Synopsis: Jack awakes from his transformation, angry at the affects, the man who's done it, and finds a surprising friend in an actress at the circus, who offers a hand even when he pushes her away.

Author's Note: Long overdue, I know. Anyways, here's the next chapter, and I hope I can expect some critique as I feel as if this chapter doesn't fit the same standard as some of my earlier ones, which is a feeling I get whenever I get deep into a novel, but, whatever. Either way, here's another chapter, enjoy, kick back and relax.
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Chapter 7: It’s a Mistake

A loud banging noise swirls around me, a metallic ringing that repeats itself time and again, in usual two second intervals. Loud voices reach above the clanging of steel together, yelling both obscenities and commands back and forth. Two men laugh heartily at the mentioning of a woman who is dressed like a whore.
Moments later a loud diesel engine bubbles to a loud roar and sits for a long time before the gears are grinded, the transmission is engaged and the engine is piped full of gasoline until it roars like an angry lion. The voices, though, poke through low sounds as the engine is choked of its vital fluids for short periods.
I hear the beating of my heart in my heat, a low thum-thump with a shock of pain following it. It feels like Jack Daniels got the best of me, but, I know I wasn’t drinking. As the feeling in my extremities slowly returns, each limb sending a message of pure and unadulterated pain to my already stressed brain, I moan out slowly in anguish.
Clenching up all of my muscles, I roll onto my back and feel the pain in my head roll with it to the back of my skull. My joints burn and smolder like ashes and my muscles throb as if they are bruised from a long and arduous fight. And the hard wooden floor that I lay on is no comfort to me.
Opening my mouth, I lick my lips and feel over the row of sharp, tall teeth and long, oblong mouth with a thin and long tongue. As I close my mouth, the thought passes through my mind and I immediately begin to open my eyes. But upon opening my eyelids, a burning light smashes against them like china onto concrete and I slap them shut once more.
I grumble and roll onto my side, lifting my arms and throwing them up and over my head, neck and shoulders. My fingers and palms touch a rough scratchy patch of what feels like straw on top of the hard, cold wood. As I drag my hands about, feeling the wood over, I hear the scratching of nails on its surface.
Moments later I open my eyes once more and stare out to the little den that I’ve made with my arms. The darkness allows me to let my pupils adjust. Upon adjusting, my eyes stare at the inside of my arms, which are covered by thick, gray fur, but with arctic white-colored fur on the insides and on my chest.
Lowering my head, I stare down my chest and look over the course, soft fur and am deathly silent. Then my eyes lower even more, converge on a large muzzle that sticks out from the end of my skull and I feel my body go cold. Breathing in air, I watch a black nose twitch around, in my control, at the end of that gray fur-covered muzzle.
Throwing my arms away from my body, I work onto my back and sit upwards. My eyes, wide as dinner plates, stare down at my body and suddenly realize what happened last night, or whenever it was. My clothes cover my body, save for my jacket and shoes which are missing, but where I am not covered, all I see is gray fur.
Long, black nails stick from the ends of each my fingers, black and pink pads stick through the fur on my fingers and palms, as I can see as I flip them over. A thick, bushy gray and white tail hangs loosely from a torn hole in the back of my jeans. Upon staring at it, it swings around and sends new sensations to my unaccustomed mind.
Finally, long digitigrade paws hang down out at the bottom of my jeans legs, with huge claws and toes and a comparatively tiny foot. What used to be the bottom of my foot is now a long, thin, but strong, part of my leg. All of my weight has been pushed onto the toes and the front of the foot. They move around as I flex my toes.
My eyes dart back and forth, confused with what I am seeing, but familiar with what I am feeling. Finally, I simply close my eyes then roll my head back and scream out in both fear and confusion. I scoot backwards over the wooden floor, pushing the wads of straw and grass out of my way, until my back is against the wall.
Then I cover my face with my hands and run my fingers through every nook and cranny. A long muzzle and tiny black nose, check, two tall, thin, very sensitive ears on the top of my head, check, thick fur that covers it all and black headfur that is combed back like my usual hair, check-o, what the hell am I?
“Jesus Christ!” I scream out.
I wrap my arms around my head and then sit in silence, my chest rising and falling as I gasp for breath, nearly hyperventilating. Then suddenly my breathing steadies itself as I begin to hear footsteps. They are loud, made by expensive dress shoes, and have a long pause in between.
The footsteps slowly come from my right and approach, getting slowly but successively louder until they feel as if they are upon me. Bang, the footsteps are at the end of this room, boom, they are halfway here, bang, they are near me, boom, they are in my ears! Suddenly everything is silent again.
“We’re awake, now, aren’t we?”
