I squinted at the western sky behind Thaddeus, a blood-red smear melting into blackness. Twisting my neck, I glanced the opposite direction. My teeth clenched at a magnified, round moon nearly as scarlet as the portending sunset, its luminous face half masked by hazy cloud cover. Hatred, vengeance, anger……such emotions coursed through my veins in a poisonous concoction that muddied my mind, impelling me to grip my sword tighter and fight with every ounce of strength I possessed against those who threatened my family - my kind. Currently, Thaddeus was behaving as such a threat, using his powers of persuasion to condone human sacrifice for some outrageously perceived good. He wanted an offering for the monsters; a desperate, futile offering of human flesh that would in no way protect the other villagers from being mauled as he promised.

Professor Lyall looked modestly proud. "I am considered a bit of an expert on the procreative practices of Ovis orientalis aries.""Sheep?""Sheep.""Sheep!" Madame Lefoux's voice came over suddenly high, as though she were suppressing an inclination to giggle."Yes, as in baaaa." Professor Lyall frowned. Sheep were a serious business, and he failed to see the source of Madame Lefoux's amusement."Let me understand this correctly. You are a werewolf with a keen interest in sheep breeding?" A little bit of French accent trickled into Madame Lefoux's speech in her glee.Professor Lyall continued bravely on, ignoring her flippancy. "I preserve the nonviable embryo in formaldehyde for future study. Lord Maccon has been drinking my samples. When confronted, he admitted to enjoying both the refreshing beverage and the 'crunchy picked snack' as well. I was not pleased.

I had always heard rumors of her, Nanook thought, she who can control the wind, the water, the earth, and fire ... she who can talk to time. But those were old myths of a woman who lived many thousands of years ago, the first daughter of the Earth. There is a prophecy that she will return again, during the end times -- every religion has someone like that, someone to wait for and put your faith in, but my culture had mostly covered up her existence. We had a god of the sea, a god of the land, a god of the air, a god of fire, but no one who could control all of the elements. We spoke, only in whispers, of the ancient bloodline -- the descendents of the Great Mother. Too many superstitious minds, too many men concerned only with their own power and position, had heard these whispers in the past and taken gruesome steps to erase the descendents. The lineage was said to be broken, the blood of the Great Mother spilled for the last time.

These werewolves and the gwrgi are not like the American breed of werewolf. They are not part timers. They do not spend the one, full moon, night in every twenty eight as a wolf or wolf-man beast. They do not spend twenty eight days and twenty seven nights wandering round high school hallways and shopping malls filled with teenage angst about falling in love with the 'one'. They do not go to cool parties where everyone is half naked and waxed.When werewolves change that's it, seven years as a wolf. Gwrgi are stuck the way they are permanently and aren't so much a wolf with a large dollop of teenage heart throb mixed in, but more a wolf with a little too much stinky tramp mixed in.One folk legend is true. You can kill both werewolves and gwrgi by either shooting them through the heart with a silver bullet or by chopping their head off. But then, pretty much any animal can be killed by shooting them through the heart with a silver bullet or by chopping their head off. And if you're on a budget, the bullet probably doesn't even need to be silver.

Rob opened the door, and a tiny kitten ran out. It stopped to sniff Rob‟s ankle and arched its back, spitting tiny kitty defiance at him. Rob scooped it up. The tiny black bundle barely filled his palm. Dark as ink, the only mark on it was a tiny white spot between its eyes. Rob looked up from the kitten to meet Jamie‟s wide-eyed attempt at innocence. "There was a cat in my closet.""I can explain," Jamie offered.Rob returned to the bed. He dropped the kitten in Jamie‟s lap, causing it to poke unfortunate things with tiny needle claws."Damn!" Jamie yelped, grabbing the kitten and putting a sheet between his delicate parts and danger. "I took out the trash yesterday, and there she was almost buried in a snow bank shivering.""It was ninety degrees yesterday, and there is no snow." Rob sat down on the edge of the bed. "Aren‟t you supposed to hate cats?"Jamie cuddled the tiny creature in his hands. It wrestled with his fingers. "That‟s dogs. I‟m not a dog, I‟m a wolf. There might not have been a snow bank, but it was dirty and hungry and very sad.

