Strays

Chapter 36

Chapter Thirty-Six

Pain felt different to an animal.

More immediate, visceral. Another instinct demanding to be followed. There was no chasing the source down a mental rabbit hole, losing myself in phantom memories and tying myself in knots over bad intentions. There was just pain: sharp and real, and the need to escape it.

I wasn't sure how long the blackout lasted.

I'd never once lost control like this – not since the night I first turned over thirteen years ago. I remembered waking up alone, curled into a foetal position on the living room floor. I'd been trembling from the force of the change, my teeth chattering so hard I'd bitten my tongue, while images of the night before flickered in the back of my head the way a violent nightmare might linger the next morning.

But it was the overwhelming stench of blood and the way it clung to my bare skin, the carpet, the furniture, that I remembered the most. I could taste it on the roof of my mouth, caked between my teeth and coating my gums and when I swiped my tongue over my cracked lips it hit me that I was tasting Henri.

Or what was left of him, anyway.

Horror had clogged my throat, so thick and powerful that I almost choked on it.

"Control," Sebastien used to say, "is essential. Losing your head gets you killed. It gets your pack killed."

It was something every newly turned had to learn if they wanted to survive. How to find balance, to forge some kind of harmony between the human in them and the animal. There were too many horror stories floating around about the ones who turned feral, who never quite mastered the discipline it took to maintain consciousness when they changed and lost themselves completely to the wolf within. They would turn on their allies without second thought, slaughtering every last one of them until they were finally put down like a dog.

But as I slowly clawed my way back to consciousness, I couldn't ignore the sense of rightness that heated my blood. The sense that it was just another extension of me, of my thoughts, of my pain.

How long had I spent terrified of losing control? Of letting my temper loose and just giving in?

It seemed almost silly now. A kind of fear that the wolf in me couldn't understand. Without an immediate threat or a predator on our tail, fear was a useless emotion – a human emotion – and all that mattered to us – to me – was pain.

The horrible, terrible ache in the pit of my stomach.

Consciousness came in snatches at first.

I caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar road. A bridge railing. The smell of Asian Street Food chased me along a broken footpath, suffused with the smell of exhaust fumes and river water. The blare of a car horn found me racing down into the Underground tunnels, the yellowy glow of fluorescent lights almost blinding my eyes.

I had no idea where I was going.

Nothing about the path I was taking seemed familiar but maybe that was deliberate. Maybe, deep down, I needed to get away from anything that could potentially trigger a memory. Trigger an impression. Cause more pain. I gave myself over to instinct and let my body take where I needed to go, trusting that somehow I'd know the way.

I ran and ran and ran, never slowing, never stopping. Running until my lungs were screaming for air and my limbs were heavy and burning with fatigue, and then I kept going anyway.