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Through the haze of fading sleep, I felt Sam's hairy chest pressed up against my back. That bastard. His arm was around me again and I opened my eyes and angrily shifted to try to throw it off of me. The arm I saw, however was covered in leathery, reddish skin with sharp, inch-long claws on the end of each finger. I turned my head and saw a mouth filled with pointed teeth that stuck out at odd angles toward me. Two goat-like horns protruded from the top of its head. The thing's brow was furrowed, below which sat a bestial, almost hog-like nose. Its red human eyes glared at me and a long, reptilian tongue snaked out of the creature's maw to lick my shoulder. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound left my throat. The demon's claws dug into my chest, splitting my ribs open with no effort. The large hand dug around inside of me, sending shockwaves of pain through me and splattering Sam's bedsheets with my thick blood. I watched in horror as it pulled my beating heart from my chest. The organ spurted onto my gurgling body. The creature's tongue wrapped around my heart and those monstrous jaws bit into it, spraying the walls of the room with crimson gore.

***

I sat up abruptly in Sam's bed, the familiar burning sensation intensified with each rapid beat of my heart.

"Fuck these dreams," I groaned, rubbing my chest to try and alleviate some of the pain.

I was alone in the room. This bedroom was similar to the one I had been sleeping in before last night. Though, Sam seemed to be rather messy judging from the clothes strewn about the floor and hanging off of the back of a desk chair. There was no fireplace in this room, but the rifle I had seen the day before when I woke up was leaning against the wall next to me. It looked like three people could have slept comfortably in the large bed I was sitting in. Sam's scent hung in the air and covered the sheets. It was a heady, masculine smell, like a mixture of leather, smoke, and musk. I sat there for a few moments, inhaling slowly until I realized how odd it would have looked if someone saw me enjoying the scent of another man. I slipped out of bed and pulled on the clothes I wore from the day before, making sure the voodoo doll the Queen had given me was still in the pocket. A pair of underwear with an incredibly loose waistband sat on the floor nearby. It must have been the pair Sam was wearing outside. For a brief moment, a voice in my head told me to take them. I ignored it. I didn't want to give Sam even more cause to think I was a creep than my lewd gazing at him already had. I unlocked the bedroom door and went down stairs. Jonas was drinking coffee in the kitchen.

"Morning, Mal," he said. "Sam told me about your little adventure last night."

"Did it wake you?" I asked.

Jonas laughed.

"Most people would still be shaken by an encounter like that. I'm glad to see you're adjusting to the oddities of our lives."

"Is it normal to almost be killed by monsters in your sleep?"

Jonas shook his head.

"Only if the monsters are starving or if you're being targeted by a powerful cult," Jonas said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I don't know how you can be so casual about it," I said.

"It wouldn't help you if I was overly dramatic," he replied. "You'll have to become accustomed to the new world you live in."

He had a point. Even if my glamour wasn't removed, I doubted I could go back to living normally. I poured myself a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator and turned back to Jonas.

"What's the next step in our adventure?" I asked.

"We wait for the Queen," he said. "She promised to help us remove your glamour."

I didn't remember that, but it could have happened when I was asleep.

"Where's Sam?"

"He's outside, still watching the fire," Jonas said.

I nodded and took my drink out onto the porch with me. Sam was standing watch over the fire pit with his back to the house. Thin fog hung in the air at the bases of the trees that bordered Sam's yard. A small fire was burning in front of him and he poked at it every few seconds with a stick. He was wearing a pair of hiking boots and a fur-lined hunting jacket that was barely long enough to cover his butt. He also had on a pair of long underwear that clung to his legs and seemed to accentuate the muscle underneath.

"Aren't you cold?" I asked.

He turned his head to smile at me.

"Nah, I'm used to it," he said. "I got a lotta fur, too."

I chuckled softly at his joke. We were silent for a while as he continued to poke the fire. When my glass was empty, I gathered the courage to ask him a personal question.

"When did you learn you were a loup?"

"Ah," he said. "I was a late bloomer. Twenty three."

"What happened?"

"My mum was a loup. Pops wasn't. I don't think he ever found out her secret before he died. I'm the only other loup in our family. My old man and I had an argument on that night. I remember being so angry, but he was only upset that I hadn't found a girl yet. It was a stupid as hell thing to fight about. I stormed out of the house and the last thing I remember about it was looking up and seeing the full moon. When I came to, I was in a hospital with bandages covering my arms." Sam shrugged and stabbed at the fire with his stick. "The docs told me I had been hit by a car and that I was lucky to be alive. When I was released from there, my mum told me what had really happened. There was a car accident, but it was me that hit the car, not the other way around. Both the driver and passenger were killed after my impact pushed the car into a tree. Their bodies were too mangled by the wreck to identify the gashes my claws and teeth made. I ain't hurt nobody that didn't deserve it since then, but... I still think about those folks sometimes."

Sam's voice was shaking by the time he finished and I was silent for a while afterward.

"Is the first time always like that?" I asked.

He turned his head again and gave a half-hearted grin.

"It depends on the situation, but it's always triggered by emotions. Sometimes it's fueled by excitement, sometimes by fear, and sometimes by anger... like mine. I guess my first time could have been a lot worse if I did have a girl... might have woken up next to a mauled corpse..."

His dry chuckle after that sent a chill down my spine. I was suddenly struck by the fact that there was still so much I didn't know about him.

"I'd guess my trigger is fear," I said.

"Nah, that's just what yer glamour feeds on," he countered. "The more afraid you are, the stronger the glamour is. At least that's what the Queen said."

"How do you resist the other side of you?" I asked.

Sam sighed.

"It ain't a matter of resistance. You're not two separate things in one body. You don't have two separate sides either. If you control yer urges and impulses, then yer actions won't come back to haunt you. Same fer humans when you get down to it."

