Novel Chapter

This is the opening chapter of my novel, Transformations, which is electronically published by Sirius Publishing, Inc.

TRANSFORMATIONS

© 2000, by Nora M. Mulligan

CHAPTER ONE

Sam thought he could hear Ariana calling him, somewhere in the marrow of his bones, in the whisper of his blood. That was why, when he left the office that night, he headed out confidently without knowing where he was going. He walked as if he were being pulled by invisible threads, sure that she was at the other end.

All that day Sam Jackson had felt peculiar. He and Ariana had kissed for the first time the night before. Sam felt as if his skin had been removed, and everything about him was exposed, sensitive.

Even at the office, he'd felt something singing in his blood. The draft of the appeal brief, which he'd been toiling over for days, suddenly took off and the words flowed out of him. He could glance at the mountains of documents he was supposed to be reviewing for Mr. Barnes without fear or loathing, which was some trick.

Sam didn't watch where he was going. Sometimes in the last week or two, he had the peculiar sensation that she was looking for him, and he would leave the office and find her waiting in the lobby, or outside the building. He had come to trust those strange intuitions.

She wasn't outside, waiting in the lobby or in the shadows just outside his office building. Normally, Sam would have stopped to reconsider exactly what he was doing, but not tonight. Tonight Sam felt as if he could fly. The call itched under his skin, and he had to follow it.

The sensation became stronger the farther he got from his office, as if he were getting closer to the source. Walking a little faster, Sam frowned. The call felt different. This wasn't a cry of desire or playfulness. It felt as if she were calling for help. She wasn't afraid, exactly, but the voice he was hearing in his mind felt desperate, as if she were faced with something she didn't think she could handle alone.

She needs me, he thought, and then he stopped thinking. He turned all his concentration to that call. He himself, on another day, would see this as bizarre. Now he didn't care. He was not entirely himself. He was a knight coming to the rescue of the woman he loved.

The word surprised him. He wasn't sure he thought of his feelings for Ariana that way. He knew he was drawn to her. He knew he felt like a different man whenever he was with her. He had only met her a couple of weeks before, but it seemed as if he had been looking for her all his life, as if the mere sight of her, the sound of her voice, made him complete, filled in all the blank spaces in his life. But love? No, he wasn't sure about that.

When Sam stopped running, he wasn't tired at all. His muscles didn't ache, his breathing didn't change. Peculiar. He wouldn't have said he was that fit. But he must have been.

His skin prickled with foreboding. Loud, angry noises came from the building he approached. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw some shadows moving on the other side of the street. He stopped. He saw nothing nearby that could have thrown those shadows, and nothing that would make moving shadows in this quiet area, except for him. As soon as he turned his attention back to the house ahead of him, he was aware of the shadows again. He told himself firmly to stop imagining things.

Sam didn't knock or go to the front door. Without thinking it through, he walked around the side of the house, hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on inside before he barged in.

The curtains weren't drawn, and he could see into a dilapidated kitchen. Two people stood inside, screaming at each other. Sam watched them for a few seconds, puzzled. He had never seen either of them before. The woman was small and slight, her hair blonde and her skin fair. She didn't look or sound at all like Ariana, and yet, as he watched the scene in confusion, he knew that the call he had followed somehow emanated from her.

The man facing her screamed at the top of his lungs. "Bitch! Bitch! You'll be sorry! You'll be sorry you ever started with me!" While Sam watched, incredulous and horrified, the man turned to the wall beside him and tore one of the cabinets off the wall as if it were attached with duct tape. Inflated with rage and hate, the man threw the cabinet, with all its contents, at the woman.

Sam would have moved then, to call for help if not to intervene directly, but he was frozen in place, watching.

The woman dodged out of the way so quickly that Sam didn't even see her move. He just saw the cabinet smash into the ground next to where she had stood seconds before. "Stop it," she said in a quiet, controlled tone. But Sam could see that she was shaking. "Stop it right now, Bill. You're skating on the edge, you know you are. Stop it."

"The edge," he growled, his face red, his eyes blazing. "The edge, yes, I am getting closer to the edge, and now you'll be afraid of me, won't you? You've had the upper hand all along, but not anymore, not when I can do it myself, when I don't need you!"

To Sam's amazement, the woman stepped closer to the man. She reached out and firmly gripped his upper arms. "Don't, Bill," she said, in the same flinty voice. "Don't. You know what will happen, you know what has to happen if you do this."

"I don't need you!" he screamed, shaking his arms free of her grip. "I don't need any of you! You can't control me anymore! I hate you! You'll pay!"

Sam could feel the man's rage as if it were his own. He could feel himself filling up with fury, with hate, with something so powerful that he had never imagined that he had this in him. It's not me, Sam thought in horror, it's him, but why am I feeling it, what am I doing here?

Sam couldn't take his eyes off Bill, and so he saw it clearly as it happened. The man actually began to grow larger, his body swelling with rage and fury. His face slowly elongated, his mouth and nose joining together, becoming some kind of muzzle, his eyes turning red with hate, the hair on his head growing longer, falling down over his face. Bill dropped down to all fours, and for a second, Sam could see the shape of a man outlined in some huge creature, like a bear but larger than any bear Sam had ever seen in nightmares. Then the human form disappeared and all that remained was the bear. It roared in Bill's voice and lunged at the woman.