I open my eyes and then lower my hands from my face. Staring upwards, I look across a room made entirely of steel bars, filled only by straw, a small pillow and sheets, and a bucket, towards the bars that lead out into a hallway. To my right and left are more bars and cages, same with across that hallway. Standing in the hallway, just on the other side of those bars is Blackjack.
Before he can say anything, I quickly thrust my legs beneath me, push upwards with my arms and begin to charge across the room. The strange, new paws carry my weight as if I have always had them and I find little difficulty adjusting myself. Or maybe it’s just my anger and hate forcing my body to adapt, rather than the other way around.
I cross the room is a split second and soon my hands, gray on the top, white on the bottom, wrap themselves around the bars and my new face is pressed onto the bars. The bars are just narrow enough that I am unable to put my arms through them. That’s lucky for him.
But Blackjack doesn’t react in fear of me. Instead he stands coolly in the middle of the room, wearing his usual clothes, his face like granite and his body like marble. I huff hot air onto his face and shake with anger as I hold the bars. Blackjack simply gingerly smiles at me as if I were a cute little bunny rabbit.
“Have we accustomed ourselves to our new wolf body already?”
“What the fuck did you do to me?”
“I am going to fulfill your wishes, Jack, I assure you. But you owe me a lot of work in return.” Blackjack says without taking his arms from behind his back. “You will serve me here, doing menial tasks, serving in the show when we need you, and doing whatever demeaning job I can conjure up for you.”
“You’re a fucking madman!”
I immediately begin to pull at the bars, pulling them sideways like Superman in the movies, expecting them to bend like rubber. But after several long, embarrassing seconds of yanking at the bars, they do not move. Either the bars are magic or I’m no stronger than I used to be.
“Ah-ah, Jack, my boy, just because you are indeed a werewolf, doesn’t mean I’m foolish enough to grant you the strength and agility of one. I learned my lesson after I granted those same strengths to that French boy in 1764. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
I am quiet for a few seconds and then I stare at him. He takes a hand from behind his back and then looks over his nails, mocking me with how calm he can be when a breathing monster is just inches from his skull. I calm myself down, slam my hands against the bars and then stalk away from him.
“You made the Beast of Gévaudan?”
“I did indeed, and fooled the entire country into believing a simple huntsman killed it.” He chuckles. “The masses of people are no smarter than a single common, ignorant slob. In fact, I believe they are dumber.”
I stop walking in the middle of the cell and am quiet, my mind working around inside my head. I am fighting with a man who is powerful enough to turn men into beasts, fool the world into believing stupid stories and is able to break the ultimate barrier of age itself. But he’s still human, always human, never better, never worse.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to get to work, my boy. The quicker your sentence is carried out, the quicker you shall be home.”
“And what makes you think that I won’t tear your throat out as soon as that door is open?”
“I am two hundred and seventy years old, my boy. Don’t you believe that I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years?”
Out of my peripheral vision, I watch as Blackjack lowers his hands to his sides and then raises one up into the air. Pointing towards me with the palm up, he flicks his fingers upwards. Suddenly I feel something crawling up my body and then I am as still as a board. Gasping for breath, my eyes widen as I look down my uncontrolled body.
I thrash my head around, wanting my body back, but find that I cannot do anything that I want to. My body turns about, on heel like a soldier, and begins to march towards the door. The door of steel bars creaks and then swings open. My body marches out and begins towards the door at the end of this long room.
“I can make you do whatever pleases me, boy.” Blackjack says as he strolls leisurely behind me. “I could make you jump into a lake, hang yourself on electrical wire, shoot yourself with that little gun in your jacket. I could turn you into a butterfly, a rat or even a speck of dust in the wind. I am more powerful than any god and cannot be killed by any stupid little mortal weapons!”
Suddenly my body jumps out of the large opening at the end of the room and I fall about four feet down to the rocky ground below. My body returns my control as I slam face first into the dirt, pebbles and pieces of wood sticking up into my fur and skin. I yelp out in pain like a dog that just got kicked and lay motionlessly.
Rolling onto my side, I stare up at the back of the trailer that I just unwillingly launched myself out of. Blackjack stands on the wooden floor and stares down at me with pure black eyes, frowning hard, his black needle mustache curling above his lips. I look down and feel tears come to my eyes.
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
There is a long silence as I bite down onto my tongue and feel a terrible hatred and shame rise into my heart. Not only have I just sold myself into slavery, I did it to a man half my weight that has the power of the world at his fingertips. I hear Blackjack huff and then open my eyes to see him smiling above me.
“That’s a good boy.” He says calmly and looks up and away from me. “There’s a truck over there next to that strength game. It’s full of food and water. It needs to be unloaded onto the back of that pickup truck to be taken to the cooled trailer to be stored. You’re job today is to put the supplies into the back of that truck for Bruno to drive over. Try to get it done before dinnertime, or you’ll be dinner.”