Brian came in heavy at that moment on his guitar, the rapid, high-pitched squeal ranging back and forth as his fingers flew along the frets. As the intro's tempo grew more rapid, Bekka heard Derek's subtle bass line as it worked its way in. After another few seconds Will came in, slow at first, but racing along to match the others' pace. When their combined efforts seemed unable to get any heavier, David jumped into the mix.As the sound got nice and heavy, Bekka began to rock back-and-forth onstage. In front of her, hundreds of metal-lovers began to jump and gyrate to their music. She matched their movements for a moment, enjoying the connection that was being made, before stepping over to the keyboard that had been set up behind her. Sliding her microphone into an attached cradle, she assumed her position and got ready. Right on cue, all the others stopped playing, throwing the auditorium into an abrupt silence. Before the crowd could react, however, Bekka's fingers began to work the keys, issuing a rhythm that was much softer and slower than what had been built up. The audience's violent thrash-dance calmed at that moment and they began to sway in response.Bekka smiled to herself.This is what she lived for.

The boldest of the three (thieves) moved suddenly, grabbed Angua and pulled her upright. "We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?" he snarled. Someone sniggered. "I hope you're not going to kill anyone," said Carrot."That's up to us!""Sorry, was I talking to you?" said Carrot. "Don't worry, I'll be fine," said Angua. She looked around to make sure Cheery wasn't there and then sighed."Come on, gentlemen, let's get this over with.""Don't play with your food!" said a voice from the crowd.There were one or two giggles until Carrot turned in his seat, whereupon everyone was suddenly intensely interested in their drinks."It's OK," said Angua quietly.Aware that something was off kilter, but not quite sure what it was, the thieves edged back to the door. No one moved as they unbolted it and, still holding Angua, stepped out into the fog, shutting the door behind them. "Hadn't we better help," said a constable who was new to the Watch. "They don't deserve help," said Vimes. there was a clank of armor and then a long, deep growl, right outside in the street. And a scream and then another scream. and a third scream modulated with "NONONOnonononononoNO!...aarghaarghaargh!" Something heavy hit the door.

There are a few other things. Weesee, when she used that word, Loup-garou, was right, at least in a sense. The word means werewolf.' Whitaker protested with a gasp of astonishment.'They don't exist,' he said sharply, jolted by a memory of old movies.The doctor replied quickly:'No, of course not. Not that way, not like some monster, a vampire or some such''What's the matter with him?' The doctor spoke softly, unwilling to stop until he had talked out the whole scope of the problem.'It is a type of encephalitis. Uncommon, but there, as solidly classified in medical literature as measles. Late effects of acute infectious encephalitis, lycanthropy, to be exact. Once it was called a form of monomania. Morbus lupinus is another name.' 'You will have to hunt him down. Then he will have to be kept in a cell, for a long time, under strong drugs, probably until he dies.' De Glew touched his throat, cleared it slightly. 'The alternative is that you hunt him down and kill him. He will kill, Aaron.''Won't it pass?' asked Whitaker incredulously.'I don't think so, not permanently. And pass for how long? Suppose he is only mad one day out of four.' The doctor paused. 'Or when the moon is full. Or when he sees it full in his mind's eye.

It took only a few hours for an exaggerated version of the attack on Dr. De Glew to reach all of Stanley. The big orderly told his wife; she told her sister who was married to a gas station worker; he in turn described the fight to a helper on the tank truck that serviced the Stanley station in competition with Gurmandy's. The two-man staff of the station plus four hangers-on and three children heard a tale of how a man who had turned into a wolf was vanquished by a seven-foot-tall Negro doctor armed with a pitch torch and how the wolf-man was even now stalking the towns in Washington, Bolivar, and Rapture counties. By nightfall terror held full sway. No locks could withstand the assault of the killer. No weapons save the torch could fend him off. No areaway was free of his shadow nor any wooded place safe from his onslaught. Every dog's bay was the wolf cry of the maddened man. On the plantations toward MacAllister and Skene, terrified tenants were brought to the main house by pickup truck to sleep on porches, in the kitchens, and in outbuildings. When the moon came up yellow that night over the flat land, the families in from the field gathered around a big fire and salted it with sulphur; their voices sounded low and awed drifting up to the windows of the dining room in the main house where the plantation owner ate with his own family. Around the fire, old men talked of the days before the tall evergreen cane was felled, of how wolves as big as lions crept among the cabins and watched while the older boys went by, waiting to grab off the youngest of the toddlers amid the screams of desolated mothers.Then the eyes of the youngsters around the fire grew wide. They sobbed and pressed up against their mothers, until one of the other men said sharply, 'Hush up, you're scaring the children.' There was silence then around the fire for a while, each with his own thoughts: of wolves who were truly men and men who were wolves. No man rode horseback at night if he could avoid it, and no hitchhiker was offered a lift save by the foolhardy or the secret death-lover. For town dwellers, the walk in at twilight from the garage to the house seemed inordinately long and dark.