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  The alligator creatures—Aiden had started calling them “gatoroids”—were mostly on the south side of the hospital, which faced in the direction of the nearby swamp. The north side was more open and faced the ruins of the city’s old downtown. The group decided to wait for nightfall and make their way north through the broken city, thence to a road that would take them south again.

  Night came and they set out, leaving through an emergency exit on the north side of the hospital. Aiden led, illuminating the way with his sun ring. They went at five-yard intervals, Pippa behind Aiden, then Abby, Tanner, and Keenan, with Salvatore bringing up the rear. They stayed close to the city’s wrecked buildings, hoping they’d provide cover if trouble came. Even with the devastation that surrounded them, it was clear that this had once been a flourishing city, now fifty years gone.

  They had gone only a mile when they heard hissing noises coming from behind them. They made ready to run, when they heard hissing in front of them. Pippa and Salvatore morphed as the group formed into a circle and prepared to fight. Abby held Excalibur, and Aiden turned on his fire saw. Dr. Tanner pulled a bow from across his shoulder and loaded an arrow. Keenan drew a long hunter’s knife from his belt.

  The hissing stopped, and time seemed to stop as well. When the attack came it was silent.

  Keenan screamed as he was pulled to the ground. The doctor’s intern disappeared into the mist that hugged the earth and they could hear him screaming as he was dragged away. Pippa roared and leaped, following the sounds of his screams into the surrounding overgrowth, but she knew, even as she saw the gatoroids drop Keenan and turn to her, that he was already dead. Something was happening to her. She had continued to morph, and she felt herself evolving into a new kind of werecat as she slashed the life out of one gatoroid and ripped the throat from the other. She tasted its blood and roared again as she reared and turned back to her friends, who were fighting for their lives.

  Aiden was swinging his fire saw like a cudgel, fending off a half dozen creatures, while Dr. Tanner released one arrow after another, aiming for creatures’ eyes. Excalibur crackled and hummed, and Abby swung it like a sword, slicing through necks and limbs and snouts. Salvatore stayed close to her, attacking any creature who came near, but the five were fighting a defensive battle against a foe that vastly outnumbered them.

  Pippa roared and leaped to Aiden’s side, and her presence seemed to inspire him. His fire saw was a blur as he stepped forward and felled one, two, three of the beasts in the space of a second. Pippa slashed the throats of two others with her mighty claws. The other creatures near them backed off and regrouped.

  Abby screamed as two creatures sent Dr. Tanner sprawling and pinned him to the ground. She struck at one with Excalibur, but another leaped at her from behind. Pippa and Aiden spun around, and Pippa snatched the beast away from her sister and hurled it against a building as Aiden beheaded one of the two that had Dr. Tanner pinned. The doctor slashed the other one’s throat with the knife Keenan had dropped.

  The remaining beasts came at them in a mass. Pippa roared and Salvatore howled, and they struck at their attackers while their friends thrust and slashed with their human weapons. All semblance of thought and reason was lost to Pippa as she became a creature of pure, perfect motion, moving like no being before her had ever moved, awesome and deadly and beautiful. Clouds broke in the night sky, and a full moon cast its light onto the raging battle. Pippa threw her head back and roared as bloodlust surged within her. She ripped the head from the nearest beast and raised its dead body up over her head as if in sacrificial offering to the moon above.

  A sliver of rationality returned to Pippa when she heard Abby wheeze and moan behind her. But Pippa could do nothing but keep fighting. Then she heard a familiar hiss and saw a blur out of the corner of her eye. It was a leaping werecat, a snow leopard hybrid like her, only smaller. Pippa’s mind reeled. Abby had morphed and was attacking the reptilian things like a crazed animal, striking with claws and teeth, rearing up and hissing, charging and striking and backing away as the creatures snapped at her.

  But the gatoroids had had enough. What was left of the horde backed off, and Pippa and Salvatore tore out the throats of any nearby creatures who were still breathing. The rest slithered away, disappearing into the night.

