Werewolf The Podcast: A Book of Ill Intent. (Episode 229)

It's a lovely morning at the University until the book arrives. A Book of Legend. The book that had been written by the mad minds of past generations. A book so dark that its content, if enacted properly, could kill... Lucifer. It could kill an Angel. The Professor has to choose between Luci-fer and the Angel Michael. Luckily, the attempted kill on the Werewolf has not worked, and the Professor and Wil have to try to... save... Satan?

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• 25:49 [Ad] The Podcast Inside Your House
• 26:37 (Cont.) Werewolf The Podcast: A Book of Ill Intent. (Episode 229)

Transcript

Professor

I was sitting in my office at the University on a sweet morning of trivial brightness.

It was the kind of day that makes optimists insufferable and realists suspicious. 

The morning was soon over, though, I mean the optimistic bit, when I received the parcel. 

It lay upon my desk like an accusation wrapped in brown paper, tied with a string of the sort that has bound many a more dangerous thing: letters of blackmail, subpoenas, and cheap sausages.

I regarded it with the scientific detachment of a man who has long since ceased to expect anything pleasant from the post and with an uncaffeinated hatred of being awake. 

I did my due diligence and hid below my desk. Yes, a little embarrassing.

Taking shelter while I did the first experiment in paranoia. From my hiding place, I poked the parcel with a silver letter opener. Flinching at each stab.

If it were a supernatural letter bomb, this would probably make it go bang. 

No bang is incorrect. Make it go boo? 

Strange how the mind works when under pressure and too tired to be overly concerned with an imminent death. 

I mean, really, I should have had this thing looked at by the bomb squad and perhaps detonated from a few hundred yards away, but I could not be arsed to be honest, so underneath my sturdy desk and a poke with a silver thing would be enough. 

If I died. Well, you know that would not keep down for long by now.

It did not go boo after several hard pokes, so I tried to collect myself into some state of professionalism once more and took my seat, wheeling it under the desk and examining the parcel afresh.

The return address was a smear of ink and bad faith. There were no stamps of authority, no heraldic crests, not even the counterfeit dignity of bureaucracy. 

Only the word 'Delivered' was scrawled across it with such haste that one might think the courier had been eager to be rid of it. Which I am sure they were. It oozed evil intention. If a parcel can do such a thing. 

Side note: As part of the investigation, we had to contact and find the courier to cleanse him of the malevolence of the thing he had carried. 

Sadly, he had passed nastily in the only death by earthworm incident ever recorded in the country. 

See the files for further information, but personally, I would not recommend reviewing them. 

In my opinion, you should never have put earthworms in that particular part of your anatomy. Served the bleeder right, really, in this chap's humble opinion.

I opened the parcel with a paper knife that had already known the throats of a dozen such mysteries. 

Inside was a book. 

Not a modern one, eager to please with bright jackets and meaningless blurbs, but a thing of solemn malice. 

Its leather binding was the colour of dried blood, and it carried the smell of something that had been alive too long. 

It felt alive. It felt as though it was waiting to pounce, even before I touched it. I felt a shudder run down my spine, and the hairs on the back of my neck arose.  

Not letting the thing leave my sight in case it attacked me. See file #398b for why, if you must. 

I collected my kid leather driving gloves from the middle drawer. I was not touching this with my own skin. Not yet. See File #879f for why not, if you must.

I then slammed my right hand down on it and closed my eyes for a moment. My pressure was such that the book would find it hard to escape. I know it's only a book, but check the file... Never mind, just be told.

I slowly opened my eyes and eased the force holding the book down. It did not move, bite or go boo. So I slowly lifted it to examine it a little closer.

The pages, as I flicked through them, sighed as though reluctant to be disturbed. Or was it eager to be read? At this juncture, I had no clue. 

I kept my silver Letter opener close just in case I had to deal with the thing. 

I had read many forbidden texts, for that is my profession, and, to a degree that deeply troubled me, I did it for some strange masochistic pleasure as well. 

But here my hand trembled, not with fear (that fashionable luxury of the young) but with recognition. 

