Animal Nature

Chapter 34

Her breath caught in her throat. The eyes were too low to the ground to be human, and besides, human eyes didn't have the tapetum lucidum layer behind the retina that caused the greenish glow when illuminated at night. She had a fleeting curiosity about whether or not a werewolf's eyes might glow green even when human, then returned her attention to the animal in the stairwell.

The green eyes blinked, then disappeared.

It had to be David, wanting her to join him in the stairwell. Perhaps he had been human earlier, when he had texted, but now, with the full moon, he had turned and couldn't turn back. The full moon had reached its peak last night, though. That was why he wanted to return tonight, after it was over. Only it wasn't completely over. She had seen his wolfish behavior escalating, and though it might have peaked at the full moon, it would now wane, not disappear entirely.

Shy stepped forward, risking a glance toward Melanie, who had forgotten she existed. She exhaled and moved into the dark hallway. "David?" she whispered.

Inside the stairwell, it was too dark to see anything, but she heard the clicking of canine toenails on the stairs going up.

"David, wait!" she whispered, and followed him.

At the top of the stairs she stopped. The exit to the second floor hallway was sighing shut, though the lights beyond the narrow windows in the door were out. She hadn't heard the door opening, which meant the wolf had closed the door somehow.

Why would David want the door closed? Why wouldn't he have waited for her to come through the door before closing it? She stepped forward, and peered through the glass. She couldn't see anything.

Her heart was thudding in her chest. She was reminded of the incident at the animal shelter, when the wolf had tried to attack her through the door. She had thought that wolf was David, even though he denied it. It wouldn't make sense for him to lead her away like this, then attack.

Shy peered through the glass again. Her eyes must have adjusted to the dark better, because now she could see the wolf sitting calmly in the hallway, waiting for her.

Pulling away, she reached back and touched the butt of the gun through her costume, and remembered the knife in her boot. She could fight back this time. She put her phone away, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

"David." She kept her voice low. It was too quiet up here, the distant thumping of music from the gymnasium ominous. "Can you shift back to human?"

The wolf growled, baring his teeth.

"Is that a no?" she asked. What could she do for him if he couldn't turn back? She had the wolfsbane vials in her top. Maybe she should try giving some to him.

Then the wolf's back arched up, and she heard the sounds of bones popping and reforming. The growling gave way to hissing and more human sounds of gasping and panting as the fur began to disappear and the wolf bulged and shrank and deformed into some kind of pale creature that looked neither wolfish nor human. Shy couldn't bear to look at it. Him. David. It was awful. He had endured this each time he transformed? She peeked between her fingers every now and again, waiting for the mess to sort itself out into a more familiar form. This was unnatural, an aberration.

Despite knowing that David was a werewolf, she hadn't quite believed it. It defied physics. A human was not the same size as a wolf. Mass could not be altered. Although the wolfhound had weighed as much as an adult male human, she remembered. Still, where did the fur go? What was the catalyst for the transformation? She wanted to know and yet seeing it now her brain refused to take it in, deemed it impossible.

Finally, the sounds coming from the werewolf stopped, and Shy opened her eyes.

"You're not David," she said, backing away from the dark-haired man before her.

He was broader than David, even more muscular. And fully naked. Shy had on her clothes and had two weapons and still this man's presence threatened her. It was something radiating off of him.

She had never felt this way around David, not even when he was naked in her room.

He grinned at her. The shadows turned the expression into a dark mask.

"No, I am not David." His deep voice laughed at her. "What I'd like to know, little girl," the man said, moving in her direction, "is how you always seem to be around, smelling as good as you do."

She wasn't sure how to answer that, and so she kept doing what she had been doing: backing away.

"And now I find you, looking like such a nice little treat," the man continued. "I wonder what this David did to earn your trust."

"Where is David?" she asked. Her voice sounded whiney and high in her ears. Squeaking, like a mouse.

"I don't know who the fuck David is," the man snapped at her. "But I have a feeling he's responsible for my new... proclivities. And I'd love to know how much you know about how that happened."

"W-who are you?" she asked.

The man stopped. "Don't you recognize me? You were there, when I got scratched."

That made Shyanne stop and think. A name came to her.

"Heath?"

"That right, hon. Nasty scratch from that wolf, and now this." He gestured to his body, then grinned at her again. "So you knew he was a werewolf then, and didn't think to... oh, say, let me know about it?" He growled and moved toward her again, with purpose this time, and speed.

She staggered backwards. "I didn't know then!"

"I thought I was going crazy, see? Going insane, completely bonkers. Kept waking up in the woods, taste of blood and fur in my mouth." He spit the words at her. "And you're running around town, knowing exactly what was going on, you and David both, and didn't bother to inform me that I was turning into a fucking monster!"

He lunged at her then, his fingernails sharp as claws, fangs gleaming in the little light there was.

She turned tail and ran. Her cape fanned out behind her – ridiculous, like she was a superhero or something. She could feel the knife in her boot but couldn't pull it out while she was running. She had the vials but didn't think they would break open if she threw them. The gun, she could get at the gun –

The cape pulled tight at her throat and yanked her backwards. She was airborne for a moment, long enough for her to know that landing on the gun might just break her back, if it didn't cause the gun to go off.

She twisted so she landed on her side. She still landed hard against the linoleum, the impact expelling all her breath. Her phone fell out of her bra and clattered across the floor.

She grasped at her throat, undid the clasp on the cape. With a gasp, she scrambled away, reaching up her skirt for the gun.

"That's right, little Red," Heath snarled. The cape whisked away. "I know what you want."

Her fingers found the handle and she yanked the gun out.

"Come to daddy," Heath said.

A growl, loud and menacing, came from further down the hall. Shy's eyes widened, trying to look beyond Heath's leering face. Had David accidentally created more werewolves, like the other animal control officer just a few days ago?

When Heath's nose wrinkled and he whirled around, Shy knew it wasn't one of Heath's friends. But it was another werewolf, and Shy had no way of knowing if this one was David.