A Dance of Demons - Chapter 5

Sharp pain tore through Urbain’s skull. He doubled over, squeezing his eyes shut until he saw white spots.

His body wasn’t changing, not yet, but he could feel the curse working its way through his veins. Would the witchcraft already in his blood speed it up or slow it down?

It seemed impossible that nobody would hear them. Somebody would come running to see what all the commotion was, Urbain was sure of it.

Martel’s smile almost seemed genuine compared to the bitter, sadistic grin he’d had only seconds ago. More than that, he seemed relieved. When he held Enfant Blanchet out, there was no sign that he planned on dropping him again.

Before Urbain could take more than a step forward, Jeanne was running past him. She snatched the baby from Martel’s hands and ran back into the safety of the house. Urbain expected her to slam the door shut behind her, but she didn’t.

“Are you happy now?” Urbain asked, his voice hoarse.

“You know, I never thought I would be happy again. But yes, I am.”

Only a few days ago, Urbain would have been relieved to hear that Martel was happy. It had felt like such a tragedy that somebody so likeable would be alone like that. Now, Martel’s loneliness seemed more than well-deserved. Maybe it was his loneliness that had made him a monster, but he was still a monster nonetheless. Plenty of people had lost family, and none of them had turned to this.

The sun had dipped down over the horizon. The last bit of light cast long shadows on the ground.

Urbain took a few slow steps forward. His legs felt unsteady, both stronger and weaker than they had ever felt at the same time. Martel did the same, though his steps seemed much sturdier.

“How did you become this? How did you end up with this curse?” Urbain asked.

There was only one question more important to him.

How do I break it?

“You remember, I’m sure, two months ago when some of Champlain’s men passed by. Well, one of them was a rougarou. Cursed by a demon, he said. I saw him transform one night. I followed them into the woods after they left. When night fell, I told one of the other men and killed him right there with my axe.”

“Somebody must know you’re the one who killed him,” Urbain said.

How had he not realized that the man he’d considered a friend was a murderer? How had he not seen Martel for the monster that he was?

Martel shrugged. While Urbain had stopped walking, Martel had not. They were mere inches from each other, close enough that Urbain could smell the dry sweat on his skin. He was close enough that when Urbain took another step forward, their chests nearly touched. If Urbain wanted to, he could tilt his head down and kiss him.

The shocking thing was that there had been a time when he did want to. Martel was a monster, but he didn’t look it.

Looking at him now made Urbain feel sick.

Martel rested a worn, calloused hand on the side of Urbain’s neck. It took everything Urbain had not to flinch away. His skin crawled with disgust.

They were so close now.

“You’ll be happier this way, Urbain. All these people in this little shithole settlement, they have no idea what you could truly be capable of. And if they did, they would burn you alive or hang you for it. We deserve this power.”

There was only one thing Bruno Martel deserved.

Urbain grabbed the fork from his waistband. He rammed it into the spot where Martel’s neck met his shoulder with enough force to break skin. He only wished he could have done it sooner. Blood spurted from the wound. His hand slid down the handle until it reached Martel’s shoulder.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen. Maybe he’d expected Martel to drop dead the moment the silver pierced his skin. All he knew was that Martel had no intention of stopping the killing.

Even if he did, Urbain didn’t care.

Urbain had never hated anybody the way he hated Bruno Martel in that moment.

Martel howled in pain. It was a wild, animalistic sound. He jerked back and pushed Urbain away with one hand. The fork came loose, but there was too much blood for it to come out in Urbain’s grip. More blood flowed between Martel’s fingers. He closed his hand around the fork and pulled hard. Blood sprayed from the open wound.

Martel’s eyes glowed bright red. His lips were pulled back over his teeth enough that Urbain could see them extending into long points.

“You should not have done that,” Martel snarled.

“You shouldn’t have threatened my family.”

Martel lunged at Urbain. As he did, his body changed. In the time it took him to reach Urbain, his face elongated into a muzzle full of those sharp teeth, his muscles bulged to fill his loose clothing, and his fingers extended into claws just as sharp as his teeth.

Urbain’s heart stuttered in his chest. Even if he had time to make the sign of the cross, his entire body was frozen. Martel slammed into him, sending him to the half-frozen ground. The pain that shot through his body was enough to unfreeze him. It took two attempts to wedge his leg between their bodies to put some distance between them. Cold, biting pain shot through his arms as Martel clawed at him.