I knew this book. 

I had seen references to it in the margins of other powerful tomes. 

I had heard it whispered about by scholars who did not live long enough to publish. 

I had actually doubted its existence, for doubt is the only armour of a rational man. 

Yet here it lay before me, a ruinous artefact from humanity's ugliest imaginings. Humanity the glue that binds the magical world.

I closed the cover quickly, though not quickly enough to suppress the shudder it gave my desk, as if the wood recoiled from its burden. 

Natural things did not like the touch of this....

Something so utterly desecrated and debauched that I would have to peruse it in detail. For science and all that you understand.

Some men would have prayed. I, who knew better, only muttered:

'So. The Liber Maleficarum.'

I sat back, thoughtful. Evil is not in books, but in men. 

However, evil can be channelled into things like this, and such things are much more effective at transmitting the disease of hypocrisy, dread, and corruption.

This particular book, I knew, had killed without moving and corrupted without speaking. 

The irony was always appreciated by me, and perhaps by the Devil?

It was amusing to be its new custodian, a man who prided himself on immunity?

How dare I be so impudent. Immunity to this. Pah!

And so I stared at the book, and the book. Well, it seemed to do likewise. 

I, being a so-called man of letters, did what all men of letters eventually do: I opened the damned thing.

The first page bore no title, no name of printer, no year of production — only a single phrase in Latin, scrawled as though with a hand impatient to be rid of it:

"Amor vertit ad odium," I shuddered.

'Love is to hate.' I spoke to the room. 

The lights flickered for a moment. Was I already allowing this thing to affect the world?

I had learned my Latin from men who liked to quote Cicero before their breakfast whisky, so I allowed myself a dry chuckle. 

'Ah, the classics,' I murmured. Always promising more than they deliver. I almost sounded confident, as if I utterly believed what I was saying.

The ink. If it were just simple ink, which was as unlikely as in all these grimoires. 

Well, the ink shone dully, like something still moist centuries past its time. 

I touched it with the edge of my paper knife. 

The blade came away stained. 

The stain suggested iron oxide. 

My instinct, a relic from ancestors who feared wolves and with good reason, suggested otherwise.

This was not supposed to be a nice thing, though, was it? So let me accept it for what it is: a hideous experience. 

I read on.

The text was not continuous, but a collection: invocations, curses, formulas for speaking with what the author charitably called 'other intelligences.' 

Margins were annotated in hands that looked increasingly unsteady, as if each scribe had been hurried by some approaching misfortune.

One note, in cramped French, advised: 'Read no further than page thirteen, for there the book begins to read you.'

I, being me, naturally, turned to page thirteen.

The page was blank. 

Perfectly blank, except for a faint impression, as though the words were waiting for someone to deserve them. 

For the briefest moment, I fancied I saw my own name forming there, but when I blinked, it was gone. 

Hmm. I needed my scepticism to rally. 

I always have an incessant idea that these things will turn out to be positive in their outcomes. 

'I think old boy that was a trick of light,' I said out loud, to no one but the dust motes. 

All books attempt to impress the reader. This one merely tried harder than others. It used force instead of gentle persuasion to make its point.

Still, the silence of the office seemed heavier than usual. 

Outside, students walked past, oblivious, their laughter like the chatter of the condemned. 

Somewhere, a clock ticked with the determination of a man hammering nails into a coffin.

I slammed the book closed. Harshly. With both hands.

Vindito de Calciones once wrote that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. 

I, with my own dark wit, now wondered if books such as this were Hell's way of teaching mankind humility.

I dragged open the bottom door and swiftly threw the ungodly thing into it. Slamming it closed and locking it.

I laughed a little at my actions. I knew perfectly well that locks are only an invitation to whatever wants to get out.

And then, to steady my nerves, I did the most sensible thing possible: I made espresso.

It was not until my second sip of such — that natural necessity — that I realised the truth.

The Liber Maleficarum was not merely a grimoire. It was a weapon. It was not for summoning, no.

It was not a weapon of iron or fire.

It was for the erasure of... 

