Mercedes Lackey - Werehunter

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Werehunter

Mercedes Lackey

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and

any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Last of the Season" copyright (c) American Fantasy Magazine; "Satanic, Versus ..." copyright (c)

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-57805-7

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First printing, April 1999

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

TWO OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD . . .

Something very large occluded the light for a moment in the next room, then the lights went out,

and Diana Tregarde distinctly heard the sound of the chandelier being torn from the ceiling and

thrown against the wall. She winced.

There go my Romance Writers of the World dues up again, she thought.

"I got a glimpse," Andre said. "It was very large, perhaps ten feet tall, and-cherie, looked like

nothing so much as a rubber creature from a very bad movie. Except that I do not think it was

rubber."

What shambled in through the door was nothing that Diana had ever heard of. It was, indeed, about

ten feet tall. It was covered with luxuriant brown hair-all over. It was built along the lines of

a powerful body-builder, taken to exaggerated lengths, and it drooled. It also stank, a

combination of sulfur and musk so strong it would have brought tears to the eyes of a skunk.

Di groaned, putting two and two together and coming up with-Valentine Vervain cast a spell for a

tall, dark and handsome soul-mate, but she forgot to specify "human." "Are you thinking what I'm

thinking?"

The other writer nodded. "Tall, check. Dark, check. Long hair, check. Handsome-well, I suppose in

some circles." Harrison stared at the thing in fascination.

The thing saw Valentine and lunged for her. Reflexively, Di and Harrison both shot. He emptied his

cylinder and one speed loader. Di gave up after four shots. No effect. The thing backhanded Andre

into a wall hard enough to put him through plasterboard. Andre was out for the count. There are

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some things even a vampire has a little trouble recovering from.

"Harrison, distract it, make a noise, anything!" Diana pulled the atheme from her boot sheath and

began cutting Sigils in the air with it, getting the Words of Dismissal out as fast as she could

without slurring the syllables.

The thing lunged toward Harrison, missing him by inches, just as Di concluded the Ritual of

Dismissal.

To no effect. . . .

-from "Satanic, Versus ..."

Introduction

Those of you who are more interested in the stories than in some chatty author stuff should just

skip this part, since it will be mostly about the things people used to ask us about at science

fiction conventions.

For those of you who have never heard of SF conventions (or "cons" as they are usually called),

these are gatherings of people who are quite fanatical about their interest in one or more of the

various fantasy and science fiction media. There are talks and panel discussions on such wildly

disparate topics as costuming, prop-making, themes in SF/F literature, Star Wars, Star Trek,

Babylon 5, X-Files, SF/F art, medieval fighting, horse-training, dancing, and the world of fans in

general. There are workshops on writing and performance arts. Guests featured in panels and

question and answer sessions are often featured performers from television and movies along with

various authors and the occasional professional propmaker. Larry and I no longer attend

conventions for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we have a great many

responsibilities that require us to be home.

Some of those responsibilities are that we are volunteers for our local fire department. Larry is

a driver and outside man; I am learning to do dispatch, and hopefully will be able to take over

the night shift, since we are awake long after most of the rest of the county has gone to sleep.

Our local department is strictly volunteer and works on a very tight budget. Our equipment is old

and needs frequent repair, we get what we can afford, and what we can afford is generally third or

fourth-hand, having passed through a large metropolitan department or the military to a small

municipal department to the Forestry Service and finally to us. In summer I am a water-carrier at

grass-fires, meaning that I bring drinking-water to the overheated firefighters so they don't

collapse in the 100 plus degree heat.

Another duty is with the EOC (formerly called the Civil Defense Office). When we are under severe

weather conditions, the firefighters are called in to wait at the station in case of emergency, so

Larry is there. I go in to the EOC office to read weather-radar for the storm-watchers in the

field. Eventually I hope to get my radio license so I can also join the ranks of the storm-

watchers. We don't "chase" as such, although there are so few of the storm-watchers that they may

move to active areas rather than staying put. Doppler radar can only give an indication of where

there is rotation in the clouds; rotation may not produce a tornado. You have to have people on

the ground in the area to know if there is a funnel or a tornado (technically, it isn't a tornado

until it touches the ground; until then it is a funnel-cloud). Our area of Oklahoma is not quite

as active as the area of the Panhandle or around Oklahoma City and Norman (which is why the

National Severe Storms Laboratory is located there) but we get plenty of severe, tornado-producing

storms.

In addition, we have our raptor rehabilitation duties.

Larry and I are raptor rehabilitators; this means that we are licensed by both the state and the

federal government to collect, care for, and release birds of prey that are injured or ill.

Occasionally we are asked to bring one of our "patients" for a talk to a group of adults or

children, often under the auspices of our local game wardens.

I'm sure this sounds very exciting and glamorous, and it certainly impresses the heck out of

people when we bring in a big hawk riding on a gloved hand, but there are times when I wonder how

we managed to get ourselves into this.

We have three main "seasons"-baby season, stupid fledgling season, and inexpert hunter season.