Somewhere behind him, Claudine was shrieking and sobbing.

“Papa! Papa!”

What was Jeanne thinking, letting her see this?

Good God, Claudine was seeing this.

As long as they stayed in the house, they would be safe.

Urbain slammed his fist into Martel’s face. Pain radiated through his arm. He might have done more damage to himself than to Martel.

Teeth clamped down around his wrist. His fingers twitched. He stuck his other hand into Martel’s mouth, trying desperately to pry his jaw open. His vision swam. He was losing so much blood. The weight of Martel’s body on his was crushing his ribs and organs. Blood or bile or both rose up in his throat.

He dug his thumb into one of Martel’s glowing red eyes. The pressure made it slip out of the socket, still connected by some kind of muscle.

The weight crushing him was suddenly gone. Urbain gasped for breath and scrambled to get up to his feet. He couldn’t see straight, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was standing straight either. His fingers were going numb.

Another ear-splitting howl rang out into the night. A dog barked in the distance.

Martel covered his eye socket with both hands. He arched back and forth, twisting and turning.

A loud bang made Urbain’s ears ring. His vision swam again, and he nearly lost his balance. After the second bang, Martel’s body dropped to the ground.

Martel didn’t move.

For several seconds, neither did Urbain.

Then, slowly, he took a slow step toward the body, clutching his wounded arm to his chest. Blood was spreading across the back of Martel’s shirt. As Urbain stared, the hair retracted. So did the claws and the teeth and the muzzle until he was staring down at the man he’d known for years.

Or rather, the man he’d thought he’d known for years.

Apparently, he hadn’t known Bruno Martel half as well as he thought he did.

Urbain turned to look back at Jeanne.

She was still holding his rifle in her hands. Her face was bright red and streaked with tears. Most of her hair had fallen from the tight knot on top of her head. She was breathing heavily, but her expression was stern.

Their eyes met.

Nobody could know about this.

Urbain tore a strip of fabric from his ripped shirt and attempted to wrap his bleeding arm. He needed medical attention, but the closest thing the settlement had to a physician was a barber and an amateur midwife. Even if there was a proper physician, he wouldn’t be able to go to them. How in God’s name would he be able to explain this?

Nobody could ever know.

Jeanne dropped the rifle and ran to him. Her hands were gentle as they searched the extent of his injuries. His arm was the worst. She took her face in his hands and pulled his head down until their foreheads touched.

“Let’s get this taken care of, Urbain. Then, I will get the shovel.”

###

They didn’t talk about it. Even though it was without a doubt something they should have talked about, they didn’t. Honestly, it was a bit of a relief. It was going to come up again sooner or later, but at least he had time to think of something to say in the meantime.

He was almost grateful that he’d already to put together a batch of his great-grandfather’s healing salve. Jeanne had once insisted the spell had likely been crafted by his great-grandmother rather than grandfather, and Urbain didn’t doubt it. Which one of them had come up with the combination of lard, herbs, and beeswax. It worked. When Claude Barbier had gotten his leg caught in a bear trap a few months ago, the salve had sealed off his skin and likely saved his foot.

The salve Urbain used for himself was much stronger than the one he had diluted for Barbier. He needed something that acted fast and effectively. He wasn’t worried about anybody noticing how quickly he healed. On the contrary, he was more worried about not healing fast enough and somebody seeing just how injured he was. The only thing that could be worse than him bleeding to death on the cabin floor was somebody knowing why.

He’d smeared the salve all over the bleeding wounds, despite the blood making it difficult to stick, while Jeanne dug Bruno Martel’s grave behind the house, and Claudine and Enfant Blanchet cried. Sealing an infection inside himself wouldn’t matter if he died before it could set in.

And then he’d slept for what felt like days.

By the time he awoke again, Jeanne had finished burying Martel and the children had stopped crying.

They still didn’t talk about it.

They only thing they said was that under no circumstances could Claudine tell anybody what had happened.

“You need to go out. You need to make sure people see you,” Jeanne said quietly.

“Do they still suspect me?” Urbain asked.

He was still so exhausted. He’d already changed the rags covering the wounds twice today. Though the bleeding had stopped, there was a faint smell of rot that was beginning to sink in beneath the old blood.

