Sorry for the long update again, but I've been working rather a lot recently, and haven't been able to find much time to spare.

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The fire rushes through me again, and this time I find myself unprepared for the severity of it. It burns hotter, spreads faster, and for a brief and awful moment I simply let it have its way with me before I muster my courage enough to try and do something with it. With difficulty I feel for the blurred edges between my magic and the potion, and when, after what feels like an age has passed, I have them firmly in my grasp, I tentatively pry them apart. They come away from each other far more easily than expected, and I am just about to draw in a relieved breath when a violent spasm lashes through me, pitching me face first onto the floor. I gasp in pain and shock as I land on my broken ribs for the second time this night, but quickly another spasm wracks me and the agony of my muscles twisting soon makes the pain of my ribs seem inconsequential. I writhe against it, trying desperately to free myself of it, for all the good it does me. I realize, almost belatedly, that this must be what the real transformation is like. It's so different from what I had experienced before, although that feeling of rightness somehow manages to shine through the pain, larger and brighter than it had been. Still, I regret my boldness in taking so much of the potion- what they had injected me with had easily been but a fifth of what was in that vial- and my ridiculous bravado in the face of Mertice's last words. Of course there is every chance that this potion may kill me, but really I know that, however briefly, I am about to experience something far worse than death.

I hear the battering ram and Mertice begin bellowing orders to those on the other side of the door the instant that the third spasm takes me. I cry out as a sharp fire sears across my shoulders and seeps its way towards the centre of me. Drawing in a deep breath, I try frantically to regain control of it, but fairly soon I realize that I have bigger problems when my bones start to break. The pace slow at first, just one or two, but quickly building to several at a time, until my weak cries become full-throated screams of agony. Frightened, on the verge of real panic, and unsure now what else to do I try to relax into the pain as I had before, hoping that it will somehow make the process easier. Almost instantly my hand, my ribs and my shoulder kindle into a white hot inferno as they begin to transform. Having seen this part of the change for myself has in no way prepared me for the actual experience of it. I look on as my fingers stretch unnaturally, and watch, horrified, as my nails become claws. Soon enough I have to avert my eyes, sickened by the sight of it. The other bones that have been breaking shortly begin to re- configure themselves too, one after another. Dizziness overwhelms me, and I fight the urge to gag on the nausea that swells up inside me. The pain in my body is now so complete that it is almost impossible to tell which the worst part is. I decide to give up trying to map it, and I make another effort to relax, forcing myself to stay this way when the change accelerates again. I lie in this hellish torment, praying for it to be over, and for a split second I actually believe that I have been answered when the pain abates a little.

Then, without warning, my skin begins to shred.

In the same instant what feels like a giant hand takes hold of my innards and squeezes sharply. The pain….. I have never felt it's like before. What has come before it has been but a light stubbing of the toe compared to this new anguish, and I feel as if I have been caught in a sudden hurricane, unable to tell left from right, up from down. I feel lost, unhinged. All I can do is lie with my mouth open in a silent scream of agony and wait for…well, whatever comes next. This turns out to be an immediate dulling of sight, scent and sound, almost as if I had been dropped into a dark, soundproofed room. Disconcertingly, I can still hear my bones re-forming from inside my head, and another wave of dizziness engulfs me. Suddenly, I realize that I can't feel anything anymore, and I wonder if I have lost that sense too. I dare not hope that it is finally over.

