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  It stood on its crooked hind legs and cocked its elongated head to one side. Its fur shone like moonlight on a still lake as it flexed its talons and rolled its stooped shoulders. It shook the beads of water from its silvery coat and licked its wrinkled snout with a long pink tongue. Upon seeing Mother whimpering and shivering like a newly whelped pup, it narrowed its golden eyes and growled.

  Rope stepped forward, positioning himself between the beast and his friend. He pulled a sharpened cafeteria spoon with a taped handle from its hiding place inside his shirt and lunged at the creature, burying the shiv in its chest.

  The creature howled as bright red blood jetted from the wound and swiped at Rope’s head with its claws, slicing open his face. The mute screamed wordlessly as he fell to his knees and frantically tried to put his eye back in its socket.

  The thing stepped past him and reached for Mother, propped against the wall, one hand still cupping his crushed genitals. “No,” the big man wept, his tears mingling with the tattooed one at the corner of his eye. “Please …”

  The creature grabbed a handful of Mother’s hair and pulled him to his feet as if he weighed as much as a kitten. The creature that, moments before, had been Skinner Cade found the smell of his enemy’s tears exciting.

  “Please don’t kill me,” Mother begged.

  The thing’s teeth snapped shut on Mother’s throat. Blood, hot and fresh, spurted into its mouth, and it found it good.

  A muscular, denim-clad arm wrapped around the creature’s throat, yanking it free of its meal. It was Rope, coming to the aid of his homey, despite the fact one eye was dangling by an optic nerve and the right side of his face had been sliced down to the bone. The mute had the creature in a chokehold and was trying to crush its wind-pipe. And had he been battling a gangly teenager from Seven Devils, Arkansas, he probably would have succeeded.

  Instead, the monster grabbed Rope’s wrist and easily flipped the mute over its shaggy shoulder, twisting his arm a quarter turn as he struck the floor. There was a loud snapping sound, like that of a green tree branch being broken. Rope opened his ruined mouth and issued a shriek only his killer could hear. The werewolf gave the mute’s arm a final wrench, snarling in triumph as the limb came off in its claws.

  The last thing Rope saw before he bled to death on the floor of the Los Lobos County Prison Farm was the beast that was once Skinner Cade hunkered down on its haunches, gnawing his still-twitching right arm like a soup bone.

  Chapter Nine

  Caged.

  Everywhere he looked, there were gray walls and no way out. Everything stank of human sweat and other secretions. Mingled with the physical odors were far less tangible, yet equally real scents—those of frustration, anger, hate and desperation. They impregnated the walls of the correctional facility like a toxic perfume, and made his fur stand on end and his teeth ache.

  As he skulked about on the catwalks that connected the upper tiers of the cell block, he heard some of the humans return from dinner. He dropped to his belly and watched as a pair of humans—one elderly and missing his upper teeth, the other tall and heavy-built—pause beneath his hiding place in order to light their cigarettes.

  He watched the pair with hungry eyes. Although he’d recently fed, ago, his guts were already growling as if he hadn’t eaten in years. The larger of the two waved farewell to his companion and walked away, leaving the old one behind. Now was his chance. The aged and infirm always make for easier prey …

  Top Gum yawned, scratched himself and blew twin jets of smoke out his nose. It was getting late. Time to return to his cell and read a couple more chapters from that book his old lady sent him. Maybe write a letter before lights out.

  He paused, suddenly overwhelmed by a memory of a dog he’d owned as a kid. A shaggy little mutt called Booker. He frowned and shook his head. Damned if he didn’t smell a wet dog …

  Just as the thought crossed his mind something landed in the middle of his back, snapping it like a dry twig. There was only time and breath for Top Gum to voice an abbreviated cry of alarm before the thing atop him clamped its muzzle about his throat.

  He wanted to keep feeding, but the sound of running footsteps distracted him. Humans were headed his way, alerted by his prey’s death shriek. He stood up and turned to face them, growling a warning to stay away.

