin to cover another season's upkeep, felt like a better deal. It wasn’t much, but it was living, at least. Maybe that was preferable to this fool’s crusade.

  He would’ve laughed at the irony if he had any strength left to do so.

  Yesterday’s march to Oudenaarde found the battalion soaked in sweat and drained of morale. Soldiers wore apprehension as a part of their uniforms. Shoddy masks of bravery tried hiding it, but the shared façade collapsed when you looked long enough into their eyes. To Claude, it was like glaring into a mirror and seeing his unease reflected. A shared question from a hive mind reached through their thoughts: Is this worth our lives?

  What did it matter to them? Did peasant farmers care who succeeded Charles II in Spain? This morning, they had faced an alliance of soldiers culled from all corners of Europe: the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and the Duchy of Savoy. All because France had allied with Spain over matters he did not understand.

  A cause that would probably never affect him.

  Matters that had murdered him anyway.

  Thoughts came slower as his body chilled. He recalled the false sense of hope being passed around camp last night: pats on the back, constipated nods of confidence, and stories of hijinks from back home. None of it brought a boost in morale, instead giving Claude a compelling notion to flee in the night.

  The smart ones had fled, and probably still had their lives to show for it. Claude stayed because he hadn't liked the alternative. His father's eyes already judged him with severity. To come home a coward would provoke in him more scorn than he could stand.

  He was paying for that stubbornness now.

  All Claude could do was marvel over how long it took to die. A braver man might hold his fractured breath until the embrace of permanent sleep, or crawl toward the nearest weapon and inflict a more fatal injury. Anything was better than this protracted wind down.

  The battlefield became less of one as time passed, turning into a mass graveyard. Only grim vestiges of warfare remained as the sun’s glare finally lifted off his eyes, leaving his vision singed and nearly gone.

  He wished his hearing would go as well. There were fewer voices now. The ones that remained clung to hopes of rescue by calling for help. Others prayed in quick, ephemeral voices for hurried passing. It was much too late for that, though.

  When the killing had started, Claude had been confident that his musket abilities could keep his adversaries afar. Dragoon units crisscrossed the battlefield on horseback and kept the enemy distracted while his long-range gunfire picked them off as if he were shooting prowling coyotes back home.

  It was only a matter of time before the enemy wised up and advanced, and Claude had been ready to meet that tactic head on. His scabbard dangled off his waist, waiting for the inevitability of close-quarters bloodshed. In a moment, chaos had engulfed the battlefield whole, forcing him to swallow notions of strategy in favor of frantic killing blows.

  He hadn't seen the attack coming. A blade sliced through the battlefield carnage, drawn to his gut like a magnet. His killer had skidded through the pandemonium and lifted his rifle overhead with clenched fists, delivering a slice so wide that Claude felt his chest bone crack.

  Then it was over. He was on the ground without realizing he’d fallen. Instinct pulled his flintlock pistol from his holster and squeezed off its single shot. It struck the assassin through the bridge of his nose. A splat of blood stretched wide behind his head before he jerked back and dropped from sight, leaving Claude to watch the skies and wait for the stars. One last dream, this time of the heavens he prayed would take him.

  The day traded deep blue for evening black. The air around him was stained by the smell of still-lingering gunpowder. Its residue marked his hands and clothes, and sullied the proximate bodies.

  He wanted to move, but even that consideration was exhausting. While drowning in contemplation, the sky grew darker still, and more of the adjoining groans became forever silent.

  If he could survive the night, it was possible that he would be discovered once the armies came around to collect their dead.

  The bayonet wound burned anew with that thought, squashing what little hope he dared to keep. This was an injury so fatal that he couldn’t expect to survive it.

  No, he was lost and death was only a matter of time. He’d be somewhere else by morning.

  That prompted him to pivot his head backward in the grass, compelled by the panicked notion that he would never again see a gibbous moon. That glorious harbinger of his open-ended evening dreams.

  A cloaked figure walked toward him.

  Through heavy eyes, it appeared to be a trick of the pale moonlight. However, it continued to advance, sidestepping strewn and damaged bodies on an undeterred path forward. The shapeless and shifting cloak strode with too much certainty for it to be surveying bodies. It moved with a destination in mind.

  Me
.

  Claude followed the shape with his eyes. It neared him and then circled. The figure paused at his feet in presumed study. Claude couldn’t be certain if he opened his mouth to speak, or if he merely wished that he could.

