Celine remembered Jason telling her about the rifle, and she had seen it in the closet when she grabbed boxes of Jason's comic books. There was no ammo, but that didn't matter; Boil wouldn't know that. She could grab him, take him out to the middle of the woods somewhere, and threaten to blow his brains out if he didn't talk. She knew that she was probably strong enough to rip him apart with her bare hands, but the threat of violence without the gun wouldn't be enough, Boil wouldn't buy it. But with a rifle pointed at his head… he would be foolish to doubt that she was capable of pulling the trigger.
The more she thought on it as she drove toward Jason's mom's house, the more sense it made. The dash clock read almost three o'clock. This was the day that Bethany always took Trish to the park to get ice cream. More importantly, it meant three hours until nightfall, until she would become… whatever she would become. She was scared, excited, confused, and defiant. No matter what, she would face this as she had faced everything else in her life: head-on.
Another wave of cramps rolled over her as she pulled on to the open gravel in front of Bethany's house, spotting the mini-van. At first she worried that Bethany had not taken Trish for her usual outing, but then she remembered Jason telling her that the family vehicle must be out of commission. There was still a chance that Bethany was home, of course. If so, Celine would make up some excuse for her visit and come back another time for the rifle. But what if Bethany came home while she was there? Celine decided to park behind the house. She could always escape through the window in Jason's room and high tail it from there.
Once parked Celine got out, took two steps toward the back door, and nearly fell to her knees. The cramps were getting worse. Much worse. Her stomach felt like it was being squeezed in an iron fist. Through sheer force of will she continued on to the back door and tried it, unlocked. Bless Bethany's small-town heart.
Through the back door, to the left in a short hall was Jason's room. She opened the closet doors, and there it was. A sound froze her hand as she reached out; it was a vehicle, still a ways away but coming closer…
Just then the most painful attack yet hit her; it felt like every bone in her body was about to shatter. She stumbled away from the closet and collapsed to the floor, tasting blood. She raised a shaky hand to her mouth and pulled away crimson fingers. Her spine arched and the world spun. Dimly, she was aware that the vehicle she heard, a truck, had now pulled up in front of the house.
This is like what Jason was going through when I found him in the mill, just before…
The vehicle's doors opened, and she heard voices: Trish, Bethany. A male voice.
She lay on her side, wracked by spasms. From outside came the sound of something—Trish's wheelchair? —being removed from the truck. Tendons in her back and arms creaked.
It couldn't be. Nightfall was still hours away. Rearing up onto her knees she looked out Jason's window and there it was, bloated, pale, and undeniable: a full moon against a not-yet black sky. From the driveway out front the truck drove away and the home's front doorknob turned.
Oh shit.
***
"You're not usually so sloppy. I'm disappointed." Boil's voice.
"I'm telling you he was dead." Carter.
"Apparently not." Jason could smell dried-up dog blood. Boil was looking over a low wooden wall into an earthen pit while holding a shotgun. Carter was standing next to him, arms folded. Behind the two of them, over Boil's right shoulder, was the kid, hugging his arms tightly and looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but in that room. The room was rectangular, as was the "ring" Jason was laying in. Wooden planks, three high, formed the walls of the ring, which had been dug another foot below ground level.
The growling and snarling sounds to Jason's back and front were nearly deafening. He lay on his side, hands shackled to the small of his back, apparently with Sheriff Barclay's handcuffs. Behind him, three dogs were straining against leashes held by the older stranger. In front of him, two more dogs lunged against leashes in the hand of the younger man, snapping their teeth. Jason returned his gaze to Boil.
"See, I think our dogs here developed a taste for human blood after we fed them some of the sheriff," Boil called down. "We're about to find out. At any rate, what they don't finish, we will."
Jason's guts twisted. His body contorted and mind-numbing pain radiated from his bones.
"Let 'em loose."
As the dogs barked wildly, Jason flipped onto his back in the dirt. All five animals—three pit bulls and two Rottweilers— crowded around, teeth gnashing just inches away. The noise bored into Jason's skull but the dogs didn't bite.
