Moonlight Becomes Him

Moonlight Becomes Him

by Alex Younger

I have never been so terrified in all my life. When I

started my apprenticeship with Doctor Nicodemus I knew

I would see all manner of trauma, pain, grisly results of

accidents, and the malice of men. I still wasn’t ready for

what happened when the ragged-looking man stumbled into

the clinic one mid-summer evening.

Our little cottage felt like an oven despite having every

door open and all the windows wide. Since dawn, the sun

had shone brightly, unobstructed by a single cloud, baking

the sandy shores that Nicodemus and I call home. No one

had been by all day. Shadows grew long in the gardens

surrounding our clinic and the evening air carried the sweet

scent of honeysuckle and sounds of locusts humming in

the trees as the light faded. I love the days when I have

Nicodemus all to myself, either sitting in comfortable

silence and sharing a pot of tea or talking deep into the

night about everything from art to politics to theology. I’ve

only spent two years in his company and still his stories and

worldviews inspire me. He’s a brilliant man and he never

gets tired of my questions which, as anyone who knows me

will tell you, seem to be infinite in number.

Nicodemus was about to latch the front door when a

disheveled man collapsed across the threshold. Goddess be

praised, but he looked a mess. His dark hair was clumped

in tangles, limp and greasy in front of his face. Despite his

slouching frame I could tell he was shorter than Nicodemus

but taller than me, as so many are. Every scrap of clothing

he had on was torn and muddy. He was barefoot and

smelled like he hadn’t seen bathwater in days. We helped

him inside, but when I offered him water he refused and

shouted at the two of us. His tears made tracks in the mix

of dirt and dried blood smeared on his face. “Please,” he

sobbed, “I can’t do this anymore. I need help.” He dragged

his bare forearm under his nose and emitted a nasty

snorting sound.

Nicodemus placed a hand on his back, leading him to

the metal examination table. “You’re safe here,” he said.

“What’s the trouble?”

Once up on the table he pulled his legs up to his chest,

hiding the lower part of his face behind his knees. Looking

up at my teacher with dark hooded eyes he spoke in a harsh

whisper, “I’m cursed.”

“I doubt that’s true,” I said. “Most people feel that way

when they don’t know what’s making them sick. It can be

very frightening, but it can also be explained and hopefully

cured.” I was being polite because, frankly, he looked

awful. His body was covered in gashes on his back and

shoulders. When I saw bite marks I wondered, Where the

hell has this guy been?

He slammed his hands down on both sides of his body,

gripped the table and yelled, “You don’t understand!” What

little shirt he had left he tore from his back. “Look! Look at

these marks. I don’t know how they got there.” He couldn’t

sit still. He shivered and rocked back and forth, clutching

the remains of his shirt to his chest before finally breaking

down and weeping openly.

I stepped around the exam table to get a better look. His

flesh was crisscrossed with angry red slashes and half-

healed scars. Some of the gouges were deeper than others,

starting out thin and digging into his back, creating little

valleys of skin. I saw scar tissue, old bruises, and burn

marks. Nicodemus met my gaze as I looked up. The entire

time I’d been under his tutelage, my teacher had always

been calm and in control of himself. I had come to rely

on his calm when we treated trauma I hadn’t seen before.

Being a doctor’s apprentice is as hard on the mind as it

can be on the soul. But now Nicodemus’ eyes locked with

mine, stretching wide, and for the first time I saw fear in

them. “What--”

He touched my arm and leaned in close to my ear. I

could feel the hair on the back of my neck prickle as he

whispered in my ear. “Bar all the windows. Lock every

door. Do exactly as I tell you, no questions. Do you

understand?” Sweat beaded on his forehead and the warm

glow in my chest turned cold.

I knew better than to gape like a fishwife. The tone of his

voice sent a chill through me. My feet rushed me into every

room, my hands slapping latches and locking doors until

every inch of the place was secure. I returned to the clinic,

shutting the last door behind me.