Its formulas, its invocations, its obscene little footnotes in Latin and bad French — they formed not a path to power but a diagram of annihilation. 

A manual on how to unmake something ancient. Fuck, the realisation was like a mental Atom bomb exploding in my head.

It was how to destroy Lucifer. 

I froze the cup at my lips. No, that's not a possibility, is it? To destroy her. No.

Well, it must be. She was created and condemned, so why could she not be uncreated? 

I know a strange word to use, uncreated, but in this case, it had much more application to the process than destroyed. 

This book could perhaps erase the Devil.

The Devil... and I knew her.

Not the horned caricature of Sunday-school warnings, not the clawed harpy of medieval woodcuts, but her — the woman who had once appeared to me on a rain-lashed night in Prague, pale and beautiful, with eyes like dying stars when my soul was about to be devoured by Cerastine soul drinkers.

She had held out her hand and said, with a smile that froze my bones, 

'Give me your soul, darling. I am the only one who can keep it safe. You may not die, but to be soulless is not a form of survival. A fair trade. And I shall take good care of it, and maybe one day. You can have it back' and she had winked.

I had accepted. I had lived, and I knew where my soul was. It was not lost. It was in her care. I had been living on her favour ever since.

Now, staring at the book, I felt a sensation not unlike treason, though I had committed no such act... yet. 

Someone or something had sent this to me. 

Someone wanted me to do their work. 

Someone wanted me to remove the Devil and, by extension, void the contract that bound my continued existence. I must admit. It seemed somewhat appealing for a moment.

I was still thinking at the Liber when a voice like velvet dragged over glass said:

'Well, Simon,'

I looked up.

She was sitting in a chair opposite, beautiful.

She was not standing in a pillar of fire, not framed by wings of ash; she was just sitting, her long legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap, the very image of elegance and utter menace. 

Her hair was blacker than the ink of the book. 

Her eyes were older than guilt. 

She wore a man's dinner suit, the colour of midnight, and a smile that belonged to the first liar in Eden.

'What...' she asked, in a tone of polite curiosity, 'are you going to do about it?

My mouth was dry and hanging open. She never failed to surprise me. She always knew. Always about all things.

I set my coffee cup down carefully and signalled an offer of a cup of her own. She shook her head in a no and then lanced me with a look.

'Answer the bloody question, dearest one.' She spiked.

'I suppose,' I stopped and looked at her. 

I had genuinely no idea.

I had genuinely no idea if it could be done. 

But she must have thought so to be here and ask this very question.

'I suppose.' I repeated, in the mild voice I used on difficult undergraduates, 'I was hoping you'd tell me.'

'Oh, Simon,' she said, and her smile widened just enough to show the teeth behind it. 

'Don't be coy. You've read enough to know exactly what this is. Someone's trying to take my... to take my... let's say job.'

Her voice became softer, but no less deadly. 

'And by extension, they're trying to take you.'

I reached for my spectacles, a useless gesture, and said, 'That was my suspicion, yes.'

She leaned forward slightly, her perfume today the scent of ancient parchment and smouldering cedar.

'Then, darling,' she caressed my hand with hers.

'The only real question left is this: whose side are you on?'

The clock on his wall ticked once, twice. 

Outside, the laughter of students sounded oddly far away.

'I suppose,' I said slowly, 'I'm about to find out.' I told her as I pointed at something on the desk that was not there before.

It was a slip of parchment, thin as onion skin, folded once and sealed with nothing more than a dab of red wax. 

We met eyes, and I got a nod to proceed.

My hands trembled as I unfolded it, for even before I read the words, I knew the shape of them.

The script was not ink but light — letters burned into the page with such precision that they seemed to hum faintly. The message was short, mercilessly so:

Simon,

Your bondage may end. Speak the words, cast the fire, and the Adversary shall be no more. Your soul will be restored, free and entire. Choose well. Free will is a blessing.

— M.

The signature was unmistakable: Michael, Captain of the Host.

I read it twice, then a third time, the promise pressing into his mind with a terrible simplicity. Your soul will be restored.

