Red was fear, so red was the color Everard dreamed in. Red was there even before the torchlights registered through his closed eyelids and he heard the clicks of the monsters, before the panic took his heart and pumped blood into his opening vision.
He could have pretended it was one of his bad dreams, but then a dying man fell across his legs and the blood that splashed against Everard’s face was hot and then cold as the life left it, and he could no longer deny he had left sleep.
Sound hit him. The skittering clicks of the monsters and the screams of their prey alternated in intensity, so both of them held equal power and created terror. The noise urged Everard down, told him to stay in the dirt, to cover his head and pretend he was nothing.
The glow of the firelight beckoned and offered false promises of safety. There he would be just one of many, a potential victims, perhaps lucky, perhaps not. Here he would die for sure. He knew he had to move.
Everard forced himself up and scampered on hands and knees away from his pack and cloak. The rest of the surviving pilgrims in the convoy had already swarmed to the protection of Grandmother Time’s carriage, and they fought and tore at each other in fear as the mechanical monsters, the horrors, reached clawed tendrils and grasping tentacles from the forest around them and dragged those furthest from the torchlight into the trees. Everard threw himself into the crowd of commoners, and stayed as low to the ground as he could. He was shoved and jostled and fell to the ground under trampling feet. He felt a force grab at his body and he swung his body in a frenzy before he realized it was simple panic that was strangling and squeezing his limbs.
The silver guards tried to fan out and form a protective line around the carriage. They stabbed uselessly at the monsters with their spears and daggers, but at least they were armed. He needed a weapon. A guard was impaled and his spear fell free. Everard did not go for it. The guards pressed inward away from the trees and trampled the pilgrims underfoot.
“Protect Grandmother! Push them back!” the closest guard screamed before he was stabbed through the chest by a long, metal arm that erupted from the darkness with machine precision. A bulbous, shifting shape, a horror, scurried from the cover of the trees and pulled the man back screaming into its welcoming arms. Everard saw tentacles and whirling arms, and glowing, mechanical eyes. He tried to close his own. He did not want to know what the horror looked like, what it was, why it killed so cruelly. He just wanted it to go.
A sound, a howl, a roar broke the air. Everard felt his insides seize as the noise struck him, but his flutter of panic was sated with a relief he could barely separate from terror. The wolf was coming.
The horror dropped the dying guard and turned to a new presence that moved as lightning through the shadows. The wolf leaped, and was framed for a moment in the light before coming down on the mechanical horror with shredding claws. Grandmother’s protector, her weapon, was beautiful. Ten feet tall, brown furred, humanoid in shape with bunched muscles and elongated jaws and claws sharp enough to tear into the horror’s metal flesh, the wolf moved like no other living creature Everard had ever seen. The wolf tore with feverish madness until it broke the horror into pieces of twisted steel. Then it was over, and Everard had been saved. The other horrors fled back into the greenery, clicking anger and pain. The wolf’s green eyes, wide with bloodlust and pain, twitched from its slain enemy to him. Everard froze as he stared into the beast’s fury. He wasn’t quite sure if his heart still beat, he’d lost all of his senses. He raised a hand in defense as the wolf angled towards him, as if the movement would do anything to stop the monster.
“Jack!” The wolf turned at the voice, immediately distracted. A woman, lithe, dark haired and cloaked in a red cape, emerged from the smoke to Everard’s right. She raised one hand to the wolf in a beckoning gesture, calling it, and in her other she held a silver pistol. The wolf faced her down, and though Everard lay between the two of them, he was invisible to both. The woman, the red, smiled and flicked a single beckoning finger at the wolf.
“Come on Jack, it’s done. They’re gone. We’re safe.” Everard looked to the wolf. The beast’s ears went flat. The eyes, at once wide with pain, narrowed to calculating slits. The jaws closed, the muzzle flexed, and teeth bared in a snarl beyond anger or hatred. Those were just words, this was a feeling, palpably felt in the air between the creature and the woman. It ignored Everard, the pilgrims, the dead, the dying. The wolf’s muscles bunched, the growl growing in its throat erupted into a howl and it launched itself at the woman with impossible speed.
The red for her part, held her smile. Everard saw concentration in her face, forcing fear from her body. She planted her feet flat and strong. There was strength, and derision in her face as it charged, and when the beast was nearly on her, when a moment of hesitation could have cost her, she squeezed the trigger of the pistol and unleashed the silver bullet. It struck the wolf and she sidestepped the beast as it crumpled and crashed to the ground. It slid through the dirt, writhing, shrinking. The brown hair slithered inward and became pale skin, the elongated limbs bunched and smoothed. With a final gasp that came out more as howl of pain, the wolf was human once more. Naked, skinny, with mottled, scarred flesh and cuts and scrapes all along his broken skin, he was fragile delicate, human. The red searched in the gloom around her and swept up the closest article of clothing, Everard’s abandoned cloak, and draped it around her wolf’s heaving shoulders. She stepped past the man and signaled Grandmother’s guards to close out the perimeter.
“Spread out, make sure there aren’t any lingering,” Cassandra, the red, called to the waiting soldiers. The silver clad men and women of Grandmother’s guard stepped smartly back into line and advanced out with spears. They called clear as they inspected the still sparking and writhing bodies of the decommissioned horrors. Everard tried to stand as Cassandra approached him, but fear had him glued. He unsure of what to say or do. Cassandra reached out a hand and helped him to his feet.
