Hunter bounded swiftly into the woods. He had been aching to shift since lunch time: he had felt the surge of animal energy coursing through his veins and the wolf's hunger had been clawing away at his insides. He needed to channel his urges into a hunt, otherwise, he would have gone crazy.
When he was far enough away from the fence, he chose a safe spot under a tree. The half moon was cradled in the tree's branches as he looked up: he deemed it a good sign.
He let go of his human mind and began to shift. His spine lengthened and his muscles grew to accommodate the increase in his height. From his human frame of nearly 6 feet tall, he grew larger to an impressive 8 feet from his head to his new hind legs. His bones shifted all over his body and his muscles and tissues expanded to cover them, all the while his organs moved, resizing and reorganizing inside him. As the surface of his body increased, his leather costume was swallowed into the expanding mass of his new skin.
When a human shifts into the werewolf form, the old skin is swallowed by the new skin. Organic leather when worn melds with the natural skin of the human body and forms the foundation for the new werewolf skin and fur. Any other material would be rejected in the transformation and be ripped apart like tissue paper. Hunter's leather getup was specifically designed to ensure that he would not go naked shifting in and out of his werewolf form.
Hunter's fur bloomed in light gray tufts across his transformed body, and as his tail grew out of the base of his spine, he fell to the ground on his newly formed paws. The increase in sense of smell and vision always overwhelmed him so he usually held his breath and kept his eyes closed while shifting forms.
When he felt the last of his bones and organs slide into place, he finally opened his eyes. From icy blue, they had changed into a deep amber color. It was a dark night out, but with his werewolf eyes he could see as clearly as though it were late afternoon. He took a deep breath and smelled the air.
He started and almost fell back on his haunches. There was a new smell in the woods. Something that had never been there before. He raised his muzzle in the air and took another whiff. He started again, jerking as though he'd been smacked on his snout.
There was a woman in the woods. She was still there and she wasn't far away.
The fact that there was a woman in the woods wasn't what surprised him though. People came out here every so often: students (usually male) on a dare wanting to prove they were brave and forest rangers (mostly male) who did their rounds in the woods every month or so.
This woman was different. Special. She had a scent like nothing he had ever smelled before in his young life. It was probably a scent that his father or even his grandfather had never smelled in their lives.
It was the scent of a female werewolf.
Werewolves in general were a rare species, rarer even than vampires and witches. Outside of his own family, Hunter had never met another werewolf, and even then all the ones he knew were male.
He couldn't believe his luck! He wagged his tail like a happy dog. He wanted to howl at the moon and proclaim his ecstasy. But he didn't. He would reserve his rejoicing for when he finally met this new werewolf.
He bounded off into the night, racing toward the source of the enticing scent.
****
In Ash's dream, the deer had disappeared. She was now eating the largest chicken leg she had ever seen in her life. Dreams were weird like that, they give you the things you crave when you're awake and blow it up to cartoon-level proportions. Her teeth were so strong that she cracked right through the bones and chewed them up. When one chicken leg disappeared, she reached for another one and proceeded to feast on it as well.
She was enjoying her meal when a large dog suddenly came up behind her. She turned around to greet it.
[Oooh, doggy! Maybe doggy is hungry too!] Ash thought.
With the giant chicken leg still in her mouth, she reached out to pet the large dog. But it wasn't her hand that reached out to pet him: it was a large bear-paw sized hand covered in thick dark gray fur. The fur was similar to the large dog's, only darker in color.
[Huh? What's going on?]
The theme of Ash's dream quickly changed from a happy feast to a strange twisted nightmare. The chicken leg in her mouth was no longer a chicken leg, but some kind of large animal leg. The large dog was now a very large wolf with light gray fur and amber eyes. And she was a fur covered creature.
She dropped the animal leg. She felt the broken bones in her mouth and tasted blood and flesh on her tongue. She swallowed, hard.
She felt a scream welling up inside of her. The large gray wolf was still staring at her. In a panic, she backed away from it, and as she did so she stepped on something wet. She turned to look at what she had stepped in and saw blood and entrails spilling out of a gory animal carcass. The animal's ribs had been broken, practically ripped open.
And then she saw its head. The head was untouched and still connected to the animal's body. It's partly open mouth still had traces of a fragrant bluish liquid, but its eyes were dead as dead could be. It was the deer from before, the one eating berries from earlier in her dream. The deer was dead.
Ash screamed in horror, but what came out of her mouth was an animal whimper: it was the whimper of a large, frightened dog.
