Ill Met By Moonlight

I stand in the shadows at the edge of the wood. The road to the bridge is near but I wait, watching, making sure.

I have been crossing this bridge for years (I snort aloud when I think about just how many) and on nights like this I am always cautious. The ancient stone arch spans a narrow gorge, which is, at this time of year, filled with impatient water. The river that carved this deep cleft is in spate - swollen with snowmelt. One hundred feet below the bridge the river continues its age old war against the rocks. The sounds of this battle, for all the world like animal bellows and growls, echo from the chasm. Despite thousands of years of this contention, of numberless floods, the rocks are still jagged fangs and the water churns against them into white foam.

I have heard told that these sharp stones, combined with the growling of the water, are given as a rationalization for the old name of this crossing place - 'The Wolf's Teeth'. But if you were to pry into the folk memory of those who live nearby you would get another – truer - explanation; one that I could confirm - if any dared to ask me.

My desire is to cross the bridge alone, without meeting anyone, especially at the height of the arch, where the carriageway narrows. This need to avoid meeting others, to be apart, has been strong in me for a long time now. But it is especially powerful tonight. A combination of the weather, my over-active senses and the moon - especially the moon - makes me doubly wary.

The noise of the river masks all other sounds, so I must rely on other senses than my hearing – but I am fortunate in that regard. The breeze that has partially blown away the clouds, revealing the moon, is blowing into my face and carrying with it a message - there is someone on the bridge.

The wind brings still more still information to me. I can detect that the 'someone' is female – as well as being young and scared. But I cannot afford to tarry too much longer. Earlier in the evening I sensed I was being followed and have been trying to put distance between my pursuers and myself. Bitter experience has taught me to trust my senses. I am confident I know who hunts me and know how persistent they can be

I know of some poor souls who believe, despite any evidence to the contrary, that they are unfairly persecuted. In my case I know this is true and have a distressing amount of proof that I am not subject to any delusion. I am persecuted. In fact it would be more accurate to say; I am hunted.

Eventually I conclude that the woman is alone, that any threat from her is less than that which comes hurrying, implacably, behind me.

I wait until the wind-tattered clouds hide the moon again and step from the darkness on to the road. Even in the darkness I feel exposed, the hairs all over my body prickle as I lope towards the bridge.

I pride myself on my ability to move silently, but I can take no credit for getting close to the woman before she sees me. The night is dark, the river noisy - and she obviously has other things on her mind.

I am five paces away before she notices me, reacting with a start. It would appear that this is not a good time or place for her to be startled – sitting as she is with one leg either side of the parapet of the bridge.

She spares me only the briefest glance despite the shock my silent approach must have produced. Barely looking at me she begins to stammer

'D....don...don't try to stop me!'

There is determination in her voice but the overtones of fear are stronger. From the glances she is casting downwards I sense it is the drop she contemplates rather than my presence, which is the source of her fear. This is a pleasant change from the usual reaction to my appearance. But whilst I can see the girl clearly to her I must seem like only a vague shadow in the gloom.

She begins again, 'You can't sto.......'

Annoyed that she believes she understands my intentions. I raise my hand and snarl at her.

'I'm not going to try!'

This unexpected response stops her foolish mouth as quickly as if I had slapped her face.

I lower my hand and study the woman - the girl. She doesn't appear to be mad - just dishevelled, frightened and determined. It seems I have interrupted a suicide

She stops glancing down and looks at me properly for the first time and gasps. Ignoring her reaction I continue to study her, taking in a mass of dark, tangled curls surmounting a pretty face. She appears to be about eighteen, no more than twenty. Her full, well-shaped lips are trembling and her eyes radiate a mixture of despair, but also petition. Her clothes are of good quality, albeit torn and dirty. Her boots (or at least the one I can see) are well made - but clumped with mud. It takes no genius to conclude that she has walked, or run, to this place - apparently anxious to die.

'I'm not going to try and stop you.' I repeat. 'In fact, I want to watch you jump.'

Again the effect of my words is like a blow. But this time I see anger flare in her blue eyes, in reaction to my callousness, after which I raise my evaluation of her appearance from 'pretty' to 'lovely'. I also take time to notice that those good quality clothes are well filled with shapely female flesh. This though makes me remember how long it has been since I lasted mated. Too long!

