Redemption

Chapter One  Fire.  You should start a fire.  The voice whispered in her head distantly, but she swatted the thought away like an annoying fly.  She dragged the carcass of the small deer to a more sheltered spot.  The animal outweighed her, but she was nothing if not determined.  With a quick scan of the surrounding forest, she ripped into the flesh with her canines, going straight for the soft underbelly, and the most nutritious vital organs.  By the time her belly was engorged with fresh meat, her muzzle was stained with blood, and night was falling.  Her wolf-form was small and pale, the color somewhere between sandy white and grey, with deep brown eyes.  She sat back on her haunches and licked absently at her lips.  In her periphery she saw two coyotes pacing restlessly.  They were hungry, and they had smelled her fresh kill.  They were small and scruffy looking, their big ears and small pointed snouts making them look silly and undignified.  Even though she was only a small lone wolf, they feared her.  Still, they couldn’t stop salivating over the prospect of fresh venison.  She laced her ears back and considered chasing them, just for the fun of it.  But her belly was bloated and she was feeling too sleepy to waste her energy.  Instead, after nosing her kill one more time, she simply turned and walked away, letting the two hungry coyotes move in to scavenge after her.  She went some distance, following the ridgeline until she found a spring that fed a small brook.  She stopped and drank from the water, relishing the coldness against her tongue.  She moved a little way downstream, into a stand of young maple that had a lot of underbrush.  It was a safe place to bed down sleep off the feeling of being meat-drunk.  Shift.  Shift damnit.  Ah, that persistent and annoying voice again.  She growled, half aware that she was only growling to herself.  When was the last time she had shifted into her human form?  Had it been days?  Weeks?  Wolves didn’t keep time.  When you were a wolf, it was always now.  Being human, thinking like a human was becoming increasingly tiresome and difficult, and she was forgetting why... why did it matter?    Remember, the voice prodded.  Remember what?  Her vague memories of Hannah the human were distant and disturbing.  It was much better to remain as an animal, think as an animal, survive as an animal.  Michael Bishop.  The growl in her chest grew deeper.  The voice would have to bring that name into her mind.  Immediately she was flooded with images of his face.  So handsome, with thick arched brows over captivating green-hazel eyes, and a big, squarish jaw.  Everything about the man had been big.  EVERYTHING.  Oh yes, she’d seen it all.  With a whine she let the memory propel her back into her human form.  If her wolf had been small, her human form was downright diminutive.  She was hardly bigger than a child.  her long red-gold hair was matted and dirty, and her naked body was gleaming pale in the moonlight. Very unnatural for a werewolf to be so small, she thought.  Her brother was practically a giant next to her.  She winced, as if it hurt to remember that she did indeed have a brother. She rubbed at her arms, feeling the sudden chill of the night air against her bare skin.  It was better to stay a wolf, where she had no need of clothing to keep her warm.  When had she lost her clothes? She couldn’t remember.  She had left them behind at some point, and had not bothered to look for others.  She didn’t like stealing, and that was the only way she was going to acquire something.  She rubbed at her chest, at the constant dull ache behind her sternum.  She was getting close, and the closer she got, the more the spot between her small breasts ached.    The only way to get rid of the pain was to kill the man.  When Michael Bishop was dead, she could go home.  Home... She shook her head.  Where was home? She couldn’t exactly remember any more.  Fragments of memories drifted in and out of her consciousness like faded photographs.  A big old farm house with a sagging porch and peeling white paint.  Faces of people whose names she could no longer remember.  She groaned and held her head.  Trying to piece together the broken pieces of her human life made her head hurt, and she longed to let her wolf back.  Only the tiniest fragile thread of self-awareness stopped her from abandoning her humanity altogether.  She knew she was in danger of losing herself forever, and she had to finish the mission before she turned completely feral.    Kill Michael Bishop.