Page 11 of The Devils

The Good Meat

The Vigga-Wolf screamed with fury and delight to be out of the horrid wagon and once again at her work, which was murder, and her hobby, too.

Also murder.

She didn’t know or care why this bastard had a bull’s head. Folk all have their own different heads don’t they? She slipped under his axe, ripped it from his fists, smashed off one of his horns with it, then flung it at the rabbit girl on the wall and split her skull in half. Then she clawed the bull’s guts out with her fists, snarling, weeping, spraying drool, snuffling for the good meat, the nice bits, the tasty morsels.

People’s heads might all be different but their insides are much alike.

Her jaws snapped shut on a woman with a piggy head, got head and arm together, squeezing, squeezing. The arm snapped first, went floppy as a sock of porridge, and she squealed piggy squeals and beat away with a shield, clobbered with the rim as the Vigga-Wolf snarled in frustration, the bits of arm still wedged in her teeth, and wriggled her head to get the best grip, biting, twisting, biting, wrenching, biting.

Squeals became screams then crack the skull popped and the Vigga-Wolf sucked the meat out and ugh, what a horrid salty mouthful. She choked and coughed and ripped at the foul-tasting pig bitch with her back claws and tore her so hard the other arm came off then flung what was left into the bull-man who was struggling up wailing with guts all hanging out and the pair of them went reeling across the yard all the horrid bad meat mashed up together.

‘Where’s the good meat?’ she screamed, but her teeth and tongue weren’t made for man-words and the rain was tickling her nose so all she could do was howl and growl but the fuckers got the gist. They’d thought they were the animals, they were the scary ones, but now they bore witness to the beast indeed and reeled about eyes rolling and fell and scrambled away whimpering with terror. The Vigga-Wolf remembered through a mist that everything that walked, crawled, or flew was always terrified of her.

This was the proper state of things.

She caught a horse by the rump, not sure if it was man-horse or horse-horse only knowing it was meat, brought it down while her hind claws raked and tore and sent the insides showering across the yard to spatter the wall with glistening shreds. She crammed a mouthful down, choking and gargling, but that was not the good meat.

The terrible hunger burned like a hot coal down her throat, like a hot brand up her arse, a great void inside choking and goading her, making her dance and twist and scream like she’d rip at her own tail.

Did she have a tail?

She spun around and around to try and see but her hind legs were always out of reach the fuckers and she ended up turning a tumble and skittering arse over tit across the yard, spraying mud and blood all over.

She caught one who was running and flung him against the wall and his head broke open, flung him again so hard the wall cracked, flung him again, flopping like rags and the broken stones crashed down on top of him, too much shattered to even be a corpse but just mess with fingers on the end.

She slit and tore and twisted them open as though each one had a special secret inside, but all they held was steaming slop and disappointment no matter how she snuffled for treasures.

She rooted about in a sheep one all fleecy but she got wool up her nose and had to twist and yelp and sneeze it all about. She screamed at the sky. Would’ve ripped the sun down and eaten it if her claws could’ve reached. She hated these meat-bags, hated the trees, the walls, the sky, the rain, herself most of all, filthy hungry thing that didn’t even have a tail probably. She wanted to rip herself inside-out and eat herself, so endless was her monstrous appetite—

But who was this?

A man with shiny, shiny armour and a shiny, shiny sword and a bit of stubborn grit in the terror on his face. Such a handsome face. Oooh, what a brave one. The Vigga-Wolf wanted to bite it and find out if the good meat was hid inside.

She slunk towards him with a sultry slither all up on her tippy-toes, her jaw hanging open and feathering the mud, the rain cold pinpricks on her lolling tongue, leaving a zigzag trail of bloody drool.

‘Die, fiend!’ he squealed.

‘Die yourself, you shitty bastard,’ answered she but the wit was wasted ’cause it came out as a slurping howl so she slapped the sword from his hand instead, snapped his arm bones even in their iron case. The blade spun twittering away to clang into the wagon and she caught him around the neck and bit on his head.