Now, injuries-and victims of idiots with guns-can come at any time. We haven't had too many

shooting victims in our area, thank heavens, in part because the cattle-farmers around our area

know that shooting a raptor only adds field rats and mice to their property. But another rehabber

gave up entirely a few years ago, completely burned out, because she got the same redtail hawk

back three times, shot out of the sky. Injuries that we see in our area are most often the case of

collision-literally-with man's environmental changes. Birds hit windows that seem to them to be

sky, Great Blue Herons collide with power-lines, raptors get electrocuted by those same lines. But

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most often, we get birds hit by cars. Owls will chase prey across the road, oblivious to the fact

that something is approaching, and get hit. Raptors are creatures of opportunity and will quite

readily come down to feed on roadkill and get hit. Great Horned Owls, often called the "tigers of

the sky," are top predators, known to chase even eagles off nests to claim the nest for themselves-

if a Great Horned is eating roadkill and sees a car approaching, it will stand its ground, certain

that it will get the better of anything daring to try to snatch its dinner! After all, they have

been developing and evolving for millions of years, and swiftly moving vehicles have only been

around for about seventy-five years; they haven't had nearly enough time to adapt to the situation

as a species. Individuals do learn, though, often to take advantage of the situation. Kestrels and

redtails are known to hang around fields being harvested to snatch the field-rats running from the

machinery, or suddenly exposed after the harvesters have passed. Redtails are also known to hang

about railway right-of-ways, waiting for trains to spook out rabbits!

Our current education bird, a big female redtail we call Cinnamon, is one such victim; struck in

the head by a CB whip-antenna, she has only one working eye and just enough brain damage to render

her partially paralyzed on one side and make her accepting and calm in our presence. This makes

her a great education-bird, as nothing alarms her and children can safely touch her, giving them a

new connection with wild things that they had never experienced before.

But back to the three "seasons" of a raptor rehabber, and the different kinds of work they

involve.

First is "baby season," which actually extends from late February through to July, beginning with

Great Horned Owl babies and ending when the second round of American Kestrels (sparrowhawks, or

"spawks" as falconers affectionately call them) begins to push their siblings out of nests. The

first rule of baby season is-try to get the baby back into the nest, or something like the nest.

Mother birds are infinitely better at taking care of their youngsters than any human, so when wind

or weather send babies (eyases, is the correct term) tumbling, that is our first priority. This

almost always involves climbing, which means that poor Larry puts on his climbing gear and dangles

from trees. When nest and all have come down, we supply a substitute, in as close to the same

place as possible; raptor mothers are far more fixated on the kids than the house, and a box

filled with branches will do nicely, thank you.

Sometimes, though, it's not possible to put the eyases back. Youngsters are found with no nest in

sight, or the nest is literally unreachable (a Barn Owl roost in the roof of an institution for

the criminally insane, for instance), or worst of all, the parents are known to be dead.

Young raptors eat a lot. Kestrels need feeding every hour or so, bigger birds every two to three,

and that's from dawn to dusk. We've taken eyases with us to doctor's appointments, on vacation, on

shopping expeditions, and even to racing school! And we're not talking Gerber's here; "mom" (us)

gets to take the mousie, dissect the mousie, and feed the mousie parts to baby. By hand. Yummy!

Barred Owl eyases are the easiest of the lot; they'll take minnows, which are of a size to slip

down their little throats easily, but not the rest. There's no use thinking you can get by with a

little chicken, either-growing babies need a lot of calcium for those wonderful hollow bones that

they're growing so fast, so they need the whole animal.

Fortunately, babies do grow up, and eventually they'll feed themselves. Then it's just a matter of

helping them learn to fly (which involves a little game we call "Hawk Tossing") and teaching them

to hunt. The instincts are there; they just need to connect instinct with practice. But this is

not for the squeamish or the tender-hearted; for the youngsters to grow up and have the skills to

make them successful, they have to learn to kill.

The second season can stretch from late April to August, and we call it "silly fledgling season."

That's when the eyases, having learned to fly at last, get lost. Raptor mothers-with the exception

of Barn Owls-continue to feed the youngsters and teach them to hunt after they've fledged, but

sometimes wind and weather again carry the kids off beyond finding their way back to mom. Being

inexperienced flyers and not hunters at all yet, they usually end up helpless on the ground, which

is where we come in.

These guys are actually the easiest and most rewarding; they know the basics of flying and

hunting, and all we have to do is put some meat back on their bones and give them a bit more

experience. We usually have anywhere from six to two dozen kestrels at this stage every year,

which is when we get a fair amount of exercise, catching grasshoppers for them to hunt.

Then comes the "inexpert hunter" season, and I'm not referring to the ones with guns. Some raptors

are the victims of a bad winter, or the fact that they concentrated on those easy-to-kill

grasshoppers while their siblings had graduated to more difficult prey. Along about December, we

start to get the ones that nothing much is wrong with except starvation. Sometimes starvation has

gone too far for them to make it; frustrating and disappointing for us.