My senses come back in a rush that takes my breath away. I open my eyes to find that I am looking at an entirely new world, or rather; I'm looking at the same world, but with brand new senses. The pain is gone, and I take a moment to appreciate this before I try to stand. That's right. Four legs, I think after I stumble to my knees. As I attempt to rise again the strangest thing occurs; I feel myself shunted aside inside my own mind by an alien presence. This at least I have been told about by both Charlie and, although he probably didn't realize that I was listening at the time, by Ray; the feeling of not only having one's body taken over by the beast, but also one's mind. Seeing as this is in no way a real werewolf transformation I hadn't expected to feel it, and I had hoped to have my mind as my own so that I can be free to do what needs to be done. I endeavor to take it back from the creature, but the struggle doesn't last long before I am pushed back, almost absentmindedly, to become a passenger once again. I'm surprised to find that the contact with it is in no way as abhorrent as I imagined it to be, and when I feel the tide of hate and rage begin to rise in it, rather than cowering away from it, I allow myself instead to be swept along in its mad wake. And when I see that Mertice is the object of its current rage I find that I am able to add my own pent up emotions to it, giving it enough of my fear and hate and rage to make it crouch, ready to spring upon him. Before we can take action though we are stopped by a piecing, all consuming howl from somewhere beyond the door. My heart swells at the sound of it, and that feeling of rightness turns into something more palpable, a feeling of pack. The beast stops, hackles rising, and quivers there for a moment before throwing its head back and answering the other – Ray, I know that it's Ray -then,having observed what are obviously seen as pack courtesies, it turns us once again to the task at hand.

Mertice is afraid now; I can smell it as part of the bitter, foreign odor that exudes from him, something that I can also see, thanks to this new nose, in shades of red and black. He stands on the dais, his eyes wide and his wrist bent at an awkward angle, desperately trying to free himself of the binding bracelet. I had intended to take my time with this – one of my reasons for using the bracelet in the first place - but the beast has other ideas, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it from leaping forward. Its excitement builds, flooding our mouth with saliva. As it does so I find my feelings merging with its own again, making us almost one by the time we reach him. Mertice shrinks back against the throne, but there is a malice shining in his eyes now, and I know that I've missed something that I should have foreseen. The beast recognizes the scent of silver before we see his belt knife come flashing down to meet us. Too slowly, we dodge the blow. The knife creates a ten inch gash across our shoulder, and it is like having a hot poker dragged through our flesh. We howl in pain, and strike out viciously as he tries to stab at us again, cleanly removing the hand that holds the knife, and then we sink our teeth into his throat. His scream of pain and fury turns into a choked gurgle.

The salty tang of his blood fills our mouth, and I pause for a moment, closing my eyes in relief, but the beast, intent on the kill, chooses this moment to end Mertice's life. With a quick movement of our neck, it removes his head with frightening ease. We turn suddenly as his body crumples to dust, hearing the door to the chamber shudder in its frame, and it is only now that I remember the others outside with the battering ram. How long before they make it thorough? Not long, judging by the drunken way that the door is now hanging. We shrink back until we are hidden behind the throne, and just in time too; the next blow takes the door clean off its hinges. It takes them a few seconds to get organized, but soon enough we hear bolts thud into the wood of the throne above us. We quickly emerge from our hiding place, and I give up a silent prayer of thanks to whoever may be listening that they use crossbows; they take time to load, as the four vampires that Jim has with him are demonstrating, and the job is obviously made doubly hard when a huge black wolf is rising from the semi-darkness to bear down upon you. Jim himself is now standing stock still, staring at is masters ashes with a look of burning rage on his face. He doesn't turn aside from us, but draws his sword and stands firm as we come upon him, ready to strike. I expect the wolf to take him, but instead it simply barges past him, sending him sprawling onto his back.

Suddenly, I can smell its reason for ignoring Jim. More silver, I think. The crossbow bolts are silver. Of course, it intends to eliminate the biggest threat. The other vampires are retreating while still loading their weapons. One manages it before the others and attempts to aim it at us. He is the first to die. Of those left, two draw swords, but one drops his bow and turn to flee, only to run straight into the jaws of another wolf that had been stalking its way up the corridor outside. She tackles him easily while we turn to deal with the others. The first goes down with little effort but the next dodges us, swiping at us wildly with his sword. We give him a chance to regain his balance, and he slashes at us again, missing us by miles. The momentum drags his arm around, exposing him to the viscous rake of our claws, and we open him up from throat to groin. He goes down, and as we move in to finish him off we watch Jim closely. His fiery anger is still with him, and he takes a fighting stance again, but holds back, waiting to see what we will do. We stand glaring at him with our head lowered, our hackles up and our teeth bared, all the while growling low in our throat. Blood drips from our muzzle to pool around our feet. I want nothing more than to tear him limb from limb right now, after all that Charlie and I have suffered because of him, but this particular thought reminds me of a promise that I made myself a week or so ago; that I would make him suffer as much pain as I can before I let him die. I realize that with the help of the wolf I can also make him experience just as much fear, if only it can be convinced to let him run. Its excitement picks up again, sensing a hunt, and I have my answer even before I ask the question.

