Werewolf Apocalypse: Rise of the Lycans

The Changing

For a few sickening seconds that felt like forever, we fell through the air and with a loud CRASH, we slammed through a floor-to-ceiling glass window of the adjacent building, tumbling across a dark, carpeted office floor amidst a shower of heavy glass shards and metal blinds.

Pain exploded through my body and I rolled over, gasping for air, the room spinning around me in the dark.

"Clara," I choked out, pushing myself up on bleeding hands. "Clara, speak to me!"

"I'm... I'm here," her voice came from under a overturned desk.

I crawled over to her, grabbing her shoulders to pull her up. "Are you hit? Did the glass cut you?"

"I don't think so," she whispered with a trembling voice. "My shoulder just... it hurts, Leo. It feels like it's on fire."

I pulled out my lighter(it was the old brass one my dad gave me) and flicked the wheel. A tiny orange flame lit up the dark office.

I reached out and pulled her jacket collar back to check for glass cuts and my heart stopped.

On her right shoulder, right where her neck met her collarbone, was a deep, crescent-shaped tear. It wasn't a glass cut, it was a bite mark, complete with jagged tooth puncture holes.

"Leo?" Clara looked up at me searchingly, her brown eyes wide with fear. "What is it?"

The blood oozing from the bite wasn't bright red. It was thick, dark, and literally steaming as it hit the cool air of the room. Beneath her pale skin, black, thread-like veins were spreading out from the center of the wound like a spiderweb, pulsing to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Her skin was very hot to the touch.

"Leo," she gasped. "I can't... I hear something... in my head..."

Her eyes suddenly rolled into the back of her head, and her whole body went stiff

The orange flame of my lighter flickered from my unsteady hands.

"Clara!" I yelled and grabbed her face, my thumbs digging into her jaw. "Look at me! Stay with me!"

Her head rolled back against the arm of the desk, and her pupils became so widely dilated, that her brown eyes looked completely black, swallowing the pale reflection of the lighter flame. Beneath her collarbone, those spiderweb veins weren't just pulsating, I noticed they were squirming and pushing up against the surface of her skin like fine black wires.

"Leo..." Her lips barely moved, but her voice sounded wrong. It had a hollow, scraping resonance, like two heavy stones grinding together. "It's so... loud."

"What's loud? The city? The helicopters?" I asked in unhidden terror.

"The blood," she cried.

A violent convulsion seized her entire spine, and no matter how much I tried to hold her in place, it was useless. Her back arched off the carpet with a sickening, wet pop, like the sound of joints dislocating and forcing themselves into place. Then she let out a sound that didn't belong to a human woman. It was a low, guttural rattle that rattled the loose glass shards on the floor around us and scared me shitless.

I snapped the lighter shut and dropped us back into darkness. Then I grabbed her around the knees and waist.

"I've got you," I gritted out, hauling her up into my arms.

The heat radiating off her body was insane, it felt like holding a radiator. It could feel it go straight through my denim jacket and straight to my chest. She weighed almost nothing, but her muscles were locked tight, rigid as iron cables, and vibrating with a high-frequency tremor that I had never seen before.

I carried her down the dark corridor of the office floor, stumbling over overturned chairs and scattered paper. Outside the tinted glass windows, the city was screaming. I could hear explosions thundering from three blocks south as a result of gas lines tearing open and transformer vaults detonating. Bright orange light flickered against the office walls, casting monstrous, stretched shadows through the cubicles.

"Emergency exit... come on..." I muttered to myself, my boots sliding on shattered glass.

I found an unmarked door at the end of the hallway, shoved it open with my shoulder, and burst into a rear service stairwell. It smelled of stale concrete and cold air. There were no wolves down here yet, and no strange white executioners either. It was just six flights down to the rear alleyway.

I took the stairs two at a time, my knees buckling under the weight of her spiking fever, and by the third landing, Clara began to thrash.

"Put me down!" she shrieked. It wasn't a cry for help; it was an order.

She slammed her elbow into my sternum and the impact drove the air out of my lungs with a sharp whoosh, throwing me back against the concrete wall. I dropped her onto the landing and coughed my chest as I gasped for oxygen.

"Clara—"

She was on her hands and knees in the corner, and her hair which was soaked with sweat, plastered against her face, giving her a grotesque look. She dropped her head and began clawing her fingers frantically at the rough concrete floor.

I heard a loud CRACK and froze. Her fingernails weren't scratching the floor, they were snapping off. One by one, her neat, clean nails peeled back, pushed out by the thick, hardened black keratin that erupted from beneath her cuticles. She scraped her new talons across the concrete, leaving four white gouges in the solid stone.

"Get... away..." she groaned. "Leo... please... run..."

Her body shuddered so violently that her thick jacket tore across the shoulder seams.

"I'm not leaving you!" I yelled and lunged forward, grabbing her upper arms to pull her up.

The moment my fingers touched her skin, her head snapped up and my heart died in my chest.

Her eyes weren't human anymore; the white sclera had turned a deep, blood-soaked crimson, and the surrounding irises burned like polished gold. Her upper lip pulled back over her gums in a feral sneer, revealing her canine teeth that were presently pushing downward with a wet, disgusting crunch as they reshaped her jaw.

She turned and locked her golden gaze directly onto the throbbing pulse in my throat and her nostrils flared as she drew in a long, shuddering breath.

She smells me like she smells, I realized with a wave of absolute horror.

"Clara, it's me," I whispered, backing away slowly. "It's Leo."

A low, vibrating snarl rolled from the back of her throat, it was a pure sound that was ancient and filthy with hatred. The woman whom I had proposed to and cried in my arms twenty minutes ago was gone. In her place was an apex predator, staring at me like I was a piece of meat on a butcher's block.

She advanced towards me and I retreated, until there was no more space and my shoulders slammed against the heavy metal stairwell door. I watched her legs coil, and her raw, taloned hands grip the concrete.

My oh my, she is going to spring.

Desperate, I reached into my coat and wrapped my fingers around the heavy brass body of my father's lighter like it was some weapon. That was the only thing I had.

Clara lunged with terrifying, blinding speed, becoming a blur of tangled hair, white fangs, and bloody talons flying straight for my throat.

I didn't think, I threw my left arm up to guard my neck and shoved my right hand straight out, thrusting the palm of my bare hand right onto her burning, black-veined shoulder wound.

The moment my bare palm made contact with the bite, a blinding, electric shock fired up my arm and Clara let out a ear-piercing shriek of pure agony.

A bright, pale-blue light flared from beneath my hand, searing through her black veins like liquid lightning. She was thrown backward as if struck by a battering ram, her heavy body went crashing down the lower flights of stairs until she slammed hard into the bottom landing.

I fell to my knees, gasping. My right hand was still burning like I'd plunged it into molten lead.

Down at the bottom of the stairs, the yellow glow in her eyes sputtered and died, and the dark veins under her skin receded, fading back into normal, pale flesh. Her long fangs also shrank back into her gums and she laid there, motionlessly and shivering violently in the pitch dark.

"Leo...?" The voice of the woman I had fell in love with whimpered from the bottom of the landing. It was fragile, and completely human again. "What... what's happening to me...?"

Before I could answer, I heard the thud of heavy, metallic boot-steps echoing from the top of the stairwell tower towards us and paused.

The vampires had found the building.