Huntress

Some time in 1992 or '93 I bought a copy of White Wolf's game, Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The content of that game impressed me deeply and I found a single image lodged in my mind: a lone woman, standing in a street under a full moon. Huntress grew from this image. This story, like most of my other stories that I truly like, wrote itself and I did not know what would happen in the end until I reached it myself.

Trueblood watched The House as it lay coiled atop its ragged lawn. Even from across the town she could see it. Of all the houses only its windows were lit, their odd light blazing forth like the beams of supernatural, searching eyes. Those lights flared and flickered as if it burned within and they reached out across the distance to play across her pale features. Trueblood could smell The House as easily as she could see it; her nostrils flared as she snorted to clear the stench from her nose. The House, the whole town, reeked of the Pit.

Running strong, thick-fingered hands through her long dark hair, Trueblood searched the windows of the buildings around her. She could feel the townsfolk staring at her from darkened windows, cowering in fear. Trueblood wanted to hunt them out, to grasp their throats and demand how they could live in such a fashion; how they could allow such evil to exist among them. Fists clenched until knuckles whitened and joints cracked, she controlled the rage that burned inside her, resisting the animal impulses that hid too near the surface of her false humanity. That fury needed to be harnessed for the task to come. She had found the enemy, and what she sought lay in the midst of its nest. The need for the pretense of this frail human form was gone. The agents of the Pit knew where, and what , she was.

She could feel it--the Change itching in her bones. Trueblood let her long-coat fall to the street at her feet. She pulled off her boots, her pants, and then the blouse that she wore, letting them crumple in a heap about her feet. She worried not about the theft of her clothes, nor did she care if the cringing humans saw her naked. The townsfolk would not emerge from their homes until well after dawn, when sunlight lit their fragile worlds and made it safe to go abroad. If she was not back by then she would be needing that pile of false skin no longer. And the human side of her mind, with all of its inhibitions and civility, was sinking rapidly to a dark corner of her skull, chased there by the rising power of her personality's feral aspect.

She felt the cold asphalt roughly caress the soles of her feet as she walked toward The House. Her pale skin glowed beneath the light of the full moon, the same moon that had hung in the sky as on the eve of her birth. The sight of its pale face now filled her with rage. She loosed the fury within her soul and allowed herself to succumb to the temptation of the Change.

First came the itching as fur pushed its way through the surface of her skin. Her fingers clutched and curled as the nails became claws and her jaw clenched as it lengthened and the teeth grew and sharpened. Her skin began to stretch and tighten as her lean body began to gain hard muscle. Then the sweet agony came as her bones bent, broke, and reshaped themselves. The Change went on, and at each stage of the transformation a little more of her humanity slipped away.

Where the tall, pale, dark haired woman had stood now towered a feral beast: muscles rippling beneath a thick coat of black fur and glistening fangs jutting from a long muzzle. Trueblood had assumed her true form, had become the half-human wolf that haunted darkened cinemas and the shadows of children's nightmares. The rage washed over her like molten metal pumping through the veins of the beast she had become. The beast that she was .

Throwing back her head, Trueblood let loose a howl that echoed throughout the night, holding that sorrowful note as it carried further and further into the veil. Slowly, other voices from the wild joined their call to hers, and soon every hill and forest of the outland echoed with the primal outcry. Anguished and tortured and enraged it came, the call of someone who has had a piece of her soul torn from her and mourns its loss. Its touch chilled the heart of every man that heard it, their palms sweating as they clutched rifles in trembling hands.

Children whimpered and clung tightly to their mothers, who openly wept. For it was they who felt the pain of Trueblood's cry most keenly, and soon their own moans of anguish began to join her cry and that of the night beasts who answered her.

The howl hung in the night air long after the last angry, sorrowful note had passed Trueblood's lips. She fixed her gaze on The House, her rage cutting through the fog of her sorrow like a lighthouse beam as she snarled and bolted through the night towards the lair of her enemy. She became a blur, tearing towards The House as if carried upon the wings of demons, her clawed feet ripping chunks of asphalt free from the street as she ran.

