I sighed. I’d been looking forward to wolfing it. You don’t really know the world till you’ve explored it with animal as well as human sense, and Ginny was certainly a part of the world—Whoa, there! “Okay,” I said. “Next year, when you’re an adept again.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, darling. If you want to run off by yourself, werewise, go ahead.”

  “Not without you.”

  She chuckled. “You might get fleas, anyhow.” She was leaning over to nibble my ear when we both heard the footsteps.

  I rose to my feet, muttering inhospitable things. A form, shadowy under the velvet sky, approached us over a path which snaked inland. Who the devil? I thought. Someone from the village, ten miles hence? But— My nose in human shape is dull by my wolf standards, but suddenly there was a smell I didn’t like. It wasn’t unpleasant; indeed, its pungency seemed all at once to heighten Ginny’s half-visible beauty to an unbearable degree. And yet something in me bristled.

  I stepped forward as the stranger reached our patio. He was medium tall for a Mexican, which made him shorter than me. He moved so gracefully, no more loudly than smoke, that I wondered if he could be a were-cougar. A dark cape over an immaculate white suit garbed the supple body. His wide-brimmed hat made the face obscure, till he took it off and bowed. Then light from a window touched him. I had never seen so handsome a man, high cheekbones, Grecian nose, pointed chin, wide-set eyes of a gold-flecked greenish gray. His skin was whiter than my wife’s, and the sleek hair was ashblond. I wondered if he was even a Mexican national, let alone of native stock.

  “Buenas noches, señor,” I said curtly. “Pardón, pero no hablamos español.” Which was not quite true, but I didn’t want to make polite chitchat.

  The voice that answered was tenor or contralto, I couldn’t decide which, but music in any case. “I’ faith, good sir, I speak as many tongues as needful. I pray forgiveness, but having observed from afar that this house was lighted, methought its master had returned, and I did but come with neighborly greeting.”

  His pronunciation was as archaic as the phrasing: the vowels, for instance, sounded Swedish, though the sentences didn’t have a Swedish rhythm. At the moment, however, I was surprised by the words themselves. “Neighbor?”

  “My sister and I have made abode within yon ancient castle.”

  “What? But—Oh.” I stopped. Fernandez hadn’t mentioned anything like this, but then, he himself hadn’t been here for months. The Fortaleza and grounds belonged to the Mexican government, from which he had purchased a few acres for his hideaway. “Did you buy it, then?”

  “A few rooms were made a right comfortable habitation for us, sir,” he evaded. “I hight Amaris Maledicto.” The mouth, so cleanly shaped that you scarcely noticed how full it was, curved into an altogether charming smile. Had it not been for the odor in my nostrils, I might have been captivated. “You and your fair lady are guests, then, of Señor Fernandez? Be welcome.”

  “We’ve borrowed the lodge.” Ginny’s voice was a little breathless. I stole a glance, and saw by the yellow window-light that her eyes were full upon his, and brilliant. “Our…our name…Virginia. Stephen and Virginia…Matuchek” I thought, with a cold sort of puzzlement, that brides were supposed to make a great show of being Mrs. So-and-So, not play it down in that fashion. “It’s very kind of you to walk all this way. Did your…your sister…come too?”

  “Nay,” said Maledicto. “And truth to tell, however glad of your society, ’tis belike well she was spared the sight of such loveliness as is yours. ’Twould but excite envy and wistfulness.”

  From him, somehow, unbelievably, in that flowering night above the great dim sea, under stars and sheer cliffs, that speech to another man’s wife wasn’t impudent, or affected, or anything except precisely right. Even by the half-illumination on the patio, I saw Ginny blush. Her eyes broke free of Maledicto’s, the lashes fluttered birdlike, she answered confusedly: “It’s so kind of you…yes…won’t you sit down?”

  He bowed again and flowed into a chair. I plucked at Ginny’s dress, drew her back toward the house and hissed furiously: “What the devil are you thinking of? Now we won’t get rid of this character for an hour!”

  She shook free with an angry gesture I remembered from past quarrels. “We have some cognac, Señor Maledicto,” she said. It would have been her best smile she gave him, slow and sideways, except that the faintest tremble was still upon her lips. “I’ll get it. And would you like a cigar? Steve brought some Perfectos.”

