Night Creature
The Werewolf Chronicles, Book One
Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
For Erica Engel
RULES OF THE WEREING
1.
A werewolf is created by birth or bite.
2.
The wereing is the change from human to beast and lasts for the three nights of the full moon.
3.
The first wereing of a werewolf child occurs in the twelfth year.
4.
If the werewolf child makes a kill in the three nights of the full moon, it shall have all the powers of a full blooded werewolf and remain a monster forever.
5.
A full-blooded werewolf can change into form at any time, but must a werewolf when the moon is full.
6.
A werewolf cannot cross water.
7.
A werewolf cannot tolerate anything silver.
In the Beginning …
I am a monster. Listen and I will tell you how the wereing began, and how I was raised by wolves, and what happened in a place called Fox Hollow.
Fox Hollow. To all appearances a perfectly ordinary town filled with perfectly ordinary homes and perfectly ordinary people. But appearances truly are deceiving, because Fox Hollow is not ordinary. Oh, no.
Something terrible crept into the town and changed the people who lived there. Something so monstrous, so terrifying, that you may never sleep again.…
Me.
In the beginning was the wereing. The change that comes for the three nights of the full moon and turns me into a howling beast. The change that waits in my blood and cannot be denied. The change that makes me a night creature—a werewolf—a foul thing who lives in the darkest part of the shadow, waiting for prey to come within range of my glistening fangs.
I know nothing of my mother and father, save that they, too, must have been werewolves. How they came to leave me in the woods I do not know, but anything is possible. They might have been chased by hunters, or attacked by other night creatures. Or maybe I was stolen from their lair—but why any creature would want to steal a wretched beast like me remains a mystery.
The first thing I remember is the smell of warm fur. The fur of the Wolfmother who took me into her den, and fed me with her litter of cubs, and protected me from the terrors of darkness even though I didn’t look anything like the other wolves.
Oh, how I remember the warmth of that den, the feeling of safeness as we snuggled together. The low rrrrrrrrrr sound coming from our throats meant we were happy, and the Wolfmother rrrrrrrr’d back at us and licked our faces to make us clean.
For the longest time I thought like a wolf, ate like a wolf, ran like a wolf, bayed like a wolf at the light of the moon. The Wolf-mother’s cubs were my brothers and sisters and I loved them and played with them and fought with them.
I thought I was a wolf. Until the wereing began …
Chapter 1
The day my life changed forever I was feeling sorry for myself.
There I was lying on my back in the clearing outside our den, letting the two cubs tumble over me. Leaper and Snapjaw nipped at each other, making happy little growling noises in their throats as I rubbed their fur.
I loved the cubs, but it wasn’t fair that I had to stay near the den while the rest of the family went hunting. They hadn’t left me behind because I was such a great cub-sitter. No. The other wolves thought I was a useless hunter.
Slow, weak, and useless, like the cubs I was minding.
I was about twelve years old and I’d been with the pack for almost nine winters, near as I could recall. And still I had to rely on the other wolves to get me food. But how did they expect me to learn how to hunt if they left me behind every time?
“Gruff!” barked Leaper. “Gruff! Gruff!”
Gruff, that’s me. Wolfmother named me for the first sound that came out of my mouth, and now little Leaper was trying to get my attention. I growled and she backed off, puzzled, and began to whine.
Sighing, I longed to be out in the woods with my throwing stick. I was getting so good I could knock a leaf off a tree. Any day now I’d actually hit something we could eat. That would show them!
For some reason I was jumpy and more moody and I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than a minute.
Did I have some kind of premonition—a feeling about what was going to happen? Maybe even then, before the Change came, something inside me was stirring, trying to get out.
“Ow!”
That’s what I got for not paying attention. Leaper had gotten overexcited and buried her teeth in the base of my thumb. She didn’t break the skin—she knew better than that—but those sharp baby teeth still hurt.
I shook my injured fist in her face and she quickly backed off. Crouching low to the ground, the little cub rolled to show me her belly. That was her way of apologizing.
Naturally my heart melted like snow in the sun. I reached over to scratch her belly, burying my hand in the thick soft fur. She wriggled in the dirt and growled contentedly while I looked around for Snapjaw.
Snapjaw—he had a bad habit of biting everything in sight, although nobody but me seemed to think it was a bad habit—was sitting on his haunches with his head thrown back. His little black nose was twitching like crazy. He was sniffing at the air as if he could taste it.
Which he probably could. He had an awesome nose. It was hard to keep him near the den as he was always following some new scent into the woods.
But not this time. Rump high, the cub backed slowly away from the forest. The slate-gray hair began
