Animal Heart(27)

What the fuck has he done to me? It's all his fault. Whatever it is. I'll never forgive him for this, never!

He didn't try to console her or attempt to touch her again.

Perhaps he knew better.

He left quickly and quietly and she lay down, gripping her bedclothes tightly in between her fingers for comfort, and began to sob. Harsh howls and snarling sobs, the sound of which she'd never heard leave her lips before. Her mind swam with highly disturbing thoughts of massive teeth and fur and stretching flesh, as she lay upon her bed.

A minute or two later a soft hand tapped her shoulder, breaking the rhythm of her sobbing self indulgence for a second. She turned her head and looked up at Samantha's kind face, smiling down at her. She sat down on the bed at her side, one leg hooked over the other.

“Hey, come on. It's not that bad. In fact I love it. You will too, eventually,” she said reassuringly, with a little giggle and a pat of encouragement on her back.

“Narrrrrghhh,” she growled, trying to say a snuffling, I don't think so!

“Look, you won't be able to talk right now. You've got a touch of a snout forming. Just nod or shake your head, okay?”

“Are you in pain?” She shook her head for no.

“Is your face hot and stinging?” She nodded.

“You're quite normal. It'll pass. Think of ice. It works for me. Lots of freezing cold ice.”

Maddy concentrated on thinking about ice, in her mouth and in her hands, and sure enough, her hand started to change back to a human shape. Her nails began sinking back into her finger tips with a squeezing sensation, and the wiry hairs disappearing into her skin, tickling and itching, as if they were being reeled in from the inside. She watched in amazement as everything returned to normal. Human normal. She continued to think cold thoughts and her ears started to burn and tug tightly inwards towards the side of her head. She touched them and breathed a sigh of relief that they had returned to their usual small and dainty shell-like shapes. Icy thoughts occupied her mind on and off, as she felt warmth and tingling starting in various areas of her body. She sat up and listened to Samantha who chatted to her constantly about how she became a werewolf and what had happened to her afterwards.

Maddy was caught in rapt attention as Sammy regaled her experience of being set upon by a gang of three wild girls in Vancouver as she was waiting for a cab home one evening after a night out with her friends. They'd mugged her, stole her purse and phone, and one had bit her, seemingly just for the fun of it. Then she'd been left alone to deal with it all. She'd left her home town straight away, fearful for her friends and family. She took a long time coming to terms with it and lived rough in the mountains all summer, travelling east until she'd been discovered in Heart, literally as she was passing through, stopping for a coffee at Betty's diner. It was fate, she said. Fate had delivered her here, to the Carr pack, and she was so grateful to have found them all and loved them dearly.

She didn't know why, but Maddy believed her tale completely. Why she hadn't believed anything Shane and Aden told her, she couldn't say. It must have been the initial shock, she supposed. Samantha put out her hand and held hers for a moment, giving it a little squeeze of affection.

“Watch me...” She bent her head, furrowed her brow and then looked up. Maddy took in her amber glowing eyes. Exactly the same color as she'd seen in her own face just before she'd been sick.

“How do you do that, on demand?”

“I bring her out, my wolf, by thinking of her. I only have to concentrate for a short time and then it all takes on a life of its own. Of course I can stop it, by thinking cold. That's how I change back again. It's slightly different for everyone. You'll come upon your own way of doing this, you'll see. The eyes are always the first to change, and the last to change back. The body transformation can be uncomfortable, but I don't have a problem with that personally. Just go with the flow, I say. Relax, don't fight it. Your body knows what it's doing, so let it do it. It's a bit of a rush actually, makes you feel really horny afterwards!!” She laughed at this revelation and Maddy joined in even though she wasn't really feeling in the mood. Sammy's laugh was infectious.

“I'm having so much trouble with all of this,” she said honestly, sighing deeply, mostly out of fear of the unknown.

“Well heck, you wouldn't be sane if you didn't,” she pointed out.

“But how can it be? Werewolves are flights of fantasy. Fictional beings. That's all.”

“Look it just is. I don't know why and to be honest I don't care. Have you ever wondered why you were a human before? No, of course not, you just were. Right now you need to prepare for your new life. You can't go back to your old one. You realise that, don't you?”