Soon the wrought iron fence of The House loomed before her, its gate tightly shut against her approach. Trueblood forced the churning pistons of her legs to push ever harder as she slammed against the gate at full force, metal hinges shrieking as they released their grip and allowed the gate to crumple before her charge. She paused among the wreckage, her huge bulk crouched in a nest twisted black metal. Trueblood's senses screamed to her and she felt their approach long before the assault materialized. Roaring her challenge to the coming enemy, she stood: a stony ridge against the raging tide that swept forth from The House.

They poured out upon her like a plague. Wave after wave of malformed beasts that had once been human broke upon her. She raged against the elemental force of their onslaught, matching it with the primal fury that drove her to cleave through the next wave, and the next, the next, and the next. Enemy without number fell before the werewolf's fury--ripping claws sought their coils and crushing teeth their flesh. She tasted the bitter pollution of their blood and gloried in the death of every abomination that came before her.

And then silence fell, like the eye of a hurricane swooped down upon her. No more of the Pit's spawn swarmed forth from the windows and doors of The House. Trueblood's enemies lay before her in mounds, like the victims of some wasting plague waiting for their devastated forms to be collected. Gore soaked her fur and the polluted life blood of the twisted beasts stung in the cuts that slashed across her torn body.

Trueblood had weathered the first maelstrom, but she had not come through unscathed. Ragged strips of her beautiful pelt had been torn from her flesh. A long gash dragged down the length of her snout and her own blood bubbled forth from her nostrils with each ragged exhalation. Absently, she allowed a blood soaked claw to feel at the torn and bloody place where her left ear had been.

For a moment Trueblood desired nothing more than to lay down and rest at last, to simply allow unconsciousness to claim her aching body. Yet, as much as ache and fatigue pulled at her bones, she knew she could not: blood cried out for blood. Her goal never left her mind and it gave her the strength to carry on. Her pack was dead, it ran with the Wild Huntsman now. She had but one reason to live, only that one desire to drive her on.

Trueblood looked down at her ravaged body as she waded through the wasted remains of the demons at her feet. Her flesh was torn and broken, her blood mixing with that of the Pit-spawn. Each step taken reopened wounds, starting the bleeding anew. The pain was blinding. But she took that pain, harnessed it, and used it to feed the rage that still burned inside of her. It drove her on toward The House.

The boards of the steps bowed dangerously under the weight of the enormous predator's body as she loped up to the front door of The House. Placing a single palm against the heavy oak door, Trueblood pushed. The door fell inward, slamming against the floor with a sound like thunder. She stooped low to fit through the door as her tired legs carried her across the threshold, her clawed feet gouging oaken splinters out of the fallen door.

The scent of her enemy hung heavily in the air like a weight upon her lungs, and the dust of the floor bore the signs of movement by things unnatural. The shiftings beneath the painted plaster of the walls and the creaking and heaving of the floorboards made Trueblood suddenly aware of exactly what it was that she she had done, what she was doing. The agents of the Pit surrounded her completely, limitless in number. She had charged into the heart of a hive and it was only a matter of time before its defenders decided to sting again, and this time on their own terms. Her fearful humanity screamed at her from its dark corner. Trueblood did not listen.

The stench of the Pit here reeked too sharply for Trueblood to catch the scent of the one she sought. She needed sharper senses than those granted her by this form. So once again the Change swept over her, her form fluid under its exertions. She lost her two-legged stance to the four legs of an enormous dire wolf, smaller than the half wolf, yet still easily larger than any man in its bulk. With this new change her humanity slipped ever further out of her grasp. Fight or flight, survival of the fittest, the thrill of the hunt, and loyalty to the pack were all that she understood. Trueblood lost what little fear or hesitation that she had felt before. Nose to the slime covered floor, she began her search.

In seconds she caught the scent. Trueblood tore through The House as adrenaline tore through her body. Her nose greedily drank in the faint traces of scent until, in a matter of moments, she stood before an open door. Framed in rotten wood was a long, steep staircase whose base was lost from sight in the murk of an ancient cellar. She could smell the dry rot and weakness in the cracked, slime covered stairs. The wolf-beast leapt downwards, passing over the stairs entirely, and landed at their base, slipping momentarily on the slick floor and skidding through scattered piles of bones. She could hear them crunch underfoot, the sound echoing off distant walls. The scent grew stronger, clear through the stink of the Pit.