She gasps in shock and begins to try and marshal her words to respond, but I cut her short.

'You want to die? The get on with it I say. Why should it matter to you if I should want to observe your passing? If I were to guess at your pathetic motives, I imagine you might desire a witness to pass on the details of your death.'

I felt my anger rising despite myself.

'I am sure in your morbid imaginings you imagine that the folk about here will be agog with interest to hear of your tragic demise. Do you picture troubadours keen to hear every word before composing, "the Lament of the Lady of the Bridge", or some such maudlin twaddle?'

I laugh when I see the shock in her face.

'You will, no doubt, want them to tell the world of the cruel man who "ruined" your reputation I am guessing?'

I see her face fall and laugh again, knowing my random jibe has hit close to the mark. But my laughter is full of anger and disdain.

'You poor, pathetic fool!' I bark. 'Do you think anyone cares what happens to you? Do you imagine your loved ones gathered in mourning at your graveside? As a suicide you'll likely be buried at a crossroads, un-shriven and alone, leaving your soul to wander........'

A gob of spit in my face stops my tirade. I see her eyes flashing fire as she shouts.

'You evil............cur, you.........dog!' she shouts in my face, searching for more harmful words, not knowing any worse. But she cannot realise how the words she has chosen do wound. It appears that there is life yet in this girl who wants to die.

At the same time as I wipe her saliva from my cheek the clouds begin to part and the night brightens. The moonlight spills across the stones and seems to gather around the enraged girl. The iron-tight grip I usually keep on my 'Rage' begins to slip. I feel muscles tense and ripple under my coat, my fingertips tingle. To her it must appear that I grow, towering even further over her. I speak slowly, conscious that my mouth suddenly feels over-crowded with teeth.

My voice come outs like a rumbling growl. 'You RRReally shhhouldn't have done that......GGGirl.'

As I speak I start to unbuckle my belt and undo the fly buttons. I watch her mouth open in shock as I push my trousers down around my thighs, thighs that ripple and bulge with new, heavy muscle.

Over the years - the many, many years - I have worked at holding sway over my 'Rage' and the changes it brings. Even when the moon is full, when control is hardest, I can usually manage. But I know that there are times when nothing can stop it. I also know that when it comes, if it comes, I won't be able to manage buttons and buckles

'What are...are you doing? The girl stammers as she watches me.

I ignore her as I feel the Rage flare within me to greater and greater heights, filling me. My veins feel as if fire flows in them in place of blood.

The moonlight continues to stream more strongly through the rent clouds. In the growing brightness she begins to see me properly, fully, for the first time. If she had been scared before, then she now scales new heights of terror.

Realisation strikes her and she begins to babble, choking on her words 'You...you're him.........it! You're..............'

'SAY IT!' I roar at her. 'YES! I am the werewolf. I am Skinwalker. The stories your Grandmother told you, to scare you when you werrre a child, the ones that you never believed – they arrre all trrue. I am legend made flesh!'

I see that her lovely eyes are full of tears as she cringes away. I can feel the uncontrollable changes taking place and she must be able to see them also – and know her fate. I can feel my hair, my pelt, growing across my body. I rotate my head and feel vertebrae crunch as they change alignment. At my centre I feel heat - as if a glowing forge is being fanned in my belly. I feel the strength and the stamina I know that my newly changed body gives me. But most of all I feel ALIVE, in a way I never do in my human form.

I am ready now, adrenalin charged; ready to flee, fight or fuck.

My teeth elongate to the point where the long canines overlap my bottom lip and I smile at the girl – now that there is no other way I can smile - wolfishly.

But, in amazement, this sight does not cause the last of her reason to flee. She swings her leg off the bridge edge and stands up straight before me, still trembling like a leaf, still terrified to her wits end – but not beyond.

He voice is shaky, but clear as she speaks. Shocked into silence by her self-possession I listen.

'I came to this bridge to d...die. Now it seems it will not be by my own hand. But I am still ready to die.'

Her resignation is touching and pathetic in almost equal measures, but I do not interrupt – my fires are banked momentarily.

