There was a jagged hole in the observatory's dome, and the moonlight poured in like pouring mercury, forming swaying spots of light on Elvira's canvas shoes. Lucas's footsteps echoed on the spiral staircase, and when she counted to the 243rd step, she smelled a mixture of blood and rust in the wind.
"If you're scared, you can turn back now." Lucas' voice floated down from above, and the hem of his black coat brushed against the rusty railing, scraping off some iron filings.
Elvira clutched the strap of her backpack, which contained an anonymous letter she had received three days ago. The yellowed paper was printed with the Lucas family crest and a sentence written in blood: "Bring her here on a full-moon night, or your mother's infusion tube will leak air." At this moment, the paper was sticking to her back and was hot, like a piece of red-hot iron.
The dome platform was covered with thick bird droppings, and the telescope bracket was tangled with vines. Lucas took off his coat and spread it on the low wall. When the sleeves slipped down, the scars on his forearms were exposed, which looked like the marks of repeated bites by sharp teeth.
"You saved me three years ago." Elvira suddenly said, "The figure reflected in the windshield of the helicopter at the explosion site had the same silver-gray hair as you."
Lucas fiddled with the eyepiece of the old telescope, and the metal parts made a dying creaking sound: "At that time, I didn't know how to control the transformation cycle." The moment he turned his face, the moonlight just passed through his pupils, and his irises turned a dark green color like swamp phosphorescence.
Elvira stepped back and bumped into the control console, with her lower back pressed against a cold metal button. The entire observatory suddenly shook, and the broken dome began to rotate slowly amid the roar of gears meshing. The moonlight roamed on the ground through cracks of different angles, and finally gathered into a light spot in the shape of a wolf's head.
"This is the Neumann family's first observatory." Lucas unbuttoned the third button of his shirt, and a faint silver claw mark appeared under his collarbone. "It was used to calculate the resonant frequency of the moon phase and transformation - until my father lost control and bit three engineers to death."
The swirling moonlight swept across Elvira's necklace, and the pendant suddenly burst into a blue-white arc. She reached out to pull the chain, but Lucas grabbed her wrist and pressed her against the wall. The moment the back of her head hit the relief of the star map, she saw clearly that the concave and convex constellation lines were actually some kind of ancient text.
"Don't take it off." Lucas' breath sprayed on the scabbed abrasion behind her ear, and the skin immediately felt a burning sensation. "Once the necklace recognizes its owner, forcibly peeling it off will trigger—"
The sound of shattering glass interrupted his words. The wolf-head light spot formed by the moonlight suddenly materialized, smashed the remaining glass in the dome and rushed towards them. Elvira was protected by Lucas, and she heard the sound of cloth tearing from his back, and warm liquid seeped into her fingers.
The silver light gnawed at Lucas's shoulder blades, making a sound similar to sandpaper grinding metal. Elvira touched the copper lever on the edge of the console and pressed it down with her whole body weight. The rusty gears screamed, the rotating dome suddenly accelerated, and the moonlight was torn into pieces by centrifugal force.
The silver wolf let out a high-frequency whine and then disappeared into the air. When Lucas stood up, a complete wolf-shaped totem appeared on the back of his neck, and every strand of hair was flowing with liquid moonlight. He grabbed Elvira's hand and pressed it on the totem, and tiny sparks burst out where their skin touched.
"This is an eternal life contract." His voice was nasal, as if he had a severe cold. "From now on, every time I die, it will consume your--"
The kiss came more suddenly than the wolf attack. Elvira tasted blood and rust, and Lucas's canine teeth scraped her lower lip. The moonlight shone through the crescent-shaped pendant of the necklace, casting a distorted star map under their feet. A gear with a wolf's head carved on it suddenly popped out and rolled to the corner of the wall, spinning non-stop.
Lucas was wiping the blood off her lips with his fingertips when the alarm sounded from downstairs. Mrs. Audrey's voice came through the loudspeaker, making the glass shards fall: "Game time is over, dear."
Elvira felt the back of her neck getting hot, and the metal surface reflected the tiny runes on her skin, which matched the edge of the totem on the back of Lucas' neck perfectly. There was a steady sound of footsteps coming from the stairwell, like a team in military boots approaching.
"Run!" Lucas pushed her to the fire escape and turned around to run into the control console. The exposed wires burst into blue-purple sparks, and before the whole floor fell into darkness, Elvira saw that the wound on his back was healing quickly, and the fluorescence of the mechanical circuit was faintly visible under the new skin.
The escape ladder suddenly broke at the fourth section. Elvira grabbed the rusty steel bars and swung into the observatory warehouse, where rows of glass jars were filled with wolf organs. The last jar had a label that read "LN1999-2015" and contained the body of a young boy soaked in formalin—he looked exactly like Lucas, but without the totem on the back of his neck.
Emergency lights were turned on deep in the warehouse, and the radio on the iron rack suddenly played the news automatically: "...The heir of the Neumann Group is getting married today..." Lucas's panting was mixed in the noise, as if it came from a long distance: "Don't believe what you see..."