A spasm sent Jason's back arching as if electrical current were running from his head to his toes. The dogs backed up just a bit…
I'm turning; why am I turning? It's not—
Then a thought hit him: occasionally the full moon rose before nightfall. As a kid he had thought it was odd to look up in the late afternoon sky and see the moon.
Idiot, you should have realized. You should have checked.
Now his body folded; his knees shot up to his shoulders and he rolled to his left side. His jaw unhinged; he felt the bones in his upper spine and base of the neck pop. He felt discs expanding.
"The fuck you suppose is wrong with him?" The younger stranger asked.
"Dogs ain't attackin'," the older man observed.
"Maybe they just need blood," Boil replied. A BOOM! thundered then, setting Jason's ears ringing. There was a large, painful impact to his right shoulder, chest, and ribs. The spread of a shotgun blast. Metallic and powder smells reached his nostrils. The dogs closed in as Jason's face began extending; bones, tendons, and ligaments throughout his body cracked, split, shifted and began to re-knit. As teeth ripped into his clothing and flesh, his arms tremored and stretched, and the small chain connecting both handcuffs snapped.
"Whas goin' on? Cain't see!"
One of the rots had sunk a deep bite into his neck, while a pit bull fought for that same space. Jason twisted his own muzzle around, even as new teeth formed and broke through the gums. He locked his jaw down just above the rot's right shoulder; felt bone snap and sinew rip as he bit harder. Blood, divine essence, washed over his tongue and into his throat.
The other rottweiler and one of the pit bulls had set to work on Jason's lower half. His legs kicked out, then cracked with the sound of logs splitting in a fire as the limbs began reshaping.
"Jesus Christ holy shit…"
The third pit bull was at Jason's midsection trying for all it was worth to latch onto his balls. Jason's right hand shot down to his groin, where he worked his fingers into the rot's mouth, forcing it open enough to shove his hand in.
As the rot at his neck struggled to hold on, Jason's neck thickened and succeeded in breaking the dog's bite. Claws extended from Jason's right hand, as it cracked and lengthened inside the pit bull's maw, snapping not only bone but popping the handcuff off from that wrist. There were choking, garbled sounds from the animal, accompanied by convulsions as Jason's transforming hand shredded its throat.
"What in fuck's sake?"
Getting his left hand under him, Jason shook off the badly wounded rotweiler at his neck as well as the pit bull that maneuvered to replace it.
Using the quivering pit bull on his right hand as a kind of club, Jason swatted at the rotweiler and pit bull on his legs, which had now taken on a digitigrade form. Through the transformation process and the mauling of the dogs, Jason's clothes had been ripped from his body. His shifting left arm broke the cuff on that wrist. He was three quarters of the way through the transformation and the conscious, self-aware aspect of him was fading into the background like a ship receding in fog. He slowly rose, towering over the older stranger. Behind him he could hear the younger man scrambling for something: "The gun! Gimme the goddamn gun!"
Jason, the beast, flung the now-dead pit bull from his gore-coated right arm. Thick fur was spreading across the entirety of his body.
"
Fuckin' gimme…"
A blow. "Agh, fuck, you asshole!"
Two of the dogs were still barking. Behind and to his left was another sound. Dimly he identified it as a shotgun being cocked. One of the pit bulls jumped for his left arm and he lashed out, grasping the dog at the throat. He raised his hand and whipped it down, snapping the canine's spine on the earthen floor. The big man—Carter?— stood, silently watching, arms hanging at his sides.
Thick strands of saliva ran from the beast's open muzzle as he moved within inches of the fear-stricken older man. The other. On this other, the beast could smell fear. Like an ocean predator rising from murky depths, Her voice, the voice he hadn't heard since the night he had attacked Celine, surfaced in his mind:
Feed.
***
Celine would have screamed—tried to scream— but her body was no longer hers to command. It felt like she was being ripped apart from the inside out. She was vaguely aware that her face was no longer her face; it was something foreign, strange, elongated, misshapen… bones and teeth formed, grew, and changed. There were no words to describe the pain.
