As the Marquis and his wife engaged in a battle of wills, Kurnos was
still racing blindly into the forest. He had no idea of what he might do
or where he might go. His mind was jumbled, a myriad of thoughts and
images. Some thoughts might have come from a man, but others clearly
sprang from some unholy source. He was dimly aware of the changes that had
come over his body, and the pain he had felt when the sun sank. The wolves
had still not completed their mission. His transformation had taken a
week, a full week of agony, with his mind spinning out of control. The
pain had been excruciating.
He finally ceased running, slowing to a trot before dropping on all
fours and coming to a complete stop. He panted in the night air, his body
was so much different, and yet he did not fully regret the change. Regret
had ceased to matter after a week of unimaginable pain and torturous
suffering. Each of the wolves had entered his body and, fighting for
control, had twisted his form in all manner of ways. A hapless onlooker
may have taken him for a loup-garou, yet his body was so swollen in places
and sunken in others that only the head would have been in identifying
trait. Definitely wolfish now, with wickedly pointed ears and a mouthful
of razor-sharp teeth in a series of three rows, he was a beat persistently
hungry for human blood. The demonic wolves, now installed in his form,
spent their time whispering and laughing in the soulless tongue of the
unformed. They took great pleasure on the changes wrought upon Kurnos, and
though he despised them he knew he would never be free of their dark
designs.
He remembered fragmented portions of his life, and with the usual
impulsiveness of a beast, he latched onto certain memories as truth
regardless of the reasons for key events. For example, he remembered
Lestat and wolves in the same instance; therefore his mind related Lestat
with the cause of his current condition. There was no rhyme or reason for
his associations as reality had become jumbled in a myriad of ways. Sanity
was something of which he would have little conception. Blundering through
the forest once again, his breathing deep and ragged with the contortions
his body had undertaken, he began once more to move. He had no idea how to
find the man whom he perceived as the enemy, yet even as the question
occurred to him the fleeting animalistic memories of the wolves merged
with his own thoughts. He knew the path unconsciously and, his fangs bared
and his eyes smoldering, he began the task of finding Lestat.
He traveled for perhaps six hours before a rabbit distracted him. The
creature was scurrying to and fro in the forest and, sensing his approach,
had deigned to make a mad dash for its burrow. The unnatural beast leapt
upon its hapless prey, latching hold of fur and flesh with all too
powerful jaws. The rabbit’s squeal of pain was short as the tiny creature
was rendered a smear of unidentifiable blood and fur on the forest floor.
The thing that had once been Kurnos licked it’s bulging lips, stretched
wide into a horrible rictus around deadly fangs, and uttered a sound like
gravel on a blackboard. Then, it’s hunger flaring anew; it proceeded to
seek out more rabbits to sate its unending hunger. Lestat was the furthest
thing from its mind for the time being, until the face would resurface in
the murky pool of its thoughts. Until that time, Lestat would be
relatively safe.
