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  Somehow I managed to stagger the rest of the way home. I was in agony again as I walked, mostly from the pain in my neck which was far worse than anything I’d ever experienced before, and soon the mystery was forgotten. I let myself in and struggled up the ladder onto my bunk bed, muttering into the darkness before sleep took me and grinning to myself at the thought of it.

  “I guess I did reach the Devil after all.”

  Chapter Two

  I was a Teenage Werewolf

  The next day I spent in bed lost in nightmares, oblivious to Mum and Dad's concern when they saw the blood stained sheets and pillowcase; and their panic when they could not wake me; and their puzzlement as to where the blood came from, for I did not look to be wounded.

  Dusk came and I awoke. I staggered downstairs, still dressed in the clothes from the previous day, just as my parents were discussing whether to make an emergency appointment at the doctors, but they were too relieved I’d finally come round to ever make the call. They were so busy worrying and fussing over me that there was never any lecture about being home late. Mum made me supper but I could feel bile rising in my throat at the mere thought of eating, so I returned to my room, intending to go back to bed.

  I vaguely remembered the night before but I thought it had been a nightmare as the wounds had gone. There were no cuts on my arms and there was no longer any pain in my chest. My body didn’t feel bruised at all and there didn’t seem to be any puncture wounds in my neck. The blood on my clothes, sheets and my skin was the only evidence I was aware of that it had been real, but still the impossibility of it all made me think the blood must have been from no more than a bad nose bleed.

  Something drew me towards the window upon reaching my room. There I saw the full moon for the first time that evening, the last full moon of that month. I knew I should go back to bed, the bile threatening to rise up at any minute; I could feel it churning inside and imagined it bubbling inside its pit, frothing up like a green raging river. I could almost sense the vile taste in my mouth. But I couldn’t pull myself away. I started pacing from side to side like a caged animal, and this soon turned to a stalk. I vaguely wondered what was happening to me. The moon seemed to be having an even greater effect on me than the night before. Could it be my dreams were finally answered?

  What happened after that is hard to remember, but I will try and describe it to you as best I can, based on other experiences. It was like the one time I had been drunk at a friend’s house. I wasn’t really aware of what was happening, or if it was real or not. Only the present existed; I couldn’t even remember what had happened seconds ago. The pain. I remember the pain. It was the only thing I was really truly aware of. It came suddenly, a great wave of it, drowning me in its great angry sea. I think I may have been screaming, but it might have been too intense even for that. If I was making any sound it must have been drowned out by Amy’s music, which she often had on in her bedroom full blast. That night was no different, despite the fact she knew I was unwell. As it was, no one came to check on me, thank God.

  I also remember feeling hot, as though I had a fever. I opened the window, hoping the breeze would cool me down, but no sooner had I done that than the next wave of pain washed over me and sent me crashing back into its angry waters, making me bend over in agony, clutching my stomach where it was worst. That's probably when I noticed my hands. My nails were lengthening and becoming sharper, like claws. Fur was sprouting on them and my whole body itched as the fur spread. My pet snake was watching me from his tank as my weak, pathetic human teeth became deadly, razor sharp fangs and, as I looked at my reflection in the window, I saw my eyes turn amber like a wolf's, noticing my eyesight improve as a result. My ears became pointed and moved up to the side of my head and my nose became black as my snout grew outwards, my hearing and sense of smell improving drastically when this happened. The snout caused my glasses to fall off, where they lay at my feet.

  My clothes tore off as muscles bulged, shifting around underneath my skin. The structure of my legs completely altered, causing me to fall onto all fours, and my spine extended as a tail grew, while other bones painfully changed size and shape. I was vaguely aware of a crack and I realised I was stood on my glasses. My hands and feet had already hardened in becoming paws and I could barely feel them there, beneath my pads. The transformation complete, I felt the predatory mind of a wolf within which became stronger under the influence of the full moon. The wolf mind pushed the human one aside and took over my body. Before the human part of me was buried deep inside the wolf, only to return at sunrise, I sensed the cold intelligence rising up beside my own, and was surprised to find more than instincts there. And then the human part of me was all but gone and only the wolf remained.

  I had not eaten all day and I was ravenous. Sniffing the air, I determined there was no food around in that room, and I felt uneasy at being trapped in there. So I bunched my powerful muscles and leapt through the open window, just managing to catch a back leg on the sill and knock several ornaments off, though none of them smashed. I landed on the grass in the back garden and pricked my ears for sounds of prey, sniffing the air once again. I growled irritably, finding no scents of interest – or at least none that were fresh. There were only old scents left by animals, humans, and fumes from their great, roaring machines that constantly chased each other through the day. I started to walk down the street, enslaved by my own hunger, the need for food greater than any other.

  Padding along the pavement, a fresh scent carried to me on the breeze, accompanied by the sound of human footsteps. A woman walked by on the other side of the road and glanced at me, but mistaking me for a large stray dog she carried on. She was in her fifties and her breathing was quick and uneven, almost a pant. Obviously unfit, and very much overweight, her clothes stretched tight around the bulge of her belly, she would be an easy meal. Any human would tire much quicker than a wolf but I wouldn’t have to waste much energy on this hunt.

