L is for Lycans: A-Z of Horror, #12

By P.J. Blakey-Novis

L is for Lycans, the twelfth book in an epic series of twenty-six horror anthologies. In this book you will find a selection of thirteen frightening tales from some of the best independent horror authors of today. From bloody tales of revenge to experiments gone wrong, from the historical to the futuristic, L is for Lycans puts a spin on the traditional theme and will have you avoiding nights when the moon shines bright.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Cape Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201918163

Book preview

Red Cape Publishing Presents…

The A-Z of Horror: L is for Lycans

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 Red Cape Publishing

All rights reserved.

Cover Design & Interior Artwork by Red Cape Graphic Design

www.redcapepublishing.com/red-cape-graphic-design

With special thanks to our supporters on Patreon and Ko-Fi

Lesley Drane

Verona Jones

Craig Crawford

Blazing Minds

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Contents

Beyond Reconcile by Alexander Bayliss

Hair of the Dog by Carlton Herzog

Book Show Rendezvous by R.C. Rumple

Harzie Pulls the Trigger by Doris V. Sutherland

Muzzled by Richard Beauchamp

Moonshine by Pauline E. Dungate

The Shape of Things by Daniel R. Robichaud

New Moons and a Nice Cup of Tea by C.R.S. Ford

The Lycanthrope’s Lament by John Joseph Ryan

Lunar Descent by Henry Snider

Flesh Lake by Timothy Friesenhahn

Cry of the Red Wolf by Ken Goldman

Brutha’ Garou by J. Benjamin Sanders Jr.

Beyond Reconcile

Alexander Bayliss

Lycan Illustrastion crop

The best hunting was always at night. Giovanni Pasamonte's father had taught him that. Such wisdom had been passed down through his family for generations.

The animal burst through the undergrowth and snuffled and scuffled at the earth between the tree roots. Giovanni pulled back on its leather harness. The pig was keen-scented but greedy. It had eaten two truffles already tonight. Still, Giovanni's sack bulged with dozens more. Tomorrow, he would sell them to the merchants at the market in the city and make enough to live on for at least a month. It had been the best night’s foraging of the autumn so far.

No! Giovanni yanked the pig back again, then stepped forward. The forest floor was springy underfoot. He knelt and extracted the spongy fungus with his trowel. It was the biggest yet, the size of his fist. He stuffed it into his sack.

Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled. In the east, the sky was purplish. Dawn could not be more than an hour away. High cloud obscured the moon. It was time to return to the village. Giovanni found the path and began descending. His wife Maria would be cooking eggs for breakfast. He would shave one of the truffles over the top to celebrate their good fortune.

The pig sensed the danger before him. It stopped, sniffed the air, then squealed and skittered back.

What's wrong, little thing?

Giovanni squinted into the darkness. Nothing. He tugged the pig’s lead, but it would not move.

Then he heard something heavy crunching through the underbrush. A hulking shape broke from the trees. The pig whimpered. Dread rose in Giovanni. The clouds parted, and a beam of moonlight found a black wolf, hair prickling, eyes yellow. Snarling, salivating, it sprung towards them.

Giovanni wielded the trowel. Its edge was as sharp as a knife. He had one chance. As the wolf jumped, he swung. He was aiming for its eyes but hit too high, scoring a horizontal cut across its head. The wolf kept coming, knocking him over. His sack split open, and his precious fungi rolled away.

No-

With a twist of its head, the wolf tore out his throat. Then it chased down the squealing pig.

***

Arturo was kneeling in the chapel when the secretary appeared.

The inquisitor wishes to see you, Fra Arturo, the secretary said. He was whip-thin, with a beard like a blade.

Arturo gave a small nod and raised his hand to dismiss the man.

Now, the secretary said.

Arturo sighed. I was praying for peace. I suppose the irony is lost on you.

The cathedral bell rang ten as Arturo strode along the stone corridor to Inquisitor Maculani’s office.

