Story

Hellhound - By Jerry Mander

Carl's machete was heavy and well-honed, but the dense jungle growth only grudgingly gave way before his blows. Sweat stung his eyes and biting insects buzzed at his ears. Behind him, he could hear Caroline trudging through the thick undergrowth without complaint, which was more than could be said for Eric, a grad student assistant who accompanied them. It was tough and miserable going, but both Carl and his wife were certain they were onto something. Years of research and months poring over satellite imagery had convinced them that one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient Mesoamericas was now within hours of their reach.

Carl had met Caroline at Brown. His specialty was linguistics; hers was archaeology. Carl was no creampuff he had been a star of the lacrosse team, but Caroline was born to explore. She was five-foot-eight of toned feminine muscle packed into a stunning package or beauty, grace and toughness. She had been a champion cross-country skier, a climber and a triathlete. On a field trip to the Valley of the Pharaohs, the linguist met the explorer and it was love at first sight. A lesser man may have been intimidated by Caroline's physical stamina and genius IQ, but Carl was cocksure and just close enough to arrogance to be immune to intimidation. While less capable women may have found Carl's sometimes misplaced sense of self-worth off-putting, Caroline found it endearing. So endearing, in fact, that they were married after grad school and spent almost every hour, both sleeping and waking, working together to solve ancient mysteries.

The present subject of their attention was a pre-Mayan temple featured in the pre-history legends of most of the Mesoamerican cultures. The temple was long thought to be a myth, given the extraordinary tales spun around it, but Carl had determined that common elements of various Nahuatl, Mayan, Incan and other pictograms were actually characters of an older written language. His translations had led Caroline and himself to locate three artifacts related to the legend. One was located in the Yucatan, one in Panama and another in Colombia. Carl believed them to be a set of keys that not only gave the location of the legendary temple of Tecohuat, but served as some sort of gateway to its secrets.

For her part, Caroline never lent much credence to supernatural tales. Her brilliant mind could assimilate and make sense of all sorts of data, but the supernatural had always seemed a waste of her time. Carl, on the other hand, spent his days steeped in ancient writings, the vast majority of which were religious in nature. Though he still clung to his Christian upbringing, he had opened his mind to all sorts of possibilities as his travels time and again led his wife and him to physical evidence of ancient religious tales.

Having lost use of his GPS hours before, Carl stopped to again check his compass heading. He was sure he was still on course. Chopping his way into a clearing, Carl caught sight of a low mound about which were scattered large stones worn away by the elements, but still exhibiting telltale signs of ancient masonry.

"Could this be it?" Carl called back to Caroline.

Caroline strode ahead of Carl in order to get a better look at the mound and the apparent remains of a structure. She looked from one scattered stone to another, reassembling them in her mind into the most likely form and location.

"If it is, then the entrance should be in this area," she responded, gesturing to a heap of massive stones.

Carl and Eric caught up to her and the two began examining the jumble of massive stones, looking for all the world like a set of Lincoln Logs that some giant had toppled with a mighty hand.

"Here!" shouted Caroline, crouching between two of the massive blocks.

Joining her, Carl peered down an apparent passage between two of the stones, almost hidden in a tangle of vine and undergrowth.

"Could be," he observed, shining a flashlight into the depths of the tunnel. "It gets larger and it's deep."

Carl hacked away the vines with the machete until the opening was large enough for a human being to fit through. Fishing through his pack, he located a pair of LED flashlights affixed to headbands, giving one to Caroline.

"Where's mine?" chirped Eric.

"Just stay close and try to follow our lead," responded Carl dryly. "We don't need anyone getting hurt."

Easing into the tunnel with their head-mounted flashlights dimly illuminating the way, Carl and Caroline cautiously proceeded, keeping an eye out for vipers and other potential dangers. As the darkness of the tunnel deepened, Carl took out a handheld lantern, casting a beam well ahead. This and their adjusting eyesight gave them a better view.

The tunnel grew wider and wider, and after a hundred feet, pictograms began to appear on the wall. As best Carl could decipher, they were warnings to intruders, followed by supplications to some deity whose name Carl could not decipher. As the pictograms grew more elaborate, some clearly depicted human sacrifice as well as victims being torn apart by what could only be termed monsters.

"Are these as bad as they look?" asked Caroline in a hushed tone.

Eric swallowed hard as he gazed upon the grizzly images.

"Worse," intoned Carl. "This is a dark place."

Carl felt compelled to spend some time copying the inscriptions and photographing the pictograms, but there would be time for that later. He needed to know if this was indeed the temple Tecohuat, and only the location of the ancient altar with the three receptacles for the keystones would answer that.

The three continued deeper and deeper until a glow appeared ahead. As they neared, they could see that a shaft of daylight from an opening far above was casting a glow that covered the full width of the widening tunnel before it expanded into a large chamber beyond. The light was sufficiently bright and their eyes sufficiently adapted that they were able to pack away their flashlights.

Carl proceeded cautiously, but Caroline stepped ahead into the large chamber beyond the curtain of daylight.

"Incredible!" she whispered.

As Carl followed, Eric trailing, he could see for himself what appeared to be a cavernous temple carved out around a large stone table, beyond which was a wall with a smooth inset circular carving some ten feet in diameter. The carvings here were clear and precise. The artistry and precision were beyond anything he had previously seen in the New World, but he recognized the written symbols. They were in the same ancient and unknown language he had deciphered in order to locate the keystones.

As he drew near to the table, three deep and precise impressions told him that this was the altar he sought.

"We found it!" he exulted.

"Now if we can just find a clue as to who they were," Caroline added.

"We found the library," Carl mused as he fished through his heavy backpack, "now let's use the keys."

From his backpack, Carl produced a heavy cylindrical stone almost as large as an oilcan. It carried small and precise inscriptions around its cylindrical face as well as on its flat top and bottom. He then asked Eric for two more stones carried in his pack.

Carl placed the stones on the altar, then blew a fine layer of dust away from the first of the three depressions carved into it, surrounded by pictograms. He located the stone whose inscriptions seemed to match to the depression, whose own inscriptions were a continuation of those on the cylinder. Carl dropped the stone into the depression, rotating it until the carvings on the bottom side aligned with those on the bottom of the depression, allowing it to key into place with just over an inch exposed at the top. Moving to each of the other depressions, he likewise matched the other two keystones, keying them into place. As the third stone was aligned and dropped, Carl thought he could hear a distant mechanical clunk.

With the three stones in place, Carl fetched his notes from the backpack, turning on one of the flashlights to help him read them. As he refreshed his memory, checking his notes on the anticipated appearance of the altar against the real article, Caroline walked behind it, examining the large circular carving in the wall.

"If the creators of this place used the hexagesimal system for celestial mechanics as I surmise, then the key is based on degrees of rotation. Aligning each of these keystones to the given rotational angle should produce the effect spoken of in the texts."

"Opening the gate?" Caroline queried. "What do you think it really refers to?"

"I guess we'll find out," Carl nervously responded. "Okay, the first one is 54 degrees, though I'm not sure how it's supposed to rotate keyed into the bottom of this slab."

Carl poised his fingers over the cylinder, ready to rotate it 54 degrees. His fingers touch the stone and he was just about to begin its rotation when Caroline stopped him.

"Wait!" she said, staring at the circle behind the altar. "Look at these grooves."

Carl looked closely and noted in the dim light that there were equally spaced radial marks carved into the perimeter of the circle.

"Can you count them?" he asked.

"Sure, but I would say that there are more than 360," Caroline mused.

She counted, then counted again and a third time for good measure.

"480," she counted, turning to look at Carl. "That's a 4:3 ratio over 360."

"So do you think that means that the stone should be rotated 54 out of 480 clicks?" he asked. "I don't see matching gradations here on the altar, and my protractor only does degrees."

"That would equate to 40.5 degrees," Caroline quickly calculated. "What if we get it wrong?"

"Well," Carl wistfully replied, "there's an inscription on each that prescribes instant death to anyone who fails to correctly key the gate."

"Funny," Eric flatly responded.

"I'm serious," Carl replied.

Eric turned to look at his face. He was serious.

"You're the one who believes in the bogeyman," Caroline replied to Carl. "It's your call."

Carl trusted Caroline. She was as intuitive as she was brilliant.

"40.5 degrees it is," he nervously quipped.

Carl marked off 40.5 degrees of rotation using his compass, then grasped the stone, expecting to have to lift it with his fingertips in order to turn it, but he felt it give easily with the slightest torque. He began turning it clockwise until he reached the mark. Nothing seemed to happen.

"Hmmm," Carl muttered. "Then next one is 172."

"That's 129 degrees," Caroline answered without hesitation.

Carl marked off 129 degrees and rotated the second stone. As he reached his mark, he thought he could feel a slight vibration suddenly being transmitted through the stone.

"I think we may be onto something," he smiled, moving to the third stone.

"What's 442?" he asked.

"331.5," came the instant response.

Carl marked off the angular measurement and began rotating the third stone. As it rotated, he could feel resistance growing with each degree of rotation. By the time he had reached the 180-degree point, he had to use both hands to keep it turning. By 270, a low hum had begun to permeate the walls of the temple. Carl looked to Caroline with trepidation as he continued to turn the stone with ever-increasing difficulty.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he half-joked.

Carl had to put his whole body into the final few degrees of rotation, but as he reached the 331.5 mark, it locked into place with a clunk.

"I think we…" he began, but his words were cut short by a deafening hum accompanied by an intensely glowing light emanating from the circle behind the altar.

With a sudden rush of wind and swirls of sparks, the circle behind the altar dematerialized, pushing Caroline to the ground and leaving a shimmering glow like a veil over a long tunnel where the stone circle had been.