"Come on," Jim mutters under his breath, moving forward slightly. He knows that he has nothing else to lose now, and it is making him reckless. He lunges at us and we knock his sword aside lightly, like swatting a fly. Our nonchalance annoys him, and he lunges again, this time putting more control and force into the blow. We back away from him, and he misses us by a bare inch. He pretends to overbalance as we circle him, an obvious feint, and then he turns, slicing the sword upwards as he does so. His hand, with some force, meets the front leg that we hold up to block him, and his sword goes flying up over our shoulder, to land with a metallic clang somewhere in the shadows. He doesn't waste time looking shocked. Instead he snarls, "Bastard," and, with fangs at the ready, throws himself onto our back. I can feel him trying to bite us, but thanks to the thick scruff on the back of our neck, he only manages to get a mouthful of fur before we throw him off. He goes sprawling again, and now it is our turn to feint. We lunge, making a move as if we mean to bite his leg, and he scrambles backwards out of reach. Once he feels that it is safe to do so, he rises, and without a backwards glance, he sprints through the doorway and out into the corridor beyond.

We pace for a few moments, letting him get a head start, before we let ourselves go after him. Once out in the hallway, we are joined by the brindle she-wolf who had taken down Jim's guard. We growl at her, not to send her away but to make it clear that she is to stay back. She obeys willingly, and follows us at a distance. We track Jim's scent through a maze of mercifully empty passageways, noticing that most of the doors to the rooms on either side of us have been broken down. The floor is powdered with scattered ash and littered with empty clothes. We come across three naked bodies; werewolves' slain and returned to human form after death, and the she-wolf whines, slowing down. I press on, not caring, like her, who they were.

It's dark up here; all of the lamps and torches have been extinguished, although, with our night vision, this causes us no problems. As we round a corner we see Jim, silhouetted at the head of a spiral stair by the light from below. The she-wolf, having caught us up quickly, growls when she sees him, and he looks behind him just as he starts to descend. The distraction causes him to lose his footing on the uneven steps, and he tumbles head over heels all the way to the next landing. As we near the bottom of the stair we see him trying awkwardly to use the right angle made by two joining walls to rise. The other wolf leaps over us to land in front of him, stopping him from retreating either down the next stair or along the corridor here. He falls back, startled, but then, seeing a small window of opportunity, he seizes from the ground at his feet the head of a broken pike, and launches it at her with a cry somewhere between terror and defiance. She ducks it, as he knew she would, and he darts past her, down into the gloom of the next stair. She roars her fury at being denied, and is so wild that we have to actually give her a nip this time to make it clear to her that she is to stay behind us.

Jim makes it to the next landing, and, hearing more wolves ascending the lower stair, decides to take the corridor this time. We follow after him; close enough to snap at his heels, and smell the fear which flows out behind him like a cloak. Soon the sound of fighting reaches us, and that feeling of pack increases. Jim leads us round another corner, and the corridor opens out abruptly into another vaulted room, in which a bloody battle ensues. Jim enters this killing ground without slowing, and goes barreling straight into another vampire, sending them both off in different directions; Jim into the wall and the other into the path of my companion, who is more than happy to dispatch him. I force the wolf to wait, and watch with more than a little satisfaction as Jim takes in the carnage surrounding us.