Come, Maculani said, but he did not look up when Arturo entered his room. He was standing over his desk, poring over an open copy of the Malleus Maleficarum. Bookcases rose like cliffs behind him. The lower shelves contained hundreds of folios of correspondence from the Roman congregation, including every significant decision, directive and decree from the last seven centuries. Above these were sacred texts from every era: the Pauline Epistles, Augustine’s Confessions, Justinian's Codex, and various volumes of the Directorium Inquisitorum. The air was cold and tinged with incense.

Maculani's face was hard. There's been another attack.

Arturo nodded slowly. Where?

Aggio. The inquisitor must have noticed Arturo’s blank look, because he continued: A hamlet, some two hours' ride from here. I need you to investigate. Take two friars and ride there immediately.

And if we find it?

"If this really is a lupo mannaro, then understand that such things are beyond reconcile with God. Bring it to trial if you must, but better yet get rid of it by any means necessary. Let us not hear of it again. You have my blessings and those of the archbishop. Take what you need from the armoury. Do what you must."

Around midday, Arturo thundered into Aggio, black horse snorting, black cape flapping, black gaze sweeping about. He was flanked by two Dominican friars, dour, wiry men who might literally have been brothers. The village was a jumble of wooden shacks. Scrawny chickens pecked at the baked earth. The villagers looked little better fed.

A woman in a black smock stepped forward. I am Maria Pasamonte, Giovanni's widow.

My condolences, Arturo said.

There will be time enough for that. Her face was like a shovel. For now, let me take you to the place where it happened.

The path out of the village passed a small stone chapel then wound up into the woods. The steep, stony trail was hard on horseback. Soon, they came to some rocks that were spattered with blood. The wolf must have dragged the carcasses away, but the path was scattered with scraps of flesh, fragments of leather and sackcloth, and a dented trowel. Arturo got down from his horse and prodded the chunks of flesh with his sword. He wasn't sure which were human and which were pig.

***

Tommaso slept late and dreamt that his wife was still alive. Dozing, he felt her soft curves curled against him. He smelt her scent and heard her muttering an invitation. The warmth of her body pulsed against him, and he grew hard. Then a bell rang, and he jerked awake. Realising he was alone, he felt the familiar empty ache of grief in his stomach. The cathedral bell was knelling, foretelling a death.

Tommaso pulled on some clothes and went downstairs and outside. The road to the cathedral was lined with hawkers selling food. The air was heavy with the scent of grilling meat. Tommaso bought an almond pastry from a baker’s stall and bit into it as he walked along. Pigeons pecked for crumbs beneath his feet.

The cathedral square was crowded. All of society was here, from beggars and urchins to lawyers and noblemen. Tommaso pushed to the front of the throng.

The heretic had been hanged until he was almost dead and was now being lashed to a stake above a pile of wood. A priest uttered an incantation, a torch flared, and black smoke began billowing upwards. Here, they burned those considered beyond redemption: apostates, atheists, protestants, pederasts, sorcerers, sodomites and cosmologists. Some died in silence, grimacing or serene. Some repented, some recanted, some prayed and some begged. Today's victim was a screamer. His agonised cries echoed off the four walls of the piazza. At Tommaso’s side, a grinning seminarian tore into a skewer of grilled beef.

Why did Tommaso come to these events? Was it out of curiosity? Cruelty? Fear? Guilt? Certainly, if the cardinals knew what he did – what he was – they would condemn him. He imagined those grey men sitting up by candlelight, devising ever more extreme forms of punishment for those who strayed beyond reconcile with God.

The screaming stopped. The fire roared. Tommaso felt the heat on his face. A column of smoke obscured the cathedral’s facade. The heretic's charred arm fell away. He gave a final, strangled, sickening scream.

Perhaps Tommaso should leave this city and make a new start, away from his past, away from the grasp of the cardinals. But he couldn't leave, could he? He couldn’t keep running away. His life was here now. His home, his trade, his prey.