The fire in front of him had mostly died down to embers and he tossed the stick he had been stirring them with into the pit. He turned to face me and I mentally cursed my eyes for immediately zeroing in on his large crotch bulge. Teenage hormones were a bitch. He did have a very nice looking package, though.

"Hey, boy," he said. "Remember what we talked about last night? Eyes up here."

I felt my cheeks flush as I looked at his face and his twinkling golden eyes. Despite the cross tone of his voice, he was smiling when he spoke.

"S-sorry," I said.

"It'd be easier for everyone if ya wore things that din't reveal ye'self," a familiar voice said from the doorway into the house.

Sam quickly moved his hands in front of his groin as his cheeks turned red.

"Yes, ma'am," he said nervously. "I didn't think you'd be here so early..."

Cecilia Martinique stood in the doorway, dressed in a pure white gown and cradling a jet black cat in her arm. The bag of knick knacks hung at her side and she beckoned to me with a finger.

"Come in, chile'. Let's get dis glamour taken care of."

I gulped and followed her inside. Sam poured water onto the embers in the pit and followed after us as the large plume of smoke ascended into the morning sky. We entered the living room and Jonas was sitting on a couch already. Cecilia motioned for me to sit on the floor in the middle of the room. Sam came in soon after, now fully dressed, and he sat down next to Jonas on the couch. The rug under me was bear skin. I didn't know enough about taxidermy to tell if it was fake or not. I imagined Sam was the kind of man who wouldn't put up with a fake bear rug anyway. There was a stone fireplace in the room that was much larger than the one on the upper floor. The furniture was fairly normal and nondescript. Cecilia sat in an armchair in front of me with the cat in her lap and held out her free hand while the other rubbed the feline's neck gently.

"De doll, please," she said.

I pulled the small voodoo doll from my pocket and handed it to her. She took it and dropped it into the bag by her side. She shook the bag for a few minutes and then brushed it along the side of the loudly purring cat in her lap. Cecilia took the doll back out of the bag along with a small glass bottle and a funnel. She slipped the funnel into the mouth of the bottle and I flinched when she tore the voodoo doll in half. The atmosphere in the room became heavy, but it was different from the oppressive heaviness that my parents' murderer seemed to cause. This feeling was more like being nestled in a warm blanket. Sound became muddled and my vision seemed to be slightly blurred. She emptied the contents of the doll into the funnel and I watched as the bottom filled with various herbs and dried grasses. The scent was a potpourri, but I could barely make out ginger and rosemary.

"Spirits of de wild, hear me," she said. "Release dis chile' from de curse upon him."

She beckoned to Sam from across the room and he approached, offering her his open hand. A lump formed in my throat when she drew a pocket knife from her voodoo purse. Sam tried to reassure me with a grin, but he grunted when she slid the blade across his palm. She caught a good portion of his blood in the funnel and I watched it fill a quarter of the bottle below. I managed to swallow the lump in my throat as Jonas threw Sam a dish rag to wrap around his fresh wound. The werewolf smiled again at me as he tousled my hair with his uninjured hand and went back to his seat. That all too recognizable burning sensation joined my rapid heartbeat as I thought of drinking that concoction. Cecilia wiped off the blade of her knife before closing it and dropping it back into her bag. She then produced a small travel flask of gin, pouring some of it into the bottle with the other ingredients. Another clear liquid was added to the mixture that smelled like vinegar followed by what I assumed was normal water up to the base of the bottle's neck. Cecilia removed the funnel and corked the bottle. She shook it to blend the mixture while she chanted something in creole. While she did, Jonas placed a small, wooden stool with a black candle on top of it in front of me. He lit the candle and the flame it produced was vibrant green. Cecilia held the mixture over the flame, still chanting. Every so often, she removed it from above the candle and rubbed the glass bottle along the side of her cat. She did this nine times.

"Thank you, spirits," she said. "Allow dis chile' ta be free from de chains dat hold him."

She handed me the bottle, the red liquid swirling inside. I looked at it apprehensively. The smell of it was intensely unpleasant and my nose wrinkled away from the bottle as I held it in front of me.

"Go on, Mal," Sam said behind me. "Drink it before it separates."

I steeled myself and held my nose closed, tipping the warm, foul smelling bottle against my lips as Cecilia continued chanting. I choked the vile "medicine" down, grimacing at the coppery, vinegar-filled, alcohol aftertaste. The candle flame in front of me flared up for a moment when I emptied the bottle and Cecilia finished her mantra.

"By blood, de gift was sealed," she said. "By blood, be it revealed."

I looked deeply into the flickering candle light in front of me and for a moment, I thought the potion would be the worst part of this bizarre ritual. That is, until the pain hit my stomach like a punch in the gut. I doubled over on the rug, almost knocking over the candle in the process. I watched in horror as my hands grew grey fur and my fingernails extended into vicious claws. Sam was behind me in an instant, wrapping both arms around me as he whispered in my ear.

"It's ok, Mal," he said. "Don't fear it. We're here. You're among friends."

My whole body shuddered and convulsed with each surge of discomfort as I watched my arms shift back and forth between fur and skin. Cecilia resumed chanting in creole loudly above the cries of agony I was making. Sam kept reassuring me with whispers into my ear. I tried to take comfort in his voice as Cecilia sprinkled something over my head. The pain eventually became a dull throb through my entire body and I collapsed, panting onto the floor. Sam looked down at me, gently rubbing my chest as I heaved under him. Something snapped inside of me as I gazed into his amber eyes. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to embrace me and whisper those reassuring nothings into my ear forever. I wanted to feel his body pressed against me; his hairy chest against mine; his tongue sliding over my flesh. I wanted to taste his sweat and his scent; his skin and his-

The monster inside of me roared his way to the surface.