The pup in me quivered, but the burgeoning wolf snarled as I thrashed my head around, trying to get the black nylon hood off my head. The hood smelled from a mixture of creatures’ sweat, and I couldn’t pick out a distinct scent; but I was sure of the other smell: men. There were two of them in the room. One of them reminded me of the woods: balsam and pine. The other man’s scent was waterless: dry earth, yellow pollen and sun.

A punch in the gut knocked me into a concrete wall, and then the hood was yanked off. I didn’t fall. I wasn’t about to look weak, despite my stomach seizing and my lungs gasping for air. I kept my back to the wall, surveying the room. It was dim. A single light bulb muddied the edges of the small, concrete room. A couple of chairs were lined along one wall, and a mirrored window was set in the other.

“You’re a stupid dog,” said the man with the waterless scent. He wore a t-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. A thick black spiral was tattooed on his tan flesh — the mark of the Huntsmen.

“Technically, he’s a werewolf,” said the man with the balsam scent. He sat in a metal chair and had the same thick black spiral tattooed on the white flesh of his wrist. He had a pudgy face and soft eyes but a stout body.

“Political correctness aside,” said the waterless man, “he tried to break into our compound, so why isn’t he dead yet?”

“Enough, Smith,” said the balsam man, and then smiled as he turned to me. “What’s your name?”

“Max,” I said. “Like you don’t know.”

He grinned. “I’m Regent Bondurant. He is Regent Smith.”

I glared at Smith, the waterless man, and allowed a short smile. I had found that a smile was scarier at times than baring teeth or slashing into someone’s flesh. Quiet was scary, too. I opted for the smile and malicious eyes.

“Did you really think you’d get through our security?” asked Smith.

“Had to try,” I said. “You came after me.” I flashed my teeth with a broad smile. “So I came after you.”

Bondurant snickered. “The Society’s headquarters is on flat land, with a three-hundred and sixty degree view of everything, which is to say, nothing. There are no trees, no bushes, no dark corners or shaded outcrops to hide behind, just sand and gravel. At night there’s a quarter-mile circle of flood lights around the encampment, and infrared cameras and sensors. Even if you breached the gate, which is topped in silver razor wire, there are half a dozen warehouses, each with their own unique security.”

“Hell, Bondurant,” said Smith. “Tell the dog all our secrets.”

“Oh, I’m sure he already knows. He’s been stalking us for a while.”

Smith laughed as he tapped his neck. “How’s your head, dog? It should have been a bullet, instead of a dart.”

Bondurant glanced at Smith. “Perhaps you want to leave me to the interrogation.”

“Leave you alone, with him?”

“He’s barely a wolf.” Bondurant stood and smiled. “He’s not going to say anything to you. You’ve hunted down too many wolves and beasts. Max can probably smell their blood on your hands.”

Smith glowered but bowed out of the room after a cold look, which gave me a chill. Bondurant pulled a chair and sat it next to me. “Sit. Please. I apologize for Smith. He’s spent too much of his youth hunting in the desert, and not enough time learning the world is full of gray.” Bondurant smiled. “Tell me Max, what were you going to do if you got inside our gates?”

Bondurant’s voice wasn’t gristly or booming but a soft tenor, which numbed my desire to kill him. I expected all huntsmen to be like Otis Hein — the man who had killed my sister, Shar. Otis had crazy eyes, a piercing taunt, and an eagerness to stick me with a blade.

A year ago I was fresh into the change, an eighteen-year-old wolf excited about my new body. My six-foot frame had become layered in thick muscle; my brown skin had taken on a shine, and for once in my life, my sister, Shar, had been envious of me.

Shar had been sixteen, two years away from the change, when she had asked:  “Did it hurt, changing into a wolf?”

“Yes,” I had said, “but only the first time.”

“Do you crave meat all the time?”

“It’s not a craving,” I had said, “but a need.”

“Do you feel stronger now?”

I had smiled at that question. “Yes.”

An amalgam of sea and cherries filled the woods. The August heat baked the scent into foulness, and I inhaled each glob of tart cherry and bitter salt with dread. It was the scent of my sister’s blood.

I sat in a thicket, next to Sharon’s body. I used to call her Shar. Used to. Her head was gashed, her chest pierced, and her hands and arms covered in a sleeve of slash marks. Her body had been stripped. Blood cascaded down her cocoa skin.

I tilted inward, as if my insides were being crushed like a soda can. At eighteen, I was six feet tall with a bulk of muscle, but my voice was washed in jerky hormones, pitching my voice high and low like a battered ship. I had no wailing voice, only a shrinking cry.