Nicodemus was speaking to our patient while I was

preoccupied. “How long has this been going on?” he asked.

While he questioned our patient, I grabbed a few leaves of

paper and a stick of charcoal to take notes. Both of them

seemed calmer, at least for the moment.

“I don’t know,” the man said as he ran his hands through

his hair. “Three, maybe four months.”

Nicodemus reached for a metal case, pulling from it

thread and a clean sewing needle. “Tell me as much as you

can remember.” He dipped the tip of the needle into a small

jar of distilled alcohol to sterilize it and threaded its eye.

“You’ll feel a small stick.”

Our patient didn’t even flinch as Nicodemus carefully

sutured the worst of the open wounds closed. He had

stopped crying and when he spoke he sounded very

detached. “At first I didn’t notice much. I had trouble

sleeping. Days would go by and toward the end of the

month I hardly touched my bed at all. When I thought I

would never sleep again, I would fall unconscious, but I

had no memory of events after that.” The man paused for

a moment. Nicodemus kept stitching up the wounds, but

I was watching the man’s face. He swallowed hard and

closed his eyes. When he found his voice again it shook as

he spoke, “I’d wake up in the strangest places, usually in

the forests behind my house, my body covered in scratches

and blood.” He covered his face with his hands and pushed

them up into his hairline. “Sometimes I would wake up in a

pile of dead animals, all ripped to shreds.”

With the deepest wounds closed, my teacher set aside

the needle and picked up a bottle of clear, viscous fluid. He

applied it to a linen swatch and dabbed the medicine onto

the sutures. “Tell me about your daily routine,” he said.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I hunt. I sell meat and hides at the markets,” the man

said.

Nicodemus asked, “And what sort of animals do you

usually encounter when you go out?”

He shrugged. “Nothing odd. Rabbits, deer, sometimes

a wild boar but they’re out in the colder months. This heat

would be too much for them.”

“Wolves?”

“No,” the man said. His brow creased in thought. “Not

that I remember.”

“Had you traveled far in the months prior to your

trouble?” Nicodemus asked.

The man pushed off the table, shouting again at

Nicodemus, “What does that have to do with anything?

I come here for treatment and you ask me about

sightseeing?” He glared at Nicodemus.

“Hey!” I shouted at him, “You’ve come to the finest

diagnostician along the eastern shores. If he’s asking you

questions it’s for a reason.” I pointed back at the exam

table. “Sit!” He stared at me for a moment then glanced at

Nicodemus, who was rubbing his beard to hide a smirk.

Our patient climbed back on the table, more subdued. I

understood that he was scared and had been for a while, but

he didn’t have to be rude. We were only trying to help.

He sat back on the table and finally replied to my

teacher’s question. “Only to Amaranth and back. I stopped

in Arthur’s Landing a few times on my way there. Made an

outstanding profit.” This was the first time I had even seen

a shadow of a smile on his face since he stumbled in. I felt

sorry for him. “Is that important?”

“It could be,” I said, taking a break from my notes.

“Cities are usually overcrowded, allowing diseases to easily

spread from one person to another because of the close

quarters.” I smiled. “Nicodemus is the best around. I know

we can help you.”

My teacher turned his head away from our patient to

hide a smirk, but I noticed. “Did you go anywhere?” He put

the stopper back on the glass jar and returned it to its place

on the shelf. “See a show or stay at an inn?” He tossed the

spent linen swatches into a wastebasket.

“No,” he said as he lowered his eyes to the floor and

shifted about. There was a short silence until he murmured,

“I mean, well, not exactly.”

Nicodemus looked at the tortured man with sympathy. “I

was young once too, dear boy. There’s nothing you can say

that will shock or surprise me.”

The man fidgeted a bit until he finally answered, “There

was a girl. Several girls.” I casually raised the sheaves

of paper in front of my lips to hide a smile. Lucky dog,

I thought. That was, until Nicodemus asked if they had

requested coin for “services rendered.” My mouth dropped

open behind the paper. I know I shouldn’t judge behavior,

but it was still surprising to hear. I didn’t have time to let

my imagination run wild about those kinds of places before

the man growled at Nicodemus, “So what? Don’t act like

you never--”

“Right now we’re talking about you,” Nicodemus said,

cutting him off.

