Now There Are Two

Each of the men gave Andrea a shoulder to lean on, and the three of them set off towards Simon's hut. As they walked, or in Andrea's case hobbled, she looked down at the wound, visible through a large rent in the leg of her breeches and illuminated by the bright moonlight. The wound did not look as bad as she had at first thought it was and it had even stopped hurting. Then she realised that even as she watched the flesh was knitting back together; the wound was healing with supernatural rapidity!

She had expected, based on the half-remembered tales told to her in her childhood, that the progress of the lycanthropy which she would almost certainly have acquired from Astra's bite would be slow enough that she would not change till the next full moon. Now it looked as though that had been a very unsafe assumption.

"Leave me!" she told Simon and Frederigo. "Save yourselves." They turned to look at her, surprise and concern on their faces. "Look," she said, pointing at her thigh. "For me to heal like that, the lycanthropy must already have a strong hold. I fear I could start to change at any moment, and..." At that point a strong convulsion seized her, and she gasped.

Both Simon and Frederigo did no more than release their hold on Andrea and step back a few paces, each confident in his own very different type of supernatural protection. "Poor, poor child," said Simon in a sad voice, as they watched Andrea's change begin.

Andrea knew what to expect as the end result, having seen Astra in her werewolf form. When the initial convulsion passed, she realised that her feet were beginning to hurt as they stretched inside her boots, and she untied and removed her footwear whilst her fingers could still manage the laces. Her toes were longer, and her nails were in the process of turning into claws.

Simon and Frederigo watched as Andrea changed, one feeling pitiful and aghast, the other with some annoyance. Yes, Astra and Andrea would both now have darkness as a part of themselves - indeed, the dominant part for three days every month - but it had not been his doing. Still, though it might now be rather more difficult to betray them as he had intended, it should still be possible.

The change took no more than a couple of minutes. When it was complete, Andrea shrugged off the torn remains of her clothing, and turned her attention to the two men. Whilst Astra had for a while succeeded in maintaining a tenuous control, at least on the first night, Andrea's will was not as strong, and the wolf was already fully dominant.

She looked first at Frederigo. She sensed a hidden core of darkness in him, a somewhat different darkness from her own, but it attracted her nevertheless. But she also somehow felt that he was dangerous. She turned her attention to Simon, who made a gesture and seemed to her to be surrounded by a blaze of brilliant light. Then he spoke and, though she could not understand the words, they filled her with dread and she turned and fled. (Meanwhile, Frederigo tried not to gasp in pain, as Simon's display of power caused the sigil on his hand - within his glove - to flare up agonisingly.)

Andrea had run about half a mile and was beginning to calm down, when she heard a howl from a mile or two away, and recognised it as being made by another of her kind. She howled in reply, and it felt so good.

1. Then she headed in the direction of the other, looking to join her. Wolves by their nature prefer to hunt in packs, after all.

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