CHAPTER ONE

     "Oh, that's good." Officer Hugh Jacobi commented sardonically,
as the light blue Chevy Citation he was behind turned left through a
red light. The Chevy had turned too soon, and the front wheel mounted
the corner before crashing back to the pavement and returning to the
correct lane.  Jacobi glanced up the street to make sure that there
was no traffic coming through the intersection, and passed through
the red light. The Chevy was moving slowly, with the left-hand set of
tires tracking erratically over the double yellow lines painted down
the asphalt. Jacobi tapped his steering wheel with his fingers and
glanced down at the digital clock on the dashboard of his cruiser.
7:20pm... in twenty minutes he would be cleared to eat dinner. There
were several rental houses up the street; perhaps the Chevy would
turn into the driveway of one of them and off the road.  Perhaps the
driver was just distracted momentarily at the intersection; it was,
after all, rather early for drunk drivers to be out.
     Jacobi looked up just at the Chevy hit the tall right-hand curb
with a crunch that announced the crumpling of a hubcap. He sighed,
and unclipped the radio microphone from the console.
     "Twenty-two eighty-nine, Central." he said into the mike. There
was silence for a few moments, and he was about to raise the mike
again when the radio bleeped, signaling that Central Communications
had keyed its' mike. "Twenty-two eighty-nine" the monotone voice of
the dispatcher said from the radio speaker.
     "Twenty-two eighty-nine, Central, I'm gonna be signal twenty-
five on a blue in color Chevy Citation, Georgia twenty-eights..." he
paused, and leaned forward to read the license plate of the
Chevrolet, which was still scraping the curb with its tire, "echo
foxtrot yankee two six four, currently headed southbound on Milledge
Avenue from Prince." He pressed a button on the radio console with
his right index finger and activated the blue strobe lights on the
roof of his cruiser. The Chevy, having finally pulled away from the
curb, continued down the street more or less in the boundaries of the
lane.
     "Hey, idiot," Jacobi said, "look behind you. Yoo-hoo!" The car
continued on, oblivious to the police car's presence. Jacobi blipped
the siren button momentarily, a loud "bwoop!" that caused the Chevy
driver to stand on his brakes. Jacobi was expecting it, and waited
until the Chevy had pulled to the curb before stopping his car behind
it and shoving the transmission into park. He picked up the radio
microphone again.
     "Twenty-two eighty-nine, Central, final will be on Milledge at
Hancock." He replaced the mike and thumbed the two halogen "take-
down" lights on the strobe bar to life, illuminating the driver of
the Chevy as he craned around to look at the cruiser with a dismayed
expression.  Jacobi opened his door and swung his feet onto the
pavement. He pulled his flashlight from it's belt holder and walked
to the back of the Chevy;  pausing momentarily at the bumper and
pushing down on the trunk lid to ensure that it was fully closed,
then shining the flashlight through the rear window onto the back
seat. He continued to the driver's window, stopping at the edge of
the door. The driver continued to stare over the dashboard, his hands
gripping the steering wheel tightly, until Jacobi tapped on the
window with the butt of his flashlight. The driver, a young white
male, turned and blinked into Jacobi's light.  Hugh breathed in the
alcohol-rich atmosphere that wafted out of the car as the driver
rolled the window down and sighed. No dinner tonight; or, at least,
no dinner for several hours. "Is something wrong, officer?" the man
asked, his eyes half closed.
     "I dunno," Hugh said. "You happen to have a driver's license and
some proof of insurance in there?"  The man slowly pulled a thick
wallet from the hip pocket of his jeans and unfolded it. Several
slips of paper fell out as he began pulling cards from its pockets,
staring owlishly at them one at a time before discarding them and
removing more. Jacobi watched in silence for a few moments as the man
fumbled. He finally opened the driver's door from the outside and
stepped back. "Tell you what, sport, why don't you just step on out
here, and lay your wallet on the hood, okay?"
     The man slowly swung his feet out of the car and levered himself
up with the aid of the door frame. He followed Hugh around to the
trunk and leaned back against the bumper. Hugh stood between the man
and the cruiser and pulled a pen from his breast pocket. "How much
have you had to drink tonight, sir?" he asked. The man clumsily
folded his arms and leaned his head back. "Uhh.. gee, two beers, I
guess. Two."
     "Uh-huh" Hugh said. "Well, sir, I'd like to perform a few
sobriety tests on you to make sure you're okay to drive. What I'd
like you to do is to follow this pen-" he held the pen at arm's
length in front of the man's face "-with your eyes only, holding your
head still. Understand?" The man nodded. "Okay, now, remember not to
move your head." He moved the pen slowly to the right, watching the
man's eyes as he did so. The man began to swivel his head to the
right and Hugh lowered the pen. "No, you're moving your head. Let's
try it again, and this time-" A dark blur over the man's right
shoulder caught Hugh's attention, and he shifted his focus. Seventy
yards away, he saw several dark forms behind a running man. He moved
around the drunk just as one of the dark shapes leapt off of the
ground and knocked the running man over. Hugh grabbed the shoulder
mike of his portable radio as a scream echoed from down the street.
"Twenty-two eighty-nine, Central, I've got a ten-ten in progress,
looks like about five or six individuals, about a block south of my
final on Milledge." He shouted over his shoulder at the drunk, who
was standing with his arms outstretched and his head back, attempting
to touch his nose. "Stay right there! Do not move from that spot!" He
began running towards the shapes, which were now covering the prone
figure. He could hear the other units over his shoulder mike,
advising that they were headed in his direction.
     He had closed to within twenty-five yards of the figures before
he realized that they were animals of some sort. He stopped abruptly,
drawing his service pistol. The animals were leaping over the now
still body, nipping and growling at one another as they tore at the
flesh and cloth of their victim. They were shaped like very large
dogs... No, Hugh thought, they were shaped like huge wolves. They
were at least three feet tall at the shoulder, and they weren't
colored like any wolf Hugh had ever seen. A couple were jet black,
one was a sandy tan, a third was a dark reddish-brown. Hugh counted
five of them, none of which had glanced in his direction.
     "Hey!" he shouted. He fired his pistol twice into the ground and
aimed it at the pack of animals. At the sound of the gunshots they
scrambled away from the body, stopping thirty feet away in a semi-
circle facing Hugh. He advanced slowly, keeping the gun trained on
the group, until he reached the body. He kneeled and reached out with
his left hand to feel for a pulse, but hastily withdrew it when he
saw that the man's throat had been torn out. He stood again, gripping
his pistol shakily in two hands. The animals stared back at him,
mouths gaping, tongues lolling out and flanks heaving as they sucked
in air. They seemed completely unconcerned by the gun Hugh was
pointing at them. Hugh noticed that the one in the middle, the bronze
colored one, stood a little ahead of the others, and was staring
unblinkingly into his eyes. Hugh stared back, until the animal's face
occupied his entire field of vision. The animal's eyes were pale,
pale blue; almost colorless and unwavering. Hugh tried to look away,
but found himself unable to turn his head; his heart hammering in his
chest and his thoughts racing around his skull without any coherency.
Hugh was vaguely aware of sirens approaching when the animal suddenly
turned its head. He caught a flash of movement to his right and began
to turn towards it when he was knocked sideways completely off of his
feet. He landed heavily on his left side and rolled onto his back,
struggling to sit up. He felt the heavy weight of one of the animals
crash into his chest and his head slammed against the pavement,
sending bright spears of light into his eyes. He could feel the hot,
moist breath of the animal gush across his face and felt a firm
pressure on his neck before he lost all sensation and blacked out.

                             --==++==--

     Hugh's first considered act after regaining consciousness was to
ask the nurse for some aspirin. She returned with a glass of water, a
small paper cup containing two pills, and a short, bearded doctor who
shone lights into Hugh's eyes and asked him some questions. The
doctor informed him humorlessly that he had suffered a minor
concussion and would have to stay overnight to ensure that nothing
was wrong. Hugh received the news calmly, already wondering how much
his workman's compensation would pay for. The next person through the
door was a solidly built policeman with salt-and-pepper hair and
lieutenant's bars on his collar.
     "Hugh, how are you feeling?"  the man asked. Hugh spread his
hands out on top of the sheets. "Well, the doc says it was a minor
bump, and they'll cut me loose tomorrow. I got a hell of a headache
but that's about it."
     The man looked at him for a moment. "How's your throat?" he
asked. Hugh felt his neck. On either side of his windpipe was a small
bandage. "I'd forgotten about that," Hugh said. He was silent for a
few seconds.  "I guess the backup got there in time."
     The lieutenant snorted. "It was Halverson, and he said he saw a
bunch of dogs running away from the scene. What happened?"
     "Well." Hugh looked over the lieutenant's shoulder and tried to
arrange his memories over his throbbing headache. "I'd just made a
signal twenty-five on a drunk. I was giving him the field sobriety
tests-- what happened to him, anyway?"
     "We got him a cab and sent him home." The lieutenant pulled a
chair from beside Hugh's bed and sat down. "His car's in impound
until he sobers up and gets it."
     Hugh grunted. "Well... Anyway, I was giving him the horizontal
gaze nystagmus when I saw those... dogs chasing after this other guy.
They knocked him to the ground and I called it in. I didn't know they
were dogs at first. I couldn't really see what they were from where I
was. When I ran up on 'em, I saw they weren't people. I fired two
rounds into the ground--" the lieutenant inclined his head at this "-
-and they got off him, but it was too late." Hugh paused for a few
seconds. "While I was checking out the victim, one of  'em knocked me
over. I clonked my head pretty good on the sidewalk there. That's
about the last thing I remember."
     The lieutenant regarded him for a moment, and then rose, resting
his hand on Hugh's shoulder. "Well, we've got animal control combing
the Normaltown area and all between Broad and Prince. Stop in
tomorrow or Wednesday and sign the workman's comp stuff. The report
can wait 'til Thursday.. you've got two days off, sick leave. Rest up
and I'll see you Thursday." He squeezed Hugh's shoulder and turned
for the door.
     "Hey, ell-tee" Hugh said. The lieutenant paused, his hand on the
doorknob. "Who was the victim, do we know?"
     The man smiled. "Yeah, actually, we do. Chamelle Cooper."
     "CC?" Hugh thought about it. "I figured he'd get popped some
day, but not like this."
     The lieutenant waved. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
Get better, Hugh." The door clicked softly shut.
     Hugh closed his eyes. Chamelle Cooper was no great loss to
society-- sometime dealer in whatever was available, fond of petty
theft, burglary, armed robbery, car theft. Hugh had been putting him
in jail for the past seven years, starting when CC was thirteen and
stealing change from vending machines.
     Hugh realized he had said "dog" when he clearly remembered the
wolf-like features of the animals. Somehow "dog" made it seem more
plausible, like it was simply random fate catching up with CC and
ripping his throat out rather than a cold intelligence. But when Hugh
remembered those pale, pale blue eyes locked with his, he felt the
sentience of the creature; as if it was reaching into his skull and
sorting through what it found there. As he drifted into sleep, he
wondered vaguely why the wolf that had had him by the throat had
stopped short of killing him, too...

                             --==++==--

     The world was gray mist, dimly lighted and fading into a
pearlescent dusk. Hugh was aware of two moons close together high
above him. He stared up at them, a low sound forming in his throat
and escaping his lips as a barely audible howl. The mist blew past
overhead, gradually thinning and revealing the two moons. Their
blurred features resolved into a pair of eyes; wolf's eyes, with
wisps of fog forming nebulous eyebrows. Hugh suddenly smelled a
strong musk and dropped to his hands and knees. The mist had parted
and before him was a magnificent buck, it's white flag tail erectly
alert. The buck was looking in Hugh's direction and snorting
nervously. The scent of the animal's fear filled Hugh's nostrils and
infused him with a tense energy that caused him to crouch on his
haunches. The buck turned and leapt over a low screen of bushes and
Hugh's tensed legs exploded him into the air after it. There was a
horrific crash and Hugh found himself tangled, his limbs trapped by
unseen hands.....
     "Mr. Jacobi! What happened?" Hugh blinked and squinted up at the
nurse standing over him. He realized he was sitting on the floor
beside his bed, his sheets damp with perspiration and wrapped around
his legs. His water glass rolled away from his side as he levered
himself to his feet.
     "It's.. a bad dream, that's all. I musta knocked my glass off
the night stand." Hugh said. The nurse gathered his sheets from the
floor.
     "You didn't hit your head again, did you?" Hugh slowly shook his
head. "Well, let me get you some fresh linens." she said. She opened
a small closet door and pulled out some folded sheets. "I didn't know
what to think." she continued. "I heard this growlin' noise from up
the hall and thought there was a dog loose in here or somthin'; and
then I hear this horrible crash."
     "Growling noise?" Hugh asked her as she spread the sheet over
him.
     "Yeah, it sounded like my dog when the fire trucks go by. If
that was you, honey, that was some dream."
     "Yeah, it was." Hugh muttered. The nurse placed the glass back
on the night stand and sighed. "Well, Mr. Jacobi, you go back to
sleep. Breakfast is in a couple of hours and the doctor will wanna
look at you again." She closed the door quietly. Hugh settled back
into his pillow and stared at the ceiling, his right hand
unconsciously fingering the bandages on his throat.

                             --==++==--

     Hugh clapped the officer driving the patrol car he had just
exited on the shoulder and walked across the parking lot of the
Lexington Road police headquarters in the bright afternoon autumn
sunlight. He had had an officer from his shift bring him his civilian
clothes from his locker at the station and bring him back after he
was discharged. The dour, bearded doctor who had treated him had
solemnly handed him a prescription for a codeine analgesic and warned
him not ignore any continuous headaches, double vision, dizzyness,
nausea, or strange smells, to call immediately should he have any
adverse reaction to the anti-rabies series, and didn't he want to
stay another night to be certain?. Hugh was glad to be free of the
hospital before the doctor decided on exploratory cranial surgery.
     He pulled a small plastic card from his shirt pocket and ran it
through a slotted box mounted on the brick next to the door. The box
clicked and he pulled the door open. The walls of the corridor were
lined with framed news clippings and epigrams. "Police officer slain
during shootout" read one headline, next to "You may know where you
are and what you're doing; God may know where you are and what you're
doing; but if your Dispatcher doesn't know where you are and what
you're doing, you and God had better be on good terms." He turned the
corner and opened another door into the men's locker room. Taped to
his locker door was a large Milk-Bone and an Athens/Clarke County
Animal Control patch. He felt a moment's irritation, which increased
as he opened his locker and a couple of dozen smaller dog biscuits
fell to the floor.
     "Hungry, Hugh?" a voice asked from behind him. He slammed his
locker shut and turned to face the voice. "Goddamnit! Can't you leave
my fucking locker alone for one day?" he screamed.
     The man stepped back, his hands in the air. "Shit, Hugh, it was
just a joke, man, calm down." Hugh started forward, his vision limned
with red edges; and then stopped as his anger vanished completely. He
ran his upraised hand through his hair. "Shit... I'm sorry, Ryan, I
just.. It 's this damn headache, it's got me in a really bad mood."
he said.
     "Yeah, man, no hard feelings, huh?" Ryan lowered his hands and
looked at Hugh quizzically. "You gonna be alright?"
     Hugh sat down on the bench in front of his locker and opened the
door again. "Yeah... I just need some sleep. And some Tylenol." he
looked up at Ryan. "I'll see you guys on Thursday, Banscome's making
me take off 'til then."
     "Yeah, well... be careful, huh?" Hugh gave him a feeble smile
and began stuffing his gun belt and gear onto the top shelf of his
locker. He fixed his badge onto a leather holder and clipped it to
his belt, and then slid his duty weapon into a waistband holster and
adjusted it at the small of his back. He shut the door and leaned his
forehead against the cool metal. The Milk-Bone on his locker had been
a typical department prank, something that Hugh engaged in himself
and found mildly amusing. His anger had come from nowhere and he
couldn't understand why it had erupted in the first place. There had
been no thought involved, he had turned and moved towards Ryan...
why? He imagined how he looked from Ryan's point of view-- arms
outstretched, lips drawing back from his teeth in a bizarre snarl,
walking crouched forward-- and groaned. It was no wonder Ryan had
looked at him like he was insane.
     He stood and walked out of the locker room by another door and
into a wood-panelled hallway lined with office doors. He stopped at
one marked "LT Banscome" and pulled off the white envelope taped
there. Inside were his workman's compensation forms, awaiting his
signature. He stuffed it into his hip pocket and backtracked until he
was once again in the parking lot. His gold colored, mid eighties
Pontiac Sunbird was in the middle of the lot and he walked slowly
towards it, watching the pavement as he tried to sort out the source
of his anger.
                                  
                             CHAPTER TWO

     The broad sycamore leaves moved gently in the breeze, splashing
the moonlight into droplets that highlighted the fur on Hugh's
forearm and back. Hugh lay his long body low to the ground, his snout
probing the air for the scent he had caught earlier... there it was,
a faint, musty odor that seemed familiar, although he was certain he
had never smelled it before. The smell grabbed his heart and
squeezed, moving his legs almost without his volition deeper into the
river bottom. The scent trail grew stronger and weaker as he moved
faster and faster through the dense undergrowth; his powerful body
twisting around the thick boles and leaping over screens of thorns.
He bounded onto a granite outcropping in three leaps as the scent
vanished, sucking the air over the river into his nostrils and
blowing it back out with violent spasms of his chest. The cheerful
murmur of the water flowing past the rock seemed to mock him as he
strained to find the trail again, his despair growing until it poured
from his upturned muzzle as a long, ululating wail that echoed off of
the far bank.
     Hugh stiffened as the last of the echo faded. The scent blew
from behind him now, extremely strong. He yelped and quickly turned,
backing to the edge of the outcropping. The bronze-colored wolf was
five feet from him, calmly gazing at Hugh with his head tilted
slightly to one side. Hugh slowly lay flat on his belly, resting his
chin on the stone and curling his tail tightly to his body. The
bronze wolf opened his jaws wide, revealing a cavernous gullet and
wet teeth, and moved closer to Hugh; until Hugh's universe consisted
of nothing but a wet red wall of flesh, slowly closing...