We've gotten all sorts of birds over the years; our wonderful vet, Dr. Paul Welch (on whom may

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blessings be heaped!) treats wildlife for free, and knows that we're always suckers for a

challenge, so he has gotten some of the odder things to us. We've had two Great Blue Herons, for

instance. One was an adult that had collided with a powerline. It had a dreadful fracture, and we

weren't certain if it would be able to fly again (it did) but since we have a pond, we figured we

could support a land-bound heron. In our ignorance, we had no idea that Great Blues are terrible

challenges to keep alive because they are so shy; we just waded right in, force-feeding it minnows

when it refused to eat, and stuffing the minnows right back down when it tossed them up. This may

not sound so difficult, but remember that a Great Blue has a two-foot sword on the end of its

head, a spring-loaded neck to put some force behind the stab, and the beak-eye coordination to

impale a minnow in a foot of water. It has no trouble targeting your eye.

We fed it wearing welding-masks.

We believe very strongly in force-feeding; our experience has been that if you force-feed a bird

for two to three days, it gives up trying to die of starvation and begins eating on its own. Once

again, mind you, this is not always an easy proposition; we're usually dealing with fully adult

birds who want nothing whatsoever to do with us, and have the equipment to enforce their

preferences. We very seldom get a bird that is so injured that it gives us no resistance. Great

Horned Owls can exert pressure of 400 ft/lbs per talon, which can easily penetrate a Kevlar-lined

welding glove, as I know personally and painfully.

That is yet another aspect of rehabbing that most people don't think about-injury. Yours, not the

bird's. We've been "footed" (stabbed with talons), bitten, pooped on (okay, so that's not an

injury, but it's not pleasant), gouged, and beak-slashed. And we have to stand there and continue

doing whatever it was that earned us those injuries, because it certainly isn't the bird's fault

that he doesn't recognize the fact that you're trying to help him.

We also have to know when we're out of our depth, or when the injury is so bad that the bird isn't

releasable, and do the kind and responsible thing. Unless a bird is so endangered that it can go

into a captive breeding project, or is the rare, calm, quiet case like Cinnamon who will be a

perfect education bird, there is no point in keeping one that can't fly or hunt again. You learn

how to let go and move on very quickly, and just put your energy into the next one.

On the other hand, we have personal experience that raptors are a great deal tougher than it might

appear. We've successfully released one-eyed hawks, who learn to compensate for their lack of

binocular vision very well. Birds with one "bad" leg learn to strike only with the good one. One-

eyed owls are routine for us now; owls mostly hunt by sound anyway and don't actually need both

eyes. But the most amazing is that another rehabber in our area has routinely gotten successful

releases with owls that are minus a wingtip; evidently owls are such strong fliers that they don't

need their entire wingspan to prosper, and that is quite amazing and heartening.

We've learned other things, too; one of the oddest is that owls by-and-large don't show gradual

recovery from head-injuries. They will go on, day after day, with nothing changing-then, suddenly,

one morning you have an owl fighting to get out of the box you've put him in to keep him quiet and

contained! We've learned that once birds learn to hunt, they prefer fresh-caught dinner to the

frozen stuff we offer; we haven't had a single freeloader keep coming back long after he should be

independent. We've learned that "our" birds learn quickly not to generalize about humans feeding

them-once they are free-flying (but still supplementing their hunting with handouts) they don't

bother begging for food from anyone but those who give them the proper "come'n'get it" signal, and

even then they are unlikely to get close to anyone they don't actually recognize.

We already knew that eyases in the "downy" stage, when their juvenile plumage hasn't come in and

they look like little white puffballs, will imprint very easily, so we quickly turn potentially

dangerous babies (like Great Horned Owls) over to rehabbers who have "foster moms"-non-releasable

birds of the right species who will at least provide the right role-model for the youngsters.

Tempting as the little things are, so fuzzy and big-eyed, none of us wants an imprinted Great

Horned coming back in four or five years when sexual maturity hits, looking for love in all the

wrong places! Remember those talons?

For us, though, all the work is worth the moment of release, when we take the bird that couldn't

fly, or the now-grown-up and self-sufficient baby, and turn him loose. For some, we just open the

cage door and step back; for others, there's a slow process called "hacking out," where the

adolescent comes back for food until he's hunting completely on his own. In either case, we've

performed a little surgery on the fragile ecosystem, and it's a good feeling to see the patient

thriving.

Those who have caught the raptor-bug seem like family; we associate with both rehabber and

falconers. If you are interested in falconry-and bear in mind, it is an extremely labor-intensive

hobby-contact your local Fish and Wildlife department for a list of local falconers, and see if

you can find one willing to take you as an apprentice. If you want to get into rehab, contact Fish

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and Wildlife for other rehabbers who are generally quite happy to help you get started.

