By Hedonism
* * * * *
The forest was only five miles wide at its thickest point. But to Rebecca it filled her world. And that of the monsters pursuing her.
It’s impolite to say the least to call Werebeasts monsters. Some didn’t even like the term Werebeast. But the lycanthropes of this wood had minds to match their bodies. These Were were monsters not only because they had fur, fangs and claws, but because they enjoyed using them on people.
As Rebecca tore a path through the briars, a vividly striped badger entity crept from behind a tree and snarled at her from behind, goading the fearful girl onwards in the opposite direction. The barbed bushes tore into her clothes and lashed her skin to illustrate that they were supposed to avoided, not walked over. But the thorns barely touched the thick skin and fur of her pursuers, so it wasn’t a place of safety either.
They’re chasing me in a certain direction, she realised. They’re herding me.
Rebecca broke into a clearing, scratches covering her body completely, fear leaving every pore as cold sweat and mixing with the mud that splattered her. Here was the rest of the hunting party.
“You’re here to die,” rasped the most evil looking creature of the bunch. He was squat and massive, the animal part of him from a normally small, ferocious animal, maybe a wolverine. Whatever it was, this monster could eagerly take on and kill a full-sized tiger. Speaking of which, there was a lycanthrope version of that animal as well, and what could only be a hyena. The badger and wolf that chased her strode free of the undergrowth, and a gnarled, mud-covered alligator man joined them from the side.
The monsters lounged around her, naked but for the forest dirt. Their expressions were pretty much the same, human looks of cruel, indulgent pleasure superimposed on wildly varied animal muzzles. They didn’t go out of their way to terrify their hapless prey, the novelty of that presumably wore thin many hunts ago.
“I’m sure you know what to do,” said the tiger with a definite upper class accent. “Run, scream, and soforth. Best get on with it, girl. We’ll give you a minute.”
“Why’re you doing this?!” asked Rebecca in a tearful scream.
“Why does it matter?” replied the wolverine. “If you wanna know, you burned down my forest, destroyed my habitat. Now we have to kill you because there’s no other animals left to hunt.”
This brought up chuckles from the others. Rebecca guessed it was a lie. They all looked healthy, didn’t particularly smell and the mud on them was only from today. They had no signs of being the sort to live out in the woods permanently. They enjoyed a life in human form as much as any other Were.
Ohh, with exception to the Werewolf. He stank like an animal. He looked ferocious but deranged, as if struck down with BSE and rabies at the same time. He was only playing their game reluctantly. He was here to feed.
“Just thirty seconds now,” said the tiger, after about fifteen.
“You’ll never let me escape,” wailed Rebecca. “Th, there’s more of you, waiting around just in case, isn’t there.”
“No-oo, we’re all here,” said the tiger. “We’re a pack. We’re a team.” He smiled fondly, even lovingly, at the rest of his people. Of course... Of course they could be nice to each other. A brotherhood who had only friendship for each other, because all their enemies were everyone else.
:: I think he’s telling the truth, :: Rebecca thought to Figment. But there was no reply.
:: Fig? Figment? Hedonism? Are you there? ::
Rebecca paced backwards quickly from the group of monsters, fear increasingly apparent in her every move. That icy chill of despair the Were expected clouded her mind. Figment _had_ to be there!
:: Busy, :: came a hurried response inside her mind, and indeed Rebecca could feel the changes starting.
:: Run! :: the voice hissed. Rebecca almost leapt horizontally into the nearest bush and started to gallop in a total frenzy.
The werewolf snarled and leapt more-or-less instinctively after her, tired of playing and anxious to feed its belly. The fanged menagerie howled and snarled and bit the air with glee as they commenced their bonding and feasting ritual.
The tiger-man’s senses were on fire, his mind a joyous blank. This was how the Werewolf felt all the time, he knew. How wonderful it must be. His sensitive nose hauled in Rebecca’s scent of terror and his ears picked out the sound of her running.
Only the scent no longer held so much fear, and from the sound of it, she was running towards them...
Rebecca appeared in the undergrowth, pools of green spreading out over her skin as she sprang over the loose formation of killers. The Weretiger leapt upwards with instinctive response and met her elbow coming the other way. His world exploded in white and red, and he collapsed into a lame, furry pile.
Figment calculated the exact force and location of the strike. He wouldn’t be permanently harmed. He would be unconscious for thirty minutes. He would have an incredible headache for a day’s duration.
