I paused on the landing and beheld another door, took a deep breath and pushed it open. The hinges were rusty and corroded by time, it opened not with a whine but a grating grind. And as it swung aside the guillotine of light from downstairs fell upon her.
The wolf was heart breakingly beautiful and her eyes seemed to shine, like sunlit amber or gold before a fire. In her paws she held my shell.
"You're a mess my love," she said softly.
My gaze locked with hers. "I don't know you," I whispered.
Was that true though? Was it? Deep down a shard of myself thought I should. As if I knew what it was like to hold her paw in mine, to touch her cheek, the sound of her voice-
"I know," she replied, smiling. "It was part of the price, to keep me safe. All of that is about to end and then you'll be you again, not just a drunkard on a beach."
"My friends said I did a great evil. That I betrayed them. I-"
"Shh," she said, coming closer. Her canines shone white and wet behind her smile and her lips were black like onyx. "They were trying to kill me, and they convinced you to join them in the hunt. Yet the hunters became the hunted in the end, when at last they had cornered me you chose me over them. Is that so wrong?"
I growled in frustration. "On the surface of course it isn't. But why were we hunting you? What did you do? What did we-"
Before I could stop her she had pressed the shell to my forehead with one paw and placed the other on my chest. "Close your eyes," she whispered.
Step back from her, something small and wretched and primal said from the sump of my subconscious, gibbering in fear. Don't go back. You can't...you don't know what she is now, what she's become.
I crushed that fear with force of will, stood fast instead, though in retrospect I would realize I shouldn't have.