Here are some basic facts about birds of prey. Faloners call the young in the nest an eyas;

rehabbers and falconers call the very small ones, covered only in fluff, "downies." In the downy

stage, they are very susceptible to imprinting; if we have to see babies we would rather they were

at least in the second stage, when the body-feathers start to come in. That is the only time that

the feathers are not molted; the down feathers are actually attached to the juvenile feathers, and

have to be picked off, either by the parent or the youngster. Body-feathers come in first, and

when they are about half-grown, the adults can stop brooding the babies, for they can retain their

body-heat on their own, and more importantly, the juvenile feathers have a limited ability to shed

water, which the down will not do. If a rainstorm starts, for instance, the downies will be wet

through quickly before a parent can return to the nest to cover them, they'll be hypothermic in

seconds and might die; babies in juvenile plumage are safe until a parent gets back to cover them.

When eyases never fight in the nest over food this means both that their environmeent provides a

wealth of prey and that their parents are excellent hunters. If they are hungry, the youngest of

the eyases often dies or is pushed out of the nest to die.

Redtails can have up to four offspring; two is usual. Although it is rare, they have been known to

double-clutch if a summer is exceptionally long and warm. They may also double-clutch if the first

batch is infertile.

Redtails in captivity can live up to twenty-five years; half that is usual in the wild. They can

breed at four years old, though they have been known to breed as young as two. In their first year

they do not have red tails and their body-plumage is more mottled than in older birds; this is

called "juvenile plumage" and is a signal to older birds that these youngsters are no threat to

them. Kestrels do not have juvenile plumage, nor do most owls, and eagles hold their juvenile

plumage for four years. Kestrels live about five years in the wild, up to fifteen in captivity,

eagles live fifty years in captivity and up to twenty-five in the wild.

Should you find an injured bird of prey, you need three things for a rescue: a heavy blanket or

jacket, cohesive bandage (the kind of athletic wrap that sticks to itself), and a heavy, dark-

colored sock. Throw the blanket over the victim, locate and free the head and pull the sock over

it. Locate the feet, and wrap the feet together with the bandage; keep hold of the feet, remove

the blanket, get the wings folded in the "resting" position and wrap the body in cohesive bandage

to hold the wings in place. Make a ring of a towel in the bottom of a cardboard box just big

enough to hold the bird, and put the bird in the box as if it was sitting in a nest. Take the sock

off and quickly close up the box and get the victim to a rehabber, a local game warden or Fish and

Wildlife official, or a vet that treats injured wildlife. Diurnal raptors are very dependent on

their sight; take it away and they "shut down"-which is the reason behind the traditional falcon-

hood. By putting the sock over the head, you take away the chief source of stress, the sight of

enormous two-legged predators bearing down on it.

Andre Norton, who (as by now you must be aware) I have admired for ages, was doing a "Friends of

the Witch World" anthology, and asked me if I would mind doing a story for her.

Would I mind? I flashed back to when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, and I read Witch World

and fell completely and totally into this wonderful new cosmos. I had already been a fan of

Andre's since I was nine or ten and my father (who was a science fiction reader) loaned me Beast

Master because it had a horse in it and I was horse-mad. But this was something different, science

fiction that didn't involve thud and blunder and iron-thewed barbarians. I was in love.

Oh-back in "the old days" it was all called "science fiction." There was no category for

"fantasy," and as for "hard s/f," "sword and sorcery," "urban fantasy," "high fantasy,"

"cyberpunk," "horror," "space-opera"-none of those categories existed. You'd find Clark Ashton

Smith right next to E. E. "Doc" Smith, and Andre Norton and Fritz Leiber wrote gothic horror, high

fantasy, and science fiction all without anyone wondering what to call it. Readers of imaginative

literature read everything, and neither readers nor writers were compelled by marketing

considerations to read or write in only a single category.

At any rate, many years later, my idol Andre Norton asked me for a story set in one of my favorite

science-fiction worlds. Somehow I managed to tell Andre that I would be very happy to write a

story. This is it. In fact, this is the longer version; she asked me to cut some, not because she

didn't like it the way it was, but because she was only allowed stories of 5,000 words or less;

here it is as I originally wrote it.

Werehunter

It had been raining all day, a cold, dismal rain that penetrated through clothing and chilled the

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heart to numbness. Glenda trudged through it, sneakers soaked; beneath her cheap plastic raincoat

her jeans were soggy to the knees. It was several hours past sunset now, and still raining, and

the city streets were deserted by all but the most hardy, the most desperate, and the faded few

with nothing to lose.

Glenda was numbered among those last. This morning she'd spent her last change getting a bus to

the welfare office, only to be told that she hadn't been a resident long enough to qualify for

aid. That wasn't true-but she couldn't have known that. The supercilious clerk had taken in her

age and inexperience at a glance, and assumed "student." If he had begun processing her, he'd have

been late for lunch. He guessed she wouldn't know enough to contradict him, and he'd been right.

And years of her aunt's browbeating ("Isn't one 'no' good enough for you?") had drummed into her

the lesson that there were no second chances. He'd gone off to his lunch date; she'd trudged back

home in the rain. This afternoon she'd eaten the last packet of cheese and crackers and had made

"soup" from the stolen packages of fast-food ketchup-there was nothing left in her larder that

even resembled food. Hunger had been with her for so long now that the ache in her stomach had

become as much a part of her as her hands or feet. There were three days left in the month; three

days of shelter, then she'd be kicked out of her shoddy efficiency and into the street.