The pack saw their quarry overhead and turned hastily when she landed. Their minds were on automatic; no need to think during a run, just feel. Things were going wrong, but they could still get a kill Only now Rebecca was seven foot tall and covered in scales. Her hair writhed unpleasantly, serpents venturing from within, absorbing the follicles into themselves. She sidestepped the Hyena’s lunging, bone-snapping bite and nudged him to the side with a foot that burst free of its trainers. As the hyena was airborne, her gentle push changed his flightpath to make a tree his next stop.
The werewolf bit into her newly growing tail. Rebecca snarled through her expanding snout and lifted him into the air with its bulky, lizardine length, then slammed him into the badger who up until that point had been the only one to hang back and wonder what the hell was happening.
Although unused to such effective prey, the monsters were still a team. Alligator bodyslammed the new lizard into the ground, his enormous maw closing around a developing wing and snapping it casually. The wolverine joined him and pierced the girl’s tough back scales with every claw.
The monsters set upon Rebecca’s grounded form, the badger next to reach her. Nearly six hundred pounds of flesh crushed her into the ground, much of that the ‘gator’s. But it wasn’t enough. Rebecca grunted lightly and powered herself to her feet, tumbling the monsters like rolls of duvet from an awakening sleeper. The lizard pulled the alligator up with her and headbutted him into temporary oblivion.
Figment, the reptilian creature living inside Rebecca, was now completely merged with her host, and her powers were fed very well by their enemy’s uncontrolled emotional energy. She flapped her mangled wing back into shape, bones and muscle untangling and fixing smoothly. Her shapechanging powers granted weapons and defences that could change from fight to the next, which is why Rebecca took for granted the sensation of her fangs hollowing out and venom sacs developing under her eyes. Her claws also sharpened and pores surrounding them leaked a sticky liquid.
A furry fist slammed into Rebecca’s face and snapped her head back. She instinctively raked the offender’s arm and rolled away. The wolverine bunched his legs to leap after her, then looked down with puzzlement at his cut up arm, which now hung lifelessly from Rebecca’s paralysing poison.
:: Uhhh, Rebs. I’m unsure... ::
The punch filled Rebecca’s vision with red flashes and clouds until she simply closed her eyes and borrowed the sight of her headsnakes instead.
:: Rebs. Something’s wrong. If you want ‘em to live - ::
The hyena laughed with utter fury as he saw the reason for his sore head. The prey’s eyes were shut, she must be helpless, he thought. He aimed for her throat but, as she moved suddenly, he settled for her right arm instead.
:: - don’t use - ::
Rebecca opened her mouth, teeth flashing, holes in her canines dripping.
:: - the fangs! - ::
The lizardwoman pulled backwards hastily, but already there were two little circles of blood-matted fur on the hyena’s shoulder.
:: What do you mean something’s wrong? What have you done? ::
There was no time for an answer. Rebecca was learning first-hand the crushing power of a hyena’s jaws. The werehyena learned that Rebecca had seven times his strength when he was picked up casually and thrown at the wolverine.
The badger had run off. Rebecca looked around desperately for him. Mustn’t let any get away! She flicked the air with her forked tongue, sprang into the undergrowth and, a few seconds later, dumped the errant carnivore next to the still-gone tiger. Screaming and curling up promptly into a foetal position to protect a kicked groin that would definitely need hospital treatment, the badger looked at his unconscious packmate with great envy.
The wolverine fell half-way through his own attempt to escape by Rebecca cutting and paralyzing his legs. Filled with terror at what the lizard woman planned to do with him, he had a desperate one-handed attempt to crawl to safety.
The wolf leapt at Rebecca from behind, but to a woman surrounded by attentive snakes, he had hardly caught her by surprise. She plucked the deranged thing out of the air and held him out at arms length by the scruff of his neck. Suspended in the air, he tried squirming, transforming, snapping, and finally whining. He wheeled around with all limbs and scored some blood from her arm before the reptile simply reinforced her scales. During that time the lizard’s eyes were elsewhere. Watching the hyena dying.
:: Why can’t you heal him? Can’t you at least try? :: thought Rebecca desperately.
