Free Lycanthropos by Jeffrey Sackett

with his screams, and both Schlacht and Weyrauch leaned forward, openmouthed, disbelieving the evidence of their own eyes.
    Kaldy was changing.
    The change was at first very subtle, an almost imperceptible elongation of his arms attended by the same sound of bone scraping against bone. His shoulders swelled as if they were being filled with liquid, but then rippling muscles pushed out on his arms and back and chest. His black eyes grew yellow and luminescent, and the agonized, painfully human look of desperation in them began to flicker and weaken, began to be replaced by something unearthly, hellish. Kaldy’s legs seemed to pull upward slightly as if compensating for the elongation of his arms, and then thick brown hair burst from every inch of his skin. Kaldy threw himself up onto his knees and faced his captors, but his face did not long remain his own. Blood poured from his mouth as long fangs thrust upward from his lower jaw and down from his upper; his lips disappeared beneath the hairy muzzle which grew downward from the squat, moist nostrils; and a long, canine tongue flicked out over the fangs.
    Kaldy screamed once more; and then, as the last spark of human intelligence in his eyes died, he began to growl.
    The creature...for Kaldy it was no longer...stood and gazed at the humans on the other side of the cell bars with undisguised, aggressive, hate-filled appetite. For a moment, no one moved. Weyrauch, Schlacht and the guards stared at the creature, their only movement being that of the one guard cranking the camera. Behind them Louisa whispered, "God have mercy!"
    Her words seemed the catalyst to action. The creature threw itself against the bars, once, twice, and then the entire iron frame tore free from its casing and crashed loudly on the stones. The guard with the camera stopped cranking it and jumped back as both Louisa and Weyrauch screamed and the other guard leveled his weapon at the creature and opened fire. The bullets might as well have been made of paper, for they thudded audibly against the monster’s chest but did not impede its attack. The creature ignored the gun, lashing out at the face of the guard. The sharp talons ripped through the guard’s flesh and tore his jaw from his face. The creature slashed at him again, shearing through his throat and sending his severed head cascading away from his body to bounce absurdly along the floor of the corridor.
    Louisa ran from the corridor out into the anteroom. Her husband and cousin followed. The second guard made an attempt to do the same, but the creature knocked him to the ground and then snapped its fanged jaws shut on his arm. The guard shrieked as it tore off a thick chunk of flesh, swallowed it, and then ripped what was left of his arm from its socket. The creature ran from the corridor into the anteroom, leaving the shuddering body of the guard lying in a pool of his own blood.
    The escape of the creature and its attack upon the guards had happened so quickly that neither Schlacht nor Weyrauch nor Louisa had been able to get to the still-locked door of the anteroom. As the beast rushed in from the corridor, Schlacht, unwilling to attract its attention by moving, froze motionless in one corner while his cousin and her husband whimpered in another.
    In the anteroom the creature stopped and looked around in what appeared to be confusion, as if perplexed by the fact that its escape from the cell and the corridor had left it still confined within a room, as if it had expected to be outside beneath the stars. It seemed to forget the presence of the three remaining humans as it searched the walls and ceiling of the anteroom for a pathway to freedom. Its limited intelligence was not able to comprehend the nature and purpose of the doorway against the far wall. Schlacht watched the creature as its eyes scanned the walls, and he began slowly to inch his hand toward the revolver hanging unfired in its holster; then he stopped, thinking the better