When her Social Security orphan's benefits had run out when she'd turned eighteen, her aunt had

"suggested" she find a job and support herself-elsewhere. The suggestion had come in the form of

finding her belongings in boxes on the front porch with a letter to that effect on top of them.

So she'd tried, moving across town to this place, near the university; a marginal neighborhood

surrounded by bad blocks on three sides. But there were no jobs if you had no experience-but how

did you get experience without a job? The only experience she'd ever had was at shoveling snow,

raking leaves, mowing and gardening; the only ways she could earn money for college, since her

aunt had never let her apply for a job that would have been beyond walking distance of her house.

Besides that, there were at least forty university students competing with her for every job that

opened up anywhere around here. Her meager savings (meant, at one time, to pay for college

tuition) were soon gone.

She rubbed the ring on her left hand, a gesture she was completely unaware of. That ring was all

she had of the mother her aunt would never discuss-the woman her brother had married over her own

strong disapproval. It was silver, and heavy; made in the shape of a crouching cat with tiny

glints of topaz for eyes. Much as she treasured it, she would gladly have sold it-but she couldn't

get it off her finger, she'd worn it for so long.

She splashed through the puddles, peering listlessly out from under the hood of her raincoat. Her

lank, mouse-brown hair straggled into her eyes as she squinted against the glare of headlights on

rain-glazed pavement. Despair had driven her into the street; despair kept her here. It was easier

to keep the tears and hysterics at bay out here, where the cold numbed mind as well as body, and

the rain washed all her thoughts until they were thin and lifeless. She could see no way out of

this trap-except maybe by killing herself.

But her body had other ideas. It wanted to survive, even if Glenda wasn't sure she did.

A chill of fear trickled down her backbone like a drop of icy rain, driving all thoughts of

suicide from her, as behind her she recognized the sounds of footsteps.

She didn't have to turn around to know she was being followed, and by more than one. On a night

like tonight, there was no one on the street but the fools and the hunters. She knew which she

was.

It wasn't much of an alley-a crack between buildings, scarcely wide enough for her to pass. They

might not know it was there-even if they did, they couldn't know what lay at the end of it. She

did. She dodged inside, feeling her way along the narrow defile, until one of the two buildings

gave way to a seven-foot privacy fence.

She came to the apparent dead-end, building on the right, a high board fence on the left, building

in front. She listened, stretching her ears for sounds behind her, taut with fear. Nothing; they

had either passed this place by, or hadn't yet reached it.

Quickly, before they could find the entrance, she ran her hand along the boards of the fence,

counting them from the dead-end. Four, five-when she touched the sixth one, she gave it a shove

sideways, getting a handful of splinters for her pains. But the board moved, pivoting on the one

nail that held it, and she squeezed through the gap into the yard beyond, pulling the board back

in place behind her.

Just in time; echoing off the stone and brick of the alley were harsh young male voices. She

leaned against the fence and shook from head to toe, clenching her teeth to keep them from

chattering, as they searched the alley, found nothing, and finally (after hours, it seemed) went

away.

"Well, you've got yourself in a fine mess," she said dully. "Now what? You don't dare leave, not

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yet-they might have left someone in the street, watching. Idiot! Home may not be much, but it's

dry, and there's a bed. Fool, fool, fool! So now you get to spend the rest of the night in the

back yard of a spookhouse. You'd just better hope the spook isn't home."

She peered through the dark at the shapeless bulk of the tri-story townhouse, relic of a previous

century, hoping not to see any signs of life. The place had an uncanny reputation; even the gangs

left it alone. People had vanished here-some of them important people, with good reasons to want

to disappear, some who had been uninvited visitors. But the police had been over the house and

grounds more than once, and never found anything. No bodies were buried in the back yard-the

ground was as hard as cement under the inch-deep layer of soft sand that covered it. There was

nothing at all in the yard but the sand and the rocks; the crazy woman that lived here told the

police it was a "Zen garden." But when Glenda had first peeked through the boards at the back

yard, it didn't look like any Zen garden she had ever read about. The sand wasn't groomed into

wave-patterns, and the rocks looked more like something out of a mini-Stonehenge than islands or

mountain-peaks.

There were four of those rocks-one like a garden bench, that stood before three that formed a

primitive arch. Glenda felt her way towards them in the dark, trusting to the memory of how the

place had looked by daylight to find them. She barked her shin painfully on the "bench" rock, and

her legs gave out, so that she sprawled ungracefully over it. Tears of pain mingled with the rain,

and she swore under her breath.

She sat huddled on the top of it in the dark, trying to remember what time it was the last time

she'd seen a clock. Dawn couldn't be too far off. When dawn came, and there were more people in

the street, she could probably get safely back to her apartment.

For all the good it would do her.

Her stomach cramped with hunger, and despair clamped down on her again. She shouldn't have run-she

was only delaying the inevitable. In two days she'd be out on the street, and this time with

nowhere to hide, easy prey for them, or those like them.