I turn my head away and look off into the distance. I see the huge twenty-foot metal tower that is the high striker. Beside it sits a semi truck with the rolling door open, displaying high row after high row of boxes and crates. I sigh and then look back up towards the back of the semi truck.
Blackjack is no longer there, having disappeared into thin air while my eyes were looking at the task at hand. I stare into the darkness of the trailer filled with cages and then sigh again, beating a clenched fist into the grassy, gravely dirt. Then I climb slowly up onto my knees and then push up onto my paws.
I curse my luck, shove my hands down into my pockets still filled with all my crap and begin towards the semi trailer. Growling like a wolf, I frown hard and walk with a slumped back and limp tail. My heart feels like it hangs from the bottom of my body, ashamed at my actions and regretting half of my life.

My body heaves sweat out of my body as I slide another heavy box into the back of the pickup truck sitting near the semi. How I am able to sweat, I have no freaking clue, but I’m not questioning it. I lean against the lowered tailgate and then feel my legs shake beneath me.
I’ve been at this job for at least two hours and I don’t think I’ve even cracked the halfway point. I stare at the row of boxes three rows deep and four boxes high that I’ve stacked into the truck and then sigh at all of the empty space. Turning about, I hoist myself up onto the truck and then sit onto the hot metal.
My arms shake and convulse as they protest how hard they’ve been used in the last two hours. Huffing and breathing heavily, I put my elbows onto my thighs and then rest my chin into my hands. I open my mouth and let my tongue loll out, drool running down the long, thin pink membrane as it pulls at the cool air.
I close my eyes and begin to think about what my uncles could possibly believe happened to me. Maybe they thought I ran away to go back home, or maybe Blackjack made them think I never existed. If he could turn me into a werewolf, and maybe all of the other were-whatever people here, and appear and disappear as he pleases, maybe he can mess with people’s minds, too.
Opening my eyes, I begin to look around where I sit. To my left, I see line after line of tent and stand, each with a small vehicle in between. One even has a Corvette, an older one, but a Corvette nonetheless, sitting next to the tarp that consists of its outer wall. Lowering my hands to the metal, I clack my claws against the bed and think to myself.
How hard would it be just to jumpstart that car and drive it to freedom? It’s only fifty feet from here to the car, about five minutes to start the car and who knows how long until I can get the car away from this place. My head cocks to the side, ears twitching about, as the thoughts pass through my skull.
“Hey.”
I gasp and feel my ears stand up on end. The voice is new and not his voice, but I don’t know where it’s coming from. Suddenly I hear gravel move about and swing my head around to the other side of the pickup truck. Lifting my eyes up, I see a woman standing next to the side of the trailer.
She crosses her arms and legs, leaning onto the metal wall of the trailer, her eyes staring at me as if I were a criminal. Her ears, tall and pointy like mine, stare towards me, but her tail hides between her legs as if I were to jump up and stab her. She is tall, thin, with a beautiful face, but she frowns and glares at me, obviously either not trusting me, or outright hating me.
She wears a pair of tight-cut jeans and a t-shirt with RUSH written in red letters on top of a red pentagram from ‘All the World’s a Stage’. Her hair is gray like most of her fur, but becomes black towards the edges. It is short and sticks upwards crazily, but seems to fit her. Her eyes, blue as crystal lakes, make a stark contradiction to the rest of her body. Her name is Quicksilver.
“What do you want?” I demand, trying to hide the distrust in my voice as well.
“Nothing,” she quickly responds, “just coming to check out the new meat before Blackjack decides you cut you up for a new coat.”
I yank back my head a bit and growl loudly from the depths of my throat. I already don’t like her. I know what she’s just said is nothing but bullshit, but that’s not the reason why I don’t like her. After a few seconds I stop growling, lick my dried lips and then turn my head away from her.
“It’s just a joke.” She says calmly. “I saw you this morning when you were walking from the holding cells. I just wanted to figure out if you were real or not.”
“What do you want from me?” I snap and turn back towards her, my voice angry but not loud.
Her brow furrows and she stops leaning against the truck, though her arms never uncross. She lets her head flop to the side as her tail picks up and begins to wave back and forth. Her eyes dart here and there, searching me over as if I were the one trying to trick her.
“I don’t want anything from you.” She says.
“Bullshit,” I quickly respond, “everybody wants something. I don’t have money, anything valuable; I don’t even have my jacket or shoes anymore.”
Her lips purse up and her eyes loosen up a bit as something goes through her mind, but whatever it is I can hardly tell. Her eyes turn to her right and she looks to a large metal tagalong that sits near to where many campers, trucks and trailers sit. I follow her eyes and look to it.