Darkness absolute reigned in the cavernous cellar. Touch, smell, and hearing were the only senses left to guide Trueblood now. They were all she needed. Her nose led her unerringly to the far wall of the cellar, where she was stopped short by the sound of heavy, ponderous breathing. Something waited for her in the murk, something that meant to stand between her and her goal. Roaring, Trueblood leapt at the shadow masked creature. Nothing would be allowed to bar her way now. The creature met her attack with its own, sending them both to the floor in a tangle of bloody fur and slimy coils. The two combatants thrashed wildly on the bone strewn floor, jaws snapping viciously and claws digging deep into flesh. Slowly the spawn managed to loop its coils around Trueblood and she could hear its twisted parody of a laugh as it began to crush her. The coils constricted ever tighter with each gasp of breath that Trueblood allowed to escape, ribs shattering under the crushing pressure of the spawn's thick coils. Still she struggled, but the creature's strength was too much, and her wild thrashing only weakened her further. The Pit- spawn laughed again its poison laugh as it gripped her head in its taloned hands and slammed it against the wall, attempting to grind her skull against the stone. The monster leaned forward, still laughing--its saliva dripped down into her torn ear. Then something caused her burning blood to race in her veins. The Scent!

Trueblood twisted madly in the creature's coiled grip, lashing out at the acidic laughter. Her jaws found the spawn's misshapen skull. The laughter stopped. They paused in absolute silence, Trueblood unable to breath and the creature afraid to. After a moment of that silence Trueblood's powerful jaws closed. Its skull crushed with a sickening wet crunch, the creature was silenced forever. Struggling desperately to remain conscious, Trueblood sought ferociously to escape the monster's death grip, gnawing through thick coils to gain her freedom. She spat gore from her mouth, reveling in her adversary's destruction and that first lung full of sour air.

Aching lungs laboring to breath in enough of that foul and oppressive atmosphere, Trueblood sought out the source of the scent. Feeling about with her torn muzzle she found it: a hole in the wall just barely large enough for her huge body to fit into. The scent was carried out from the depths of the tunnel on a foul and feathery breeze. In the passion of the chase, Trueblood ignored her screaming instincts. She squeezed herself through the hole and the tunnel into which it opened.

Trueblood crawled through the tunnel for minutes, rough stone dragging at her lacerated hide, before finally reaching its end. Upon dragging herself free from the tunnel she found herself in a round chamber several hundred feet across. In its center lay a large pool of thick, viscous liquid lapping at smooth granite shores, lighting the cavern with its sick purple light. Hundreds of skulls, both human and unhuman, were arranged in concentric circles about the pool. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted from rock like the teeth of an enormous beast waiting to tear into the flesh of its prey. Several more tunnels like the one she had passed through were revealed in the sick purple light. But she ignored all of this, for what she sought was on the far side of the cavern and her mind had only room for that goal.

It was a cage, roughly constructed of planks crudely nailed together by clumsy hands. Skirting the pool of glowing unwater, Trueblood ran to the cage and her shape reverted to her true half-wolf form as she moved. A feeling of dread, of absolute wrongness, filled her. A small, hand-like paw stuck out between the boards. When she reached the cage Trueblood's clawed hands tore off the top of the flimsy cage without her ever uttering a sound. Slowly, she reached in and pulled out the furry bundle. Trueblood slumped to the floor, her passion drained from her like water from a shattered urn.

She held the end of her life in her powerful arms. The body of her once happy pup seemed so ... small . Trueblood thought of the many nights spent soothing the pup in her embrace and imagined that she could almost feel her only child breathing in her arms once more. She lowered her head and wept over the body of her daughter.

Lost in her sorrow, Trueblood did not notice when the stench of the Pit within the chamber increased, neither did she look up when the spawn began to flood the chamber. She did not resist as they swarmed over her and the the small body of her child. She had no reason left.