Writhing on the floor, she kicked out, not slamming the door but shoving it to the jamb. She dimly recognized sounds of Bethany wheeling Trish into the next room. She heard the TV come on, heard Beth leave. There was a sudden sensation that her guts were going to come up out of her throat. Her clothes felt all-too constraining. She ripped coat, shirt, and jeans from her body and rolled onto her knees. Guttural sounds had begun to escape her from deep inside as she quivered on all fours, her back arching like that of a spooked cat. Her panties ripped, and her bra snapped and fell.
My tits, Jesus what's happening to my tits?
Her C cup tits, hanging and swaying one second, had all but disappeared the next. Nipples sprouted along the edges of her stomach. She shut her eyes tight, trying desperately to shut out the pain but it was no use. When she opened her eyes once more, colors had changed. Her red coat, the remains of which lay only a few feet away, looked a kind of dull green. In fact, none of the colors in the room looked right...
Or did they? Did it matter? Maybe this was how it was meant to be. How it had always been meant to be. Her thoughts became indistinct, scattered.
Burbling noises from the room next door carried to her. Celine's head swiveled, her eyes locking on the hole in the back of the closet. An arm appeared there— slender, inviting. Despite the pain, she had begun to drift, a sensation like that middle ground between wakefulness and sleep. It was then that a foreign voice rose inside her mind. It was soft and warm, but firm. It spoke a single word:
Feed.
A sliver of Celine's consciousness remembered Jason's warning, of a war-goddess driving him to kill. She thought of this only briefly before dismissing it, crawling toward the closet, fixated on that pale, flailing limb.
Soon her gaping jaws were hovering within inches of that arm…
Yes.
She struck out, latched down, pierced skin. Trish screamed. Blood ran over Celine's tongue and the taste was indescribably pleasing. But she only had a slight grasp of the limb; she opened her mouth to achieve a better bite and the arm whipped back into the hole.
No!
Feet pounded heavily into the other room. Another scream. Celine's conscious mind continued to fade. The one she had just bitten was out of her reach. But, there was another…
Wailing sounds, moving away. The two others were leaving.
Chase.
Celine was on her feet, wobbling, the transformation not yet entirely complete. She stumbled to the door and clawed it open. The fat other was pulling the crippled other. Fat other looked at her, mouth open, eyes wide. Fear is for the others. Fear is for prey.
The fat other moved quickly away. She wanted to chase but could not, not yet; her feet hadn't yet transformed. They extended now, her heels rising further and further from the floor. Her hips, legs, tail… these were the final changes; those and the hair spreading across her skin, turning to a thick black pelt.
The fat other and the crippled other were outside the house now. She pushed through the opening, moved into the cramped space, then a larger space, adjusting to walking on different legs and seeing different colors. She continued on, through another opening and another, and then out into the cold air, looking to an almost-dark sky lit by… the moon. The Giver of Life. It was beautiful, and ancient and primal and perfect.
Others are food.
The fat other had put the crippled one into a metal box, closing a barrier. Fat other moved to the other side and also entered the box, shutting a second barrier.
She stalked to the large metal cage and sniffed, running her claws along the part she could see through. She thought of her dream-memories, of the hunt, of scared pale prey hiding in trees. She knew that now, as then, all she need do…
Was wait.
***
His transformation was complete. The beast that had been Jason lashed out and sent the older other—man, he's a man—flying. The man's feet hit the topmost planks, then smashed into the barrier—door—beyond, his head hanging limply from a broken neck.
There was a BOOM! and pain across his back; that powder smell again. The beast spun. The old man was above, holding a… gun. Shotgun. There was also a skinny other crawling away in the pit, divine essence flowing from its—his—nose, eyes wide with fear. A big other was standing against the… wall; a young other in the corner behind…
Old man. He was the most dangerous. The creature leapt over unbroken boards onto the floor. Old man ran, took the young other and held him in front, a sacrifice.
