The Howling Hunger
This article is a part of Spooktober 2024 and is still a work in progress. Written for the Fur prompt.Contains a small amount of body horror. He could feel it coming. The moon, the waxing full of it tugging at the part of him that had first become a beast. Only now he was a new kind of beast, with a lust for blood to drive his tastes. Walter Leidtner slumped against the wall of the inn, groaning as his flesh burned with the need to change. To shift and run. To hunt. To kill. To feed. He didn't know what to do. He wasn't entirely certain as to what he even was now, except that it reminded him of the stories his mother had told of the wiedergänger as a child to keep him from wandering far from home. There was a part inside of him that knew that he had died, that the weakness in his body growing stronger and stronger as his attacker bit into his neck had been his death. And then he had woken and all there had been was rage and thirst. Whoever had attacked him had died. Walter had torn their head off. He had lost control. He waslosing control. And he had been losing control for weeks before the moon began to wax towards full again. Groaning, Walter tilted his head back against the wall of the inn, closing his eyes as his stomach cramped agonizingly. He bared his teeth as he felt himself losing control over his own form as the pain and the nearness of the moon was overwhelming. Blood filled his mouth as fangs grew in place of his teeth and he gagged on them before slumping onto his side to cough the jagged remains of his human teeth onto the ground. Despite his thirst for blood, this didn't touch his hunger, didn't slake it at all. And it was...wrong. Thick. Sluggish. The hair on his arms thickened and spread, becoming familiar ash blond fur, and he knew he needed to move. He had just watched the English hang three innocent women for witchcraft when he had wandered through Bideford days ago. Walter had been close enough to smell them when they were lead to the gallows and they had no magic scent on them. Not like the one true witch his mother had dragged him to when he had been bitten as a child to discover that he was a warwulf. If someone saw him growing fur and fangs, they would take him to the gallows too. Or, perhaps worse, burn him. A wolf would burn, they were mortal. He did not know if a wiedergänger could be killed that way or if he would just linger forever in flame. And he did not want to find out. It was bad enough being German with how the English looked at him, he did not want to know how they would treat a real monster. Groaning, Walter shoved himself up from the ground and tugged his rolled up sleeves down over the fur on his arms. He couldn't be seen. Couldn't be known. Limping into the woods behind the roadside inn, he made it a decent distance before his knees cracked and buckled beneath him. As he collapsed with a cry of pain, Walter closed his eyes as the agony enveloped him. When he reopened his eyes, they were wolf's eyes and he was in a wolf's shape - all fur and sharp ears and four limbs. Walter whined and slowly pushed himself up on legs that quivered and shook, feeling weak and tired and hungry underneath the feral emotions that came with the wolf. Then...scent. Prey. His stomach cramped and then suddenly energy surged through him as a rabbit burst past him, it's eyes wide with terror, heartbeat rapid fast. Walter snapped his head towards it, feeling fast - faster than he had any right to be - and the rabbit screamed as its spine snapped. Hot blood rushed over his tongue and he growled in pleasure as he scarfed down the small body, bones and all. Whatever he was now, it wanted blood. Looking back towards the inn, Walter's nostrils flared as scents assaulted his now overly acute senses. He whined, swaying slightly, as the hunger in him urged him to go back, to feed, the hunger still a furious drumbeat in his body eager to spill human blood. It was less than it was before, however, the rabbit's blood having sated it at least a little. Trying to kill humans not knowing what he was could get him caught. Hung. Burned. Forcing himself to turn towards the deeper woods, Walter sprang into a loping run, paws in the dirt, wind in his fur, scent of animal prey in his nose. He would hunt. He would feed. He would kill. But not humans. Not yet. Not until he had to.
wiedergänger - one who walks again
warwulf - werewolf
Timeframe: 1682
Location: England
Event: Walter Leidtner, who was bitten by a wolfkin as a youth, was attacked weeks before by a vampire and turned. However, the bloodlust of a new vampire mixed with feral instincts forced him to change to wolfen form, where he promptly tore off the head of his sire. Without anyone to lead him in his new reality, he struggles to cope with the bloodlust driving his feral nature mad.
Consquences: Upon learning that blood does slake his new thirst, Walter Leidtner makes the decision to quench the hunger on animal blood for as long as he can.
One of the only known wolfkin to be successfully turned into a vampire, he has been around since the 1600s. Originally unaware of what he had become, he eventually met other vampires who were shocked at his nature. Typically he keeps to himself given the rarity of his existence.
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