There were wolves out there.
This was an unshakable truth in her mind, despite the fact that there were no wolves in the back country of Louisiana. But there were wolves out there now. Wolves infesting a land filled with familiar oddities that she was used to.
She knew it.
She hugged her arms around her shoulders and let the warm, damp breeze blow her hair into her face. She should have been afraid. Instead, she was full of anticipation.
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He was running.
He didn’t know where he was running to, all he knew was that he was running faster than he’d ever run in his life. It didn’t feel the same, either. His muscles bunched differently, his pace was funky. Then he realized that he was running low to the ground, that he was running in an unfamiliar place. There were sticks and branches everywhere. He looked up and saw a slice of moon through the trees, beyond the thick moss covering them.
This wasn’t home.
This wasn’t anywhere he’d ever been.
He looked down again, so as not to lose his way.
He looked down at his paws.
A howl cut through the heavy night air. It was his howl, and was soon answered in kind by another howl of a different tone and quality. From the tangled growth surrounding his path he first sensed, then saw, that he was with others of his own kind; running beside them he saw his reflection in their liquid eyes.
Wolf.
He howled again in excitement. Running with his pack he followed his instincts and raced ahead, leading the others to the edge of the woods where he could see a forested path leading to a house that gleamed ghostly white in the moonlight. The brush thinned and he tore through a jagged line of bushes, leaping over debris and leaves, leaping with some instinctual desperation that pulled at him.
Alex bolted up from his bed, covered in sweat, a scream choked back in his throat. His heart was leaping in his chest as he sprang from the mattress without thinking. By the time he could think, could realize that he had just had the same dream he’d been having night after night, he was already halfway across his hotel room, groping in the dark for the door.
Instead of leaving the room, though, he sat himself against the heavy door and reached up to turn on the lights.
What was happening to him?
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© 2002 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2002 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