"So wouldn't you like to escape altogether?"

The soft voice out of the darkness nearly caused Glenda's heart to stop. She jumped, and clenched

the side of the bench-rock as the voice laughed. Oddly enough, the laughter seemed to make her

fright wash out of her. There was nothing malicious about it-it was kind-sounding, gentle. Not

crazy.

"Oh, I like to make people think I'm crazy; they leave me alone that way." The speaker was a dim

shape against the lighter background of the fence.

"Who-"

"I am the keeper of this house-and this place; not the first, certainly not the last. So there is

nothing in this city-in this world-to hold you here anymore?"

"How-did you know that?" Glenda tried to see the speaker in the dim light reflected off the

clouds, to see if it really was the woman that lived in the house, but there were no details to be

seen, just a human-shaped outline. Her eyes blurred. Reaction to her narrow escape, the cold,

hunger; all three were conspiring to make her light-headed.

"The only ones who come to me are those who have no will to live here, yet who still have the will

to live. Tell me, if another world opened before you, would you walk into it, not knowing what it

held?"

This whole conversation was so surreal, Glenda began to think she was hallucinating the whole

thing. Well, if it was a hallucination, why not go along with it?

"Sure, why not? It couldn't be any worse than here. It might be better."

"Then turn, and look behind you-and choose."

Glenda hesitated, then swung her legs over the bench-stone. The sky was lighter in that direction-

dawn was breaking. Before her loomed the stone arch-

Now she knew she was hallucinating-for framed within the arch was no shadowy glimpse of board

fence and rain-soaked sand, but a patch of reddening sky, and another dawn-

A dawn that broke over rolling hills covered with waving grass, grass stirred by a breeze that

carried the scent of flowers, not the exhaust-tainted air of the city.

Glenda stood, unaware that she had done so. She reached forward with one hand, yearningly. The

place seemed to call to something buried deep in her heart-and she wanted to answer.

"Here-or there? Choose now, child."

With an inarticulate cry, she stumbled toward the stones-

And found herself standing alone on a grassy hill.

After several hours of walking in wet, soggy tennis shoes, growing more spacey by the minute from

hunger, she was beginning to think she'd made a mistake. Somewhere back behind her she'd lost her

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raincoat; she couldn't remember when she'd taken it off. There was no sign of people anywhere-

there were animals; even sheep, once, but nothing like "civilization." It was frustrating,

maddening; there was food all around her, on four feet, on wings-surely even some of the plants

were edible-but it was totally inaccessible to a city-bred girl who'd never gotten food from

anywhere but a grocery or restaurant. She might just as well be on the moon.

Just as she thought that, she topped another rise to find herself looking at a strange,

weatherbeaten man standing beside a rough pounded-dirt road.

She blinked in dumb amazement. He looked like something out of a movie, a peasant from a King

Arthur epic. He was stocky, blond-haired; he wore a shabby brown tunic and patched, shapeless

trousers tucked into equally patched boots. He was also holding a strung bow, with an arrow nocked

to it, and frowning-a most unfriendly expression.

He gabbled something at her. She blinked again. She knew a little Spanish (you had to, in her

neighborhood); she'd taken German and French in high school. This didn't sound like any of those.

He repeated himself, a distinct edge to his voice. To emphasize his words, he jerked the point of

the arrow off back the way she had come. It was pretty obvious he was telling her to be on her

way.

"No, wait-please-" she stepped toward him, her hands outstretched pleadingly. The only reaction

she got was that he raised the arrow to point at her chest, and drew it back.

"Look-I haven't got any weapons! I'm lost, I'm hungry-"

He drew the arrow a bit farther.

Suddenly it was all too much. She'd spent all her life being pushed and pushed-first her aunt,

then at school, then out on the streets. This was the last time anybody was going to back her into

a corner-this time she was going to fight!

A white-hot rage like nothing she'd ever experienced before in her life took over.

"Damn you!" she was so angry she could hardly think. "You stupid clod! I need help!" she screamed

at him, as red flashes interfered with her vision, her ears began to buzz, and her hands crooked

into involuntary claws, "Damn you and everybody that looks like you!"

He backed up a pace, his blue eyes wide with surprise at her rage.

She was so filled with fury that grew past controlling-she couldn't see, couldn't think; it was

like being possessed. Suddenly she gasped as pain lanced from the top of her head to her toes,

pain like a bolt of lightning-

-her vision blacked out; she fell to her hands and knees on the grass, her legs unable to hold

her, convulsing with surges of pain in her arms and legs. Her feet, her hands felt like she'd

shoved them in a fire-her face felt as if someone were stretching it out of shape. And the ring

finger of her left hand-it burned with more agony than both hands and feet put together! She shook

her head, trying to clear it, but it spun around in dizzying circles. Her ears rang, hard to hear

over the ringing, but there was a sound of cloth tearing-

Her sight cleared and returned, but distorted. She looked up at the man, who had dropped his bow,

and was backing away from her, slowly, his face white with terror. She started to say something to

him-

-and it came out a snarl.

