I awoke to the smell of smoke and lilacs, my nose detecting the latter buried beneath the cloying odor of burning timbers and charred fabric. My body instinctively tried to rise and follow the familiar flowery aroma, but was thwarted by the thick cords which bound my wrists and ankles. I writhed against the bonds, my muscles straining, but the ropes remained knotted around my limbs, smugly nonchalant in their success. This shape did not have nearly the strength required to snap the thick bindings. A glance around the smoke filled room revealed no knife or shard of glass with which to cut the ropes;there was nothing but an flames dancing behind a veil of thickening gray fog. The heat crushed against me, allying with the smoke in an attempt to asphyxiate. I ignored the discomfort, trying hurriedly to piece together what had occurred. My memories, fortunately, were clearer than the room at the very least. Visions of the mob storming the house began to coalesce in my minds eye.The congregation from town whipped into a frothing sea by their ignorance and fear… they had taken her to do god knows what- and in these cases God not only knew what, but had, in fact, been the one to mandate the act. She’d burn soon if I didn't free her. Smart of them to sneak up and knock me out first. Too bad I hadn't stayed unconscious long enough to let the fire do their murder for them. As if on cue, a timber in the far corner of the room failed spectacularly, its fire gnawed length creating a firestorm of debris as it collapsed. I needed the ropes off soon and I could think of only one way of doing so, but it would be risky. Suffocation would likely be the result, but my end seemed to be destined for that end regardless of my decision. I gritted my teeth and prepared for the change.


My body began to flow. Bones swam under my skin like fish rippling the surface of a lake and muscles settled into new shapes. Skin swelled and shrank and twisted. Fur began to erupt from me, making the heat crowd in closer. Some ropes fell away, their knots meant to bind larger appendages; still others strained and snapped, falling to the floor with wet thuds, their coarse fibers streaked with blood and hair. As I changed my senses sharpened and the smell of lilacs bloomed, intensifying like the light before dawn, brighter and brighter until it eventually blinded me. I howled, the noise ragged in my chest. The cry echoed through the house, the woods, and into the village. That sound was a warning to the kidnappers- their only warning. They had taken her and that had been a mistake. The even bigger mistake, though, had been not puncturing me from head to toe with every piece of silver in the town before they took her. I shrugged off the remains of the rope, shook soot out from my fur, and bounded out of the window. Falling through the night, I thought for a moment that my nose sensed the trail splitting, one clear distinct path leading out before me, the other small and modest leading back into the house. I hesitated for only a moment, before speeding of, away from the burning house.


The smell of her drew me like an iron filing to a lodestone. The trees whispered with the velocity of my passing, a cloud of fallen autumn leaves creating a tail of fire behind me. The nearer I grew to the city the more powerfully the scent compelled me. I blew through the city like a dark squall and followed the scent to the church in empty town square. The lilac path up to the window below the steeple couldn't have been more obvious to me if it had been painted in gold. Ignoring the stairs, I bounded up from the lower roof to the second floor and in through the window, shutters banging open upon my impact, drowning out a shout of fright. I scanned the room, ready to tear the throats from any defenders that thought to bar my way. My vision fell over a form stretched upon a bed.


It was not her.

The room swam with her perfume, its source a familiar bottle spilled upon the a nearby table. My head clouded, the animal in me struggling with the obvious dichotomy. I smelled her all around me, but in the bed lay a stranger. She gripped a crucifix in one hand and was shackled to a bedpost by the other. I had been tricked, and this pathetic creature had been left as a sacrifice.




“Puh-puhlease don’t…,” she said but could not finish and was forced to averted her eyes, such dreadful sight I was to behold.



It was in this moment of rage and confusion, with the smell of lilacs- the smell of her- swimming in my head, that I heard the scream. It rent the night like a black satin curtain, coming from the direction of the house, burning now as second sunrise in the distance. As ghastly as the sound was, there was a quality about it which I recognized. A quality which drew me towards it… like iron filings to a lodestone.

Art by Jon Foster

Story by Russell Lee Nasrallah

*Edited 11/16/2014