Werehunter (anthology)

standing beside a rough pounded-dirt road.

She blinked in dumb amazement. He looked like something out of a movie, a peasant from a King Arthur epic. He was stocky, blond-haired; he wore a shabby brown tunic and patched, shapeless trousers tucked into equally patched boots. He was also holding a strung bow, with an arrow nocked to it, and frowning—a most unfriendly expression.

He gabbled something at her. She blinked again. She knew a little Spanish (you had to, in her neighborhood); she’d taken German and French in high school. This didn’t sound like any of those.

He repeated himself, a distinct edge to his voice. To emphasize his words, he jerked the point of the arrow off back the way she had come. It was pretty obvious he was telling her to be on her way.

“No, wait—please—” she stepped toward him, her hands outstretched pleadingly. The only reaction she got was that he raised the arrow to point at her chest, and drew it back.

“Look—I haven’t got any weapons! I’m lost, I’m hungry—”

He drew the arrow a bit farther.

Suddenly it was all too much. She’d spent all her life being pushed and pushed—first her aunt, then at school, then out on the streets. This was the last time anybody was going to back her into a corner—this time she was going to fight!

A white-hot rage like nothing she’d ever experienced before in her life took over.

“Damn you!” she was so angry she could hardly think. “You stupid clod! I need help!” she screamed at him, as red flashes interfered with her vision, her ears began to buzz, and her hands crooked into involuntary claws, “Damn you and everybody that looks like you! ”

He backed up a pace, his blue eyes wide with surprise at her rage.

She was so filled with fury that grew past control­ling—she couldn’t see, couldn’t think; it was like being possessed. Suddenly she gasped as pain lanced from the top of her head to her toes, pain like a bolt of light­ning —

—her vision blacked out; she fell to her hands and knees on the grass, her legs unable to hold her, ­con­­ vulsing with surges of pain in her arms and legs. Her feet, her hands felt like she’d shoved them in a fire—her face felt as if someone were stretching it out of shape. And the ring finger of her left hand—it burned with more agony than both hands and feet put together! She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it spun around in dizzying circles. Her ears rang, hard to hear over the ringing, but there was a sound of cloth tearing—

Her sight cleared and returned, but distorted. She looked up at the man, who had dropped his bow, and was backing away from her, slowly, his face white with terror. She started to say something to him—

—and it came out a snarl.

With that, the man screeched, turned his back on her, and ran.

And she caught sight of her hand. It wasn’t a hand anymore. It was a paw. Judging by the spotted pelt of the leg, a leopard’s paw. Scattered around her were the ragged scraps of cloth that had once been her clothing.

 

Glenda lay in the sun on top of a rock, warm and drowsy with full-bellied content. Idly she washed one paw with her tongue, cleaning the last taint of blood from it. Before she’d had a chance to panic or go crazy back there when she’d realized what had happened to her, a rabbit-like creature had broken cover practically beneath her nose. Semi-starvation and confusion had kept her dazed long enough for leopard-instincts to take over. She’d caught and killed the thing and had half eaten it before the reality of what she’d done and become broke through her shock. Raw rabbit-thing tasted fine to leopard-Glenda; when she realized that, she finished it, nose to tail. Now for the first time in weeks she was warm and content. And for the first time in years she was something to be afraid of. She gazed about her from her vantage-point on the warm boulder, taking in the grassy hills and breathing in the warm, hay-scented air with a growing contentment.

Becoming a leopard might not be a bad trans­formation.

Ears keener than a human’s picked up the sound of dogs in the distance; she became aware that the man she’d frightened might have gone back home for help. They just might be hunting her.

Time to go.

She leapt down from her rock, setting off at a right angle to the direction the sound of the baying was coming from. Her sense of smell, so heightened now that it might have been a new sense altogether, had picked up the coolth of running water off this way, dimmed by the green odor of the grass. And running water was a good way to