Chapter 10

Before Bijou had left the room, she picked up one of Maxwell's books to look through it. Finding a page that looked useful, she read it carefully, then tore it out to bring with her upstairs. While she was sneaking out of the room, though, she didn't notice it slip from her hand onto the floor of the room.

She tiptoed all the way to the staircase. She looked up into the darkness, and now regretted leaving the safety of the other hams. Swallowing hard, she began up the stairs.

It was creepy being alone at that time of night, especially when the thought kept coming to her mind that the murderous beast was out to get her. Then, Bijou noticed something lying on the ground, shoved into a corner, that appeared strange. She approached it, picked it up, and as she was holding it, came to realize that it was a bone. She dropped it, trying hard to hold in her scream.

"That must have been what Boss was talking about . . . with Snoozer," Bijou thought to herself.

The hall seemed to last forever. Each room she passed made her think of one of her deceased friends . . . the cold, dark feeling of the empty space that should be taken up. A tear trickled down her face, but she wiped it away, knowing that the past could not be changed and she would not complete her cause of coming upstairs if she stopped to mourn.

Finally, she reached the storage room. There were scratch marks all over the door frame, and from the size of them she could tell that they were not the wolf's but of one of the ham-hams. She stepped into the room, and began to look around for the needle.

She looked everywhere that there was sufficient light for her to see. The needle was nowhere to be found. Giving up in that particular spot, she ventured into the darker portion of the room.

A strange smell surrounded her. She sniffed the air, trying to figure out what it was. It wasn't a bad scent, just something she had never smelled before. The further she went, the stronger it got.

Suddenly, she tripped over something. It was about the size of herself, though slightly bigger. She was lying on her side, looking at the object, with her lower body resting on part of it. The strange smell seemed to be coming from it.

She looked up her leg, and noticed a thick, dark liquid seeping from the object she was laying on. Then, she turned her eyes back, and to her horror, made out a face. The dark circles around the eyes showed that it could only be one person . . . Panda. His mouth was gaping open, and his face still expressed the look of being taken by surprise.

She looked over at the rest of him, and . . . there wasn't anything there. Her legs had been lying on Panda's own entrails the entire time. The werewolf had disemboweled him.

Bijou scrambled to her feet, shrieking insanely. She sprinted towards the door, and was almost out when something stopped her in her tracks. Standing in the doorway, was the werewolf. Bijou was so startled she lost her footing and fell on her back. The wolf took a couple steps forward, then grabbed her by the neck and held her up to the light.

"D-d-don't . . . k-kill . . . m-m-meee . . .," she sputtered out. The wolf narrowed its eyes at her and stared blankly.

" . . .p-p-please . . .," she begged. Then, to her surprise, it set her back on the ground. The werewolf looked down at her, and Bijou stared back, wondering why it spared her. She turned away to leave, but her breath seized up as something sharp struck her side. Looking down, she realized that the wolf had sank its teeth deep into her, and wasn't about to let go.

The pain was too intense for her even to scream as the wolf's fangs dug deeper into her. The same thick liquid that she saw surrounding Panda appeared to be coming out of herself now, but she didn't seem to care, because the world around her was turning black and there was no escaping it.

X X X X X X X X X X

Sandy was peering nervously around the room. Maxwell saw her, and was curious about what was spooking her.

"What's wrong, Sandy?" he asked.

She looked over at him. "Nothing . . . I mean, uh-"

"Yeah?"

"I don't see Bijou anywhere."

Shocked, Boss quickly rose to his feet. "What do you mean you don't see her?"

"I don't think she's here-"

"SHE LEFT?" he yelled out angrily.

Sandy started to shake a bit, because Boss was standing right over her and his expression was intimidating. "I . . . think she might have."

Boss turned away and began to say things under his breath. "Oh, Bijou! Why'd you go? You'd have been so much safer if you had just stayed . . ."

Stan turned toward Sandy. "Don't feel bad, sis. It ain't your fault."

"I'm so sorry. I didn't notice-"

Oxnard butted in. "She might be in real trouble right now, maybe even hurt."

Boss, on the other hand, was still stampeding all over the room. "And she might also be DEAD!" And with that, he raised up his hand as if to hit Stan. Maxwell quickly ran over and grabbed hold of Boss' arm to stop him.

"Get a hold of yourself, Boss!" Stan said, holding his arms above his face.

"How could you not see her walk out the door? Honestly, a white hamster would stick out like a sore thumb in this dark room!"

"Geez! I'm like, sorry Boss, I just thought that maybe you should have spotted her, too-"

"Guys! Stop fighting!" Hamtaro yelled. "Besides, it isn't Sandy's fault. We all should have been paying attention to each other. What in the world could she have left for?"

"Suicide attempt . . .," Stan mumbled.

"Bijou wouldn't do that. She must have gone up for a good reason, or she wouldn't have gone." Maxwell said. Hands on his forehead, he sat down, thinking furiously about why Bijou would have gone out on her own.

Oxnard was looking around the room when he saw a slightly crumpled piece of paper lying on the ground. "Hey, what is this doing on the floor?"

Maxwell stood up and picked it up to examine it. "Hey, this looks like a page from one of my books!" After looking through it carefully, he noticed the title at the top of the page. It read, "WEREWOLVES".

"Oh my gosh! This is what I've been looking for the whole time. But why is it out of my book?" He read through the article, and found something else. "This says that the only way to kill a werewolf is with silver . . ."

Suddenly, it came to him that Bijou must have read the page, and knowing that the pin upstairs was made of silver, she must have gone up to get it for them. "No!" he cried, dropping the ripped page. "If only she had told us! We could have helped!"

"What are you talking about, Max?" Boss questioned.

"The pin upstairs that we went to get . . . it was made of silver. She must have gone up to get it for us."

Boss took in a deep breath. "The wolf is upstairs though. Oh, god dang it, this is just like her! Doing something without thinking . . ."

"We can only hope she made it out safely," Hamtaro said glumly.

Oxnard gulped. "Uh huh. Maybe she-"

His sentence was cut off short by the sound of heavy footsteps outside the door.