Doctor Who_ Wolfsbane - Jac Rayner [36]
But no. I am too harsh on my kind. I think that even the strongest of men - human men - could perhaps not have resisted the treatment we now received. We were promised meat, which arose in us hope that we would be restored to what we once were. We were given speeches, rousing, incredible speeches on the service we could do for our country, how we were the chosen ones, called to serve; how our noble, proud nation needed our help and our loyalty and our forgiveness. And we were shown what would happen to us if we did not agree.
To demonstrate this last, a wolf, a true wolf, was brought into the camp. It took the wolf three hours to die, and we had to watch it that whole time.
We knew ourselves for weak for agreeing then to what he asked, but there was not one of us who did not agree . We were starved, tortured and frightened, and yet on top of that we now believed, somehow, that we could become the saviours of our country.
And yet still, inside, I did not think I would do the wrong things he asked us to do. I thought I would agree on the outside, but when the time came, I would have courage and resist. But this is where he showed genius. For when it happened, it was not on the first or second nights leading to the full moon, when we gain strength. It was not on the night of the full moon itself, when we are strongest and fiercest and have no control over our beast. No, it was the second night after the full moon, the last night of the change.
Each night, we had been fed meat, and now we had regained some of our lost physical strength. On the night of the full moon, for once we were locked in, chained in, for this one time they did not want us to rip out the throats of each other, for they had another purpose in mind for us.
On the second day after the full moon, the 29th of June, we were not brought meat. There was the sound of a motor in the camp, and we pushed each other out of the way to get to the tiny holes in the walls which served as windows in our huts. We were still human, then. In the camp there was a lorry, and out of the lorry came more men in the uniform of the Schutzstaffel. They threw open the doors of our huts and dragged us out, and despite our new found strength there was no way for us to resist them.
We were thrown into the lorry. Some of us huddled together, others fought and argued - some saying they would gladly do what the men asked, others saying they would fight it. Gunter and I hugged and told each other to be strong. But we knew that when it came to it, we would not fight it, we would not be strong in our minds.
It will be hard to explain to you, to anyone, what it feels like to be a werewolf on the days after the full moon. I have told you that on the days before, we change, but have control of ourselves; the beast is not the master. We can even control the change itself, if we stay out of the sight of the moon. On the day itself, we are full, strong beasts. But on the days after... we are beasts, still, but we have no strength. Our human mind is trying to assert its hold, we know the language of men, but strength of will we have none... Some say that the night of the full moon is the worst of all, but many will tell you that the nights following are for worse, when we have the strength of a beast but our minds are feeble, like a puppy, not a wolf.
And so we knew that whatever we were ordered to do, our beasts would obey.
We spent many hours in the back of that lorry. We all felt the moon rise, and dreaded what was to come, but