"What have you brought us to?" he whispers, turning his wide eyes to us, and I fully expect him to launch himself on us again, such is the anger in them. We lash out at him, gouging four bloody slashes in his upper arm, and the anger is immediately smothered with fear and pain.

He runs from us, around the worst of the fighting and away from the wolves that are blocking what I had assumed was the only escape route. He reaches a scarred door and shoulders it open, but we are too close behind him for him to be able to close it. He flees through the room beyond, pulling things over as he goes, hoping to slow our progress. There is another door at the other side of the room, ripped from its hinges now, and he throws himself through the resulting hole. The beast, growing tired now of this game of cat and mouse, snaps at him before I can stop it and Jim falls against a balcony railing, his leg bleeding profusely. Somehow, this place strikes me as familiar, and I quickly realize why; I'm now standing in exactly the same position as I had been when, in a dream, I had first laid eyes on Cassie. Having remembered this I expect the feeling of déjà vu to fade, but instead it intensifies. The she-wolf slinks from the doorway to take up position beside me, giving Jim no room for escape, and I have no more excuses for denying myself the pleasure of killing him. Knowing this, Jim decides that he would rather face a long drop than our teeth and claws, and he pulls himself over the railing to fall, screaming, all the way to the arena floor.

And if it wasn't for Charlie, he may have survived.

I hadn't been lying when I had told Ray that Charlie would be isolated. In the last few weeks Charlie had explained to me in greater detail his imprisonment here all those years ago. He told me that, at first, they had spent time experimenting on him, taking his blood and eventually turning him into the monster I see below me. After that, they had made him a gladiator of sorts, pitting the strongest and most violent of his kind against him in the arena for sport. He told me that had never been beaten. Thus I surmised that when he was back in their power, the first thing that they would do at the full moon was to turn him back into what he once was, and set their worst against him yet again. I gaze over the balcony, just like I had in my dream, and see the limbs of his latest adversaries spread across the bloodied floor.

I watch, feeling strangely detached, as Jim becomes dust beneath Charlie's worrying jaws. Movement causes us both to look towards the gate to the arena. There are two vampires there, arguing about something, and although I cannot hear them, their body language is clear. One goes towards the gate with a set of keys, and the other pulls at his shoulder, urging him to come away. The first shrugs the second off roughly and makes an imploring gesture. Whatever he is doing must seem important to him, for he turns his back on his companion and continues on as he had planned, regardless of the others angry, fearful shouts. Charlie lumbers over there, curious now, but I can see exactly what the vampire means to do. He's going to let him out, I think in panic, and suddenly I can see it as if is happening right in front of my eyes; Charlie freed, roaming the castle, killing vampire and werewolf alike as he goes. I see the pack catching wind of it, and, now that the majority of the vampire threat has been tackled, forming up to hunt him down and kill him.

I back away from the railing, not knowing what I mean to do. I only know that my fear is such that it immediately overrides the beasts own emotions, making it so that I am now in almost complete control of my own body again. The she-wolf growls a warning from beside me, and I turn, trying to dodge the bolt before I even hear the twang of the crossbow string. Luckily, it does nothing more than graze me, sending a line of fire down my right flank. I let the she-wolf hake him down and then head off in what I hope is the direction of the arena entrance, growling an order to the her as I go: Follow me. She obeys without question. I know that what I am about to do is incredibly foolish, but what choice have I? After everything that I have already risked to save Charlie's life, I can no more leave him to this fate than I can cut out my own heart. I know that I stand no chance of stopping him or the pack, but I press on regardless, feeling surprisingly fearless now that the decision is made.