“Do you think you can do that? What you just saw me do?” she asked. Everard fumbled for words and looked past her to the wolf, Jack, who finally managed to gather himself enough to rise from the dirt too. Flecks of silver powder mixed with the blood of the scrapes on Jack’s chest, proof of where the silver had touched him and momentarily rendered the virus in his veins inert. Cassandra snapped her fingers to draw his attention back to her.
“In the moment, fear is all you have. And you use it to focus. I told you to stay with me if there was an attack. I wanted you to stay close, to learn from the way I move with him, to be my second eyes. You failed. Where is your gun?” Everard reached a hand down to his belt, but there was nothing. His weapon. He had been armed this whole time. It came back to him in pieces, and he knew he would feel shame, if numb fear hadn’t taken him over completely.
“Here.” Jack limped over, still wearing Everard’s cloak. With a trembling hand, the wolf held out the sheathed silver pistol Everard was supposed to be wearing at all times. Cassandra snatched it from Jack and pushed into Everard’s hands.
“You lose that, and you die. What happened?” Everard shook his head, over and over. He had no answer.
“You were afraid,” she answered for him. Her ice-cold eyes, beautiful, angular and remorseless, narrowed and coaxed him to copy her.
“I was afraid,” Everard whispered. There was no sympathy in this woman, not for him. Coldly mocking, she took his arm and drew him into a walk with her. They left ragged Jack standing alone, and he fell to his knees again as Cassandra turned her attention away from him.
“Good. You are afraid. Accept it. Fear is all you’re given. So take it, use it, and then throw it away. Just like their love,” she said, gesturing to Jack, who remained where he was, dead eyes down and glued to the bodies of the slain humans he kneeled in.
“The wolves are useful to Grandmother only as long as they are controlled, tempered, directed at her enemies,” Cassandra said, “I control Jack, completely. He’s never bitten another human. Grandmother trusts me to control him. If ever I was to fail, my life would have no purpose. At least not in her eyes.” The statement was a cold splash of water after this heat of battle, and Cassandra meant it that way.
“Do you understand that?” she said, “Control is all we are here for. That is all you have to care about. And you know how I control him?” Everard waited for her to explain, but with great impatience she gestured for him to speak.
“You… you control through hatred, and fear, and lust.” His voice sounded so weak.
“How?” she asked.
“Jack speaks only to you, sees only you, knows only you. You are his tether to humanity, and you deny him… you deny him your body, and your love. And he loves and he hates you for that.” Cassandra held up a hand and he closed his mouth. She stepped closer, so close he could smell her skin, feel her body as she pressed it to his. She leaned in close and brought her lips to his ear.
“He hates me. He wants me. He would kill me and take me all at once. He does not love me. Do you understand that?” she said. Over her shoulder, Everard could see Jack watching them.
“There is no control if there is real emotion. This is a game. You watch how I dance. How I push and pull him. He knows where I am, at all times, at any time, even with the monsters and the screams. Even as a man. He always knows. I guide him, direct him, I am him.” She leaned back, and he saw contempt in her eyes before she kissed him. She pushed into him with strength and power and he had never been weaker. He saw over her, through her, felt Jack and the anguish pouring from him. Cassandra abruptly pulled back.
“You think I’m cruel. I have to be. You will have to be too. Especially cruel.” She turned and glanced haphazardly at Jack. Everard looked away from the tortured man and back to this woman. She nodded, sensing the rising beat of his heart.
“You know what she is, this woman you’ve been assigned to. She’s the first. She’s different. A female. And she is powerful, if she can be controlled. And so far she hasn’t been. She’s killed men like you, men who looked at her and underestimated her. She is the closest you will get to death, but you will stand with her. You’re her last hope, and she yours.” Everard felt his breath catch in his throat as it dried. He swallowed away the tremors in his voice, hoping he sounded strong. She blocked him off before he could start.
“Grandmother knows what you are, you’re past. You’re not exactly a loyal subject. When we found you, hiding out there in the desert, I saw that much. You’re a fighter, a revolutionist, a rabble-rouser.” Everard shook his head again and again.
“Not anymore…” Cassandra smiled.
“You know this girl, and I know what you were to her. You were hiding out there from her, and from Grandmother. This is your chance to be something Everard, something good. Control her. Or you’ll waste this chance. And you’ll die.” Cassandra stepped away.
Everard was alone with only his fear now. It was final, certain. He looked down to the gun in his hand. This was all that stood between him and death now. He followed the red, not knowing where else to go. He stepped over the smoldering ruins of the campfires and bodies without looking down. He boots tracked blood and gore, but at least he didn’t have to see it.
Cassandra stopped in front of Jack and removed the cloak from his shoulders. The wolf bowed his head, trembling, but she cupped his chin and forced him to look into her. Jack shuddered and she drew strength from it.
“Unrequited rage, lust, fear. It is all one thing to them. That feeling is stronger than anything else. You’ll understand that once you’ve been given your cloak. When you become a red, you’ll grow to love her pain.” Cassandra reached up to her face and plucked a single bead of her blood from her skin. She touched her finger and her blood to Jack’s lips. Jack closed his eyes, his fingers clenched and he drew blood from his palms in unconscious tension as his nails scattered his flesh. But he accepted the blood, he wanted it, needed it, drank it in.
“Hot, warm, delicious pain…” Cassandra said. She brushed her wolf’s tangled hair back and whispered something in his ear, something that left the broken man unable to stand.