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her tongue. She directed all of her
helpless fury at Bernard. If he hadn't have given her that elixir,
she would probably be dead now, or at least insane. Either would be
better than being stuck as a monster forever, perfect conscious of
what she was. Blast him!
     
    The odor of filthy dog assailed Charlotte's
nose. Another werewolf! She forgot her hatred of her husband and
jostled against him. He jogged to a halt and sniffed the air with a
low growl, and Charlotte pressed her shoulder and flank against
his.
     
    The outline of another werewolf flitted
through the trees a short distance away. Its red eyes flashed in
their direction. Bernard bared his teeth to their roots, and the
hair on his shoulders and back rose like spines on a porcupine.
"Snarl!" he hissed at Charlotte.
     
    She bared her teeth in a pathetic imitation
of a snarl.
     
    Fortunately it was enough to warn away the
wild werewolf. It skirted them and galloped north without a sound.
Bernard and Charlotte continued south, hearts pounding.
     
    "You've got to learn to snarl," said Bernard.
"Canines are all about bluff."
     
    "Unlike you, I didn't handle dogs much."
Charlotte sniffed and stepped away from him as they hurried onward.
"I spent my time among civilized company."
     
    Bernard let his tongue roll out in a grin.
"Very little of that in the forest."
     
    They ran on without speaking. Bernard paused
occasionally to sniff and look around. He led them roughly
southwest. When Charlotte asked where they were going, he replied,
"Grayton is a peninsula. The south end is rocky with lots of
caves."
     
    Dawn paled the sky as they descended a gentle
hill and plunged into young, brushy forest. Charlotte pushed her
way through brambles that would have torn a dress to ribbons, but
instead they raked her fur with the pleasing sensation of a
brush.
     
    The wolf pair drank from a stream, and crept
into a thorny cave under a raspberry hedge. Bernard opened the food
bag, and they shared pies, bread and cheese, broken into pieces
with their claws. The pair was ravenous, and the bread didn't
satisfy their animal stomachs.
     
    But it was food, and neither of them
complained. Charlotte and Bernard curled up at opposite ends of the
hollow and fell asleep.
     
    ***
     
    Bernard awoke hours later in fright, the fur
on his back bristling. He opened his eyes, but did not stir.
Charlotte lay pressed to the ground, ears flattened against her
skull. Humans yelled nearby, and magefire roared overhead. Werewolf
voices howled a short distance away, and the smell of burned hair
and flesh filtered through the leaves overhead.
     
    "They're hunting them," he whispered.
     
    Charlotte rolled one yellow eye at him.
"They're hunting us."
     
    Neither of them dared move until the human
voices had moved off, and the wind carried away the stench of
magical burning. Bernard recognized the magical signatures of some
of the Mage Society, his old friends. "We're monsters now," he
thought with a twist in his stomach. "They'll destroy us, the way I
always thought we should."
     
    He uncurled and nudged Charlotte with his
nose. "I think it's safe now."
     
    She cringed away from him, and he squeezed
past her, out of the hedge. He rose on two legs, looking, listening
and sniffing. Birds had resumed their songs. The clouds obscured
the sun's position, but Bernard thought that it was around noon.
The breeze carried the smell of humans.
     
    He dropped to all fours. "Charlotte, they're
moving west. If we run south we'll avoid them."
     
    She crawled out of the hedge, dragging the
food bag in her teeth. She slung it over her shoulders and sighed.
The pair drank from the stream again, then Bernard led the way
through the brush, keeping low and stopping often to listen for
enemies.
     
    They traveled several miles this way,
following the rise and fall of the land and keeping to the lowest
areas where the brush was thickest. They happened across the
charred corpses of three werewolves. There was little left of