***

Stay here, Arturo said. He left the path and followed a trail of bloody paw prints into the forest. He soon found the stripped skeletons of man and pig. The paw prints continued. He followed them for another hundred paces, then stopped and drew a breath. The paw prints had disappeared. They had been replaced by footprints. He lost the trail in a tangle of brush, but it was evidence enough. This was no mere wolf. Maculani was right: It was a lupo mannaro.

Arturo retraced his steps to the path. Maria and the two friars had been joined by a slack-jawed old man carrying a bundle of wood.

This woodsman says he saw something, one of the friars said.

Speak, oaf, Arturo snapped.

The woodsman's voice was quiet, and he spoke with downturned eyes. Early this morning, around dawn, a stranger passed my hut coming down from the forest. He was bloody, barefoot, dressed in rags. He had a cut right across his forehead.

Where was he going?

The man shrugged. Maybe towards the city?

Arturo turned to one of the friars. Ride back to the city and talk to Captain Calvane, the head of the guards. Ask whether a vagrant with a cut across his forehead has been spotted at the city gates. We’ll stay here and scour the forest.

***

Tommaso smashed his chisel into the white Carrara marble. Once finished, this block would form part of the presbytery in the nave of the cathedral. The Cathedral of San Lorenzo was still unfinished after over five hundred years. It was ironic that one such as Tommaso was working on its completion. More than ironic. It was perverse.

He was an abomination, he knew that. And he was a killer - of four people now. No, not him. The thing that he became. He always took himself away from the city when the hunger came over him. He tried to sate it with wild boar and fallow deer. He knew the best places to hunt, far up in the hills away from any human settlement. The truffle hunter and his pig had been unlucky. They had crossed his path when the hunger had been full on him and all control had been lost.

Around him, dozens of masons were working. The air was thick with marble dust and the smell of stale male sweat. From the far end of the workshop, he heard shouting and the clank and rattle of a block and tackle as the finished blocks were hauled outside.

As a marble block banged down, the image of the truffle hunter flashed through his mind, eyes wide, mouth open. Then he saw his previous victims, the woman and child, running away from him, stumbling, screaming. And before that…

Tommaso yelped as he drove the chisel into his finger, shearing away a thick flap of skin. Blood pulsed over white marble. He cursed, but calmed, and the images faded.

After he had bandaged his hand, Tommaso put his tools away and went down to the docks to get drunk. The cathedral bell rang six as he ambled through narrow, sunless streets that stank of fish and piss. He found a low bar, lit by a jumble of candles and lanterns even during the day. The place was called Il Polpo. It was crowded with dock workers and sailors from many nations. They spoke in many tongues and had many shades of skin from pinky white to inky black. He’d come to this city to lose himself in just such a crowd. He found a space at the bar. A serving girl slipped him a chipped ceramic cup and filled it from a jug of wine. Her lips were a scarlet gash, and her nose was only slightly blighted by syphilis. Tommaso bolted the wine then nodded for her to pour again.

After four more cups of wine, he swayed along the dockside, stepping unsteadily between straining ropes and chains. Merchant ships lay at anchor in the harbour. Beyond them, the lighthouse had just been lit. Seagulls wheeled and cawed. Tommaso hadn’t always lived in Genoa. Nor had he always gone by the name Tommaso. He’d had another life before the bite, before the hunger. In Florence, he’d worked as an apprentice to Fancelli, sculpting flowers and faces rather than endless oblong blocks. He’d had a wife but… The memory jolted him. Never again. Never again would he risk…

"Attento!"

A city guard had spotted him staggering towards the edge of the dock. Tommaso raised a hand in apology and moved back from the edge. The guard squinted at him then strode forwards. Tommaso turned to walk away. He felt a stab of fear. If he ran, he would raise the guard’s suspicions. But if he stopped, and the guard somehow knew what had happened in Aggio last night, then…

"Alt!"