“That’s where Blackjack keeps most of the stuff he has but has no use for. Most of it is just a lot of crap, kind of like the evidence locker in a police station.” She tells me. “If you want your stuff, it’s probably in there. But I wouldn’t suggest trying to get in there to steal them back. Blackjack would roast you like a marshmallow if he found out.”
“I don’t give a shit about him.” I reply without looking to her. “The fucking bastard shanghaied me into this. I just want to get out of here.”
“That ain’t a good idea, dude, Blackjack would torch you like a crash test dummy if you tried to leave.” She says calmly. “He’s all magic and psychic about that.”
There is a long silence as I stare at the big metal airstream trailer in which neither I nor Quicksilver speak. My mind goes over and over how I would get in there. Getting my hands on a piece of metal to pry open the door would be easy, or smashing the window, too, but that would mean a lot of noise. And then to get out of here, that’s the next problem. There are plenty of trucks and cars around, I just need to be able to get into one and get it out of here quickly.
“I’ve seen you before too, you know?” I say without looking to Quicksilver. “I saw your show yesterday. It was just before I sold my soul to the Devil. I know your name too.”
“My name isn’t Quicksilver.” She interjects quickly. “That’s a stupid stage name that Blackjack came up with. He loves to figure out stage names for his pawns. That’s why nobody calls him by his real name. My real name’s Rayne Reynolds. What’s your name?”
I stare at her and find my eyes staring directly into hers. I search her face for some sort of deception, some sort of filthy trick that she could be playing. She could be working with Blackjack or she could just be lying to get a rise out of me. But whatever it is that she wants it’s hard to tell.
“Jack.” I finally consent to tell her. “Jack Walker. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to get this work finished.”
I slide off of the metal tailgate of the truck and begin towards the back of the open trailer. My body has cooled down considerably and my arms and legs no longer feel as if they are going to fall off. As I march towards the back of the truck, Rayne steps forward and leans on the rear bumper of the trailer, her arms still crossed and her eyes looking at me.
I reach into the truck and drag another box out of the back of the truck. As I heave it down off of the trailer, I turn and begin to unsteadily march back towards the tailgate of the now nearly crouching pickup truck. As I near the back of the truck, a low pain begins to rise up in my lower back and by the time I reach the tailgate, it is screaming into the bottom of my brain.
Growling and grunting, I drop the heavy box down onto the truck and then lean on it. Behind me I hear Rayne begin to chuckle. I stop growling in pain and begin to snarl in anger at her laughing at me. Looking over my shoulder, I see her strutting towards me. Soon she is standing right beside me, leaning her now uncrossed arms onto the back of the truck.
I draw back my head and stare into her eyes with distrust and hate, but she just lightly smiles and looks over me with now glimmering eyes. She chuckles and her smile widens even more until I can almost see the shining, glimmering fox teeth beneath her gray furry lips.
“You know these boxes are filled with rocks, right?” She asks me.
Quickly I stop growling and look to her with surprise, but quickly return to distrusting what she says. Slowly, I begin to look down towards the box that I’ve just heaved fifteen feet from the back of a trailer truck to the rear of a pickup. I just now realize that this thing is pretty heavy to be food and water.
“He said it was—”
“Blackjack does this just to figure out how long it takes people to figure out the boxes are filled with rocks.” Rayne says, propping her head up on her elbow noticed into the metal tailgate. “He’s evil and old as the rocks in the boxes, but, even he tries to get a cheap laugh every once in awhile.”
I look away from the box and to her, my jaw hanging loosely open, but my tongue sitting comfortably inside my muzzle. She smiles at me as if getting a bit of a laugh out of it too. I just look at her with a bit of embarrassment, a cold chill running the length of my body.
“Why are you helping me?” I ask her after the long silence.
“I don’t know.” She coyly replies. “I always try to get to know the people Blackjack tricks into joining his little circus, but usually just to play tricks on them. Why don’t you trust people?”
“Because people are dirt, filth, they lie, cheap, deceive, steal, murder and always to get stupid, petty, retarded shit.” I quickly and truthfully state.
“Agreed, but if Blackjack sees that you’ve figured out his trick too soon, he’ll be fuming mad, and at me for springing you from prison, too.”
“So what do you suggest?” I ask.
Rayne lifts her head up and steps away from the tailgate of the truck. I turn my body towards her and watch her begin to walk away, her one hand rubbing the underside of her chin. Then she turns and looks to me, holding her hands up, her forefingers and thumbs out like a picture frame.
“Yeah, I figure you’ll fit.” She says. “I’ve got an idea. Come on; let’s put a trench coat on you.”