He let the man go.
The man fell to the pavement, the arterial blood pumping out of him. Reuben chomped at his right arm, tore it almost loose from the shoulder, and then flung the helpless broken body by this arm against the far wall so that the man,s skull cracked on the bricks.
The woman stood stark still, her arms crossed over her br**sts, staring at him. Feeble, choking sounds came out of her. How utterly miserable and pitiable she was. How unspeakable that anyone would do such evil to her. She was shaking so violently that she could scarce stand, one naked shoulder visible above the torn red silk of her dress.
She began to sob.
"You,re safe now," Reuben said. Was this his voice? This low and rough and confidential voice? "The man who tried to hurt you is dead." He reached out towards her. He saw his paw like a hand reaching for her. Tenderly he stroked her arm. What did it feel like to her?
He looked down at the dead man who lay on his side, his eyes gleaming like glass in the shadows. So incongruous, those eyes, those bits of hard-polished beauty embedded in such reeking flesh. The scent of the man and the scent of what the man was filled the space around him.
The woman backed away from Reuben. She turned and ran, her loud shrill screams filling the alleyway. She went down on one knee, rose again, and continued, running right towards the traffic of the busy street.
Reuben easily sprang up out of the alley, gripping the bricks as surely as a cat might grip the bark of a tree as he went straight up to the rooftop. In less than a second, he had left the entire block behind, bounding towards home.
There was only one thought in his mind. Survive. Get away. Get back to your room. Get away from her screams and from the dead man.
Without a conscious thought, he found his house, and came down from the roof to the open deck outside his bedroom.
He stood there in the open door staring at the little tableau of bed, television, desk, fireplace. He licked the blood on his fangs, on his lower teeth. It had a salty taste, a taste that was ugly yet tantalizing.
How quaint and small the bedroom seemed, how painfully artificial, as if it was fabricated from something as fragile as eggshells.
He moved inside, into the dense unwelcome warm air, and closed the windows behind him. It seemed absurd to slide the tiny brass lock shut; what a curious little thing it was. Why, anyone could break one of the small white framed panes in the glass door and easily open it. One could easily break all of the panes, and fling the window, frame and all, out into the darkness.
In this close place, he heard his own easy breathing.
The light from the television was flashing white and blue over the ceiling.
In the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, he saw himself, a great hairy figure with a long mane covering his shoulders. Man wolf.
"So this was the manner of beast that saved me in Marchent,s house, was it?" He laughed again that low, irresistible rolling laughter. Of course. "And you bit me, you devil. And I didn,t die from the bite and now it,s happened to me." He wanted to laugh out loud. He wanted to roar with laughter.
But the dark little house was too close around him for that, too close for throwing open the doors and howling at the drifting stars, though he so wanted to do it.
He drew closer to the mirror.
A daylight scene on the television screen laid bare every detail. His eyes were the same, large and deeply blue, but his eyes. He could see himself in them, yet all the rest of his face was thick with dark brown hair, revealing a small black-tipped nose that only faintly resembled that of a wolf, and a long lipless mouth with glaring white teeth and fangs. The better to eat you with, my dear.
His frame was bigger, taller, taller by perhaps four inches than it had been, and his hands or paws were enormous, sprouting thin deadly white claws. His feet were huge as well, and his calves and thighs so powerfully muscled, he could see this beneath the hair. He touched his private parts, then drew back from the slight hardness he discovered there.
But it was hidden, all that, by a soft underfur, as well as the coarser hair that covered most of his body. Indeed this soft underfur was everywhere, he realized. It was just thicker in some places than others - around his private parts, and on his inner thighs, and on his lower belly. If he parted the fur, or the coarser outer hair, gently with his claw, he felt a rippling, dazzling sensation.
It made him want to go out again, to travel over the rooftops, to seek out the voices of those in need. He was salivating.
"And you are thinking, feeling, watching this," he said. Once again, the low timbre of his voice startled him. "Stop it!"
He looked at his palms, which had thickened into hairless pads for the paws his hands had become. There was a thin webbing between what had been his fingers. But he had thumbs, still, did he not?
Slowly, he made his way to the bedside table. The room felt much too warm. He was thirsty. He picked up the small iPhone, and it was difficult to grasp it with these huge paws, but he managed.
He went into the bathroom, turned on the full electric light, and stared at himself in the mirrored wall opposite the shower.
Now, in this intense illumination, the shock was almost too much for him. He wanted to turn, cower, shut off the light. But he forced himself to study the image in the mirror.
Yes, a black-tipped nose, and a nose that could smell a multitude of things such as an animal could smell, and powerful jaws, though they did not protrude, and such fangs, ah!
He wanted to cover his face with his hands. But he didn,t have hands. Instead, he held up the iPhone and clicked a picture of himself. And again and again.
He rested back against the marble tile beside the shower.
He pushed his tongue through his fangs. He tasted the dead man,s blood again.
The desire rose in him again. There were more like the reeking ra**st, and the sobbing woman. The voices were still all around him. If he wanted, he could reach into that slow rolling ocean of sound and hook another voice, and bring himself to it.
But he didn,t. He was paralyzed, finished.
The impulse to cry came to him, but there was no real physical pressure to it. It was just an idea: cry, pray to God, beg to understand; confess your fear.
No. He had no intention of doing it.
He turned on the tap and let the basin fill with water. Then he drank it in fierce laps until he was satisfied. It seemed he,d never tasted water before, never known how purely delicious it was, how sweet and cleansing it was, how invigorating.
He was struggling to hold a glass and fill it with water when the change began.
He felt it as he had the first time, in the millions of hair follicles covering his body. And there was a sharp contraction in his stomach, not painful, just a spasm that was almost pleasure.