                             --==++==--

     "Shit!" Hugh muttered, throwing his damp sheets back and sitting
hunched over on the edge of his bed. The dream had been one of the
most realistic, vivid dreams he could ever remember having. He felt
as if he had run a marathon; he was utterly drained, his legs when he
stood were rubbery and every joint creaked and ached when he moved.
He could feel the steam from his damp t-shirt rise past his face.
     By the time he reached the kitchen of his duplex, he was
shivering. He opened his refridgerator and pulled out a two liter
bottle of Coke, unscrewing the cap and gulping down a mouthful
directly from the container. He stood holding the bottle, leaning
against the edge of the counter, rubbing his neck with his other
hand. The Coke settled on his stomach in a cold ball, churning around
for a few moments before forcing its way back up his throat. Hugh
dropped the plastic bottle and vomited the Coke into his sink in two
violent heaves. He ran some water around the sink basin, cupping his
hand under the flow and bringing it up to wash out his mouth. He
suddenly realized how thirsty he was, and stuck his head under the
flow, gulping the tap water down for a full minute before stopping to
breathe.
     He cleaned up the spilled Coke and stumbled back to his bed,
wrapping himself tightly in his comforter in an effort to stop his
shivering. Twenty minutes later, he lay spread out flat on top of the
sheets, sweat rolling from his forehead in big drops. He alternated
between chills and fever for the next two hours before dropping into
sleep again.
     When he awoke, he was still sore, and running a slight fever;
but any nausea was gone and he stretched as he contemplated the
clock. Three o' clock,  Wednesday afternoon. He rubbed his throat,
massaging the swollen lymph nodes there. Flu, he thought, probably
got it off some snot-nosed kid at the hospital. He stopped rubbing
when he realized that the scabs on his throat were gone. He rose and
walked into his bathroom, flipping on the light with his free hand.
Under the fingers of his other hand his throat was smooth and
unblemished. No, he thought, there were the spots.. two small, pink
dots where the scabs had been. Must be the world's record for
puncture wound healing, he thought with some satisfaction.
     He returned to his room and pulled on his jeans and a fresh t-
shirt, and walked out his front door around to his car. After a few
slow cranks of the starter- Hugh made a mental note to buy a new
battery- it coughed into life and he backed out of his driveway and
headed up the residential street.
     The drugstore was two miles from his house, on one of the busier
streets of East Athens. By the time he'd arrived, Hugh's earlier good
humor had vanished; replaced by a buzzing irritation at the stupidity
of the other drivers on the road. He seethed as a huge, older sedan
creeped slowly forward in his lane, blocking the entrance to the
parking lot. He squeezed past the corner of the sedan's bumper the
moment there was room and raced down the aisle, pulling into a
parking space in front of a smaller car. The other driver hooted her
horn angrily and drove on. "Kiss my ass, I was here first." Hugh
muttered, slamming the Pontiac's door. He rubbed the back of his sore
neck as he stalked into the drugstore.
     The cooler air of the drugstore soothed his skin and he shook
out his arms. My joints are so stiff, it feels like the day after
pushing too hard in the gym, he thought. He prowled up the store
aisles, darting glances at the other customers, until he located the
Cold/Flu, Analgesics row. He grabbed a couple of packages and headed
for the checkout counter.
     He could feel his ears begin to burn again as he inched through
the line at the counter. He fidgeted with the medicine boxes until he
arrived at the register, then tossed them on the glass plate of the
scanner and tugged his wallet out of his jeans. "Eleven thirty-five,
sir" he heard the cashier announce as he thumbed through the six one-
dollar bills in the wallet. "Gott-dammit!" he breathed, and pulled a
wrinkled and smudged blank check from of the pockets. He snatched a
pen from the register and hastily scrawled out the check, dropping it
and the pen in front of the cashier. She looked up to ask him if the
information on the front of the check was correct, then decided
better as she saw his bloodshot eyes, stubbled cheeks and distinctly
unfriendly expression. She hastily circled the information on the
check and ran it through the register, gingerly handing Hugh the
receipt. He snatched it out of her hands, grabbed the bag of medicine
and strode out of the store, his skin burning under the t-shirt.
     He stared at his feet as he walked, until he reached his car and
looked up to see a white Mercury Tracer parked over the line barely a
foot from his door. "Son of a bitch," he grated as he squeezed
between the vehicles and opened his door. He sucked in his stomach
and slithered around the edge of his door, dropping painfully into
the driver's seat. As he swung the door shut, he glanced into the
other car and incredulously noted a large older man seated behind the
steering wheel, thumbing through a newspaper. He leaned out of his
car and pounded on the window of the Mercury. The man lowered the
paper and glared at Hugh. "Hey, asshole!" Hugh shouted, "Why dontcha
park a little fucking closer next time, huh?" The man jabbed his
middle finger in the air and turned back to his paper.
     Hugh sat stock still for several seconds, and then clambered
over the passenger seat and out the right hand door. He walked to the
front of the Mercury and slammed his palm down on the hood, pushing a
small dent into the thin metal. The driver jumped in his seat and
dropped the newspaper. Hugh swung a kick, shattering the turn-signal
lens and pushing the headlight askew in its holder. He kicked again,
punching a hole in the grille and breaking bits off the fiberglass
nosepiece. The driver threw open his door and surged out of the car,
charging around the fender at Hugh. "All right, you little shit, I'm
gonna tear you a new-" Hugh stepped back quickly, reaching under his
t-shirt and pulling his service pistol from the waistband holster
still affixed to his jeans, and stuck the muzzle under the nose of
the man; who backpedaled abruptly with his hands out. His bulging
eyes stared at the end of the Smith and Wesson .40 caliber automatic
and the color drained from his face. "Sweet Jesus!" he blubbered, and
looked up at Hugh.
     Hugh's lips drew back from his teeth in a fierce grin. Part of
his mind was aware of the hammer on the pistol slowly inching
backwards as his index finger applied pressure to the trigger. The
tendons in his neck stood out like cables as the hammer hovered at
the breaking point; and then it lowered and he took his finger out of
the trigger guard and lowered the gun. "Get the fuck outta here!" he
snarled. He watched as the man scrambled back into the car, started
the engine and raced across the parking lot; his door still swinging
open.
     Hugh glanced around the parking lot. It was empty of shoppers,
save for one women who was shoving her small child into the store
entrance while glancing over her shoulder at him. He got back into
the Pontiac and started it, fighting a moment of panic as the starter
dragged, and chirped the tires as he sped onto the street. He slowed
down after making a couple of quick turns onto a side street, and
drove carefully through the residential area until he was sure he
hadn't been followed.
     He ran his hand through his hair. Fuck! He had been within
seconds of killing the man; another pound of pressure on the trigger
and he'd have been a murderer. He had never lost his composure like
this before, not even when confronted with some of the most
belligerent, dangerous criminals in the city. There was no
consideration of his actions beforehand, he had leaped out of the car
with the sole intention of damaging something. His blind rage
terrified him. He could not remember ever having been this angry, and
certainly not for so insignificant a reason. Had the wol...animal
given him rabies, after all? He'd been very thirsty that morning;
weren't thirst and irrational rage symptoms of rabies? Or was that
just for animals, and not humans?
     He turned at the next stop sign and accelerated up a poorly
paved street, taking a largely abandoned side road in order to circle
around to his neighborhood. He turned the radio up slightly and hung
his left arm out of his window, leaning against the door post and
watching the scrubby pine trees flash by. He certainly felt fine now,
barring the aches of his body from the flu he'd acquired.
     The pine trees vanished on his right, replaced by fence posts
and barbed wire lining the edge of a large field that swarmed over a
small hill. He topped the rise and began descending the other side,
letting the car coast as he inhaled deeply. It was still warm, even
for October; although a cool breeze blew from over the field bringing
with it the first hints of winter. And cow shit, Hugh thought wryly;
the smell of cow shit and...
     He sat upright. The scent, the smell he smelled in his dream,
was blowing into the car from the field. He scanned the treeline and
immediately noticed the five wolves, standing in the shade of the
trees across the field. He slammed hard onto the brake pedal, locking
all four wheels and sliding onto the verge, the back end breaking
away before he let up and began pumping the pedal. The Pontiac
shuddered to a jerky stop in front of a fence post. He threw open the
driver's door and ran around the car, slipping on the grass torn by
his stop, and vaulted the fence in a clumsy leap.
     The wolves were perhaps sixty yards away, and they calmly
watched him approach them at a dead run. Hugh pumped his legs
furiously, ignoring the pain of his stiff knees, his eyes locked on
the pack. He was right, they were wolves, and they were huge. The
bronze one that had held his attention two days ago was once again in
the center of the pack, surrounded by two black wolves, one dirty
tan, and one reddish-brown, almost chestnut colored. The five waited
until he was within twenty yards, close enough for their scent to be
maddeningly strong in his nostrils, before turning as one and running
easily into the forest.
     "Goddamnit, WAIT!" Hugh screamed at them, still running. He
followed them into the treeline, ignoring the twigs and brambles that
slapped at his face. They were out of sight when his foot caught on a
fallen limb and sent him sprawling face first onto the forest floor.
He jumped back up, wiping the dirt from his face, whipping his head
from side to side. They were gone, the scent vanishing as he stood
there.
     "Shit shit shit!" He threw down the handful of dirt and pine
straw he'd pulled up  and fell to his knees. Damnit, that was THEM,
and they weren't dogs, they were wolves, and they were the same
wolves that attacked him Monday night. He slowly stood, casting one
more look about the trees, as if they would suddenly reappear from
behind the trunks, before walking back to his car. Who knew about
wolves, he asked himself. Greg, Greg Pullman... he'd been roommates
with Greg for two years in college, when Greg was a biology major.
They hadn't talked in four years, but Hugh still had his phone
number, and remembered Greg's interest in wolves and bears and the
like. Greg's room had looked like the gift shop of a zoo, covered in
wildlife posters and stuffed animals. The car started on the first
try, and Hugh drove slowly back to the duplex, watching the edges of
the road for a flash of fur.
     The phone was ringing when he opened his front door. He crossed
the room in four steps and yanked the handset off the hook. "Hello?"
     "Hugh! It's Banscome. How're ya feeling?"
     Hugh leaned against the wall and tossed his keys onto the couch.
"Well, my head's stopped hurting, but I picked up the flu or
something while I was in the hospital. I'm sore as hell, running a
little bit of a fever."
     "Nothing a year in the tropics wouldn't fix. You need some more
time off?"
     "Uhh.. no, I don't think so. I'll be in tomorrow." He hesitated
a moment. "Hey, ell-tee?" He stopped. He was going to say he'd seen
the wolves again, but he imagined what Banscome would say. 'Oh, you
did? Near your house? Animal Control spotted 'em this afternoon near
the Seaboard Farms plant. That's at least ten miles from your place-
why don't you take tomorrow off after all, Hugh?' He cleared his
throat.
     "Yeah?"
     "Nothing... nothing. Umm.. busy day today?"
     Banscome sighed. "Yeah, actually, it is. In addition to the
usual robberies, muggings, car thefts and complaints some guy got a
gun pulled on him about thirty minutes ago on Gaines School Road, out
by your place."
     Hugh stiffened. "Really? What happened?"
     "Dunno.. he says he was sitting in his car in a parking lot,
when some guy starts beating the shit out of his grillwork. When he
got out to have words with the guy he gets a gun stuck in his face.
He took off and called us. Doesn't sound like a robbery."
     "Any description? In case I see him around here?"
     "Oh yeah, a great one.. average height, average build, dark
hair, and.. quote..'a big-ass shiny gun', unquote. I love my job."
     Hugh relaxed. "Yeah, you gotta love the observational powers of
the Georgia redneck. Well.. I'll see ya tomorrow, I guess."
     "Yeah, tomorrow. I still want that report. Bye." Hugh hung the
phone up and tossed the bag of drugs onto the couch next to his keys.
     He walked back to the spare bedroom and began rummaging through
a large pile of papers on top of an old steelcase office desk.
Towards the bottom of the pile he located the edge of a worn leather-
bound notebook and tugged it free from the rest of the papers. He
brought it back into the main room and sat down next to the phone,
leafing through the pages until he located PULLMAN, GREG. He held his
index finger on the name and dialed the number next to it.
     The phone on the other end rang six times before an answering
machine picked up. Hugh was about to hang up when he heard the click
of an extension phone being lifted. "Hold on a sec.." he heard over
the outgoing message, which then stopped. "Yello?"
     "Greg? Greg Pullman?" Hugh asked.
     "Yes, it is, and who are you?"
     "Uh.. This is Hugh Jacobi. I was your roommate for a while in
college, at UGA.. you remember, that house on Finley Street? With the
leaky toilets?"
     "Oh, yeah! Yeah, I do. Long time no speak, Hugh, what's new?"
     "Oh, I'm still doing the same old thing...fulfilling my public
duty, and all that. And you?"
     "Well, I decided to finish my masters.. enrolled at Prescott
College again. Maybe I'll get it this time around."
     "That's great..listen, Greg, I've got a question I thought maybe
you could answer."
     Greg sounded guarded. "Oh? What is it?" he asked cautiously.
     "Well.. I remember how much you liked wolves and stuff in
college.. and I thought I saw one in town here the other day-"
     "What, a wolf? You still living in Athens?"
     Hugh closed the address book and slid it across the floor.
"Yeah, still in Athens. I saw 'em in the middle of town, actually."
     Greg snorted. "You didn't see a wolf, then. There haven't been
any in Georgia for.. oh, hell, a hundred years, at least. There are
some red wolves in the Smokies, but no wolves in Georgia. It was
probably someone's husky or shepard mix dog."
     "This wasn't any dog, it was too-"
     "Hugh, how many wolves have you seen? I mean, face to face?"
     Hugh wanted to say "Five!" but instead made a non-committal
grunt. "Well... none."
     "That's what I thought. Anyone who tells you they've seen a
wolf, and know it's a wolf on the basis of a glance, is either David
Mech or a stone liar. Wolves look too similar to a lot of dogs, it
takes measurements of paw marks, vocalizations, direct observation...
lots of things. Hell, ninety percent of the folks around here who
tell me they've seen or heard a wolf have just seen some feral dogs,
or heard a coyote. How big was it?"
     "Uh.. well, really big, actually.. Around three feet at the
shoulder, and maybe a hundred sixty pounds?"
     "Heh! Well, forget husky or shepard mixes.. try ponies, or
mastiffs."
     "How big do wolves get?"
     "Well, around here they're around eighty pounds, two and a half
feet at the shoulder. Coyotes are much smaller, around thirty-five to
forty pounds. There are some coyotes around your area.. they're
moving eastward, and they're more adaptable than rats. But no wolves.
Certainly no wolves that size."
     "Oh."
     Greg took his tone to be one of embarrassment. "I wouldn't worry
about it. Even the experts get fooled, all the time. I wish I could
say there were wolves in Georgia. Hell, I'd have stayed at UGA and
written my thesis. But there aren't."
     "Well.. thanks, Greg. I guess it was nothing."
     "No problem". There was an awkward silence, and then "Well,
Hugh, keep in touch, man. I'll probably be at the same address for
quite a while."
     "Yeah, I will. Thanks again, Greg. See ya." He replaced the
handset in its cradle. Mastiffs, my left nut! he thought. They were
wolves. The experts can kiss my ass.
     Hugh got stiffly to his feet and walked into the kitchen. He
opened the refridgerator and surveyed the contents...no, no coke; no
orange juice either, he thought. He took a large glass from an
overhead cabinet,  filled it with tap water, and walked back into the
main room. He bent over, painfully, and turned on the television set
before collapsing onto the couch. He took a long swallow of his water
while grabbing for the remote control, changing channels rapidly
before settling on CNN. He retrieved the bag from the drugstore,
pulled out the first box, and tore open the packaging. "May cause
drowsiness," he read, "so be it." He spent a few frustrating moments
twisting and pushing on the red cap before opening it and fishing out
two capsules, which he swallowed with another long gulp of water. He
settled on his side on the couch and watched Larry King argue with
his callers before drowsing off.

                             --==++==--

     The cold air woke him. He blinked a few times before stiffly
propping himself up on one elbow. Another breeze blew through his
open sliding-glass patio door, making him shiver as he rose and
hurried over to close it. Damn, it got cold quick, he thought as he
fingered the latch shut. The warning bell that had been buzzing in
the back of his head forced its way through his sleep-clotted mind.
Wait, how did the door get open-
     He turned quickly as the hairs on his neck prickled. The wolves
lay on the cool linoleum tile of his kitchen. Hugh's stomach flipped
and he felt nauseous again, but he stood completely still. The bronze
wolf was once again at the front of the group, and Hugh watched with
growing alarm as he slowly raised himself to all four legs and then,
continuing the same smooth motion, rose onto his hind legs, which
seemed to flow and thicken. Hugh took a step backwards, watching as
the wolf's torso flattened, the fur changing thickness and pattern.
The head became more rounded, retaining the pricked ears and a
shortened muzzle. The motion took a couple of seconds, and was so
fluid that Hugh missed most of the changes... one moment there was a
wolf rearing up, the next there was a man-shaped, fur covered being,
six feet tall and stocky, standing more or less on its toes in his
kitchen. Hugh's stomach flipped again and he resisted the impulse to
claw at the door latch and flee into the night.
     The creature opened it's muzzle. "Hugh," it said in a deep
rumbling voice that came from somewhere deep in it's chest, "It's OK.
We've got to talk with you. You've got to understand some things."
     Hugh's jaw, which had been hanging slack, clapped shut. "I-" and
"what-" and finally "You... know my name." he said calmly. And you
talk! Hell! he thought, somewhat less coherently.
     "We read it in the newspaper Tuesday." the creature said, and,
in a very human gesture, leaned against the countertop. Hugh suddenly
noticed that the creature was very obviously male.
     "The ah... the newspaper." he said. The creature nodded his
head, a motion which seemed so out of place that Hugh almost giggled.
"We read the police blotter page. They had a nice piece about the
death of a young man and the injury of a police officer by the man's
attackers, who were apparently a group of feral dogs." His muzzle
lifted upwards, baring his canines in a half-snarl, half grin. "Big
dogs." His relative position remained unchanged, but the fur covering
his body shortened rapidly and vanished. His head and legs reformed
and there was now a naked man leaning against Hugh's kitchen counter.
     Hugh blinked, and cleared his throat. The man was solidly
muscled, with short brownish-blonde hair. He looked to be about
Hugh's age and height, and at least forty pounds heavier. The other
four wolves remained on the floor, watching Hugh.
     Hugh cleared his throat again. His head was beginning to swim.
"You're.. you're all... well.." He couldn't say it. The man didn't
look anything like Bela Lugosi. He didn't look much like anyone
special.
     "Werewolves." the man said. His voice was now low and pleasant,
with more than a touch of drawl. "And you are too.. or will be, in a
day or so."

                             --==++==--

     Rowland Perham quietly opened the bedroom door and slid around
the edge. He glanced over at a small, slim, naked redheaded woman who
was crouched on the edge of a swivel rocker, her knees up next to her
ears and her eyes on the figure on the bed. Hugh was laying on top of
the sheets, his arms and legs tied with towels to the bedposts. His
chest rose and fell rythmically as a dark arm wiped a damp cloth
across his closed eyes. "How's he doing?" Rowland asked the woman
holding the cloth.
     Karen Tougee dropped the washcloth into a small bowl and set it
carefully on the bedstand, and then leaned back in her straight chair
and stretched her arms over her head. Rowland watched the muscles
flow under her bare ebony skin and smiled inwardly. She looked at him
and briskly scrubbed her hands across her short afro. "He's fine,
now." she said in a startlingly rich contralto. "I give him maybe
twenty minutes before he starts again." She waved one arm at the bed.
"That damn bed isn't much, he almost tore it up last time. He's
taking the longest of any of us."
     "He'll take longer yet. I'm just glad we got him to call in sick
'fore he started."
     "How do you do that, anyway? I'd've told you to piss off if you
popped into my kitchen, told me I was going to be a werewolf, and
asked me to call in sick because I was going to be 'busy' for the
next couple of days."
     Rowland leaned over and kissed Karen softly on the lips, and
looked into her brown eyes inches from his own. "Every wolf knows his
alpha."
     Karen stroked one hand up Rowland's thigh and rested it on his
buttock. "I know one alpha who's gonna have his hands full with a new
cub." she said quietly, and slapped him hard across the rump. Rowland
nipped her nose softly and straightened, turning towards the other
woman. She was still staring at Hugh, huddling in the chair, her
expression somewhere between sadness and revulsion. "Linda?" Rowland
said. She flicked her eyes towards him and then back to the bed.
     Rowland pursed his lips. "Linda, you gonna be okay?" he asked.
She was silent for a few breaths. "Sure." she said in a hoarse
whisper. Rowland looked at Karen, who arched an eyebrow and looked
away. Rowland walked back to the hallway, pulling the door shut
behind him. He walked down the short hallway that joined the bedrooms
to the living area.
     "So how's the patient?" Rowland stood in front of the couch and
faced the young white male sprawled on it. The man rested his head on
one arm and held a thin magazine with the other. Bradley Steiner
would look content wherever he was, Rowland thought, even sprawled
out naked on a strange cop's couch. "Better 'n he has any right to
be." he replied. "How much longer you think this is gonna take?"
     "Shit, I dunno. He seems like a strong one; if I'm right, that's
bad. It didn't take any of us more than a couple of days. Mighty
inconvenient of him, I say, especially given his crappy taste in
reading material." Bradley tossed the magazine onto the coffee table.
Rowland looked at the title.
     "Georgia Outdoor News." he read. "Hell, I subscribed to that."
     "Yeah, but you're a redneck." Bradley grinned lopsidedly.
     A pale, thin man muttered darkly under his breath and sat back
in the chair across the room. Rowland turned his head to face him.
"What." he said, more statement than question.
     The man brushed several long strands of straight, black hair
from his face and looked up at Rowland with a sullen expression. "I
said, this is a fuckin' lousy idea. He's a goddamn cop, for christ's
sake."
     "Leon, stop bitchin'. You got us into this, so don't complain
about it."
     Leon folded his arms and rested his chin against his chest. "You
shoulda let me kill him." he said in barely audible voice.
     "Leon." Rowland's voice was calm and quiet but still forceful.
"Knock that shit off right now. We're on the side of the angels,
remember? You agreed. We don't kill cops. If you'da kept yer damn
head we wouldn't be here. Besides, I think he'll join us. He seems
that type." Leon arched his wiry body out of the chair and stalked
into the kitchen. Rowland heard him opening and closing cupboards and
turned to Bradley again. "Didja find anything out from the paper?"
     "Yeah," Bradley said, "being a townie has it's advantages. No
one misses me." He grinned again, and sat up. "He's been a cop here
for seven years, left college in '86 as a junior, average grades. The
police reporter knows him,a little. Says he's an average guy, nothing
special. Still a patrolman, which means he doesn't go out of his way
to kiss ass, but she thought he was a good cop. Works hard, or at
least hard enough. No girlfriends or relatives that she knows about,
but she doesn't know him that well. Mostly, she knows squat."
     "That's good and bad. We don't know what he's like, but he ain't
likely to have too many ties. Humpf."
     Leon walked back into the room, with a leathery carrot in his
hand. He was chewing with a pained look on his face. "This guy's got
shit for food." he said around a mouthful.
     "He's gonna be hungry when he comes out of it." Bradley said.
Rowland scooped up Hugh's keys from the coffee table and worked the
house key from the ring. He tossed it to Leon. "Go get some cash from
the car and get some food. Get a few days worth, I don't know how
long we're gonna be here. And get some real food, not that Ramen
noodle shit." Leon tossed the key into his mouth and opened the
sliding glass door. He hunched over, his chest deepening and his back
narrowing; thick, glossy black fur erupting from his skin to cover
his entire body. He ended up on all fours, a jet black dire wolf with
startlingly green eyes. He loped out of the door and Rowland slid it
shut again.
     A loud moaning came from the back bedroom, followed by a thud
and Karen's strident voice: "Hold still, damnit... Rowland!" He
sighed. "Here we go again. Come on, Brad, let's go play punching
bag."