Shar was sixteen, smart and pretty.

She was going to be a beautiful creature.

Was.

Something fluttered along the tops of the scaly trees, disturbing their flock of leaves, through which the sun dripped and scattered the shadows on the ground. I growled, or at least I thought I did. I couldn’t hear much above my pounding pulse and the figment screams of Shar.

But I could smell, so I sniffed the air and caught the trail of the killer. His scent was of a bar: caffeine, cigarettes, and beer. I followed the stench through the trees and over the boggy ground to a murky stream.

A man hunched over the clouded water. He was trying to splash Shar’s blood away, but his neck and face remained speckled. The scratches on his arms still bled, the blood beaded up like tiny balls of wax.

Shar knew this man.

I knew him, too.

Otis Hein.

He went to high school with Shar. Otis was a second-year senior. He was a nineteen-year-old who looked like a truck driver, drank like a sailor, and smoked like a recovering addict in need of a new addiction.

I wanted to rip him apart, but as Otis turned and eyeballed me, I felt a cold thing run through my blood. Otis’ eyes were different. They weren’t the normal dull or vacant windows. They were dressed in dark draperies that hid his wickedness with smiles and winks.

“He said you were coming,” Otis said.

“You killed her.” They were the only words I could say without crying.

Otis shrugged. “She was a dirt dog in need of putting down.” His eyes drifted up along the tops of the trees, and then he smiled. “You need to be put down, too. He said I should skin ya and then roast ya, just for fun.” Otis winked. “I’m thinking I’ll eat ya, too. I heard werewolf meat is sweet. Is it true?”

His words didn’t mean anything. They were cotton clogging words that got wedged in my ears. My fists were ready, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I had never killed anyone before.

Otis pulled a knife and poked the air with it as if he were Zorro. “These woods aren’t yours. You can’t just hunt whatever whenever. You’re a thing, not human or kind. I’d cage you, if I thought it would do any good, but you’re unnatural, and things like you need to be destroyed.”

“I’ll kill you.” They were the only three words I cared about.

Otis chuckled. “He said you wolves are nothing but a sack of hunger and rage, easy to stomp out. I think he’s right. He’s always right.”

His words finally made it through my ears. Questions climbed up my throat, but only one word made it out of my mouth. “Who?”

“He told me what would happen if we don’t stop things like you. You look like us, but underneath you carry a dark disease, an impurity. He said you think us regulars are fodder, but hell if I’m gonna get served to the likes of one of you. I won’t let that happen, and neither will he.”

Confused, I glanced around. I didn’t see anyone, but I heard a flutter from above. A shadow darted along the ground and then rolled back into the spiky shades of the trees.

It was nothing, I thought.

It had to be nothing.

But, what if it was something?

“You don’t look like much.” Otis ran his hand over the scratches on his arm. “Your sister put up a fight. Doubt you will.”

My blood heated. My skin tightened, accentuating every bone and ropy muscle. My jaw flared in pain, as my teeth lengthen into jagged summits. Unfurling my fist, I flashed my inch-long nails.

“I’ll kill you.”

Otis grinned and twirled his knife.

He wasn’t afraid, but I was.

There was something in the trees. Each time it shifted from branch to limb, I felt the wind dip and roll over my back. I could smell the danger; it was smoky like a campfire, and it burned my eyes and clogged my throat.

“Come here, dog. I’m gonna stick ya and then roast ya.”

I didn’t pounce.

I didn’t rush.

I walked to Otis, staring him down. “Go ahead.”

Otis jabbed the knife into my side. The blade slipped in between my ribs. “I told ya you’d be easy.”

It burned like rubbing alcohol, but I didn’t scream. I grabbed Otis’ hand and twisted. The tip of the blade broke off inside of me, but I also broke Otis’ wrist.

He howled.

Shiny tears gushed down his face.

I smiled.

“Silver plated isn’t the same as sterling silver. You should have done your homework.” I fished out the tip of the knife with my nails. “Now, I’m going to kill you.” I lifted Otis by the neck. His body jerked, his arms flailed and legs kicked. It was a sloppy kind of doggie-paddle that got him nowhere.

Something fluttered above, and the shadow, long and lean, darted along the ground.

Was it a man?

Could it be only a man?

No, it was something much more sinister.

I threw Otis into a tree and then took a quick peek. Nothing and no one was around, but I smelled smoke.

“Who’s here? Who are you working with? Who told you to kill Shar?”

Suddenly all I cared about was who and why.

Did it really matter?

Yes.