Of course he would never! My Nicodemus is much more

dignified than that. Sure, he’ll go fishing without a stitch

on if the weather is nice and there have been many times

when he’s told dirty jokes or flirted with patients. Many

patients. Come to think of it, Nicodemus was a bit on the

wild side for a doctor. I remember him telling me stories

of when he was in the medical guild during his residency

and I remember my mouth open in shock for most of it. But

paying for pleasure? No way, even if he wasn’t a saint. And

yet I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering if he would do

such a thing. Thinking of him with someone else, paid or

not, caused a spark of jealousy to flare in my chest.

After a quick glance out the window Nicodemus turned

to me, shoulders straight and jaw tight. “What is today’s

date?”

I blinked, my thoughts derailed. “Uh... Thor’s Day, Juno

twenty-eighth. Is that important?” He didn’t answer me.

I noticed the light was failing outside. Night was quickly

approaching and I was starting to worry. “Nicodemus,

what’s going on?”

Our patient and I stared at Nicodemus, waiting for him to

speak as the minutes dragged on. When he finally replied,

I was flabbergasted. “How much do you know about

lycanthropy?”

I guffawed loudly. “Oh, be serious!” My smile faded as I

watched his face, stern as stone, and with a slow, creeping

realization my brain began to scream. No words, no

thoughts, just screaming filled my mind as if I was hearing

it out loud. “It can’t exist. Those are only stories, old wives’

tales to scare children.”

“I told you I never saw a wolf and I didn’t get bitten by

anything!” the patient barked.

“You wouldn’t have if she was in human form,”

Nicodemus replied. “Someone afflicted is only transformed

for two days out of the month, three in the most severe

cases. The rest of the time they are human. The disease is

a virus that is spread by exchanging fluids, either through

cuts or sexual contact.”

“I can’t believe this,” I muttered, tossing my notes onto

the counter near the hallway-side door leading to our

private quarters. My heart started thundering in my chest

as I ran my hand over my face. When the man lowered his

head, Nicodemus caught my eye. His mouth was set in a

grim line, but I saw the quick bounce of his hand where it

rested at his side. In his palm was a loaded syringe.

I placed my hand on the man’s back. “So, what’s your

sign?” I arched an eyebrow, giving him, in my opinion, a

most dashing smile.

He looked down at me, completely perplexed. “What?

Ouch!” Nicodemus emptied the contents of the needle into

the man’s leg, causing him to slump forward suddenly

and almost pitch off the table. We caught him just in time

and pushed him flat on his back. Under the exam table are

shelves and drawers that hold medical equipment. Aside

from the scalpels, syringes, rubber tubing and bandages

we have a set of leather wrist and ankle restraints to keep

volatile patients from harming themselves -- or us. With a

few quick movements he was secured to the table.

“What do we do if he is infected?” I asked. The sconces

on the walls started to glow to compensate for the failing

light. Several of these lined the walls in our cottage, all

inscribed with dimming runes. They normally give me

comfort, but this was not a normal night.

Nicodemus had his back turned to me. He grabbed

several vials off the shelves, working quickly at the prep

counter at the front of the clinic. “For lack of a better term,

lycanthropy sufferers are ‘allergic’ to silver. Too much will

kill them. Applying it at all has a high mortality rate.” He

paused, raised a syringe and squeezed until a few drops of

silvery liquid splashed from the needle. “But just enough,

carefully administered, can cure them. The restraints will

help if he has an adverse reaction to the drug.”

I crossed my arms. “If this doesn’t work, we always have

that cast iron kettle that packs quite a blow.”

