Even a man who's pure at heart
And says his prayers by night,
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright1
The words came unbidden to him as though they were encoded in his DNA. Ronald Talbot did not know when- if ever- he heard those lines, but he knew them. He knew them, and he knew what they meant for him.
He screamed again, as his skin seemed to itch as though it were trying to tear itself off him. He shuddered as felt the bones of his face seem to soften, elongate, change. He moaned as he felt his canines thrust themselves out of his gums as wicked ivory fangs.
Count Dracula watched with ghoulish fascination as the offspring of his most hated enemy twisted and writhed on the table. His eyes were an eerie red as though they were backlit with red blood. "Oh, yes. It begins."
"I'll get you for this!" Ron screamed at the vampire lord. "You'll pay for this! I swear to God you'll pay!"
The Count winced. "Please don't use that language in my presence, Young Talbot. I find it . . . offensive."
"Go . . . to . . . hell!"
The vampire smiled. "In the words of your generation, Mr. Talbot: been there. Done that."
"He's hurting, Father!" Veronica said. "You didn't tell me that it would hurt him!"
"I would have thought it would be obvious, my daughter."
"Fascinating," Elizabeth Frankenstein said as she came closer to the table.
Ron Talbot snarled at her and struggled ferociously to bite her with his growing fangs.
"Be careful, Doctor," Dracula warned her. "Our young friend will be most hungry when the transformation is complete. I didn't bring you this far for you to turn into an entree."
Ron's skin darkened at the same time as thousands of wiry gray hairs forced themselves out of his skin. His face seemed to shimmer and blur like a mirage as the nose flattened and the jaws extended slightly. His ears seemed to slide up to the top of his head even as they took on a distinctively lupine appearance. His fingernails darkened and began to grow points even as his eyes turned as yellow as the autumn moon . . .
"His features are even more lupine than Lawrence Talbot's," the Count commented. "I didn't expect that."
With a growl, the Werewolf that had been Ronald Talbot flexed his mighty arms.
The straps that bound him snapped like twine.
Reaching down in a distinctively human gesture, the Werewolf tore the straps off that bound his now bare feet. He jumped lightly to his feet and tore off the tattered shirt that covered a chest that had grown much more massive.
He raised his talons to the sky . . . and looked at them.
The Werewolf paused. He looked at his fur-covered hands as though seeing them for the first time. Then he touched his face, felt his slight snout, the jutting fangs that protruded from his black lips.
Then he turned his yellow eyes back up the sky . . . to the moon.
And for the first time, the wolf-thing that had been Ronald Talbot howled.
And down belong in a dark and dank dungeon, the former Larry Talbot, the original Wolf Man, paused in the devouring of his meal. His ears pricked up and he listened intently.
The howling came again.
The Wolf Man did not have a mind, as a human would have understood the term. A creature of instinct, it lived by rage and hunger and . . . loneliness. It felt more than thought, and it was not capable of complex thought.
Still, if the feeling that came upon the Wolf Man could have been translated into something like human thought, it would have been understood:
My kind. My kin.
Throwing back his head, the Wolf Man opened his bloody jaws and howled.
Then, his meal forgotten, the Wolf Man launched himself once more at the heavy dungeon door.
High above him, the Werewolf that had been Ron Talbot heard that cry.
Elizabeth Frankenstein looked at the Count. "You have another one?"
"Indeed," the Count replied. "I have the original! Larry Talbot himself! Why else do you think he reacted so potently to the blood? It was his grandfather's."
"Ron, do you understand now?" Veronica asked, approaching the Werewolf cautiously. "Now we can be together forever. You'll live forever . . . just as I do. I did it for you, Ron. I did it for us."
The Werewolf looked at her for a moment. His taloned hand reached out to gently touch her cheek . . . and then cruelly slashed it. "I didn't ask you for this!"
"He spoke!" Elizabeth Frankenstein cried. "He spoke!"
"Indeed!" the Count replied, seemingly unperturbed by the attack on his daughter. "It appears that Young Talbot is quite a different breed of wolf than his grandfather."
The Werewolf grabbed Dracula's Daughter and threw her halfway across the room. "I'll kill you!" he growled, launching himself at Dracula.
With impossible speed, Elsa thrust herself between her master and the attacking Werewolf. Catching one of his outstretched arms, she pivoted and threw him against one of the huge generators that stood against the walls of the room.
The Werewolf smashed into it with enough force to break the metal shell of the device open like an eggshell. He hung against the wall of the machine like a pinned moth as electricity arched and crackled around his form.
"Stop it!" the Count cried. "I want him alive!"