  The ones at the head of the mob came to a sudden halt the moment they saw him and began frantically backpedaling, only to be pushed forward by those behind them. There were angry shouts and swearing and the air became electric with the smell of panic. Smelling their fear, he lunged forward, tearing at those closest to him with his claws and fangs in hopes of a stampede.

  A half-dozen prisoners were trampled by their fellow inmates as they tried to flee the snapping, snarling, yellow-eyed monster set amongst them. Creighton, who’d come running the second he recognized Top Gum’s voice, was knocked to the ground and narrowly avoided being crushed against a railing. As the surge of bodies moved past, he found himself staring at a nightmare. The creature stared down at him, panting like a dog, its silvery pelt marred by a wet crimson bib. The brows above its yellow eyes momentarily bunched, as if confused.

  “Kid?” he whispered in disbelief.

  The creature lifted its snout and tested the air, gave out with a high-pitched whine, and then turned and loped away. Creighton stared after the werewolf for a moment, then got to his feet and hobbled after his cellie.

  Stanton looked up from his girlie book and scowled at Tate, who was cleaning his nails with a pocket knife. “You hear that?”

  The younger guard cocked his head to one side and frowned. The sound of men shouting and screaming echoed up the corridor from the cell block. “Oh, shit!” he groaned.

  Stanton pushed himself away from the desk, fumbling for the keys to the riot gear locked in the closet beside his desk.

  “Sounds like we got ourselves a situation in A Block!”

  Tate moved to stare at the bank of monitors connected to the closed-circuit TV cameras spread throughout the cellblock. Every screen showed inmates running frantically back and forth in what seemed to be a blind panic.

  “‘Situation?’ It looks like a fuckin’ riot! Where’s Malone and Keller?” he asked as he searched the screens. “I don’t see them anywhere …”

  Suddenly both guards’ radios began to squawk and a panicked voice came on the line. “Officer down! Officer down! It got Malone!”

  “Keller! What’s going on?” Stanton shouted into the mike mounted to his shoulder as he frantically scanned the monitors. “Where are you?”

  “I’m near the—Oh, Jesus! It sees me!”

  “Get on the horn! We need back-up, pronto!” Stanton snapped as he hit the shutdown alarm and flicked on the cell block’s intercom. A second later his amplified voice could be heard booming from the public address system. “Cell Block A is now on lockdown! All prisoners are to return to their cells immediately! I repeat: A Block is now on lockdown, return to your cells!” He then turned and yanked open the riot closet, his hands trembling as he reached for the gear. He’d lived through a major riot at the state penitentiary, six years ago. The prisoners there broke into the wing where the snitches and chomos were kept and dismembered an inmate with acetylene torches looted from the machine shop. He had hoped transferring to a smaller county facility like Los Lobos would keep him from having to deal with a shit-show of that caliber again. But thanks to recent staff cut-backs, if the riot spread to the other cell blocks, there was no chance of putting it down without help from the State Police.

  “Where’s our back-up?” he snapped as he pulled a gas-mask onto his head.

  “Ortega and the others are on their way,” Tate replied, just before a second, completely different alarm began to sound. “Aw, shit—! Those idiots started a fire!” He pointed to the monitors screens rapidly filling with smoke.

  As he strapped himself into his Kevlar vest, Stanton moved to stand behind the steel door that led into the cellblock, p
eering through the narrow Plexiglas window that looked out onto the corridor.

  “See anything coming up the line?” Tate asked anxiously as he checked the charge on his taser.

  “Hard to tell, what with the smoke and shit,” Stanton replied. “Wait a minute—I see someone running this way! I think it’s Keller—!”

  Suddenly there was a thunderous crash as the two-inch thick reinforced steel door came off its hinges, slamming into Stanton’s face with such force it killed him instantly.

  Tate stared open-mouthed at the thing crouched atop the broken door, too shocked to move. It wasn’t until the thing began to lap at the blood seeping out from around the edges of the door that he threw off his paralysis and aimed his taser at the beast. The thing yowled in pain as fifty-thousand volts shot through its hairy body. But instead of dropping to the floor and flopping about like a landed fish, the creature closed the distance between them with a single bound, shredding his Kevlar jacket like cheesecloth.

