Thunder sounded, making my ears twitch, and I found that the door was open. How stupid of them, to not be more careful.
In an instant I was out, and found myself in a darkened hallway that led upward.
A man stood at the end of it, doing something on his phone.
It was too late by the time he looked up, hand upraised in a futile attempt to stop me.
My fangs broke his skin, choking his screams. Bone splintered between my sharp teeth, the feeling foreign but distantly familiar at the same time. It had been years since my wolf had taken over. Now I could see from her eyes, but her actions were not my own.
Hot blood filled my mouth, leaking down my jaws and neck as I dropped the witch to the ground.
Blood trickled from his mouth as he gurgled. He stared at me in absolute horror, eyes going dark, and I wasn’t sure he could even see me. No matter. He shuddered again, drawing one last breath before his eyes clouded and he lay still.
I watched, licking at the hot, coppery blood on my jaws in satisfaction
He was prey, and now he was dead.
The only other door in the long hallway creaked open, a young woman taking a step back from it. Her mouth fell open and I took a step towards her, my wolf ready to show her just where she resided on the food chain.
Memories flashed through my head. The coffee shop; had that really been so long ago? I knew her. She had warned me, right? She’d been outside my cell, eyes pleading as if she’d wanted to help but couldn’t. Siobhan. That was her name.
“Please!” she gasped, stumbling back with her hands up. “I didn’t want any of this! I didn’t do this!“
I licked my jaws as I walked out of the underground bunker and into a dense forest clearing. Thunder rumbled from the sky above us, faint light patterning the grass under my paws.
“We didn’t want to! It’s only Colette’s family that agreed to help the vampires.” She was still talking, and there was just enough of me left to listen. Barely. “None of us will stop you.”
She still held her hands up, looking terrified. Her fear-scent made my nose wrinkle.
She had warned me, or tried, I screamed to my wolf-thoughts. Siobhan wasn’t worth my fangs.
Voices made me look up, and I found two people coming towards us, nightblind in the dark. They drew my wolf’s attention away from Siobhan, probably saving her life.
I lunged, my weight knocking the woman to the ground and biting through her throat just as I had the man in the tunnel.
The man with her screamed, backing up and whipping out a crystal on a chain.
Magic assaulted me, trying to break through my fury and push me back. The spell battered against my white fur, not managing to sink into my pelt.
It wasn’t very strong magic.
He lay dead next to the witch moments later.
All the while, my witch-self fought with my wolf for control. For rationality. For reason.
But with every one of Colette’s witches that confronted me and tried to halt my escape, the wolf won out just a little more.
I came to a stop at last, finding no more living witches in the clearing after the five I’d killed. All of them, save Siobhan, had tried to stop me. They’d tried to hurt me, to put me back in that hole. They didn’t understand that it drove my wolf to strive ever harder against them; to frenzy with the need for their blood on our teeth.
My sides heaved and I scanned the woods around me for movement. When I could breathe normally again I inhaled deeply, tasting the scents of the forest and the storm on the back of my tongue. Colette’s scent was here, but it was old.
I wanted–needed to find her. I wouldn’t be satisfied until she was dead and my fur had gained another coat of crimson paint.
I wavered once more; was that really what I wanted? To hunt her like a literal animal and kill her?
The answer ended up being a resounding yes, and just like that, my witch-self lost the battle with my wolf.
Everything changed. Priorities shifted and I tilted my head back to howl. Nothing answered me, predictably, and when I tried to remember what had me so anxious…I couldn’t.
I existed only to hunt down the witch who’d tried to control me. Anger burned the image in my mind, chasing out everything else as I began to run.
She’d been here at some point; her scent wasn’t fresh, but she’d been here. And, judging by the way her scent drifted into the trees, she hadn’t driven away. She’d walked.
She was somewhere in these woods, and I would find her. I stepped into the trees, ears pricked and alert as I left the clearing and the sounds of Siobhan trying to start her car far behind me.
Something nagged at me. Wasn’t there something I had to do? Wasn’t there somewhere I needed to be?
But every time I tried to remember, Wolf pushed the thoughts away. Things like that weren’t important, to a wolf. There was only now.
So I stopped trying to remember, and gave into the alluring pull of my wolf.
The rain had lessened by the time I had found what I was looking for. Thunder still rumbled, interspersed with the lightning that lit up the sky. I didn’t know how long it had been. Hours, maybe? It was so difficult to track time when that was not important to my wolf.
A familiar scent tickled at my nose. It was clearer than it had been so far, and that meant she couldn’t be much further. I dropped into a belly crawl, my eyes tracking movement between the trees ahead of me.
Chickens picked about an enclosure in a small grotto.
A cat scrambled from a tall wooden fence to the roof, fur bristling.
My paw splashed