Carl uncovered his face and looked down the long corridor before him. Something looked wrong about it something other than the fact that it existed where once there had been only solid stone. But before he could collect his thoughts, Caroline lifted herself from the ground directly before the glowing veil at the mouth of the portal and, without a second thought, climbed through. She stood for a second, peering down the corridor, then turned to gesture for Carl. There was a look of confusion on her face, as though she could not see beyond the entrance she had just stepped through. Carl could see her calling to him, but he could hear nothing. As he watched, she tried to step back to his side of the glowing veil, but it seemed as though she were bumping into a solid wall.

"Caroline!" Carl shouted as he leapt over the altar and through the shimmering entrance, leaving the dumbstruck Eric behind.

To his relief, Carl found himself with his arms wrapped around his wife in the mouth of the tunnel. He turned to look out of the tunnel and back into the temple, but there was only darkness, opaque and impenetrable. He reached out to feel for the entrance, but found the same increasing resistance he felt through the last keystone until his hand could move no further. He called to Eric, but there was no response.

Carl turned to see Caroline's gaze focused down the tunnel.

"It's so odd," she mused. "There's light, but I can't see where it's coming from."

True enough, Carl found that he could dimly see all the way down the tunnel, which was evenly lit but with no apparent light source.

"Well, we can't go back this way, so I guess we had better find out where this goes," he suggested.

"What about Eric?" Caroline asked.

"If I know Eric, he'll stay put," Carl responded.

As the two began slowly making their way down the tunnel, two dark objects stirred some distance ahead of them. Carl froze, catching Caroline by the arm.

The objects seemed to rise from the floor of the tunnel and circle momentarily before freezing in place. Carl hoped that he and his wife had not been detected by whatever was before them, but the objects began moving in their direction, first slowly, then with greater speed. As they drew closer, Carl could see that they were very large and seemed to travel on four legs. He could make out no detail in their black silhouettes.

Whatever the things were, they were nearing quickly, now on a dead run.

"C'mon!" Carl directed Caroline, pulling her by the arm in the direction of the tunnel mouth.

"But the entrance is sealed, isn't it?" Caroline responded as they turned and began running toward it.

"I don't know, but I'll take my chances," Carl replied, now in a full sprint.

Carl looked back over his shoulder to see two huge beasts rapidly closing on them. Quickly calculating the speed with which they were being overtaken, he figured that he and Caroline and whatever was coming at them would reach the tunnel mouth at about the same time. He was relieved to see that Caroline was keeping up stride for stride.

As the black void of the tunnel mouth grew from a dot to a looming disc of blackness, Carl could hear heavy footfalls behind him, closing fast. Suddenly, there erupted a rumbling noise that sounded like a thunderous animal growl, just meters behind him and Caroline. Just as the black former opening loomed in his sight, he could hear, and almost feel, the creatures behind them leave their feet in a leap toward them. Reflexively, Carl dove, pulling Caroline to the ground with him, and as he did so, two huge black beasts soared over them, one turning to snap massive jaws at them but catching only air.

As the huge shapes hit the black void, it again shimmered with light and became transparent, allowing the beasts to pass.

Looking up from the ground, Carl could see Eric, his face contorted in shock, as one of the two huge dog-like creatures caught his head in its gaping jaws, flipping him like a rag doll to the ground as the other sprawled onto the floor of the temple beyond, immediately rising to its feet and spinning back toward him. But before it could make a move in his direction, the two beasts began shaking violently as if in pain , the one dropping what was left of Eric, his head torn away and hanging from his neck by a flap of skin. As the beasts thrashed their heads about, their black fur began to smoke. Lines of glowing red like burning coals began to appear from under the fur, appearing like cracks in shattering glass, and shimmering convection currents distorted the air around them. One of the beasts let out a blood-curdling howl before becoming enveloped in brimstone. Within seconds, both creatures flamed to hardened ash, then shattered into dust on the floor.

Carl stood dumbfounded. What were those things? Carl imagined that they looked like some sort of huge dog, but the faces were all wrong. As best he could see, they had red eyes and heavier muzzles, and the teeth were more like something from Jurassic Park than from any canine he had ever seen.

Carl looked at Caroline, who was still staring in the direction of the temple, then grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the still-transparent portal.

"Wait!" Caroline countered, pulling back at him. "What if exiting the portal does the same thing to us that it did to those things?"

What if more of them are coming this way to do to us what they did to Eric?" Carl shot back. "I'll take my chances."

He turned to step through the portal but it was already darkening. He tried to step forward, but could feel the increasingly repulsive force pushing back against him. A moment later, he was again staring into blackness. The opportunity was lost.

Carl began to turn to his wife, but her hand was violently jerked from his. For a split second he saw a tall black silhouette looming over him, then everything went black.

When Carl awoke, he was naked on a stone floor. He tried to get his bearings, but everything was strange. He was in a vast chamber, or at least it seemed like a chamber. The stone floor spread out before him, illuminated in the same sourceless light as the tunnel, but the light fell away to blackness a few hundred feet in every direction, revealing no walls or ceiling. There was no sign of his clothes, his pack or of his wife. He sat up.

"Caroline!" he called out. His voice seemed deadened and there was no echo whatsoever. There was no response.

Carl rose to his feet, attempting to wrap his head around the bizarre scene. He began to randomly walk, calling for Caroline, but receiving no response not even his own echo. As he walked, Carl noted that no matter how far he went and no matter what direction, the light still fell off a few hundred feet beyond him.

Though he felt no fear, Carl began to feel dread, not for himself but for Caroline. Where was she? Even as he focused on her, it was as though he could see her in the distance. The vision was unsettling, as she hung limply from a stone wall suspended by shackles at her hands above and feet below, her head bowed unconsciously forward and her body and knees draped in a limp forward arc. The sight was so real that he thought he was actually seeing it, but no matter how he tried to walk toward it, it hung like a mirage at the edge of the light a few hundred feet beyond him.

"Caroline!" he shouted as loudly as he his lungs would allow, but she did not stir. "What's happening? Where am I?"

A low rumble like a deep laugh rolled about him, seemingly coming from every direction at once. Carl spun to try to detect its source, but no source was evident.

"Who's there?" Carl demanded.

"Your god," came a reply in the same impossibly deep voice. As the words formed, they took shape and funneled from omnidirectional to a single source behind him.

Carl turned again, seeing a tall shadow at the edge of the darkness. He strained his eyes, but could make out no detail other than a tall dark shape that he guessed to be some fourteen feet tall. Stepping forward from the edge of darkness was another of the beasts that had attacked them in the tunnel. Carlfelt a shot of adrenaline as he prepared to flee, but then he saw that this one wore a band about its neck and seemed to be connected to a tether that disappeared into the darkness.

"Not my god," Carl responded in the direction of the shadow.

"You call yourself hu-man," came the reply. "I know your kind. It has been long since you sent me a sacrifice."

"Whoah!" responded Carl. "I think there's been a mistake. No one sent a sacrifice."

"You destroyed my beloved murderers," the voice responded. "There WILL be a sacrifice."

"We didn't destroy anything," Carl responded, unafraid. "Those things chased us and we ran. One of them killed our assistant, but I don't know what caused them to burn up."

"It is known that they are no longer allowed beyond the gate," rumbled the voice. "You lured them beyond and destroyed them."

"No, no, no," Carl began, "that's not what happened. We…"

"Silence!" the thundering voice demanded, cutting him off mid-sentence. The figure suddenly seemed closer and the darkness closed in to within a few tens of feet. "Lives were lost and lives will replace them."

Carl raised his hands in genuflection, "Look, I don't know who you are or where we are. My wife and I are here by mistake, our assistant is dead, and you need to just let us go back where we came from."

A low rumble erupted from the shadowy figure. "You come to my domain and pretend to not know me?" the shadow asked. "I am your god. My names would take a thousand years to pronounce in your pathetic tongue. None of your kind come here but as sacrifice or servant, and you are no servant."

"We are explorers; knowledge-seekers," Carl tried to explain. "We knew of this place only through ancient legend, and learned of it from a tongue that has not been spoken in millennia. Whatever happened to your…pets was an accident."

There was silence, but the shadow seemed to grow as the little sphere of illumination tightened to within a few yards of Carl. He could feel the scrutiny of this strange being on him.

"Very well. I will let you go," responded the shadow.

"Thank you!" Carl exhaled, overcome with relief.

"But there are two conditions," the voice continued. "First, tell no one of my temple. Long has it been concealed from your kind and so it should stay."

"Okay," began Carl, "but…"

"Second," continued the voice, ignoring Carl's interruption, "the death of your assistant pays for one of my losses, but you will give the other as sacrifice for my loss.""

"The other?" asked Carl with incredulity. "You want me to leave Caroline as a sacrifice? Oh, no no…"

"She will be mine and you will go," demanded the voice.

"I'm not leaving without her," Carl declared, gathering his courage. "I love her, and I had rather die trying to defend her than to abandon her."

"Then you shall die. You are willing to die?" responded the voice flatly.

"I am not leaving without her."

Again there was silence, but Carl could feel the shadow withdraw to a distance before losing it in the darkness. Carl spun in a circle, but could not detect the location of the shadow.

"Caroline!" Carl again called, and again her image appeared, shackled and unconscious, at the edge of the darkness.

"Tell me of love," came a voice almost directly behind Carl and inches from his ear, causing him to spin wildly about, losing sight of his beloved.

The shadowy figure loomed directly before him, the black beast at its side. It had the approximate shape of a man, but the shroud of darkness that enveloped it made any other detail impossible to discern.

"For countless ages I knew your kind," the voice explained. "You are different. Your skin is fair and your hair is pale and wrinkled. Your eyes are a strange color, as are hers. The humans I knew were cunning and cruel. They were fierce warriors and they understood many mysteries. They were driven by the reproductive imperative and protected their young, but I have not heard of this love, and its feel is unfamiliar. Explain."

"Wow," Carl began, "how do I describe it? Love is probably the noblest emotion. It is the unifying emotion that places the good of another above that of oneself."

"Hmph!" snorted the shadow, "you are deceived."

