CHAPTER 3

 

From the personal notes of Jacob Donner, Secretary of the Wolfenrout, Independence, Missouri, May 18, 1846

 

The Wolfenrout met today and voted for a Foregathering of the Clans to take place in the last week of October in the mountains of California. It will be the first Foregathering of Our Kind in fifty years. Before that, there wasn’t a full Foregathering for more than a hundred years. Before that, it had been a millennium since we’d gathered enough of Our Kind to pass laws.

The Wolfenrout meeting started well enough, possibly because the ceremonial sacrifice satiated the bloodlust of the more aggressive among us.

My daughter, Marilee, went to a local tavern and enticed the town drunk back to our tent. He was a disgusting, smelly creature.

“What’s this, then?” the man slurred when he saw the gathering. “You want me to meet your family, do you?” He looked a little uneasy, but did not yet understand the danger he was in.

He laughed, then faltered as the silent gathering closed around him. “Get back!” he cried, grabbing Marilee’s arm. “What… what’re you doin’?”

She shrugged him off and began to undress. She had a calm look on her face, dispassionate, as if she was undressing for bed. He could only stare. A few moments before, he had wanted nothing more than to see her naked, but now the coward averted his eyes.

Solemnly, the other twelve members of the pack disrobed and surrounded the sacrificial offering.

“What’re you folks doin’?” he cried. “Stop it! This ain’t natural!”

I don’t know what shocked the human more: our nudity, or when we began to Turn.

My daughter transformed first. Her arms distorted, her fingers becoming sharpened claws; her legs lengthened, became thicker at the haunches, and narrowed to paws. Her torso elongated and her chest widened. Finally her head changed, her face squeezing outward, her teeth getting longer, her eyes growing larger, and her ears moving to the top of her head and becoming pointed.

Marilee stood upright, like a wolf standing on its hind legs. The man fell to his knees and began to cry.

“Please… I don’ unnerstand this. But I won’ say nuthin’ to no one. If you be devils who reckon to punish me, I swear I won’ never steal or hurt no one, ever again. I won’ never have another drink. Jus’ let me go.”

Marilee reached down and, putting one long claw beneath his chin, gently lifted his head. She leaned toward him, growling as she bent her head to his as if to give him a lover’s kiss. Instead, she licked his face with her long tongue.

He squeezed his eyes shut. “God, please God,” he chanted. “Please God, forgive me. I don’ wanna go to hell.”

My daughter’s barking laugh misted his face with spittle. He voided himself. In my human form, I would have been disgusted, but when Marilee began to eat the hand the man was holding up in self-defense, I was overwhelmed by the smell of fresh blood.

He was screaming, and even as I became wolf, I worried that someone might hear. Keseberg, as usual, transformed faster than the rest of us. He leapt on the drunk and clamped his jaws around the man’s neck, and his cries faded to a low, horrid hum. We fell upon his bleeding body.

The man was barely aware that he was being eaten alive. The shock to which humans succumb is a blessing of nature, and proof that they are meant to be our livestock. Mercifully, the man soon fell unconscious. I say mercifully, but only in hindsight. At the time, I wanted him alert, aware of what was happening, his eyes open so that I could stare into his soul as he died.

Each time I think we have progressed beyond our primitive nature, these sacrifices remind me of the satisfaction of tasting the flesh of humans, of eating their essence, of watching the life leave them, the horror of it shining in the blackness of their eyes. Each time, I feel as though I have eaten their souls, and that as they vanish from this Earth, I grow stronger. The God they call on to save them never comes, and as I devour them, I always think, If He did, I’d eat Him as well.

In the middle of the carnage, there was a small gasp near the front of the tent. We paused in mid-meal. Keseberg instantly transformed back into human form, and again I was impressed by his control. Bloody and naked, Keseberg went to see who it was.

He came back a few minutes later. “It was just some nosy little girl,” he growled. “Hey, save some of that for me.”

He transformed back to wolf and pushed aside some of the weaker members of the Wolfenrout. It troubles me that they let him. Keseberg is even stronger than we have been led to believe.

We resumed feeding on the now-dead man.

It is at such times that I fear my brother’s plans to reform the Wolfenrout are hopeless.

One thing I know for certain: if my dear brother is smart, he will delay the Wolfenrout vote until well after the ceremonial sacrifice. I suspect that with blood on our muzzles, even the most civilized among us will vote with Keseberg and his brethren’s more aggressive solutions to the problem of humans.

We have attached ourselves to a small wagon train, one of the last of the season. It was always our plan to join a human party, one that we could delay and control. Inevitably, there are those who fall by the wayside on these long, dangerous migrations. We will be well fed while we travel, without the need to reveal our true natures.

I fear, however, that the daily proximity of Keseberg and his followers to humans who are unaware of the danger is only asking for trouble.