  I sat down as she bustled inside. For a moment I was too outraged to speak. Maledicto took the word. “A charming lass, sir. A creature of purest delight.”

  “My wife,” I growled. “We came here for privacy.”

  “Oh, misdoubt me not!” His chuckle seemed to blend with the sea-murmur. Where he sat, in shadow, I could make him out only as a white and black blur; and yet those oblique eyes glowed at me. “I understand, and shall not presume upon your patience. Mayhap later ’twould please you to meet my sister—”

  “I don’t play bridge.”

  “Bridge? Oh, aye, indeed, I remember. ’Tis a modern game with playing cards.” His hand sketched an airy dismissal. “Nay, sir, our way is not to force ourselves unwanted. Indeed, we cannot visit save where some desire for us exists, albeit unspoken. ’Twas but…how should a man know aught from our dwelling save that neighbors had arrived? And now, I cannot churlishly refuse your lady’s courtesy. But ’tis for a short time only, sir.”

  Well, that was as soft an answer as ever turned away wrath. I still couldn’t like Maledicto, but my hostility was eased enough so I could analyze my motives. Which turned out to be largely reaction to a third wheel. Something about him, maybe the perfume he used, made me desire Ginny more than ever before.

  But my rage came back as she hovered over him with the cognac, chattered too loudly and laughed too much and insisted on having the Maledictos to dinner tomorrow! I hardly listened to their conversation. He talked smoothly, wittily, never quite answering any questions about himself. I sat and rehearsed what I’d say after he left.

  And finally he rose. “I must not keep you,” he said. “Moreover, ’tis a stony path to the Fortaleza, one with which I am not yet familiar. So I must go slowly, lest I lose my way.”

  “Oh! But that could be dangerous.” Ginny turned to me. “You’ve been over the trail, Steve. Show him home.”

  “I’d not afford you that much trouble,” demurred Maledicto.

  “It’s the least we can do. I insist, Amaris. It won’t take you long, Steve. You said you felt like a run in the moonlight, and look, the moon is almost due to come up.”

  “Okay, okay, okay!” I snapped, as ungraciously as possible. I could, indeed, turn wolf on the way back, and work some of my temper off. If I tried to argue with her now, the way I felt, our second night would see one Armageddon of a quarrel. “Let’s go.”

  He kissed her hand. She said goodnight in a soft, blurry voice, like a schoolgirl in love for the first time. He had a flashlight; it made a small bobbing puddle of radiance before us, picking out stones and clumps of sagebrush. The moonglow on the eastern ridges grew stronger. I felt it tingle along my nerves. For a while, as we wound over the mountainside, only the scrunch of our shoes made any noise.

  “You brought no torch of your own, sir,” he said at last. I grunted. Why should I tell him I’d been given witch-sight in the Army—to say nothing of the fact that I was a werewolf who in my alternate species had no need of flashlights? “Well, you shall take mine back,” he continued. “The way were perilous otherwise.”

  That I knew. An ordinary human would blunder off the trail, even in bright moonlight. It was such a dim, nearly obliterated path, and the land was so gnarled and full of shadows. If he then got excited, the man would stumble around lost till dawn—or, quite probably, go off a precipice and smash his skull.

  “I will call for it tomorrow evening.” Maledicto sighed happily. “Ah, sir, ’tis rare good you’ve come. New-wedded folk are aye overflowingly full of love, and Cybelita has long been as parched as Amaris.

  “Your sister?” I said.

  “Yes. Would you care to meet her this eventide?”

  “No.”

  Silence fell again. We dipped into a gut-black ravine, rounded a crag, and could no more see the lodge. Only the dim sheen of waters, the moonglow opposite, the suddenly very far and cold stars, lit that country. I saw the broken walls of the Fortaleza almost over my head, crowning their cliff like teeth in a jaw. Maledicto and I might have been the last living creatures on Middle Earth.

  He stopped suddenly. His flashlight snapped out. “Goodnight, Señor Matuchek!” he cried, and his laughter was evil and beautiful.

  “What?” I blinked bewildered into the murk that clamped on me. “What the hell do you mean? We’re not at the castle yet!”

