[Vorcla]

He had been irritable all day.

He swung the axe savagely and took great pleasure in watching the seasoned log split cleanly in two, spraying curled chips and wood dust in the air, some of which stuck to his perspiration-drenched arms and chest. His upper body had become even more sculpted and well-defined over the past month as he worked around Gemma's cottage - repairing some roof problems, clearing brush, and, mostly, chopping and splitting wood.

By his reckoning, Gem was set for the next three winters.

It would be dark soon. Dusk flowed through the forest like a slow purple tide. Shadows peeked out mischievously and then faded back as trees danced in the warm breeze. The quavering ebb and flow of locusts gave way to the call-and-response of katydids. A song bird chirruped one last trill, and then an owl hooted.

The woodland night shift was coming on duty.

He heard a rustling coming down the path from the woods, and he smiled. Gemma padded out of the shadows, carrying a basket on her hip. Only she had been able to soothe his jangled nerves today. She'd been harvesting wild herbs in the glade near the spring. He felt his pulse quicken as she smiled back. She set down her basket and caressed his cheek, her fingertips trailing molten heat over his skin. Her kiss was explorative, fierce; their tongues wrestled, and he gave in to the waves of pleasure that cascaded through him. When she finally pulled away, his blood was on fire, surging fiercely through his veins. He gazed into the depths of her warm hazel eyes and decided he wanted to dive in and stay under forever...

"I'll get supper going," she whispered, twirling the soft golden hair on his glistening chest between her fingers.

She sauntered slowly down the path toward the cottage, and he was mesmerized by the swaying of her hips. He swallowed hard and let out a long, shuddering breath.

"I've created a monster," he murmured.

"Dessert" was going to be interesting...

He buried the axe in a stump and straightened up, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand as he tried to cool off. Gemma had truly blossomed over the past few weeks. Her appearance hadn't changed, but her demeanor and personality had opened up. She had proudly taken him into town on several occasions; with her new outlook, she had warmed up to the locals, and they had responded in kind. It was gratifying to see. Gemma had always been looked upon as something of a hermit, aloof and unapproachable.

Now she was one of them; she just happened to live on the outskirts of town.

The shy, almost backward young girl had become a self-confident young woman. The two of them became a couple by mutual consent, falling in love almost immediately. They had learned together; their first awkward attempts at lovemaking had grown into adventurous forays into carnal pleasure.

She had even conquered her fear of the dark, for the most part.

For himself, he was content. He'd discovered no further revelations about himself since realizing he came from Michigan, except that he apparently had been an avid nature enthusiast, but he no longer struggled so hard to remember, either. For now, at least, he would be perfectly happy to stay here with Gemma. He enjoyed being with her. She was a beautiful, loving girl who adored him, and the feeling was mutual. They were self-sufficient here; she grew most of her own food, and they could supplement with occasional visits to town.

Money, as it turned out, was no problem, either; Gemma's father had received a substantial inheritance from his parents, and now it was hers. She could easily have afforded a lavish lifestyle and lived in a palatial estate, but like her father before her, she chose to live simply and frugally. And so they had enjoyed a blissful, bucolic existence for the past month.

And she was there to comfort him on those nights when he awoke screaming in a cold sweat from nightmares he could not remember. He was grateful for that.

He winced as another spasm coursed through his stomach.

What in hell was wrong with him today? Some unnamed anxiety gripped him; he felt as if he was ready to claw his way out of his own skin. He was hot and flushed, and his heart was pounding like a triphammer. True, he had been working hard, exerting himself.

But this was something more.

"Hey, Gem, I'm going to the spring to cool off and freshen up before I come down," he called out.

"Okay, honey," she returned, standing in the front doorway. "Just don't take off on one of your nature hikes. Supper will be ready in about twenty minutes."

"Okay - I promise," he said, chuckling. He ventured up the path toward the glade. Suddenly, another twinge of pain seized him as he got to the crest of the hillock, convulsing his body into a cramp of agony. He doubled over, his hands grabbing at his stomach.

"Jesus!" he gasped. "I feel like I'm going to explode!"

All day long, he'd felt as if his muscles were trying to burst outward, threatening to split open his skin like fresh bread. His entire body felt restless; the hair on his chest and arms felt squirming and alive. He itched from head to toe, relentlessly. His bones ached, and felt as if they were flexing and stretching under his skin. He was alternately hot and cold; a chill settled over his writhing skin now, raising gooseflesh, and he imagined he could feel stubble prickling up all over his body. His fingers felt fat and swollen, and wriggled like grubs.