  He cast back his head and howled as he entered the yard. The smell of the Wild was all around him, cutting through the acrid smoke like a razor-sharp talon. He loped forward, eager to put the huge concrete warren full of screaming, shouting humans behind him. All that mattered was the Wild on the other side of the metal fence, calling him to join it.

  Suddenly a beam of bright light shone down from above, swiveling to follow him. A voice—angry and frightened—shouted from the nearest guard tower: “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  There was a sharp crack as a bullet punched a hole in the air beside his head. He saw a spray of dirt as the bullet struck the ground next to him, but he did not care. He had to be free of this place of men, with its cages within cages. The second bullet hit him in the right shoulder, the third one in the back of his left leg. It felt like he’d stumbled into a nest of angry hornets. The fourth shot knocked him off his feet.

  One of the guards was hurrying toward him with a pair of massive, snarling Doberman pinschers. They smelled like slaves. He fixed the dogs with a defiant stare, his hackle raised and teeth bared in challenge. The attack dogs abruptly dropped their ears and pulled their heads in, cringing and whimpering like unweaned pups.

  “God dammit, Benito! Stalin! What’s gotten into you?” the guard shouted, tugging violently at the Dobermans’ choke chains, only to have them pull themselves free and run to the safety of their kennels.

  He was on the guard in a flurry of fang and fur before he could draw his gun. Someone in the tower fired a shot, only to be told by one of his fellow officers: “Hold your fire! You might hit Jack!” But it was already too late for Jack.

  He spat out the dying guard’s larynx and loped on all fours toward the north fence. He made a running jump at the fifteen-foot fence, hitting it halfway up. He howled as the shooters in the guard towers opened fire again. His body jerked with each impact, and his mouth filled with blood, but he continued to climb.

  Suddenly there was the sound of a muffled explosion from the main building and the yard was plunged into darkness. “Damn it!” one of the tower guards shouted. “The generator’s blown!”

  Seconds later, scores of men came pouring out into the yard like fire ants from a burning nest. The guards in the towers turned their guns away from him and began firing on the rioters below. He pulled himself over the top of the fence, his fur protecting him from being disemboweled by the razor wire, and dropped to the other side.

  Free.

  He did not even glance back at the chaos in the prison yard, as it was human foolishness and had little to do with him. Instead he tossed back his head and gave voice to a long, ululating howl, then loped off into the darkness to where he belonged: into the Wild.

  Chapter Ten

  Skinner squatted atop an outcropping of rock on a hill overlooking the highway, peacefully gnawing at the jackrabbit he’d just killed. The animal’s meat was stringy but palatable. It tasted gamier than human flesh, but it also lacked the preservative and other contaminants humans made a part of their diet.

  Skinner’s belly was stretched tight as he had devoured more than his fill of meat that night, and the hunger that gnawed like a rat in his gut was finally starting to fade. Still, he wasn’t so full he didn’t savor cracking open the bones of his kill to get at the marrow.

  He scanned the star-strewn desert sky and yawned, curling his tongue inward as he did so. It felt good to be free. He couldn’t think of anything better than running in his true skin in pursuit of prey, unless it was being surrounded by the Wild.

  Although his memory was blurry, he was certain this was not his first Change. He yawned again. He was tired. His belly was laden. He was far removed from those who had tried to hurt and imprison him. It was time to rest. He took what little was left of the rabbit carcass and covered it with loose stones, in case he woke up hungry, then turned around three times, resting his muzzle atop his folded hind legs.

  Within three minutes he was asleep; after five minutes he began to dream. And with the dreams came the memory of his first Change.

  “Hurry up, Skin! You don’t want to be late your on your first hunting trip!” William Cade announced, calling to his son from the foot of the stairs.

  It was a very early morning in November—so early the sun had yet to rise. Will Cade was dressed in a flannel lumberjack shirt, a red plaid hunting jacket, khaki pants, leather boots that laced up to his knee and a fluorescent orange cap with earflaps.

