The creature lifted an enormous paw and placed it gently over Melanie’s own small hand, taking care not to scratch her skin with its talons. Melanie gave it a reassuring smile. ‘You did the right thing,’ she told it. ‘I will change. I promise.’
But it was the wolf that was slowly changing, even as she watched. The fine hairs that clothed its body were drawing slowly back, leaving bare pink skin as it ebbed away like the ocean tide leaving clean, even sands in its wake. The strong muzzle of the beast was shrinking, flattening itself, while the protruding canine teeth it had put to such devastating effect were receding into the animal’s jaw. The creature’s broad shoulders and bulging muscles contracted and withered away, leaving behind a slender body so thin she could even see its ribs in places. The great paw that covered her own hand shrunk, the claws receding, the fingers thinning and shortening, until eventually just a small, pink hand, not much larger than her own, gripped her tightly in a sweaty clasp.
Finally, the yellow lights that had burned like beacons behind the inhuman eyes vanished, to be replaced with cool, green orbs nestling in pools of clear white. Tears flowed in rivers from those eyes, and the boy who now crouched naked by her bedside wailed and sobbed in disconsolate despair, his bare shoulders shivering as if the world really had ended.
Chapter Ninety
Imperial College, Kensington, London, New Year morning, full moon
It was almost dawn when Leanna climbed to the top of the roof and looked down with fury at the city beneath her. The moon hung low in the sky, just above the far horizon. It could only be seen now from the rooftops and the tallest buildings. In a matter of minutes, it would be gone and she would revert to human form.
From her rooftop vantage point it was a sheer drop of eight floors to the street below. In her black rage she had to suppress an urge to spring from the roof into thin air. Not even in wolf form would she survive such a fall. She licked her paws instead and sat on the edge of the building, her hind legs bent under her.
The wind gusted across the damp tiles of the roof, making them sing in the cold, but Leanna hardly felt it. She had not felt cold since leaving the Carpathian Mountains. Wolves just didn’t feel the cold.
But they felt rage. Warg Daddy’s news of James and Samuel’s betrayal had filled her with a boiling anger. She had killed, and killed again, but not even that had quelled her wrath. Only vengeance would quiet the fury, but that would take time. While she waited, she would nurture her black hate, cultivate it in her heart. Revenge, when it came, would be sweeter that way.
She turned her gaze from the street below to the buildings opposite and beyond. Lights twinkled from windows, cars and street lamps, keeping the night at bay. Millions upon millions of people lived in this city, huddling together for comfort against the dark, against the cold and the terrors of the unknown, just as their ancestors had gathered around campfires. In the sky, a plane passed overhead, full of people arriving from a distant land. Another followed, about a minute behind. With Leanna’s enhanced vision she could see two more approaching in an endless stream of life. People everywhere; a global community that never truly slept.
The midnight fireworks had long since ceased now, and in their place fires burned. The sounds of police sirens and emergency vehicles had replaced the earlier sounds of celebration and festivity. Smoke billowed into the sky, obscuring the stars and sometimes even the bright sphere of the moon itself. It spread across London like a hazy memory of the violence that had engulfed the streets tonight.
This city would soon fall. But before it fell, it would burn.
Wolves had ruled this land once. Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, after the glaciers had retreated north, the European primeval forest had stretched from the coastline of Ireland in the west to the shores of the Caspian Sea in the east. In that forest, wolves had lived and killed as they pleased. No lights had disturbed the darkness then, save for the cold and distant moon and stars that lit the sky. Then humans had come, bringing weapons and fire. They had burned the forests and hunted the wolves, driving them to the fringes of civilization and into the shadow realm of nightmares.
But the wolves were returning. The hunted had become hunters again.
Now civilization would be their friend. The fires that burned this time would burn for the wolves. Globalization and technology would drive their return to supremacy. Already Leanna had sent servants to the corners of the globe, to seed a new generation of werewolves. New York, Beijing, Sau Paulo, Moscow. By the time the authorities discovered them, it would be too late to stop the global rise of the werewolf.
Werewolf. It came from the Old English word wer, meaning man. Legends of the werewolf had existed for as long as humans had walked the earth, since the first stories were told around campfires to keep the darkness at bay. But they had never been taken seriously by science, not until Professor Wiseman had begun his experiments in the Carpathian Mountains, hunting and trapping werewolves, studying them, documenting their characteristics and habits. He had brought modern scientific methods to bear on an ancient legend, and like all great scientists had displaced superstition with understanding. Wiseman had taught Leanna everything he knew about the condition.
He’d even named it. Lycanthropic.
Wiseman had been a brilliant epidemiologist, but even he hadn’t understood the full implications of his work. What he’d discovered wasn’t simply a new class of disease, but a superior status to be enjoyed by those strong enough to harness its gift. It was a pathway to super-powers that humans had previously only ever dreamed of.
Ultimately, Wiseman had been too weak to use his knowledge in that way. Humans had always been weak, and nature punished weakness without pity or mercy. It was the cause of all human suffering. Now it was time for weakness to be stamped out.
The days of Homo sapiens were coming to an end. Homo lupinus, the ‘wolf man’ had made its debut. The lycanthropic would inherit the earth. And Leanna would be their queen.
She rose up on her haunches and howled at the moon, a sustained call rising and falling in pitch for a full minute before silence closed in again. She dropped back onto all fours and waited, her long ears twitching. A response came back to her, an echo of her own howl, coming from the south of the city. As it died away, another howl began, this one from the east. Then another joined it, and another, from every direction. From across the slate rooftops, from the tops of thrusting steel-and-glass towers, from beyond the ancient steeples and domes and cobbled streets and bustling thoroughfares of the sprawling city, a chorus of howls echoed in reply.
To be continued in Wolf Moon, Book 2 of the Lycanthropic series …
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Lycanthropic (Book 1): Wolf Blood Page 34