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
