A hot, itching feeling began to surge through his body; his head started to pound. The urge to change. But there was something different. The compulsion, usually nagging and insistent, was all-engulfing. They want you to give in to your wolf side? OK. Fine. Show them just what that means. That weird red tint was back in his vision. ‘Kate,’ he gasped. ‘Help me.’

‘Hold on, Tom,’ she called, somewhere close by.

A terrifying, keening howl echoed out around him.

‘No, Tom!’ Kate called desperately. ‘Please, no, not now! Not like this!’

It suddenly clicked in his head that the howling was his. The change was in full flow. His human flesh and bones were melting away as his ’wolf lunged out from the darkness to dominate. Tom could feel his consciousness slipping away as the lupine will took hold.

‘Your eyes,’ Kate was shouting, almost hysterical. ‘Jesus, Tom, your eyes are yellow! Yellow! This isn’t you, Tom, it isn’t you!’

Chapter Eleven

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tom’s morphing lupine body tore free of Ramone’s clothes. His body looked more bestial, more powerful than Kate had ever seen it. That, together with his eerie yellow eyes, was enough to warn her well away.

This wasn’t Tom as she knew him. She could hear it, in the way he bellowed his rage up at Marcie and Swagger. The two ’wolves were leaning over the side of the bridge above them, snapping their jaws, their sinister silhouettes blotting out stars.

Kate had seen the rage that had taken Tom up on the bridge, the excessive violence he’d meted out. The glazed, unseeing look in his eyes had reminded her of Swagger and his generals back at the arena –and those unwilling warriors fighting for survival in the rink. Now that rage was back – only, in his ’wolf form, Tom could be unstoppable.

He leaped down from the scaffolding and landed half on land, half in the water. At once, two black shapes detached themselves from the darkness and attacked him. Jesus, there were more ’wolves down there, lying in wait –they’d been surrounded. Clearly Kate’s mom was taking no chances.

But just as clearly, Marcie hadn’t reckoned with the change in Tom’s personality. Kate saw her standing motionless now, watching the show as Tom fought off the ’wolves with a ruthless determination. His club-like paws swiped through flesh. His teeth tore at fur and muscle and bone.

It was a bloodbath.

Another ’wolf burst out of the blackness to throw itself at Tom, and he went down beneath its bulk. The two monsters rolled over and over till they hit the water with a colossal splash. Kate stared helplessly. There was nothing she could do to help him. She was frightened even to draw attention to herself, for fear of what he might do to her.