viselike grip and twisted hard. He began to sweat and shake
uncontrollably.
He steered the pickup onto the berm and stopped. He fumbled for the
handbrake, pulled it on.
He had begun to whimper when the first pangs struck him. Now he heard
himself growling deep in his throat, and he sensed his self-control
rapidly slipping away as his animal needs became more demanding, less
resistible.
He was afraid of what he might do. Maybe leave the car and go hunting
in the desert. He could get lost out there in those trackless barrens,
even within a few miles of Vegas. Worse, all intellect fled, guided by
pure instinct, he might go onto the highway and somehow stop a passing
car, drag the screaming driver from the vehicle, and rip him to pieces.
Others would see, and then there would be no hope of journeying secretly
to the shuttered motel in Vegas where Rachael was hiding.
Nothing must stop him from reaching Rachael. The very thought of her
brought a blood-red tinge to his vision and elicited an involuntary
shriek of rage that rebounded shrilly off the rain-washed windows of the
truck. Taking his revenge on her, killing her, was the one desire
powerful enough to have given him the strength to resist devolution
during the long drive across the desert.
The possibility of revenge had kept him sane, had kept him going.
Desperately repressing the primal consciousness that acute hunger had
unleashed within him, he turned eagerly to the Styrofoam cooler that was
in the open storage compartment behind the pickup’s front seat. He had
seen it when he had gotten into the truck at the rest area, but he had
not thus far explored its contents. He lifted the lid and saw, with
some relief, that the cowboy and the girl had been making a sort of
picnic of their trip to Vegas. The cooler contained half a dozen
sandwiches in tightly sealed Ziploc bags, two apples, and a six-pack of
beer.
With his dragon hands, Eric shredded the plastic bags and ate the
sandwiches almost as fast as he could stuff them into his mouth.
Several times he choked on the food, gagged on gummy wads of bread and
meat, and had to concentrate on chewing them more thoroughly.
Four of the sandwiches were filled with thick slices of rare roast beef.
The taste and smell of the half-cooked flesh excited him almost
unbearably. He wished the beef had been raw and dripping. He wished he
could have sunk his teeth into the living animal and could have torn
loose throbbing chunks of its flesh.
The other two sandwiches were Swiss cheese and mustard, no meat, and he
ate them, too, because he needed all the fuel he could get, but he did
not like them, for they lacked the delicious and exhilarating flavor of
blood. He remembered the taste of the cowboy’s blood. Even better, the
intensely coppery flavor of the woman’s blood, taken from her throat and
from her breast.. . He began to hiss and to twist back and forth in his
seat, exhilarated by those memories. Ravenous, he ate the two apples as
well, although his enlarged jaws, strangely reshaped tongue, and sharply
pointed teeth had not been designed for the consumption of fruit.
He drank all of the beer, choking and spluttering on it as he poured it
down. He had no fear of intoxication, the alcohol before he felt any
effect from it.
For a while, having devoured every ounce of food in the cooler, he
slumped back in the driver’s seat, panting.
He stared stupidly at the water-filmed windows, the beast within him
temporarily subdued. Dreamy memories of murder and vaguer recollections
of coupling with the cowboy’s woman drifted like tendrils of smoke
across the back of his mind.
Out on the night-clad desert, shadowfires burned.
Doorways to hell? Beckoning him to the damnation that had been his
destiny but that he had escaped by beating death?
Or merely hallucinations? Perhaps his tortured subconscious mind,
terrified of the changes taking place in the body it inhabited, was
trying desperately to externalize the changefire to transfer the heat of
metamorphosis out of his flesh and blood and into these vivid illusions.