Once away from the balconied area of the castle, I find it very easy to lose my way in the twisting, confusing passageways. I had tried to memorize Charlie's maps, but now that I am here, these corridors are far more confusing than I would have believed. Some passageways have been blocked off, some open out to areas not marked on the maps, and to reach others we have to travel through cluttered rooms, disturbing thick layers of dust as we go. We backtrack a few times and correct ourselves, taking corridors that I think must head in the right direction, only to confuse things even more. The she-wolf is no help; I should imagine that she has even less idea of the castles layout than I do. I doubt that they let the prisoners do much exploring. The second I think this last thought her head goes up, ears pricked forward, and I know that she had remembered something of this particular corridor. I give her permission to lead the way, which she does, and I realize that we must be somewhere close, for I remember some of this corridor too. They had lead me through here on the way to Mertice's chamber. Suddenly we hear a noise up ahead. There is growling, snarling, and something else which feels like Charlie's "pull", only stronger, harder to resist, and tied in with that feeling of pack. All of this is then coupled with a howl, a call to arms as it were. I do manage to resist it, but only because my emotions are still high enough to have control of the beast. I expect the she-wolf to answer it, but she surprises me by sidling closer, as if she thinks that, somehow, I can shield her from her own nature. While I watch her struggle, I try to work out why she has chosen to help me, but I have no answer. She must know how much danger she is in, and why choose this path for a stranger? Soon though the moment seems to pass for her, and when she has control of herself again, we move on.

Round the next corner we find the source of the commotion. A pair of double doors stand open at the end of this short hall way. The room beyond looks to be a chapel of sorts, and I can see that the curved ceiling is painted with what I assume are religious images. Inside, a mass of wolves is gathered, all facing towards the right corner of the room, where they have Charlie trapped. I can sense their fear, and share it, for I can now feel the threat that emanates from him in a way that I couldn't before. If I didn't have control of this body, it would have me cowering with my tail between my legs. I know that this is what had kept them from striking out at him so far, but how long can it last? As it is, my fear for him is greater than my fear of him - a high emotion indeed - and my only thought as I push my way through the crowding wolves towards him is for Charlie; how has he come to be caught in here like this?

Thinking me one of their own, the others let me pass without so much as glancing in my direction, and I work my way to the front of the gathering with no trouble. The wolves here press forward slowly, driven on by those behind, but it seems that everyone is reluctant to be the first to attempt an attack, even though Charlie is injured. A particularly brave wolf – or stupid, depending on your view – darts forward, and as Charlie turns to meet her I see three silver bolts protruding from his hind quarters. Suddenly his back legs seem to lose their strength and he sags into a sitting position. The opportunistic wolf comes forward again, this time going for the throat. No longer able to just stand and watch, I move forward to intercept her, sinking my teeth into her own neck before she can get more than a foot towards him. I feel her surprise as her life drains away. This sentiment is shared by the pack, along with a little confusion, and quickly their one mind is turned towards me. A silent whisper spreads through the ranks. Traitor, they think. I turn to face the thirty or so that stand before me now, swallowing my terror as I move to shield Charlie from them. They move in slowly, less wary of him now, for they, like me, can feel the silver sapping at his strength, and know that shortly he will be incapable of protecting himself. I bare my teeth and watch them carefully, waiting to see who will strike first. One off to my left makes a move, and the she-wolf, still at my side, takes him for me. They attack quickly after that. I do what I can to defend myself, trying to hold them back at arm's length, but this feat is nearly impossible. I am scratched and bitten more times than I can count, and all the while I desperately try to maintain my place as Charlie's shield. Then I hear Ray above the cacophony as he tries to regain order of the pack, if such a thing is even possible.

Salvation. The word echoes through my mind, but I know that it has come too late for me. The beast, frightened for its own life now and thinking only of self preservation leaps forward in my mind again to take charge. I am pushed back so roughly that I lose consciousness, and I wonder as the darkness engulfs me how I could have come so far only to lose at the last moment.

Bleh. Due to lack of dialogue, this chapter seems really blocky, like a really uninteresting text book! This was the moment when I realised that writing in the first person may have been a mistake, and writing a werewolf transformation from the persons point of view was nearly impossible, but here it is, finally.

Anyway, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading this far, and also to let you know that there'll be only two more chapters after this. Probably be a while before the next upload.

Thanks again. Xx