"Love is real!" Carl insisted.

A laugh rumbled from the shadowy figure. "You deceive yourselves. Reason was joke played on you at your creation, and it mocks you. Like every other beast, you are driven by imperatives that insure the survival of your species, but your flawed gift of reason drives you to deny your nature. Rather than to accept your instinct, you rationalize higher purposes like love. Even in the old days, your kind used reason to create false gods that you pretended would make gods of you. You imagine yourselves gods in the making and you fabricate higher purposes and emotions to mask your animal nature. Pathetic!"

Carl was taken aback. It was a lot to absorb, but Carl still wasn't buying it.

"Yes," Carl began, "my God promises a life after, and my God teaches us of higher purposes like self-sacrifice and love."

"Your god?" The shadow laughed. "I am your god."

"You," Carl stated emphatically, "are not my god. Maybe some primitive humans worshipped you as a god some time in the remote past, but no one today has even heard of you. What did they call you, anyhow?"

"My name is ineffable, but your ancestors called me The Dark One, Shadow of Death and Life, Bringer of Rain and Grower of Crops, Dealer of Justice and Pain, Crowner of Kings and…"

"Okay, I get it," Carl interrupted. "The Dark One."

"You arrogance leads you to impudence," the voice said calmly. "But I will propose a wager."

"A wager?" Carl asked, intrigued.

"You believe this love is real, and you believe that she shares it for you," the shadow began. "I know that it is a subtle insanity in the form of self-denial of your animal nature, and that given a choice between pure instinct and this love you say exists, she will respond to pure instinct."

"And how would you prove this?" Carl queried.

"My murderers that you destroyed are creatures of instinct. I see in your mind that you are dimly aware of them. Though they have not walked your world for ages, they are remembered in your lore as hellhounds."

Carl knew what the figure was saying was true. "That's the European version of the myth, yes…" Carl agreed, taking a moment to more closely examine the dog-like monster at the end of the shadow's tether. It was like a massive canine, but it was more muscular and narrowed to a vastly thinner waist. The beast was blacker than black and its snout was oddly shaped, with a downward curve toward the nose and what seemed to be almost a double thickness to its snout and jaw. Carl remembered seeing these compress as the teeth snapped at him in the tunnel. Were the teeth retractable?

"Here is the wager: Given a shared mind in which she has equal part human thought and emotion and equal part instinct of my hellhound here, she will respond to the honest instinctive imperative to mate with my remaining hellhound before she will choose to mate with you. If you win, you both go free, but with the promise not to reveal the temple's location. If you lose, I keep your Caroline as replacement for my lost murderers and you die. A life must be given for a new hellhound life to begin"

"That's insane!" Carl retorted. "Even if any of that were possible, which it isn't, there's zero chance that Caroline would choose some canine monster over her husband."

"Then you agree to the wager?" the shadow asked.

"I didn't say that!" Carl quickly shot back. "Caroline would have to agree, for starters, and I would have to know how you intend to accomplish this melding of her mind with that of some monster dog. I also have to know that doing so would not harm her or her mind or memories."

"Very well," answered the Dark One. "I will show you how it is to be accomplished and I will explain to you the mysteries of the hellhound race, but she will not be told these things. You may not interfere until she has been able to experience life as a hellhound sees it in order to level the playing field between you and my beast. You may not speak to her once the wager has begun, except that you will again have a chance to state your case as her mate before she is allowed to choose."

"How do I know this isn't just a trick?" Carl asked suspiciously.

"Accomplishing the wager will require three conscious affirmations on her part, with each affirmation consecrated by a murder."

"Murder?" Carl shot back, alarmed.

"Murder is my word for the hellhound purpose, which is to hunt and kill for me just as the canines of your world hunt and kill."

"Caroline wouldn't kill anything," Carl observed, more to himself than to his captor, "except maybe to save a human life."

"Then you have no reason not to agree to the wager," the Dark One seemed to smile. "Shall we seek the approval of your mate?" he said as he move around Carl, causing him to turn to face the other direction.

To Carl's amazement, he turned to face a stone wall, from which hung the motionless Caroline.

The Dark One waved what appeared to be a shadowy arm before Caroline's face, causing her to stir to consciousness. Carl wanted to run to her, but the same force that had held him from the tunnel entrance held him away from her.

"Not yet!" shot the Dark One. "In due time. But you may explain to her what you now know along with the terms of the wager.

"Can you at least give her some clothing?" Carl asked, gesturing to the naked Caroline.

"There is no need for adornment here," the Dark One glowered.

Stirring to consciousness, Caroline interjected, "Please, I need some clothing for warmth and protection."

"I will provide a fine coat of fur soon enough," retorted the shadow, "and there is no need for warmth or protection in this place, even for your feeble bodies."

"May we speak privately?" Carl requested.

"Do as you wish," replied the Dark One as he slipped back into the shadows.

Carl began to explain the situation to Caroline, helpless to come to her aid as she hung naked from the restraints.

"How does this thing propose to make me think like one of those monsters?" Caroline asked.

"I don't know," responded Carl. "I don't know what sort of thing he is and I have no idea where we are or how to get back home. I only know that Eric is dead and that we are trapped here for the moment. But I don't want you to do this."

"I don't see any other way out, Carl," Caroline thoughtfully responded. "I don't like this any more than you do, but maybe I can learn something that would be useful in getting us out of here. Besides, no matter what happens, I would never forsake you. The only question is whether this thing has any intention of honoring the bet when we win."

"It says it's our god," mused Carl. "I know that's bullshit, so I don't trust it, and I am scared out of my wits to consider what your being changed so that you can live as a hellhound would entail. Do you think it can actually do that?"

"I have no idea what is possible in this place or even where this place is," Caroline offered. "We have to assume that it can do what it says it can do, and for now we have to assume that we have no other options. I sure as hell can't do anything shackled to this wall. We'll just have to figure out what's going on, and for now that means accepting the wager. If you're in, I'm in."

Calling out to the Dark One, Carl had one final question.

"What's to keep your monster from simply tearing Caroline or me apart?"

"There would be no sport in that," retorted the Dark One as he appeared from the shadow. "For the duration of the wager, as long as my beast is not attacked, it will not draw blood from you or your Caroline."

With that, Carl and Caroline consented to the bet. Then in an instant, without remembering how he got there, Carl found himself on a sort of platform above a vast illuminated area over which arced an immense dome of some unknown transparent material.

"Your observation platform" came the voice behind him. "This is the arena in which the wager will be carried out."

Carl strained to see across the breadth and depth of the vast area, wondering what good a platform would do when much of the arena was well beyond his visual range.

As if reading his mind, the shadow suddenly loomed before Carl, reaching out what seemed to be a finger to touch his forehead.

"I give you my sight," said the Dark One.

As the Dark One receded, Carl again viewed the arena, but he noted something strange. He focused on a area that must have been several hundred yards away, and it was suddenly as if he were standing right there. To one side was a large boulder. When Carl attempted to look at it, he did not just see the side that faced his apparent position, but rather viewed every side at once. The effect was momentarily disorienting, but Carl was surprised how quickly he became accustomed to it. Not only could he view multiple angles at once, it was as though he could see inside and around things as well. Amazing.

"From here," intoned the Dark One, "you may monitor every aspect of our little drama to its very conclusion. In this manner, you may know that the game is fair."

Suddenly Carl was back on the platform, viewing the arena from his distant perspective and then catching sight of his beloved Caroline and a sudden flurry of activity around her.

"It begins," the Dark One stated coldly, then gestured, "My minions."

Shadowy figures stirred around Caroline's position. They released the restraints on Caroline's arms and legs and lowered her from the wall, strapping a wide collar inset with some substance that mimicked the vivid blue of her eyes. The use of the collar was, of course, unnecessary no doubt an intentional taunt, hinting at the fate that her captor wished upon her. Once on the ground, she was roughly led by a tether attached to the collar to the verge of the large arena. The substance forming the bubble around the arena was virtually invisible, but an oval area the size of a doorway could be seen to glow and then disappear, leaving a clear opening. The collar was removed and Caroline was roughly shoved through the opening. As she stumbled to the ground inside the arena, the oval behind her again glowed and then disappeared, leaving no trace of the opening.

Caroline picked herself up and spun to test the opening, but there was only the seamless barrier. She shouted for Carl through the barrier, but the sound was absorbed. From his observation point, Carl could only watch.

"If there is something you need to hear," interrupted the Dark One, "I will allow you to hear, but you will not be allowed to communicate. You must honor the wager."

Resigned to the ordeal ahead, Caroline turned back to the arena. In contrast to the bleak and barren stone of the former chamber, this area inside the bubble was moderately more forgiving. As she began stepping into it, her bare feet fell upon some sort of vegetation not as soft as grass, but perhaps like a stiff moss. The light was still dim, yet oddly adequate in the immediate area, as though the soft illumination followed her, falling off within a few tens of feet and disappearing into darkness perhaps a hundred feet in any direction.

As Caroline padded forward, a deep and bellowing growl erupted from just beyond the edge of the darkness. The sound filled her with dread, but she maintained her composure, edging forward.

From out of the darkness, the beast emerged, head lowered, sniffing at the air. Caroline stopped in her tracks. It wore no collar or tether. She understood the conditions of the wager, but she had seen what these monsters were capable of. Her heart began to pound.

With a snort, it began to stalk cautiously toward her. The creature's lips had been curled back in a snarl as it first emerged from the darkness, exposing the same dagger teeth she had seen shred her assistant, but as it walked, it opened its mouth wide as in a deep yawn. An inner jaw detached from the upper, sliding sheath-like gums over the teeth until they were no longer visible, then the mouth closed. Caroline assumed that this was some gesture of non-aggression.

Caroline remained in place, assuming that the hound was seeking her out, but to her surprise it stopped some ten feet short of her, first sitting, then lying itself on the ground, its huge paws stretched out in front of it. Caroline waited, her heart rate still accelerated, but the creature seemed content to simply watch her from this distance.