It was what I had longed for on sleepless nights, what I had dreamed of when I looked into the hollow dark between library shelves, when I woke to find myself whispering in languages not my own. 

Freedom. 

Forgiveness.

And now—

'Well?' she said.

She was watching me, her head tilted like a cat observing a cornered bird. 

She had seen the letter. She must have seen it — she could see everything.

I swallowed, and because I had never been much good at lying, I said: 'It's from Michael.'

Something flickered in her eyes — not fear, but something colder, almost amusement. Then her mouth curled into a smile that was as much mockery as delight.

'Oh, of course it is.' She gave a low laugh, not human at all, but rich and deadly. 

'The shining boy. The dutiful soldier. He's still at it — polishing his sword and his halo and plotting how to outwit me. How sweet.'

Her eyes narrowed, the humour turning razor-sharp. 

'And how very stupid.'

I pressed the letter flat with trembling hands. My mouth was parched, my heart beat at my ribs like an animal in a cage.

I wanted to believe the promise. 

I wanted to believe that I could still walk out of the shadow and back into the light.

But I also knew her. 

The Devil. The woman before me who had taken my soul and, in some grotesque way, cared for it. She had never lied to me — not outright. Angels, on the other hand…

I felt my mind split down the middle, like a log under an axe.

'Lucifer…' I began, and stopped, as my voice cracked.

She smirked; her stare was full of an unknown force. 

'Yes, darling?' She purred.

'Is he asking me to kill you?'

For a moment, silence held, heavy and suffocating.

Then she got to her feet, laughed and danced. 

It was the first genuine laugh I had ever heard from her. She really laughed, it was a peal of mocking music that filled the office until the books on the shelves seemed to shiver with the rhythm of her movements.

'Of course he is! Of course! Who better than you, my favourite little Professor? Oh, Simon — do you know how delicious this is? Michael wants you to burn me. You, whose soul I already own.'

She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a husky whisper.

'So here it is, love: Heaven wants your treachery. I want your loyalty. And you…' 

She reached across the desk and tapped the book with one perfect nail. '…you have to decide whether you're their executioner or my protector. Whichever you choose, there's no crawling back.'

I closed my eyes, the letter still burning in my mind, and felt the abyss open beneath me. When I reopened them. Of course. She was gone. 

Professor

I must confess, there are few moments in my life when the blood in my veins ran colder than it did that night in my office.

I had removed the book from its place, which I laughingly call 'safe,' in my drawer and placed it on my desk once more.

A vile thing, its pages whispering promises I dare not repeat. Michael's note was in my hand, a parchment of mockery: your soul for her ruin. The arrogance of angels never ceases to astonish me.

It was then I heard it. A sound in the corridor — no, not footsteps. A dragging, uneven scrape, as though something half-dead clawed its way back into the world. 

My first thought was that Michael had sent something to hurry me into a decision. I slowly reached for my pistol that was holstered cunningly under the desk within easy reach. 

What would HR think of that if they knew? Never mind the underachieving undergraduates who often sat before me.

The door opened. My gun was in my right hand without thought. My silver Letter opener is in my left just in case the thing that entered was... let's just say... other. 

Wil fell through the door — or at least the wreckage of him. 

His clothes were little more than rags, his skin blistered and blackened in places, as though fire had tried to unmake him. 

His eyes burned. Not the glow of fever, but of something older, colder, lupine. And behind him — ah, behind him stretched the shadow of his other half. 

Fenrir. Too large, too wrong for the space, his vast muzzle opening and closing in silence.

Wil spoke first, though it was not entirely his voice:

'Michael thought us ash. He thought us gone.'

His body shook, his bones shifting beneath the skin like prisoners rattling their bars. He clutched my desk so hard his nails split and grew into claws. 

Blood ran down onto my papers. His face cracked open, half man, half wolf, before snapping back again with a sound I will carry to my grave.

He told me Michael had sought to tear them apart — man and beast — to burn Fenrir from the flesh, to consign them both to Hell. It was meant as a warning to Lucifer. A demonstration of angelic power.