Sam opened his mouth to scream, but then he saw the woman. She stood still for some fraction of a second, her eyes wide and shiny, and then the room was filled with blinding light. When Sam could see again, the woman was gone, and a leopard, large and sinuous, stood facing the bear.

I'm not seeing this, Sam told himself. I can't be seeing this, this isn't happening, this isn't real, I'm not seeing this.

The leopard snarled back, in the woman's voice, "Damn it, Bill, I told you, I told you, and now it's too late."

"Yeah, too late for you," the bear growled, padding closer to her. "You're smaller than I am, you know. You're dead, you know you're dead, I can kill you before you can do me any damage, and I will, Sylvia, I will. God knows I have reason to, you know I do."

The leopard crouched low for a second or so, watching the bear as it lumbered closer, its huge front paws reaching out to bat at her. Then she pounced, her claws raking at the bear, tearing into it.

Sam saw the shadows then, and that didn't make any sense either. They shouldn't have been there, and they certainly shouldn't have been moving towards the two creatures who were locked in a bloody struggle in the center of the room. And yet, he could see the shadows pouring themselves across the floor towards the two animals. He watched them even while his mind screamed that it was impossible, even as his head filled nearly to bursting with the rage and hate the bear creature felt.

Sam didn't actually see the shadow become a lioness. He just saw the lioness standing where the shadow had been a heartbeat before. He watched, horrified, as the lioness threw herself into the fray, gouging at the bear. Sam could feel the blows in his own body.

The bear swatted the leopard away from him and turned his attention to the lioness, smashing at her with huge paws, roaring. As the leopard dragged herself to her feet, Sam caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Another animal, some sort of black, catlike creature, like a mountain lion but larger and darker, had emerged, seemingly from nowhere, and joined the battle. The bear turned, in pain and surprise, to counter this new threat. The smell of blood burned in Sam's nose, and he almost choked on it, and on the pain and rage of the bear. It was too much, he couldn't watch, he couldn't turn away. He was frozen, terrified.

Sam saw the other shadow change form. He happened to be looking right at it, and he saw every detail. The shadow grew larger and larger, taking on a shape, and then the shape filled out, changing color until it was a large golden brown creature, the size and almost the shape of the bear that was attempting to fend off the lion and the dark cat.

The new creature threw itself into the melee, and then the bear screamed in a horribly human voice, as the four other creatures knocked it to the floor and swarmed over it. Then the scream stopped, with an awful gurgle, and Sam was inundated with a wave of terror and fury and pain, until he couldn't watch, couldn't listen, any longer.

Sam crouched outside the window, shaking, pulling himself into a ball. He could still hear the sounds from the room on the other side of the window.

"Stop it, Jonquil," said one voice, a human woman's voice, angry and curt. "He's already dead, cut it out!"

The other voice was muffled, as if the speaker's mouth were full. "Shut up and leave me alone, Margaret."

Sam heard scufflings and something that sounded like a blow. Then the second voice cried out, "Cut it out, damn it!"

"Cut it out, both of you." Sam didn't look, not yet. He recognized that voice. That was the woman who'd been in the room when he first arrived. She sounded so normal. She couldn't be that leopard creature.

"We have work to do," said the first female voice, the one the other voice had called Margaret. "You're not helping, Jonquil."

"I did help," said the other woman's voice. She sounded proud, almost smug. There was a note of satiation in her voice that made the hair on the back of Sam's neck rise, even though he couldn't see the speaker.

"Oh, yeah, you're always good at that part. But when it comes to cleaning up afterwards, you're not so good at that," said Margaret's voice. "And we have a lot of cleaning up to do. Who'd have thought he would be so strong?"

"You've seen him," said the woman who lived in that house. Her voice was shaky. "You knew what he was like."

"He was never like this before," said Margaret. She sighed. "That's the point, I suppose. I'm glad you called us, Sylvia. You never would have taken him alone."

They sounded so normal. Sam could feel some of the tension leaving his muscles. It should be safe to look now, he thought. And if he saw four women standing around, then he would know that he had been hallucinating.

He straightened up and looked in the window. His heart stopped beating. There were no women there. Instead, he saw the body of the huge bear on the floor, mutilated, bleeding, clearly dead. Four creatures stood looking at the body: the leopard, the lioness, the black cat creature, and the golden bearlike creature. Sam swallowed. He was still in the nightmare.

"Come on," said the bearlike creature. Her voice was Margaret's, practical and serious. No, thought Sam, no, this can't be happening. "We can't do anything like this, and the longer we stay, the greater the chances someone will see us."

"Right," said the leopard. The room was filled again with that blinding light, and then when he could see again, Sam saw the small blonde woman standing where the leopard had been seconds before. "Come on, guys, Margaret's right, let's go."

Sam couldn't say why he watched the black creature. Something about it seemed to draw his eye, as if it knew he were watching and wanted him to see it. The large cat stretched, and filled with light, and then stood up. He recognized her.

"Ariana!" he cried, his voice suddenly restored. He was so horrified that he couldn't think, didn't think. He leaped to his feet in front of the window, unable to take his eyes off her, and he screamed her name again. "Ariana! No!"

She turned to look at him, her dark eyes suddenly startled, and even a little afraid. "Sam?" she whispered. "How did you ever -- "

Something that felt as large as a baseball bat clubbed into the back of his head and he collapsed forward into darkness.

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