With that, the man screeched, turned his back on her, and ran.

And she caught sight of her hand. It wasn't a hand anymore. It was a paw. Judging by the spotted

pelt of the leg, a leopard's paw. Scattered around her were the ragged scraps of cloth that had

once been her clothing.

Glenda lay in the sun on top of a rock, warm and drowsy with full-bellied content. Idly she washed

one paw with her tongue, cleaning the last taint of blood from it. Before she'd had a chance to

panic or go crazy back there when she'd realized what had happened to her, a rabbit-like creature

had broken cover practically beneath her nose. Semi-starvation and confusion had kept her dazed

long enough for leopard-instincts to take over. She'd caught and killed the thing and had half

eaten it before the reality of what she'd done and become broke through her shock. Raw rabbit-

thing tasted fine to leopard-Glenda; when she realized that, she finished it, nose to tail. Now

for the first time in weeks she was warm and content. And for the first time in years she was

something to be afraid of. She gazed about her from her vantage-point on the warm boulder, taking

in the grassy hills and breathing in the warm, hay-scented air with a growing contentment.

Becoming a leopard might not be a bad transformation.

Ears keener than a human's picked up the sound of dogs in the distance; she became aware that the

man she'd frightened might have gone back home for help. They just might be hunting her.

Time to go.

She leapt down from her rock, setting off at a right angle to the direction the sound of the

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baying was coming from. Her sense of smell, so heightened now that it might have been a new sense

altogether, had picked up the coolth of running water off this way, dimmed by the green odor of

the grass. And running water was a good way to break a trail; she knew that from reading.

Reveling in the power of the muscles beneath her sleek coat, she ran lightly over the slopes,

moving through the grass that had been such a waist-high tangle to girl-Glenda with no impediment

whatsoever. In almost no time at all, it seemed, she was pacing the side of the stream that she

had scented.

It was quite wide, twenty feet or so, and seemed fairly deep in the middle. Sunlight danced on the

surface, giving her a hint that the current might be stiffish beneath the surface. She waded into

it, up to her stomach, hissing a little at the cold and the feel of the water on her fur. She

trotted upstream a bit until she found a place where the course had narrowed a little. It was

still over her head, but she found she could swim it with nothing other than discomfort. The

stream wound between the grassy hills, the banks never getting very high, but there rarely being

any more cover along them than a few scattered bushes. Something told her that she would be no

match for the endurance of the hunting pack if she tried to escape across the grasslands. She

stayed in the watercourse until she came to a wider valley than anything she had yet encountered.

There were trees here; she waded onward until she found one leaning well over the streambed.

Gathering herself and eying the broad branch that arced at least six feet above the watercourse,

she leaped for it, landing awkwardly, and having to scrabble with her claws fully extended to keep

her balance.

She sprawled over it for a moment, panting, hearing the dogs nearing-belling in triumph as they

caught her trail, then yelping in confusion when they lost it at the stream.

Time to move again. She climbed the tree up into the higher branches, finding a wide perch at

least fifty or sixty feet off the ground. It was high enough that it was unlikely that anyone

would spot her dappled hide among the dappled leaf-shadows, wide enough that she could recline,

balanced, at her ease, yet it afforded to leopard-eyes a good view of the ground and the stream.

As she'd expected, the humans with the dogs had figured out her scent-breaking ploy, and had split

the pack, taking half along each side of the stream to try and pick up where she'd exited. She

spotted the man who had stopped her easily, and filed his scent away in her memory for the future.

The others with him were dressed much the same as he, and carried nothing more sophisticated than

bows. They looked angry, confused; their voices held notes of fear. They looked into and under the

trees with noticeable apprehension, evidently fearing what might dwell under their shade. Finally

they gave up, and pulled the hounds off the fruitless quest, leaving her smiling catwise,

invisible above them in her tree, purring.

Several weeks later Glenda had found a place to lair up; a cave amid a tumble of boulders in the

heart of the forest at the streamside. She had also discovered why the hunters hadn't wanted to

pursue her into the forest itself. There was a-thing-an evil presence, malicious, but invisible,

that lurked in a circle of standing stones that glowed at night with a sickly yellow color.

Fortunately it seemed unable to go beyond the bounds of the stones themselves. Glenda had been

chasing a half-grown deer-beast that had run straight into the middle of the circle, forgetting

the danger before it because of the danger pursuing it. She had nearly been caught there herself,

and only the thing's preoccupation with the first prey had saved her. She had hidden in her lair,

nearly paralyzed with fear, for a day and a night until hunger and thirst had driven her out

again.

Other than that peril, easily avoided, the forest seemed safe enough. She'd found the village the

man had come from by following the dirt road; she'd spent long hours when she wasn't hunting

lurking within range of sight and hearing of the place. Aided by some new sense she wasn't sure

that she understood-the one that had alerted her to the danger of the stone circle as she'd

blundered in-she was beginning to make some sense of their language. She understood at least two-

thirds of what was being said now, and could usually guess the rest.