                             --==++==--

     Hugh leaned back against the rough bark of the pine tree and
folded his arms. Above him stars winked like faceted jewels tossed
onto a black velvet blanket. He idly picked out Orion, the ancient
warrior's belt pointing at the full moon directly overhead. He let
his gaze fall level again, looking southward out over the edge of the
bluff upon which he sat and down into the river valley a thousand
feet below, and then up again at the forested ridge across the
valley. The moon's radience bathed the trees in ghostly light and
turned the sluggish river below into a twisting snake of molten
silver. He followed the river with his gaze until he met the town
nestled in its banks, the tops of buildings poking here and there
through the trees. He watched tiny figures moving on its well-lit
streets in couples or groups, stopping to admire the items in bright
store windows or to greet one another with amicable handshakes. It's
too nice, he thought to himself, the people are too nice. The city is
too clean, there's no pollution, and the setting is incredibly
beautiful. I wonder if they need a police chief... except I doubt
they have any crime to worry about. It's too perfect.
     As if to underscore his thoughts, a buck crashed through the
undergrowth below his perch and disappeared into the trees. Hugh
closed his eyes and inhaled the rich forest scents, the humus and
pine and mountain blossoms, and relaxed completely. I could stay here
forever, he thought, this is truly the place I dream about. A soft
breeze blew warmly across his skin as he drowsed.
     The wind became stronger and cooler. Hugh shivered once, and
opened his eyes. Thin streamers of cloud were blowing across the moon
now, racing south to north as if in a speeded-up film. They thickened
quickly, and the trees began swaying in the increasing wind. Hugh
watched as the sky darkened to the south over the far ridge, blotting
out the stars. A few fat, cold drops of rain spattered the ground
around him and he huddled against the tree.
     The darkness spread across the sky, finally sweeping across the
moon and over Hugh until the sky was a pitch-black dome. The people
in the town below began scurrying into doorways and lighted shops as
the rain marched across the valley in a thunderous wall, interspersed
with thick chunks of icy hail. The ridge to the south seemed
imperceptibly darker, as if the sky were bulging down to blanket the
trees. To Hugh it seemed as if a thick, oily black cloud of smoke was
rolling down the mountainside to cover the valley. Where it covered
the land vanished behind a black wall, seamless with the sky. The
blackness continued down the slope from horizon to horizon; trees
withered and crumbled as it approached. It swept into the valley, the
river's water changing to a rich blood-red in advance of the front.
It soon blotted out the town, the buildings bulging as if  they were
over-filled balloons, then exploding in a swirl of debris just before
the cloud enveloped them. Hugh leapt to his feet as the cloud rushed
to the foot of his ridge. He could hear the snapping of tree trunks
and the thunder of animals attempting to flee from the front. The
cloud charged up the steep slope, enveloping him as he threw up his
hands and fell backwards...
     He found himself laying on a patch of green grass that ended a
few feet from his body. He was surrounded on all sides by a dark,
pulsing wall that seemed to suck the heat from him. He slowly came to
a crouch, scarcely aware that his body was changing as he did so. His
forearms thickened and his fingernails hardened into long claws, his
face flowed into a shortened animal's snout, his teeth lengthened and
sharpened. His ears seemed to move upwards on his skull, their tips
lengthening into long fur-covered tufts. His feet narrowed and grew
until he crouched on their balls. His body sprouted thick, long brown
fur. His lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl and he hesitantly
touched the black surface a foot from his head.
     The blackness was cold, its surface like slick rubber. Hugh
tried to draw back his hand, and found it was stuck to the wall. He
pulled harder, but the walls bulged inwards, enveloping his hand. He
howled with rage and slashed with his free hand, his claws raking
across the surface with no effect. The walls began to press on his
body, squeezing the air from his lungs. He heard a low, dark laughter
in his skull before he ceased to struggle.

                            CHAPTER THREE

     "God...dammit...let...go...of...my...fucking...neck!"
     Hugh looked up into a pair of green eyes above gleaming teeth. A
dark hand encircled the creature's throat, its inch-long dark claws
buried deep into black fur. The thick forearm was covered richly in
dark brown hair. Hugh jerked his arm away and slid backwards until he
crashed into his headboard. The room spun for a moment as an electric
jolt of pain shot through his body, and was then gone. The coppery
smell of blood vanished as well. Hugh looked at his arm; it was
completely normal. The creature stumbled backwards a step, rubbing
its throat with a sinewy black arm, its lips still pulled up in a
snarl.
     "Christ, man!" The creature's skin shuddered and flowed and Hugh
looked at a short, thin man; straight black hair spilling over his
bare shoulders. The man looked at the thin smear of blood on his
palm, and then at Hugh while wiping his hand on his other arm. The
blood paled next to the bright tattoos that covered the arm and most
of his chest. The man's wiry muscles knotted and flexed as he glared
at Hugh.
     Shitholyshitholyshit thought Hugh. The man stayed where he was,
but he didn't look happy. Hugh opened his lips and managed a croak;
his throat and mouth felt like they'd been rasped with steel wool
dipped in sulphuric acid. He managed to swallow and tried again.
"What.. the fuck." Hugh looked across at the foot of his bed and the
two figures there. A college aged white male, perhaps six feet tall
and around a hundred seventy pounds, shook out his hands and grinned
at Hugh. This is the tan one, he thought, looking at the man's dark
blonde hair. Next to him, leaning forward on the endboard, was a
tall, slender black female who was looking at him with a somewhat
exasperated expression.
     "Well, you back with us, finally?" Hugh turned towards the voice
on his right. The man from his kitchen was standing with his arms
folded in front of the bed table. Standing slightly behind him was a
small, red-headed female who was clutching a wadded towel. Hugh
realized he had been holding his breath and exhaled with a gasp. His
head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. He shook it, his eyes
closed, and opened them slowly. The figures were still there.
     "We're still here." the man said.
     "What the fuck." Hugh repeated. "What the fuck is this? What are
you doing?" He tried to scoot backwards further, succeeding only in
sliding his back up the headboard. The older man reached for Hugh's
head with both hands. Hugh started to bat them away, until he caught
sight of the man's eyes. They locked with his and Hugh stopped
struggling, aware of nothing but two pale blue irises and a soothing
voice. "Hugh. It's alright. Calm down. No one's going to hurt you.
Just stay calm." The man stared at him for a moment more and stood
back upright. Hugh blinked and inhaled deeply, raggedly. "Now," the
man said, "How much do you remember? From before?"
     Hugh glanced around the room again. "I.. uh.." his tongue felt
thick, and his stomach was doing lazy backflips. He swallowed again.
"I remember waking up and finding you folks in my kitchen. I remember
feeling really, really sick. I blacked out somewhere then. I think I
was out of my head for a while." He heard the thin man snort to his
left.
     The older man turned and took the towel from the young woman
behind him and began to mop his face with it. "Is that it? Nothing
past that?"
     Hugh considered. "I remember... really faint dreams, of fighting
with someone. And one really vivid dream... more like a nightmare."
     The man stopped toweling his neck and looked intensely at him.
     "What kind of nightmare?" the black woman asked softly.
     Hugh looked at the skewed bedsheets. His endboard seemed to be
sitting at an angle now. "I remember... I was sitting on a ledge, in
a forest, looking out over a valley. I don't know where it was, I've
never seen it before. It was really peaceful. Then it got cold, and
dark, and some kind of cloud came up, and covered everything; like
smoke. It felt... bad. Evil. I don't know how to describe it." He
looked up at her. She was looking at the older man. "What? What is
it?" He began to feel panic again.
     The older man tossed the towel onto the floor. "Nothing. We'll
talk about it later. How do you feel? Now?"
     "I feel really confused, is what I feel. What's going on?"
     "Hugh. Stop it. How do you feel physically?"
     Hugh continued to stare at the man. "I feel a little dizzy. My
throat hurts. I'm really, really hungry, and I want to know what
you've done to me."
     The man smiled. "We thought you'd be hungry. We all were. We
made some supper, come on into the kitchen and eat, and I'll answer
your questions. Come on." He held his arm out to the door.
     Hugh followed them to the table, cleared of its clutter and
covered now with plates and steaming food. Hugh's stomach contracted
painfully at the smell. What the fuck am I doing, he thought. Get out
of here, run, why do you still stand here? Hugh sat down with them,
looking from the thick steak on his plate to the others. They sat
around the small table, looking expectantly at him. Thanksgiving in
the nude, he thought, and giggled.
     Hugh tore into the steak, cutting off large pieces and barely
chewing before gulping them down. The steak was rare, and Hugh though
how hungry he must be if he could eat rare steak without getting ill.
He slowed after the baked potato and began heaping slices of ham onto
his plate. "I feel like I haven't eaten in days" he remarked around a
mouthful.
     "You haven't," the older man said from across the table. "It's
Friday night, now. You've been out for two days."
     Hugh stopped chewing. "No shit." He chewed again slowly,
swallowed. "I remember some now. You said you were... Rowland?" The
man smiled broadly.
     "Rowland Perham." He jabbed a fork at the black woman seated
beside him. "This is Karen Tougee. That's Leon Ware-" he indicated
the thin, dark haired man with the tattoos, who was grabbing thinly
sliced roast beef from another plate "-and this is Linda Sheldon."
The red haired young woman next to Rowland didn't look up at the
mention of her name. Rowland hesitated and pointed out the blonde man
next to her. "That's Bradley Steiner." Bradley grinned at Hugh and
touched his fork to his forehead in salute. Hugh looked back at
Rowland.
     "You also said you were all werewolves." He swallowed. "And that
I was going to be one too."
     Rowland forked up another mouthful. "That's true. I did." he
said slowly. "And you are a werewolf, now." He chewed and looked at
Hugh, who was gripping his fork tightly in one hand. "Eat. You need
to eat."
     Hugh stabbed the fork at his plate automatically. They're all
crazy, he thought, you're having dinner with a table full of crazy
naked people. But those teeth! They changed, dammit! "Okay. Say
you're not all my hallucination, and I'm not still in the hospital
with a lump on my head. You're all....werewolves. Why? Me,  I mean."
     Rowland laid down his fork and leaned back. "Accident." The
table was silent now.
     "Accident."
     "Yeah, accident. What you saw Monday night... will take some
explaining."
     Hugh was tense. "Well, explain it. I saw wolves.. I saw you all
kill a man. I saw you rip his throat out."
     "Yes we did. We killed him. Why we did I won't tell you now.
Leon attacked you. He shouldn't have, but he did." Leon stared at his
plate, his long black hair concealing his expression from Hugh. "He
bit you before I could stop him. You were... infected."
     "Infected?" the word exploded from Hugh. "Infected?"
     Rowland waved his hand. "I can't explain how it works. Bradley
is the biologist, get him to tell you what the mechanics is. But you
were infected, and the only cure is to change. Change or die of the
infection."
     Hugh opened his mouth. "Shut up." Rowland said quietly, leaning
forward again. "We tracked you down. You're strong.. you didn't
change right away. Your body fought the...infection for two days. We
found you in time to help you change; barely in time." Rowland took a
long drink from his glass. "I lived in a farmhouse in north of here,
in Suches." He managed a wry grin. "I wrote system manuals for IBM
mainframes, if you believe that shit. It was 1975. I had been sick
for a week; really bad flu, and it was winter. We didn't get much
snow up there, but what we had closed up them mountain roads. I lived
by myself.
     "I'd had a pack of wild dogs come around there all winter,
tearin' up my yard. I thought I heard one outside that night and
grabbed my rifle. Got a shot off at him and went to take a look." His
face went slack, and he stared past Hugh.
     "It was a wolf, and I'd hit it, right in the chest. I thought it
was dead, but when I went to grab it it bit me. I shot it again.
     "I was weak with that flu. I changed that night. I had no idea
what was happenin' to me. I found I could change by accident; I
thought I'd gone crazy. Most of the town did too.
     "That wolf turned up at the end of my road, dead. But it wasn't
a wolf any more; it was a man, a hitchhiker folks had seen in town
that winter. The sherriff came up to ask me about him, and I was out
of my head. I shot at him and took off for the woods. They came after
me for a while, they wanted me for killin' that man. But they didn't
think to look for a wolf.
     "I stayed in the woods for a year and a half. They thought I'd
died; I'd taken off from the house with no clothes and no food in the
middle of winter. By the next summer, I was a wolf. I took deer in
the half-form and roamed around the woods. I wasn't human any more, I
was all animal."
     Rowland shook his head slightly, and looked over at Karen. "Then
this fool city girl decided to go hiking in the mountains. She
startled me while I was gutting dinner and I damn near killed her."
He looked back at Hugh. "Some part of me was still there, buried in
that wolf. I hadn't killed her, and I couldn't kill her, but I knew
she was gonna change. And if she didn't have someone with her when it
happened, she was gonna end up like me. So I stayed with her. It was
rough for a while, but we got each other sorted out."
     Karen tossed her napkin in Rowland's lap. "I just didn't want my
friends to know I was dating a white boy."
     "That's why we're here." Rowland continued. "Your gettin' bit
was an accident, and there ain't nothing we can do to change it. But
we are here to see you keep your head."
     The table was silent again, each person staring at their own
plate. Hugh finally cleared his throat. "Well. What happens to me
now?" Some tension seemed to have fled the room.
     "We'll stay with you this weekend. We'll show you how to get
around. It'll take some gettin' used to, especially as a full wolf.
You ain't used to walkin' on all fours. When you're a median- that's
the form between full wolf and full human- you'll be on two feet and
it's easier to get around. You'll also have to get used to some new
sensations and some new thoughts.
     "After this weekend, you can go back to being a cop. We'll be in
town for quite a while, probably. You'll always be a werewolf, you
can't change that. But you may find out you don't want a normal job
anymore. Sometime, you're gonna have to decide if you want to join
us, or you want to stay with what you're doing. We won't be here
forever." Hugh felt a minor thrill of panic at the idea of being
seperated from these people. "But that's later. Let's clean up this
mess."
     As they scraped and washed dishes in the kitchen, Rowland
continued lecturing. "You won't notice much anything different in
human form, and neither will anyone else. A blood test might arouse
some concern. You'll heal a good bit faster now. As a median.. well,
you've seen us as medians. You'll be different in looks as well as
other things. Your senses will be much better than as a human. You
won't be any bigger than you are now, but you'll be a hell of a lot
stronger. More stamina, too. And unless you get really seriously
injured.. say, you get your head cut off, or shot through the heart,
something like that, that'll kill you instantly.. you'll heal up
completely in a day or so in this form. You'll still have your wits
about you, but you'll be hearing and seeing and thinking in a new way
and it'll be confusing.
     "As a wolf, you'll be a wolf. You'll still heal better than a
wolf would, and you don't lose your senses; you won't be a dumb
animal. You won't be exactly human, neither. It ain't easy to
navigate on all fours. It took me some time to get the hang of it.
Your reflexes is all messed up, too; different timing and different
power behind what you do, but the basic muscle moves are the same.
     "About what I said, about your job. Karen was a bank teller
manager in Atlanta before. I went to live with her afterwards. She
ended up quitting after about a month."
     Karen stopped stacking plates and turned to Hugh. Her eyes were
a light brown and sparkled with a dark humor when she spoke. "I got a
different outlook after I changed. I never felt so... alive, before.
I couldn't go to that bank day after day and pretend to enjoy dealing
with the same problems. I wanted to be out of there, I knew what
living was and this wasn't it. I cashed in my health insurance and
collected my savings and sold everything I had. Rowland and I kicked
around the country for eleven years."
     Hugh looked closely at her face. "Eleven years.. how old are
you?"
     Karen dimpled. "Never ask a lady that question. It's been forty-
seven years since I was born. But I'd say I look about thirty-
five...I was twenty-nine when I met Rowland."
     "You won't age as fast, Hugh." Rowland said. "I don't know how
long we'll live. I don't feel fifty-three, but that's what my birth
certificate says I am. I look forty and feel thirty, but who knows; I
may keel over next week as a young-looking corpse. I don't expect
I'll get old, anyway. He who lives by the sword." Rowland walked out
into the main room. "Come on. Enough talk. Time for your first
lesson."
     Hugh followed him. Rowland stood in the middle of the room, in
front of the couch, and motioned for Hugh to stand opposite him. The
others stayed back near the kitchen door and watched.  Rowland stood
with his feet at a forty-five degree angle, spread even with his
shoulders. Hugh matched his stance. "This is crazy," Hugh said, "I
just thought I should say that."
     "Life is crazy, son, haven't you seen that in your job?"
     "Yeah, but I never thought it was this crazy."
     Rowland grunted. "Now. I taught Karen and Linda how to do this
and I still can't explain it. Watch me closely."
     Hugh watched the shift to median form, but couldn't detect any
special effort on Rowland's part. His feet had legthened so that he
now stood balanced on their balls and toes, and the tips of the long
black claws. His knees were bent and his legs joined his hip in a
strangely odd way, balancing out the new distribution of weight. His
chest was squatter and more barrel-shaped that before. His arms
seemed a bit thicker, as if the muscles were attatched in the wrong
places. The most startling change was in his face, in the squat
muzzle and long tufted ears. His fur was a deep rich red-brown on his
head and back, and across his arms and thighs; fading to a lighter
bronze color across his chest and stomach and loins. "Look at me," he
said in that deep sepulchral voice, "and visualize yourself looking
like this. Close your eyes and imagine your legs, arms, body, and
head changing; imagine yourself covered in fur, imagine yourself
running like this... aahh, that's good, like that.. oop!" Hugh had
closed his eyes, feeling slightly silly. Watching Rowland change had
been a shock, even now; he still half imagined himself laying in a
drug-induced dream on a hospital bed. Would he really look like that?
Rowland's voice crept into his head, and he tried visualizing himself
as a median. He didn't feel anything. How would he look from his own
point of view? His arm, when he had awakened.. was that how his arm
looked? He saw it again in his mind...
     ...And a sharp pain tugged at his body, like the catch of a bad
cramp. His body seemed to expand a slight bit; he gasped and slumped
in on himself.
     "That was it, you had it! You started to change just then. You
remember what it felt like?"
     Hugh was breathing harder now. "It was.. I dunno, it felt a
little painful; but not a bad pain, and not a strong pain..."
     "Kinda like wiggling a loose tooth, right? I can't explain it
either. But that's what you feel. You need to visualize now, so you
can change; but after three or four changes you'll know what to do.
It's like flexing a new muscle in your head, it'll be automatic. Try
it again, and let it happen."
     Hugh tried, looking for the pain again. He struggled and
stopped. "I can't" he gasped. "I can't find the spot again."
     Rowland clucked. "You're too tense. Close your eyes, and relax.
Relax. Good. You're home, with friends, relax. See yourself as a
median. Feel that fur? Inhale. Feel yourself as a median."  Hugh
closed his eyes and tried to relax, but he was too excited.
Goddammit, a werewolf! Rowland's voice pushed the exited thoughts out
of his head and he concentrated on the image of his arm again. How
would that arm feel? He reflexively raised his arm as his mind saw
it, imagined clenching the clawed fist.
     The pain was sharper this time, but Hugh let it come. It seemed
as if something was wrenching at his diaphragm; it was a painful
catch in his breathing as if something were tearing. It wasn't
overpowering. Hugh felt a bit of disorientation at the pain and it
vanished. He grunted. "There it was again, but I-" he stopped and
snapped open his eyes. His voice was deeper, his breath seemed to
come from far in his chest. He could see the tip of a leathery nose
at the close extreme of his vision. He stumbled backwards, grabbing
at Rowland who hooked his elbow and kept him upright. The arm Rowland
had hold of was covered in thick, dark fur.
     "That's it, guy." Rowland said. "You did it."
     Hugh let go of Rowland and held out his arms. They were both
furred, thinning over the tops of his hands so that he could see the
veins and tendons bulge there. The palms were dark and furless, the
skin thicker, the nails long curving brown claws. He pushed past
Rowland and into the bathroom in the hall.
     The mirror showed him a werewolf.
     He ran his hands across his face. His dark blue eyes stared back
over a short snout. He opened his muzzle and ran a pink tongue over
two sharp canine teeth. The incisors were much smaller and slightly
pointed; his molars were still there but the frontmost two on each
side were sharp and pointed, blade-like. His fur ran from dark brown,
the same shade as his normal hair, to an almost blonde strip across
his chest and stomach. He reflexively reached for his groin, cupping
his testicles buried in thick blonde fur. His penis seemed to be
enclosed in a furry sheath, attatched to his lower stomach by a thin
strip of skin.
     "Don't worry, it all still works" Rowland said, leaning against
the doorframe. "Smell. Breathe in, and smell."
     Hugh looked at him, and back at the mirror. He closed his eyes
and breathed in. Immediately he smelled the scented soap and shampoo
in his shower, and the cologne in the tightly capped bottle by the
sink. The deoderant was a lighter scent but still very noticable. He
could smell a faint hint of leather.. his travel case, in the
cupboard. A hint of must from the baseboard, where the pipes had
leaked last year. From his own body came an animal scent, of warm
fur; the same came from Rowland, but subtly different. He smelled
urine around the toilet, and the lingering smells of food from the
kitchen. More mildew from his shower curtain. He opened his eyes
again. "I smell it! I smell all of it."
     Rowland beckoned him back into the main room. Karen and Bradley
were smiling at him from the back of the couch. Linda remained at the
kitchen door, but her expression had brightened considerably. Leon
leaned against the wall and smirked. "All of your senses are like
that now," Rowland said, "Taste, hearing, sight, smell... you'll be
able to tune some things out after a while, like you do every day,
but you'll probably want to get some unscented soap. That Coast is
hard to take." He suddenly crouched down onto his haunches and
changed again, into a wolf sitting upright on the carpet. Hugh looked
at Karen.
     "Go on, try it. Try like you did before, it should be easier
now." She said. "Better sit down first."
     Hugh squatted on floor in front of Rowland, whose tongue lolled
out of one side of his mouth in a friendly grin. Hugh closed his eyes
and saw Rowland as a wolf in his mind. For a second or two nothing
happened, until Hugh relaxed for a moment and felt the pain again.
The disorientation was greater, this time; and Hugh toppled to his
side. He opened his eyes and tried to get his arm under him, but it
refused to move the right way. He threw his head around until he
rolled completely over across his back and stood on all fours.
     Or, rather, on the edges of his hands and feet. His snout was
longer now, and he looked down to see two wolf's forelegs supporting
him. He sat back on his hauches, clumsily, and looked around. Rowland
was standing over him, still in wolf form, and barked at him, his
tail sweeping briskly back and forth. Hugh tried to speak but only
managed a cross between a whine and a grunt.
     His world was changed dramatically. Colors were still present,
but muted, somehow; as if a light sepia filter had been placed in
front of his eyes. He found he could swivel his ears almost one-
hundred eighty degrees, picking out the hum of the flourescent
lights, the whirr of the clock on the mantelpiece, the skritching of
insects outside the sliding glass door. The scent of old dirt in the
carpet was strong and close; he thought he smelled a cold french fry
under the couch. Rowland changed back into human form and caught his
attention. "Hugh... back to normal now."
     Hugh found he didn't need to close his eyes now; he wanted to
tell Rowland what he was feeling and knew where to look for the
change. "That was incredible! It's a little strange as a wolf, but my
god! I've never felt like that before! I-" he chuckled. "Shit!"
     Everyone was grinning now. "It's some shit, huh?" Leon said.
Hugh didn't know what to say, he stood like a child peeking at a
christmas tree.
     Rowland was bent over some bags on the floor, pulling out
clothes. "Come on, folks, let's get dressed. Hugh, go put some
clothes on. We're gonna drive out to a park and let you practice."
     Hugh giggled again, a little manically, he thought. "Drive?"
     "Yeah. You haven't got the hang of being a wolf, and its too
early for Halloween. So we drive, like normal folks." He held a pair
of underwear out to Hugh, who grabbed them after a second and headed
for his closet.

