"Shadow! Shadow, no!" Chance cried out, lunging to the end of his chain.
Sassy's paw caught in his collar and she was dragged along with him. Startled out of her wits, the cat yowled and kicked out with her back feet. The effect of this was not only to free her, but to mostly undo the buckle of the collar. When Chance backed up to lunge again, the rest came undone and the collar fell to the dusty ground.
With a roar of unbridled rage, Chance bolted forward and heaved his massive bulk against the back door. It held, even against him. Remembering the broken window, he turned to go around, but never made it off the porch. The door cracked, then broke behind him, wood splinters flying outward. Leaping sideways, Chance landed on the ground several feet away, clear of the falling remains of the door. Trembling with shock, he looked past the doorway, into the house itself.
There, standing strangely beyond the threshold, looking alien and out of place, was the Evening Wolf. Yellow eyes glittering with rage, misshapen jaws parted to reveal a blood red mouth and uneven set of wicked looking teeth. It had torn Tracy's clothing, revealing gray skin and broad muscular shoulders, unnaturally long forearms and a deep chest.
A roar burst forth from the monster's mouth, deafening Chance and seeming to blow away the very air, flattening out plants and trees. The windows, which had before rattled, now shattered, as though the glass itself was trying to escape the monster, as if even the nonliving feared it. For a moment, Chance couldn't breathe. He lowered his body, shaking in the presence of the beast. The smell, both intoxicating and terrifying, drove virtually all thoughts from his mind. Those eyes... he couldn't even meet the ferocious gaze of the monster on his doorstep. But he didn't run. The one thing he could not do was run.
When the Evening Wolf's voice died away, Chance forced himself to stand up straight and walk stiff legged towards the creature, head down and tail up. This thing did not belong here. This was his home! His family was in there! This creature wasn't welcome. As the family dog, it fell to him to drive it away, or to kill it if he had to.
The Evening Wolf stepped out of the house, halting at the shadow on the porch, refusing to step into the pale sunlight. Or maybe it just didn't want to set foot outside of the house it was trying to claim as its own. Chance didn't care one way or the other.
He ran at his enemy in utter silence, leaping at the last, springing onto the porch, and then up towards the eight foot monster's face. It threw out its arms to block him, but he drove its defenses down with his front paws as he went for it. His teeth met just short of his mark, cutting flesh and fur, but not finding a hold. He fell, but kicked out with his back feet, hitting against the monster, thereby propelling himself beyond its range. Even as he did, he felt those sickle claws rake down his back and struggled to hold a yelp of pain inside, barely succeeding. He twisted, and landed on his feet facing the monster. Again the beast moved to the edge of the shadows, but came no farther, growling as though it were chained.
"What's the matter!? What are you so afraid of? It's just sunlight! Get out here, you coward!" Chance taunted, barking loudly.
"I... don't... have to..." the creature hissed in a gravelly voice, "I... have... nothing... to protect."
It turned as if to go back in the house. Chance knew he had no choice but to fight it on its own terms. The beast was right. It was already inside, keeping Chance out. Chance was the only one who really had something at stake here. And so he ran at the beast again.
Faster than a heartbeat, it rounded on him, dropping to all fours. As he leaped for it, a clawed hand swiped at him, knocking him aside as if he weighed no more than a feather. The force knocked him away and he went rolling several feet. He was as good as dead in that moment. But he had once again cleared the house. The beast did not follow him into the light.
Lying on his side, panting heavily, Chance struggled to think. What would Shadow do now? Chance clearly wasn't winning this way. The Evening Wolf had the position of power. It had the strength, the speed, everything. Probably even the brains. Thinking had never been Chance's strong suit.
Gritting his teeth, the dog bravely staggered to his feet, oblivious of the blood pooling beneath him as he swayed, trying to clear his blurring vision. Drawing his lips back once more, the dog snarled and prepared to wage another assault. It was his only option.
"Chance, it's the sun!" Sassy exclaimed from her position near the dog house, "Shadow said it gets its strength from the moon. The moon isn't up yet, Chance! The sun will weaken it."
Chance halted in his advance, his mind working. How could he get the Evening Wolf off the porch and into the light? He had only one idea. It was a stupid one, he was sure. But it was all he had. He ran at the Evening Wolf, but this time he went in low. The creature expected him to leap as he had before and swiped high, missing entirely as the dog latched onto the monster's ankle and bit deep.