Then the quiet of the pines softly closed over him, and he could feel himself relax in the tranquil glade. The cool scent of the trees and the moist earth brought him peace. To his right, the sky swam with the muted pink and gold of sunset. He knelt in the wet grass at the edge of the pool; the soothing, incessant chuckling of the stream as it meandered through the meadow and into the woods calmed his ravaged nerves. He dipped his cupped hands into the water and splashed some over his head and chest. The icy shock invigorated him and cooled him down. He dipped again and took a drink; the cold, refreshing liquid coursed down his throat, quenching his thirst. The last of the sparkling trickles streamed through the creases of his palms and dribbled down his chin. He raised his eyes and glanced at the eastern sky, which was paled by haze - just as the blood-red leading edge of the full moon hove into view on the horizon.

His hands shot to his head as a lance of pure agony pierced his skull. It hurt too much to scream; he collapsed on his side in the grass as blackness flooded in...

He blinked and sat up. Crickets and tree frogs orchestrated a raucous cacophony in the forest. He appeared to be sitting in the mouth of a cave. A small bonfire crackled in the center of the floor, in a bowl-like depression.

In the flickering orange half-light beyond the rim of the fire's glow, a scattered, gnawed human skeleton lay. The skull was askew on the neck at an impossible angle, and grinned vacuously in the shadows.

He shuddered.

Suddenly,in the darkness beyond, he heard a whisper of sound - claws ticking on stone. He whirled around and bolted to his feet.

A pair of amber eyes glowed in the blackness farther back in the cave, about three feet off the ground. Then they rose up until they were eye level with him.

"Come out of there," he said, sounding more self-assured than he felt.

A figure stepped into the circle of the firelight, and he found himself face to face with...

Himself.

But not exactly.

The face that peered back at him was altered somehow. His ears were slightly pointed, and the eyebrows were upswept. The smile was somewhat sardonic and never touched the cold, reflective amber eyes that regarded him with seeming disinterest. A tousled mane of golden blonde hair tumbled to his shoulders.

A sense of unbridled, uncontrollable evil enshrouded him.

The apparition was naked; the build was similar, but somewhat more filled out, even more muscular than his own. And he was...

He glanced up quickly. His doppleganger's smile widened, displaying canines that were sharper and more elongated than normal.

"It's okay to be curious," his other self said. "Better hung than you are, huh?"

"Wh-who are you?"

His double snickered.

"I think that's pretty obvious. The question is, who are you? You don't remember, do you...Dylan?"

Dylan!

The name triggered a tidal wave of images in his mind, images of evil, and blood and horror. The pale, naked body of a young girl with copper hair lying dead on an altar slab, of the grinning, blood-smeared vampire who had murdered her.

And a huge, horrifying wolf creature with golden blonde fur.

Fur the color of his own hair...

The images cascaded over him in ever-faster torrents, until his memory returned in a mind ripping jolt, and he screamed in anguish.

Dylan Vorcla slowly raised his head. Tears streamed down his face, and his shoulders shook with sobs. He remembered it all now. He remembered who he was.

And what he was...

"Back among us now?" his double asked. "Good. The full moon is rising. In a few minutes, you'll Change and become the ultimate predator, a hunting and killing machine - a werewolf. I need you fully functional, with your memory intact. Because whatever happens to you happens to me, too. So I don't want you pulling some dumbass stunt like stepping in front of a silver bullet. That's what started all this crap in the first place at LaGory's castle."

At the mention of the hated name, Dylan's face contorted in fury.

"LaGory!" he snarled. "I'll kill him!"

"In due time. Right now your needs will be more immediate. You will be incredibly hungry after you morph. You'll be driven to kill and eat human prey. Seems to me all you have to do is run down the hill and pick off that little beauty you've been shacking up with."

"Gemma?" Dylan cried in horror.

"Yeah. There were a couple of times when the two of you were going at it that I thought you were going to Change on the spot. That would have been interesting!"

"No! I can't!"

"Yes, you can," his double said. "It's easy. Watch."

Dylan heard rustling in the bushes outside the cave. He turned toward the sound, dreading what he would see.

"Michael? Are you all right?"

She stepped into the firelight, heartwrenchingly lovely in her oversized nightshirt.

"Gemma! No - run!" Dylan cried. He surged forward to protect her, but his other self stiff-armed him and sent him sprawling to the ground, stunned.