                            CHAPTER FOUR

     Hugh shifted briefly to median and swatted Linda on the rump.
She yelped and immediately dropped to the ground, ears flat. Hugh
shifted back to wolf and paused to lick her across one furred cheek
before sprinting after the others.
     It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to learn to walk as a
wolf. He had been chasing the others through the river bottom for a
half-hour before gaining enough coordination to catch Linda.
     He leapt now over a tangled snarl of dead branches, stumbling
upon landing but grimly determined to catch the light-brown tail only
yards from him now. Bradley shifted to human form and stopped, bent
at the waist, gasping breath in ragged wheezes. "Thas...enough...for
me" he gasped as Hugh ran past. Karen was ahead, weaving in between
the thick trunks of the gum and poplar trees. Hugh jinked to the
right to avoid a mass of smilax briars, clearly visible in the
moonlight to his wolf's eyes. Karen hesitated, and plunged through;
emerging on the other side in half-form with a green vine snaring her
arm. Hugh barked joyfully as he passed her, concentrating now on the
two figures some thirty yards distant. Hugh was slightly faster; but
they were more experienced at avoiding chuckholes and tree branches,
and he was tiring.
     Hugh luxuriated in the feeling of solid muscles bunching under
his fur, exploding his body forward in great leaps. The cool night
air whistled past his ears, competing with the rushing of his blood
and the quadruple thuds of his paws digging into the ground. This was
life;  simple, raw and unadorned. There were no bills, no decisions,
no pains that intellect brought here; there was only the sleek
feeling of gliding over the forest floor.
     He was within twenty yards of them when Leon mis-stepped and
slid on his side to a stop. Hugh braked, but his paws plunged through
the leaf layer into viscous mud and he landed on his chest. He stood
and shook his body, droplets of water and mud flinging off his fur.
Leon was sitting with his legs stretched out, attempting to catch his
breath. Rowland had stopped and shifted to human form, one hand
holding his side. "Where'd you... learn... to run like that?" he
asked.
     Hugh shifted to median, found it uncomfortably hot, and shifted
again to human. He breathed deeply, willing his heart to slow its
pace. "I run ten miles a week, cross-country. Have been for years."
      Rowland tried to muster the moisture to spit. "Shit."
     They sat in silence for a few minutes. Rowland flung an acorn at
Hugh and gestured. "OK, hotshot, now you get to be the hare for a
while." Hugh groaned. "You've got to be kidding." Rowland shifted to
full wolf form. Hugh shifted as well and scrambled to all fours.
     The pace was much slower now, as the three were still winded.
Hugh chose his path deliberately, angling closer to the river. Leon
had passed Rowland and was now scant yards behind Hugh, the
expression on his wolfish face serious. Hugh gained a few yards by
avoiding a thicket at the last second, causing Leon to stop short and
go around. Still, Leon was intent on catching Hugh, and his desire
was providing him with enough energy to close the gap again.
     Hugh caught sight of the riverbank and angled towards it. A few
yards downstream, a sycamore leaned over the river, spreading low
branches over the bank. It was surrounded by bamboo thickets. Hugh
changed direction again, heading for the tree. Leon was now almost
within arm's reach, and Hugh plunged into the bamboo. When his head
emerged on the other side of the thicket he leapt straight up,
changing to median form. His outstretched hands caught one of the low
branches, and he dug his claws in as his feet swung out over the
river.
     Leon burst through the leaves a second later, and almost
succeeded in skidding to a stop before he slid over the edge of the
riverbank and into the water below. Hugh hung from the branch as Leon
emerged from the muddy water in half-form, sodden ears laid flat. The
picture was so comical, a fearsome werewolf standing hip-deep in the
current, arms outstretched, fur plastered to his flanks and a look of
dismay and disbelief on its face, that Hugh began giggling in spite
of himself and dropped to the ground. Rowland came galloping up,
shifting to median with an amused snarl on his muzzle.
     Leon plunged through the water and scrambled up the bank. "You
think that's funny, shithead?" he roared, holding his hands claw-like
at his side. Hugh swallowed his mirth and held out a hand. "Hey, it's
just a game, man. You were about to run me into the ground there-"
     Leon swatted the hand away and lunged at Hugh, teeth bared. Hugh
sidestepped and blocked Leon's hand, the black claws swiping through
the fur of Hugh's midsection. The action turned Leon sideways, and
Hugh instinctively swung his other hand across his body, striking
Leon on the side of the neck with a closed fist. Leon stumbled, and
then Rowland shoved both of them to the ground.
     "That's ENOUGH!" Rowland roared, leaning over them, snarling.
Hugh felt like rolling on his back and whimpering. Leon's ears went
even flatter and he cringed. Then he rolled to his feet and stalked
off.
     Karen, Bradley, and Linda ran up then, looking from Leon's
retreating back to Hugh, prostrate on the ground, to Rowland, who was
fighting to control his snarl. He took a deep breath and stepped
back, allowing Hugh to sit up. "Some things aren't a game, Hugh." he
said.
     Hugh avoided his gaze. He recalled their conversation in his car
during the ride here. He and Rowland hand followed the others, in a
dented tan Chevy Nova, to the campsite. Most of the way, Rowland had
been jovial, giving Hugh tips on four-legged maneuvering and enjoying
his bubbling exuberance at the new sensations. When Hugh asked about
Leon, however, Rowland had gone silent. Finally he'd told Hugh what
he knew.
     "Leon grew up in Detroit. His dad was a cop, and apparently a
dirty one. He had a coke habit, and slapped Leon around enough that
he eventually ran away. So Leon doesn't like cops too much." Rowland
looked at Hugh, his face blue from the reflected instrument lights.
"From what I've heard of Detroit cops, I can't say as I blame him
much."
     "Not all cops are-" Hugh began to protest. Rowland cut him off
with an upraised hand.
     "I know, not all cops are bad. But I want you to see where
Leon's coming from. All the cops he knew growing up were dirty. He
ran away from that and grew up on the street, where all he got from
authority figures was a hassle. I gotta say, he's a tough kid. He
left home at fifteen and lived three years on the streets of Detroit
and survived."
     They continued in silence, digesting the conversation. Hugh
cleared his throat after several minutes.
     "How'd he end up in Athens?"  he asked. Rowland smiled a twisted
grin.
     "He wanted to see the home of his favorite band. Some of his
friends had made the circuit of music towns and told him it was the
place to be. So he started hitching his way south.
     "I got most of this from Bradley. Leon doesn't like to talk
about himself, even to me. But he talks to Bradley. He turned
Bradley.
     "Anyway, he stopped in Cleveland in '89. Apparently he had a
little heroin habit." Rowland mimicked putting a needle in the crook
of his arm. "He woke up after a bender and found he was a werewolf.
Bradley thinks it was a contaminated needle. He made the change,
alone, and didn't go nuts. Probably he just wrote a lot of it off to
the drugs. It certainly didn't do his head any good." Rowland put his
hand on the dash. The headlights had illuminated a small wooden sign
marking a dirt road. "This is it." Rowland had said.
     Hugh looked up at Rowland, who was now gazing off in the
direction Leon had gone. Rowland looked back at Bradley.
     "You and Hugh go get some wood and start a fire back at the
cars. I'll go chase down Leon, and we'll eat when I get back." He
shifted to wolf and bounded off. Karen shifted to wolf and nipped
Linda on the foot, and ran off as well. Linda yelped and scrambled
after Karen, growling playfully. Bradley held out a hand and pulled
Hugh to his feet.
     "Leon can be a bit difficult" Bradley said.
     "Rowland told me about his dad." Hugh said. "I guess I remind
him of a bad memory."
     "Well, you grow on people." Bradley clapped him on the shoulder.
"Race you to the cars?"
     Hugh groaned.

                             --==++==--

     They talked while they gathered wood.
     "Leon eventually made it to Athens in '92. We were both twenty-
two; I was still surfing through school, trying to finish a
Bachelor's in biology.
     "I met him in Lowrey's. You know, that bar downtown, that all
the frat boy greek types like? I go in there every now and then to
bait 'em." He grinned at Hugh's expression.
     "Bait them?"
     "Yeah... you know, sit there dressed in something other than cut-
off duckheads and button down shirts and talk about how stupid the
greek system is. It's fun."
     "If you say so." Hugh began arranging rocks in a circle for the
fire ring. Bradley continued.
     "Anyway, I go into Lowrey's and there's this kid, way out of
place, squaring off with a frat boy twice his size. I made a joke out
of it and the frat left, but Leon was pissed at me. He really wanted
to fight that guy. I calmed him down, and we eventually ended up at
my place for a little pot." He glanced at Hugh to see his reaction
and seemed disappointed when he ignored the comment. "By the time he
got around to telling me he was a werewolf, we were both pretty high.
It seemed perfectly natural to me. I thought the idea was pretty
cool, at the time, and asked him to make me one."
     Hugh was now bent over a teepee of twigs, carefully adding
thicker branches. "How'd he do that?" he asked.
     Bradley shrugged. "Oh, I think it was the anal intercourse. We
did a blood-brother thing just to make sure."
     Hugh's hand knocked the teepee flat and he sat back to look at
Bradley, who was grinning hugely. "You do that just for the shock
value, don't you?" he asked.
     "Well, yes, I did enjoy the expression on your face. But we did
bump uglies. I'm gay, and Leon... Leon would fuck anything once." His
grin grew even broader as Hugh's face turned red and he bent over the
fire pit again.
     "Uh huh. So that's how you and Leon... met. Did ya'll know any
of the others?"
     Bradley shook his head. "Nope. We met Karen and Rowland later
that year. Leon spotted 'em first, but we all kinda knew we were...
special. We were in a Waffle House, and Leon kept staring at Rowland
and he stared back, until they finally came over to the table. I
think we scared the shit outta that waitress when we started howling
in the parking lot."
     A tiny flame flickered in the center of the new teepee,
faltered, and then grew stronger. Hugh and Bradley remained silent
until it was large enough to begin burning the larger twigs. Hugh set
about snapping small branches to length.
     "What about... ungh" he broke a larger branch over his knee
"Linda?"
     Bradley squatted and idly tossed bits of bark into the fire.
"Linda... We met Linda in '93. She-" he stopped as Karen and Linda
appeared in the clearing, laughing.
     "I see you're hard at work, Bradley Steiner." Karen said
mockingly. Bradley leapt up and bounced a salute off his forehead.
"Yes'm, just testing the fire, ma'am."
     "Shit." She waved a hand at him and reached into the Nova for
the keys. She opened the trunk and tossed a gallon jug of water at
Bradley, who scrambled to catch it. The cap popped off and sprayed
him with water. "If the fire is quite okay, how about helping me
unload the food?"

                             --==++==--

Leon and Rowland re-appeared twenty minutes later. Leon walked up to
Hugh, keeping his gaze on the ground. "I'm... ah, sorry I swung at
you back there. It was... stupid." he said quietly.
     Hugh didn't know what to say. The silence stretched until Leon
finally looked at Hugh. Hugh could see in the green eyes, framed by
black fur, what it had cost Leon to say that. "Apology accepted" was
all he could say, and Leon looked away again.
     "Hey!" Karen yelled. "Come eat before it all gets cold again."
Hugh walked over to the fire, relieved.
     They sat in a circle around the fire, passing plastic containers
of leftovers from the earlier feast around. They stayed in median
form, as the night had gotten quite chill, despite the fire. Hugh was
pleased at how warm his fur kept him. He ate two normal meals and
wondered where it was all going. He idly watched Linda devour a plate
of loose meat scraps with a dainty ferocity and wondered again how
she came to be a part of the group. Something about her appearence
tickled the back of his mind; he was sure he had seen her before but
couldn't place where. He turned back to his own food. They ate in
silence, lost in their own thoughts. Hugh finally broke the silence.
"Bradley. You said you were a biology major?"
     Bradley spoke around a mouthful of food, waving a chicken leg
around as he spoke. "Yeah, 'was' being the operant word. Nothing like
this in any text book. I kinda lost what little interest I had in
going to class." He choked slightly on his mouthful. "Mom always told
me never to feed dogs chicken bones."
     "Speaking of mom, do your parents know about... this?" Hugh
asked.
     Bradley bit off another chunk. "Nope. I still call occasionally,
but" he shrugged "they go their way, and I go mine." His brown eyes
glittered in the firelight.
     Hugh grunted. In median form, the sound was like a bull mastiff
growling. He decided he liked it.
     Rowland was leaned back on his elbows, his face in shadow.
"Hugh. Go ahead and ask him before you bust."
     Hugh grunted again. Yes, he definitely liked it. "Bradley... how
do you explain... all this. Biologically." He held out his furred
arms, black palms facing up.
     Bradley burped, and tossed a denuded leg bone into the fire.
"'Scuse me. Well..." he wiped his mouth with his arm "Right after I
changed, while I was still welcome in the life sciences building, I
brought in some blood and tissue samples. I worked up whatever tests
I knew how to do on 'em, and then asked my T.A. to do complete
workups. He did, and then wanted to know just where the hell I'd
gotten 'em before he'd tell me the results. I told him they were a
bunch of different samples- that I just wanted to see if he could
tell what they were. I don't think he believed me, but...
     "Anyway, I could tell from my own tests that the blood chemistry
was way off, and the cell samples looked funny; especially the
nuclei. The T.A. was able to do some pretty exhaustive tests... we're
not supposed to screw with the research equipment, but he owed me
money, so...
     "He said that whoever it was was very ill. Massively high white
blood cell count, numerous viral phages, evidence of lysed cells...
but also high amounts of ATP and increased mitochondrial activity,
some breakdown elements of pyruvic acid and some hormones he'd never
seen before. I left before he started asking any more questions and
destroyed the samples. I hope he didn't cut his finger while he was
working on the stuff..."
     Hugh was shaking his head. "English, please; I missed half of
that."
     Bradley sniffed and looked down his muzzle. "I'm sorry, I forgot
I was speaking to a... .layman." He grinned; a lifting of his muzzle
that Hugh had seen friendly dogs do before. "Basically, it showed a
viral infection, a recent bout with that infection, and cells capable
of wringing every last bit of energy they could out of glucose. Even
anaeobically, without the nasty side effects, like cramps... Anyway,
the DNA analysis was even more interesting." He leaned forward,
warming to his subject. "Our nuclear DNA is almost twice the size of
normal human DNA. I'd guess the retrovirus succeeded in completely
incorporating its own DNA without lysis... without killing us. Not
unheard of, but never on this scale, and retroviruses are usually
nasty. Cancer causing, a lot of 'em."
     Hugh was leaning forward now as well, and the two of them
regarded one another across the fire. "So, all of this is the result
of a viral infection?"
     Bradley nodded gleefully. "Yup... that's about the only thing
I'm sure of. A virus that's transmitted via bodily fluids. A virus
that's damn successful, too. Rowland took only a day to change... his
immune system was too stressed from the flu to deal with anything
else. I took a couple of days- I was in pretty good health. You were
apparently disgustingly healthy and fought it for five days."
     "Not every one wins," Karen said softly, gazing absently into
the fire. "There was one boy who wanted to be one of us so badly...
never been sick a day in his life." Rowland sat up and began rubbing
her shoulders. She closed her eyes. "The fever killed him, after a
week of pure hell." Leon tossed a fresh log on the fire, sending a
shower of sparks skyward. Everyone watched silently until Bradley
shook himself.
     "Anyway... um... oh. The virus makes a lot of copies of itself,
sacrificing some cells to do it... relatively non-essential cells;
you lost some muscle tissue. That's the lytic phase of the infection.
If your immune system doesn't kill you first trying to kill it, it
goes on and infects the rest of your system, cell by cell, adding its
DNA to your own. When it's done, it's basically re-programmed and re-
built your body.
     "Now, think about that for a minute. Here you have a retrovirus
so specific that it does everything right and transforms you almost
overnight into a super-being. Your immune and regeneration facilities
are increased to the point that you can survive major trauma so long
as you don't bleed dry. You can squeeze every bit of energy possible
out of what you eat. Your body is now a hundred times more efficient,
at everything, than any creature in recorded history. If that weren't
enough, you can change your body structure almost instantly. Oh,
sure, I suppose your organs all remain the same from shift to shift;
the only things that have to change are connective tissues, bone,
skin, hair, muscle and all that. Sensory organs, as well. But do you
know how much energy it takes to do something like that even once?"
He was gesturing wildly now, staring at Hugh, waiting for an answer.
"No, I don't." Hugh said, after a short silence.
     Bradley blinked and lowered his arms. "Well... neither do I. But
it's a lot! And it's something that would happen slowly, over weeks
or months, like... like 'The Fly'. The movie? Where the guy turns
into a fly slowly?" Hugh nodded, and Bradley plowed on. "But your
body does it in a second! And can do it over and over! Which puts the
efficiency of your cells at... hell... five-hundred percent. Higher.
     "Also... all that change means very, very rapid cellular
division. Any time a cell divides, there's room for error. Errors
here lead to things like skin cancer. For us not to be riddled with
tumors means we've achieved transcription and replication of unheard
of accuracy.." he stopped, sensing that he'd lost his audience.
     "The point is, how could something like... us... have evolved?
We're too perfect. My T.A. would literally kill to study us; we've
got the answers to most of the world's health problems locked up in
our genes. How did we come to exist?"
     Leon yawned and leaned back. "Aliens. Dumped our ancestors in
Transylvania a million years ago. Or that 'Communion' crap was right-
aliens abducted some schmo and genetically re-engineered him and put
him back."
     Bradley held a hand next to his mouth and spoke in a
conspirational stage whisper. "Personally, I think it's a secret
government experiment that got loose." Linda giggled.
     Rowland stood up and stretched. "There are more things in heaven
and earth, Horatio..." He shook himself. "Who knows, maybe it's just
magic. I'm going to bed." Bradley groaned theatrically and covered
his ears. "Blasphemer!" he intoned. "Magic, indeed!"
     Hugh watched the fire collapse into the embers and finally go
dark before curling up, tail over his nose, to sleep.