Planting his feet, using the porch steps for leverage, the powerful dog heaved backward with all his considerable strength. Snarling in fury, the Evening Wolf slashed at him. The claws cut deep through Chance's hide, but he didn't let go. True to bulldog form, he'd found his hold, and he wasn't letting go. The claws slashed again and again. Blood splashed to the left and right, spattering on the wooden railing and steps, sinking into the dry ground. And still the dog held his grip, pulling with all his might. Inch by agonizing inch, the dog dragged his adversary towards the light.
But it wasn't enough. Blood loss was fast weakening him, and the Evening Wolf, now understanding his plan, was putting its own strength into holding its ground. It had always been the stronger of the two. It held its position, and continued to strike the helpless dog before it.
An angry yowl was the only warning as Sassy flung herself bodily from the porch railing and onto the creature's elongated snout. Needle sharp claws dug into the sensitive skin about the monster's nose and eyes, scratching down the soft lips and gums as the cat's teeth bit into a nerve cluster right above the beast's left eye. Blinded, confused and raging, the beast turned its attention to the vicious fur ball on its face. It reeled back, shifting its weight. Chance heaved backward, once again making inch by inch progress towards his goal.
Sassy dodged the first slash, slithering up higher on the beast's face. But then the beast raked its claws all the way down its own face, catching the cat on the way down. The wounded Himalayan let out a wailing scream. The scream of a cat is one of the worst sounds in the world, and Sassy's was no exception. The beast had her in its grotesque hand, but instead of crushing her, it threw her as hard as it could to get the sound away from its hypersensitive ears.
Then it turned its attention to Chance once more. But before it could strike out at him again, something crashed heavily into the upper part of its back. Unbalanced, it pitched forward, rolling past Chance and into the sunlight. It shrieked, its body cracking, crunching, shrinking into itself, revealing the naked woman beneath the beast.
By the time Shadow leaped onto her from the porch, he was met by the terrified eyes of a human woman. But he didn't hesitate. Even as she was now helpless, Shadow knew it wouldn't last. In mere seconds, the moon would rise, and she would be as strong outside as she had been inside.
Powerful jaws closed around the white throat, cutting through skin, jugular, windpipe... and then tearing them from the woman's neck and casting them aside. Shadow stood over her, staring down at his enemy, waiting for the life to drain out of those all-too-human eyes.
A scent on the wind made him look up, towards the porch. Chance lay there on the steps, broken and bloodied. Beyond the porch, Sassy lay in the dirt, her fragile body seemingly ripped wide open, blood matting her beautiful coat. But it was not their blood which drew Shadow's attention. It was the scent... that hated scent. With dawning horror, Shadow realized what he should have known all along.
The Evening Wolf wasn't alone.
It had a mate.
"Holy Hell Hounds," Chance yelped, proving he was still alive by wiggling himself backwards down the stairs, either too afraid or too weak to get to his feet, "There's two of them!"
The second Evening Wolf stepped through the doorway and onto the broken door. Then it dropped to all fours to show the very muscles of its back crawling about and reforming themselves into something... other. The Wolf's very bones cracked audibly, breaking and knitting themselves into something new. From the human skin there burst ragged clumps of coarse white hair. The nose and mouth of the Wolf became as one, lengthening until the term Wolf seemed all but entirely accurate.
The creature threw back its head and howled. The low, terrible sound shook the house to its foundations. Glasses in the cupboards danced, rattled and broke against one another. The computer screen in the study cracked down the center, then exploded. The very sound was painful to the animals, who could not hold back cries, feeling as though their eardrums would burst. It was the sound of fury, and of loss. The sound was meant to evoke both the sensation and emotion of pain in any who heard it. For it was the cry of a Wolf who had lost its mate, its lifelong companion.
Even the children upstairs, having no idea what was going on outside, could hear and understand the woebegone ululation.
"It's me you want!" Shadow barked when the howl started to die away, "I'm the one who took her from you! So come and get me!"