  I advanced across the road, lips curling back in a snarl, fangs bared. She looked back upon hearing that bestial warning and froze, realising something was amiss. Recognition of my true wild nature seemed to hit her, for she screamed and ran down an alley. I pursued, fast enough not to lose her yet not fast enough to bring her down immediately. It was the thrill of the chase that made the kill more satisfactory.

  The sweet smell of her fear and the sound of her hammering heart spurred me onwards. I was playing with her, letting her think she had escaped certain death, only to discover me ahead or to the side, or just behind. I could have kept that up all night if I wanted to but she was tiring already and the hunger had grown unbearable, so I pounced on her, knocking her to the ground. As I stood over her, I heard something and turned, trying to determine if it was a threat. She took the opportunity to lash out while I was distracted. The blow didn’t hurt me but it caused me to turn back to her, growling.

  There was a strange scent on the air, but it did not matter to me then. I was intent on my prey and, as I sunk my fangs into the soft flesh of her neck and ripped out her throat, blood spewing out onto the pavement and spattering my body, the bloodlust took me, making me oblivious to the world around. The life in her faded, her heart and body stilled, and she died. I howled in triumph and then savaged her body, tearing through her clothes and skin and feasting upon the soft, sweet flesh beneath. I grabbed a piece of flesh in my jaws and pulled until tendons snapped and it came away from the bone, still warm in my mouth, the blood making it slippery. I swallowed and it slid down my throat and into my stomach, slithering down into the dark pit to be bathed in acid.

  After I had stripped the limb of its flesh, I bit into the side of the stomach, nuzzling into it with my snout in search of offal, richer in blood and providing more sustenance. It didn’t take me long to find my prize, and I surfaced from the deep, dark hole I had made with a kidney between my teeth, gulping it down greedily, blood splashing the concrete, leaking down the side of my mouth and staining my fur red. The
intestines came out next, as they were blocking the way to everything else. I pulled, and slowly they slid from the hole like a slimy, giant, grey worm. Passers by might have seen them dangling from my mouth and mistaken them for a string of sausages in the jaws of a stray dog.

  Once I had laid them to rest alongside the kidney, the way was clear to more of the organs and I had soon eaten my way up to the heart. Blood squeezed out of it and along the veins in a mockery of life as my jaws clamped down on the dead muscle. More blood was forced out as I pulled and sought to rip it from the tubes chaining it inside its bony prison, the ribcage. Finally it came free in a shower of blood, staining the concrete red and splattering my body, the crimson spots almost lost in the darker parts of my coat.

  Once I had picked the corpse clean, I dragged it into the nearest garden and buried it deep down in the earth where nothing else would find it. I knew little of the human world, my knowledge limited to the little I had glimpsed within the human’s mind during my awakening, but I knew enough to know that if dead bodies started turning up, the hunter would become the hunted, and I would be prey to the angry mobs who would not rest until they had spilled my blood. That done, I decided to explore my territory and look for my pack. I would belong to the same pack as the werewolf who had bitten me, my blood brothers, and their blood called to me, stronger than the call of the moon, almost as strong as the hunger that had driven me moments before.

  I sent up another howl into the night to inform my pack of my whereabouts, and stood listening for their rallying howl, calling for me to return to them. But only silence greeted my ears. That puzzled me. Why were they not replying? Had they left this territory for a better one? But that made no sense, for they would not leave without me. They would howl for me and wait for my reply for at least three nights to determine whether I was lost and returning, or whether I had left to join another pack, or even start one of my own. And yet I had found no sign of them so far that night and I had heard nothing. Had they, then, been killed? Or forced to flee from death? But even stranger was that there were no howls from rival packs, defending their own territory. I was uncertain what to do and howled again to tell them I was here and that I was ready to take up my place in the pack's hierarchy and help them with day to day pack life, such as the hunt, raising pups, and defending the territory. Still the night was silent so I decided to move on and try to find their scent, or any other hint of where they might be. While doing so I could also familiarise myself with the territory.

  I had not gone far when a dog barked at me. I caught its scent and knew it to be a male Yorkshire Terrier. It was also clearly someone's pet, as it was in a kennel with a chain that stretched just far enough for it to come to the end of the drive where I stood. As far as he was concerned, this was his territory and I was in it. He was barking a warning for me to go away. My keen senses detected no movement within the house belonging to his human masters. They were either asleep or out somewhere. I had no love for dogs, despite the fact we had originated from the same lupine ancestors. They had allowed themselves to be enslaved by humanity, and I had only contempt for them. The day a human tried to tame me was the day to give up on life, for I would not allow myself to become a slave, not to anyone, but especially not to humans. They were so arrogant, thinking they owned the world. If I could only find my pack, we could remind humanity they didn’t rule the Earth as they liked to think. They’d even tried to conquer nature. I wanted to remind them they are not gods, they are mortals like the rest of us, whether we walk on four legs or two, and I was going to start with that dog. So I lunged without giving him any warning, my jaws, flecked with blood and spit, opened wide, revealing the deadly fangs within, already bloody from the previous kill. I must have been a fearsome sight, for the dog's growls became whines and he tried to cower back in submission before I attacked, but even if I had intended to spare him, it was too late – I was already in mid-leap.