  Pippa stared in wonder at her sister, who was changing back to human form, looking confused and disoriented. Salvatore went to Abby and put an arm around her. Pippa heard someone moan behind her, and she turned to look, returning to human shape as she did. She gasped when she spotted Aiden lying motionless a few yards away. Dr. Tanner was bent over him, checking for injuries, feeling for a pulse.

  Pippa ran to Aiden and took his hand. He tried to smile, but Pippa could see that it was an effort. He wanted to say something, but she shushed him and told him to lie still.

  “Hey, kitty cat,” he whispered.

  “Hush,” she said as a tear streaked down her face. She glanced at Dr. Tanner who was crying softly. She had never seen him look so helpless.

  “Hey, have you ever had a boyfriend?” Aiden rasped in a barely audible voice.

  Pippa bit her lip and shook her head.

  “No one good enough for you, huh?”

  “Hush, Aiden,” she said as her tears fell softly on his bloody face.

  “I wish I was good enough for you,” he said.

  “You are,” Pippa said. Her lips were quivering and her voice trembled. She bent down and gently put her arms around him. “I love you, Aiden.”

  Aiden smiled and closed his eyes.

  “We have to get him back to the hospital,” Dr. Tanner said. “He’s lost too much blood. His only chance is a transfusion.”

  After Dr. Tanner tied his belt around Aiden’s thigh, Pippa morphed, picked up Aiden, and began running.

  Back at the hospital, Dr. Tanner found transfusion equipment and quickly set it up. He looked at Pippa. “It’s a long shot. I don’t know his blood type, but I have reason to believe you may be a kind of universal blood donor.”

  “What if I’m not?” Pippa said. “It could kill him.”

  “There’s no other way,” Tanner said. “He’ll die for sure if we don’t try.”

  Pippa lay on a bed next to Aiden as the doctor prepared for the transfusion. Abby had found a suture kit, and after cleaning Aiden’s wounds, she began to sew them up, hoping her book knowledge and past needlework would serve her.

  The doctor inserted the needles and began the transfusion. Several pints of blood flowed from Pippa to Aiden, and his color slowly returned.

  “I think he’s going to be okay,” the doctor said, as he removed the needles.

  Suddenly, Aiden’s body began shaking violently. Salvatore and Dr. Tanner tried to hold him down, but Aiden threw them off as his body began contorting. He was morphing, turning into a creature that was part cat and part reptile. He moaned and changed back, and his eyes opened wide with fear. He looked at Pippa, tried to call her name, but no sound came from him. He slumped back to the bed and was still.

  “Aiden!” she cried, but the boy was gone. “Aiden! Please, no. Aiden!”

  Dr. Tanner struggled to resuscitate him, but even the doctor knew that the tragic metamorphosis was too much for the young man to survive. Abby cried as she threw herself on Aiden’s chest. Pippa backed away, her face void of emotion. Abby turned to comfort her sister, but Pippa was morphing, turning into something none of them had seen before, more beast than human.

  Pippa leaped onto the windowsill. Hate coursing through her, she gazed at the dozens of humanoid reptiles slithering on the ground below.

  Dr. Tanner, Salvatore, and Abby gasped. Pippa had morphed into a werecat that was more powerful, more grotesque, and more maniacal than she had ever been before. She seemed possessed by madness, and when she roared, it sent a chill down Abby’s spine.

  You’re all mine, and now you’re all going to die, Pippa thought, before jumping from the three-story window, her heart bent on vengeance. />
  “No!” Abby yelled. Looking down, she saw the reptiles backing away from Pippa, who stood before them hissing and growling. “Pippa!”

  The creatures continued to back away, finally disappear-ing into the darkness.

  Abby called out to her sister once more, but it was no use. Pippa was headed toward the swamp. She stalked her prey with the killer instincts of a jungle cat. As she brooded over the death of Aiden and the fate of her sister, Abby shed what little tears remained. She stared out into the shadows as Pippa disappeared into the night in pursuit of Aiden’s killers.