That shiny helmet was most annoying, it wouldn’t break straight away, her teeth scored and scraped it and maybe his face a bit as well. Perhaps his nose came off.

Before she could really work her jaws around it something bashed her back and knocked her rolling over and she twisted around to see a man with slitted eyes like a cat had hit her with a halberd and her side was all bruised and burning and though she hated everything she hated cats particularly. Who’d he think he was?

He looked shocked as a cat could when she sprang on him and ripped a chunk of his ribcage out then flung him upside down into the burning stables, roof caving in and burning thatch sliding over his still-kicking corpse and a horse burst free and frisked sideways across the yard all wild and maddened with its tail on fire.

Shiny was up again which you had to admire since he was sobbing away with one arm bitten all floppy. There’s a lesson. One moment you’re king of the yard the next your face is all red strips and blood’s bubbling from your empty nose hole. She pounced on him and this time got her jaws around his head, not just the nibblers but the crushers at the back, and she shook him flopping and flailing, his armour clanking like a pan-seller’s wagon going off a cliff which she thought maybe she’d seen happen once.

He burbled and screeched and clawed at her face with his hand and dragged at her jaws with his nails but he’d have had better luck stopping the tide with his fingers. She gnawed and worried and the steel had to give, give all at once, and she crushed his skull like a nut and all the juice squirted out and she stuck her tongue inside and snorted up the bits, then flung the broken rags of him away, high over the wall.

The horrible hunger was withering, the wonderful need was shrivelling, and she spat out mangled shreds of helmet, prowling and growling. Maybe she needed the good meat still or maybe a lie down, back in the wagon, where it was dark and smelled comfortingly of herself.

Lie down and snooze.

What was that nagging noise though? She cast about with the drool dripping from her jaws and saw a girl sat with that wobbly-slack face they get when they’re past crying and a trembling priest kneeling in front of her and the Vigga-Wolf could smell piss and perfume and she wasn’t sure which of them or both had pissed or maybe pissed perfume it was a puzzle. He was dribbling prayers the way they do, O God, O Saviour, O Saint Beatrix , like God cares about such meat as this, like God cares about anything but Himself.

She bared her teeth and gave a grinding growl because the Vigga-Wolf and God did not get on at all and she found it …

Very …

Irritating.

Brother Diaz knelt, still partly shielding the cringing Princess Alexia with his body, though it could only be by accident. He couldn’t have moved had he wanted to, utterly frozen with terror as the thing crept ever closer, blurred through the tears in his eyes, its growl seeming to make the whole yard throb.

It looked sometimes like a vast and terrible wolf, a wild dog big as a horse, but the rags of human clothes trailed from it as it slunk low to the dirt, its forelimbs like arms, great muscles clenching beneath coarse fur, curving claws sprouting from almost human fingers, grasping hands squelching at the mud.

Through a mane of black hair clotted with blood he saw a snuffling wolf-snout. A glimpse of an eye. A devil’s eye, burning with hateful malevolence. A giant mouth, black lips curled back in a frenzied snarl, teeth big as butchers’ knives, steaming with gore.

‘Father protect us …’ he breathed. One of his knees was trembling. He could hear it flapping inside his habit.

‘Though we stand at the gates of hell …’ The beast gave a great bellow, blowing a mist of blood in his face, and he closed his eyes, wincing as he turned his head away.

‘Though death’s breath … is upon us …’ He felt it hot on his cheek indeed and his prayers became meaningless whimpers. Here was death, and an utterly horrible death, and he gripped Alex’s hand, felt her grip him back with desperate strength—

‘ Vigga! ’ roared a voice.

Brother Diaz prised one eye open.

Jakob of Thorn was, as Baptiste had put it, dead as fuck. He still had the bloody rent in his gambeson that Marcian’s mortal thrust had left, not to mention two arrows sticking through his body. Yet there he stood, impossibly upright, with the expression of a furious schoolmaster dressing down a wayward pupil.

‘Vigga!’ he bellowed, stepping in front of the beast. ‘This behaviour is unacceptable !’