  Beneath the hood, shimmering eyes watched him in silence.

  He wasn’t moving anymore. Had his body failed completely? The cloak rippled and spread like bat wings. A curvaceous form stepped free of it, long hair darker than the evening sky, her body whiter than the moon, and with breasts that bounced in time with her steps. Then her feet fell on either side of him.

  She was a shadow, a solid black monolith blotting out what remained of his vision.

  “Please.” His voice was gunpowder coarse. She knelt, and her hair scuffed against his cheek while her lips curled around his earlobe, whispering for him to shush. Her breath was sticky and passionate; enough to ignite goose bumps across his fading flesh.

  Her hands slid around his back. One caressed the base of his head while the other crept along his spine. She lifted him without regard for his injuries, taking him into a compassionless hold.

  He grimaced with as much protest as he could offer. She didn’t seem to care, nor was she deterred when his opened chest spilled onto her. The sound of unmistakable arousal sputtered past her lips.

  Her teeth clung together with the ferocity of a hammer falling on anvil, followed by the sound of breaking bones as her shifting skin lifted and fell—something beneath it trying to break out.

  Claude’s chin sat against her shoulder. Patches of thick hair grew from her flesh and scuffed his jaw. It was almost comfortable when compared to the mound of dirt that had pressed against his neck for much of the day. Now that he was upright, he looked out across the battlefield.

  There were others like her.

  Monstrous shapes cradled other soldiers, choosing bodies on either side of the skirmish with breath being the only apparent requisite. Some cloaks only now slithered from the darkness and closed in on their persons of interest.

  He tried to say something, but red babble spilled down his chin and onto the animal’s shoulder. Her voice was a deep-bellied growl.

  She pushed him back into the grass, leaving him to stare at a visage that was no longer human. Yellow eyes swirled into huge bulbs that glowed hearth hot. A wolf’s snout dropped into his face and delivered a gust of squalid air.

  There was only time enough to cough. The string of eager saliva dabbed his neck and face before razor sharp jaws dove beneath his shoulder.

  Claude was already so damaged that he barely felt it. As the animal swallowed a piece of him with a satisfied huff, he could only close his eyes and imagine the sweet release he was about to experience.

  It wasn’t so bad after all.

  Night falls

  October 30, 1708

  Hungarian-Moldavian border

  Elisabeth hadn’t seen them until it was too late. They were there as soon as she opened her eyes.

  Armed men pushed into the clearing. Their breaths heaved with the kind of excitement that sounded like fear to her eardrums. They might've trained for this moment, but couldn’t push out their trepidation. Doubt carried its own smell, and it was mounted on each of them.

  Somehow, they had evaded her senses every step of the way. Even in this form, she had a wolf’s sense of hearing and smell. Somewhat muted while on human legs, but strong enough to prevent this kind of sneak attack. Usually. She only knew they were here now because they let it be known. How'd they do it? That question alone made them formidable, but others dawned on her in rapid succession.

  Who are they?

  For how long have they followed us?

  Finding her should've been impossible. She and Aetius had scaled to the very top of this mountain ledge; close enough to the luminescent moon to shred it with her fingernails. No better hideaway for tired animals looking to leave the bloodshed behind.

  Yet it had followed them here.

  Their new start crumbled like rocks off the cliff behind them. “We will call this Nightfall,” Aetius had said of this peak, his thick hands clasped over her eyes as he led her through the brush. She remembered the way her nostrils cleared as the air thinned, a soothing feeling that put the world so far beneath them that it was an instant memory. Recalled how it was impossible to stop a lunatic grin from overtaking her lips. “Up here, the evening descends upon us first, and the night has always been ours.”

  The mountain’s eastern and southern walls were impossible to scale. An impenetrable fortress crafted by centuries of erosion. Constructing an estate up here was going to be costly, though beneficial to what she wanted. Once completed, there would be nothing to do, save for explore each other’s curves in solitude. Hidden from the rest of the world and relying only on each other.

  Elisabeth could think of nothing she wanted more.

  After terrorizing humanity for decades that blurred together like dreams in the first moments of consciousness, chaos was a lusterless chasm. The world hunted them as devils for their sins, and sometimes that world was shockingly adept at killing.