Once it became clear that the beast had no apparent intention of coming any closer, Caroline somewhat relaxed. Taking a deep breath, she began to look around her. There were large stones and stony structures scattered here and there and the occasional unidentifiable plantlike thing protruding from the mossy floor, but little else. She realized that she had no idea what she was supposed to do. Here she was locked in a space with a massive hound-like monster that a wager said she would choose, actually choose, to mate with, but the creature seemingly had little interest in her and there was no obvious way for her to pass the time. This was either going to be a very easy wager to win or else there were surprises yet in store, but the thought that she had no idea what was to happen next filled Caroline with an unexpected dread and uncertainty.

Caroline eyed a patch of ground near one of the nearby rocky protrusions, thinking that she would need a place to either sit or lie down and that this would be as good a place as any for now. With her eyes on the hellhound, she began cautiously edging toward it. Though the animal made no move, its gaze followed her movements intently, and it could be seen to periodically sniff the air.

Caroline carefully continued to her chosen spot. She found that the undergrowth felt slightly softer there. The protruding rock was far too sharp and jagged for a seat, so she lowered herself onto the moss, which softly pricked her naked skin. All in all, it was not too uncomfortable, though, so she curled herself into a ball, resigned to try to get some sleep.

From the other side of the bubble, Carl watched, surprised that there was no more to see than this.

"What now?" he asked.

"Now," responded his dark captor, "we wait. The hound is subtle, having seduced thousands of your women. He will bide his time, and so shall we."

Carl shifted nervously, uncomfortable with the idea of a protracted wait. Seeing this, the Dark One spoke.

"Would you like to observe the final process?"

"The final process?" Carl asked, confused. "On Caroline? No, I…"

"Not Caroline," replied the Dark One, "but another."

"I don't…" Carl began. "How would that work? I thought you said that this had not happened in ages."

"It has not," Carl's captor replied flatly, "but I can share my mind with you show you."

"Like a memory?" Carl mused.

"More complete than a memory. Would you like to see?"

Carl was ashamed to admit that this idea appealed to his scientific mind, given that he fully understood the perversity of what he was likely to see, but his curiosity was indeed piqued.

The Dark One responded before Carl realized he had made a decision, "Alright then."

Like a dark shroud, the Dark One descended on him. From the glowering darkness, what seemed to be a finger protruded, touching Carl in his forehead.

Before he was aware what had occurred, Carl found himself apparently in another time and place. Though the terrain appeared similar to the arena in which his wife was imprisoned with a murderous beast, the details were different and, though he could not explain it, the time itself seemed different.

The now-familiar voice of the Dark One interrupted his thoughts.

"There are three stages. I would call them conceptions in your feeble tongue. The chosen female must freely accept each conception, the first of which introduces the instinctive mind. The second conception changes her to an analogous form to that of the hound, allowing her to experience existence with the hound's senses and physicality while retaining the nature of your world. The third permanently, irrevocably changes her nature to that of a beast of this world. I will show you the third conception."

Carl had many questions, but one leapt to mind. "So there are rules?"

"Rules?" muttered his captor, a note of irritation rising.

"Yes, rules. If there are rules, such as that the woman must freely accept the changes, then who sets them? Who enforces them? It doesn't sound like you do."

With contempt, the Dark One rebuffed the insolent insinuation. "In the end, little human, before you are torn asunder, you will understand my power and cower before this world in awe! Now, observe."

Carl returned his attention to the chamber before him. Off in the darkness, Carl recognized the same faint glow that accompanied the formation of the portal in the wall of the arena bubble. Oddly, his eyes easily pierced the darkness, and he could see a figure approaching. Carl expected to have to wait until the figure drew nearer to make out detail, but as before with Caroline he found that he was suddenly able to view her from seeming inches away. More than that, there was other information flooding into his mind that he could not make sense of.

"Whoa!" Carl exclaimed. "What was that?"

"You are seeing with my eyes," responded the Dark One. "Distance and what you call visible light are of little consequence to my senses. I see every color, including thousands that your mind cannot comprehend. Space, touch, hearing they are constructs of your world, not of mine."

Indeed, Carl could see every detail, from microscopic detail to a distant view that encompassed the entire chamber, and it was as though he could see them all at once, though his human mind could focus on only one at a time.

Returning to the woman who had entered the chamber, Carl noted that while she appeared more or less human, with vaguely Mayan features, there were distinctly inhuman features as well. Her hair was jet black, but unlike human hair, it clung flatly and tightly to her scalp like a dog's coat of fur. Her irises were dark brown, but her sclera was obsidian black like that of the hound. Her skin was dark, but her lips and other epithelial tissue were also jet black. Odder still, a thin, flattened canine tail emerged from the base of her spine, clinging tightly between her butt cheeks and curling tightly under her genitalia until it emerged from between her legs, curling downward.

"I thought you said that the hounds used only humans," Carl puzzled.

"She is human," smiled the Dark One, "but she has undergone the first two conceptions."

"But you said that the second conception would give her the form of a hound," Carl volleyed.

"She is allowed to resume a semblance of her human form before choosing the third conception," the Dark One replied with an odd air of satisfaction.

With this, there was a glowing in the distance again, and two new figures entered the chamber, the one being a massive hellhound, the other being a trembling man, again apparently Mayan or something like it.

The hound immediately began slowly pacing a circle around the woman, while the man sank to his knees, pleading with the woman in a strange tongue. To his surprise, Carl was able to discern the meaning of the man's words.

"Please, you are my woman," the man begged. "Do not become a beast and devour me. Return to me so that we may live as we did."

The woman retorted, "Never would I return to live as we did. I was your slave and your beaten thing. You did with me as you chose. Now I will be free and you will suffer,"

The man continued to plead, but the situation was clear enough. There would be no mercy.

The woman turned her attention to the circling hound, a broad smile on her face. "I choose you," she proclaimed.

Slowly she began to circle the hound, then lowered herself onto all fours, crawling in circles around the hellhound on her knees before finally stopping before it, lifting her backside high into the air. As Carl watched, her oddly tucked tail began to peel itself from her as though it had been glued in place. A redolent and viscous fluid strung from tail and dripped in foul-smelling globs to the ground.

As the tail pulled free, the scent emanating from the fluid caught the attention of the big male hound. It immediately bounded to the moist pools of sticky fluid on the ground, sniffing eagerly. Within seconds, his nose took him to the source of the scent, and he buried it in the sex of the female. Moving in sharp twitches, the aroused male eagerly mounted the woman's back, its hips already beginning to involuntarily pump.

The freed tail first pulled itself sharply to the side, then withdrew into her as if it had never been. For a moment, the woman appeared as human as any Carl might have seen on an expedition to an Amazonian village.

The beast pulled itself up onto her, drawing its hips closer until its rapidly emerging member began to contact her flesh. With another lunge forward, it was able clamp its jaws around the nape of her neck, giving it firm purchase from which to penetrate her. Back bowed, it began driving furiously.

"Observe," came the voice from behind Carl.

To his amazement, Carl found that he was able to see into the woman, actually observing the coitus like some sort of full-color x-ray. He could see the massive size of the hound's rapidly growing member, and he could see a ballooning canine knot toward the base of the shaft, already forced inside her and growing.

"Observe," came the voice again.

Unlike a normal canine knot, Carl could see something emerging from beneath the flesh. Each time the penile shaft was withdrawn, an array of six talon-like hooks began curling out from the bulbous mass. With a great rearward stroke, the hooks fully deployed, lodging deeply into the flesh of the female. With the vision of the Dark One, Carl was able to see in further detail that each hook was hollow like a fang, and that as they were deployed, they injected a fluid into her. Carl was repulsed by what he saw, but he could not exit the vision. He could see as the fluid was picked up by her circulatory system and began to spread throughout her body. As it did so, she grew larger and more powerful, taking on the shape of the canine creature. Other changes occurred, some of which were beyond Carl's ability to comprehend, though every piece of information flooding into his mind told him that they were changing her very nature. Most obviously, he saw the venom reach her skull, causing her brain to simplify and shrink and her skull to compress and flatten until her ears stood atop her shrunken dog-like cranium.

The muscles of the bitch began contracting in pulsing waves, drawing the stud hound deeper inside her. With each reposition of the shaft and its knot, the hooks again dug in a little deeper inside, delivering yet another payload. With the pain, she began to curl her lip into a snarl as the double jaws began to clinch against each other until her new teeth pierced the gums of the inner jaw in a bloody gush of hot saliva.

Carl turned to look into the shadowy depths of the figure that was the Dark One. "What was that?"

"When the bitch accepts her mate," the Dark One began, "she signifies her choice by allowing the protective tail to come free. But the conception is not complete until a male, either your kind or another, penetrates her. The hellhound stakes his claim with an ichor injected by six hooks in his shaft that permeates her body, changing her forever."

"And that's what you call the final conception?"

"Not quite," responded the shadow. "The hooks will not release until each of the six eggs she carries are fertilized, creating six whelps."

"But you said that a life had to be exchanged for each hellhound created," Carl asked, again not understanding.

"One life will be given before the whelps are born, and then the greatest of the litter will consume its five brethren in its first act of murder," the Dark One leered. "Delicious symmetry."

"What life?" asked Carl.

Before he could protest, Carl found himself in another place and another time. This was a vast and dimly illuminated chamber, and it was a house of horrors. As far as the eye could see, heavy chains terminated with iron rings were staked to the ground, perhaps thousands; perhaps hundreds of thousands. Each ring still bore a remnant of human remains the skeletal lower leg and foot, the ring circling between the tibia and fibula, and a portion of the femur bitten cleanly in two. Each ring, that is, but one. In the midst of this charnel house, Carl recognized the man who had pleaded with his woman not to turn on him. He wrenched in agony as blood oozed from around the ring that pierced his leg.

"I don't want to see any more," Carl demanded, but the Dark one silently glowered.