Elvira kicked over the iron frame and rushed out of the vent. The necklace she was holding suddenly shrank and tightened around her neck. Under the moonlight, a new mark appeared on the inside of the pendant: 11.05.2023. The date on her phone showed that today was November 5, and her birthday was in March next year.
The church on the other side of the moat struck midnight. Elvira felt the new bite mark below her collarbone, where fluorescent blue blood was oozing out. When she drew a wolf head pattern on the bridge pier with blood, the river suddenly reversed and formed a whirlpool, revealing the rusted safe at the bottom of the water.
Inside the box was a bronze key with stars carved into it, and a yellowed baby photo with "Elvira Neumann, born on the night of a lunar eclipse" written on the back. The baby in the photo was pinned with a silver wolf-head brooch, exactly the same as the one in her schoolbag.
Three hours ago, she sneaked into the abandoned biological laboratory. After the radiation-proof door was propped open with hydraulic pliers, black crystals still remained in the dusty petri dishes on the operating table. The refrigerator labeled "11/05" was locked with a triple password. When she used a silver leaf bookmark to swipe across the sensing area, an ice-blue mist poured out as the door popped open.
Now the ampoules of clear liquid were clinking in her backpack. Elvira moved along the leaking wall, and the flashlight on her cell phone revealed the scratches on the wall - each one was more than 20 centimeters long, with rusty red oxidation marks on the edges.
Emergency lights were on at the turn of the tunnel. Lucas was leaning against the broken ticket machine, with three rips on the left side of his suit. He held a half-broken syringe in his hand, with the needle still stuck in the blue vein in his elbow.
"Did they give you a sedative?" Elvira smelled the strong smell of blood on his collar as she squatted down.
Lucas suddenly turned over and pressed her against the gate. His pupils shrank into two vertical silver lines, and his canine teeth pierced his lower lip, causing blood to ooze out: "You should have listened to your mother and taken the check."
"And then let you and Selena perform a perfect marriage?" Elvira pressed her knee against his ribs and felt the uneven seams under the bandage. "What was the Neumann Group helicopter transporting on the day of the bombing? Those black crystals?"
Alarms sounded from both ends of the tunnel. Lucas tore off her backpack strap and threw it at the pursuers, dragging her into the maintenance passage. The silver lines on the back of her neck began to spread toward her spine. Elvira felt like ants crawling in her blood vessels under her skin when he touched her.
The full moon was just overhead when the ventilation manhole cover was pushed open. Lucas knelt in the rubble and tore his shirt, his shoulder blades making a leather creaking sound. When the moonlight shone on his back, the silver lines suddenly came alive, twisting and reorganizing, and finally condensing into a complete wolf-shaped totem.
"Look at me." The syllables rolling in his throat were no longer human. "Remember the true cost."
Elvira felt the necklace around her neck and it was hot. When Lucas rushed over, she raised the silver leaf bookmark, and the metal surface reflected no longer a human face - but a wolf head covered with blue-gray hair. The moment the fangs pierced her shoulder, the moonlight reflected rainbow spots on the necklace, and Lucas suddenly twitched and returned to human form.
The pursuer's footsteps approached the roof. Elvira dragged the unconscious Lucas into the water tower and found that his phone was beeping with a call from Audrey. The lock screen wallpaper was a photo of her dozing on the sculpture table, and the date of the photo showed that it was taken three months before the bombing.
"Wake up!" She slapped his cold face and touched the microchip implanted behind his ear. Just as the evidence-collecting tweezers touched the edge, Lucas suddenly opened his eyes and grabbed her wrist.
"Don't touch this." His voice was like sandpaper on rust. "The chip is connected to the TNT explosive."
The moonlight cut their shadows through the cracks in the water tower. When Elvira counted the seventh time the helicopter's searchlight swept across the ceiling, Lucas began to carve words on the wall with a utility knife. The cement powder scraped off by the knife tip was mixed with blood, and she recognized it as the coordinates of the explosion three years ago.
"The leak in the lab wasn't natural gas." The tip of the knife broke as he wrote the last number. "What they cultivated... is now awake."
The moment the rooftop door was blown up, Lucas pressed the necklace into her palm. When Elvira slid down the maintenance ladder, she saw the moonlight gathering into a silver wolf shadow behind him. The moment the explosion shattered all the glass, the phone suddenly received an encrypted file - the seventh patent that Lila finally cracked, titled: "Gene Chimera Werewolf Stabilizer".
When she landed, she found a crack on the necklace, and a blue fluorescent liquid was seeping out of the crack. Elvira dipped it into the water on the road, and the liquid formed a string of longitude and latitude coordinates on the water surface. Two blocks away from here, there was a refrigerated transport truck with a diplomatic license plate parked in the basement of the church.
When she pried open the carriage, she saw rows of cylindrical culture chambers. Yellowed photos were posted on the outside of each chamber, and in the newest chamber, a creature with a wolf's head and a human body was floating - it had Lucas's face.