Banished To Earth Book Two, Ravaged Earth (35)

Chapter 64

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    Later that day, while Davin and Pry walked toward the great oak. He took her hand. “I think we should go to the shack.”

   “Why?” Her answer was short and sharp.

   “I kinda think it’s really appropriate.”

  “ The sun is still two hours away from the treetops. I rather do this while it’s still light.”

   “Why?” Again, short and sharp. “You said you would never return.”

   “I said a lot of stuff, but when things change, we must change as well.

   That place still creeps me out even in the daylight. I do not want to be anywhere near it at night. But I think it might be better for everyone if I, I mean we were away from the others for a while, just in case.”

    “Davin. You are being silly. Mabel is not there. But more than that you are a Hunter, a Seer a werewolf and a ghost. Are you not also a man?” She bit her tongue, the instant the question fired from her mouth. Davin shrugged it off.

   “Funny you should mention werewolf.”

    Pry pulled her hand away and stopped. “What do you mean just in case? Werewolf, yes I said it. But why does that matter?”

   “They know you now. They are looking for you. I’m pretty sure they are not looking for the werewolf.”

   “Oh. Ooooh!” She turned back toward the house. “Yes. We should place distance between them and us.”

   “Put distance, not place distance, but that works too.” He corrected her. Even though he could not see her face. He could tell she was not tense or angry. “So, you get what I’m getting at?”

    “Get, put, you still talk in a very odd manner.” She turned back to him. He smiled at her smile.

   “It may not work.”

   “You wish me safe. Hidden within my warrel. It must work.  It is our only option…”

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  Having secured Pry’s permission and approval, he whipped open a portal and stepped out of the warm afternoon light into the gloomy coolness of his childhood dread.

 Grey shadows lay over the dirt yard, the rut riddled path and the time withered ruin he once struggled to live in.

    “You have not changed in a while.” She said as their eyes rolled up into the vine laden tree limbs, looking way too much like a net poised to drop any second.

   The shack squatted before them. Its roof was almost sunken to its rotten floorboards.

   “Looks like Mabel was the only thing holding it up.” He quipped, not really joking at all. “I’m close enough. You ready? More importantly are you sure? You could get stuck inside…”

    “I’ve already spoken to Nikki, Beth and Trudy, already said my goodbyes…so. Yes.”

    “Yeah, me too.” Davin’s eyes watered as he watched her close hers, resigning herself to his crazy idea, that could well turn her into a ghost, trapped inside a monster. He put that thought away. This thing must happen. The thing out there, and the thing up there must die.

    He had been hiding in plain view since the day he was born. Had the Urgis simply looked rather than relying on their high-tech sensors, they still would not have seen him.

    They were just that dependent on their technology, which they worshiped as a God, and far too disdainful toward common sense and the simple senses they were born with.

      The moment they lost contact with the original Chase; they simply relied on the sensors to reconnect with him. It never occurred to them that an extra galactic changeling had thwarted their plans. They were completely blindsided by Davin’s invasion of Mabel’s womb. Any DNA match was so far as they were concerned superfluous. They had lost contact with their progeny; they were not concerned with something as superficial and archaic as DNA. The internal link was broken. That was all that mattered to them. So far as they were concerned Chase was lost and would remain so until they could reconnect with him. Which is exactly what happened that night.

   That was what he was counting on to keep Pry safe. Soon she would be just another monster. She would be vermin unworthy of notice, no better than the unchanged Earth people. Davin would happily use their egotistical bigotry against them…

   As she stood before him, he turned toward the shack and remembered his confrontation with the shark man Stayner. Letting his darkest fears take him to the unthinkable place, the imagined end of his beautiful Pry.

    The only way he could summon the werewolf was to go to the one place he could not bear to go. Her horrific death at the hands of the monstrosity called Stayner.

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   Forcing himself to imagine Stayner chasing her down the beach, catching her, ripping her scalp from her head as she tried in vain to fend him off, with her lifeless useless hair. Then biting off pieces of her precious body, letting her blood, her insides sling and slide across his slimy mouth was all it took to draw the beast out. Of course it was a ghost beast.

     Invisible and untouchable to all but Pry, he hunched toward her tiny body. She sensed his presence his change, opened her eyes, smiled sweetly and invited him in. All the while she knew she may never see Nikkie Beth or Trudy again. But she also knew they were safe, and there was a world full of people just like them who would never be safe until the monsters and their keepers, the Urgis were destroyed.

  There was no pain at first. The beast, like smoke sucked into a keyhole by a draft gathered against her flesh, saturated her pores, filled her body. Then the agony. The transformation had just begun. Her flesh melted around her bones, as they softened and collapsed. Fire burned through every cell only to be caught up by the werewolf’s will and reconfigured to accommodate its presence.

   A mass of pulsating living matter lay quivering on the ground. It was alive but not much more.

    Had she a mouth she would have screamed. Had he a mouth Davin would have begged her forgiveness. But both could do nothing but endure the torture of being ripped apart from within, having every cell altered in ways they may not survive. Was Davin trying to harness cancer? No, not really. the wolf was simply making its bed in their living flesh.