                             --==++==--

     Hugh paused on the rim of granite, watching as the herd of deer
filed through the trees several hundred yards downslope. Soon they
would reach the first of the large boulders, forcing them to narrow
their ranks as they trudged uphill. The warm late-afternoon wind
carried their scent up the mountain and he inhaled deeply. He would
drop down off of this outcropping and  follow the ridge for a few
yards, and then head straight down towards the jumble of boulders. In
the confined spaces the deer would have little chance of spotting him
and even less of getting away.
     He shifted to full wolf form and began trotting along the ridge.
The forest was a lush riot of bright greens, striped yellows, brown
and red dirt, and spotted feathers. Far off over the western horizon,
tall cumulonimbus thunderheads boiled into the sky; their windswept
upper plateaus lit bright lemon-yellow, fading through orange and
pink to dark red and finally to an angry blue-black on the underside.
Parts of the puffy structure were illuminated at intervals by silent
flashes of internal lightning. The strong downdraft was blowing
through the valley and up the slope he crossed, keeping the deer from
scenting him and bringing the sharp smell of ozone and wet foliage.
     He switched again to median and began picking his way carefully
and silently downhill through the undergrowth. He should reach the
boulders several minutes before the herd of deer did; plenty of time
to settle into a good ambush spot.
     His surroundings grew increasingly darker as he descended. He
was idly wondering how much time he'd have before the rain fell when
his outstretched hand brushed something cold and rubbery. He jerked
it back and looked up from watching his foot placement. Directly in
front of him was a head-high black featureless oblong sphere. To the
left of it were four smaller spheres, packed side by side. The backs
of the spheres were attached to a smooth-edged rectangle; and
attached to the back of the rectangle was a twenty foot diameter
column that vanished skyward.
     Hugh cautiously reached a hand out to touch the closest sphere.
He could press inward on it, as if it were a giant water balloon. He
leaned back and followed the column up with his eyes. A hundred feet
up it joined another column that rose from somewhere on his right and
merged to become an even thicker column lost in the low shelf clouds
of the thunderstorm. Hugh shuddered. The forest had become completely
still now. He backed up a couple of steps, craning his neck back to
see the column, when he noticed it toppling forward towards him. He
turned and began running up the hill and to the left, away from the
column.
     He could hear trees snapping behind him as the column fell. It
seemed to slow dramatically as it neared the horizontal, to stop
twenty feet above the ground. Hugh stopped running and sheltered
behind a tall pine, watching the column. It had bent in the middle,
the two sections still joined at one end, parallel to the ground. A
shadow fell across Hugh and he looked up, to see thinner, six foot
diameter columns falling towards him. They slammed into the ground
around him, heaving the earth up and throwing him on his side. He
rolled over and hugged the tree as his stomach fell out from under
him and he lurched into the air.
     He opened his eyes again when the upward movement stopped. He
felt the ground beneath him drop away and he tightened his grip on
the tree trunk. Below him the grass and dirt crumbled from between
the tree's roots and he watched, terrified, as they dropped into the
clouds below him. A flat black plain swept up from below and cradled
the tree, which rolled to a nearly horizontal position. Hugh gingerly
let go of the trunk and stepped out onto the black surface. It was as
soft and rubbery as the spheres. He felt a warm, moist wind, fetid
with the odor of decaying flesh, blow across his back and he slowly
turned around.
     Behind him was a complex flat shape, dominated by two glassy
round hemispheres, six feet across. Their edges were the same
featureless black as the rest, but their centers each held a round,
ruby-red circle that seemed to glow with a faint light. As Hugh
watched, aghast, a smooth black curtain descended across the
hemispheres, covering them, and rose again as quickly. A blink. Hugh
was staring into the face of a four-hundred foot tall giant, resting
in the palm of its hand. He dropped to his hands and knees and
changed to wolf.
     The thin slash of mouth curled upwards at the edges and the eyes
narrowed. The palm turned, slowly, causing Hugh to scramble up the
slope. The palm reached vertical before he could reach the edge and
he fell past it, changing to median in mid-air, tumbling head over
tail, as the bellowing laughter of the giant merged with Hugh's
screams and the rolling crescendo of thunder...

                             --==++==--

     Hugh clawed at the ground, anxiously, as his head spun and
slowly cleared. He was on all fours, staring at the cold fire circle.
He sat back on his haunches as Rowland approached.
     "Hey. You OK? Looked like you had a pretty bad dream." Rowland
asked as he squatted beside Hugh, who brushed the dirt he'd clawed up
from his hands.
     "Yeah," he said, "I sure as hell did." He shivered again with
the memory of it. He glanced around. Bradley was stretched out on the
hood of the Nova, dozing. Karen was rinsing the dinner plates out in
the river. Linda was sitting on the trunk of the Nova, hugging her
legs and giving Hugh a vaguely sympathetic look. Leon was nowhere to
be seen. The late morning sun was burning off the last of a patchy,
low fog that pooled around the low spots in the terrain.
     "Tell me about it." Rowland commanded. He did, haltingly.
Rowland listened silently and nodded when Hugh was finished. "Did you
dream a lot? Before, I  mean?" he asked.
     "Well... I dreamed the average amount, I guess. I usually don't
remember `em long after I wake up. Every now and then I'll have a
really vivid one that I'll remember. But nothing like this... nothing
this vivid. This one was... really, really intense. The dreams I had
while changing were this intense, too." He met Rowland's eyes. "You
told me after the nightmare the night before, when I finished the
change, that it meant something. What? What did it mean?"
     This time it was Rowland's turn to look away. "I don't dream
much. Never have. Figger if I do, then I don't ever remember `em when
I'm done. Until about a year ago. Then I started having nightmares, a
lot like yours. I'm bein' chased, or... toyed with, or watchin'
people I know get killed. Not every night. But a lot more often than
I used to." He looked at Hugh again. "And so has everyone else. Leon
gets `em more often than me. Bradley and Karen are about the same.
Linda gets them every night, and they're as vivid as yours." He
glanced at her briefly out of the corner of his eye. "She's stopped
talking about what they're like. But they're bad. And now you're
havin' `em."
     "What do you think it means?"
     Rowland looked at the ground again. "I don't know. I guess I
kind of hoped you'd know. Maybe it's a side effect of being a
werewolf. It's just odd that they started for everyone at the same
time. Except you, and then they started as soon as you'd changed."
     Both of them were silent for a long minute. Rowland bounced up
to his feet again. "Enough of that. Today you learn to hunt." he
said.
     Hugh got to his feet, much more slowly. Sleeping on the ground
hadn't gotten any more comfortable than he'd remembered. "Before
breakfast?" he asked.
     "What you catch is your breakfast. If you catch anything."
Rowland walked over to the Nova and slapped the soles of Bradley's
furry feet. Bradley shaded his eyes with his arm and groaned.
     "I already know how to hunt." Hugh said. Rowland's reply was
quick.
     "Bullshit. You know how to hunt with a rifle. Not the same."
     "Handgun. I hunt with a forty-four. Ruger Redhawk."
     Rowland grunted. "Well, then you know a little bit about
stalking and tracking. You have to get close with a handgun. But
you've never killed anything with your hands."
     Hugh couldn't answer that.
     Leon wandered back into the campsite. "I found some tracks by
the riverbank about a half-mile up. Fresh this morning. Good place to
start." He avoided looking at Hugh.
     "Good." Rowland said. "Soon as everyone takes care of their
morning constitutionals we'll get started. Oh, and Hugh-" Hugh was
walking towards the trees "-it's easier to shift to human for the
morning leak. Otherwise, you try and pee standing up, and you pee in
your face."
     Hugh looked down at his crotch and then back up. "The thought
had occurred to me."
     When he returned, they were gathered around the fire ring.
Rowland had scraped a section of ground clean of leaves and twigs.
"Now," Rowland began, "We'll head upstream towards the tracks Leon
found." He squatted and scratched a straight line in the dirt with
one claw. "This is the riverbank. We'll follow it so we'll only have
one side to worry about." He picked up a pebble and placed it next to
the line. He placed a second six inches behind the first, and a third
the same distance behind the second. He tapped the first pebble with
his claw. "Leon will take the lead. I'll be behind him, and Karen
will be behind me." He placed two more pebbles to the left of the
first line, and one more to the left of those two; forming a triangle
with the river as the base. "Hugh, you'll be to the left and behind
Leon; Linda will be behind you. Bradley will be the farthest out."
     He looked up at them, still squatting. "Stay far enough back so
that you can just barely see the person in front of you. I'll stay so
that I can just see Leon in front of me, and Hugh in front and to my
left. Karen will be able to see me and Linda. Linda will be able to
see Hugh and Bradley. Bradley will keep Hugh in sight. Got it?" He
was looking at Hugh now, who nodded.
     "Is this how real wolves hunt?" he asked.
     Rowland swept the pebbles away. "Some of `em. Wolves with large,
open areas to hunt, like arctic wolves, spread out the pack until
they find something. Best way to cover large area where the prey can
spot you from a long way off. But we're not exactly wolves, are we?"
He stood up.
     "If anyone spots a deer, or people, or anything the rest should
know about, he'll signal. If he's in the back, he'll whistle.. just
loud enough for the person in front of him to hear. If you hear a
whistle, stop, and look for the person who whistled. Use hand signals
if you want the group to come to you. Remember- we're not only
hunting here, but likely to be hunted if someone spots us in median
form. Or stark naked, for that matter. Leon?" He motioned with his
hand towards the edge of the clearing. "Lead off, son."
     They reached the tracks after about half an hour of slow
walking. Hugh was noisy at first, crunching twigs and leaves
underfoot. After a few irritated looks from Leon and low mutterings
from Rowland, he adopted a sort of shuffling walk; skimming each foot
over the surface of the litter, feeling for noisemakers and gently
brushing them aside before planting the foot. The fur that covered
the tops of his feet and spilled over the sides muffled whatever
sound was left to be made. The pace was irritatingly slow to Hugh,
but very silent. A noiseless hole in the woods, he thought.
     He found it hard to concentrate on walking silently, though. The
day was gorgeous, one of the mild, sunny Indian summer days that
stayed with Northern Georgia until the first cold snap in November.
Most of the trees had shed their leaves, but those that remained were
torches of bright yellow and red. The breeze was very light, stirring
Hugh's fur and bringing the earthy scents of the forest and nearby
river past his nose; scents that he delighted in guessing the sources
of. That moist, peaty smell, that was the edge of leaves that lined
the river; that musty odor was a skunk, somewhere hundreds of yards
away. Smells that he'd never noticed before paraded past his nostrils
like signposts, pointing out the paths of various animals and
insects. Now, kneeling before dozens of hoofprints in the soft mud by
the riverbank, he snorted the hot, dusty fur scent of the deer they
were tracking, and the unreality of it all made him shiver.
     "Okay" Rowland said in a low, quiet voice. "Now we spread out in
a triangle again, Leon leading, Hugh and me next. They're probably a
mile or so over that ridge-" he waved towards a rise behind them "-
browsing in the clear-cut over there. Soon as they're spotted, we'll
stop and circle `em." They assembled the triangle again and began
carefully picking their way over the low ridge.
     The deer were closer than Rowland thought. After another three-
quarters of an hour of silent tracking, Hugh heard a soft whistle
from Karen behind him. He stopped and whistled himself, a little too
loudly. He made sure Leon and Rowland had heard it and stopped before
turning to look at Karen.
     She had changed to full wolf, muzzle probing the air in front of
her gently. Hugh inhaled deeply a couple of times before catching the
scent himself: Whitetail deer. A subtle blend of fur, dander, and
musk. Karen changed to median again and faced them, holding one
finger to her lips and waving them forward. They moved cautiously to
her position.
     "They're about sixty yards directly ahead" she whispered when
they had gathered around her. "Maybe ten of `em. They haven't scented
us yet."
     Rowland breathed out. "Okay." He made a clockwise motion with
his finger. "Let's circle around `em. Karen, you stay here and watch
this flank. Leon, you're the chaser. Hugh, you stay with me. And I
want it quiet this time, real quiet. This is hunt club land, so
they're probably skittish."
     They took another half hour to encircle the herd, moving even
slower than before and stopping when they were within sight of the
animals. Hugh and Rowland lay prostate in full wolf form, watching
the group of deer, who were placidly browsing on the edge of a large
clear-cut. Rowland changed to median again and stuck his muzzle in
Hugh's ear. "Leon has a tough go of it." he whispered throatily, his
breath tickling the fine hairs in Hugh's ear. "He's got to get around
behind `em, upwind, through those briars and shrubs and shit in the
clearing. But he's good, he's quiet." Hugh made a slight grunt in
acknowledgment.
     Hugh's hind legs were going to sleep when the herd suddenly
became nervous. The largest buck raised his massive head and shook
his rack. He grunted, loudly, attracting the attention of the rest,
who stopped browsing and raised their tails. They were sniffing the
air in the direction Leon had gone, and a couple pawed the dirt
nervously.
     "That's it." Rowland breathed, just before changing to full
wolf. "Leon's in place and they smell him. Get ready." Hugh was
wondering what he should be getting ready for when the herd suddenly
broke into a dead run, straight for them.
     Rowland exploded off the ground towards the herd, startling Hugh
who scrambled to follow. The group was now in full panic, scattering
in all directions at the sight of two wolves directly in front of
them. Hugh simply followed Rowland, who stopped abruptly and wheeled
to the right after a smaller doe. The doe leapt a fallen log and
suddenly jinked to the right, avoiding Leon, who had seen Rowland
change direction and followed the new target. The doe was faster than
any of them, and Hugh was regretting not getting any more practice at
full-wolf running the day before.
     Suddenly, Karen leapt from behind the log she was hiding behind,
slamming her body into the doe and knocking it to the ground. Rowland
and Leon reached the doe as it was struggling to regain its hoofs and
landed on it in median form, pinning it to the forest floor. Hugh
galloped up and stopped, uncertain what to do. Rowland was holding
the doe's head twisted back with both hands, his body jouncing with
the animal's efforts to dislodge him. Leon was straddling the doe's
hips, trying to avoid the flailing hind legs. Rowland looked up at
Hugh and snarled. "Now, Hugh! Kill it now!"
     Hugh hesitated for a half second before kneeling in front of the
doe. He opened his muzzle as wide as it would go and grasped the
animal's windpipe in his teeth before biting down with all his
strength. Hot fluid gushed into his mouth and over his snout as he
twisted his head, tearing free the chunk of meat in his mouth. He sat
back and spit out the animal's throat, changed to median and wiped
his face with the back of his hand. The hand came back bloody. The
doe stopped struggling and its eyes began to glaze over.
     Rowland stood up and flexed his fingers. He looked at the now
dead deer and muttered something under his breath. He was aware of
Hugh watching him and looked slightly abashed. "That's lesson number
one," he said in a louder voice. "How to kill. Lesson number two is
why to kill." He looked straight at Hugh. "We don't kill for fun. We
killed today for food. I just said a prayer thanking God for letting
us have this deer." His gaze flicked over to Leon, who was looking
slightly embarassed. "I don't expect you to believe in God. But
always thank whoever you believe in for what He lets you take." He
looked to the ground, and bent over to life the deer by its
shoulders.
     What were you thankful for after you killed Chamelle Cooper?
Hugh thought, as he watched Leon and Rowland carry the doe's body
down to the river. He followed the rest silently.
     He washed most of the blood from his fur in the river before
joining the pack in its feeding. The sight of the doe's organs piled
in a steaming heap on the ground caused him a twinge of nausea at
first, but the scent of blood and raw meat soon drew him to the
carcass. He followed the others' lead in tearing large chunks of
bloody venison from the body and swallowing them whole. The meat was
still warm and tasted slightly gamy, but at the moment it was
ambrosial. The only sounds for fifteen minutes were wet smacking
noises and low growls as Bradley and Leon competed for a choice
morsel. When they were sated the carcass was mostly bones. They lined
up by the river and spend several minutes lapping water.
     Bradley shifted to median when they were done and dangled his
feet in the water. "Drink as much water as you can stand. Prevents
uremic poisoning from eating so much raw meat." He patted his
slightly bulging belly and sighed.
     "What do you think, Hugh?" Rowland asked from behind him. Hugh
looked at his reflection in the river, a nightmare face dripping
blood and water from its snout and gleaming teeth. He hesitated
before answering.
     "It's... well. You were right. I've never killed anything by
biting its throat out before."
     "I usually use my claws, myself. Hate to get blood in my eyes.
Or just snap the neck." He watched Hugh, who was still staring at his
reflection. "What did it feel like to bite that doe's throat?"
     Hugh touched his reflected face with one claw tip, causing the
image to vanish under the concentric ripples. "It felt... good. It
felt very good." He turned and looked at Rowland. "It shouldn't feel
good. Killing, I mean. It made me feel more alive than I've ever
felt."
     "Humans shouldn't enjoy killing." Rowland replied. "Humans
rarely need to kill nowadays. It shouldn't become something they
enjoy so much they do it for fun. Animals kill every day. They have
to. You are neither now; you are both now. The animal in you-" he
leaned forward and tapped Hugh's chest "-enjoyed killing that doe. It
meant you would eat. It meant you were fulfilling your basic mission
in life. The human in you-" he moved the finger to point between
Hugh's eyes "-was repulsed by the carnage. Everything you do from now
on will be like that. A product of two instincts." He could see that
there was still something behind Hugh's eyes that was troubled, and
could guess what it was, and sighed. "Help me hump this... gift...
back to the car. We'll finish off what's left later."

