Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [34]
„War is rather an obsession on Earth.‟
„Not the war,‟ she told him. „A new war, that has yet to come.‟
„That‟s the one I meant,‟ he said.
„They are planning for it. You speak to the people in the streets; they know nothing of the war to come. It is of the economy and of unemployment that they speak with worried faces. But there are those - perhaps in the government, perhaps in the military - who think that one day soon Great Britain and Germany will face each other in war. I was to create their secret weapons for them. They called them
“lunatics”, and thought it funny. If they knew what it was to be under the power of the moon, they would not have laughed so. “Lunatics” was a good name for them, but not in jest. These lunatics would be werewolves, created through my bite in wolf form. They would - so they thought - be able to change themselves at will. They would be sent to my country, where they would infiltrate and kill on the orders of their British masters. For it is easy to take weapons into the presence of enemies when those weapons are teeth and claws that you do not yet possess.‟ She laughed bitterly. „They tortured me for this. If they had only spoken to me as a being like themselves, they might even have convinced me to help them. For I have no reason to love the politicians in my country. Shall I tell you why?‟
The Doctor didn‟t answer. She didn‟t usually talk to anyone about these things. Some of the things she‟d never spoken of at all. Secrets! All her life, she‟d had to keep secrets. And suddenly, she couldn‟t bear it any more. Whether it was true or not, she had to let it all out.
Chapter Six
Night of the Long Claws
I will tell you all, (Emmeline said).
When I was a child, I knew nothing of my true nature. I had no parents, I lived in a home for orphans. I was never told what had happened to my parents, and I never thought to ask. They simply were not there. Now, I have many guesses as to what happened to them.
I have always been what I am. I do not know how, and I do not know why. There are other ways my kind can be created, though it is not as simple as folk tales would have you believe. There has to be a bite, yes, but it must be on the night of the full moon itself, and in addition to that... The full moon itself? No, that is not the only night we change, although that is the night when the beast takes full rein. For the two days before and the two days after we change also, although the creature inside is not so strong then. Then, it is the touch of the moonlight which brings on the change, and we know ourselves for who we are.
I reached the age of fourteen in the year 1926. It was a time of change. There were whispers in the classroom of bleeding.
Hair grew where no hair had grown before. But nothing was taught to us, and the whispers never increased in volume. So I did not know if what was happening to me was normal or if it was not.
It was not.
My first change was in the September. It hurt so much, and I was so scared. I thought I was dying. I thought I had become ill that day and these were my death throes. I thought that the house mother had poisoned my evening meal for some imagined slight, or perhaps the state paid her money for each orphan she killed. I thought I had insulted a witch without knowing, and she had cursed me to suffer eternal pain.
But when the change had happened... I felt free and trapped at the same time. The shackles of human thought fell away, but I had to get out of those four unnatural walls. I slammed into the shutters of my window, splinters flying but hurting for only the smallest second before the pain washed away. I ran through the night, ran for miles through the trees, and it was the most glorious time of my life. When the sun rose, blinding the moon, the change reversed. I found myself lying on the ground, with blood round my mouth, and I was so happy. Barely a minute later and I thought about what had happened and I was scared again, but while the exhilaration of the wolf was in me I was happy.
And so it went