Kill the young one.
One dog still barked, growled and snarled but stayed away. The beast stood, panting, chest heaving, waiting. The part of it that was Jason clawed its way to the surface.
No. He's a kid. Just a kid.
Anger; confusion; shock; persistence.
KILL.
The beast heard a sound behind it and turned to see the big man holding a large plank. Big man moved to swing it into the wolf's head but the wolf was too fast. His jaws descended, closing on big man's wrist. Divine essence flowed, and the beast allowed itself to drink. This man was a danger to those it loved; this man deserved to die.
BOOM! The creature was thrown forward, colliding with Big Man, rocking him to the wall. BOOM! The beast was nearly knocked off its feet. BOOM! This time it was forced down onto the dead man against the door. The dog closed in.
Run.
It grabbed, reared up, spun, and threw the dead other into Old Man. It tore through the door. Outside, it dropped to all fours and bounded for the trees.
Above, the sky had finally grown dark.
PART THREE: WIND MOON
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Carter's little brother Ralph called it a gift. Don Mastroni had another word for it: "obdurate." Don Mastroni liked big words. Don Mastroni liked many things.
The way Ralph described his big brother was like a machine: brutal, efficient, no guilt, no fear—he always said it with a kind of awe. Ralph wasn't born with the gift, he was soft, the opposite of fearless. Death, heights, spiders, crowds… Ralph spent half his life scared of one thing or another.
Ralph had been right about Carter, though. Carter could shove a palm knife between his best friend's ribs and then go have lunch. When it came to fear, the way he figured it, fear was just another emotion. Throughout his life he had never really, truly known, what fear felt like.
Until he saw what that guy Jason turned into.
Carter didn't grow up believing in a lot of nonsense. He didn't believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, he sure as hell didn't believe in God. What he believed in was what he could accomplish with his own two hands. And survival.
When that guy changed right in front of him, he experienced several things at once: an inability to trust what he was seeing with his eyes for the first time (and he had seen some truly crazy things,) a tightening in his chest and stomach, a weakening of the k
nees, a tremor in arms and hands, an urge to run…. He had felt a touch of that fear earlier when he opened the door and saw Jason—the guy who was supposed to be dead, should have been dead—standing on the other side. But he was still having trouble getting his head around what happened at the Haversaw house.
A human being turned into an animal. Just like in those low-grade horror movies. This happened right in front of him, just a few feet away. He replayed it again and again in his mind, like rewinding a video cassette, as his brain tried to make sense of it. Things like that didn't just happen. It changed… he changed, right there. Killed three of the dogs, almost killed a fourth…
Then it knocked the daylights out of Ned Haversaw, leaving him broken against the door. And through it all Carter had just stood there, frozen. Worthless. When the animal jumped up and closed in on the old man, who used that stupid kid as a human shield, he had actually considered running. He considered pushing past poor old dead Ned and running as far and as fast as he could.
But the one thing Carter had believed in throughout his miserable time on this planet was not giving up, not backing down, no matter what. He had only run from one thing in his entire life, and he wasn't ready to do it again.
So he had swung that plank, and he had gotten bit. He felt the raw power of the thing that Jason had become and he had thought to himself, this is it, whatever this thing is, it's gonna be the end of me. Then the old man had come out from behind the kid, blasting with the Mossberg pump action, firing his last three shells into the monster. Then he was out… but the thing didn't know that. It ran. It ran and it left him nursing a mangled right arm… while the old man had reloaded and blew half of Troy Haversaw's brains out while the sorry hick huddled over his older brother. The kid, Ghost, would have wet himself if he hadn't already when the animal-thing had stood over him. Meanwhile, five minutes after the bite, that arm of his had already started to heal.
Carter Roth didn't believe in a lot of nonsense. But he and Ralph had watched horror movies when they were kids, and he was pretty sure that there was a rule about a…werewolf. Sounds so stupid… biting you, and not killing you. It meant you would become one too.
Whisper Lake (The Turning Book 2) Page 20