As he pushed the needle into the patient’s skin,

Nicodemus said, “Speaking of which, start the tea and

keep the snide comments to a minimum. This will take

all night.” I felt my cheeks burn. He was right. It wasn’t

exactly a good moment to act like a prat when something

this serious was going on. “Markus.” My hand was inches

short of the door when I turned back to my teacher. He

turned the mostly full syringe in his hands over and over,

not meeting my eyes as he spoke. “I’m as frightened as you

are, but please try to be professional. If something happens,

you may end up in charge sooner than you intended.”

I felt my stomach jump. Imagining life without him was

impossible. Before I could respond, the patient started to

convulse violently.

He bucked and arched on the table, veins and muscle

bulged, turning his skin a rosy hue. Foam appeared at his

mouth as he snarled like a wild animal.

Nicodemus jumped back and I flattened against the door.

“What the hell?” I yelled.

The color drained from his face. “Gods, help us.”

My jaw dropped as I watched our patient turn into a

thing of nightmares. The man started arching his back,

straining and thrashing against the leather straps as thick

strands of hair sprang out from his skin. His legs grew

longer, snapping in three parts, cracking bone and cartilage.

The sound of the skeleton crunching under his skin sent

shivers down my spine. I could see the jagged edges of

bones pushing against flesh, threatening to break through.

His teeth sharpened into bestial fangs-- long, white, and

sinister. Nose and mouth stretched into a lupine snout with

whiskers popping out on either side. Both eyes enlarged

and spread back to the sides of its shaggy head, flaring

wide, like black pools against a yellow field. They rolled

wildly in their sockets. He thrashed back and forth, strands

of drool and blood spraying from his mouth. From his

fingers sprang cruel looking claws that gouged deep marks

in the table.

The straps broke.

The beast flung itself on all fours and gripped the end

of the exam table, staring at me with luminous eyes, now

mere slits in its dark, hairy head. From down in its chest it

growled, low and slow. A sinister grin stretched across its

muzzle and a dark red tongue lolled out of the side of its

mouth. It tipped back its head and from the depths of the

underworld conjured an ear-splitting, bone-chilling howl.

My mind was wiped blank with terror. The sound of

Nicodemus screaming my name was tinny and faded, and

desperately commanding me to follow. I was helplessly

rooted to the spot. My feet left the floor when he grabbed

the scruff of my shirt and sent the two of us tumbling out of

the clinic and into the hallway. He slammed the door shut

behind us, pulling the handle hard to keep it from opening.

He reached toward me, “Keys!”

A shower of glass shards from the clinic viewing window

exploded from over Nicodemus’ shoulder. We bolted into

the kitchen, barricading the door with a heavy wooden

table. “Gods’ blood,” I wheezed, pushing against the door.

I could hear the beast snuffling on the other side for a few

moments, and then silence filled the room.

Nicodemus and I continued pressing the table firmly

against the door, straining our ears for any sound. There

was none except for a faint, high-pitched ringing in

my ears. My teacher was drenched in sweat. As the

quiet settled in I felt my trembling hands ease. Finally,

Nicodemus’ breathing slowed to a normal rhythm and he

closed his eyes, letting his head rest against the door. A

trickle of sweat meandered down his cheek and dripped off

his chin. He said, barely above a whisper, “I can’t believe

this.”

I asked, “Why did he change?”

“I think it was a combination of the allergic reaction to

the silver in the medicine and the moon being full tonight,”

Nicodemus said. “If he had come to us a week earlier, even

this morning, there would have been only a negligible

chance of this happening. Bad timing.” He looked old. He

never looked old. Nicodemus was always bright-eyed and

confident. I’ve seen him worried sometimes, but this was

different. The situation had been wrenched completely out

of his control and it terrified him.

All I wanted right there and then was to hold him and

tell him it would be okay. We would think of something.

It wasn’t his fault. Instead, I looked away to make sure

he couldn’t see my face. All this chaos, the beast on the

other side of the door, the fact that we couldn’t hide in the

kitchen all night made good arguments against turning this

pause into a wine-and-roses moment. But I’ll be honest: my

heart was racing for reasons other than mortal peril.