But the wolf, as always, the wolf endures.

I heard Fenrir's voice then — not Wil's, no. A voice like a storm rolling across mountains. It filled the room, made the lamps flicker, made my very teeth ache in my jaw.

'The wolf does not burn. The wolf survives. I dragged this man back from the ash because Michael feared us. He feared what we would become at your side.'

There is a certain irony, is there not, when a wolf speaks with more loyalty than an angel?

Wil fell then, gasping, his human voice ragged:

'Michael thinks me dead, Simon. He will not look again. But you must know… what he is planning.'

Then Fenrir, his jaws gleaming in the dark, added the words that chilled me most:

'I will not forgive. Not the angel. Not the heavens. And not any man who lets him succeed.'

I sat in silence, the fire guttering in the grate, and looked upon my visitor — no, my ally. 

A man broken but unbowed. A wolf unburnt by the fire of heaven itself.

And I realised that Michael had erred. 

In trying to destroy them, he had only bound them closer. And by bringing them back to me, fate had dealt me a card I am not certain even Lucifer foresaw.

When Wil's body crumpled into the chair opposite me — or rather half into it, for Fenrir would not fit within the frame of any human furniture — I sat motionless, listening to the rattle of his breath. 

The air smelled of scorched flesh and damp fur. Every instinct in me, human and otherwise, told me to recoil. Yet my mind, ever treacherously rational, was already assembling the puzzle.

Michael thought him dead. Michael thought them dead.

Which meant two things.

Firstly, the Archangel had grown cautious. He would not strike at Lucifer directly, not yet. Instead, he attempted to strip her of her allies. 

Wil and Fenrir were not simply destroyed; they were made example. 

Their ashes were meant to be held aloft as a warning to the Morningstar herself: 

You are not untouchable.

But secondly — ah, secondly — his miscalculation betrays him. Michael believes himself absolute. 

He cannot imagine failure. That arrogance is the crack in the marble, the hairline fracture in heaven's great statue.

And in that fracture, I saw my opportunity.

I told Wil as much, though I doubt he heard through his pain. Fenrir, however, listened. The beast's eyes fixed on me — amber suns in the dim office light — and I felt the weight of his judgment.

'What is he planning, Professor?' Wil croaked, voice caught between man and monster.

I answered not as a man should, but as a scholar must: with the truth, half-seen, half-deduced.

'He plans replacement,' I whispered.

'The Book Michael sent me is no gift. It is a weapon. He would have me turn it against Lucifer — not to kill her outright, but to strip her throne from her. Imagine it: the Devil unseated, her office vacant, her duties undone. Michael would not destroy Hell; he would inherit it. Heaven's perfect soldier, turned gaoler of the damned. And with it, the balance shattered.'

Fenrir's growl filled the room like thunder. The fire guttered and hissed in the grate.

Yes. I could see it clearly now. Lucifer herself had warned me, though cloaked in riddles. 

Michael's ambition was not to end her — no, that would be too simple. He would usurp her. 

Heaven would wear Hell's crown, and the world would burn beneath the weight of divine order masquerading as justice.

And in that moment, staring at Wil — ruined, barely breathing — and at Fenrir, eternal and furious, I knew why Michael had tried to erase them.

Because Wil and Fenrir represent the thing he cannot abide: survival in defiance of annihilation. They were meant to be obliterated, reduced to an object lesson. Instead, they returned. Living proof that the angel's fire is not enough.

Michael cannot afford such contradictions. That is why he feared them. That is why he will come for me.

And that is why I must decide: do I stand with Lucifer, who owns my soul yet spares my will? Or do I gamble with Michael's promise of freedom, knowing it is poisoned honey?

Gentlemen, the truth is this: the battlefield has shifted. It is no longer heaven and Hell locked in their eternal quarrel. It is we — the unlucky few caught in the middle — who will decide which tyrant's hand closes first.

And so, when Wil raised his broken face and whispered, 'Professor… what do we do?'

I lied.

I said, 'We endure.'

But in my heart, I knew endurance alone would never suffice.