The giant that had once been known simply as Frankenstein's Monster lumbered over to the twitching Werewolf and seized one furry shoulder. With no sign of exertion on his jaundiced face, Adam tore the Werewolf off the generator and threw him down to the floor.
"Father!" Veronica hissed, holding a hand up to her bloody cheek. "He hurt me!"
Her eyes were as red as blood.
"Consider it an object lesson, my daughter. He could have just as easily torn off your head. You really shouldn't expect to mix with his kind. They're useful as servants, but nothing more. Elsa, how is he?"
Elsa knelt beside the Werewolf. The air was filled with the stench of singed fur. "He's-"
"Mad as hell!"
The Werewolf grabbed her arm. With an animalistic growl, he yanked-
And ripped it free of the socket.
Elsa cried out and stood up. She hissed at the Werewolf like an angry snake, but there was no blood. Electric sparks dropped out of the empty sleeve onto the floor.
Her hand- the severed one that the Werewolf held in his own- tried desperately to grab the wrist of the hand that held it.
The Werewolf stared at the limb in shock and then threw it at Elsa.
Adam, growling in rage, tore one of the laboratory tables off its base. Holding it before him like a crude battering ram, he lunged at the Werewolf.
The Werewolf did not try to dodge the table though he easily could have. Instead he caught the free end of the table and shoved back.
The unexpected resistance knocked the larger creature off his feet.
"He almost fights like a man," Elizabeth Frankenstein commented to the Count. "From the accounts I've read of Larry Talbot he was much more feral than Ronald."
"Indeed he was," Dracula commented. "Always leaping down and trying to rip out throats- I applaud the intentions, but his execution was always a little clumsy. I see a great deal of possibility in Young Talbot though. He is everything I had hoped he would be . . . and more."
"You hurt me!" Veronica cried, launching herself at the Werewolf. Her face had turned into something distinctly inhuman: oversized fangs, furry features, and two bat-like ears. Long leather membranes attached to now-furry arms as she struggled to claw the eyes out of her former lover. "You'll pay for that!"
"Veronica, stand back!" Dracula ordered.
"This is your fault!" the Werewolf cried as he seized the clawed hands of the bat-woman. "You did this to me!"
Snarling, the two struggled against each other. Their fangs snapped at each other's throats.
"Stand back, Veronica!" Dracula hissed. "Now!"
But it was too late for the Daughter of Dracula.
The Werewolf lashed out with one of his feet and knocked the bat-woman off balance. With a burst of ferocious strength, he lifted her off her feet. Yellow eyes gleaming, he cast his gaze upon the laboratory.
Dracula realized his intent the moment the Werewolf found what he had been looking for. "No!" he cried.
With a savage howl of triumph, the Werewolf cast the struggling bat-woman down onto the broken base of the laboratory table . . . the wooden base.
There was a sickening sound as the jagged wooden base tore through her flesh. The bat-woman howled in pain and twitched feebly. Turning her monstrous face towards the Werewolf, she said, "I thought you loved me."
Her very flesh seemed to turn into smoke. When it cleared, only a deformed skeleton remained where she had been.
"No," Dracula whispered.
The Werewolf's yellow eyes gleamed . . . with something other than triumph in them. Pointing a claw at the vampire lord, he said, "You're next, Dracula!"
The Count looked at him, his face streaked with blood tears. "Come ahead and die then, boy!"
The wooden laboratory table smashed into the Werewolf. He was knocked hard against the wall.
Growling, Adam reached down and took hold of his awkward weapon once more. He glared at the Werewolf.
The Werewolf rose back to his feet and growled at the giant. He looked back at the lord of the vampires: Dracula had transformed into a bat-like thing much as his daughter had done . . . only much larger and more powerful.
Behind them, Elizabeth Frankenstein was working on Elsa. She was watching the tableau before her at the same instant. Her eyes gleamed with amusement.
The Werewolf felt that he was a match for either Frankenstein's Monster or Dracula alone . . . but he didn't know if he could take on both of them alone. And with Frankenstein's Bride ready to re-enter the fight at any moment . . .
He didn't know if it was the human or the animal part of him that decided on flight first, but his powerful legs propelled him into the air. He latched onto the chain that lifted the platform through the skylight. Without a backward glance, he pulled himself up the chain and broke through the skylight.
Howling, he leaped off the roof.
The bat-thing that had been Dracula protected his eyes with a great black leather wing. "Let him go," he told Adam. "There are worse things outside my castle than the Werewolf. If he survives the night, we will find him in the morning."
Far below them, the Wolf Man shattered the door of his dungeon.
Howling with joy over his freedom, the thing that had been Larry Talbot ran up the stairs to the exit . . . and freedom.