The monstrous thing shifted back. Away from Jakob and – thank the Saviour – away from Brother Diaz. It seemed somehow less a thing now, more a person, crouching on two feet rather than crawling on four claws. Behind the tangle of hair he saw less muzzle, more face. There was a strange silence, with only the ongoing death-rattle of one of the butchered creatures in the background.

Then the thing leaned forwards, opening its maw, making Brother Diaz shrink away even though it showed less beast-fangs, more human-teeth, and shrieked in a broken growl. ‘I’m thirsty!’

More silence, with the faint spattering of rain from a broken gutter, and the snuffling gurgle of the man with the bull’s head as he dragged himself towards the gate, unfurling a glistening trail of guts behind him.

The woman crouched, breathing hard, bloody hands dangling. It could not be denied now that it was a woman, albeit an extraordinarily tall, muscular, and entirely naked one, skin rather than fur slathered in mud and blood.

‘I’m thirsty.’ Did her lower lip wobble? ‘I’m thirsty and … I’ve got blood up my nose.’ She dropped on her backside and started to sob. ‘I’m thirsty. And I hurt my hand!’

She dragged aside two handfuls of bloody black hair to reveal an angular face, broad-browed, heavy-jawed, and scrawled with tattooed writing in several alphabets. The word beware in bold type down her cheek. The word caution in large letters on each forearm, smaller messages pricked in other colours and languages around, and between, and inside the letters.

‘You put me in the wagon,’ she said, rubbing tears on the back of her painted wrist. ‘I hate the wagon!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Jakob planted his fists on his hips and surveyed the devastated yard. He still had those two arrows in him. ‘But I think … we can see why.’

‘I ate something bad.’ The woman lurched onto her hands and vomited up a great stream of blood and half-chewed offal at Jakob’s feet.

Alex prised her hand from Brother Diaz’s clammy grip, raising a trembling finger to point. ‘He … has arrows …’

‘Yes,’ said Brother Diaz, hopelessly.

The big woman who a few moments before had been a giant wolf rocked onto her haunches. ‘That’s bad meat,’ she groaned, wiping her mouth. ‘Where’d I get it?’

Jakob of Thorn considered the torn-open bodies. ‘Here and there.’

She heaved again, more black lumps splatting onto the heap in a widening bloody puddle, and she worked her tongue, and let a couple of shreds of twisted metal drop from her mouth.

‘Blessed Saint Beatrix …’ Brother Diaz forced his eyes away. ‘What is she?’

‘Rather obviously, a werewolf.’ An elderly gentleman stepped from the inn, calm as a patron after a meal, holding a walking stick but not really leaning on it. ‘And not one of those crappy little German ones, mark you, dancing about and wanking at the moon.’ He was very upright, and spry, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘A proper Norse blood-and-lightning werewolf! I see she has made another mess.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s what Vigga does. But I suppose, sometimes … a mess is what you need.’

It was only by his clothes, and something around the eyes, perhaps, that Brother Diaz was finally able to place him. ‘Baron Rikard?’

The vampire looked, if anything, faintly amused. ‘The very same.’

‘You have something …’ Alex pointed at the corner of her mouth. ‘Just here.’

‘Ah.’ He whisked out a handkerchief, licked one corner, then dabbed away a bloody smudge. ‘How incredibly gauche of me.’

‘You look twenty years younger,’ said Alex, eyes wide.

‘How delightful of you to say so. Perhaps you’re not such a charmless cluck as I first suspected. We may make a princess of you yet.’ The baron gave Brother Diaz something close to a conspiratorial wink. ‘I know it’s a great deal to take in, Brother, but trust me, it’s amazing what one can get used to.’

‘For the Chapel of the Holy Expediency …’ The elf had reappeared from nowhere, leaning against the wall of the inn, arms folded, ‘none of this is that remarkable.’

Brother Diaz took in the burning buildings, the retching werewolf, the knight full of arrows, the dead guards, and the half-goat, half-sheep, half-dog corpses tangled in the inn’s broken gateway. ‘So this …’ he managed to croak, ‘is a typical day?’

‘Well.’ Baron Rikard raised one grey brow. ‘It’s not un typical.’