His double instantly changed into the gigantic form of the Wolf and loosed an earsplitting roar. Gemma screamed in terror and turned to run, but the creature was far too quick for her. He sprang and grabbed her from behind and yanked her into the air, stripping off the nightdress, slashing and ripping her naked form with fangs and talons. Her shrieks rang in the cave in time with the werewolf's vicious roaring as he violently defleshed her, shaking her from side to side, swinging her around like a bloody rag doll. Her raw, torn flesh spurted blood like a burst cask of claret wine, spraying crimson over Dylan like an errant firehose. Bones snapped as they were crushed in powerful jaws.

And all Dylan could do was scream in impotent rage and grief.

The beast bore her to the ground and continued to rip away chunks of her until finally Gemma's piteous screams ceased and a wet feeding sound began...

After what seemed like hours, the beast stood up and turned back toward Dylan, morphing into his blood-drenched humanoid form.

Behind him lay the mangled torso of Gemma Harrison in a sticky scarlet pool. Gold-flecked hazel eyes stared in horror from a gory mask that had once been her beautiful face.

"Legend has it the werewolf always kills the one he loves," his wolfish twin said, chuckling, licking blood off his lips as he crouched next to the fallen Dylan. "Why postpone the inevitable? Go get her - she tastes as good as she looks."

"No, you bastard!" Dylan snarled. "I won't!" He clenched his fist, but was still too stunned to move.

"Frustrating, isn't it? You want to beat the shit out of me and you can't. Even now you can feel the touch of the full moon upon you. You don't want to Change; your candy-ass morals abhor what you will do. You'll kill, and you'll feed. You'll be amok. And you'll have no choice."

The apparition flashed a feral grin.

"I, on the other hand, relish the slaughter. I'm you without your stupid inhibitions. I'm your Id monster. I do the things you wouldn't dream of doing, things so horrible your mind can't even comprehend them. And when I'm running with the moon, I run wild!" His golden eyes narrowed. "You'll be waking up in a few moments. You're going to Change; you're going to run down that hill and slaughter that little girl and have her for dinner!"

"Nooooo!!"

Suddenly Dylan's fist whistled through the air in a vicious uppercut, catching his Wolfen self flush on the chin. There was a satisfying sound of crunching bone, and his other half went down, spitting out blood and broken fangs.

"I'm not going to kill her!" Dylan hissed through clenched teeth.

"Fuck!" his double growled, wiping blood from his shattered mouth. "How did you do that?"

"My great-grandfather is a vampire," he returned as he started to walk out of the cave. "If I'm going to kill anybody, it'll be that son of a bitch!"

He heard a blood-curdling roar behind him, and turned to face the Wolf.

The creature towered above him, standing over seven feet tall, drooling blood from his gaping, fang-studded maw.

"You can't escape this," he snarled in an otherworldly voice. "You might be able to stave it off for a while with your vampire powers, but even they won't be enough to save you in the end. When the full moon reaches the zenith, your ass is mine!"

Dylan raised his middle finger and shook it at the creature as he strode out into the night...

His eyes felt pasted shut. He forced them open. The grass at the edge of the pool tickled his cheek.

And a quarter of the moon's disc had edged above the horizon.

He sprang to his feet in alarm. The Change was already clawing at him. There were sprigs of golden fur sprouting on the palms of his hands; his joints swelled and ached, and his fingernails had grown into long, sharp talons.

A glance in the pool in the gathering dusk confirmed the worst; amber eyes stared back at him, and his teeth had elongated and sharpened into fangs.

With a Herculean effort of his mind and will, he forced back the Change and shifted into his normal shape.

But he realized the Wolf had been right; soon he would no longer be able to fight the full moon.

"Michael? Michael, honey, are you all right? I've been calling you for five minutes!"

Gemma!

And she was coming up the path...


To Be Continued...

[Mr Morbid]

Suddenly,in the darkness beyond

Found a mistake.

The amount of detail in your stories never ceases to maze me. Top notch, as always.

['Ginnis]

Dylan raised his middle finger and shook it at the creature as he strode out into the night...

What a badass...

Excellent. I'm so glad you used that scene, it worked out really well for you. I'll make sure to leave a more indepth comment when it's not 1.48 am. I enjoyed this, really.

[Jimbalaya]

Dusk flowed through the forest like a slow purple tide.

For me, that is the finest line in this chapter. It's like a takin a punch from George Foreman. I would have said Mike Tyson, but he's a pussy.

Anyway...

I didn't find one flaw in this chapter, Rick. Doesn't me there isn't one, just that I didn't see one. I was looking, too.

The dream scene where he gets his memory back was brilliant and extrememly well done. I like how he fought with himself and pretty much one. Shows that no matter what, Dylan can assert some kind of control over the wolf.

I wish I had your vocabulary. I had to look up several words to see what they meant. It's true, my vocabulary isn't my strong point.