Jeanne didn’t look up at him as she tossed the old rags into the fire. Even if they weren’t too soaked in blood to be salvageable, there would be no way of taking them to the Madame Legrand to wash them without explaining where all the blood had come from. While Urbain thought they would be able to use Jeanne’s monthly bleeding as an excuse, Jeanne insisted Catherine would know she was lying. Women did know these sorts of things about each other.

“They’re wondering where Bruno Martel is. They know he had intended to come visit and see how you were doing. I’ve been telling them he never arrived, but… I put his clothes and parts of his body out in the woods to make it look like he was killed there.”

A swell of affection filled Urbain’s chest. He couldn’t imagine what this must be like for her. He’d promised her that the hardest part of their life together would be leaving France. Even if this wasn’t technically his fault, he couldn’t help feeling guilty. She shouldn’t have had to deal with any of this and yet, here she was, handling it without so much as faltering.

“You’re a brilliant woman,” Urbain said.

“A few men have gone out there to search for him. I don’t know what they found, nobody seems to want to tell me. Now they’re wondering where you have been. It’s been days since anybody saw you. They’re even more afraid now than they were.”

Was it ironic for them to be more afraid now that the cause of their fear was gone?

Frère Michel claimed that if the one who passed on the rougarou curse was killed, any of its ‘descendants’ would be cured as well.

Urbain wasn’t sure how true that was. He didn’t know what the rougarou curse was supposed to feel like, but he did feel something.

There was a darkness in his heart, something that made him understand too well why Martel killed. Because Martel was right, wasn’t he? If these people suspected what he was enough, the truth wouldn’t matter. And if they did learn the truth… God help him if they did learn the truth.

Urbain winced as he pulled his jacket on. He’d lost some weight in recent years. It was loose enough on him not to put much pressure on his wounds and hide the stiff way he still moved.

“I’ll go get some feed for the chickens,” he said.

“Take Claudine with you. I can take care of the baby while you’re out, just not both at the same time.”

The trip across the settlement was remarkably uneventful. Whenever anybody asked where he had been, he told them he had been ill. When anybody asked if he knew where Martel was, he told them he hadn’t seen the man in days. It was technically the truth. Every time Claudine giggled, Urbain’s gut tightened with the fear that she would spill their secret. Thankfully, she didn’t. On the way home, he bought her a sweet bun from a baker. While he would generally agree that deception shouldn’t be rewarded, this was one exception he was willing to make.

Besides, he could only imagine what the past few days had done to her.

Children were resilient. His mother once told him that the children of witches were especially so. They had to be to survive in a world that both hated and feared them.

How in God’s name would he be able to keep her safe when he didn’t know if he would even be able to do that for himself?

With Martel dead, Urbain hoped at least that one danger had passed. There wouldn’t be any more midnight murders with him buried behind their house.

He was wrong.

He was very wrong.

They found another body in the morning, killed in the same way as all the others. Claude Barbier, whose foot Urbain had saved with the same salve covering a good part of his own body, was found outside his home the next morning. He’d been killed by what appeared to be a wolf.

Two days later, Catherine Legrand’s husband was killed.

On the fifth day, it was Simon Guillot.

While every other person had been killed outside, Simon was killed in his own home while his family slept not ten feet away from him.

It there hadn’t been panic around the settlement before, there absolutely was now.

If they hadn’t suspected unnatural forces at play before, they did now.

If there hadn’t been any whispers about how odd it was that the attacks had stopped while Urbain was allegedly ill, there were now.

The worst part was that Urbain wasn’t sure he could even refute any accusations.

“It isn’t you,” Jeanne told him with enough certainty that he almost believed her.

“You don’t know that,” he said.

Jeanne snorted and rolled her eyes.

“I think I would notice my husband sneaking out in the middle of the night to kill our neighbours. And if I didn’t, the baby certainly would.”

She did have a point there.

He had no reason to hurt anybody in this settlement. Even if he did, Frère Michel’s notes said that rougarou retained their memories when they returned to human. From the way Martel had acted, he was right. It all meant that even if the curse hadn’t been broken on Martel’s death, he should know if he was killing people.

Still, the fear nagged at the back of his mind.

There was an even worse fear he almost didn’t want to think about.

If he and Martel weren’t the ones who had killed those people, then who or what was?