These people seemed to be stuck at some kind of feudal level-had been overrun by some higher-tech

invaders the generation before, and were only now recovering from that. The hereditary rulers had

mostly been killed in that war, and the population decimated; the memories of that time were still

strong. The man who'd stopped her had been on guard-duty and had mistrusted her appearance out of

what they called "the Waste" and her strange clothing. When she'd transformed in front of his

eyes, he must have decided she was some kind of witch.

Glenda had soon hunted the more easily-caught game out; now when hunger drove her, she

supplemented her diet with raids on the villager's livestock. She was getting better at hunting,

but she still was far from being an expert, and letting leopard-instincts take over involved

surrendering herself to those instincts. She was beginning to have the uneasy feeling that every

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time she did that she lost a little more of her humanity. Life as leopard-Glenda was much easier

than as girl-Glenda, but it might be getting to be time to think about trying to regain her former

shape-before she was lost to the leopard entirely.

She'd never been one for horror or fantasy stories, so her only guide was vague recollections of

fairy-tales and late-night werewolf movies. She didn't think the latter would be much help here-

after all, she'd transformed into a leopard, not a wolf, and by the light of day, not the full

moon.

But-maybe the light of the full moon would help.

She waited until full dark before setting off for her goal, a still pond in the far edge of the

forest, well away from the stone circle, in a clearing that never seemed to become overgrown. It

held a stone, too; a single pillar of some kind of blueish rock. That pillar had never "glowed" at

night before, at least not while Glenda had been there, but the pond and the clearing seemed to

form a little pocket of peace. Whatever evil might lurk in the rest of the forest, she was somehow

sure it would find no place there.

The moon was well up by the time she reached it. White flowers had opened to the light of it, and

a faint, crisp scent came from them. Glenda paced to the pool-side, and looked down into the dark,

still water. She could see her leopard form reflected clearly, and over her right shoulder, the

full moon.

Well, anger had gotten her into this shape, maybe anger would get her out. She closed her eyes for

a moment, then began summoning all the force of that emotion she could-willing herself back into

the form she'd always worn. She stared at her reflection in the water, forcing it, angrily, to be

her. Whatever power was playing games with her was not going to find her clay to be molded at

will!

As nothing happened, her frustration mounted; soon she was at the boiling point. Damn everything!

She-would-not-be-played-with-

The same incoherent fury that had seized her when she first changed washed over her a second time-

and the same agonizing pain sent blackness in front of her eyes and flung her to lie twitching

helplessly beside the pool. Her left forepaw felt like it was afire-

In moments it was over, and she found herself sprawling beside the pond, shivering with cold and

reaction, and totally naked. Naked, that is, except for the silver cat-ring, whose topaz eyes

glowed hotly at her for a long moment before the light left them.

The second time she transformed to leopard was much easier; the pain was less, the amount of time

less. She decided against being human-after finding herself without a stitch on, in a perilously

vulnerable and helpless form, leopard-Glenda seemed a much more viable alternative.

But the ability to switch back and forth proved to be very handy. The villagers had taken note of

her raids on their stock; they began mounting a series of systematic hunts for her, even

penetrating into the forest so long as it was by daylight. She learned or remembered from reading

countless tricks to throw the hunters off, and being able to change from human to leopard and back

again made more than one of those possible. There were places girl-Glenda could climb and hide

that leopard-Glenda couldn't, and the switch in scents when she changed confused and frightened

the dog-pack. She began feeling an amused sort of contempt for the villagers, often leading

individual hunters on wild-goose chases for the fun of it when she became bored.

But on the whole, it was better to be leopard; leopard-Glenda was comfortable and content sleeping

on rocks or on the dried leaves of her lair-girl-Glenda shivered and ached and wished for her

roach-infested efficiency. Leopard-Glenda was perfectly happy on a diet of raw fish, flesh and

fowl-girl-Glenda wanted to throw up when she thought about it. Leopard-Glenda was content with

nothing to do but tease the villagers and sleep in the sun when she wasn't hunting-girl-Glenda

fretted, and longed for a book, and wondered if what she was doing was right . . .

So matters stood until Midsummer.

Glenda woke, shivering, with a mouth gone dry with panic. The dream-

It wasn't just a nightmare. This dream had been so real she'd expected to wake with an arrow in

her ribs. She was still panting with fright even now.

There had been a man-he hadn't looked much like any of the villagers; they were mostly blond or

brown-haired, and of the kind of hefty build her aunt used to call "peasant-stock" in a tone of

contempt. No, he had resembled her in a way-as if she were a kind of washed-out copy of the

template from which his kind had been cut. Where her hair was a dark mousy-brown, his was just as

dark, but the color was more intense. They had the same general build: thin, tall, with prominent

cheekbones. His eyes-

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file:///G|/rah/Mercedes%20Lackey/Lackey,%20Mercedes%20-%20Werehunter.txtWerehunterMercedesLackeyThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright(c)1999byMercedesLackey"Werehunter"copyright(c)1989(Ta...

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Mercedes Lackey - Werehunter

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