The beast that Giovanni had become stood in the growing pool of hot blood, which he lapped up greedily.
He fought to control himself, to stop the horror of what he tasted, but despite every bit of his will he couldn’t even bring himself to step back from the slaughter. It was as if he were a passive observer — watching through a window, or a mirror, as a monster fed on the still-jerking remains of a human being — but it was obvious he was the monster, even though he wasn’t controlling the muscles or the claws, or the jaws.
Something else had taken control.
The Devil.
It had to be the Devil, taking him for the evil he had done.
And as punishment, he couldn’t even look away or close his eyes to the horror before him. He had to live through every moment of it, watching through the window that was a mirror to his actions.
Showing its incredible intelligence, the beast Giovanni had become dragged the partisan’s warm corpse away from his sentry position and — once hidden in the shelter of a crumbling building — tore into Vincent’s belly and feasted on the soft, bloody innards. Within the body of the wolf-monster, what was left of Giovanni-the-human prayed to wake from this terrible nightmare as he tasted the flesh, chewing and swallowing like a machine. The fresh meat invigorated his body even as his mind screamed in revulsion and disgust.
But the beast wasn’t sated.
No, there was a deep-belly hunger the likes of which Giovanni had never experienced, and he knew the monster in front of his eyes wasn’t finished, not yet.
After finishing the choicest parts of the sentry (his name had been Vincent, and hadn’t he offered Giovanni’s family his mattress?), the beast he’d become began to prowl, looking for more food.
The creature moved effortlessly and without a sound through the rubble, the new and expanded palette of scents and sounds suddenly exploding in Giovanni’s brain. Even though he couldn’t make sense of the jumble of olfactory and auditory sensations, the beast took it all in and used it to hunt new prey while avoiding potential adversaries.
Ahead there was movement and the beast closed in as stealthy as a shadow in the dark.
Within the skull of the wolf-monster, Giovanni screamed when the creature spotted its newest quarry — a woman escorting two young children through the ghost of the city.
Straining with everything he had, Giovanni fought to stop the beast, or at least distract it. But it was futile. He knew now he was inside the monster — part of him at least was completely aware of it — but it didn’t seem as though he could influence its behavior.
The beast trailed behind the woman and her children, stalking them through the desolate, detritus-strewn streets.
Was it toying with them?
The woman glanced over her shoulder repeatedly while herding her babies, seeming to intuitively sense the presence of danger. And through the creature’s senses, Giovanni smelled the woman’s fear, her nervous sweat, and heard the heart pounding in her chest, her quickened breaths.
And despite his horror, Giovanni felt excited.
Sexually excited.
When the woman spotted the monster, her eyes grew wide with fear. She turned on her heel and pushed her young ones ahead of her. “Correte!” she said with a hiss. Run!
But the wolf was in no hurry. The prey couldn’t outrun it. He loped behind them, gathering speed, easily avoiding the scattered bricks and broken glass that littered the street, which the humans had no choice but to navigate carefully.
They were too frightened by now.
The woman stumbled over a mound of broken bricks and Giovanni could only look on in horror through the wolf’s eyes as it decided to end the game.
“Presto! Correte piu’ presto!” the woman yelled. Faster, run faster! She shoved her children even as the wolf pounced on her back, knocking her violently to the ground.
What was left of Giovanni cried out in torment as the wolf’s jaws — his jaws — sank into the back of the woman’s neck, snapping the bone as if it were a pencil.
The younger of the two boys stopped and turned back, his eyes and mouth gaping as he watched his mother’s terrifying fate. The child’s older brother grabbed his hand and jerked him away. “Vieni! Corri!”
The monster didn’t care. They would be easy enough to track. He gave a powerful twist of his neck and tore the woman’s head from her shoulders, enjoying the crimson gout that poured out of her and puddled on the paving stones. He licked at it, enjoying the freshness and the unknown element that made the blood of a frightened human so much tastier.
He then rose to pursue the two smaller male humans.
He could smell them — the sweat oozing from their pores, the urine staining their undergarments… and their sweet, salty blood.
He could hear them, too, softly weeping in heightened fear and grief.
He found them a few ruined buildings away from their mother’s cooling, headless corpse. They were huddled together in the space between two collapsed walls. The smaller of the two clutched some kind of plush figurine that smelled of sawdust.
As the wolf approached them, growling, strings of drool escaping from its jaws, Giovanni’s conscious mind could no longer accept the bottomless well of suffering he was causing. Mercifully, he blacked out, and the wolf went on without him.
8
At dawn, he awoke shivering from a nightmare, bathed in cold sweat. Faint echoes of the dream lingered like the previous night’s moonlight, and he shrank at the images of blood and fury. God knew he had experienced enough of both recently. Where was he? Why was he shivering?
He was curled in a tight ball, trying to keep skin on skin so he could stay warmer. Had Maria opened the window again? She tended to feel too hot, whereas he craved warmth in the night.
He shivered more intensely now. His head ached, throbbing with a hammer-like cadence that threatened to overwhelm him. Slowly he became aware of the cold wetness covering every part of his skin. The tiny, hard points prickling his side puzzled him. The scratchy wool blankets piled on his side of the bed didn’t usually feel like pine needles.
Pine needles?
Suddenly his throat screamed for water, as if he had swallowed a bucketful of desert sand.
He remembered then that the shelter they had been forced to inhabit was below ground. He wasn’t in his own comfortable bedroom, where the creamy stucco walls bore only a crucifix and a portrait of Mary. He almost smiled at the memory, but his head hurt too much. And he remembered the shelter was windowless.
He opened his eyes and leaped up, shocked to see that he had slept on a gently sloping hillside — in a clearing, trees cluttering his view all around. Over him the drooping branches of a weeping willow seemed to cascade like tears. The long, narrow leaves dotted his naked arms and chest. Where was his nightshirt? Giovanni always wore a thick layer of clothing to bed, but now he was naked and the leaves tickled his skin.
He hugged himself, trembling uncontrollably. Cold, wet dew numbed his toes. His penis had shrunk and sought shelter between his thighs, and small twigs made sticky knots in his pubic hair.
“Ma che cosa—?” What was going on?
He tore his right hand from under his left armpit, where he felt a semblance of warmth, and cupped his genitals to preserve some body heat.
It was dawn, the sky dappled with patches of light. A cool wind swept across the overgrown grass of the clearing. The slope meant he was back in the hills, but where? How far? And how had he gotten here? And why had he shed all his clothing? His feet squished in the wet grass as he started in one direction, stopped, then tried another.