We both tensed when we heard distant movement from

the other side of the door. I put my ear to the wood to listen,

but nothing followed. “What do we have to do?” I said.

His throat strained as he swallowed. “Administer at least

one full vial of the cure straight into the heart.” Nicodemus

closed his eyes and turned his head from me slightly.

My stomach lurched. I couldn’t help a fearful groan

escaping me.

“I’m so sorry,” my teacher said softly. “I should have

been better prepared.”

Rolling my eyes I asked, “How?”

For the first time that night, we chuckled. Nicodemus

pressed his ear to the door as I had done. “I don’t hear

anything. He must be in the other end of the house.”

A lock of dirty blonde hair with some grey strands fell in

front of his eyes. He never lets me cut it often enough, so

it’s no wonder that it keeps getting in his face. I reached up

to push it around his ear and I felt safe again as he towered

over me. That was when our eyes met, his soft brown

seeking out my blue. I trailed my fingers down the side

of his face, feeling the rough texture of his light colored

stubble from his oval-shaped jaw to his chin. My thoughts

of “not now” were drowned out by the timpani in my chest.

“Markus,” he whispered, “I...I’m your teacher, I can’t...”

“I don’t care.”

He pressed my hand to his face and closed his eyes.

A sudden, violent slam from the other side of the door

threw me backward into the middle of the kitchen. My head

cracked against the stone floor and I felt something warm

and sticky slowly ooze down the back of my head and

neck. Waves of nausea rose and I was seeing two or three

of everything. A long, hairy arm burst through the wood

and slashed at Nicodemus’ face. He yelled for me to run

around to the front of the house. I scrambled to my feet,

slipping and staggering for the back door with Nicodemus

hot on my heels. Seconds before swinging it shut we felt

a rush of air from behind us as the kitchen door and table

exploded in a torrent of splinters.

Nicodemus grabbed a shovel that rested against the

outside of the chimney and jammed it up under the

doorknob. “We have to get back into the clinic,” he said,

helping me up. “I have two more vials of liquid silver.” We

kept low to the ground to avoid being spotted through the

windows and skirted around the side of the house. When a

dizzy spell caught me hard I felt the world sway under my

feet, but Nicodemus caught me under the arm before I fell.

“Markus!”

“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I could feel more blood from the

back of my head dripping into my shirt collar. Gods, I had

such a headache.

The full moon illuminated the land so well that I could

see the strain on my teacher’s face. He tried to steady me

on my feet, but my knees kept buckling. “There are two

loaded needles. It will either kill him or cure him.”

“What are the chances?”

“Fifty-fifty.”

“Oh, sweet Goddess...” I rubbed the side of my head.

“Can you stand?”

I nodded and he let go slowly. I could still smell the soap

that he favors lingering on my shirt, surprising me with the

comfort that it gave.

“Markus,” Nicodemus hesitated for a moment and

swallowed thickly, “don’t let him bite you.”

I lifted my head to my teacher as I realized what he was

getting at. A tremor traveled up through my body so hard I

swore I was going to be sick. “No,” I said. “No, no, please

no, I didn’t sign up for this!” My legs gave out again and I

crashed onto my knees. “I can’t do this. Please don’t make

me do this, I can’t!”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, I won’t!”

He lifted my chin gently. “We don’t have a choice.”

I wanted to run. I wanted to cry. I wanted anything in the

world as long as I didn’t have to face that madness. There

was no luxury of losing control or holding on to the quiet

moment slipping through my fingers. Another crash from

inside reminded me of that hard, ugly truth. I found my

footing and the last of my courage as I was trying to decide

which of the two front doors I was seeing was real. Colors

were bleeding into each other as I struggled through waves

of nausea and pain caused by the concussion. Finally, I

pulled myself together on two unsteady legs, because we

had no choice. I was ready.

