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.It was then that Leon knew fear.Before Leon could react to the old man, his warning instinct shrilled and he knew help was coming for the old Asian-someone else who carried death in bloodstained hands.Leon's nerve broke.He retreated, knowing that the bitch would blame him-possibly the others, too-and that they would be right.He led his brothers and the bitch in a coward's retreat-and they were struck down like cowards by a foe even more lethal than the Chinaman.Leon had caught a glimpse of the horror and still couldn't believe what he had seen.The younger man with the dead eyes had ripped the tail right off one of his brothers, then had launched the wolf into the side of the building.With one hand.And had done it with enough force to shatter the beast.He and his brothers bullied their way through the crowd, but the mass of normals slowed them down.The one with the dead eyes caught up in seconds.Another wolf dead from a single blow to the spine.Another wolf snatched up by the scruff of the neck like a housecat!That was when a lucky break in the crowd allowed Leon to streak back to the van.He was already blinded by his own tears, which blurred the shapes of the people that got in the way of his vehicle.He simply drove through them and remembered feeling the thump of bodies bouncing off the van.Screams followed in his wake, but all Leon could think of was that his brothers were dead.Another crowd.He didn't even try to slow.Just let the van slam into the mass of costumed humans and come to a stop-then he and his companions emerged and fled through the city of horrors.He had taken fully half the pack with him on this trip, and now there were just two wolves remaining-the bitch and the guard wolf he had left with the van during the hotel incursion.It took the pathetic trio twenty minutes more to find another vehicle, because most Mardi Gras participants were roaming aimlessly on foot.At last they came upon a normal in a Toyota Tercel station wagon, just emerging from an all-night liquor store.He had a paper bag in one hand, a twelve-pack in the other, and he never knew what hit him, dying on his feet before he had a chance to be afraid.They were too frightened to feed.They scrambled into the car and raced back to the bayou to mourn.Those were his brothers-dead!More than that-those wolves were his children.He had created them.THE WOMAN WHO CAMPED on the Hermit's land, who called herself Thena, had asked Leon to come visit her laboratory on wheels.Page 75ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlLeon liked Thena.She didn't flinch from him.She had something of the animal in her, too.He had begun thinking that maybe, somehow, he and the woman.Was such a thing totally out of the question? He, Leon, the loup-garou, the killer and hunter, was shocked when he entered the laboratory.Thena had been busy collecting animals of all shapes and sizes from the bayou, and parts of them littered the interior of the laboratory.Many parts were stored in glass laboratory freezers.Other parts were chewed to the bone and tossed in plastic bins or simply scattered on the floor and the counter.That was when the woman, Thena, made him the offer he couldn't refuse.With one simple sip of a solution, she could make him into a true hunter-a genuine, more-than-human loup-garou.Leon accepted the offer without hesitation.Thena laughed delightedly, showing her strong white teeth, and then she made him something to drink.She took a small glass laboratory bottle from one of the little refrigerators-the one with the label 942 Solution-and poured the contents into a paper cup."Just drink," she said.So Leon drank."What's the matter?" she asked as he sat heavily down on one of the folding chairs."It hurts," he said.She looked confused."Bad?""Not too bad."But it lasted a long time.Hours.And he felt sore for weeks afterward.His face and his arms.His very bones hurt.He didn't know it that night, but his bones were changing.Lengthening.But that night he became a true loup-garou.He and the woman hunted together, and she was delighted with his new strength and speed."My wonderful wolf man!" she exclaimed happily when he emerged from the water with a struggling gator draped over one shoulder.Together they feasted on the gator, still weakly struggling as they tore it apart with their talons and teeth.Thena, he found, might look entirely normal, but she could kill and devour prey like a tigress.On the way home, she told him to kill the hermit.Then the bayou would be all theirs."It already is," Leon argued."He'll let us do as we please.""I can't allow him to know what has occurred," Thena said with a heartless shrug.Leon Grosvenor wanted very much to please her.But kill the old hermit, the only father he had ever known? "Never," he declared."You will do as I command!" Thena snapped, suddenly furious."Not that," Leon responded.They argued, but Leon stood his ground.Thena became very quiet the rest of the way home.THEY PARTED COMPANY that night with short words, and Leon waited in the woods a few hundred paces from the RV laboratory, then realized she might smell him.He moved into the nearest body of water, a stagnant pool of murk, and sank almost completely.Near dawn he heard the woman emerge from the laboratory and scamper off into the bayou.When Leon entered the laboratory, he found her notes."Canis lupus 942standard dilution too potent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]