We rode north, on her suggestion. She was quiet on the way. The night wasn't too cold for September, and we made the the trip without any problem. We found a motel near the Canadian border.

She was quiet. I told her to take a shower, try to relax. I opened the bottle of Beam I had in my bike's saddlebag. I lit a stogie, and took a shot. I checked my arm. A slight scar where hours earlier the muscle was exposed. I flexed it. Another hour the scar would be gone.

I pulled the communicater out of my pocket. It was round, with a bright red 'X'. All I do was key in the code, and my friends would come running. I held it, and smoked my stogie and drank another shot and stood there. I heard the water shut off in the bathroom. I put the comm away.

She came out, steam whooshing behind her, with her clothes on and drying her hair. I threw her the clothes I had in the saddlebag. "Here. There's a couple o' t-shirts in there. No pants, though."

She nodded and walked back in the bathroom. I flicked my ashes in the ashtray and poured Julia a shot. She walked back out of the bathroom and and tried a weak smile. "Your turn."

I nodded, and handed her a shot. She smiled and took it, knocking it back fast and hard. She sat down on the bed and pulled out her cigarettes and grabbed the ashtray. She saw the look on my face. "Take a shower. When you come out, I'll tell you everything."

The shower felt good. I tried to get the smell of the beast off me, but it was inside me. The water rushed over me, the steam filled the room and I wanted to run, I wanted to burst out of the prison and hit the forest and let the animal run free..

The water turned cold. I went to turn the faucet off and I noticed that my claws were unsheathed. I retracted them and stepped out of the shower and looked in the mirror. The animal wanted to run, his eyes stared back at me, full of malice and rage. I stared him down.

I walked out of the bathroom and sat down on the bed next to Julia. She was propped up, smoking.
She had an ashtray in front of her, and she took another drink and told me her story.

Julia was an All-American girl. Cheerleader in high school, high SAT's, ready to start her life. She had a father that loved her more than anything, and she loved him back.

Her mother died in childbirth. Julia's father told her all about her mother, and she fell in love with her instantly. She held her mother close to her heart, and missed her everyday. Through her father, Julia was close to her.

Dad was a science teacher in the high school. The kinda guy everyone liked, and the kinda guy that you could count on. He was a 'cool' dad; Julia's friends loved to come over and hang out, never feeling out of place, never feeling as if they were intruding.

But Julia knew her father was sad and lonely. Julia told him it was okay, Mom would want him to be happy. Dad would smile in that way of his, and say, "I am happy, honey. I get to see my little girl grow into a beautiful woman. And I know I'm doing the right thing." Julia could still sense something was wrong.

A month after graduation. Julia was accepted to NYU, Dad was estatic. But his mood was still the same, no matter how much he tried to hide it. Night. Julia heard sounds coming from her father's room. Was he having a nightmare? Was he dreaming of Mom? She padded her way down the hall to his room and peeked in.

She screamed.

Dad was changing in his sleep. He became a wolf; his face elongated, hair sprouting all over his body, like in that movie An American Werewolf in London. He heard her scream and woke up, changing back to a non-wolf father. He looked and her and burst into tears.

He mumbled, "I'm sorry," over and over. Julia stood there, tears running down her face. She watched the man that was her world suffering in pain. She walked over to him and sat down on the bed, and held him tight. They both cried the pain out.

He told her he was a mutant. He told her he had been able to change himself into a wolf-like creature since he was fifteen, and that he had kept it secret. He knew how bad mutants had it. He was lucky; he could pass for human.

He told her he was scared that he was becoming more animal than man. The instincts and the feelings he had were strange and arousing at the same time. Every so often he would go out late at night, change and run. He would let the animal take over and run it out, and he would be fine for a few months.

He had horrible guilt over Julia's mother. He told her, between wracking sobs, that he was responsible for her mother dying in childbirth, that the difficult labor that killed her had to be because he was mutant and she wasn't. Julia held him and told him, "No." That night was long and difficult and they both became closer than ever.

