Page 38 of Howl for the Gargoyle

Rafe led me out of the bathroom by the hand, and I followed with an automatic trust that made me stumble when I realized what I'd done. We were moving through the bedroom, out to the living room, through the hall to the front door. There was never a chance I would've asked Rafe to leave, because I didn't want to do this without him. It was one thing to be trapped in a small reinforced cell of a room alone during the full moon. But here in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by woods as far as I could see?

If I didn't know better, I would've said Rafe and I were walking out to meet a werewolf waiting in the dark for us, not waiting for me to transform into the beast myself. I was terrified, bracing for an attack.

My toes ached with every step over the mossy stones that led away from the cottage door, claws ready to tear free. There was a pinch at the base of my back, a tail waiting to sprout. My jaw ground against the promise of fangs and curved, threatening canines, my sinuses pounding with the slow gathering of magic that would turn me into a monster.

Transformation was the ugliest combination of science and magic. I couldn't simply change in a swirling cloud of glitter and smoke at the first glimpse of the full moon. No, my body had to break and rebuild me. Organized chaos.

"Breathe, Hannah," Rafe coaxed, his cool and firm hand brushing over my cheek.

I sucked in the breath, and my eyes widened. Rafe's hand holding mine tightened, as if he could feel the knife's edge of the moon cutting sharply through the dark of the night, into my bones.

I screamed at the burning stab of my heart in my chest, the tearing as it grew thicker and stronger, beating with a new, ragged animal pace. My spine cracked, and Rafe released my hand as I fell forward, twigs and debris biting into my stretching, changing, toughening skin. My fingers clawed at the tie of the robe, and Rafe must've been close, because the fabric was swept off my back and shoulders at the first fiery growth of fur.

I swallowed the rest of my screams, because my lungs were changing and my jaw was breaking, and it was worse to scream than it was to let myself choke on the blood of biting my tongue with freshly sharpened teeth.

A hand passed along my side, Rafe's breath catching roughly in my ear as my ribs snapped and popped, but his touch was ice in comparison with the fire blazing through me, and I didn't know if the touch was a relief or if it compounded the agony.

Through every minute, every shattering bone, my right side gnawed at me. The scars that remade me howled through my transformation, refusing to be forgotten or ignored. It wasn't enough to be turned into this creature. I had to remember why, how it had happened.

It doesn't take the moon very long to rise. Not from the first little sliver to the full body heaving itself over the horizon. Only a few minutes. But even two minutes is one hundred and twenty seconds, and if every one of those seconds was the worst moment of your life, expounded upon and multiplied and made even more harrowing, it was hard to imagine surviving so many of them.

Except I did it every month, and I knew with every second there would be another that followed, just as devastating and impossible, and that even when I'd survived all two hundred of them, there would be another two hundred waiting for me in less than a month.

I looked up in the haze of the pain, in the middle of the transformation, and Rafe was there, facing me on his hands and knees. My eyes had already scratched and shredded and reshaped with the vivid, sharp vision of the beast I was now, and he was perfectly clear, right down to the pulse hammering in his throat. My nose and lungs and tongue were reshaped too, my lips parted as I hauled in air, growled through the growth of new and strange legs.

Rafe's breath was uneven, stare wide and fixed to my face, watchful…frightened.

I let out a howl, a hollow warning cry of my new voice, and Rafe sat up straighter, a flinch away from me. I could make out a glimpse of myself in his vast, dark eyes—the eerie lamp glow of my stare, the creature crouch of my twisted body, and the gaping feral grin of my mouth.

"Breathe," he whispered.

I'd followed his lead too many times—it was automatic—but with the breath came the slightly metallic tang of stress.

Rafe was frightened of me.

The seconds ticked down until the only ache remaining was that of my scars and the clawing, tugging sensation in my mind of the beast held at bay. That pain would fade too in another hour or so, bitterly dragging on longer than all the others, but the battle inside of me would last until morning.

"Hannah?" Rafe murmured, inching forward.

But the sulfur of fright was still hanging on the air, and his shoulders were high around his ears. I didn't trust the creature in me—or myself, for that matter. The world was wild and intense and unfamiliar, and the streak of fur that ran down my spine was standing on end, aware of too much, too many smells, too many sounds. Every animal that scurried to safety underground was distinct in my elongated ears, every leaf bitter on my tongue.

Rafe reached a hand out, and I gave in to the better of two urges, darting out of reach, stretching properly for the first time on my legs, leaping over the ground, low and fast. And then I was moving because I could. For the first time, I could run. My body sang with the racing movement, the metallic sheen of the gate ahead of me sending me curving to the right, darting through trees, tearing through briars, a chill licking over my stinging skin.

A bark escaped my maw, a high-pitched yip of…of excitement.

It was impossible to hold my beast at arm's length as we beat a speedy path through the woods, but she was joyous where I was miserable, whole where I was broken. And when she pushed forward in my mind, it was a relief, a welcome difference from my own turmoil. Diane's words echoed in my head. I didn't know her, didn't know myself. Not like this.

I reached another corner of the gate and paused, the glimmer of silver rising inch by inch into the sky, flickering through the woods outside the gate.

A bright howl rose in my chest, warm and delighted and victorious.

I gave in, and the sound exploded into the night.

CHAPTER 15

Rafe

I cursed, dodging a tree and keeping my eyes down on the pale figure galloping wildly over the ground below. Whatever I'd expected tonight, it hadn't been for Hannah to run from me. Except Hannah never did what I expected, so I should've known.

---