  “I’m coming, Dad!” Twelve-year-old Skinner hurried down the stairs, still struggling into his own jacket. From his hat down to his boots, he was dressed identically to his father.

  Today was a very special day, as it was the first day of deer season in Arkansas and Skinner was finally old enough to join his father at the deer camp. He had been looking forward to the arrival of November 1st with an eagerness usually reserved for Christmas and his birthday.

  The night before he had undergone the same rite of passage all boys in Choctaw County his age experienced: he’d gone trick-or-treating for the last time, knowing that, come the dawn, he would be putting aside childish costumes and candies in exchange for a hunter’s garb and gun.

  No one in Seven Devils, outside of the handful of Catholics who attended St. Joseph’s, had any idea that the day after Halloween was known as All Saints’ Day and The Day of the Dead in other parts of the world. As far as the inhabitants of Choctaw County were concerned, November 1st always had been and always would be known as the First Day of Deer Season, and celebrated with a school holiday.

  Edna Cade was in the kitchen, making sure her men didn’t go out into the wilderness hungry and unprepared. She carefully poured hot coffee into her husband’s thermos and hot cocoa into her son’s, and made sure each was equally provisioned with enough sandwiches to last the day. Once she was satisfied they were warmly dressed, she kissed them each on the cheek and escorted them to the back porch. She quietly stood and watched her husband and child walk across the back yard and into open field next door, in the direction of the woods … Before he disappeared into the forest, William Cade paused long enough to wave a farewell to his wife of thirty-five years.

  Skinner’s excitement doubled as they moved into the woods. Although he was familiar with the forest from the years he had spent climbing its trees and fishing its creeks, his father was taking him deeper into the wilderness than he had ever been before, to the groves and thickets where the wild things dwelt.

  “Do you think we’ll see a bear or a bobcat?” he asked excitedly.

  His father laughed as he lit his pipe. “Son, we’ll be lucky to see so much as a fox in these parts. Most of the bears and swamp cats were either scared off or shot up back when I was your age.”

  “But Mama’s always telling me to be careful when I play in the woods …”

  “That’s because it’s her job to worry about bears eatin’ her young ’un. Looky there!” Will said, lowering his voice to a whisper as he pointed to the ground. “Those are deer tracks! Fresh ’uns, at
that!”

  Father and son moved even deeper into the woods, following the trail left by the white-tail. Skinner’s heart hammered at his rib cage like it wanted to get out. He’d never stalked anything with the intent of killing it before. Over the years he had become quite adept at tracking squirrels and feral cats during his solitary trips to the woods, but he’d never done anything once he located them besides look at them.

  They caught up with their quarry an hour later. The deer had paused to drink from a creek in a part of the woods where the trees were so close together the forest floor seemed cast in perpetual twilight. Skinner stood and stared in awe at the creature as it drank. It was a large, healthy buck, boasting an eight-point rack and a pelt the color of caramel apples.

  “Go ahead, Skin. Take your aim,” his father whispered. “Just remember what I told you: squeeze the trigger, don’t pull. You want to make sure you get ’im with the first shot, so he doesn’t run off into the woods.”

  As if in a trance Skinner raised his rifle, sighting down the barrel at the deer standing fifty feet away upwind of him. The buck lifted its head suddenly, water dripping from its wide black nose, and for a heartbeat Skinner feared it had caught his scent and was about bound into the surrounding forest, its white tail lifted in warning to its fellows.

  The bullet from his rifle punched into the buck’s exposed throat, causing it to jerk backward, and its forelegs flailing as its lifeblood pumped from the wound in its neck. The deer collapsed among the dead leaves with a heavy thump, its body shuddering like a clockwork toy whose action has wound down.

  Skinner’s father clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s my boy! You’re a natural born hunter, son! Now, let’s put the poor beast down.…”

  The buck had stopped struggling, but was still alive as, its ribcage rising and falling like a faulty bellows. As they stood beside the dying animal, William Cade handed his son his folding lock-back knife.

  “Here you go, Skin. Finish what you started.”