The Blood Moon

Last Moments

Shards of glass and splinters of wood tore through my skin and snagged my clothes. I cried out in pain, but my screams were lost beneath the vindictive laughter of the unfazed Natasha.

My back collided with the grass, my ribs cracking as she landed on top of me. I blinked away tears, desperate to face her with clear vision, but that clarity only granted me an unhindered view of her torturous transformation.

I didn't know how long she'd been a wolf. Was she paid up front and turned by Ryan before she murdered Zachary? Or did Heather provide the vicious bite that initiated Natasha? Whenever the deal was sealed, it hadn't been long enough to steel herself against the pain of the shift. Bloodcurdling cries tore open her mouth as her lips cracked with the lengthening of her jawline.

Her body jerked in angles that joints weren't meant to go in and her skin ripped at the fingertips as the bones stretched to form a large paw. As a werewolf, her natural healing ability conjured up new layers of flesh to cover the tears that the transformation revealed, but with her so young and fresh, the saving grace of her rejuvenation powers came slow. Her eyes bulged from her sockets, her ears burned red as the tips reached up to the night sky, and her pores bled as fur forced its way through.

Perhaps I could have found the strength to pick myself up and hobble towards safety, but the grotesque display entranced me with its horrifying effects and my already exhausted limbs could not move without my full attention placed upon them.

"Ms. Cross!" shouted a vaguely familiar voice. "Don't move, I have silver bullets. I'll..."

Unable to even flip onto my stomach to get a better view of the voice coming from behind, I leaned my head back just in time to see the mostly transformed Natasha lunge forward, straight into the barrel of my chauffeur's gun, before biting down upon his skull and squishing it like a grape.

Blood and brain matter dripped from her jaws and the flesh of her furred back rippled as her body continued to struggle with completion. She hacked, spitting bits of scalp and bone onto the ground, which was pooling with the remains of the driver's limp corpse. I felt my own stomach attempting to regurgitate what little food was in it, but the pressing concern of survival kept my muscles in check and returned my focus to the need to move.

"Natasha," I said, my voice not nearly as loud and steady as I had hoped it would be, "the whole house will have heard your screams. It won't be long until Antonov finds out and when he does..."

"I'm dead," growled a voice that no longer resembled that of the vampire's first bride. "I will not be able to escape this town and even if I did, I would be picked off by the next neighboring pack. Without Grey Ravine's protection, I am already dead. I've accepted my fate, so long as I take you with me."

She paused, taking one uneasy step towards me so that her tail brushed through the blood of her fresh kill. She didn't resemble the transformed werewolves I'd seen before. Everett, his pack, and the Grey Ravine wolves had looked like larger versions of a normal wolf. Natasha, however, stood on two legs, her front legs bent before her to keep balance and her paws looked more like hands with long, webbed fingers. Patches of skin still shone through her ragged fur coat, and she watched me from atop a shortened snout. I saw the way her muscles still wiggled with tension, but she seemed to have willed them into submission, forcing the transformation to pause. Perhaps because she couldn't take the pain the shifting brought, or perhaps because she found it indecent to walk on four legs. Honestly, I could believe both were true when it comes to Natasha.

"You see," she continued, taking another awkward step forward, "I don't need to outrun Antonov. I just need to kill you before he catches me."

"This...this won't solve anything. This..."