Julia prepared to go to college. She started studying genetics on her own time, and in particular what make a mutant. She saw several cases similar to her father's. His DNA was confused, mixed with a strand that is predominated in the canis lupus family. It was like the scientific form of lycanthropy. She knew Dad was finding it harder and harder to supress it, and worried for him. She went off to college, worried about him, determined to help him.

Two years passed. Dad was getting worse. He closed himself off from his friends, and seemed to only be going through the motions at work. He told her he was going out almost every night, roaming the woods, searching for prey. She was worried. Then he was gone.

She was home in a flash. He was gone. Did he disappear into the wolf? A call from a stranger told her. He was in a facility in Canada called "Weapon M." The caller was anonomyous. The caller told her to hurry, or the father she knew would be gone.

She hurried. She found out all she could about the facility. She had computer hackers at NYU help her, and they were able to supply her with some fake IDs, good enough to get her in the front door. After that, they told her, she was on her own.

The trip was long. She was nervous of being caught, scared she would be too late. The facility looked like a fortress. Gray and cold, as if it was out of out of a old horror picture. She walked in with her forged credentials. No one batted an eye. There were so many people there, almost like a small city.

Julia found the files she needed. She found what they were doing to her father and she cried. Tears blurring her vision, she read how they started to splice his DNA with other animal and lizard types, in an attempt to breed a monster, a soldier that could be controlled with pain and suffering.

Julia found out where he was. She made her way into the lab, and saw him in a cage. He was naked, and he was bruised and he was alone. He was sobbing softly in the corner, and suddenly he stopped. He turned his head up and she knew he was blind. He groped for a handheld and stood up. "Julia?" His voice was a rasp, and Julia burst into tears.

"Julia, leave. Please. Go now! Please." His voice cracked and he leaned against the bars of his cell. She walked up to him and and held his hand. She caressed his face and sobbed.

"You are my whole world," she said. He smiled and the tears running down his face weren't from pain.

Then the lab doors opened and soldiers burst in. A little man in a white coat led them. He reminded Julia of Peter Lorre from The Maltese Falcon.

The soldiers pulled her away from the cage. Doctor Psycho walked up to her and smiled. "The daughter. We knew you would come. Are you a mutant as well? Well, we can find out soon enough." He motioned for the soldiers to take her away and Julia heard an awful scream of animal rage.

It was her father.

He screamed and howled and repeated her name, over and over. His body contorted and the soldiers looked in horror as he grew,and grew, and became a monster...

Minutes later, Julia was covered in blood that was not her own, running away from the lab, out of the room, running away from the thing that used to be her father.

And she had been running ever since.

Half a bottle and several cigarettes later, her story was done. I stood up and pulled the comm out of my pocket. All I had to do was enter a code and my friends would come running.

She was crying and I sat down next to her and held her. She pulled away and wiped the tears from her eyes. She reached into her bag and pulled out a file.

"This is the file I took from that goddam place. Look at it, and tell me you can let it stand one day longer."

I flipped through the pages. A name struck me as familiar. A little more reading and I knew why. The director was a low-level tech in the 'Weapon X' program. I sighed, and sat down on the bed. All I had to do was enter a code and my friends would come running...

I put the comm away and looked at her. "I'll help you. I have a problem with people experimenting on mutants, since I am one and all."

Julia nodded her head. "I know. They did things to you, didn't they? Those..knives in your hands." She reached out and held my hand, running her fingers over the back where my claws extended.

"Yeah," I replied softly. "They did."

I held her close and kissed her softly on her forehead. She leaned up and kissed me on the lips. We fell to the bed, our animal passions taking over. Sex is like death; it goes on forever, it ends too quickly. We tried to chase our demons away with ourselves, rawness of our humanity laid bare and open. The scent of her sweat drove me harder, she screamed and dug her nails in my back, drawing blood.

We laid in the dark, smoking silently. Her arms were warm and comforting, and I never wanted to leave that place we visited together, that common ground we suddenly had. She sensed I was brooding and kissed me and told me she was glad she was there to protect her.

I knew then I would have to kill her father.