                             --==++==--

     They wrapped the remains of the carcass in two large trash bags
and laid it in the trunk of the Nova. It was late afternoon now, and
the group was feeling tired after the exertion of the morning and the
heavy meal they'd eaten. Bradley was already asleep, sitting up
against a tree. Leon was watching Linda, in full wolf, chasing a
large butterfly around the clearing. Karen was in human form, reading
a small paperback. Rowland and Hugh were standing hip-deep in the
river, washing off the last bits of blood and gristle from their
skin. They were in human form, finding it easier to clean than fur.
Rowland ducked his head under and came up, slicking the water from
his face. He noticed Hugh watching Leon. Best to talk to him now, he
thought.
     "Hugh. Do you like what you've seen so far?"
     Hugh glanced back at Rowland and returned to idly wiping down
his arms. "I feel at home with ya'll. I really do. It's been a long
time since I've had any... really close friends. Just never seem to
have time for them, nowadays." He stopped washing. "I guess I sort of
assumed we'd always be around each other. But I guess I haven't
really thought about the future."
     Rowland motioned with his head towards Leon. "You've noticed
Leon is deferring to you a lot more now." Hugh nodded. "Wolves form
hierarchies in their packs. There is one strong pair, the alphas. One
male and one female. There's a secondary wolf, the beta wolf. And
there's the lowest in the pecking order, the omega wolf."
     He began sloshing towards the opposite bank, with Hugh
following. They climbed out and sat on the bank. Rowland continued:
     "As I said, we're not wolves. But we've kind of fallen into a
wolf-pack relationship, and it seems to work. Karen and I, we're more
or less the alphas." He watched Hugh to see his reaction. Hugh nodded
slightly after a moment. "Bradley would make a good beta. He's smart,
and he's got a fairly good head on his shoulders. But he's lazy. He'd
rather be the omega, the clown. He's content to be the omega. So the
omega he is.
     "Linda really isn't much for beta, either. She lead a really
sheltered life before... Leon is headstrong, impulsive, and
impetuous. But he's the beta... or has been. He's deferring to you
now because he recognizes that you've taken his place. He accepts you
as part of the pack now, and so do I. So do we all."
     Hugh felt his face flush and looked down. He realized that he'd
been worried about being accepted by the group. He squirmed a little
and Rowland continued.
     "I think you'd make a good beta for us, Hugh. You're new to all
this, but you've got a good head on your shoulders." He paused until
Hugh looked up. "If you want to run with us, you can."
     Hugh didn't know what to say. He looked Rowland in the eyes, his
own watering slightly, fighting an urge to wag a tail that wasn't
there in human form. He started to speak, then averted his eyes and
shut his mouth. He'd thought of Chamelle Cooper again, of the wolves-
of these people whom he'd just met, and whose acceptance of him
seemed to be of paramount importance- who had torn out Cooper's
throat and left him to choke to death on his own blood. Rowland saw
him look away and knew what it meant.
     "But there's something else you want to ask me, isn't there.
About that Monday night, when you first saw us." Hugh nodded, still
looking away. Rowland looked across the river at Linda, who had given
up on the butterfly and was sticking her muzzle into a rabbit hole.
The silent seconds stretched into minutes before he spoke again.
     "You ought to know Linda. I'm kind of surprised you didn't
recognize her. We met her late in 1993. At her apartment on Hancock."
Hugh thought about it for a minute. The name still tickled something
in the back of his mind... then he knew.
     "Yes.." he said slowly. "It wasn't my zone, then. But we all
heard about it. She's been missing, presumed dead, for almost two
years." He looked across the river at her as well. "She looks older
now, older than the picture they kept running in the papers. That's
why I didn't recognize her. How-"
     "We saved her life. She was almost dead, would have been dead,
even if she'd been taken to a hospital. Bradley found her. He'd been
downtown, drinking again, and was walking through her apartment
complex to get to the car. Her door was open, and he could smell
blood...
     "Her apartment had been torn up. She was laying on the floor,
cuts all over her body, just about dead. He knew she'd be dead before
an ambulance ever got there. Or, at least, that's what he said. He
bit her and carried her to the car and drove her to our place.
     "It was tough for her. It took us a month to convince her she
wasn't dead and in hell, or just plain crazy. She was healed
physically and almost healed mentally when she started having the
dreams."
     "We never did really figure out what happened." Hugh said. "Her
roommate came back in the morning to find the door wide open, the
place torn up and covered in blood, Linda's blood, and no body. We
don't get a whole lot of that in Athens, so this was given the big
deal. GBI, FBI, special homicide detectives from Atlanta, everything
sent to the state crime lab... and we never found anything out." He
grinned suddenly. "I remember hearing they found a lot of animal hair
in the carpet, and neither Linda or her roommate had a pet. They
figured a dog wandered into the apartment after it happened. I guess
that was Bradley."
     "No doubt. We really didn't know what happened, either. Linda
couldn't remember. Blocked it out, I guess. But the dreams, the
nightmares... jarred something loose. A year after it happened, and a
few months after the dreams started, she remembered a face, and some
of the details.
     "Seems she walked in on someone robbing her place. She started
screaming, and he cut her up and left her for dead. She described the
face to us, but none of us thought we'd ever seen the guy.
     "Then, a month ago, we're all sitting downtown, and he walks
right past us on the sidewalk. Linda freaked. We had to get her back
home and calm her down. It was Chamelle Cooper.
     "We decided right then and there that we had to find Mr. Cooper
and extract some retribution. We hung around where we had seen him,
and sure enough, he showed up again. We followed him enough to figure
out where he lived and where he went every day, and went and told
Linda what we wanted to do." Hugh was watching him again, his
expression carefully neutral, but his eyes alive with conflicting
emotions. "It was Linda who killed him, Hugh. Linda who ripped his
throat out."
     Hugh stood and walked up the riverbank. He stopped by a river
birch and picked at the flaky bark before turning back to Rowland.
     "Yeah, well, I figured as much. But that doesn't make it any
more right."
     "What would have happened if we'd done it your way, Hugh?"
     "My way? My way he'd have been arrested and had his day in
court. They probably could have placed him at the scene. Then he goes
to jail for attempted murder."
     "And how do you think we'd do in court, Hugh? You think the
prosecutor'd put Linda on the stand? And what would she say? That
she'd be dead if it wasn't for this werewolf that bit her and turned
her into one? That'd look real good."
     Hugh threw down the pieces of bark. "There had to be some way to
go to court without mentioning werewolves. You can't just outright
kill him. What if Linda had been wrong? There's a system for this."
     "Oh, yeah, there's a system for this. How long have you watched
the system let Cooper go? How many times had he been arrested... Ten?
Fifteen? And never more than a year served, right? How long before he
was out again, even if he had been convicted?" Hugh stayed stubbornly
silent. Rowland moved next to him. "There wasn't any other way, Hugh.
Not for Linda. Not realistically. We talked this through- we couldn't
let him go, but there was nothing else we could do. What would you
have done?"
     Hugh looked up. "My job." he said bitterly.
     Rowland snorted. "Bullshit, your job. You think that means
anything anymore? Your job doesn't know how to deal with this
situation. Yor job would treat you no better than we did Cooper if
they knew what you are now." Rowland could see Hugh getting angrier.
He softened his tone. "The question is, Hugh, how are you going to
deal with this situation?"
     Hugh knew what he meant immediately. His head jerked around to
look at Rowland. "You're asking me to ignore a murder."
     "Not a murder. Justice-"
     "A murder! Screw the circumstances, it's still murder. I haven't
worked seven years in this stinking town, putting up with all the
petty bullshit, to throw it all away in one weekend."
     "Things are different now, Hugh."
     "The fuck they are!" he screamed. He stopped, making pushing
motions with his hands. "I've got to think about this. I- I've got to
go."
     He turned and slid down the bank, slogging across the shallow
river to the other side. Rowland watched him climb the opposite bank,
stalk past Leon, Bradley and Karen; and jam his legs into his jeans
without looking at any of them. Bradley started to reach for his
shoulder, but Hugh slapped the hand away and climbed into his car.
They watched silently as he drove off in a cloud of dust.
                                  
                             End Part I
                              INTERLUDE

     "You got the rest of the rent yet?"
     James DePascale stopped, his hand lightly resting on the
banister. The fingers curled around the metal rail and gripped it
very tightly before releasing. He turned to face the voice. "Like I
said yesterday, Mrs. Parrino, I'll have it in your box Monday
morning."
     Mrs. Parrino gripped the hem of her housecoat tighter. DePascale
scared her, especially his eyes. He was only a few inches taller than
her, but she had always been a tall woman. He was dressed now in
tight jeans and a thin shirt, his pale, almost white face framed by
straight black shoulder-length hair. His tone was friendly enough,
but as Mrs. Parrino looked into his dark, almost black eyes, she saw
what she always saw there- absolutely nothing. There was no emotion
whatsoever in those eyes.
     She amended that thought. She had seen emotion there before,
usually when she asked him for the rent he was always late in
providing. The she could see the very fires of Hell spring up behind
his pupils, see the veins in his neck stand out and watch his
forearms cord and knot. Then the fires would die and he would relax
again, and the eyes would once more be lifeless. She nodded, looking
away, and closed her door.
     DePascale was proud. Parrino was a horrible little bitch, but he
didn't let her get him angry. He was better at this now, much better.
Much better than when he killed his miserable cunt of a mother. He
let his mind peek at the memory, briefly, of when he'd finally
answered the call in his mind; and then shut it away, satisfied.
Then, he would have hacked the Parrino bitch's head clean from her
shoulders before she'd finished talking. Now he could face her
without even twitching. He was getting better.
     He whistled tunelessly as he unlocked the door to his apartment.
He kicked the piles of newspapers and dirty dishes and clothes out of
the way as he waded across the filthy room. He went into the bedroom,
flicking on the light switch as he passed, and tugged a wallet from
his back pocket; stopping in front of an old steelcase desk littered
with underwear and dirty drinking glasses. He removed a few bills
from the money section, frowning at their low denominations, and
dropped them on the desktop. He pulled a driver's license from behind
the little plastic window and tossed the wallet to the floor. He
grinned at the photo on the license, feeling the beginnings of an
erection. "You were good," he said to the picture; then squinted to
read the name. "Harold L. Wisenhut, even if you do have a stupid
name." He opened the center drawer of the desk and removed a hole
punch and some string. He punched a hole in the top of the license,
grunting at the effort required to pierce the thick plastic. He ran
the end of the string through the hole and tied it off; then measured
out a foot or so and snapped it.
     He walked to a corner of the room with the license, dragging a
metal folding chair behind him. He stood on the chair and tied the
other end of the string to the end of a piece of coat-hanger wire
that was suspended from the ceiling. He stepped off the chair and
stood back to admire the effect.
     The coat-hanger wire was part of a mobile hanging from the
ceiling; a collection of driver's licenses and wristwatches, a hank
of hair, a pair of eyeglasses. The licenses twisted slowly, showing
him old familiar faces and one new one. He bounded onto the bed in
the opposite corner of the room and felt for the pendant switch
hanging by the mattress. He clicked it on, illuminating the mobile in
the light from a hooded spotlight clipped to the edge of the desk. He
turned off the room lights and sat on the edge of the bed, slipping
his hand under the waistband of his jeans, and watched the lazily
rotating plastic cards wink reflections back at him. It had been a
good day, certainly. A very good day.

                            Begin Part II
                              CHAPTER 5

     Hugh opened his eyes slowly. He could see nothing other than
pure white until he passed a hand in front of his face. It was if he
was in a round, white room; except that even then there would be some
sensation of depth. Here could see no floor or walls; the horizon was
indefinate and undefined. He looked down at his feet and realized he
was completely naked. He appeared to be standing on nothing, yet he
could feel something under his feet, supporting him. He bent over
slowly and attempted to place his hand on the floor; but it continued
past the level of his feet without contacting anything. He reached
under his feet and felt their soles, and straightened quickly. He
slid one foot gingerly to the right. It was as if he was standing on
a glass floor; he could feel the surface supporting him, but he
couldn't see it.
     He turned slowly, looking for something, anything for his eyes
to rest on, and finding only unrelieved white nothingness. With no
point of reference, he wasn't even sure how many times he turned a
complete circle. He kept rotating, looking up and down, until he
faced a tall, well-muscled man.
     He blinked. It took a couple of seconds for the sight of the man
to register on his brain. When it did he stepped back involuntarily
and looked the man over. He was about six and a half feet tall, and
muscled like a professional body builder. His skin was very tan and
rippled as sleek muscles bunched and relaxed underneath. His face was
angular and heroic, as if chisled from dark wood. His eyes were
completely black; as was the mass of curly hair that framed the face.
The man was smiling slightly.
     Hugh cleared his throat. "Umm... Hi." he said halfheartedly. The
man remained impassive, still grinning at Hugh. Hugh reached out to
touch him, stopping a few inches from his skin and dropping his hand.
"Right," he said. He started to turn away when the man spoke.
     The voice was deep and very cold. "And who are you?" he asked,
with more than a hint of humor that added no warmth. Hugh looked
back.
     "Hugh. Hugh Jacobi. And you are?"
     Instead of answering, the man walked around Hugh in a slow
circle, looking him up and down. Hugh followed the man with his head,
feeling more than a little vulnerable in his skin. When the man was
facing him again he shook his head.
     "Well, then, Hugh," the man said, making Hugh's name sound like
a specimen under glass, "What are you?" The man quickly reached out a
hand and plunged it into Hugh's forehead.
     Hugh gasped and jumped back. He was changing before he began the
jump, and was in median form when he landed. The man stood and
crossed his arms, still grinning lopsidedly. "A werewolf! What a
surprise!" He shook his head and walked towards Hugh, who found
himself unable to move. "This town is lousy with werewolves, you know
that?" he said conversationally. "What else are you, eh?" He flicked
his hand out again.
     Hugh felt a twinge and bent double. As he straightened he saw
that he was in human form again, and dressed in his police uniform.
He looked back up at the man, who was resting his chin on one fist.
     "Now that is interesting. A cop. This town is lousy with them,
too." He extended a finger from the fist and pointed it at Hugh. "But
a were-cop, that's new. You look a little out of your element, Hugh.
Maybe we should transplant you? Call it a scientific experiment.
Reintroduce you to your native habitat." He pushed the finger forward
into Hugh's forehead and the whiteness faded to black. There was a
moment of dizziness and when Hugh blinked he found himself in the
middle of an empty parking lot.
     The lot was dimly lit by a pair of sodium-vapor street lights at
opposite corners. The cracked blacktop was littered with broken beer
bottles, scraps of paper, and tiny vials. A fetid breeze blew the
scraps about Hugh's feet and up against the stained brick and barred-
window facade of a liquor store. He looked up at the hand-painted
sign above the store and his heart sank. "Nellie B Package" it said.
He was standing in the middle of what the police called the "Iron
Triangle"... the single most dangerous piece of ground in the city
for a cop. Cruisers didn't come down Nellie B Avenue in less than
pairs. Even then the damage to the cars from thrown bottles and the
occasional stray round kept police presence to a minimum. The city
had written the Iron Triangle off as a loss and let it fend for
itself.
     Hugh turned and started walking quickly to the end of the lot.
He had at least seven city blocks in any direction before he'd be out
of danger. His boots crunched on a broken beer bottle, echoing off
the store front; answered by a crunch from the edge of the lot. He
stopped.
     From the darkness at the edges of the lot materialized dark,
vague shapes. They were little more than shadowy blurs, but each held
a crude weapon... a broken bottle, a long knife, a cheap handgun.
Hugh looked around slowly as his right hand slid towards the
thumbreak on his holster.
     His hand slid across the smooth synthetic of the holster and
into its interior.
     He looked down. The holster was empty.
     He frantically fumbled across his duty belt. The radio holster,
pepper spray holder, baton ring, flashlight case, handcuffs... all
were empty. He swallowed and straightened to face the shapes that
were slowly closing in.
     "Hey, Hugh, need some help?"
     The voice had come from behind. Hugh spun around to see Ryan
standing next to his cruiser, its blue strobes flashing, casually
tossing a side-handle baton from hand to hand. Ranked behind him was
every officer in the department, standing next to squad cars or blue
and white police vans. Hugh jogged towards them as a wave of relief
washed over him.
     "Holy shit, Ryan, it's good to see you. I don't know how I got-"
He stopped as another officer walked up behind Ryan and put his hand
on Ryan's shoulder. The face was that of the muscular man. The man
waved the fingers of his other hand at Hugh, and then drew his pistol
from his gun belt and casually fired a single round into the side of
Ryan's head. Ryan's brains and blood flecked the cruiser's windows as
he flopped to the pavement and lay twitching.
     Hugh gaped as the man grinned at him and then turned and leveled
the pistol at the ranks of officers behind. The men and women stared
complacently ahead. Hugh began to run for the man, but his arms were
caught by the wraithlike forms who had come up behind him. He
struggled against the clutching hands that pulled him into the crowd;
barely feeling knives that cut through his shirt, body armor, and
skin like paper; screaming at the man who was calmly shooting the
rigid officers one by one in the head...

                             --==++==--

     "Jesus Christ." Hugh lay on the tangled sheets and slowly
unclenched his fists. He wiped the sweat from his face and panted
until the shrill buzzing of his alarm clock forced him to roll over
and hit the off button. He sat on the edge of the bed and thought
about breakfast, but decided against it despite the rumblings of his
stomach. The clock read 1:30 pm. He had forty-five minutes to shave,
shower, and dress for work. He forced himself to stand and stumbled
into the bathroom.
     The mirror showed him sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes. He ran a
hand over the three-day stubble on his face. "Starting to look like a
werewolf, hah-hah." he mumbled. He began the daily routine of
fighting with the shower knob, getting the temperature just right,
and adjusted the spray to a needle fineness. He leaned against the
shower wall and let the water prick the back of his neck, and thought
about the past several days.
     Saturday evening he'd driven aimlessly until after dark, and
then pulled into the entranceway to the University of Georgia's State
Botanical Gardens. The gates were locked after dark, but a friendly
University police officer had shown him how to operate the keypad to
the electronic gate after a long foot chase through the grounds once
several months ago. He closed the gate behind him and drove with his
lights off past the caretaker's house and down a dirt service road to
the river. He walked along the river until he came to a large boulder
perched above the water and sat, motionless, until long after dawn.
He walked stiffly back to his car and drove some more, ending up
stopped at Milledge and Hancock; where he'd first seen Rowland and
the others... and Cooper.
     The yellow and black police tape was long gone, but there was
still a patch of torn lawn where Cooper had fallen. There were two
small circles of orange spray paint, the kind used for marking tire
positions in accident investigations, indicating where the ejected
brass casings from his gun had landed. He squatted by the tear in the
grass and crumbled dirt with his fingers and thought about Rowland
and Linda and Cooper. He thought about his job, court cases he'd won
and lost, and the justice of murder. He left when the owners of the
house next door began peering through their blinds at him.
     He set about cleaning his duplex when he returned to it. He put
on loud music and tried to ignore replaying the weekend in his head,
especially his argument with Rowland. He finished the cleaning job in
the afternoon and went to a grocery store to re-stock his shelves. He
bought several different cuts of meat, raising the eyebrow of the
checkout clerk. When he returned home he drug the grill out from the
patio and started to light it, then stopped and considered the steak
resting on a plate. He pressed down on it with a finger, raising a
pool of blood, and gingerly sniffed the finger. Impulsively, he
closed the lid of the grill and carried the plate back inside,
setting it inside the microwave oven. He heated it for two minutes
and gobbled the steaming red slab down in several huge bites. He had
two more smaller cuts of beef in this fashion before feeling sated.
     He closed all of the blinds in the house and sat in the middle
of his living room floor with a bottle of canadian whiskey and
thought about Rowland's arguments some more. After several drinks he
clumsily stripped off his clothes and changed to median. He found,
much to his dismay, that the sudden burst of metabolic activity in
changing burned off a good deal of the alcohol in his system and left
him with an instant hangover. He wondered why his wonderful new
metabolism didn't take care of the byproducts of his drinking as
well. "Something to ask Bradley" he said to himself; and then his
thoughts returned to the argument and he began to drink straight from
the bottle. His median form needed quite a lot of whiskey to achieve
the desired effect. He left the empty bottle on the floor and
collapsed onto his bed sometime late Sunday night.
     He now lathered half-heartedly and rinsed off. He wanted badly
to talk to Rowland about last night's dream. He wanted to run through
the woods with the pack, to feel the electric thrill of leaping onto
his prey. He didn't want to spend his day in a car, dealing with
people who were unable to deal with their problems and expected him
to.
     He wanted to tell Rowland that he was beginning to understand,
and might be willing to forgive what they did.
     He dressed quickly and drove to work. It was darkly overcast
outside, a chill wind buffeting the car with short gusts. He decided
that he'd visit the apartment that the pack shared downtown, over a
store. He'd talk with them again. Just the thought of seeing them
again erased some of the hangover and eased the clenching around his
heart.
     The Pack. The word seemed to need to be capitolized in his mind.
He'd never thought of the concept before. He'd always gotten along
with his parents, but they'd never been especially close. He saw them
at Christmas and Thanksgiving and talked to them on the phone every
other month. He had few close friends... now that he thought about
it, he had no friends that he'd ever dream about telling he was a
werewolf. He hadn't had a girlfriend for almost two years and had
lost touch with the old one. He'd never really belonged to a group of
people that he felt this close to, that he'd trust his life to
blindly and unhesitatingly. Even the bond that develops among police
officers wasn't as strong as what he felt for the Pack. He wanted to
be with them forever, even given his strong feelings about what
they'd done.
     A few fat drops spattered the parking lot as Hugh parked at the
station. He entered the back door and headed for his locker. He
noticed the milk-bones were gone from the front and grinned. A couple
of officers clapped him on the shoulder as he dressed and asked him
how he was feeling. He woofed at them and they laughed and left. He
paused before putting on his body armor, wondering if the velcro
stays would give should he have to change forms, and then realized if
he changed while at work he might as well turn in his badge. He
shrugged the bulky vest on and finished dressing.
     The shift briefing room was muggy as usual. Hugh turned in his
leave forms to Lieutenant Banscome at a podium in the front of the
room, who took them with a grunt and continued filling out the shift
assignment form. Hugh sat down and greeted the other shift officers,
retelling the story of the wolves- dogs, he had to remind himself,
dogs to them- twice before Banscome cleared his throat and started
shift briefing.
     "First, let's welcome Hugh back from the ranks of the dead, none
the worse for wear after his little dogfight." He glanced over the
rims of his reading glasses as the officers cheered and made woofing
noises. Hugh grinned and accepted the milk bones tossed at him by the
sergeant. Banscome cleared his throat again. "All right, enough.
Hugh, you'll be east, zone four, vehicle ninety-three two-seventeen
again tonight. Try and stay out of the gutter, ok?" He shuffled paper
while waiting for the chuckles to subside again.
     "Day shift took six domestic, four assault and one armed robbery
reports today. The domestics were the from the usual suspects. The
armed robbery was the Chevron on Baxter. Perp was a white male,
average height, wearing a ski mask, carrying a chrome revolver. He
fired one shot at the clerk, which missed, and fled on foot towards
Parkview, what a surprise. The rest is the usual breaking and
entering, etcetera etcetera. Remember the lookouts for the peeper in
five-points. Bishop!"
     "Here."
     "East, zone three, vehicle two fifty-five. Lambert!"
     "Here."
     "West, zone one, vehicle four seventy-one. Massey!"
     Hugh waited through the rest of the roll-call and filed out with
the rest, picking up the keys to his squad from the pegboard on the
back wall. He begged off eating lunch with another officer and exited
the building before Banscombe could ask for his report on Cooper's
death.
     His shoulder mike crackled as the rain began in earnest. "Go
ahead" he shouted into it while running for his squad car. Central's
slightly irritated voice advised him to be en route to one half of a
domestic dispute, ambulance already en route. He fumbled his keys
into the door lock and dropped into the driver's seat, tossing his
briefcase of forms and ticket book into the seat next to him. The
report form he'd started was soaked through.
     It was Monday, after all.