My teacher opened the door a crack. I slipped in behind

him and grabbed one of the two needles, leaving him the

other. Glass shards of smashed bottles crunched under our

feet and there was a gaping hole where the viewing window

used to sit in the wall. Some of the medicine shelves were

broken, their contents scattered and smearing the wood

floor. The door from the clinic to the hallway was ripped

off the hinges and lying on its side in three pieces. We

were mere steps inside when the snarling creature lunged

through the glassless window, launching itself off the exam

table right on top of Nicodemus.

I stood transfixed at the sight, clenching the syringe in

my hand with no breath to scream. They tumbled over each

other, the hairy thing snapping and slashing at my teacher.

Nicodemus’ arm flailed out to the side, the needle flying

from his fingers and rolling unbroken toward the cottage

side door. I watched in horror as it brought its jaws down

on his shoulder and shook him like a rag doll. He screamed

out under the massive, furry monster and fell to the floor, a

bloody heap.

“No!” In two quick movements I was up on the exam

table and leaping off its edge onto the back of the savage

beast. It thrashed back, trying to dislodge me. I grabbed the

top of its scalp, digging in with my fingernails, and pulled

its head to the side as hard as I could. With my other hand,

I stretched over its shoulder, feeling the tendons in my arm

strain with the effort. The syringe found its target, pumping

the beast’s heart full of liquid silver.

Convulsions ripped through the animal so violently that

I lost my grip and crashed into one of the bookcases. I

scrambled over to my teacher as the creature howled and

snarled, doing my best to get him away from the thrashing

beast. Nicodemus was bleeding heavily from his shoulder.

Amidst all the chaos, I reached out for my healing will,

begging, pleading with my natural energy and his to stem

the bleeding. Fighting through the pain in my head, a wispy

blue glow wound its way down from my wrists and over

his left side. I could feel the tissue starting to reconnect,

slowly but surely. The beast’s cries were weakening and

as my talents finally kicked in, the gruesome sounds faded

into the background. “Please,” I whispered, “please...”

The puncture wounds sealed. The ligaments half-

heartedly mended. It was all I could conjure at the point,

but when I called back my energy, I knew he would be all

right. At least I thought I did. “Thank the Goddess you’re

alive.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, feeling his

stubble against my cheek.

“Markus,” Nicodemus’ voice strained.

“You’re going to be fine now.” I expected to see him

smile, but when I pulled back to look at him my breath

seized in my chest. My Nicodemus has brown eyes, soft

brown eyes that are kind and inviting. When he tells our

patients, “You’re safe here,” they always believe it, because

he does too. The eyes I looked into, ruddy gold irises

slashed with a dark pupil up the middle, gazed back into

mine with no measure of kindness, only pain and death.

“I’m sorry, dear boy,” he whispered.

I barely had time to grab the unspent syringe before

Nicodemus threw me off. The body of our patient was at

my back now-- fully human, cold and dead. New sounds of

transformation filled the clinic with the same wet popping

of tendons and stretching of skin as when our patient first

transformed. My teacher’s bones started to snap and bend,

hair pouring out of his skin, face twisting into a muzzle.

His screams bounced off what was left of the clinic walls.

I pressed my hands against my ears, but couldn’t block

the sound. Ruddy gold slits, lamp-like in the half-light

and burning with bloodlust stared back at me. He stilled,

panting softly. We stared at each other in the eerie silence

and for a split second I prayed to any god that could hear

me that his humanity had fought through.

“Nicodemus?” My voice sounded so small. I felt so

small. There was no one else around to help and I felt the

full weight of that suffocating me. If he was gone I would

have nothing left.

The creature stood to its full height. I could see the full

moon over its left shoulder through the window leading

to the path outside. It was like some horrific painting. The

beast’s chest rose and fell gently as it stared at me with

luminescent eyes. “Teacher, please.” I could feel the pit of

my stomach drop out. A sinister grin spread across its face

as it leaned forward, opening its jaws. It lunged at me. I

screamed and ran into the hall, tripping over cracked wood,

not stopping until I reached my bedroom and slammed the

door behind me.

