He screamed and screamed as his world slowly faded to gray.
It hurt so bad… more than anything he thought possible… not just the knee, but all over. Every cell in his body was on fire and the rage kept building and pushing to get out. He screamed again and again like a lost soul being dragged to Hell while getting pulled asunder and burned alive at the same time.
After what felt like an eternity he started to regain some of his awareness behind the red wall of pain. He was sitting on a chair in a room and there were voices.
“Motherfucker! What the fuck is happening to him? What is this slimy shit? What the hell did you do Carson?”
“Nothing boss. Just kneecapped the guy. I don’t know why he’s flipping out like that.”
The pain gradually gave way to a sense of clarity. The seething rage remained, but Al felt his body and mind adapting to it somehow. Like a warm flood rushing through him and filling him up. It was an odd feeling, but somehow he had never felt better. Stronger. More powerful. Even his destroyed knee was no big deal anymore. Hardly worth noticing actually.
He looked down at his bulging furry arm and vaguely registered that he was strapped to a chair with zip-ties. Almost casually he broke free with a flex of the wrist and rose from the chair. Two men (who were they again?) were recoiling in terror. In the far end of the large room a female with a vaguely familiar scent came running through a side door and fell to her knees screaming hysterically when she saw him.
One of the men pointed a gun at him and fired. He felt the bullet hit, but somehow his body rejected it.
“Well, that was mildly annoying,” Al thought to himself. “Shooting people is so rude.”
Irritated he lashed out at the man and gutted him from groin to sternum with a clawed hand. With a gurgling cry the rude man collapsed in a bloody pile of his own intestine while the other fellow took off frantically running towards the main door. Al was conflicted. The corpse smelled delicious, but chasing the fleeing man could be fun too.
“Hungry,” Al decided and turned towards the bloody remains of the dead man.
Just in that moment a skinny redheaded girl with a punkish hairdo came running in the same door that the fleeing man had just exited and grabbed on to him. He knew this girl. He liked her. She smelled like family. Like an ally. Like a mate. Her scent triggered a pleasant tingling sensation in his abdomen and between his legs.
“Get it together doc,” Mei said firmly while holding on to his face and shaking it back and forth. “Control it. I know yer in there. Talk to me.”
Somehow her words and the timbre of her voice cooled the fire a little, and Al began to regain his ability to think coherently. He was… Alcide McCurdy… retired physician and bar owner… this was his house…. his home… and that skinny lass in front of him was…
“Mei?” he groaned in a raspy voice.
“In the flesh doc. I’m so sorry bout this.”
“What is this? I am… seriously… a… werewolf?”
“Really really sorry doc. Musta passed it on to ya. Didn’t know I could.”