A Gift in the Dark

Blood Red Moon

Blood Red Moon

Running consumed him.

The chase had been desperate at first. He had thrashed through the forest as fast as his legs could carry him, brambles and branches ripping at his skin, the hounds hot on his heels, and the shouts of men loud in his ears. Their weapons clashed together as they closed in on him, seeking to drive him with a barrier of noise toward the cliff and trap him. Only the combination of his desperate human cunning and moon-given strength had saved him from those who hunted him. Assuming they were tracking a mere wolf, he had managed to outpace the hounds, double back, and dash past the last man in the hunting line at wolven speed before he could react and bring his weapon to bear.

A few hours later, he was a long way ahead of the hounds and men; his speed and stamina beyond that of any normal man, and yet he still had no idea what to do or where to go. Pushing his way through a low stand of bushes at the edge of the woods, he paused in the twilight of the clearing, panting heavily. A cloud of insects gathered in unwelcome distraction around his head as he took stock of his situation.

He knew he was in trouble. Sundown wasn't far away and he had only the trousers and shirt in which he stood. He was hunted, alone and weaponless; there was no chance of assistance, no hope of absolution and remorse weighed down on his thin shoulders.

His blood stirred restlessly in his veins. He could feel the moon waiting patiently for the sun to drift down across the sky, the tail end of the warm midsummer's day making him sweat. Why now, why tonight? The itching on the inside of his skin grew as his blood roiled with the primeval internal growl of the Change. Every day varied, but the full uncontrollable change to wolf only happened a few nights every month. Each night was different. Normally, he could control when or if he changed; enhance his sense of smell, change his form to run faster, or increase his strength. But the two nights of the month when the moon was at its fullest were different. Tonight was the second night, but it was last night that had brought him to where he was now.

The first night was always the worst. Everything that was animal about the Change came out completely on the full moon's rise, and all control was devoured by the raging beast within. He'd awoken that morning far from his normal area, the gutted and half-devoured corpse of a young man lying in front of him. That had never happened before. Normally it was a sheep or a goat or some other domestic animal. Once, it had been a mountain lion that had left him scarred and battered in the aftermath of an unremembered fight for survival.

He had spent most of the following day as a human wallowing in grief and self pity. After burying the body and saying a brief prayer, he had curled into a ball and cried, deep sobs racking his body. Only the baying blood lust of the hunting dogs had lifted him from his darkened pit of despair, the sound snapping him into action.

He ran.

Moving away from the horror of his recent memory, and having regained his breath, he made a choice and loped away from the clearing into the dwindling sun to see what the night would bring.

Cresting the top of a rise a short time later, he knelt in the long grass, making sure no one would see him silhouetted on the hilltop, and studied the terrain in front of him. The trees had thinned and a gentle grassy valley with a winding stream lay in front of him. He had smelt the house in front of him a few seconds earlier, the scent of a meat pie calling tantalisingly to him on the light breeze.

A picture-perfect timber house nestled in a hollow, a gentle trickle of smoke from a cooking fire twisting in unfettered wispy freedom from the chimney. Well kept fields and pens filled with chickens, sheep, goats, and pigs surrounded the house, and a barley field swayed in the light breeze. Any other time he would have stopped to take in the view, but night and its unforgiving moon was on the way, and a shed behind the house was looking inviting.