:: I am! :: responded the second mind. :: That venom you... we, injected. I didn’t make it, I swear! I’ve still analysing it, but it’s a spiritual venom, not a chemical one. I just can’t work out a cure! ::
:: But... you cured a lift full of people, and they were already dead! ::
:: I’m sorry... :: whined the inner voice. :: It’s just too powerful!. ::
:: You said you didn’t make the poison... who did?! ::
There was a pause in the internal dialogue. Then, :: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I did make it, I was just too... enthusiastic. ::
:: You know, your personality’s pretty much the same as mine. And I know when I’m lying. Need I say more? ::
The wolf’s squirming lessened as Rebecca and her inner voice argued. But the cessation of all movement snapped them both out of their quarrel. The foliage underneath him changed to a deeply unpleasant red, to match much of the creature’s chest leg fur, and two claws of his right hand. Rebecca dropped him and looked down.
The beast had cut his own throat, and quite expertly as well. Rebecca’s natural sense of disgust and squeamishness was turned down by Figment so she could fight effectively, and this was a good thing indeed at the moment.
:: We could heal him, :: said the parasite. The fact she wasn’t simply going ahead with this was the same reason Rebecca didn’t demand her to get on with it. The animal preferred to die than be captured. And he was an animal permanently, not like these part-time Were.
He was a murderer, or a killer animal. If he wanted to die, who are we to argue?
Nahhh.
“I’m not going to be a frightened little girl forever,” she mumbled to herself as she collected the crawling wolverine and dumped him back in the center of the clearing, then hunched over the wolf and started doing some very unconventional yet effective surgery.
* * * * *
It was a week since the situation with Dr. Jagar and the other Yuan-ti, or Ophidians, or whatever they liked to be called. Rebecca had spent a lot of time hanging around the Union courts and police offices, getting her application to be an aware supernatural entity (or something like that), giving statements and generally sorting out the very large mess that had developed. During this, John the Lesser serpent mentioned something offhand about an investigation into humans dissapearing in a forest.
The Union reckoned there was a Hunt Club there, or the activity of Beasts. Both went after humans, the former for sport, the latter for food and some obscure act of vengeance. The Union needed someone to investigate, someone who would preferably be female and appear completely human, even to scent, something very few Ophidians or Were could do. And they needed someone who would be genuinely frightened, again so those that preyed on her would know that they were looking upon and smelling terror.
Rebecca was a human. And when asked if the appearance of several furry, clawed monsters would make her afraid, she felt she could manage that. Oh yes. It had only been a little over a week since she had encountered real danger, and realised she could take it on.
Figment played her part by being quiet and not reassuring her host that they would be safe. The parasite didn’t like doing that. The only problem was, Figment was getting good at staying quiet, she had been like this only a few days since being reunited with her friend. And she was getting better at it. The human was afraid for her.
Rebecca returned to her human form anxiously. Figment losing control of her teeth was making her worried. She pulled on her ragged, torn clothing and called the cops with the Union mobile they had given her.
Within two minutes, a helicopter whirred over the treetops. She did tell them that the situation was fine, but troops fired those strange rounds at the ground all around her, vanished with electrical crackles and reappeared where their teleportation bullets lay. Heavily armed and armoured Yuan-ti and Werecreatures of the Union secured the area in an anxiously professional way, protecting the apparently vulnerable little human from the dangers of the big bad forest. Or vice versa.
Speaking of which, Rebecca looked at the Were that had attacked her. Apart from looking terrified, they had expressions of great regret. Regret at being caught. The world was so unfair, sending them a girl who would stop all their fun and get them into so much trouble.
The hyena’s expression was rather more peaceful. And permanent.
A snake fell upon Rebecca and constricted her tightly in his coils.
“I’m ssso glad you’re ssafe!” he rasped happily. Despite showing a little distaste in Rebecca’s human form, John was being very... clingy. Affectionate. Loving. Uh-oh.
“Yes,” replied Rebecca professionally, knowing the remnants of fear-scent remained on her skin.
“They were a Hunt Club,” said John.
“It’s worrying that there’s so many of that sort around, there’s actually a name for them.”
“You could have killed them. You were defending yourssself.”
Rebecca shrugged.
“Before there wasss the Union, the Were would have executed them immediately.”
“Good job there’s the Union now, then. Right?”
John’s weight nearly had Rebecca on her knees, and she had no way of getting him off her.
“I’ll hug you until you no longer sssmell afraid.”
“Ahh, yes, errr... Okay, take your tentacles off there, I know _you_ don’t think they’re off-limits but I do. It’s a mammal thing.”
“Mammal thing?” he asked innocently. “What hass that got to do with ussss?”
“With us?” asked Rebecca. The words came out a little spluttered. Her canines were a little too long. And her tongue found little holes in each tip.
The human called desperately for Figment, but she was asleep.
By Hedonism