Without voluntarily turning his head, Carl's vision returned to the anguished man as something stirred from the edge of the chamber. A hellhound, the now-massive bitch, bloated with a wriggling brood of pups inside her, stalked toward him. The man began to whimper and plead, but the hound bitch merely picked up her pace, sniffing her prey as she came. By the time she reached him, she was on a dead run. Twenty paces away she leapt, baring her dagger fangs as she descended on him.

Carl expected a violent but quick death for the unfortunate soul, but that is not what he got. The ferocious bitch dove straight for his abdomen, tearing open the abdominal cavity but leaving the organs intact. She then backed off and circled, menacing as the man cried in anguish. She lowered her snarling face directly into his as he raised his hands to her, pleading. In one snap, she took off half a hand, then again backed away, circling and threatening.

Over the ensuing period, Carl was forced to watch over what he guessed to have been ten hours, maybe twice that, as the once-human bitch slowly dismantled the living, breathing man, prolonging his terror and anguish until so little remained that his life finally ceased. From that point, she went about the business of devouring what was left until she finally stripped the flesh from the leg that was secured with the iron ring.

Carl was exhausted and sick. "Why?" he weakly muttered.

Calmly and with seeming satisfaction, the Dark One explained, "The hounds are not like creatures of your world. They do not devour flesh except when raising a brood. Rather, they feed off of pain, terror and other black emotions. For a hellpup to be spawned, the bitch must devour her former mate, sustaining herself with his terror as she gives substance to the brood with his flesh. This is the way of the hellhound, as you shall soon experience yourself."

Carl shook his head, but he was too worn out to argue.

Suddenly, Carl was back at his observation perch outside the bubble of the arena. Caroline, his beautiful wife, lay asleep on the ground. One of the Dark One's murderous beasts watched her intently from mere tens of feet away, plotting things that Carl could not imagine.



Caroline awoke with a start to the feel of a heavy wet tongue on her naked body. Caught by surprise by the sight of the great hound hovering over her, it's inky black tongue sampling her body, Caroline scuttled backward until her back was hard against the rock that protruded from the ground near where she had curled up. Her breath was heavy with trepidation, but the beast made no threatening move, instead reassuringly easing closer before pressing a muzzle to her shoulder and giving another friendly lick wet with saliva, then patiently waiting for a response from her.

Friendly or not, Caroline was still cognizant of the wager and wanted no part of the beast. Without taking her eyes off the hellhound, she crawled around the protruding rock in an attempt to place it between herself and the creature, but there was nothing to keep it from simply following, administering seemingly innocuous but unwelcome licks to her legs and backside as she retreated.

Understanding that the hound was intent upon following her and that there was little she could do about it, she got to her feet and tried to walk briskly away, seeking some place of refuge though none was in sight. The hound still followed her, its demeanor playful as a pup, and it administered licks each time it was able to draw near enough to do so.

Caroline kept walking, hoping that somehow the beast would either stop following or else that she could find something to climb onto in order to separate herself from the beast. As she briskly made her way through the seemingly boundless arena, her skin began to warm and she began to perspire. Interacting with the body heat and perspiration, the hound's saliva began to emit a pungent but slightly perfume-like odor. Caroline was scarcely aware of it at first, but as she continued exerting herself, the smell grew stronger. Caroline wished that she had some way to wash the thick substance off, but she knew that no such opportunity was likely to arise. Fortunately, the beast seemed to lose interest in licking her after a few minutes, though it still insisted on following her closely wherever she went.

After searching about the arena for some time, Caroline began to lose hope that she could separate herself from the hound and its ministrations. Finding another soft spot of the mossy growth, she sat down. The hound circled her then lay itself on the matted ground next to her.

Caroline could still feel the thick saliva slathered about her body and began trying in earnest to wipe it off, but the more she wiped, the more she could smell it. Admittedly, the smell was quite pleasing, and seemed to grow more so. Either it was losing its pungency or else she was simply growing accustomed to it. She lifted a hand to her nose and sniffed deeply. Yes, the smell was indeed quite pleasant. What's more, as she took another deep sniff, it seemed as though she was now able to smell other things that her nose had not picked up before. Over the notes of the saliva, she could now clearly smell the earthy moss beneath her. She was aware in a way she had never before been of the acrid smell of her own sweat and of the subtle complexities of it. Most profoundly, though, she could now detect a concert of aromas arising from the fur of her unwanted companion. This was an unexpected development. Caroline wondered to herself whether her sense of smell was changing or whether some change to the hound was making his odor stronger, but then she came back to the fact that she was even able to detect her own aroma in an enhanced fashion. Though her own scent carried far more information than she had ever imagined, it was the smell of the beast that intrigued her. It was not a smell or even a collection of smells, as was her own scent, but rather an unfolding library of olfactory data, though she had no idea how to interpret it.

Cautiously, Caroline leaned toward the beast, gently touching its short black coat. The hound lifted its head, but otherwise offered no reaction. Caroline began to gently stroke the fur, noting that more scent was released with each stroke. The subtle smells came at her like whispers. When she reversed her stroke against the growth of the fur, an even more intense cascade of scents greeted her.

From his perch on the observation deck, Carl rose to his feet.

"What is she doing?" he asked aloud.

"It begins," responded his captor.

Caroline began vigorously stroking the fur, back and forth, eliciting all the aromas that would be released. She noted that the thicker ruff of fur at the beast's shoulders and neck seemed to be most redolent. As she rubbed the fur with both hands, she leaned in to get a better smell. As she did so, the fur began to rise like the hackles on a cat.

As her face drew near to the beast's coat, led there by her nose as though it had a mind of its own, a thick mist exploded from beneath the fur in a cloud that enveloped Caroline's head, carrying a payload of complex aromas so overpowering that she reeled and collapsed backward.

From his observation point, Carl frantically tried to gauge what had just occurred. He could see Caroline lying on her back, her legs caught up under her, twitching as though having a mild seizure.

"What's happening to her?" he excitedly demanded.

Though his eyes were fixed on Caroline so that he could not see the Dark One, Carl could hear the broadly spreading smile of satisfaction in his response, "The first conception!"

As Caroline's mind tried to gain clarity, alien thoughts overtook her. New thoughts that had the form of memory seemed to emerge from every corner of her mind, but they were not the memories of a human being. These thoughts were streamlined, direct and unquestionable. They carried none of the vagueness or haziness of human memory, and they had the character of unassailable and unquestionable truth, though Caroline did not possess the faculties to fully comprehend them. Those thoughts that had images or other sensory data associated with them spoke to her in a foreign tongue with colors she could not identify, sounds she could not hear and, most importantly, odors far stronger and vastly more complex than these that had captivated her. They spoke a language all their own in varieties and complexities of scent that her human nose had never known.

As the thoughts flooded over her, Caroline tried to ward them off, but they grew like choking vines, wrapping themselves around her every thought. They made unspoken demands of her that as yet had no power, because she could only begin to comprehend them in any meaningful context. Caroline fought on, but the flood was unabated and it overwhelmed her to the point that she was unaware that she lay on the matted ground, weakly convulsing.

After a few moments, the flood began to ebb, but it left her head brimming with its contents.

Caroline opened her eyes, seeing the world as she had always seen it, but now her vision seemed somehow incomplete. The colors seemed limited, and she sought for meaning in shapes and movements that her human visual cortex could not process. Her sense of smell was still enhanced, but her mind sought vastly more olfactory input. With her human nose, it was like trying to feel texture through an oven mitt. Her body was the same as it had always been, but somehow it did not feel right. She tried to rise to all four feet by briskly rolling from her side, but her back legs were too long and her shoulders poked out to the side rather than seamlessly flowing into her front legs. It was only with this last thought that Caroline felt a jolt of terror. Front legs?

Caroline found herself oddly hunched on all fours, standing on the balls of her feet and the tips of her fingers and realized that this was not how a person stands. But as soon as she tried to think of fingers, she found an insistent parallel thought wondering why her front feet and toes were not working as they should. She dropped to a crouch, sitting on her haunches, but her feet felt wrong and her front legs did not want to reach the ground. There it was again: front legs. Even as she thought of front legs, she knew that they were arms, but the two thoughts could not be separated. She held her arms and hands out in front of her, even though part of her knew that front legs shouldn't move that way. She noted that her skin and her arms and hands looked exactly as they should except that there was no fur or toe or foot pads.

Caroline's mind raced. Again and again, she tried to think uniquely human thoughts, but each time they were accompanied by these other thoughts of equal amplitude. Indeed, the alien thoughts seemed increasingly insistent. Not only were they inseparable from what she thought of as her own thoughts, they seemed to be grafting themselves seamlessly into each and every thought she had. Panic began to set in.

"Carl!" Caroline cried. "Help me!"

From his vantage point, Carl could not respond, but only watch and agonize without having any comprehension of what was happening to his wife.

Caroline tried to focus on Carl. He was, after all, her mate. She loved the way that he licked her fur and…

Wait! Caroline recoiled at the errant perception of Carl. He was a human, and she had no fur. She pictured Carl's naked body that she so loved and she thought of how delightful soft humans were to track and kill. No, that wasn't right either! She did not want to kill her husband! She wanted to make love to him and end this wager! She thought of his hands on her, exciting her senses. She loved feeling herself being held by him, and she loved the way that his odors spoke to her when she licked his snout. She thought of his heavy weight on her back, his meaty paws wrapped around her body and his powerful jaws clamped on her neck as his massive knot lodged itself in her. She again caught herself. Carl was not a hound. He wasn't! A hound mate would help her track and kill little squirming things and torture them until their essence flowed into her, nourishing her, and Carl would never do that.

