Free Mistress of the Night by Don Bassingthwaite, Dave Gross Page A

her eyes, took a breath, and opened herself to the wild power within her spirit.
    The transformation came upon her like a warm breath across her skin, a shiver of sensation. Feena shook herself, the symbol of Selune jingling on the chain around her neck. When she opened her eyes again, she stood on four russet paws and the night air was rich with smells. Part of her wanted to sit back and offer a howl of joyful release to Selune's half-hidden face. She held that part back to a few delighted yips as she trotted off into Yhaunn's warm night.
    I should have done this days ago, she thought. There was some truth to the tales that connected werewolves to the full moon. An innocent bitten by a werewolf and infected with its curse could be forced into a rampaging animal shape by the full moon's light. But Feena had been born a werewolf, inheriting the power from her dark father. She could change form whenever she desired. In her old days at the temple, both Dhauna's counsel and her mother's dire warnings had kept her safely inside the walls when she couldn't resist the call of her animal half. A hop over the wall in the herb garden had been only for acolytes desperate for a night in the city—a human night. The city was no place for a young wolf.
    But she had become both a priestess and an adult. Yhaunn was no forest, but it was better than the stone cage that Moonshadow Hall sometimes felt like. As open and airy as the temple was, it was still a human building, enclosed and cut off from the world. The wolf inside her needed to be free, away from Mifano's social niceties and Velsinore's restraining drudgeries.
    Away—even for just a little while—from Dhauna's dark portents of danger.
    Feena growled. No! No thoughts of the High Moonmistress. This is my time.
    She threw back her head and set free the howl that she had restrained before.
    Every dog for blocks around went mad in a frenzy of barking. In alleys nearby, cats screeched as they scrambled for safety.
    Tongue lolling in satisfaction, Feena trotted on. She followed the natural slope of the city down toward Yhauntan Bay and the Sea of Fallen Stars, letting her nose lead her to places and things she might have overlooked as a human. In a tiny square, the stink of rotting vegetables haunted the site of a farmers' market during the day. Among the shadows of one alley, the tang of blood and birth—a mongrel bitch licked clean a new litter of puppies. She froze as she saw the wolf watching her. Feena kept her distance and after a time, the dog went back to licking her offspring, one eye fixed warily on the intruder. Feena spoke a silent prayer to Selune, asking her to watch over the newborn pups, before continuing on her way.
    In another alley, she tore into a crawling swarm of rats, snatching them up in powerful jaws and breaking their spines with a swift shake. The vermin weren't exactly the blood-mad servants and marauding predators of Malar the Beastlord that she was used to stalking among the trees of the Arch Wood, but the skirmish left her panting and exhilarated. She rinsed the rats' foul taste from her mouth at a trough in a stable yard as the horses nearby whickered uneasily in their sleep.
    Among the hovels closer to the docks, she listened outside a shack as the inhabitants wheezed and coughed. A miasma of pestilence drifted out of the shack. In the morning she would have Mifano send some of the junior clergy to the neighborhood. Prayers and medicines might stop the disease before it became a plague.
    Finally, she ended up on the docks, gazing out over the sea. All around her, ships and boats bobbed at anchor, a cacophony of creaking wood and straining rope. Their
    hulls oozed the odors of wet wood and tar, overlaid with the stench of sweat and excrement. Feena stood as far out on the docks as she could, nose raised high to catch the fresh wind as it came over the water. She had stood on the docks many times before in human form, but never before as a wolf. There were so