All-American Werewolf

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

As his personal chauffeur passed the iron gate and turned onto the long gravel driveway leading to Raven Hill Manor, Louis Garrou finished reading a small story buried deep in the pages of The Washington Post Sunday edition about a spate of bizarre animal attacks in the past week all throughout rural Somerset County, Maryland. According to the article, conservation officers were on the hunt for a rabid bear that had apparently killed no less than seven people in the days following the Fourth of July. All the bodies, the report noted, were ripped and shredded beyond recognition.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Garrou said. “Carlos, did you see that story in the Post about those animal attacks?”

Carlos, his driver, glanced in the rear-view mirror a moment to look at Garrou, then said, “No, sir, but I saw a report on the news about it. That’s horrible.”

“Damn right it is. I was going to all those town hall meetings on the Delmarva and never once realized this was happening. How terrible.”

“Yes, sir. It is that.”

Garrou looked again at the headline that read Thompson Closing Poll Numbers with Garrou in Senate Race, then tossed the paper aside with a grunt. He watched as the gigantic Gilded Age mansion loomed in front of him with all its imposing Italianate revival opulence, surrounded by flocks of crows as it was always. He’d grown up in that mansion with his parents, his siblings, the servants, and the memory of the entire Garrou family history, something that had been drilled into the children from an early age. He and his siblings all knew that they weren’t so much living their own lives as they were furthering the glorious history of the Garrou family and fulfilling its destiny.

His six siblings were scattered all around the world working as leaders in industry, banking, the media, and education. His generation was doing their duty to live up to the family name, furthering their agenda on a massive scale. But he, as the eldest and living so close to the family estate, had the additional duty of visiting his mother on a regular basis.

As Garrou walked into the grand foyer, he breathed in the familiar odor of his childhood home: Old leather, fresh-cut flowers, and tangy burnt incense. He paused to check himself in an enormous, gilded mirror that had once belonged to a king of France. His Bill Blass suit was impeccable as always, as was his strawberry blond hair, though he did adjust his tie to perfect the knot dimple. Though only meeting his mother for their weekly Sunday brunch, his appearance mattered.

He thought of the cold, hard woman that was his mother as he picked a small piece of lint off his suit coat. Mariette Garrou, matriarch of the family and incessant driver of her children’s success. She was ancient and unyielding and had been his entire life.

He knew she’d be sitting on the private family patio reading the Post as she waited for him because Sunday brunch is served on the patio during summer, and she always read the newspaper. If it were raining, the table and chairs would be moved to the portico, but brunch was always served outside. She would never consider an alteration to her ways, nor would the thought enter her mind that it is unrelentingly hot outside and perhaps not the ideal environment for eating.

He knew she was unbending, obdurate, and implacable, and always would be.

Garrou smiled to himself as he walked onto the patio; the picture he’d created in his mind perfectly matched the reality he saw. There sat his mother, stiff and straight as always, her half-moon glasses perched on her nose, reading the Post. She, as always, wore an archaic black dress that seemed as if it was original to the one hundred ten-year-old family mansion, with her hair tied into a severe bun atop her head. Servants in sharp white Eton jackets and matching white cloth gloves on their crossed hands stood a respectful distance away, awaiting an order from either Garrou.

“Good morning, Mother,” Garrou said as he crossed the patio to kiss her. She presented her cheek to him, but never once did her eyes stop reading the story.

“Did you have a pleasant hunting trip?” she asked.

“I did indeed. I downed seven of them.”

“Well done. That was a fine speech you gave about how workers need the full backing of the government, and so it should support them everywhere,” Mariette said, without making eye contact. “Very inspiring, and no doubt uplifting for the poor and working classes.”

“Thank you,” said Garrou, glancing at one of the servants and snapping his fingers. The young man rushed to the table, laid Garrou’s napkin on his lap, poured him a cup of coffee from the silver carafe, then served him a croissant and some fruit before retreating with similar alacrity to his original spot. “You do know how deeply I care for the plight of the working man.”

“Of course,” she said, as what passed for a smile briefly teased up the ends of Mariette’s thin lips.

Garrou regarded his mother closely and noted that, although he remembered her as always being old, she looked even more aged of late. Her always pale skin was now nearly translucent and was so pallid it seemed almost to glow in the glaring sun; if he weren’t wearing his Ray-Bans, Garrou doubted he could look right at her. Her wrinkled skin seemed to have become more deeply etched of late, and her slight tremor appeared worse. Her hair, which up until recently had always been her natural red color, was now streaked with long wisps of pure white, making her bun look almost like the swirl of a candy cane.

Though Mariette had surrendered none of her intensity or vitality, and she moved with the grace she’d always shown, Garrou believed his mother looked somehow older. He’d once thought she was immortal, but, no, she could age just like everyone else.

“How are you, Mother?” he asked. “Is everything well?”

Mariette looked up from the newspaper at her son with unflinching ice blue eyes, one eyebrow raised.

“Am I well?” she said, her voice strong and fierce. “Am I well? Louis, may I remind you that I’m not the one running for the open Senate seat and not the one who should be leading the polls by double digits – especially given our connections – but who is not! I’m not the one who is being upstaged by some country bumpkin farmer and being made to look foolish. You are!”

Louis sat back in his chair and sighed. f**k, he thought to himself. Politics. Always politics. And now here comes the lecture.

Mariette pointed to the folded newspaper she was reading. “Have you seen these latest poll numbers, hmm? Are you reading what the opinion pieces are saying?”

“Yes, Mother, of course,” Garrou said. “I’m a United State Congressman, I know enough to check the poll numbers and opinion pieces. My election staff is keeping me updated on all of this.”