  “Nay. Proceed thither if thou will. And if thou canst.”

  I heard his feet go back down the path. They didn’t crunch the gravel any more. They were soft and very rapid, like the feet of a bounding animal.

  Back toward the lodge.

  A moment I stood as if cast in lead. I could hear the faintest movement of air, rustling dry sagebrush, the ocean. Then my heartbeat shook all other noises out of me.

  “Ginny!” I screamed.

  I whirled and raced homeward. My toes caught a rock, I pitched over, bloodied my hands with the fall. I staggered up, the bluffs and gullies flung my curses back to me, I went stumbling down a slope through brush and cactus. When at last I stopped, panting, to glare around, I’d lost sight of the castle and hadn’t yet spied the lodge. I’d lost my way.

  My gaze swept down the slope to the dropoff. The sea was a wan glimmer beyond. A little sense came back. Maledicto had adroitly removed me from the scene, perhaps murdered me: if I were the untrained, unspecial Homo Sapiens he assumed. But I had a little more in reserve than he knew, such as witch-sight. I mumbled the formula and felt the retinal changes. And then I could see for miles. The view was blurred, of course; the human eyeball can’t focus infra-red wavelengths very well; but I could recognize landmarks. I set a general course and made for home.

  With nightmare slowness. Maledicto had gone faster than human.

  Then the moon broke over the hills.

  The change was on me before I had even consciously willed it. I certainly didn’t stop to undress, bundle my clothes and carry them in my mouth. My wolf-jaws ripped everything to rags except the elastic-banded shorts, and I went shadow-swift over the mountainside. If you think a bobtailed two-hundred-pound wolf in shorts is ridiculous, you’re probably right; but it didn’t occur to me at that moment.

  I couldn’t see as far with lupine eyes. But I could smell my own trail, in bruised vegetation, vivid as a cry. I found the path again and drank another scent. Now I knew what the undertone of Maledicto’s odor had been.

  Demon.

  I’d never caught that exact whiff before now, and my wolf brain wasn’t up to wondering about his species. It didn’t even wonder what he desired of Ginny. There was only room in my narrow skull for hate, and for hurrying.

  The lodge came into view. I sprang onto the patio. No one was about. But the master bedroom faced the sea, its window open. I went through in a leap.

  He had her in his arms. She was still pressing him away, resisting, but her eyes were closed and her strength faded. “No,” she whispered. “No, help, don’t, Amaris, Amaris, Amaris.” Her hands moved to his throat, slid to his neck, drew his face towards hers. They swayed downward together in the gloom.

  I howled, once, and sank my teeth in him.

  His blood did not taste human. It was like liquor, it burned and sang within me. I dared not bite him again. Another such draught and I might lie doglike at his feet, begging him to stroke me, I willed myself human.

  The flow of transformation took no longer than he needed to release Ginny and turn around. Despite his surprise, he didn’t snarl back at me. A shaft of moonlight caught his faerie visage, blazed gold in his eyes, and he was laughing.

  My fist smashed with all my weight behind it. Poor, slow manflesh, how shall it fight the quicksilver life of Air and Darkness? Maledicto flickered aside. He simply wasn’t there. I caromed into a wall and fell down, my knuckles one crumple of anguish.

  His laughter belled above me. “And this puling thing should deserve as lively a wench as thee? Say but the word, Virginia, and I whip him to his kennel.”

  “Steve…” She huddled back in a corner, not coming to me. I reeled onto my feet. Maledicto grinned, put an arm about Ginny’s waist, drew her to him. She shuddered, again trying to pull away. He kissed her, and she made a broken sound and the motions of resistance started once more to become the motions of love. I charged. Maledicto shoved with his free hand. I went down, hard. He put a foot on my head and held me.

  “I’d liefer not break thy bones,” he said, “but if thou’rt not gentle enough to respect the lady’s wishes—”

  “Wishes?” Ginny broke from him. “God in Heaven!” she wailed. “Get out!”

  Maledicto chuckled. “I must needs flee the holy names, if a victim of mine invoke them in full sincerity,” he murmured. “And yet thou seest that I remain here. Thy inmost desire is to me, Virginia.”

