If I had no way to escape as a wolf, I’d do it as a vampire.
I lay on the plywood and tucked my legs close. The trick during transmutation would be keeping my writhing body from touching the electrified cage.
I cleared my thoughts of fear and let my mind expand into the stillness. The transformation came to me like water filling an empty shell.
A great force pulled from the inside of my skull to flatten my snout. My leg and arm bones felt like they were crushed by enormous stones. My senses were smothered by a storm of pain. Fur receded into skin and my flesh burned with the sensation of being dragged through smoldering brush. My paws molded themselves back into hands and feet in agonizing spasms.
The pain lifted and for an instant my mind was a smooth pool devoid of thought. My senses had turned dull and the complex smells simple. Staring into the landscape, my mind clutched at the names and purposes of the objects. A wire cage that rested on a wooden deck. Juniper. Rocks.
Zombies.
Someone clapped. A man cheered, “Very good.”
My muscles throbbed. My joints unfolded like they were breaking through glue.
I drew onto my naked butt and sat on the plywood sheet, careful not to touch the wire grid. I turned toward the clapping.
A red aura surrounded the man who stood between the house and me. His psychic shroud undulated with pleasure and the fuzzy, sparkling penumbra betrayed his curiosity.
He had the broad shoulders of a lumberjack. A fleece sweater covered the top of a white lab coat.
His proud jaw and the cowlick curling over his forehead made him appear like the superhero in a comic book. Only we weren’t in any comic book and he was no superhero.
He crouched beside my cage.
I focused my gaze into his. I’d zap him and order him to let me out.
His irises opened like the apertures on a camera lens. Usually the irises pop wide as fast as a bubble bursting. His aura brightened, but it didn’t blaze as I expected.
My hypnosis powers were weak.
The man’s expression went blank. He staggered from the cage.
Cowboy zombie grasped his arm and pulled him away. Why did the zombie protect this man? Was he their master? The reanimator?
The man gave his head a groggy shake. He rubbed color back into his face. Snakes of malice lashed from his aura. His forehead wadded with deep furrows of anger. He motioned toward cowboy zombie and beckoned for the club.
The man took the club and smacked it across the cage. “What the hell did you do to me?”
The cage rattled. I feared the wires would snap loose and shock me.
I couldn’t break free. I couldn’t hypnotize him. I was trapped.
The man eased the club through the wire grid. “What the hell are you?”
I was certain he was going to jab me with the club, and when he did, I’d shove it back into his chest.
Instead the man wedged the club in the grid and tipped the cage. I slid across the plywood toward the electrified wires.
I grabbed in panic for the plywood sheet to arrest myself. My fingers touched the wires under the plywood, and the next instant, blasts of mule-kick pain shot up each arm and exploded in my armpits.
My hands tore from the wires and I tumbled backward against the grid.
The sensation was like getting impaled on a red-hot iron bar. Every synapse fired between every cell, and the universe within my head was scorched of everything but pain.
The cage rocked back and settled on its bottom. I curled on the plywood to save myself.
The man levered the cage again, and again I fell against the wire grid.
For the next minute I lived inside a lightning bolt, my being consumed with white pain, every thought obliterated by a tumbling fire that wracked my body.
The pain abated, like the crackling embers of a dying fire. I smelled burnt flesh-my own. My eyes gradually came into focus. Wisps of smoke drifted by my face.
I lay on my side in a clenched fetal position. My kundalini noir trembled, exhausted by the ordeal.
The man slapped the club against the cage. “More?”
I couldn’t speak. I put my hand against my face-my numb fingers were hard as icicles-and tried to force my mouth to move. My lips were rubbery and cold like those of a dead fish.
He yelled, “You do that hypnosis thing again and I’ll fry you like sausage. You understand?”
I pulled from a deep reserve and the effort to speak was like climbing out of a crevasse. “Yes, I understand. No more, please.”
“Please?” His aura smoothed. “Don’t expect a ‘you’re welcome.’”
I wanted a sip of warm blood. I wanted a ticket home. I wanted…I wanted…
The morning light on Ghoul Mountain inched down the summit. The last of the eastern stars disappeared into the cerulean blue.
The dawn approached.
I wanted not to die.