I'm on the edge of my seat wondering if, in the grip of the change, Dylan will be able to spare Gemma. I sincerely hope so...I love her.

I tidy and exciting write, bro. Lookin' forward to the next!

[dearest]

Yay, another great chapter! My favorite part: L-O-V-E the dream/internal conflict scene where Dylan faces down the inner wolf. Look at you, getting all Freudian. ^_^ Seriously, extremely well written scene, gives some great insight into the character and his many faces. Excellent work, looking forward to seeing how he saves Gemma (which I hope he will. He will, right? ...run Gemma, run!) ^_^

[Vorcla]

Thanks for commenting, everbody!

Marksman - thanks for taking the time to read and comment. Glad you're enjoying this.

Kara - I'm glad you suggested I put the dream scene where I did. It really worked well there, and everyone seems to like it so far. Helps establish Dylan's character as well. Thanks again. Enjoy your trip.

Jimbo - thanks for the accolades. That vocabulary was built through voracious reading. If I didn't know what the words were I looked them up. Now, about Gemma... Hmmmmm...

Tricia - thank you, partner. Glad you liked that scene. It is indeed Freudian. The Wolfen half is definitely the Id - totally out of control. And yet...not quite. Now, about Gemma... Hmmmmm...

I guess you guys are just going to have to wait and see. I promise you, your questions will be answered quickly - extremely quickly! Bwahahahahahahah!

[RENA HANDS]

This Part 13 was extremely active and the mixture of comedy…MARVELOUS!

I really, really APPLAUD the middle finger flip to the Id Dylan.

A rating of 5/5!

[Vorcla]

Ha ha - yeah. A nice salute. And yes, that is Dylan's Id.

[ea_blue]

Wow! I am really liking this one. One thing bothered me, though. This transition...

His fingers felt fat and swollen, and wriggled like grubs.

Then the quiet of the pines softly closed over him

...struck me as too abrupt. I was hoping for a description of him calming down that lasts a sentence or two. But! I really love the text of the following paragraph. I could actually "feel" what you were describing. Very nice!

While Gemma was being consumed by Dylan's "Id monster", I expected some action - or re-action - from Dylan, while the monster was destroying the woman he loved. I just don't buy that he wouldn't react until afterward.

Aside from these small points, I really enjoyed this chapter tremendously. The writing is very very good. The description is complete and moves the story forward without bogging it down.

You got me emotionally involved in it too. As I read, I was trying to help Dylan along and formulate a plan to help him dodge the inevitable. And Gemma just has to come walking down the path as he's changing. Aarrgghhh! hehehe.

Great work!

[Vorcla]

Originally Posted by ea_blue;

Wow! I am really liking this one. One thing bothered me, though. This transition...

Quote:
His fingers felt fat and swollen, and wriggled like grubs.

Then the quiet of the pines softly closed over him

...struck me as too abrupt. I was hoping for a description of him calming down that lasts a sentence or two. But! I really love the text of the following paragraph. I could actually "feel" what you were describing. Very nice!

Thanks. He doesn't actually calm completely down. He's suffering from PCS - Pre Change Syndrome! It's his time of the month. He relaxes a little, but it's only a short-lived respite.It gets worse from there when he starts getting big and hairy.

Originally Posted by ea_blue;

While Gemma was being consumed by Dylan's "Id monster", I expected some action - or re-action - from Dylan, while the monster was destroying the woman he loved. I just don't buy that he wouldn't react until afterward.

Actually, he does react, right before - and he gets smacked to the ground and is somewhat out of it:

"Gemma! No - run!" Dylan cried. He surged forward to protect her, but his other self stiff-armed him and sent him sprawling to the ground, stunned.

...and he also reacts during the attack - again, he's on the ground, stunned:

And all Dylan could do was scream in impotent rage and grief.

Originally Posted by ea_blue;

Aside from these small points, I really enjoyed this chapter tremendously. The writing is very very good. The description is complete and moves the story forward without bogging it down.

You got me emotionally involved in it too. As I read, I was trying to help Dylan along and formulate a plan to help him dodge the inevitable. And Gemma just has to come walking down the path as he's changing. Aarrgghhh! hehehe.

Great work!

Thanks, Eric. I really appreciate you taking the time to read and comment. You always get down to the nitty-gritty with your reviews, and I always learn something from them.

[timtornado3721]

That scene in the dream was pretty awesome. I might need to borrow the idea sometime. Nice job Rick.

[Vorcla]

Thanks, Tim - I appreciate it. And if this helps jumpstart your own writing, that's cool.