Chapter 2, wherein Angua comes a bit unwound...
The rest of the day passed by in a haze. In fact, despite Vimes' best efforts to present alternatives, it passed in a bar. And then the moon, just shy of full, began to rise, and Angua began to run.
Last night she'd run with a purpose. This time she ran just to get away.
Human thoughts bounced crazily around the wolf brain, too big for even her conscious mind to get a hold of; she just kept hearing fragments, like fire, or flying ship, or end of the world.
That last one kept coming back, again and again.
She came to a stop before a stoop on a half-empty street, threw her head back, and howled.
Carrot -- throwing himself in front of all this --
"Now there's an unsettling sound," someone said nearby. "That's the sort of howl that'll wake the dead."
Angua moaned deep in her throat as an all-too-familiar dog rounded a corner and gave her a long, searching look. "So what's gnawing at you?" Gaspode asked, answering the question for his own part by absently scratching at fleas.
"I can't...."
"Sure you can. You can tell me anything. I'm good with secrets, me."
She glared at him. The mongrel's expression was open and innocent, but she knew him too well to believe it for a second. After a moment he gave it up and tried on a doggy smirk.
"Okay, maybe I'm too talkative for my own good..." He paused, tilted his head inquisitively, and turned serious. "So what is it, really?"
Angua shook her head and then lowered it between her paws, trying to suppress a whine. "It's all too much.... there's --"
Gaspode threw out a wild guess, which unfortunately happened to be right. "Is this about your man? 'Cause if it is...."
"He's gone off in some flying dragon-powered bird-carrying-a-fish thing with a crazy inventor and a 'wizzard' who can't spell to try to stop a horde of old men from returning fire to the gods, and if he doesn't the whole world's going to end...."
The sentence spilled out almost too fast to follow, and ended in the desperate whine Angua had been hoping she wouldn't make. Gaspode stared at her as she fought to calm down. "Okay," he said slowly, "I thought I was good with words and all, but the only part I understood there was the part I didn't want to."
Angua shuddered. "You're not... the only one."
Gaspode settled down next to Angua, trying awkwardly to express comfort. "Well, if you want someone to try to stop the end of -- well, the.... something that big, I can't think of anyone better than Carrot."
She shut her eyes. Some part of her agreed with that, but it was getting overruled by the part that was spinning in frantic circles of terror. Vimes had told her just how Carrot's crew was going to get to the Hub. Somehow, even compared to the gods themselves, that part was what truly scared her, too much for her to verbalize it at all....
Gaspode was shifting tactics now, his voice a little hopeful. "Well, if you need to take your mind off it, y'know, need someone to be around, style of fing, I'm willing to--"
There came the sudden sound of broken glass. Angua raised her head.
Gaspode plunged on. "I think there are extenuating circumstances for end-of-the-world scenarios such as those we have here..."
The air was split with a terrified scream.
Copper instincts took over. Angua leaped forward, instantaneously at a run, the badge glinting at her collar. Gaspode watched her go and heaved a sigh.
"It's the end of the world," he muttered. "And she's still gonna sort it out one person at a time before they come kick everyone off."
The man who'd broken into the flat didn't see anything coming. He was too busy with strips of fabric -- tightening one around the girl's mouth, loosening another somewhere else.
And so the blunt impact from behind caught him completely by surprise.
There was a growl after he fell heavily to the ground, and then he screamed -- it was even shriller than the girl's, because he'd just seen the flash of angry eyes that were far too aware to belong to any ordinary wolf.
He got up to run, and Angua leaped up again with a snarl.
She'd had a good moment to see what was happening before she'd... announced her presence. Only years of fighting werewolf impulses kept her from simply raking him open. As it was, she snapped her fangs a hair's breadth from his nose, and pinned him to the floor with claws she knew were digging into his chest; blood began to ooze beneath her paws, and she didn't care. All her thoughts had distilled into the feral growl rising in her throat.
Then it died in a whine of pain as something jabbed into her right side.
She rolled away to see moonlight glint off a knife in the man's hand, and an almost manic look as he stabbed out again, nearly randomly, at this mad beast who'd interrupted something even more beastly.
Angua twisted away and struck out again, passing through that silvery patch of light that streamed in through the shattered window.
The girl on the floor let out a muffled shriek as the werewolf's silhouette went by.
Angua bit down hard on the man's arm, forcing him to drop the knife. He growled out in pain himself, collapsing to the floor as Angua gnawed harder.
Sometimes she could get away with this, and stop before it went too far. But something ancient was spinning outward in her brain....
The salty taste of blood screamed at her, hitting nerves she'd tried to forget she had, waking more of the animal under the surface. There was a horrible moment when she just wanted to let it out. And then the man, trying to wrench away from her, pulled her out of the patch of moonlight and back into ambiguous shadow. Something still human and lucid in her head said, This isn't how you do it....
Angua reached for every ounce of will she had, let go, and after a terrifying snarl of disgust, she stood up into the light.
The queasy moment of morphic dislocation was just as bad for Angua's audience as it was for her. The man let out small whimpers of terror as she went through the in-between, and then again as that undefinable shape resolved into a woman, trembling with anger.
"You," she ground out, "are pathetic...."
And a fist, more or less human, whipped out to knock him senseless.
He dropped silently to the floor.
Angua spun around, trying to ignore the bleeding gash in her side. The captured girl was resourceful; she'd managed to loosen the bindings around her hands, and had been tugging at the one around her mouth before Angua turned to face her. At that point she stopped, hands at her face, starting to shake again.
Angua bent down and tore it off, more roughly than she'd meant. But the scent of blood in the room was strong, and her control was wavering....
"Arre you hurrrt?" she asked, hearing more rough-edged syllables in the words than should have been there.
"I... I... no...." The girl could barely get the words out.
Something in Angua twisted painfully as she realized how terrified the girl was of her. Another part was reacting in another way entirely to the fear, and was clawing forward for dominance. She tried to take a breath and steady herself.
"You'd better go," she managed. "Find somewhere safe."
The girl stared and then scrambled backwards, her eyes never leaving Angua's wavering form. She got to the doorway and paused there, back flat against the wall, one shaky hand reaching for the knob...
Angua shuddered and growled, "Get ouuutttt...."
The girl pushed the door open and fled into the night.
Angua fell forward into wolf form and slashed her claws down the wall, leaving deep, ragged gashes over a foot long. And then she turned back to the fallen man.
And tried, very hard, just to breathe.
## continued in chapter 3.... ##