                             --==++==--

     Hugh rubbed his eyes and glared at the digital clock on his
dashboard. 9:41, it winked at him in flourescent blue digits. He'd
already used his thirty-minute lunch break to check on the pack's
apartment, finding no one home and leaving a note taped to the door.
He'd driven past it twice more since then, not stopping as no lights
shone in their windows. He'd spent the first half of his shift
tracking down the other half of the domestic complaint he'd responded
to, finally finding the man in a dank topless bar and arresting him;
much to the amusement of the bar's other patrons. By the time he'd
finished the processing paperwork and gotten the man to the jail, it
was after seven. He took his lunch break and went to find Rowland,
only to have that cut short to respond to a multi-car accident in his
zone. He spent the next two hours directing traffic while a traffic-
unit car and trainee took the convoluted accident report.
     He shrugged now, trying to scratch the spots on his back
irritated by the rainwater that seeped past the neck of his raingear
and behind his vest. He voiced a silent prayer that he'd get through
the rest of the shift with no major incidents, but the incessant
crackle of radio traffic as officers were dispatched to one violent
crime after another dampened his hopes. The citizens of Athens had
decided to spend Monday evening beating the crap out of one another.
     He turned down Chase, on the western edge of his patrol zone,
and thought about camping out near the apartment until someone showed
up or it got to be too late. He started to pull into a convenience
store parking lot for a fresh Coke when his radio crackled again.
     "Central, twenty-three forty-nine" the dispatcher called. Hugh
relaxed. 2349 was Franklin Bishop, in East zone three tonight. The
call wasn't for him. He pulled into a parking spot and started to
turn off the car when Bishop acknowledged Central and the dispatcher
replied, in a strained voice.
     "Twenty-three forty-nine, be en-route to one thirty-five Mandy
Drive, respond to a report of a signal seven in the yard of one
thirty-five; EMS and a supervisor are en-route." Hugh put the car in
reverse and backed out of the space. A signal seven was a dead body.
He knew what would come next- they'd need any available officer to
secure the scene until the detectives could come and take over. Mandy
Drive was on the eastern edge of his patrol zone and was shared with
Bishop's zone. He had the microphone out of it's holder even before
Central spoke again. "Twenty-two eighty-nine, en-route for signal
sixteen from Chase and Prince." He thumbed the strobes and siren to
life and sped out of the parking lot.
     It took him five minutes of threading through downtown traffic
to reach Mandy Drive. An ambulance had arrived just before him and
the EMTs were clustered around a spot on the lawn of a small wood-
frame house. Hugh trotted up to Bishop, a heavy-set dark-skinned man
who was always trying to grow a moustache but never quite succeeding.
Bishop had started with the department shortly after Hugh, and was
usually outspoken and loud. Tonight he looked at Hugh with widened
eyes and a dazed expression.
     "What's up, Frank? Hugh asked, trying to peer around the
paramedics. Bishop's voice was unsteady and Hugh looked back at him.
     "She's dead, man, nothing lives after that. She ain't got a neck
no more. I `bout puked when I pulled up." He shuddered and looked
back at the knot of white-shirted men. They were beginning to
straighten up and one of them turned to the two officers. He looked
pale.
     "She's dead-on-scene. No vitals when we got here and no way to
resurrect. We're not gonna transport, you might as well call the
coroner." Hugh nodded and looked down at the body, surrounded now by
scraps of torn open gauze bandages and bags of saline. He started
forward when he saw the body's face.
     She was a young adult, around college age, and pale-skinned. Her
long, auburn hair was tangled and touseled around her head; her blue
eyes were wide open and sightless. She looked so very much like Linda
that Hugh made an involuntary noise before realizing that she wasn't.
One of the paramedics had started to intubate her airway before
discovering it would be futile. The edge of the white plastic tube
was visible just below her chin.
     Her neck was torn open. Wads of blood-soaked gauze littered the
grass that was already stained with her blood. Her head was cocked at
a right angle to the rest of her body, barely connected by a few
threads of sinew. There were several long, parallel gouges across her
chest and through the thin nightshirt she was wearing. Hugh followed
the blood trail from her body across the grass to the open door of
the house. She'd been drug onto the lawn from inside.
     Hugh looked back at Bishop, who was ushering the EMTs off of the
lawn. He looked again at the open door of the house as another squad
car roared up. Bishop and the new officer walked over to him as he
began unsnapping his holster. "You cleared the house yet?" He asked,
without looking away from the door.
     "Hell, no, man. Not by myself."
     "Had to ask." He looked over at the new officer, a nervous-
looking male who Hugh knew had only been out of training for two
months. "Hawker," he said, reading the man's nameplate, "Watch the
front, and keep anyone from coming in." He nodded to Bishop, who
sighed and drew his pistol. Hugh knew they should wait for another
unit to cover the rear, but a nameless dread forming in the pit of
his stomach pushed him to search. Hawker was speaking nervously into
his shoulder mike, asking Central to clear the channel of unnecessary
traffic. Hugh and Bishop advanced to the front steps, warily eying
the doorway and the large, curtained window next to it. Bishop cut
his eyes from Hugh to the door and back again, indicating that Hugh
should go first. "Thanks" Hugh mouthed silently, and swung around the
doorframe in a crouch, pistol extended in front of him and sweeping
across the room as he entered.
     The entry room was also the living area of the small house. The
blood trail was startlingly bright against the light wooden floor.
Hugh quickly scanned the room, noting the only door leading into the
interior and a large blood smear across the far wall. He whispered
"Clear" and started towards the far door as Bishop crossed the floor
behind him.
     He glanced across the room again, this time taking in the
disheveled cushins of the couch, the lamp that was knocked to the
floor, and the large smeared pool of blood in the center of the
floor. The couch and the wall behind it were flecked with large drops
of blood. He noticed that the blood on the floor was smeared in a
pattern of words....
     Bishop looked over his shoulder at Hugh. "What the fuck does
that mean?" he whispered. Hugh just stared.
     The smears formed the words "Not Linda-Not Yet".

                             --==++==--

     Hugh wiped sweat from his forehead and leaned back against the
door frame, the slide of his service pistol nearly touching his nose
as he held it up. He clenched his eyes shut for a moment and drew a
ragged breath, tensing himself. He pivoted on his right foot and
swiveled around the door frame, crouching as he did so, sweeping the
room with the front sight of the pistol, stopping on the standing
figure. It was the muscular man, and he was standing over the body of
the murdered girl. Hugh straightened slightly, extending his arms,
aiming his pistol at the center of the man's chest. The girl's body
was horribly eviscerated, her abdominal cavity empty and her organs
spread around her corpse in a ring. The man smirked at Hugh; folding
his arms, bloody up to the elbows, across his powerful chest.
     "Freeze! Don't fucking move!" Hugh screamed at him. The man's
grin grew wider and he suddenly flung his hands out and jerked
forward. Hugh instinctively pulled the trigger of his gun, only to
have the hammer fall on an empty chamber with a loud click. The man
laughed loudly, shaking his head as Hugh went through the jammed-gun
drill- slapping the butt of the magazine with his left hand and then
pulling the slide back- to find the slide locked open on an empty
magazine.
     "Sucks, don't it?" the man said, and laughed again at the look
of rage on Hugh's face. "You can't win this, none of you can. All you
can do is shake your little fists and wait for me to get around to
you. I promise when it's your turn I'll be quick... you've been fun
to fuck with." He raised a hand to his face and sucked the blood off
of his index finger while crinkling his eyes at Hugh.
     Hugh started forward, but caught himself. It's a dream, he
thought, I'm having another nightmare. He's fucking with my head,
he's not really here. He deliberately thumbed the magazine release
with his right hand, dropping the empty to the wooden floor, while
unsnapping the carrier on his belt and pulling out a fresh one. This
one will have rounds in it, he thought, because I damn well want it
to. He continued to stare at the man while slapping the new magazine
home. The man continued to lick the blood from his fingers while
grinning at Hugh, unconcerned by his actions. Hugh levered the slide
release down and was rewarded with the distinctive shh-CLACK of a
round being chambered. The man stopped licking his finger, his grin
fading, just as Hugh raised the gun again and carefully fired eleven
times, until the slide once more locked empty. The rounds struck the
man in his upper chest, leaving dark holes in his shirt, and making
him stagger backwards. He looked incredulously at the wounds, and for
a moment he shrank in size. Hugh glimpsed a five-foot, eleven inch
tall man, moderately muscled with straight, black shoulder-length
hair; who looked back at him with disbelief and the first hint of
fear. Then he expanded, and Hugh was once again confronted with the
taller figure.
     "You son of a bitch" the man said "How did-" He shook his head
and a look of intense rage replaced the disbelief on his face. He
bent over and charged Hugh head first. Hugh spun out of the man's way
and toppled over, out of balance.
     He landed on something soft and springy instead of the hardwood
floor. He looked down and saw that he was sitting in the thick grass
of a hillside. He looked up, and tried to jump to his feet; but thick
vines sprang from the turf and wrapped themselves around his wrists,
ankles and waist. He thrashed for a minute, but the creepers were too
strong. He looked at the awful landscape around him and began
bellowing, over the strewn corpses dressed in police blue uniforms
drenched in dark blood, and the five furry human-like bodies laid in
a rosette at his feet, each missing a head: "Wake up! Wake Up! WAKE
UP!!"

                             --==++==---

     Hugh's shout echoed off of his bedroom walls as he sprang
upright, throwing his comforter to the floor with a sweep of his arm.
The springy matress was treacherous footing and he fell to his hands
and knees. He fought to focus his vision as he panted, rolling over
onto his back after a couple of seconds. "Fuck!" he sighed, and
stared at the ceiling until his breathing slowed. He rolled to the
edge of the bed and stood up, looking down as he became aware of a
constriction around his waist. He had changed to median sometime
during the dream, splitting the legs of his shorts and stretching the
elastic of the waistband to its limits. He struggled to pull the
tattered remains off for a minute before muttering "Stupid" under his
breath and changing back to human, where they fell off of their own
accord. He shambled into the bathroom and ran some water into the
palm of his hand, splashing it on his face.
     He'd gone by the Pack's apartment again after work; late because
he'd had to stay at the murder scene for an hour after shift, keeping
the curious neighbors back and telling the crime scene detectives
what he'd seen when he first went in. The apartment had been dark
still; and Hugh's worries for Linda's safety turned to jealous anger,
as he envisioned them still roaming the woods, carefree. He sat on
the stoop of their building for an hour, his anger changing places
with his concern several times before he left for his own place. He
laid awake in his bed until after dawn, sleeping poorly even before
the dream; and now it was-
     His alarm clock announced its presence shrilly and Hugh ran
across the hallway into his room and slapped it until it silenced.
Now it was time to go to work. He felt as tired as he had when he'd
finally fallen asleep that morning, but he had no intention of
calling in sick to work. He sleepily started the shower and arranged
his clothes.
     The day was bright and clear, in contrast to Hugh's mood; and
much cooler after the rain had passed. The radio station he listened
to in his car was full of news reports detailing the murder scene the
night before, ending with the ubiquitous, dry observation that the
Athens-Clarke County Police had no leads at the present time and were
continuing their investigation. He carefully avoided the television
news van parked at the front entrance, its crew filming "cutaways"
that would be spliced in with other taped footage in the studio.
     Ryan stopped him as he was changing into his uniform. "Hey,
Hugh... I heard it was a pretty gruesome scene last night." His face
betrayed the lightness of his tone. Hugh fought down the dream-memory
of Ryan's brains hitting the window of his cruiser when he looked up.
     "Yup. Somebody cut her head almost off, and sliced up her front.
They didn't find a knife anywhere, but I heard the dicks say it
looked like a short, curved blade." Even as he said it, there was
doubt niggling the back of his head that a knife had done the damage.
He wadded up his t-shirt and threw it in the bottom of his locker.
"Whoever it was is a sick fucker." he said with more conviction, and
slammed his locker shut; deliberately walking past Ryan to the shift-
briefing room. He could tell Ryan wanted to ask about the writing on
the floor, but refrained when he saw Hugh's mood.
     The shift-briefing room was quiet, as the officers present were
silently reading the media release printed that morning detailing the
murder. Banscome was already at the podium, and looked up when Hugh
entered the room. "Hugh. Lieutenant Lustig wants to talk to you, so
go by detectives sometime today." He raised his hand as Hugh opened
his mouth, and continued. "I know, you already talked to them last
night. He wants to see you and Bishop for some reason." Hugh nodded
and sat down.
     "Speaking of which," Banscome said, "Has anyone seen Bishop
today?" The assembled officers looked around; a couple shook their
heads silently. Hugh cleared his throat. "He said he wasn't feeling
too good after last night. He didn't say anything to me about calling
in sick though."
     Banscome looked at Hugh over the tops of his reading glasses,
and then flicked a hand at the man standing next to him. "Sergeant,
go call him and see if he's coming in or not." The officer
disappeared into an adjoining office. Banscome took off his glasses
and addressed the room.
     "As you're all doubtless aware, there was a murder last night
close to the end of shift. Mary Patricia Martin, white female aged
twenty-two, attacked by unknown assailant or assailants in her house
at one three five Mandy drive. The coroner put the time of death
around nine thirty, so her attacker may have still been in the area
when we got the call. She was reported by a neighbor who saw her
laying on the lawn around nine forty. The neighbors, of course,
noticed nothing unusal prior to this." He flipped over a page in the
bound passalong book on the podium and continued.
     "She was attacked with some sort of short, curved knife.
Dectives established a walking pattern from some footprints in the
yard and in the blood pool in the house, and from this they estimate
the attacker to be between five-nine and six foot in height, and
around one seventy to two hundred in weight. They think he's very
strong, and the cuts on her neck indicate he's right-handed; and he
was barefoot at the time of the attack."
     He took off his reading glasses and looked at the assembled
faces. Hugh thought he looked tired. "The detectives think that this
is not his first murder, and they don't think it'll be his last. They
say that judging from the nature and extent of the wounds, and the
fact that the killer left a taunting message on the floor in the
victim's blood, that he may be a serial killer." There was a low but
audible groan shared in the room.
     "They have not released this to the public, so don't anyone go
shooting off their mouths. They don't want to start a panic at this
point when they've got so little to go on; but they want us to be
aware of the possible description and the fact that he's likely to do
it again, so keep your eyes open out there. If we have another one,
they want us to stay out of the crime scene as much as possible- they
know we have to check for survivors and perps, but they don't want us
stepping on any clues."
     The sergeant walked back into the room. "No answer" he said.
Banscome put his reading glassed back on and looked down at the
podium. "Nice day to sleep late. He lives out on Pineforest, on the
west side, right?" The sergeant nodded affirmative. "Swan, you're
zone eight, get his address from dispatch and go by there and wake
his ass up." He flipped throught the passalong book, shutting it and
looking up again. "Other than that, there's not much else. It's area
rotation day today. Jacobi!"
     Hugh straightened. "Here."
     "Corporal Lumly is still out sick, so you're west area, zone
rover. Franklin!"
     Hugh started to gather his clipboard and briefcase. Zone rover
meant he was a backup unit, assigned to all of the zones of the west
side of the city; an assignment usually reserved for more experienced
corporals or sergeants. Banscome must be wanting me to put in for
corporal, he thought. Normally he would feel honored that the
lieutenant was placing such faith in his experience; but now job
advancement really didn't seem to matter.
     He stopped with a jolt. West area... that meant he'd have to
leave his area to visit the Pack's apartment; something he wasn't
supposed to do. He waited until after shift briefing was over and
approached the podium.
     "Uh, Lieutenant?" Banscome looked up from his paperwork.
     "Hugh. You finish those reports? The Captain is on my ass about
`em."
     "Uh, yeah..." he set his briefcase down and opened it, taking
the reports he'd written after shift last night and setting them on
the podium. "Uh, I'd like to stay east, sir... I- well, I prefer the
area. Sir." he said uncomfortably.
     Banscome regarded him silently. "You meet some girl who lives in
east? She can wait until after shift."
     "Uh, no sir, that's not it. It's just that... well, west is all
traffic, and I'd like to stay where the action is."
     "Uh huh. You've been here long enough to know that the Chief
doesn't want road officers staying in any one area too long. Today's
rotation day, so you rotate. That's straight from upstairs to you,
OK?" He looked back to his paperwork. "Besides, she can meet you for
lunch somewhere in west. Dismissed."
     Hugh stood dumbly for a second before collecting his things and
heading for his squad car. Shit, shit shit! If I didn't need this
paycheck, he thought; and considered how the Pack got along on odd
jobs and deer meat. Well... Headquarters was on the very eastern edge
of town; a subject of fierce debate amongst west area citizens who
felt they were being abandoned. He'd have to pass through most of
east to get to west; he'd hit the apartment on his way there. With
any luck, nothing major would happen for a while, and his absence
wouldn't be noticed. He quickened his step across the parking lot to
his car.
     He noticed their dented Nova as soon as he turned behind the
apartment building. Their car was here; it was a good sign. He felt
his pulse rise as he parked the squad and entered the building. He
mounted the stairs two at a time and stopped outside their door, hand
raised to knock, and stopped. His fear of rejection, remembered anger
over the argument, and concern for Linda flashed through his mind in
the second or two he stood paused outside their door, and then he
knocked softly.
     He heard the floor creak as someone walked to the door.
Rowland's voice called quietly from the other side of the wall. "Who
is it?"
     Hugh's voice squeaked a little. "It's Hugh. I- I wanna talk."
     Silence for several heartbeats as Hugh's stomach knotted. Then
the sound of a deadbolt being turned, and the door opened to reveal
Rowland, wearing a pair of trousers and a knowing look. "Well, come
in, then."
     Hugh took off his uniform cap and crumpled it in his hands as he
entered. The apartment was sparsely furnished; a recovered couch and
battered coffee table occupying the center of the floorspace. A
couple of overstuffed chairs sat next to the window, overlooking the
street below. The walls were decorated with a couple of Metallica and
Nine Inch Nails posters- most likely Leon's, he thought- and,
surprisingly, a topographic map of the county.
     Rowland shut the door softly and motioned to the couch.
"Siddown. Hungry?" Hugh shook his head and sat on the edge of the
couch, dropping the cap on the coffee table. "Leon and Karen are
working at a stop-and-rob out North Avenue. Linda and Bradley are
asleep- they've got the night shift at The Grill, downtown. I'm
between appointments." He grinned and drug one of the chairs around
to face Hugh. "We don't stay in any one place long, anyway. Thinking
about heading north... find the snow." He sat down heavily in the
chair and put his feet on the table. "How `bout you? You think about
things lately? What've you come up with?"
     Hugh rested his elbows on his knees and looked at the table.
"Well," he said slowly, "I can accept that what you've done is done.
That doesn't mean I like it any more than I did-" he looked up "-but
there's no sense in dwelling on it. It's past. Vigilantism doesn't
sit well with my badge, but the circumstances were kind of...
special. Anyway.. I'm not sure how well my badge sits with me any
more."
     Rowland met his gaze silently. Hugh looked away after a few
moments of inspection. Rowland drew a deep breath. "Well, then," he
said "there's no point in beating it to death right now. But sometime
you've got to decide how bad what we did grates on you. It shouldn't
be a raw spot. That would be bad for the Pack."
     There was another uncomfortable silence before Hugh cleared his
throat. "So. We're thinking about heading north, huh?"
     Rowland grinned. "Well, we kind of put things on hold for now.
We haven't really talked it over with you, after all. We didn't leave
before this because Linda needed familiar surroundings." His grin
faded. "Maybe a move will stop these dreams, too."
     Hugh started. "Shit! I forgot. Linda... has she had dreams the
last couple of nights?"
     Rowland looked at him oddly. "No, she's been sleeping during the
day. They don't usually come during the day. What's up?"
     Hugh related his last two dreams and the details of the murder
quickly. Rowland's face went grim at the mention of the killer's
message. "Anyway," Hugh said, "The killer knows who we are, and
apparently knows our names. The guy I've seen in the last two dreams
knows who we are, too; and knows we're weres. I can't help but think
they're interconnected, somehow. I know it sounds like a bad horror
movie."
     Rowland plucked at his lower lip and stared over Hugh's
shoulder. "Yeah," he said slowly, "it sounds unlikely. But we're
pretty unlikely ourselves." He refocused. "Did you recognize the guy
at all? When he was big and when he changed for that second after you
shot him?"
     Hugh shook his head. "No. Doesn't ring any bells. Well,
something tells me I've seen him somewhere before; but I see so many
mug shots and so many people every day, they tend to run together
unless they're really distinctive. I think I'd remember the muscular
guy and the smaller one was so plain, he could be anyone." He sighed.
"Why's he picking on us, anyway? Because we're weres? How would he
know in the first place? Anyone ya'll have really pissed off before
the dreams started?"
     "No one that I can remember. We kind of keep to ourselves. If he
is the same person as the killer, why has he suddenly decided to
kill, rather than fuck with our dreams? If they're two different
people... I can't see two people. What are the odds on two unrelated
people having it out for us like this?"
     "What are the odds on six werewolves living in Athens, Georgia?
The whole thing is pretty fucked."
     Bradley wandered into the room, running a hand through sleep-
touseled hair. "Hugh. You're back." he mumbled sleepily. "What's
goin' on?"
     "I think we've got a problem," Rowland began. He was interrupted
by Hugh's radio. Hugh started to turn it down but stopped when he
heard the fear in the voice on it. "Tuh.. Twenty-two seventy-one,
Central! I need EMS at-" Hugh held up a hand to silence Rowland while
he waited for the voice to come on again- "At thirteen ninety-two
Pineforest! Officer down! Ten-eighteen!" Hugh jumped to his feet and
grabbed his cap off the table. 10-18 meant hurry. "Gotta go. I'll be
back as soon as I-" he stopped as Banscome's voice came over the
radio.
     "Two seventy one, which officer is down?" There was a long pause
before the reply. "Fuh... Frank! Three forty nine!"
     Hugh froze with his hand on the doorknob. Bishop... 1392
Pineforest was Bishop's house. "Shit!"
     "What, Hugh?" Rowland asked. Bradley stood in the hallway
looking confused.
     "Bishop... the officer down, I was his backup at the murder
scene. He didn't show up for work this morning. Two seventy... the
officer on the radio, he went to Bishop's house on Pineforest to see
if he'd overslept."
     Rowland caught on after a second. "You think... the dream
killer, he..."
     Hugh nodded. "I dunno, but I got a very bad feeling. Come with
me... if it's nothing, I'll bring you back."
     "What killer?" Bradley asked asked as Rowland brushed past him
to the bedrooms. He looked at Hugh after getting no answer. "Hugh,
what killer? Murder?"
     Hugh opened his mouth and made a small noise. "It... Shit, I'll
tell you when we get back. It's complicated." Bradley started to ask
Rowland again when he came back through, pulling on a shirt and
jacket, but Rowland cut him short. "Bradley, watch Linda. We'll be
back as soon as we can." The door shut and he was alone in the room.
     "Well, fuck." he said, and turned back to the bedrooms.
                                  