Caroline clutched her head. Increasingly, the thoughts were not separate and competing, but became hybrids. While her human mind reeled at the impossible contradictions, the hound mind required no reconciliation of the paradox. It simply knew what it knew and what it was supposed to do, and the only thing that kept it from simply dominating was that it was out of its physical element. Caroline's eyes did not see in canine color. Her ears did not hear the vastly broader range of frequencies. Her smell, though enhanced by the fluids of the male hellhound, did not begin to approximate the most dominant sense of the hound. Her body did not could not move as a hound moved. Her jaws could not rend and her tongue could not grip, could not clean, could not perform most of the functions of that of a hound. So the streamlined thought processes of the hound mind could not directly assert themselves because the hound in her was, for the most part, deaf and blind, at least with respect to the senses to which it was accustomed. All the same, the melding of the thought processes continued as Caroline sat on the ground, pleading for Carl as she rocked herself, clenching her head in a vain attempt to preserve her uniquely human mind. It was all too much and she just wanted to sleep or else she was going to lose her sanity.

Caroline curled into a ball and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out all thought, but the canine mind would not shut down. She tried to surrender her human mind to unconsciousness, but the canine mind could not properly operate this body in this form or make proper use of the sensory information it provided. It needed the human mind to work this body, and it would give her no rest. She tossed and turned, losing all track of time. The more she tried not to think, the more she remembered things dark and ancient things about the hellhound race. The thoughts were not foreign, but her own instinctive memory. As she drifted with the memories, her two minds began to fuse, each giving up enough of itself to avoid discord with the other.

By the time the big hound came to her, nudging her with his snout, she recognized him as one of her own, or at least as the same kind as part of her. She felt no fear. His form was not what her hound mind knew, because colors and sounds and smells were wrong, but he was now familiar, as if she had known him for ten thousand years. She had cried for Carl, but Carl was not there and now her canine mate was, soothing her with his heavy tongue. He towered above her, so she knew that she must submit to his ministrations, and she lowered her head submissively, her fear and confusion abated and tears no longer falling from her confused eyes.

The big hound recognized her posture. In every way, she reacted to his actions and movements as would a lesser female. He rose and began to walk, and she rose to follow, first instinctively on all fours, but then accessing her human bipedalism. When he finally stopped and turned to look at her, she obediently crouched behind him. She would have tucked her tail if she had one. He turned to give her a reassuring lick on the face, then curled up on the ground, looking at her. Once he averted his gaze, she cautiously approached and curled herself under him, resting her head on his massive shoulder. Her olfactory senses were still weak, but from the ruff of the big hound's neck, she could smell his unpronounceable name.

Caroline wondered about her other mate, Carl, as she settled herself. He was so helpless and weak compared to this, her ancient mate, but she loved him. She had made promises to him, though they somehow seemed less important now. All the same, they were promises, whether or not the whole of her mind now understood what a promise meant.

Perceiving the presence of thoughts that were decidedly non-canine as Caroline pensively mused, the big hound gave her a lick, which she returned with a short lick to his snout. She curled up easily with him and closed her eyes.

Carl watched helplessly, his stomach knotted and weak.



Caroline stirred from a half-sleep. It seemed that hours had passed since she lay down with the black beast. As her canine mind began to lapse, burdened by the lack of canine sensory input, her human thought processes began to reassert themselves. Caroline tried to think of the hound mind as new, but it seemed far older than her human mind ancient even. Yet the hound mind was streamlined and simpler, and was out of its element without all the olfactory and other sensory information innate to its species. Subdued by this impairment, it was little match for the higher reasoning of human thought. Caroline had been overwhelmed by the flood of new, instinctive memories and modalities, but her keen mind now began to sort through the changes.

Caroline accepted that she had been changed, or at least that she used to be different. She no perceived the hound thoughts as separate. For good or ill, they were part of her, at least for now. She accepted that this new mind possessed inhuman thoughts and was driven by inhuman urges. What she sought to challenge was any acceptance of the notion that these new urges were beyond her control. All the same, she decided that it would be best if the black hound did not know that she was not helpless to whatever it had done to her. This was a chance to observe, to learn and to understand the alien thought processes of a beast whose job it was to win a wager for its master.

Sensing that Caroline was now fully awake, the big hound sought to again exercise his dominance. He rose and stretched, towering above her, then lowered his head and began sniffing about her body, including her nether regions.

Caroline's immediate impulse was a mix of revulsion and submissive pleasure, but she suppressed the revulsion and rolled onto her back, opening her legs and allowing the beast full access. It sniffed deeply around her anus and genitalia, but her scent was still human. The beast snorted and then moved its attention toward her head, nudging her with its snout and then turning to walk away. Stopping after a few paces, it turned and looked directly at Caroline, and her new instincts understood the pose. She submissively rose to her feet and followed.

The big hound seemed restless and bored. It paced about the arena, stopping to sniff small items of interest and then moving on after allowing Caroline a few seconds to mimic his actions, to which she dutifully complied.

After some hours of this, the hellhound sought out a softer patch of ground and, circling three times, curled up for another rest. Caroline waited as he chose the spot and then curled up against his chest and legs, again resting her head upon his shoulder.

The big hound twisted his neck toward Caroline and began licking her bare skin. The sensation was not at all unpleasurable. When he stopped after a minute or so, Caroline's instinct told her it was her turn. Though she did not possess a canine tongue and though the whole of her mind was not at ease with complying with what her instinct told her she must do, she again acted so as to appear to be primarily under the influence of instinct and not of human reason.

Caroline's human gag reflex was still intact, and Caroline had to suppress the urge to gag as stiff black fur clung to her tongue, but she did not let on. Her instinct told her which parts of the great hound could not be cleaned by his own tongue, and so she labored until she had groomed them all. As she licked, the big hound occasionally let out what could only be described as sighs of satisfaction.

When the hound stirred and rose again some time later, it substituted a very subtle "waiting" posture for the more forceful dominant stance. When Caroline immediately complied with the signal and rose to follow, the hound began to trot away with a springier step than before, which Caroline immediately recognized as a sign of self-satisfaction that his dominant role was understood.

For the rest of the day, the hellhound was more playful, occasionally nipping at Caroline or circling to probe her with a curious nose. When he began to bounce and prance around, Caroline did the same, or as best she could in her human body. When the hound dropped and rolled vigorously, scratching his back on the stiff moss, Caroline followed suit, though it was hard on her bare skin. She would occasionally go into a sort of instinct-driven auto-pilot, but her rational mind stood ready to intercede should anything unexpected occur.

Dangerously, Caroline's mind began to think of her hulking playmate as a large but innocuous canine. Her instinct told her to be submissive and respect the beast, but her rational mind began taking liberties, forgetting the predicament that she was in.

After a particularly frisky romp, Caroline squatted back on her haunches and the big hound came to her, lowering his face near hers. As he did so, she began rubbing its jowls, ears and neck with her hands in the way that a human plays with a normal dog.

The hellhound suddenly pulled away, stiff postured, recognizing the very un-canine nature of Caroline's actions. Caroline crawled to him in his new position a few feet away and attempted to try again more gently, but the beast began to emit a low growl, which instinctively set Caroline rocking back onto her haunches in an upright squatting position.

In the observation area, Carl had been lulled into a sullen complacency by the previous goings on of the uneventful day. The growl, however, got his attention. The Dark One was as obscured from view as ever, but Carl felt a chill as he thought he could perceive a smile emanating from his captor.

As the hellhound rumbled a menacing growl and allowed his fangs to protrude through the gums of the inner jaw, he began to noticeably produce a heavy drool. Some portion of Caroline's instinctive mind felt a race of excitement, but Caroline could not discern what the feeling meant. She did, however, understand that she should remain still until his intentions were revealed.

The big hound stepped forward, lowering his huge head nose to nose with Caroline. Before she could react, he lapped at her face with a tongue literally pouring with the heavy drool.

"The second conception begins!" whispered the Dark One from his perch.

Caroline wanted to recoil, but her instinct told her to remain still. Her face was drenched with stringy saliva, which covered her eyes, mouth and nose. Ignoring the instinct-driven command to remain immobile, she raised her hands and attempted to wipe the drool away with her delicate fingers so that she could see and breathe. But just as she attempted to draw a breath, the hound produced another drool-laden lap at her, drenching her again and causing her to suck some of the fluid into her nasal cavity.

Carl, now standing, could see that the hound's drool had subtly changed color from clear to blackish.

As the fluid permeated Caroline's nasal passages, she could feel a searing sensation. Her olfactory bulbs seemed to light up, and as they did she thought she could perceive convolutions forming in and enlarging nasal chamber. This sent a tickling sensation to the tip of her nose, and before she could stop herself she instinctively licked at it, drawing thick, blackening drool into her mouth and swallowing.

Caroline again felt her rational mind being overwhelmed as the sensations intensified. At the same time, the instinctive mind bristled to new life, with rapidly intensifying aromas flooding her mind as distinctly canine senses began to develop. She had been able to detect a subtle language of scent with her slightly enhanced sense of smell, but now incoming aromas began speaking vast volumes of information she never imagined (at least with her human mind) could exist. As the sensation intensified, her canine mind hungered for more. She gave another lick around her mouth, finding copious amounts of the strange black liquid remaining.

As Caroline licked at her face, she noted that her tongue felt smooth and that her sense of taste seemed to have diminished to the same extent that her sense of smell had intensified. More oddly, her tongue seemed to be thickening, too large and long for her mouth to contain. Her instinctive mind began to recognize it as the multipurpose tool it is for canines, even as her rational mind began to realize that she was losing the neural connections between it and her speech functions. She tried to form a word, but all that came was a whining sound flowing out over an uncooperative tongue. The rising panic this caused in her rational mind only served to encourage the newly assertive instinctual mind.

Carl strained to see what was happening. He could see that Caroline was in some sort of distress. She again tried to wipe the thick drool away from her face and eyes, but this time she did not use her fingers. Rather, she swiped at it with the top of a lightly cupped hand, fingers dangling, in the manner of a canine wiping at its muzzle.