Ash turned to run away from the bloody scene; she was in a nightmare, a bloody unreal nightmare! But even as she ran, she felt her feet buckle beneath her and she crashed on her side in the grass. She fell with a loud thudding sound, and then her mind went silent.
****
Hunter came upon the new werewolf just as she had hunted down a young deer. He walked carefully behind her as she tore at the deer's ribs and ate its heart. He made a mental note of that: he liked to eat hearts too.
She hadn't seen him yet because her back was turned, but he was surprised that she hadn't smelled him yet. A normal animal would have turned around by then, alert to the presence of an intruder. But this one just kept eating.
[Fascinating,] he thought.
He stepped closer to her. She finally turned around and saw him. She still had the deer's leg in her mouth, but she had a friendly expression in her eyes. It almost looked like she was delighted to see him.
Hunter wagged his tail. He was so happy that she liked him! He bounded forward, eager to introduce himself. She reached out an arm to touch him, but then she froze. The expression in her eyes changed from joy into a palpable fear. Something was wrong!
She chewed at the remnants of the deer's leg in her mouth, and then she started thrashing about. She looked at the deer and let out a loud whimper, and then she ran away.
[Wow. That was not at all how I thought that would go,] Hunter thought.
He looked around, wondering what had scared her. He could still smell her: she was just a few meters away and she wasn't moving. He decided to look around and try to figure out what had spooked her.
[I'm the man in this situation. I should take care of her,] he thought.
He put his nose in the air and sniffed. Now that he had located the female werewolf, he concentrated on taking in the other scents in the woods. It was possible that he had scared her and that was why she ran away, but it hurt his pride to think it, so he forced his mind to consider another possibility: maybe something else had frightened her away.
His nose caught the scent of something a few meters away from where the dead deer was. He trotted off in the direction of a faintly familiar scent. His nose led him to the base of a tree. He had caught this scent in passing as he pursued the scent of the other werewolf, but he had dismissed it then as unimportant.
Torn clothes lay scattered about at the roots of the tree. He pawed at it and saw that it was an SBA uniform: white-long sleeved blouse and a dark gray pleated skirt with red trim at the bottom. The blouse's sleeves were in shreds and the back of it was nearly torn in half. The skirt had ripped almost halfway down on two sides.
In the mess were also some scattered underthings. There was a bra with a broken back clasp, elastic straps ripped off at the seams and a pair of white underwear, seemingly ripped in half. A pair of shredded knee socks completed the wrecked ensemble.
The uniform could have belonged to anybody at SBA, but Hunter knew this person. He knew her scent.
She was the reason he had gone out to hunt that night in the first place.
The tattered uniform belonged to Ash Parker.
Hunter took stock of the tattered uniform in front of him. He knew from the scent who it belonged to, but it didn't really give him much to go on.Thinking was hard. It was especially hard when the aroma of a fresh kill was still wafting in the air and the enticing scent of a possible mate was within immediate mating vicinity.Hunter left the pile of tatters and returned to the deer carcass. He ate the leg that Ash had dropped, fed on the entrails, and tore apart the deer's front legs. When he had finished with his meal, it looked like a pack of wolves had descended on the poor deer. He would leave the rest for the scavengers to find.If a forest ranger were to pass by, the carcass would just be another hard piece of evidence for predation in action: another prey animal succumbing to a carnivore, just another day in the wild with Mother Nature.He turned his attention back to Ash, eager to sniff at the new werewolf up close.When he found her, she
"You know, I saw you at lunch today, and---"Hunter cut himself off mid-sentence: he noticed Ash's eyelids were twitching. It looked like she was about to come to.[Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,] he thought, panic rising in his chest.She was still haphazardly dressed and propped up on his knee. He would have wanted to put a modest distance between their bodies (making room for the Holy Spirit, as the teachers called it) especially considering her state of undress, but that would have meant putting her back on the cold ground.He settled for cradling her shoulders: it seemed like a reassuring thing to do for her (human contact after passing out and all that) but more importantly for him, he could at least keep her from slapping his face the moment she opened her eyes."Heeeey, Boots. Wassup?" he said.[Wassup? Where the hell did that come from? That sounded so lame!] he thought to himself, cringing inwardly.Ash slowly open
