"But before we go," Derak said, "we will give them something to remember."
And he began to change.
Derak tore the shirt from his back and flexed the powerful muscles of his shoulders. His chest swelled and cracked as the bony structure within reshaped itself. His lips drew back to show the strong yellow teeth. The killing teeth.
Around him the others followed the lead of Derak. They threw off their clothes while their bodies twisted and stretched in a jerking dance of metamorphosis. The faces, human a moment before, thinned and lengthened. The ears grew, the noses pushed forward into muzzles. Short, coarse hair sprouted on their bodies. The hair spread, thickened into fur. The human voices became low, muttering growls. And there was the howling.
Malcolm sat suddenly upright on his cot in the small cabin. The candle flame guttered and died in a whisper of the night wind that seeped through cracks in the walls. The voices howling in the night were strange and frightening, yet they touched something deep within the boy. They spoke to him in a language he did not know. They called him. He longed to go to them.
Then there were other sounds. The scrape of heavy booted feet, a crunch of brush, muttered curses. Malcolm began to sweat. He stared into the darkness, fearful of something he could not define.
Inside the barn of a building, they heard the other sounds too late. There was a heavy scrape and a thud as the door was barred from the outside. Those within froze for a moment in wild attitudes of change... half-human, half-beast. They sniffed the air and caught the scent of men outside, then the biting odor of raw gasoline. An instant later in a blast of heat and light, the barn was afire.
Panic.
Three ways a werewolf can die. By a weapon of silver. By fire. And a third way that was never spoken of. The fire was all around them, and the fire was death.
Inside the barn was hell. Humans, wolves, creatures in all stages between, stumbled into the beams and crashed the blistering walls, searching for an escape. Their voices mingled in an outcry of agony and rage. Twisted muzzles pushed through the boards of the walls for air but were seared and sizzled by the flames outside. Claws scratched frantically at the wood. The men with the torches had done their work well. The building was surrounded by a wall of flame.
Some of the creatures in the barn broke through to the outside, their misshapen bodies afire, and ran till they dropped in a blazing, screaming heap. The men with the torches watched grimly as they died.
Most stayed inside the building. They huddled together as the flames leaped up the walls and across the roof. Their terrible jaws gaped in helpless rage. The blazing roof fell, and the screaming stopped.
But not all of them died. A few got away. A few always get away.
At the sound of the agonized howling and the furnace blast of the burning barn, Malcolm bolted from his cot and stumbled out into the inferno that had been his village. Men ran from house to house with cans of gasoline and blazing torches. One after another they were set afire.
For long minutes Malcolm stood in frozen horror. The shrieks of the dying were all around him. The smell of the dead made him retch. His body twitched and jumped of its own volition. The smells around him were keener, his night vision sharper than ever in his life. The message was clear in his mind.
Run!
And Malcolm ran. Away from the carnage of Drago. He was faster and stronger than ever he dreamed he could be. The forest was his as he loped through the brush, darting among the trees, leaping easily over any obstruction. Faster and faster he ran, putting the night and the forest between him and the blazing ruin of Drago. He ran in a deep crouch, his hands sometimes clutching at the ground, helping to pull him along. In the midst of his grief at the loss of his village and his people, Malcolm felt something else. Freedom. Freedom and power.
On the other side of the burned-out village, on the crest of a hill, a huge wolf-like figure looked down on the dying flames. Its fur was singed, and a ragged gash from a splintered board ran the length of the animal's side. The wound would soon heal. The anger would remain.
If he had escaped, there would be others. To help them survive, be must find them and bring them together. He was the leader.
Derak pointed his muzzle to the sky. The cruel teeth gleamed in the moonlight. He tested the air. There was the acrid smell of burning flesh and fur. The bite of gasoline. The sweat stink of the men. And there was the familiar scent of the others, those who had escaped... and somewhere in the night forest... his son.
Miles away, moving swiftly in the other direction, Malcolm paused and raised his head to listen to the howling.
CHAPTER
FIVE
The forest took him in. It sheltered him from the night and hid him from the men who shouted and cursed as they crashed through the brush, searching out the few survivors of Drago. In the morning the shouts were farther away. The smell of smoke still hung in the air. The sun was a pale disk behind a curtain of cloud. Malcolm rested and realized he was terribly thirsty. His instinct was to cry, but he did not. Instead he set out to find water, and the forest showed him where to look. There were shallow pools from the last rain, hollowed-out stumps that held enough to drink, and half-hidden streams that a man could miss if he did not stop to look.
Food was easier. Pine nuts were plentiful, and there were wild blackberries and grapes. The leaves and stalks of goosefoot and the fleshy green purslane were tough and chewy, but they gave him nourishment. Sometimes he ate things that cramped his stomach and doubled him up in pain, but soon he learned which foods to avoid and which gave him the strength to go on.
But where to go? Everything that he had known was behind him, burned. Destroyed. Gone. He had no destination. The days passed. And the nights. He stopped counting. Sometimes Malcolm could hear the men in the woods. They were still out there stalking him. And he could smell them. Smell the acrid sweat of the hunter. The men were clumsy in the woods, and slow moving compared to the boy. Still, he could not risk discovery. The men had guns. Malcolm well remembered what the men had done to his village. To his people.
By night he moved, restlessly and without destination, sustained only by the conviction that he must keep moving. During the day, when he would be more easily seen by the searchers, he rested under a simple lean-to constructed of boughs. It was an aimless existence, and a gnawing ache grew in Malcolm's heart. Somewhere, he felt, there was a place for him, could he but find it.
The growing ache was not only in his heart. For the first time in his life Malcolm knew hunger. Real hunger. The edible plants he found in the forest - the berries, the roots, the bark stripped from tender saplings - these were enough to keep him alive, but he was never completely free from hunger. Hunger for meat. It was a pain that never left him. A pain that grew worse every day.
Then one morning in desperation he snatched at a squirrel that sat on a stump regarding him curiously. Malcolm was surprised at the ease with which he had caught the little creature. He killed it quickly, tore away the fur as best he could with his hands, and devoured it. He ripped the raw flesh from the tiny bones with his teeth. The meat was rank and tough, but it was better than bark.
Soon Malcolm discovered he was quick enough to run down and catch other small animals with his hands. Opossums, raccoons, once even a small deer. The streams were not deep enough to provide fish, but there were frogs to be taken. Malcolm's muscles grew lean and hard in his hunting exertions, his teeth white, his jaw strong enough to crack a bone.