The lone Evening Wolf hesitated, casting a wary eye towards the sky. But the moon had risen, even if the human eye couldn't see it in the middle of the day. And the Wolf stepped from the shadows without incident. Even as it did, Shadow was backing away, keeping his eyes on the enemy and thoughts on his objective. It had taken all they had to bring down just one Wolf. And, for this Wolf, the fight was personal. It was even stronger, and more animal than its mate had been. The moon was up now.
The Evening Wolf stepped almost regally from the porch, as the King of Hell might deign to step from his throne. This otherworldly beast seemed to have walked right out of fantasy into reality, as one might walk across a room. Breaking down the barriers of the natural order, defying the very laws of nature. Born of tragedy, instilled with the very essence of evil. The embodiment of malice.
At the property line, Shadow turned and fled into the woods, leaving a clear blood trail behind him. With an infuriated roar, the grief-stricken Evening Wolf tore after him, bounding over the body of its dead mate without even seeming to notice that she was there.
"Shadow, don't! You can't outrun it It'll kill you! Shadow... come back..."
Upstairs, Peter had found animal control in the phone book and reported what was going on. To his surprise, they kept him on the line, and asked a bunch of questions that didn't seem very relevant. They'd asked Shadow's breed, and his age, and if the dog had ever shown aggressive tendencies before. Peter answered all of that, and then they asked whether or not the person attacked lived with them.
"No, but Aunt Tracy's been here before. Shadow loves her, and Uncle Jim too. Shadow likes everyone. Or... at least... at least he did," Peter bit his lip to keep from crying.
"It's alright, Peter. We're sending someone over to help you," the feminine voice, she'd called herself Vicki, assured him gently.
"Are you... gonna have to put him down?" Peter asked shakily.
"We won't know that until someone sees him. For now just stay where you are. Don't move, okay? I have a few more questions for you. Do you have any other animals?"
"Y-yes... Chance, our other dog... and... and Sassy, she's Himalayan."
"Have the other animals been acting strange?"
"No... just Shadow, I think. Have Chance or Sassy being acting strange?"
"Chance won't play," Jamie volunteered.
"I keep finding Sassy on the bookshelves," Hope replied, "And she won't come down, except when I feed her or at night."
"I guess they have," Peter told Vicki slowly, "Do you think they're afraid of Shadow too?"
"Maybe. Has Shadow been aggressive towards your other pets recently?"
"He and Chance had a fight last night," Peter said.
"Did you see it? Do you know what happened? Were they fighting over a toy or food or... anything like that?"
"No. I mean, I don't think so. I didn't see it. We actually thought it was Chance who started it, he's the younger of the two. But then Shadow went after Aunt Tracy... and... and... well..."
"You're doing fine, Peter. This information is very important. Okay? What kind of dog is Chance?"
"He's... I don't know... some kind of Bulldog, I think. Jamie, do you remember?"
"Umm... the pound said he was a Pit Bull, but Dad says he doesn't look like one," Jamie replied.
"I dunno... a Pit type dog, I guess."
"Around how big? Bigger than Shadow?"
"Yes. He's taller, and heavier. And much younger."
"I see. Were either of the animals hurt in the fight?"
"Yeah. Shadow took the worst of it, but I don't think he was hurt that bad. We were gonna take him to the vet... tomorrow."
"So you're saying an elderly golden retriever picked a fight with a young bulldog, and wasn't badly injured by the end of it?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Peter said, "I know it sounds strange, but Chance isn't really much of a fighter. He's pretty much harmless... then again... I though Shadow was too."
"Okay. Now, Peter, this may sound very strange. But... has your Aunt been acting... odd lately?"
"We've gotta go after him," Chance whimpered.
He had crawled over to where Sassy lay, and was nosing her and gently licking her fur, trying to rouse the prone and seemingly lifeless feline.
"Sassy, come on. We've gotta go help Shadow. Sassy, please wake up. You've gotta get up."
But the cat didn't move. She didn't even seem to be breathing. Her whole body smelled of blood, and there were four slashes across her back and sides from where the Wolf had grabbed her. Except for the wind blowing her fur, there was no sign of movement. None at all.
"Sassy, please! I can't do this without you. Sassy... wake up."
So consumed with Sassy was he that Chance didn't even notice as, behind him, Tracy's body was slowly shifting, turning gray, forming lethargically back into the creature.
The Evening Wolf was being reborn under the moon.