'Perhaps this is better?' she continues. 'You taunted me that a suicide goes to hell, which I knew, although it did not deter me from my resolve. Death at your......hands, would not be suicide, would it?'

Then, amazingly in the circumstances, she smiles at me.

My lips curl back from my teeth and I see her flinch. Enunciating carefully, wanting to make myself clear with a mouth that is no longer shaped for words, I speak.

'Arrre you awarrre of the fate of a werrwolvesh victim girrrl? Therre are worrsh fates than the Hell your prieshts prratle about.'

'Worse? Nothing could be worse than my fate now?'

In a blazing instant the heat, the fire, the RAGE is back.

'You pathetic, self pitying, FOOL!' I roar, my voice surmounting the noise of the torrent to echo in the gorge below.

'How DARE you speak to me of your fate? You, so young, with every reason to live, are able to die when you choose - and so easily. Whilst I, old beyond the mere count of years, I who deserves death more than any being, must endure a life I can bear no longer.'

My breath sobs in my throat when I stop. I see the girl, hand raised to her mouth, staring at me.

Quieter now, but still tense with anger, I tell her. 'You cannot imagine what is to watch those few who did love and trust me, who knew me as a man, watch them grow old and perish while you still live. What it is like when everyone else who remains trembles at the mention of your name and wishes for nothing but your death. To know what it is to be hunted, HUNTED, by those who wish to make it happen. To have nothing to look forward to but the fear and hatred of every man and know that there is no release, no escape – EVER!'

In her eyes I see the welter of emotion my words have generated. She holds her hand up to me, in supplication? To calm my anger? Or perhaps to signal surrender?

She whispers, still audible above the torrent, 'I want you to know.....when granny told me; you are right she told me stories of the Skinwalker; when she told me the legend of the werew....told me about... you, I wasn't scared. I felt only sorrow for him, I knew, even as a little girl, that he....that you must be very lonely.'

As the import of her words sink in a gap in the cloud opens and fully reveals my old enemy - the moon - full and serene. The bridge, the girl and I are lit, as if by spotlight. I feel almost the last bonds of my humanity slip away. The moon, and my jumbled emotions are the trigger. But these emotions are not anger - the usual cause of the change. But I am now too much the beast to unravel and understand human emotions.

'YOU PITIED ME?!' I scream as I feel the last changes happen, beyond my control. My spine knots as my tail sprouts. My fingertips contract and the nails lengthen, razor sharp talons glinting. My cock changes and swells, growing larger at the same time as engorging.

Fully metamorphosised, I throw my head back and howl. But that word is insufficient to describe this noise. The sound shakes the hills and rattles the heavens. And in the race-memory of every human is the ineradicable memory of the meaning of this cry:

YOU ARE PREY!

From somewhere down the valley I seem to hear echoes of my howl.

The girl swoons back against the edge of the bridge and I grab at her. My hands, my paws are clumsy and the newly revealed claws slice away her dress, from hem to neck, as if it were made of paper. Revealed, her plump, snow-white breasts seem to glow in the moonlight, crowned by rosy nipples. The remnants of her dress fall around her feet and I survey my mate. The beast is in charge now.

I flip her round as easily as if she weighed nothing, until her head hangs over the bridge edge. A few strokes of my claws shred her underclothes, carving stripes in her buttocks and leaving trails of blood. The scent of blood and the sight of her exposed, unprotected cunt excites me to full erection. My canine prick, already swollen to prodigious size, emerges, pink and pointed from its sheath, squirting semen constantly as I jab the head between her thighs. A tiny part of my mind, the last part that is still human, is screaming – 'Stop'. My transformed cock is larger than any human member, the head already the size of an apple. That small voice speaks because it believes the girl will be split in half – but the beast cares not. The wild, abandoned mating urge is overwhelming; nothing will deny it.

My hips thrust frantically forward until the tip of my cock finds a purchase amongst the folds of her labia. With another howl (exultant this time) I drive my cock into her insensible body and feel her tear. Hymen, skin or muscle? It is of no concern to me.

I hear her groan, the pain of my savage intrusion bringing her back to consciousness. The screams of her tortured senses and nerves begin connecting with her returning awareness. The realisation of what is happening to her floods her mind and I hear her moan, then wail in terror and pain.