After a couple of swipes, Caroline's eyes had cleared enough to open. What she was met with was wholly unexpected. Not only was color becoming completely different, being rendered in fewer shades but somehow extending to more colors, her optical connections to her brain were changing in confusing ways. Her emerging perception of shapes and movement was utterly alien to her human thought processes, but it conveyed instantaneous meaning to her instinctual mind. There was nothing in what her eyes were feeding her that she could relate to her human memories or experience. Her canine memories, however, suddenly began to be translated in crystal detail as the sense to which they were attuned emerged.

In addition to her smell and vision, Caroline began to note changes to her hearing as well, as frequencies shifted. She instinctively sought to move her ears to tune in direction, but they did not move yet.

Caroline struggled to retain some measure of her humanity, but it was hopeless in this flood of new perception. She knew that she would have to give herself over to instinct if she were to ever have a chance of making rational sense of anything she was about to encounter, and her instinctive mind told her that she still required more modification. Much more.

Carl could see the hound standing erect over Caroline, nose to nose, as she fought and struggled with something that he himself could not see. It maintained that posture until Caroline finally limply lowered her raised hands from her face. As she opened her eyes wide to look at the hound, Carl was horrified to see that the sclerae of her eyes were now totally black. He had no idea what this meant, but he knew that it could not be good.

Caroline remained motionless for a moment, then began to lightly bob her head like a dog sniffing. She began to lean toward the nose of the black beast, its foul jaws now dripping with inky black drool. As she leaned forward, the beast took a half step back, just out of reach.

Caroline began to lean forward toward the beast's muzzle, craning her neck as far forward as she could as her impossibly long and blackening tongue lapped out in a vain attempt to lick it.

The beast backed away another half step. As it did, Caroline's nose followed as if on an invisible tether. She dropped to her fingertips as her weight shifted farther than her crouching position could sustain, her backside rising from the crouch as she did so, and she again lapped at the big hound's dripping black muzzle, her tongue this time finding its mark.

The big hound again backed slightly away, causing Caroline to have to stretch even further to continue lapping at the dripping black goo, which she did with ever-increasing vigor. As she stretched, Carl watch with incredulity as her neck began to lengthen along with her face, even as her skull seemed to uncoil, retaining a larger volume than a canine skull yet pulling her reshaping brain into a straight line with her horizontal spinal cord. Her shoulders began to drop and her thighs shorten as her feet thinned and lengthened. Her spine began to lengthen and curve as well, even as her chest began to swell and deeply bow.

The changes came together and they came quickly. As he tried to focus on the changes that were occurring to his wife's lithe and feminine body, Carl's attention was caught by a whip-like protrusion snaking from Caroline's coccyx. Carl could not accept that he was seeing his beautiful wife growing a tail before his very eyes, but even as he anguished the changes continued unabated. She continued to lick at the horrible hound's hideous muzzle, and now the big hound willingly obliged. Waves of dense black fur swept over Caroline's naked body as it contorted into inhuman shapes. Fingers thickened into toes as great toes and thumbs were absorbed into nothingness. In moments it was over.

Having lapped the last drops of the vile black fluid from the great beast, Caroline turned and glanced down her own body. All that remained of Carl's loving partner was a large black hound with an oddly shaped head. Her tail whipped from side to side, then began to curl tightly between her legs, flattening as it did so into a temporary seal, pressing itself tightly against her anus and genitalia.

The big hound stood stiff and erect, intently eyeing his new playmate. Head held high, he sniffed at her, now recognizing the unmistakable aroma of his kind. He moved along her spine, sniffing in short snorts as she lowered her head and remained motionless.

Satisfied that she was now ready, he slowly turned, stepping off a few paces as she followed him with her gaze. Suddenly, the huge hound bolted in a dead run, and the hound bitch bolted with him simultaneously, the reaction so fast that they appeared to be of one mind.

Carl slumped to the floor. He trusted Caroline. She was the smartest and most intuitive person he had ever known, but his mind could not reconcile that the black four-legged thing that scampered from his view was her.



Caroline's mind was a blur. She tried to reason through what was happening as the world rushed by in a blur, her long tongue lolling to the side as powerful legs and a whip-like spine propelled her over the ground in pursuit of the being she recognized as her ancient mate, but the sights, sounds smells that greeted her were alien to the rational mind. She was conscious, but she was on a sort of autopilot. Decisions bypassed reasoned thought, being triggered by stimuli in such a streamlined process that they were made before anything so complex as reasoning could occur. And while reason could find no purchase, the new mode of existence seemed utterly natural, not second nature but rather first nature.

While Caroline's gaze was focused on every twitch of her galloping mate, sight was only a secondary sense. Her nose told her all she needed to know about where she was going, where she had been and what lay beyond in every direction. Every minute sound could be precisely located by simply rotating her erect ears. Her body skimmed comfortably close to the increasingly familiar terrain, keeping her sensory organs low enough to the ground to detect every detail. Her four large paws felt naturally connected to the ground as they propelled her across it, just as the wind whipping through her gaping mouth and lolling tongue seemed completely normal.

Somehow, Caroline understood as she ran, drinking in her surroundings, that she and her mate were searching for small, soft, scurrying things that their jaws could tear and torment. She felt a strange anticipation of the delicious sustenance that the torture of these things would provide, but the form of the sustenance made no sense to her rational thoughts, because they involved a means of consumption with which this body was as yet unfamiliar. The need that her genetic memory spoke to her of did not involve swallowing food, but rather absorbing waves of some delicious thing through every pore. As confused as Caroline's human reasoning was by all that was happening, this confused her even more, and in the hopeless confusion she simply let go and stopped attempting to do anything but act on ancient instinctive imperatives, following a mate whose genetic mind she shared.

The male and his new playmate ran for hours, examining every inch of the vast arena, but there was no prey to be found. After a time, the big male began to tire of the pursuit and again sought a place to lie and to wait. Once he located a comfortable spot, he curled himself into a ball and waited for his mate, who followed suit by curling herself between his long legs and again resting her head on his shoulder.

As Caroline rested on her counterpart, her instinctual mind was also at rest. Her long jaw seemed to fit perfectly at the end of her outstretched neck, resting upon the muscles of his shoulder and neck. For the moment, there was no internal struggle. She was just one of two animals doing what they were created to do. Comfortable, her instinctive mind began drift as she closed her black eyes.

As time passed, the void of the dormant instinctual mind allowed reason to slowly reawaken. Caroline's rational thought still wrestled with the new sensory input, but her keen mind began to assimilate and analyze it. The colors were still alien and the frequencies were all wrong, but sight was still sight and sound was still sound. More importantly, Caroline began to merge her reason with the newly dominant olfactory processes of her canine body, which was familiar and foreign all at once. As she began to access her human memories, Caroline was shocked to find that not only had her senses changed, but that her mind's ability to process information had changed such that the colors and shapes of her human memories were now all but meaningless. The first thing she tried to remember was Carl. She still remembered him in a sense, but when she tried to visualize his face, she realized that this mind did not understand the concept of a face and the patterns that made it familiar. Rather, she found herself repeatedly, and against her will, attempting to remember his scent. Her reason told her that she could not remember his scent because all memories of him predated her sense of smell as she now knew it. Worse yet, she could not remember his name. More to the point, the patterns of sound that made up his name and indeed all human words did not register in this, her canine brain. She retained her consciousness and, for what they were worth, her memories, but now it was those human memories that were in a language foreign to the mind they now inhabited.

Frustrated, Caroline began to search the images from her genetic memories that she could relate to her human mate as she perceived him. After all, she reasoned, hellhounds knew what humans were, according to what the Dark One had told them. She began to painstakingly render the idea of an upright being whose arms were not used for locomotion but rather flailed at its sides, and an image began to form of the hound's perception of a human being.

As Caroline focused on understanding what Carl would look like to her hound senses, an unexpected thing occurred. The image it formed elicited a low growl from her own throat as a spiral of intensifying feelings hit her.

Caroline involuntarily bolted upright as she caught herself intently sniffing the air. Suddenly, she remembered the scent of humans. She could plainly visualize their ungainly and slow upright gait. She remembered how easy they were to take down with a swift bite to the back of the leg, tearing through their pathetically soft and hairless skin and ripping muscle and tendon. An even louder growl escaped her throat, and for the first time she could feel her two distinct jaws, inner and outer, and she could feel them converging, pressing sharp teeth through soft gums.

By the time Caroline's reason caught up with these involuntary responses, she realized that the feeling that was conjured by the image of a human was not hunger or protectiveness of her kind or any other emotion she expected from an animal mind, but rather searing and intense hate. Hate. She wanted to kill this thing in the most agonizing way possible and relish and soak in every minute of its agony. Her reason for being was to destroy these things and to drink in their pain. The more she thought about it the more she desired to kill, and she began to furiously sample the air for any sign of the presence of her prey. Before she knew it, she was on all four feet, the hackles on her neck and shoulders standing, lips curling back to reveal hateful fangs.

None of this went unnoticed by the big male, and she was suddenly aware that he was standing beside her, looking and sniffing agitatedly about for the source of her arousal, then confusedly pacing when no such source could be detected.

Observing the big male as his sense of alarm quickly abated and he returned to his resting position on the ground lulled Caroline from her heightened state. For a moment, she puzzled as to whether one of her prey had been present or whether she had confused herself. Then it hit her: prey. Her attempts to think of her husband had triggered a response from the deepest recesses of her animal instincts. Her curled lips returned to a lax position and she nervously licked her snout as her fangs retracted and her hackles lowered. Only then did Caroline's rational thoughts return and allow her to understand what had just happened.

To her horror, Caroline began to realize that a part of her own mind now harbored as much revulsion for her husband as the other part had once harbored for her hound mate. Revulsion was not the end of it, though. Intertwined with every good and loving thought that she had for him was a programmed desire to rip him to shreds and revel in his disembowelment. And while Caroline could have no idea what thoughts other members of the animal kingdom harbored in their unique minds, she could not imagine that rage and hate were innate to natural creatures. Hate was, as far as she knew, unique to beings with higher brain functions. And if that were true, then what was the nature of the beast she had merged with? The Dark One had called his prized pets murderers. She had thought that the term was euphemistic. Perhaps it was not. Vague allusions to the "nature" of the hellhounds had perhaps been taken too lightly.

