And To The Living... Let The Dead Come Alive

Time moves slowly… it drinks of itself often, leaving nothing but confusion behind. She was not lost, and yet… Had things changed so much? Had they? She no longer remembered a time before the present. It was not so bad. To be alone; to live, to die, it made no difference in the here and now, nor, for that matter, the then and there. A giggle slipped through her lips, numbing them, turning her to ice from the inside out… Perhaps it had not been the same for always; perhaps the changes were not without, but within…… How to tell, how to tell? She frowned, turning such drivel aside for more pressing issues. It made no sense to her anyway… why argue with the devil?

Canth bit her lip, trying not to torture herself, but the temptation to recall… to know, was strong. The devil was a master of disguise after all… and his ways were the ways of the apes; he paid no heed to the likes of garou. And what of the Wyrm? Did it not also lay claim to a finite portion of her soul? Had she indeed been raped by the unclean urgings of the vampire, or, as the leech had said… had it merely released Canth's innate nature, freeing her to follow a more rich and sensuous path, a path denied to garou by the petty, jealous rantings of Gaia? Thinking! It was a vile activity, to ponder, to question; it led to nothing but suffering and uncertainty.

She had been sitting too long, she decided. Being alone would do that to a person; bring them full circle to realization of failure, and make their own intellect turn against them. Such was the poison of the mind, such was the voice of insanity. Infinity was its own hell, and it claimed one in bits and pieces…turning joy to sorrow, curiosity to denial, caution to cynical contempt. She had been alive in her hell of days for many, many turning of the ages. Apes came, rising to conquer, turning all about them to dust or fanatical hysteria. She watched them scurry about like ants, her own kind often the root of their madness. It was sad, and it made her laugh. Nothing was too good for them, the lot of 'em. Nothing.

Canth sighed deeply, rising to her feet and stretching. Time for a run…..it stilled the voices for a time.

---

When exhaustion claimed her, she slowed and stood, motionless, the picture of a predator. Her heart thundered in her throat, and her breathing was a ragged explosion, and yet she was silent as smoke. She could control such things. Her eyes scanned the area, marking dense clusters of trees, the small pond to the south, the field of flowers to her right, and the descending sun strait ahead. It was all beauty, it was all Wyld, it was perfection… and she enclosed herself within it, tasting the wind, feeling the fitful gusts toss her sable hair behind her like a cloak.

A second before the shot rang out, she sensed the man with the rifle, and tasted his desires, the cunning rage in the sweat evaporating from his skin. A low, rumbling growl sprang into the still air, and she ground her teeth to silence it. He was far off… well into the corpse of woods beyond the pond. She reached out with her emotions and felt for the target of his skills…. The pain which washed back told her everything she needed to know. It would be dead by the time she got to it, but she could avenge it, oh yes… she could make the man pay…. Her smile, though meant for no one but herself, revealed the nature of her desires… to the hunter, the hunted…all pray for him, for he was now the prey.

---

A figure in black entered the clearing, a small smile playing on the corners of her mouth. She was quite beautiful, and yet… The hunter turned and followed her movements with almost wary suspicion, for she radiated chaos, and he was uneasy about hunting in preserve as it was.

"Mel," he called over his shoulder, expecting the guy he'd been poaching with to come out and back him up… but only silence returned, and his fear wound up a few notches…

Where had he gone off too? The lazy bastard….wasn't worth his weight in buckshot. He leaned more protectively over the still twitching body of the brown bear he was cleaning, trying not to gag as the smell of freshly spilled entrails washed over him. Still leaning over his kill, he began slicing into the thick hide again as he angled upward into the throat.

"You're cleaning it backwards, you know… You're supposed to make a "t", starting at the jugular, and moving down in a strait line from that horizontal incision to the anus… that allows the blood to drain out when you hang it upside down. The blood spoils first you know… it begins to decompose, tainting the flesh…"

He glanced up and the woman, startled that she had spoken to him… and deeply resenting her presence. He knew how to clean a g.d. carcass. She leaned idly on a tree, watching his exertions with a growing amusement; she seemed on the verge of laughter. He reddened, going back to his cleaning, and completely ignoring her.

"I know, " she said gaily, "you are showing me a new technique! Or perhaps… yes, I see… you are talking the hide, and nothing more?"

"Look… who the heck are you, lady? This is a restricted area, and you have no right to be here…"

He paused to shoot her a fiery glare, wiping his hands on his camouflage pants. He was busy doing this for several minutes; his arms were streaked with gore from fingernails to just above the elbows.

She shrugged noncommittally, and nodded past him, into the woods. "But Jack, Mel said I could come and watch you play…"

He flinched with surprise, looking up at her sharply for having know both his and his companions first names, and regarded her with something more like civility for the first time.

"You know Mel?"

She bobbed her head to one side slightly and smiled. "Oh yes… he and I are quite close… I'm not sure if he ever mentioned me… Drat, I've been rude again," she sighed with exaggerated care and walked up to the crouching hunter, extending her hand. "I'm Canth…"

He looked at her quizzically for a moment, then shook the offered hand. He was mildly surprised at the strength of her fingers, and he nodded with the first kindling of more than friendly interest.

"Canth, eh?"

"Canth… Mom was a hippie," she laughed, looking down at her fingers; they were covered in blood. She absently rubbed her hands on her thighs as she looked around.

"Have you seen Mel? He was supposed to help me carry this brute back to the truck."

She nodded and looked about as if she expected him to come out of seclusion at any moment. "Yes, I did, actually... it was the only way I you… but he seems to have wandered off again.  He is such a lazy bastard."

"Yeah, he is, ain't he?" Jack gave her his most winning grin, hoping that whatever kind of thing she had going on with the lazy bastard wouldn't interfere with him getting to know her… much better.

She brushed her hair out of her eyes with a casual grace, one almost…feral, and touched the tip of his hunting knife with her fingers, gently running the third finger up its length.

"Could I see that for a moment? I really would love to show you how to skin, if you'd like..."

He reddened for the second time… and handed the Bowie to her, handle first. She accepted it, leaning close enough for her knee to touch his.

"You start by making a horizontal cut through the throat….like this…"

With the speed and strength inherent in her race, she brought the knife up and sliced into his neck, just shy of severing the arteries keeping him alive, and watched with mirth as he fell back with a strangled cry, clutching at the seeping wound with both hands. Eyes wide with shock, he stumbled away from her in a crab like motion, his feet leaving deep furrows in the meaty loam. Chuckling softly she licked the crimson from the blade and followed him with her eyes, almost debating, even as she leapt over the cooling corpse of her ursine brethren and landed with one foot to either side of the hunter.

"And then you make a long vertical cut, from throat to anus…"

He started screaming as she sunk the sharp edge into his flesh and gently, slowly tugged the serrated side down… they did not still for a very long time.

---

She looked into the dead hunters glassy eyes as he swung in front of her, tied to the branch by a coil of him own intestines. She was tempted to eat him, for she dearly hated to waste good meat… but Gaia had forbidden garou from consuming humans… for they were ripe with the taint of Wyrm. Once again, she debated, gently swaying the hanging form with a free hand. Awwwwww, what the hell? The musk of her change filled the clearing, and for miles the nighttime sounds stilled until it had passed.

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