“Uh-huh,” she said dismissively. “Sim Thompson is gaining on you in the polls. They are writing about him now like he is a viable alternative, that he is the leader the state needs and not you. Earlier in the year, after the sudden and tragic death of Senator Wilkes, Thompson was being written off as an ‘also-ran,’ as an opposition candidate just for the sake of opposition, but now he is becoming a serious threat to you… to all of us.”

“I know, Mother. I know.”

She swept her thin, bony hand into the air as if pushing aside his defense. “You know, you know,” she said contemptuously, “but I don’t see any action, Louis. I don’t see you taking on an enemy and annihilating him, the way you were taught.”

He looked at his mother as the realization of what she was saying dawned on him. “You want me to… again? Like Wilkes?”

“Nothing and no one can be allowed to stand in your way,” she said, and then in a whisper, “in our way.”

Garrou slowly chewed a small piece of croissant as he thought. “I need some time to plan it. I want it to look like an accident, like with Wilkes.”

“Time?” Mariette asked, speaking softly. “What time do you think you have? Might I remind you it was long ago decided by the High Commission itself that you would be president? Your duty, your singular mission to our coven, and to the Coven Universal, is to become president so you can establish policies to further our rule. The national covens will, of course, assist you to win the presidential race, but if you lose this race then all these plans will have been for naught – and, let me also remind you, this was the entire reason you were given the Gift of the Wolf.”

The Gift of the Wolf. The ability to change into a huge, wolflike beast at will, one granted through demonic power to only select members of the Coven Universal. It was a most convenient power to have when one wanted to eliminate political rivals in a clandestine way, or just to kill just for the sport of it.

Garrou thought back twenty-seven years to the night of his sixteenth birthday, the night he was given the Gift.

He’d been raised in the regional coven. He’d been saturated in its beliefs, aware of its awesome powers, and dedicated to its goals from an early age. Having a High Priestess as his mother made that inevitable. Garrou had become a full member three years earlier when he’d sacrificed a child on the bloody altar, and in that time, he’d been preparing himself to be worthy enough to deserve the Gift.

Garrou had been given a list of challenges to accomplish, of goals to achieve in something of a Satanic agoge. In addition to reading and analyzing some dark grimoires, Garrou had been given a list of heinous acts to commit. As a student at the Fairmont Preparatory Academy in California, Louis not only had many potential victims within easy reach but an even larger pool of victims waiting in the surrounding community, a community that would never believe a Fairmount student could be guilty of these crimes.

The first task on Garrou’s list was a simple one: Kill a random person, anywhere, at any time of day, with any weapon. That was easy enough and he was able to check it off within a few days. The tasks, however, grew in complexity and danger, as any good agoge should. It took him the entire three years to accomplish them all.

One of the later tasks he struggled with was to kill someone in public with nothing but a screwdriver and without being arrested. Garrou puzzled over that for a time but eventually found an elegant solution. He ground down the end of a large screwdriver until it was nothing but a giant shank, then went to an adult movie theater. Taking a seat directly behind a man who was too focused on the action on the screen, Louis waited until he was distracted by pleasuring himself and shoved the screwdriver into the base of the man’s brain in one swift movement. Garrou twisted and turned the screwdriver a few times to make certain the man was dead, and then simply walked away, leaving him there with a screwdriver sticking out the back of his head.

Garrou’s final task was a challenging one, but one that, like all the others, he accomplished with aplomb and ability. He was to r**e and murder a married woman in her house during the day while her husband was home, but to do it without his ever being aware. Garrou pulled off this most difficult of all agoge tasks with planning, daring, and a little bit of luck: He pulled the front door closed behind him even as the husband walked in through the back after having finished his yard work.

And so it was that Garrou had proven his worth, his ability, and his willingness to kill, maim, and r**e in Satan’s name. Due to completing his agoge, he was finally allowed to have his Gifting ceremony when he turned sixteen. He recalled how on that night so long ago he’d stood naked before the altar as several masked priestesses in black robes anointed him with aromatic oils and painted his body with potent runes and sigils.

As they did so, Mariette, wearing a horned animal skull mask, chanted powerful ancient words of magic while she sacrificed seven choice young virgins, slitting their throats, and collecting the blood in a large, gilded basin. After killing them, she eviscerated each one in turn and collected their entrails to chop into the base of a chunky salve, which she smeared all over his body after the priestesses had finished, still chanting her spells.

Mariette had taken the athame she’d used to sacrifice the girls and sliced a sigil into Garrou’s back, and then finally called upon the demon Marchosias to grant him the Gift as she poured the virgins’ blood over his head. From that moment, Garrou could take werewolf form whenever he wanted, towering over ten feet tall when he did, having supernatural strength and speed.

The very next night he went hunting for the first time, whispering the words that turned him into a werewolf, and killed a farmer who lived not far from their mansion in Poolesville. The transformation process turning into the Wolf was agonizing, and while not as long or drawn out as depicted in the stories, it took nearly a full minute for Louis’ bones to be broken and knitted back together, for his muscles to swell into their massive proportions, and for his tendons and ligaments to stretch so he could reach his full inhuman height. As he endured the pain of becoming the Wolf that first night, the words his mother often said to her children echoed in his head: There is no power without sacrifice, and there is no sacrifice without pain.

Garrou had loved the feeling of unbridled power that first kill afforded him and lusted after the feeling with every subsequent kill. The power that came with limitless wealth was magnificent, and the power that was attached to being a congressman delightful, but Garrou found there was no power like that of taking another person’s life, especially in the form of a demonically empowered beast.

He sipped his coffee, meeting his mother’s unwavering blue eyes. “I’ll take care of it, Mother,” he said. “One way or another I’ll take care of that up-jumped hick farmer.”