                              CHAPTER 6

     Hugh was doing fifty when he crossed Hawthorne under a red
light, thumbing the air-horn setting of his siren frantically. He
swerved around a Lincoln that was stopped in the middle of the
intersection with a brief flirt of the rear end as the sideways
motion overcame the tires' traction. Rowland kept one hand pressed
against the dash and the other cutching the seatback. "I thought you
guys were supposed to stop at red lights." he complained.
     "Nervous?" Hugh asked, darting though the space left by two cars
frantically diving for the shoulder in front of him and going around
the others in the oncoming lane.
     "These things don't have passenger air-bags, do they?"
     Hugh grunted and fought the car into a hard left, power-sliding
the rear end again as he accellerated through the residential
neighborhood. He could see two squads parked against the curb ahead
of him and brought the car to a stop alongside theirs. He switched
off the siren and put a hand on Rowland's arm. "Stay by the car... I
haven't signed you in as a ride-along yet. Better to stay low."
Rowland nodded and Hugh jumped out.
     He could hear the ambulance that had been following them turning
into the neighborhood, its driver unwilling to duplicate Hugh's more
dramatic entrance. A few of the neighbors huddled in a knot across
the street, watching Hugh sprint across the yard, one had on the butt
of his pistol, to the open front door. He could smell the bright,
coppery odor of blood from the doorway. He triggered his shoulder
mike. "Twenty-two eighty-nine, ten twenty-three, Pineneedle. Seventy-
one, where are you?" He heard his voice echoed from the kitchen, and
Swan's timerous "In here." He crossed the small living space and
rounded the corner to the kitchen.
     Bishop was upright against the far wall, his arms spread out,
his hands pinned to the plasterboard by kitchen knives. His head
lolled loose. He had been eviscerated, his organs heaped on the floor
in a pile. The kitchen floor was covered in his blood. Swan and Ryan
were standing in the opposite corner; Ryan dialing his cellular phone
and Swan clutching himself across his midsection. Hugh exhaled
loudly.
     Ryan looked at him, the phone to his ear. "The blood's not that
old," he said, "A little tacky. Maybe an hour."
     "Juh- just before I got here. Jesus." Swan said.
     Hugh's stomach knotted. He laid a hand on Swan's shoulder and
turned from Bishop's body to survey the room. A couple of plates had
been knocked from the countertop to the floor. The refridgerator was
at a thirty degree angle to the wall, the door open. A half-gallon
container of milk had fallen from inside and lay on the floor, its
contents mixing obscenely with the blood. On the wall opposite the
body-
     On the wall was written, in scrawled, bloody capitols, "ME=7
WEREWOLVES=0".
     Hugh turned to face the wall completely. He was dimly aware of
Ryan finishing his phone conversation and standing behind him. "What
the fuck is that?" Ryan asked rhetorically. Hugh reached out and
almost touched the blood streaks, and then dropped his hand. A little
below the 7 was a small hole.
     He backed up slowly, motioning Ryan aside. Scattered across the
wall were other small holes, ten in all. He looked down at the floor,
and immediately spotted a small brass cylinder winking against the
baseboard. He looked back at Ryan.
     "Where's his gun?" he asked. Ryan blinked. Hugh pointed at the
wall. "His gun. He shot at something. There's cases on the floor." He
turned and started looking under the dishes on the counter.
     "Hugh." Ryan said. Hugh ignored him and kept searching. "Hugh.
Hugh, Banscome's on his way. He said to back out. Hugh-" Ryan grabbed
Hugh's arm and Hugh snatched it away, his eyes wild. Ryan dropped his
hand, recognizing the look from the locker room. "Hugh, come on. We
searched the place, the guy's not here. The crime scene van'll be
here any minute, let's let them handle it. Come on." Hugh nodded
slowly after a second, and walked out; with Ryan and Swan close
behind.
     There was a sizable crowd outside, standing in clots around the
squad cars and on the street, whispering and pointing. "Where do the
come from so fast?" Ryan breathed, and went to talk to the EMT's.
     Hugh stood on the stoop and stared at the tops of the trees
across the street and breathed deeply, snorting to clear the smell of
blood from his nostrils. He looked down and saw Rowland leaning up
against the squad car, and weakly motioned for him to stay put.
     Banscome's car pulled up, followed by a large police panel van
and two unmarked detective's units. Hugh met Banscome in the yard.
"He's dead." he said flatly.
     "Ryan told me." Banscome said. He glanced at the crime scene
technicians that were hurrying into the house. "Get on crowd control,
string some tape up, all around the house." He strode off towards the
door.
     Hugh walked to his car and opened the trunk. Rowland put his
hand on Hugh's arm. Hugh shut his eyes tightly.
     "He's dead?"
     "Like the Martin girl. He left us another note on the wall. `Me,
seven; werewolves, zero'."
     Rowland let go of his arm. "Well, he's definately trying to get
us, then."
     Hugh opened his eyes and looked at Rowland. "He's got to die.
We've got to find him, Rowland. He's got to stop."
     The corner of Rowland's mouth twitched into a sardonic grin.
"You know what you just said, don't you?" he asked.
     Hugh yanked a dispenser roll of crime scene tape from a box in
the trunk. "Yeah, I do." he muttered "But he'll kill a dozen more
before the cops ever catch him, if they do. He wants us." He stalked
off past Rowland.
     "Just so you know." Rowland said to his retreating back.
     Hugh found a tree on the side of the house and tied the end of
the yellow tape around the trunk at chest height. He walked to the
curb, stopping to loop the tape around trees here and there to
support it, turning at a road sign and following the street. Rowland
had moved off into the crowd. He's right, Hugh thought; I am being
hypocritical. What's the difference in my finding and killing this
guy and in what the Pack did to Chamelle Cooper? What makes one right
and not the other? What makes any of it right at all?
     Not a damn thing, he decided as he worked the tape down the
opposite side of the house. Right, wrong, it doesn't really matter
any more. There's no way I can let this guy live if I find him. If
that's wrong then I'm incapable of living in a black and white world
any longer. Shades of gray, that's my new outlook; and God fuck my
soul.
     By the time he had finished stringing the tape in the back of
the house, one of the police photographers was standing in the front
yard; snapping pictures of the crowd. One or two of the onlookers
left nervously, unwilling to be photographed for one reason or
another. Hugh caught sight of Rowland, motioning him over. Hugh
dropped the tape by his car and walked.
     "You know that guy over there?" Rowland asked, nodding to a
group of people standing in a neighbor's driveway. Most of them were
looking at the house, but one of them; a small, stocky man with pale
skin and black shoulder-length hair, was watching them with dark
eyes.
     "No, not really..." he said; but he felt unnerved by the
intensity of the man's gaze.
     "He's been pretty interested in you. Watched you the whole time.
Feels funny."
     "Feels funny to me, too. Maybe... he's kind of like the guy from
the dream." He shook his head. "I'm not sure."
     "Heads up." Rowland said suddenly, and melted back into the
crowd. Hugh turned and groaned inwardly. A tall, thin man with dark,
slicked-back hair was walking towards him, holding a clipboard. He
was wearing an immaculate gray suit with a badge clipped to the
breast pocket. He nodded at Hugh, his gray eyes searching Hugh's face
through wire-rimmed glasses. His face was narrow and bony, the nose
thin and sharply pointed.
     "Lieutenant Lustig." he said. Lustig nodded jerkily and probed
Hugh with his eyes again. Hugh thought he looked like a bird,
greedily pecking away until his found some little morsel.
     "Officer Jacobi." He glanced down at his clipboard and back at
Hugh. "You were third onthe scene?" Hugh nodded. "What did you notice
when you first went in? Anything unusual?"
     "Other than Frank pinned to the wall, no sir." Fuck you, sir.
     Lustig stared at him unblinkingly. Hugh returned the stare. Blue
strobe flashes reflected off Lustig's glasses for several ticks.
     "I'll remember you're under stress and forget I heard that." He
looked back at the clipboard.
     "Sorry, sir." Hugh mumbled, not really meaning it. "It's not
something you see every day."
     "Just twice in two days." He looked up again, bird-quick. "You
didn't notice anoyone or anything we haven't seen inside?"
     "No, sir. There were, oh, five or six people in the yard across
the street when I got here. I didn't pay them much attention." He
looked around again- the pale man was gone from the driveway.
     "Any ideas about the message on the wall?" Another glance up and
down.
     Hugh froze before anything showed on his face. "No, sir."
     Lustig searched his face for uncomfortable seconds. Hugh met his
gaze finally, and Lustig looked down again. "Who was that man that
was pointed out to you?" Peck, peck.
     Shit. "I'm not sure. He looked sort of familiar. I don't know
where from." More silence. Lustig sighed and lowered the clipboard.
     "OK. Come in tomorrow morning and we'll get a photo line-up. I
still have some questions about last night." He made a throwaway
gesture towards the crowd where Rowland vanished. "Bring your friend
and we'll find out what he's seen." He turned and walked away. Hugh
blew out his lips in a gusty sigh.
     "Man don't miss much, does he?" Rowland said from behind Hugh's
left shoulder. Hugh half turned to glance at him and then back at the
house.
     "No. No, he doesn't." Hugh was momentarily disoriented; sounds
became distant and his vision tunnelled. Rowland nudged his shoulder
as he swayed a bit. "You okay?"
     Sight and sound returned abruptly. "Yeah, sure." He looked
around the yard again, at the confusion of blue strobe lights and
vehicles scattered across the street and the unnaturally quiet clumps
of observers and uniforms. "Our secret admirer seems to have
vanished."
     "Yup. I didn't see him go. Didn't see any cars leave. Maybe he
lives around here."
     "Yeah." He watched a radio news truck pull up to the edge of the
tape, and a pair of uniforms move to intercept them. "Look, I'm
probably gonna be here the rest of the night. Lemme borrow Ryan's
phone, and you can call Leon to get you in the car. I'll come back to
the apartment when I'm done." He hesitated. "You'd better get Karen,
too. It's probably better if we're all in one place." Rowland was
still looking at him. "Really, I'm okay. I promise I'll come back to
the apartment when I can."
"Okay." Rowland nodded. "Don't go off in any dark corners yourself,
big bad wolf or no." Hugh managed a thin smile and went back to the
house to find Ryan.

                             --==++==--

     "Linda." He laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched slightly
at his touch and withdrew the hand. She stayed hunched over her
knees, her back to him. He squatted next to her and tried to peer up
into her face, hidden by her auburn bangs. "Hey... it's gonna be
alright. Don't worry about it." She sobbed quietly, ignoring him. He
reached out, stopping himself a few inches from her arm, and then
dropped his hand again; feeling awkward. He started to get up when
she raised her tear-streaked face to him.
     "I'm scared, Hugh." she said in a quavering voice, and then
flung her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. He
rocked back, caught off-guard by her action, and then gently put his
arm around her and stroked her hair back. "I know," he said, wishing
he could find something more comforting to say. "I know."
     They sat on the floor for a long while, Hugh stroking her hair
and resting his cheek on her head as she clutched him tightly and
wept. Eventually the cries subsided and her breathing became a little
more regular, broken now and again by sniffles. Hugh cleared his
throat. "Linda. He's just one man. He can't hurt us if we stay
together. We'll find him, and we'll stop him, and the dreams will
stop."
     Her voice was muffled by his shoulder. "How can you be so sure?"
     Hugh sighed. "I have to be. Besides, we're the big bad
werewolves around here, right? How tough can he be." He squeezed her
around her waist. "I won't let anything happen to you or the others.
I promise." She sniffed again and he felt a little silly for saying
it. She freed one hand to wipe her nose. "Okay."
     He nuzzled the top of her head and breathed in the clean scent
of her hair. He could feel the beginnings of an erection and was
immediately guilty. Stop it! he thought. She does not need you coming
on horny now. She's six years younger than you, anyway. Put it away.
     She let him go and leaned back. She wiped her nose again and
smiled a little. "Thanks" she said quietly. He smiled back at her and
reached to brush a tear from her cheek. "You're welcome."
     He felt a strong hand grab his hair and yank his head back
sharply. Another hand reached under his chin and his head was twisted
violently around. He felt himself being lifted and thrown across the
room, hitting the far wall midway up before thudding to the floor in
a heap. Colors exploded behind his eyes and he gasped.
     The large man was standing over Linda, grinning savagely at her
and reaching fro her shirt. She was huddled in the corner of the
room, frozen with fear, unable to move as the man grabbed the front
of her shirt with both hands and ripped it open. Hugh made to get to
his feet, but the man had broken his neck and he couldn't move more
than his face. The man turned to leer at him as he unfastened his
trousers and freed an enormous erection, and then turned back to
Linda.
     It's the dream again, Hugh thought, you can deal with it. Pull
it together! He willed his feet to move and slowly pulled himself up,
shaking off the effects of his collision. "Linda!" he shouted, "It's
just a dream! Fight it! Fight him!" Linda didn't seem to hear him,
but the man did. He turned with a snarl to face Hugh.
     "Hey!" he yelled. "Can't you see we need some privacy here?" He
swept his hand in a low arc and Hugh felt the floorboards under his
feet buckle. He fell to his rump just before the floor collapsed
entirely and dropped him into the yawning chasm below...

                             --==++==--

     Hugh was on his feet and running before he was fully awake. He
careened into a door jamb and stumbled sideways. "Linda!" he yelled,
"Linda!" He regained his footing and pushed open the door to the
opposite room.
     Linda was curled in a ball in the corner of the room, twitching.
"Linda! Wake up!" He skidded to his knees and shook her until she
came to. She shrieked and caught him across the face with one
flailing arm before seeing him, and then pulled him to her. She was
crying loudly now, squeezing him hard across the ribs.
     Rowland and Leon appeared in the doorway at a run, their hair
touseled. Hugh looked over Linda's head at them. "Another nightmare,"
he said. "I think she'll be okay." Rowland nodded and left. Leon
gripped the doorframe for a few seconds, and then pulled the door
shut and was gone.
     Hugh felt a brief sense of deja vu as he stroked her hair,
whispering "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay" over and over into her
ear. He gently picked a tangle out of her hair with his claws,
realizing as he did so that he'd shifted to median when he woke.
Gradually she calmed enough to release him and sit up.
     "I'm sorry" she said, not meeting his gaze. He brushed her bangs
back from her eyes with one claw tip and she looked at him briefly.
     "It's okay. It was just a dream. I know."
     She looked at him again. "You were in it. We were both in it.
You were comforting me and... he..."
     "I know. It's okay. He's not here." Hugh felt clumsy. They sat
opposite one another for a while, feeling slightly foolish. "I meant
what I said, in the dream" he said finally. "I won't let anything
happen to you or the others."
     She leaned against his chest, forcing him to lean back against
the wall. "I know." she said quietly. He put his arm gently across
her shoulders and they slumped there for a while quietly.
     When she spoke again her voice was steadier. "When I saw you
change, it really freaked me out. I couldn't handle it when I
changed. I mean... after everything, I didn't know what to do. I was
a normal college kid, doing normal college kid stuff... class,
parties, sorority..."
     "Which one?"
     She looked up at him oddly. "Phi Gamma Beta."
     "Jamma Vi-Brator" he said before he could stop himself, and
yelped as she yanked the fur on his stomach hard. "Sorry."
     "That night, everything I knew was gone. C- c- cooper, he-" she
stopped again, and Hugh squeezed her shoulders. "I thought I'd died
and gone to Hell. There were all these demons around, and now I was a
demon..." she pushed off his chest as he chuckled. "I didn't think it
was silly then. Maybe you didn't go to church as a kid but I did."
     Hugh stopped, instantly contrite. "I'm sorry. I was freaked,
too."
     She leaned back. "They finally convinced me I wasn't crazy, and
I started to deal with it. Then the dreams started... and when I saw
you change, it brought all that back. I still don't know what to do.
I'm scared again."
     They sat against the wall for until Linda fell asleep again and
yellow light began to stream into the room through the window. Hugh
waited until he heard footsteps outside the room and smelled coffee
before gently moving Linda off his chest. He arranged a pillow under
her head and walked out into the main room.
     Rowland was standing by the window with a cup of coffee in his
hand, watching the morning traffic on the street below. Hugh looked
at his uniform draped over the back of the sofa. "Got any pants I can
borrow?" he asked.
     Rowland turned. "I `spect so. Might be a bit baggy."
     Hugh stretched and turned to the kitchen. "That's okay. Let's go
have a talk with the detectives this morning."