The beast’s hot breath washed over Maria’s face, fogging her glasses. Now blinded, her terror grew. She knew the werewolf’s fangs were mere inches from her face, but she could no longer see them. Massive paws pressed her shoulders into the ground, while rocks and sticks dug into her. Maria tried to push the werewolf back. Her hands sank into its dense fur up to her wrists to find sinewy muscle. She could not budge it.
She squirmed and tried to turn her face away, but the werewolf was so heavy. She could not move. It was hard to breathe under its weight. Teeth brushed her throat and fear surged, swamping all rational thought. She renewed her efforts to escape, her hands scrabbling in the dirt for something, anything, that might be used as a weapon. There was nothing but feeble twigs.
Teeth pressed against both sides of her throat and thick ribbons of saliva dripped down her neck. Maria froze and squeezed her eyes shut. This was it. She was going to die. Tears escaped from under her closed lids as she waited for pain and the hot rush of blood that would signal the end of her life.
There was a yell, answered by a series of shouts. The werewolf yipped in pain and was wrenched sideways. Its teeth tore into her skin as it fell. Maria struggled to sit upright, slapping one hand to the wounds in her neck to stop the flow of blood. The werewolf thrashed next to her with an arrow protruding from its ribs. Maria scrambled backwards through the dirt away from the flailing claws.
Hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her to her feet and back. “It’s all right. You’re safe,” a man’s rough voice said in her ear and stubble scraped her skin.
Maria couldn’t breath from terror. Her fingers felt the gouges in her neck, but she couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt. Was she going to die even though help had come?
The man pressed a bandana against the back of her hand, and Maria reluctantly moved it so that he could press the cloth against the wounds. Other men and a woman passed them and surrounded the werewolf, which back on its feet and snarling.
The woman approached the werewolf from the side and draped a loop of rope around the werewolf’s neck as it snapped at a tall, dark-skinned man. The rope pulled taut, yanking the werewolf off its feet. It growled and whined, its paws digging into the dirt as it tried to regain its footing.
While it was down, the dark-skinned man stepped in and restrained one of the werewolf’s legs with another rope.
“What are they doing?” Maria asked between gulping breaths as the man holding her turned her away from the scene. She tried to turn her head to see what was going on, but it hurt too much. What if the monster escaped and she couldn’t see? “Are they going to kill it?”
“No.” He wasn’t looking at her, but at the activity behind her. He had brown hair and golden eyes. Such an unnatural gold… “He’s one of us.”
“One of…” No. They had the same eyes, the werewolf and this man. The glowing golden eyes that had shone out of the bushes before the werewolf, still half in human form, had charged her. Maria’s body shuddered, and the man rubbed her arms absently. “Let me go.”
He looked down at her. His eyes weren’t hateful or menacing, but sad. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” her voice rose to a pitch that would have embarrassed her under other circumstances. Her ex-husband had always called her shrill.
Calloused fingers traced her wounds, which still seeped blood. “Because you’re one of us now, too.”
If you liked this story, you might also enjoy Night Terror, Poltergeist, or My Home is My Castle.