  She snatched up a vase and hurled it at him. He fielded it expertly, dropped it to shatter on me, and went to the window. “Oh, aye, this time the spell has been broken,” he said. “Have no fear, though. At a more propitious hour, I shall return.”

  There was a moment’s rippling, and he had gone over the sill. I crawled after him. The patio lay white and bare in the moonlight.

  I sat down and held my head. Ginny flung herself sobbing beside me. A long time passed. Finally I got up, switched on the light, found a cigarette and slumped on the edge of the bed. She crouched at my knees, but I didn’t touch her.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “An incubus.” Her head was bent, I saw only the red hair flowing down her back. She had put on her frilliest nightgown while we were gone—for whom? Her voice came small and thin. “He…it…it must haunt the ruins. Came over with the Spaniards…Maybe it was responsible for their failure to—”

  I dragged smoke into my lungs. “Why hasn’t it been reported?” I wondered aloud, dully. And then: “Oh, yeah, sure. It must have a very limited range of operation. A family curse on a family now extinct, so it could only haunt the home and lands of that old Don. Since his time, no one has been here after dark.”

  “Until we—” Her whisper trailed off.

  “Well, Juan and his wife, with occasional guests.” I smoked more fiercely. “You’re the witch. You have all the information. I barely know that an incubus is an erotic demon. Tell me, why did it never bother the Fernandezes?”

  She began to weep afresh, deep, hopeless gasps. I thought that despair had combined with the earlier loss of witch-power to drive her thaumaturgic training clean out of reach. My own mind was glass-clear as I continued: “Because it did speak the truth, I suppose, about holy symbols being a shield for people who really want to be shielded. Juan and his wife are good Catholics. They wouldn’t come here without hanging crucifixes in every room. And neither of them wishes to be unfaithful to the other.”

  The face she raised was wild. “Do you think that I—”

  “Oh, not consciously. If we’d thought to put up some crosses when we arrived, or just to offer a prayer, we’d have been safe too. We’d never even have known there was an incubus around. But we had too much else to think about, and it’s too late now. Subconsciously, I suppose, you must have toyed with the idea that a little vacation from strict monogamy could do no one any harm—”

  “Steve!” She scrambled stiffly to her feet. “On my honeymoon! You could say such a thing!”

  “Could and did.” I ground out the cigarette, wishing it were Maledicto’s face. “How else could it lay a spell on you?”

  “And you—Steve—Steve, I love you. Nobody else but you.”

  “Well, you better rev up the carpet,” I sighed. “Fly to, oh, I imagine Guaymas is the nearest town big enough to have an exorcist on the police force. Report this and ask for protection. Because if I remember my demonology, it can follow you anywhere, once you’ve come under its influence.”

  “But nothing happened!” She cried it as if I were striking her; which, in a sense, I was.

  “No, there wasn’t time. Then. And, of course, you’d have been able to bounce any demon off with a purely secular spell, if you’d possessed your witch-powers. But those are gone for the time being. Until you relearn them, you’ll need an exorcist guard, every hour of the day you aren’t in a church. Unless—” I stood up too.

  “What?” She caught me with cold frantic hands. I shook her off, blinded by the double hurt to my manhood— Maledicto had whipped me in fight and almost seduced my bride. “Steve, what are you thinking?”

  “Why, that I might get rid of him myself.”

  “You can’t! You’re no warlock, and he’s a demon!”

  “I’m a werewolf. It may be a fair match.” I shuffled into the bathroom, where I began to dress my wounds. They were superficial, except for swollen knuckles. She tried to help, but I gestured her away from me.

  I knew I wasn’t rational. There was too much pain and fury in me. I had some vague idea of going to the Fortaleza, whither Maledicto had presumably returned. In wolf shape, I’d be as fast and strong as he. Of course, I dare not bite…but if I could switch to human as occasion warranted, use the unarmed combat techniques I’d learned in the Army… It was as hopeless a plan as ever men coughed forth, but my own demon was driving me.

  Ginny sensed it; that much witchcraft remained to her, if it were not simply inborn. She was quite pale in the unmerciful glare of the saintelmo, she shivered and gulped, but after a while she nodded. “If you must. We’ll go there together.”