Caroline struggled to push from her mind any desire to harm her husband or any human. The human scent, however, was programmed into her genetic memory as it was in the memory of every hellhound, and the scent elicited the desire to kill. If only she knew her human mate's scent as she knew the scent of her hound mate, she thought, realizing that in this form with its altered sensory perception she could kill him without even recognizing him. Indeed, with her new wiring, she had no capacity to even visualize her husband as her human mind knew him, much less to know him by sight or smell. Somehow, she needed to identify him and learn his name. No, not his name his scent. She was getting confused again.

Again recognizing atypical behavior for one of his kind, the huge male rose and approached Caroline, probing her with his muzzle and tongue only to find her lost in thought. Hounds do not become lost in thought. Circling her, his head again became erect on a stiffened neck, signaling his dominance. Caroline should have lowered her head and weakened her own stance, but she continued to ignore the dominant male even though strong instinctual signals prompted her otherwise. Frustrated with her strange behavior, the big hound let out a thunderous baying howl.

Caroline snapped to attention, her train of thought broken by the piercing call that again set deep imperatives in motion. But even as the echoes of the howl were dying, other sounds caught her attention. The howl was not solely in frustration, but also a signal. In the distance, the sound of a portal in the barrier opening, accompanied by its faint glow, set her senses on edge. Over the sound of the near silent minions of the Dark One, another set of sounds could be heard. It spoke in whimpers of weakness and frailty, and the sound of incompetent limbs flailing uselessly again set her hatred afire.

The hound's howl had also caught Carl's attention, and he focused first on the actions of the hounds that is to say, of the hellhound and Caroline and then on something happening beyond in the distance. Shadowy figures of the Dark One's servants dragged a strange figure through a portal and into the arena. Focusing on the figure, Carl saw a gangly, almost amphibious looking creature with smooth, shiny skin, a broad mouth and protruding eyes, thin appendages and a bulbous head atop a delicate neck. It struggled feebly against the dark minions as they roughly dragged it into the arena and cast it upon the mossy ground. As they exited the portal, the creature turned and unexpectedly leapt some thirty feet through the air, smashing into the barrier just as the portal closed. Carl would not have guessed that the soft creature with its sagging belly and spindly legs could propel itself in such a manner, but then he realized that he had never seen anything like it before, and had no idea what world it may have hailed from.

Falling to the turf below, the creature righted itself, trembling and looking wildly about. It seemed to sense that it was in grave danger.

In the distance, two hounds sniffed at the air, sensing prey within their arena. The big hound bristled and snarled, pumping pheromones into the air that instantly overwhelmed Caroline's mind. She felt the hate rising in her and the overwhelming urge to kill and feed. Within a second, the large hound had lunged into action and Caroline had instantaneously followed.

The strange creature raised its head in the direction of the approaching hounds. Using senses that Carl could not begin to surmise, it detected their rapid approach. Its skin began flashing different colors like that of a signaling squid. As the hounds bore down on the odd thing, it again leapt, easily clearing the two of them and sending them spinning in the air as their snapping jaws just missed it. It landed on the run, jackrabbiting with surprising speed and agility. Driven by instinct, the hounds separated, the smaller remaining in direct pursuit while the larger and faster male began a wide circle.

"What is it?" Carl asked as he watched the strange game afoot.

"It is a creature not unlike yourself from another of my worlds," replied the Dark One.

"But how did it get here?" Carl queried.

"I sought a sacrifice and my faithful responded," came the reply.

"You say it is not unlike me…" Carl began.

"Not quite as amusing as you," responded his captor, "but it is a sentient being with what you would term friends and family and a life on another world. Its agility will make a fine test for my new hound."

"She's not yours yet!" shot Carl, "and she won't be!"

"Let us enjoy the hunt and her instinctive skill as one of my murderers," the Dark One intoned.

Caroline was hot on the creature's trail, her canine reflexes anticipating every move as the soft thing before her darted and weaved. Her finely tuned ears could perceive the twitch of every muscle and calculate the direction and speed of every hop. Even so, the creature was nearly as fast as she was, so she began overcompensating with each move so as to drive the creature in a predetermined path toward her mate's planned intercept.

So furious was the pursuit that Caroline's reason had again abandoned her, but from somewhere deep within it began to speak to her through the cloud of murderous lust and hate. Why, she wondered, did she hate this thing? Her instinct had given it an unspoken name and told her that it must be mercilessly destroyed, but why bear such malice against it? These thoughts were a quiet subconscious stream against the torrent of instinct driving the pursuit as if on autopilot. Then again, she came to realize that there was uncontrollable conscious thought accompanying the instinct. It was the same rage and hate she had felt before. Caroline mused to herself that she had never begrudged a predator its prey. She loved animals, and most of her favorites were predators. But this seemed different somehow, this burning desire to torture.

Caroline's thoughts were cut short as the big hound suddenly converged on her and the creature in a flash of black, jaws agape. The creature was nimble, though, and the big hound's razor teeth missed their mark, merely lacerating a flailing limb before his crushing jaws could slam shut. The miscalculation sent the hellhound sprawling, but the sudden smell of blood or whatever it was that now leaked from the slice in the creature's leg again set Caroline's instincts afire, and she intensified her pursuit with newfound intensity as all other thought cleared from her mind.

Caroline could now see that the prey was favoring the damaged leg. With animal precision, she began flawlessly predicting each move, timing her strike. Each time the creature landed from a leap, she let out a sharp bark from one side or the other, increasingly controlling the direction of the next leap. She timed its now predictable movements and struck.

With a great shot adrenaline, Caroline lunged into the expected path of the creature, her teeth shooting through her gums as her crushing jaws came down on its leg. She landed in a roll, wrenching the creature with exactly enough force to snap the bone without severing the appendage, then shaking it violently with the powerful muscles in her shoulders and neck before flinging it like a play toy. Before the creature could gather itself, she was on it again. This time, she neatly sliced her sharp teeth through what would have passed for the hamstring of its uninjured leg.

The creature let out shrill shrieks of pain and agony that would have immediately torn at the heartstrings of the human Caroline, but to this new Caroline, they were sweet music. Her instinct told her that she should be deriving something more than simple pleasure from this, but something felt wrong. It was as though there were still some fundamental function that her body was unable to perform.

As she mused, the big hound stalked into view, fangs bared and hackles raised. It would have been a horrifying sight to any other creature, but to Caroline it was an unspoken cue.

As the prey creature's eyes widened in horror, Caroline again bared her own fangs and snarled directly into the creature's face, adding terror to its agony. As she did so, the hairs on the big hound's back and neck began to literally stand on end like thousands upon thousands of tiny antennae. Caroline could literally feel the energy of the pain and fear of the captive creature being sucked from the air as the erect hairs of her mate bristled.

Playing out her ancient role, Caroline again slashed the creature with her razor teeth, tearing deeply enough to cause searing pain but not enough to kill, and as she did, a shudder of intense pleasure ran down her mate. Caroline's sublimated conscious thought began to muse at the strange ritual, realizing that the big hound was somehow absorbing the negative energy coming off of the captured prey and taking it in as sustenance and that the day would come when she could do the same, but her overpowering instinct drove her forward in her torturous and murderous act.

For hours on end, Caroline tortured and slowly dismembered and disemboweled the helpless thing as Carl could only watch in shocked disbelief. As she did her terrible work, the male hellhound seemed to grow in stature and power and exude deep pleasure and satisfaction at the work of his soon to be mate.



By the time her bloodlust was satiated, Caroline stood over the mangled remains of the strange creature that instinct had driven her to murder. She was exhausted and her fur was drenched with the creature's fluids. Even so, she felt a hunger that had not been satisfied, dimly aware that she could not satiate that hunger even in her present altered form. While her mate was alert and brimming with energy, Caroline needed only to groom and to rest. Instinct told her that they should groom each other, but she alone had done the work this time, so she collapsed to the ground and allowed the powerful male to begin the work of lapping the sticky and redolent fluids from her skin and fur.

The long strokes of the licks had a calming effect, allowing Caroline to gradually reassert her rational mind. Only then did the nature of what had just happened begin to sink in. Caroline may not have lived a perfect life, but she had never been cruel, nor had she as a human ever even felt, much less reveled in, such rage and hate. Yet there it was. Somehow, this was part of her now. Somewhere just beneath the skin she was now a violent killer. Caroline began to seriously question what she had allowed herself to merge with. She could not allow whatever it was to dominate, whether it was now part of her or not. But the hate and violence was so satisfying, so delicious. Even as her conscious mind rejected it, revulsed by it, she could feel herself hungering for more, leaving her revulsion competing with deeper satisfaction than she thought imaginable, and a pride and contentment that she had served her purpose.

Caroline began to reason that there were answers that were needed, and that the best place to find them was in her genetic memory. However slight, enough of a schism still existed that she could think of the instinctual memories as separate from her conscious human memories, and that she could think of her reasoning mind as a separate thing as it sought to invade the ancient racial memories.

Caroline began the descent into the canine memories with the knowledge that accessing them could further merge them with her human processes to the point that the two were truly merged and inseparable, but she trusted her intellect and decided that the risk was one that had to be taken.

As she probed her way through the programmed memories, she found many disturbing things. She found that she knew precisely how to elicit the maximum agony from any of thousands of strange species. She learned that each hellhound bitch would produce one litter of six pups after brutally killing and eating a former mate, and that one of those pups would cannibalize the other five in order to earn its right to grow to maturity. She learned that every hellhound regarded not the largest male of its kind, but rather the Dark One, as its alpha male and therefore its master. More