Two. Hot Damn, that is a Fine Wolf-Man

My psycho customer the witch seemed just as shocked as I was when her ritual knife thudded right into the tree trunk and not into juicy human flesh. I was gone. Poof! Vanished and become one with the mist curling around my ankles.

It was freaky as hell. I couldn’t feel my hands, or my face, or my lungs. Was I breathing? Don’t think so. Was I even still alive? Arguably not. I’d skipped the dying stage and ascended right into ghosthood. I still booked it right the hell out of there the second I intuited how to move though, in case this crazy witch sensed me and tried to bind my soul in hell or something.

I raced off, a bit of breeze whipping through the trees, holding my nonexistent breath and thinking stubbornly that I must still be alive. I have survived my abduction, and I will find my way back to the main road, then back home to the city where I will report all this to the cops.

Then probably wind up straight in the insane asylum. What a depressing thought.

So depressing, it drags me right down into the dirt, and I turn solid again.

I am naked and human in the middle of the five degree woods, and there is a lynx, yes a freaking lynx crouched in the bushes right ahead of me.

The full moon has just come out from behind the clouds, lighting up this stretch of leafless trees with its milky pale spotlight and I see that ball of gray fur, watching me with glowing green eyes alight with obvious hunger. “Mist. You’re mist. Go back to mist,” I tell myself, trying to visualize and reactivate my awesome new ghost powers.

There is no mist around my ankles anymore though. It’s all blown away in the rising wind and maybe that’s why it failed this time. Or maybe it was the full moonlight beaming down on me now, making it impossible to feel hidden or one with the shadows.

Either way, the lynx stalks forward, so I throw a rock, which proves to be a terrible decision on my part. I’ve pissed it off royally now, and it gives a bloodcurdling yowl. I grab a bigger rock, but it does precious little good. It pounces. I’m knocked flat on my ass. Claws rake my flailing arms and side, and I scream like a banshee myself. Then I swipe at its face, and it leaps back with a growl, because I’ve left four impressively deep, long, finger-sized gouges across its eye.

I look down at my fingers and I notice they are tipped in claws, not nails. There is thick gray fur sprouting all up my arm, but that just starts me screaming again. I’m falling down on all fours with a tail rapidly unfurling between my legs, and that’s when my panicked cries turn to a deep and satisfied roar. I am no longer a helpless, naked human. I am a powerful lynx fully equipped for this cat fight.

My attacker has watched my transformation with clear unease, but she’s still circling me, hissing and gnashing her teeth with tail fully puffed.

That’s when the wolves start howling. It is loud and it is close, and they have most clearly caught our scent.

Lynx prime takes off up a tree in a split second to hide, and I myself am no longer feeling like a powerful wild cat. I’m just a frightened little kitten, and that is exactly what I become. I shrink down to a foot long house cat, and my gray patterned fur darkens to pitch black so it blends in with the shadows around me. I claw my way right up a tree trunk in mimic of the cowardly lynx’s strategy, and right in time too.

A massive black wolf comes trotting between the trees, nose lowered to the ground, clearly sniffing out a trail. He lifts his nose and those cruel amber eyes lock right with my own. He bares his teeth in what looks to be a sadistic smile. I really don’t think the tree is going to stop him, since his paws are shifting back into human fingers as he sinks back on his haunches and starts to straighten to full height. I know that emerging face. It’s my kidnapper, Michael. The witch’s errand boy is a werewolf, and he’s going to rip me out of this tree and drag me right back to his master.

Mike is almost back to full human when my silver furred messiah comes barreling out of the trees. He slams into Mike’s side and sends him rolling through the grass. Mike snaps back into wolf form in an instant, but silver fur is as viscous as he is fast. He takes a good chunk out of Michael’s back as he flings him through the air and into a tree trunk.

Mike hits with a yelp and a sickening crunch. Then he drops to the ground and starts to lengthen out, fur pulling back into human hair and skin. The transformation may have healed those broken bones and bleeds, but he is out like a light, and I don’t think he’ll wake up anytime soon.

The sun is coming up over the treeline now, and as it falls on my silver furred savior, his own body starts to transform. I said before that Michael could be a model on a fireman’s calendar, but he’s got nothing on this man. The first thing I see of his human form is bare backside, and if a cat could blush then I would be red as a fire hydrant. That is a well toned set of muscles, and it only gets better as I get a look at his front with its full eight pack abs and other above average sized delights.

I try to not be a leering creep and to focus on his face, and that is not hard at all, because that face is absolutely captivating. My defender is younger than psycho Mike, around my age, though they look most clearly related. He has those same black curls, but he keeps his trimmed much shorter and his face is clean shaven to better show off his chiseled jawline. He has the bluest eyes that I have ever seen, and I swear to you I almost fell out of that tree in a dead faint the second those eyes found me.

Love at first sight most definitely exists. I don’t care what anyone says.