The guard was running towards him now, gripping the handle of his sword. A gang of drunken marittimi looked over with mild amusement. Tommaso sprinted across the cobbled quayside and into a passageway between two warehouses. The guard was close on his heels. At the end of the passageway, Tommaso swung left then right, running pell-mell through a maze of narrow streets. He risked a glance over his shoulder. The guard was almost close enough to grab him. As he looked back, Tommaso smacked into an orange seller, knocking her stock of oranges to the ground. The guard dodged through the rolling oranges. There was only one place Tommaso had a chance of losing him. He broke left into an alleyway at the side of a tavern. The floor was slippery with shit. Tommaso had lost his footing here only days before. Now, he ran along the raised stones at either side of the alley, while the guard took the centre line.

"Cazzo!" the guard yelled as he went down in a brown spray.

"Mangia merda," Tommaso muttered. Reaching the end of the alley, he turned left towards his home.

***

Arturo and the remaining friar scoured the forest until dusk. It was dark by the time they turned back for the city. The moon was fat above the rolling hills, and the cool air carried the scent of jasmine.

What now? the friar said.

We go to Captain Calvane. Perhaps his men have seen something.

Arturo knew that there was little chance of that. The city guards were in the pockets of the merchant families and the bankers, and so spent more time pursuing smugglers and coin clippers than heretics.

Arturo and the friar passed through the north-eastern gate and tracked the inside of the city wall to the guardhouse. They hitched their horses outside and entered. In Calvane's candlelit chamber, a group of men sat around a table scattered with playing cards. At the centre of the group was Calvane himself, a grim, hulking strongman run to fat. At his side, the greasy-haired city jailer flicked through a bunch of keys as though they were rosary beads. Two mastiffs lay by a blazing brazier. The place smelt of the dogs.

You got my message? Arturo said.

Yes, Calvane grunted. His face was like the bottom of a dented copper pan.

And have you found him?

Yes.

Arturo raised an eyebrow in surprise.

He was spotted by the docks. A guard saw the cut across his forehead and happened to recognise him. Some journeyman mason from the cathedral workshop. We’ve picked him up drunk a few times.

Is he under arrest?

Not yet. But he will be. We have his address. A squad of guards is heading there now. I trust the bishop will remember us when he is dishing out his indulgences.

***

Tommaso lay in bed, but he could not sleep. He found himself thinking about the bite and everything that came after. The wolf bite itself had healed quickly, but the hunger had grown and grown. It was more than an ordinary hunger. It felt like hatred. It felt like rage. At first, he had tried to resist it. He had shut himself away, hoping it would pass, until his wife came to his room with a bowl of broth. He groaned aloud as he remembered the change from man to beast, teeth gnashing, spit flying, the bowl of broth crashing down, his wife’s flesh ripping from her bones.

As he lay awake in horror, he heard heavy footsteps and a voice outside: This is the place. Right, straight in, no quarter.

He got out of bed and crossed to the window. Three floors below, six guards stood in the street, swords drawn. One of them kicked open the front door.

Tommaso grabbed the leather knapsack he kept under his bed in case of just such a situation. There was a back door on the ground floor: one chance. He ran onto the landing, but the first of the guards was already halfway up the stairs.

"Alt!" the man shouted.

Tommaso dashed back into his room and over to the window. He scrambled onto the ledge. He looked down. It was a sheer drop onto cobblestones. He’d probably break several bones, before being arrested, tried, hanged and burned.

The bedroom door banged open and the lead guard strode in, pointing his sword at Tommaso’s chest. There was nothing else for it. Tommaso jumped up from the window ledge. He caught the edge of the roof tiles with his fingertips and hauled himself onto the roof. The guard tried to grab Tommaso’s swinging feet, but he was a moment too late.

"Bastardo," he spat.

Tommaso climbed the steep, smooth, cool tiles to the ridge at the top of the roof. He looked about. To his right, he saw the soaring cathedral and the hills beyond. To his left, the lamplit city fell away to the docks. Overhead, the sky was an explosion of stars. He felt a sudden thrill of liberty. The die was cast. He must flee.