This is not human lovemaking. This is animal, bestial mating – dog and bitch. I have no concern for the girl's pleasure, there is no finesse. My only concern is to fill her with my seed – to breed her. My hips hammer forward and each shove forces a bit more of my shaft into her abused cunt. I yelp with the effort of each shove. My breath rasps in my throat and my tongue lolls, dripping hot saliva on her heaving back. The mixed smells of blood and semen flood my nostrils and spur me to greater efforts.

The girl shudders below me as I take her. I grab her hair and haul her head back, then lower my mouth to lick her neck. My inhumanly long tongue rasps across her pale skin and I hear her gasp; but not in shock or fear – this is a different sound.

Inflamed, I open my jaws wide before burying my teeth into the flesh between her neck and shoulder. Growling constantly, I am panting now, through my nostrils, for the breath I need to continue the remorseless assault. This bitch will not get away from me until I am well and truly finished with her.

But even in the height of my animal passion, some spark of humanity remains intact. I make sure not to find a vein with my teeth. Doing so would condemn her to my fate. In my years I have subtracted many humans from their total, but I swore long years ago, never to add to the population of my kind.

The taste of her blood is thick and delicious in my mouth. My hot breath bathes the girl's neck, as my cock pistons into her limp body. My hairy haunches slap against her buttocks with constant, rapid concussions.

Then I almost loose my grip on her neck in surprise as, no longer limp, I feel her move. I growl louder in menacing warning, thinking she is trying to escape or otherwise prevent me from taking what is mine. Then I notice her groans have become moans and feel the muscles of her stretched and abused vagina squeezing my inhuman shaft. As my pelvis comes forward again I feel her hips come back to meet my thrust.

The last, the thickest, the final stubborn half inch of my immense wolf cock disappears into her sex and I hear her wail. My cock head must be battering against her womb. But no longer do her cries betray distress. This is a different sound, the sound of a woman fulfilled, satisfied.

I have never heard this before when mating and the uniqueness is extraordinarily exciting. I slow my thrusting as I feel the knot in my cock swell. Fresh moaning and panting tell that the girl can obviously feel it as well. Before, whilst mating in wolf form the woman has always been a victim, not a partner. When the female is usually catatonic with terror or screaming constantly, it is sex in a form that only an animal can enjoy.

I stop thrusting altogether and pull back slightly to test that we are fully 'knotted'. My experiment proves that we are – and produces fresh groans of pleasure. For the girl it must feel like having a clenched fist pulled from within her very core, but she seems to enjoy the sensation.

My heightened sense of smell can detect her excitement now, amongst the welter of other scents – blood, semen and sweat. And now that I am paying attention I can deduce something else from how she smells. She is ovulating – truly 'in heat'.

The beast retreats enough for the man to feel shame. Yet, despite everything, she is enjoying this?

Standing on the tips of my toes (my claws) for extra purchase I ram my entire length back into her receptive hole, so hard that we nearly go over the edge of the bridge together. Once, twice and a third time – the new and delicious slickness eases the passage of my member into her hot, fertile centre. In response I feel her body writhe beneath me before she wails like a tortured soul descending into Hell's fires. I feel her culmination ripple through her like a wave through water. Her muscles clamp and cling to every inch of my length until there is not the slightest chance that I will not join her in this mutual release.

I howl again, joyously, savagely as my balls contract, my urethra expands and I empty myself into my lover. My ejaculations in wolf form last far longer than any man – and the emissions are far greater in quantity. Jet after jet of canine semen floods her depths. With the knot of my cock blocking her like a cork in a bottle there is no escape for this hot flood. In this way the dog-wolf ensures his mate is impregnated. It must almost feel to her as if she is being filled from inside, swelling with my inhuman seed.

The intensity of my climax causes my vision to fade for a moment. Only deep, racking, sobbing breaths keep me conscious. And in that instant of release and recovery my Rage is gone. Faster and more painfully than ever before, the changes in my body reverse. The pain makes me cry out – but is a scream not a howl. My prick shrinks, in several senses, sliding out of her ravaged, swollen sex – releasing a flood of our intermingled fluids. I can hear it splashing on the flagstones of the bridge.