My shaking hands found the locks in time. Tears ran

down my cheeks in what felt like rivers as I tried to make

sense of the whole mess and this terror that had invaded

our home and stolen my Nicodemus from me. I hated the

bastard now dead on our floor. I hated him for bringing this

madness to us. Death was too good for that degenerate.

Bracing my back to the door, I slid down it with my head in

my hands, waiting for the pounding, for the door to break

over me.

Nothing.

My shirt was soaked with sweat, my ponytail stiff with

dried blood from the crack in my skull. The beating of my

heart filled my ears and my head throbbed in agony. My

Nicodemus was gone. He would kill me or the cure would

kill him. Again, the world seemed to shift suddenly under

me and I rolled forward onto my knees. I tried focusing

my eyes on the floor to ground myself, but seeing three

blurry syringes, twenty-odd fingers and an endless pattern

of blood splotches told me that I was getting worse. The

pain was blinding. I couldn’t concentrate enough to conjure

my healing will. If I didn’t get help soon, time would finish

what that thing had started.

I heard the beast on the other side of the door. It was a

gurgling, heavy sound like nothing I recognized, but there

was a rhythm to it, a staccato sound to the wet rumbling.

Then I realized. It was laughing. That horrible thing was

laughing at me. Managing to get back on my feet, I closed

my eyes, searching again for my focus and begged my heart

to slow. I had no choice and only one dose left. Running

from it or facing it would both end in death, but at the very

least I would die on my own damn terms.

Everything crystallized in the stillness and my senses

sharpened, giving a hard outline to the familiar objects in

my room. I could smell the night air, as crisp as ever, and

the glass syringe felt cool and light in my hand. With a deep

breath I opened the door and locked eyes with the monster

-- my mentor, my best friend, my whole world -- standing

on the other side with a nasty smirk on its face. It wasn’t

my Nicodemus.

I steadied myself and gripped the syringe. The beast

spread his hairy arms, dipped its shoulders toward me,

opened its jaws and roared. I narrowed my eyes and

scowled. As it came at me, I pitched the vase off my

nightstand at its face. The vase shattered across the

bastard’s muzzle into a thousand pieces, blinding it and

buying me seconds. It staggered, stunned just long enough

for me to knock the horrid thing on its back. I straddled

its waist and plunged the needle into its heart, pushing

the contents straight into it. It howled and thrashed under

me, but I’d be damned if I’d let go. I slammed my heels

into its sides, aiming for his kidneys, before another wave

of dizziness shot through me. Spilling off the beast like a

rag doll, I lay sprawled across the floor, fighting to keep

my eyes open, but unconsciousness was so near and so

tempting. Through the haze I watched and prayed for both

of us.

It convulsed violently, foaming at the mouth for several

minutes, and then lay deathly still. The hair on its flesh fell

out, drifting to the floor. Its frame slowly reverted from

beast to man, muzzle shrinking to a human mouth and nose.

Nicodemus’ hands diminished from deadly claws to slender

fingers and his legs went back to bending the normal

way. Finally, my eyes failed me and I surrendered to the

darkness.

“Nicodemus?” I heard my own voice whisper softly.

“Nicodemus?”

There was no way for me to know how much time had

passed, but as my mind crawled back to consciousness

a warm sensation enveloped the back of my skull. I felt

energy in my head coaxing my bones to heal, asking my

flesh and brain if it would please mend itself. Opening my

eyes, I was greeted by my teacher’s smiling face. “You

saved me,” he said weakly. My spent body was draped

across his lap, his hands cradling my head. When he kissed

my brow I wept like a child. I couldn’t help it. He is more

than my teacher. If I ever lost him it would be too much

to bear. Nicodemus cradled me in his arms, murmuring

comforting words and telling me how grateful he felt and

that he was so proud of me.

I’ll admit I cried myself to sleep. After all that,

Nicodemus and I are still together and that’s all that matters

to me. If called to act again, I know I’ll be ready.

END

Moonlight Becomes Him

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