  The lunge was so powerful that we smashed into the small kennel, which splintered from the impact. I closed my jaws round his neck and picked him up, shaking him from side to side like a dog with a rabbit. I heard his spine snap and he went limp but still I shook him, in the grip of the bloodlust, his blood gushing into my mouth and spraying the surrounding broken wooden planks.

  When I finally dropped him to the ground, he was not completely paralysed despite the broken back. Still able to move his front legs, he scrabbled at the ruined wood, trying to get away. I gave a low, threatening growl as the bloodlust took me once more and lunged again, ripping open his belly and spewing his guts all over the floor, making his upper body writhe in pain. Despite the fact I had already made a kill, my hunger was not yet satiated, and I would not wait for him to die. I started with the stomach, which lay at my feet, gripping it in my jaws and swallowing it down eagerly, even though it was still attached to the dog. The tubes attaching it soon ripped as they caught on my teeth. I ate the other organs that had spilled out: the kidneys, the liver, the spleen, the intestines, the pancreas. The dog was in its death throes when I started stripping the bones of their flesh, what little of it there was on the small, skinny frame, and it died soon after I had devoured the left leg. The right leg I ripped right out of its socket and chewed at until it was all but gone. Strange noises in the night were enough to persuade me to leave my meal. There was little left anyway, and there was still time to hunt yet.

  I emerged from the wreckage and slunk away into the night, ignoring the urge to howl and mark the place with my scent. I didn’t bother to hide the remains of the dog as I had with the human, for I knew a dead pet would attract less attention. And I was more concerned with the possibility of an immediate threat.

  When I was far enough from the kennel to feel safer again, having not heard, seen nor smelt anything else unusual that could possibly pose a threat, I continued to explore my territory, pausing every now and then to howl for my pack. The night was almost spent when finally I received a reply. But I did not recognise the howl as one of my pack members, who I would instinctively know by scent and sound, even though we had never met before – the werewolf who had awoken me had passed that vital knowledge on, though I knew not how. Cocking my ears in that direction I determined it was a lone wolf, female, containing all the confidence that went with a high rank; an alpha I decided, but fairly young, at least physically. Her voice did not betray her mental age, which could be centuries for one of our kind. The howl was brief and soon ended, and filled with excitement I howled again, straining my ears in desperation for a reply. My pack seemed to have deserted me but this was a chance to start a pack of my own, and gain the security a pack brings. The howl came again, brief as before and from a distance. I could tell that the wolf had moved from her last position so that rival packs could not easily find her, but I had some idea of where she was, and as I replied with another howl after that to tell her of my interest and my intentions, I knew we would meet whilst still hiding from rival packs. She replied again, having moved slightly closer, and I pinpointed her current position and set off in that direction at a run.

  However, I soon came to a stop, feeling that I was being watched. My hackles rose in alarm and once again my lips curled back in a warning snarl. Yet my sharp hearing caught no sounds of movement, my night vision finding nothing, my acute sense of smell picking up no dangerous scents... But I knew whoever or whatever it was could be downwind of me. I decided to take the risk that time, so intent as I was on finding the alpha female. Trying to shake off the feeling, I slunk into the field of the nearby primary school, knowing that if I was being followed I could crawl into the neighbour’s gardens where a human could not follow me, assuming it was human. If it was anything else I could deal with it; only humans posed a threat to me for they came with their guns and hunting dogs and brought the death which only humans bring. Their dogs I could handle, but their guns I could never defeat. Little did I know there was someone in the field with me.

  I padded over the grass, towards the hill at the o
ther end where there was a fence I could easily jump over and a ring of bushes which I could slink through, my thick fur coat protecting me from thorns. But upon reaching the middle of the field shapes materialised from the shadows and I suddenly found myself surrounded by people with guns who were creeping towards me from the edges of the school grounds. How I had not detected them before I did not know. I saw the glint of silver from their belts, most likely a selection of silver knives, and instinctively knew that the silver was meant for me. They must have been following me most of the night and I guessed they knew I was more than just a wolf, though I hoped they didn't know who I was, otherwise my life was over.

  I glanced around for an escape route but found none, so, growling, I turned on one as if to attack him and started forward, but as he readied himself to shoot me I suddenly turned and ran in the opposite direction, moving faster than they'd anticipated and so making it past them, knocking one over in the process. This bought me some time and I ran flat out towards the hill. And, though they shot at me before I got there, dirt spraying up around me from the bullets, I did reach the safety of the hill without being hit. I kept on running, afraid then and only dimly aware of where I was going; over the fence into someone's garden, under a hedge and back onto the street, over the road, narrowly avoiding one of the human's rushing machines, hearing the sounds of pursuit, doubling back to try and confuse them...