Tommaso heard scrabbling below him and looked back. Two guards had climbed out of his window and were coming up the roof after him. He teetered along the ridge towards the neighbouring house. Several buildings ran together in a terrace, but all were different heights. The next roof was higher and even more precipitous. Tommaso reached up, grabbed the overhanging tiles and pulled himself up. Behind him, he heard a clatter and a cry of "Mannaggia!". One of the guards had tripped on a broken ridge tile. His armoured body clattered down the roof and disappeared over the edge. There was a scream, a thud, then silence. The second guard was taking aim with a crossbow. Tommaso threw himself flat against the sloping tiles, and the bolt flew past him. He looked back. The bowman was reloading. Two more guards were scrambling out of the window.

Tommaso edged across to the next roof, which was a long way below. He heard shouts behind him. He stood for a moment, looking down. Nausea and vertigo swept through him. There was another shout, closer. He drew a breath and stepped off the edge. Cool air rushed past him. He landed heavily, cracking several tiles and almost losing his footing. Worse, he was now atop the last building of the terrace. Beyond was a yawning side street. On this lower roof, Tommaso was exposed. The crossbowman loomed over him, taking aim again.

The sight of the burning heretic flashed through Tommaso’s mind. He sprinted across the slanted terracotta tiles and jumped off the edge. For an instant, he hung between life and death, then he smashed down on the roof opposite, dazed, grazed, but alive. A crossbow bolt glanced off the tiles at his side. One of the other guards ran to the edge of the roof and leapt after him, but without enough momentum. His fingertips caught the edge of the tiles, and he dangled helplessly.

Help me! he cried.

God help you, Tommaso said.

The man’s fingers slipped, and he was gone.

***

Arriving at the house, Arturo passed the crumpled body of a guardsman, his head smashed against the cobbles. The door to the house had been kicked off its hinges. He strode up to Tommaso’s room on the third floor. Another guard was standing there, open-mouthed.

What happened? Arturo’s voice was sharp.

He… He got away.

Imbecile! Arturo slapped the man hard across the face. How?

He climbed onto the roof and fled. We tried to pursue him but…

I saw that cretin outside. God rest his soul.

What should we do?

Ensure every guard in the city has his description. He cannot get far. Arturo’s voice lacked conviction. He could of course get very far. Dozens of ships left the port every day for destinations around the Mediterranean and beyond.

Yes sir, the guard said and shrank away.

Arturo looked around the room. It was spartan in the extreme. There were faded bedclothes and a tatty armchair. Candles were propped in empty wine bottles. He breathed in the sour scent of the man and sighed.

***

Tommaso found a cheap, windowless backroom in a flophouse by the docks. The place wasn’t a whorehouse exactly, but it rented rooms by the hour and didn’t ask questions. He sorted through the contents of his knapsack: a change of clothes, a washcloth, a bar of soap and a bag of coins. He weighed the bag in his hand. It would be enough to pay for his passage out of Genoa, with very little to spare. He would go to Il Polpo and ask about in the crowd, try to find a ship that was leaving in the morning. Anywhere would do. A new life. Tommaso must die tonight.

As he was preparing to go out, he was hit by a sudden, sick sense of dread. The hunger was rising again. Impossible! He had hunted only last night. But as time went on, the hunger was becoming harder to sate. It grew more intense, more difficult to resist, and it returned more quickly. Soon, he knew, he must hunt again.

***

The wolf bounded through the narrow streets behind the port. This quarter of the city was still crowded, despite the late hour. Throngs of revellers hung round tavern doorways lit by guttering lights. With its head down, shrinking into the shadows, the wolf could pass for a stray dog, and the drunkards ignored it.

In this form, the stink of piss fractured into a thousand distinct trails. The wolf detected one and followed it.

***

Tommaso spilled