    Night had consumed the shadows, by the time the writhing puddle of living flesh finally began to congeal into something resembling a living creature. The process continued.

     Hours crept past. The moon repeated its slow arc across the star flecked sky. Long white hair began to sprout over limbs and claws. A fur matted back curled upon the ground hog tied by long arms and legs that might have been human once but were now far too long and hairy to belong to man or woman. It was still changing.

    Golden blades of sunlight finally bore down on the thing that was once Pry. The pain had ceased. Sweet relief cradled her deep within, that and Davin’s comforting presence made it possible for her to stretch out and embrace her new persona.  

 

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   She raised her head. A low growl rolled up and rumbled out. Rising, on claw fringed paws she looked down remembered her feathery drape and grunted at the long white hair that now flowed and undulated down her sleek new body. She was not naked, not if you count living fur and hair as clothes.

    She was at least still female, but not pure Crychee. Though she could not see her face. She could feel it with her pawlike hands. She had a long narrow snout, fox like. Her ears, long and pointy, protruded from the top of her head, again more fox than wolf.

     She was a werewolf, but not some living nightmare straight out of a horror movie. Still, she need not worry about men lusting after her again or would she?

     Maybe she was a pretty werewolf, not likely. However, as she looked down at her body, perfectly toned tall and straight, its shapely cat like sleekness relieved her of regret. Maybe her new form was not as horrific as she feared.

    She was thinking, assessing, reasoning. Beneath all her luxurious white fur, claws and fangs she was still Pry, and Davin was still with her, deep inside. They were not yet talking, but that would come.

    Had they succeeded in condemning them both to the life of a monster? She was not sure. They may well have just sacrificed themselves. But, she was not about to try and reverse the whole thing now, just to see if she could. That was a painful chore she would happily put off, until their mission was complete. It may well not even be possible, but that was secondary. They had real monsters to destroy and a home world to reclaim….

   Now to find Silhouette and Tucker and try not to scare them away. She spoke their names. They did not hear. But she did, that was what mattered. She did…

   

    Davin had not bothered to tell anyone his plans for Pry’s transformation, so she had to find a way to approach without alarming them. Simple, she would just casually saunter up and say good morning.

    They were waiting for her on the front lawn when she rounded the house seventy-five feet away.

     Like a scene from an old western movie, they drew their pistols at the same moment and fired. The air sizzled and steamed as two red beams burned through the morning mist.

    A flash of white somersaulted toward them, dodging the beams with incredible speed.

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    “It’s me, It’s me” She said landing in a perfect crouch right in front of them. Her new voice was something between a purr and a growl, the sound a cat makes when its resting on a lap.

    “Who’s me?” Tucker yelled.

   “Pry!” She straightened with her paws up, claws sprung back, ready to slash. She saw them and instantly slung them behind her back. “I am Pry. Do not shoot. Please.”

   “Dang!” Silhouette put her gun away and stepped back, her eyes wide with admiration. “You make a mighty fine werewolf. If they ever made a monster porno you’d be the star. Yeah I see what he did.”

    “He saved me. Porno? What is that?”

   Tucker, putting his gun away stepped up to her. “Did he?” He turned his face away. Sil and Pry exchanged confused expressions, although Pry’s expression was strangely adorable as it was unsettling.

   Tucker coughed as if he were choking. He was. He was choking back tears. “Cindy.” He mumbled. “You’re just like Cindy.”

   Pry rushed to him, forgetting what she was, only remembering her friend. “Tucker. I am not dead.”

    “He didn’t force you; I know Davin. He would never…”

   “No, he did not.”

   “You sacrificed yourself for us.”

   “We needed a key Tucker.” Sil said as they huddled around him. “You’re more of a girl than I am.” She quipped. Pry snarled at her. Sil jumped back. “A joke, just a joke.”

    Seeing the fear in Silhouette’s face she hunched away. “I am sorry. Yes I am a key. I am not dead. But we still do not know if Davin can leave me, without taking the werewolf with him.”

    He turned back toward them, his face still wet and shiny with tears. “I’m going to shift back to the house get his duster and his pistol, and we will see if his cockamamie experiment was worth your sacrifice, since he did not give us any choice.” His disapproval burned their ears, but they said nothing.

    Before leaving, Tucker told Beth and Trudy about Pry’s change. And did not leave until their shock abated.

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     “You tell our little bit, to wear Davin’s duster and you teach her how to shoot.”

   “Ah, she’s not so little anymore,” Tucker replied, “in fact she’s taller than me.”

    “Hope his duster will fit her.” Beth’s voice was nervous. It seemed her new world was growing stranger by the day, “I ah, don’t want to see her, off. I, I want to remember her, as she was.”

    “Beth we’re coming back, all of us.”

   “I’m just glad Nikki slept in this morning. I, I don’t want her to see her, like that.”

   Tucker blushed, “Well to tell you the truth, she’s ah, not exactly scary, which kinda makes her scarier.”

   Just before he lifted his hand to open a shift portal, Trudy rushed up to him, grabbed his face, pulled him down and kissed his mouth.

  "You come back," she said after they parted.

  "Yes ma'am." he said just before he shifted away.