[The following is Ash's interpretation of what happened on the night of her first transformation]Tonight, I was in the woods with the Prince of the Forest. The palace was cold and the deer that drew my carriage ran away because his stomach hurt. I think he ate too many blueberries.The Prince arrived after dinner when they had taken all the food away. The fairies were playing a song when he asked me to dance with him, but the music wasn't right so I asked him to wait until it changed.The Prince gave me his tunic to wear because he had chosen me as his betrothed. I was very happy. I had never been chosen before. Then he asked me if I knew my way home so we could tell my parents of our engagement. But I couldn't tell the Prince that my parents were gone. It would have made him very sad, and I did not want to see him sad.I was only sad that we never got to dance.I picked up my garters from where I dropped them: if human things
Ash woke up the next morning chilled to the bone and with a splitting headache. Her night had been heavy with mixed up dreams that made no sense: the dreams just seemed to jump from one to the other, each one more fantastical than the last. She didn't remember leaving the room to eat, but for some reason, she wasn't hungry.She remembered falling into her bed right after school the day before, and between then and now, she did not remember ever having taken her clothes off. So she was definitely surprised at waking up naked under her thick blanket."Aaaah!" Ash shrieked loudly."Well, look who's awake."Celia had been standing over her friend for the last 15 minutes, just waiting for her to open her eyes. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was staring menacingly into the bottom bunk where Ash was sleeping."Are you gonna tell me where you were last night or do I have to torture it out of you? I'm in a very torturing mood this morning, so y
At the pool, Hunter sat on the bench watching the others finish the last relay for the day. He had been benched by the coach for finishing dead last in the second race. Usually he would be neck and neck with Luka or Anwar, the best swimmers on the team, but today he was barely keeping up with the group.When training was over, Luka and Anwar came up to him on the bench. Luka put a wet arm around his buddy's shoulder and nearly knocked him sideways off the slippery plastic bench."Swimming a little heavy today, weren't you?" Anwar asked without looking at Hunter. He was concentrating on stretching his arms over his head."How does a man from the desert swim so fast anyway?" Luka interjected, smiling at Anwar mischievously, dark gray eyes twinkling."How can I not? It's so hot out there that I cannot help but take to the water. I would rather drown than melt." His caramel skin glistened as he rubbed water off his toned arms. Standing next to the two paler b
On the second night of the fever, Ash dreamed about the Forest. Unlike the first time where she was physically in the woods behind the school, this particular visit happened purely in her mind. She never left her bed.In Ash's mind, however, there was no difference: she truly believed that she was in the Forest, and so there she was. For her, the hallucination felt real.[[Ash's Delirium: Night 2]]I have returned to the Forest, but the fairies were not there to greet me. I wanted to see the Prince again, but I couldn't seem to find him. I asked the fireflies where his Highness was, but they flitted about, lighting my path without pointing me in any particular direction.I realized that I made a mistake the last time I was here: I did not ask the Prince his name nor did I tell him mine. Cinderella made this mistake, and her prince had to search the entire kingdom for her. At least she left him a shoe to find her with. I took everything with
Although the lights went out in the library, the room didn't exactly plunge into darkness. The stained glass windows still let in a bit of daylight, but it wasn't bright enough to read by. Shadows moved across the floor as the students milled around, looking for friends to huddle with and empty seats to sit on as they waited for the backup generator to kick in. Two figures moved together behind the stacks, forming one large shadow as their individual forms merged. Hunter and Ash had locked in an embrace, bodies pressed against each other, their hands caressing each other's necks, and tousling each other's hair, oblivious in their passion to the world around them. Another shadow crept along the floor, moving silently away from the stacks where the lip-locked couple remained. Celia scurried away on her hands and knees, giggling like a naughty child who had seen something she shouldn't have. Further away, the librarian at his desk looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by and the g
"He said what?!""He said, 'I know it's your first time and it's hard, but if you wanna go at it again, I got you, babe,' or something like that.""He called her 'babe'?""Uh, no, but he might as well have."Isabelle slumped back into her chair and sighed. Celia was sitting on an ottoman beside her, still leaning forward. They were in one of the many student lounges on campus. This particular one was Isabelle's favorite because of the overstuffed furniture and heavy wooden tables. It reminded her of her mother's sitting room.Isabelle lay as far back as she could in the overstuffed chair. She clasped her hands together and rested them on her stomach. Celia stared at her friend's face, waiting for her reaction. She had just told Izzy that she had seen Hunter and Ash kissing in the library. She also told her about what she'd heard Hunter say to Ash, including what she thought he meant by it."She didn't tell us about it," Isabelle whined sadly