The Howling II Read Online Free PDF

feel constricted, and he sank gratefully to his knees, leaning forward to dig his fingers into the soft earth. He stretched out full length and lay for a moment with his face pressed to the sweet-smelling carpet of moss and leaves. With a deep sigh he rolled onto his back. Above him, through the cross-hatching of branches, he could see the full moon riding high and cold. The rush of blood through his veins became a roaring in his ears.
    A short, sharp pain stabbed into his forehead, and he cried out. His body jerked over onto one side as though controlled by wires. He cramped into a curled, fetuslike position. As he lay there, the man’s face stretched and distorted like modeling clay until all resemblance to Roy Beatty was lost. His nose and jaw thrust forward and became a muzzle. His ears grew longer and tapered themselves into blunt points. A series of convulsions seized his body. When the tremors quieted he stretched again, and new, powerful muscles moved under the skin. Where there had been bare flesh, thick fur, golden tan and glossy, now covered his body.
    In minutes the change was complete. The creature that had been a man rose to its feet, unsteadily at first, then more confidently as it gathered strength. Braced on four sinewy legs, the beast pointed its muzzle to the night sky.
    The wolf opened its throat and howled. A quavering cry that chilled the blood of the gypsies locked away in their trailers nearby. The wolf exulted in the renewed power of its body. It moved easily through the forest, picking up speed as it went. Finally it charged ahead at its full speed - faster than a man could run, faster than any natural wolf. It crashed heedlessly through the undergrowth, the thick coat of fur protecting its hide from thorns and broken ends of branches. The essence of the man that had been Roy Beatty shrank and retreated to a dark tiny corner of the mind of the beast. All rational thought was wiped out. There was only the raging hunger of the werewolf.
    *****
    The inhuman howling carried clearly to the trailer where Marcia Lura was locked away from the night. The thing on the floor scrambled over to the door and pressed its face against the cool metal. From the misshapen mouth came a sound - something between a woman’s sob and the growl of a wolf.
    *****
    Through the forest the huge pale wolf loped on. Dimly remembered in the animal brain were those other nights when the sleek black she-wolf ran at his side. Then the way she looked, moving powerfully, gracefully, and her sharp female scent on the night air, had driven the pale wolf half-mad with animal lust. Three years before, on a night of terror in the village of Drago, he had lost the female forever.
    On that night, as the fire consumed the village and destroyed the others, the huge, pale wolf had broken through the flames to where the female lay wounded and dragged her to safety. The silver bullet missed ending the dual life of the black wolf and Marcia Lura by the breadth of a hair. Over long agonized months, Roy Beatty had nursed the woman back from near death. Now, at least in her human form, the only mark of the wound she bore was the silver-white streak through her midnight hair. As to the other - Roy could only imagine the things that happened to Marcia on the nights she locked herself away from him. He knew only that the lean, beautiful she-wolf would not return. That hunger would never be fed.
    But there was the other hunger, the hunger that drove the werewolf endlessly through the night. The killing. The tearing away of living flesh, the crunch of bone between powerful jaws, the sweet-salty taste of warm blood.
    As the werewolf reached the far side of the wood, it slowed and moved cautiously through the last of the trees. Roy Beatty had learned much in the three years since he went down under the slashing teeth of the she-wolf and awoke to find himself forever changed. He had learned to move with stealth and to kill with the smallest possible