  The first crusader stepped into the clearing and Elisabeth smelled offcuts from last week’s meals in his coiled facial hair. Spoiled food bits undetectable to human nostrils, but threw off rancid stink as he came forward.

  I know you, she thought, and growled at the realization.

  He looked like a new man, though, taken by confidence and rage. How long had it been? Where had it been? Elisabeth struggled to recall these familiarities as the admittedly daunting sight vaulted forward in a death charge.

  Elisabeth scampered off the bedroll, caught between competitive shrieks: the cliff side breeze howling at her back and a roaring battle cry plowing for her. It had been a long while since fear was anything other than a memory, but she felt it now.

  The assailant wore an off-white linen shirt cloistered beneath a dark doublet. A single lock of curly auburn hair jostled out from beneath his hood in the naked moonlight, dangling between fiery eyes. Black leather gloves climbed to his wrists and disappeared beneath silver vambraces that shelled his forearms. A matching sword sat in one hand, and he pulled a pistol from the holster with his other. Spot-ridden trousers were tucked into ankle-high boots spiked with silver toes.

  He knew well what he hunted.

  A silver pauldron clamped over his shoulder and kept the thick grey cloak in place. It billowed off his back, the whole getup daring her to find his vulnerability. Furthermore, it implied that he understood hers.

  In theory, she thought.

  Reaching this peak would have consumed whatever energy these men had stored. They looked disheveled in the moment, powered by adrenaline and little else. Less zealous men might have waited for daybreak and taken them then. This was to her advantage.

  Elisabeth’s bones broke beneath her human skin as the wolf awakened. Her lips curled into a battle snarl.

  The soldiers, if they could be called that, hurled encouraging words into the sky. A rallying volley. Some voices were unmistakably British, meaning these boys were a long way from home, and had likely crossed the Holy Roman Empire to get here. That was a month, maybe more, spent walking from Marburg to Ingolstadt, only to reach a chaotic land that would never accommodate the oppression of the imperials they served.

  This corner of the world had its own problems. Invaders to the north and east, armies clashing for little more than ego and leaving broken lands of death and destruction in their wake. In the debris of war, the darkness came crawling, looking to exploit the runoff of vulnerability. Elisabeth could not say precisely what inhabited the forests below, but there was very little humanity left out here. Violent men and malignant creatures had seen to that.

  It was a perfect hideaway.

  One of the men hovered at the clearing’s edge, falling behind the charge. A teenager stuck in hesitation, with juddering movement that couldn’t decide between charge or retreat. Elisabeth sensed high tension among them. Doubt.

 
She also sensed the blood of her pups. It stained their blades and clothes. The army she had fostered off battlefield scraps—an inspired idea, she thought—had fallen once more, and the sudden anger she felt over this was unquenchable.

  She urged the wolf to the surface, but the animal would not come fast enough. The hunters closed in around them and she braced for a fight.

  One hundred years ago, I would have relished this.

  A feather’s tickle stroked her body. Raven-black furs enveloped her milky white flesh in tufts. Her eyes became inhuman orbs of ferocity that pulled the evening’s obscure details into focus.

  Aetius was already wolf. He puffed his chest and lifted onto the tips of his hinds. A howl rolled off his tongue and slid down the mountain, coasting over the tree beds far below—a rallying cry to any brethren in the area.

  Strategic, but no one could reach them in time.

  “Fan out and slay the abominations!” The familiar hunter’s adrenaline wobbled.

  Elisabeth’s skull broke shape in an implosion that would’ve killed a human. Her cheekbones cracked and shattered, her nose popped and the top of her skull collapsed. The wolf’s face pushed outward at the same time. The angry animal sang her displeasure through gnashed hunter's teeth.

  The killer skidded, as if encouraged by second thoughts. A puff of dirt kicked into the air between them as he took aim.

  His weapon was impossibly fast. Three shots barked from the barrel, each of them accompanied by blasts of sparking light. Three silver pellets landed against her, striking her neck and chest with staggering force. The balls of her feet kissed naked air as the cliff nearly sent her tumbling. She prevented it by digging her hind nails into the dirt.

  Four men converged and readied their weapons with killing strides.

  She felt Aetius’ body tense with impending battle. The brown wolf took point and moved to meet them head-on, shielding her from the bulk of combat. A sliver of barely recognizable affection passed between them, followed by a battle roar so forceful the trees nearly toppled against its gust.