laid a guilt trip on him about how little time they spent together. Rick wished the trip had been an instance when he'd remained self-absorbed, instead of giving in. Then he and Jason would not have fallen into the nightmare.
They were drinking beer and bragging about women that night in front of the campfire. Jason had excused himself, muttering he had to see a man about a dog. Rick sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the silence of the wilderness and the popping of the fire. A short time later, he'd heard his brother's calls for help.
He'd grabbed his rifle and charged through the foliage. Rick stumbled upon a scene he would never forget. A huge wolf had his brother down, its powerful jaws wrapped around his throat. Rick lifted the rifle and shot at the animal, missing because he was no marksman.
Then the animal had come at him. Rick barely managed to lift the rifle when the wolf sunk its teeth into the flesh of his thigh. He'd shot the animal in the back at close range. The wolf yelped and fell to the ground. Dragging his injured leg, Rick rushed to his brother's side. It had been too late. Jason was dead. Even though he knew, Rick removed his jacket and wrapped it around Jason's throat, hoping he was wrong.
He'd carried him to their vehicle, thrown him in the backseat, and raced for the nearest town. The rest seemed like a blur. Because he'd lost a lot of blood from the gaping wound in his leg, he passed out at the hospital. He'd awakened in a room, tubes running from his arms, with the recollection that something had gone horribly wrong tugging at his conscience.
His brother had, in fact, been dead upon arrival at the hospital, he learned later. He'd taken him home in a casket. Or at least he thought he had. The loss of his brother had blunted his emotions. He hadn't even noticed that the wound in his leg healed at an impossible rate. Then the changes started. The restlessness. The sleepless nights. His infatuation with the moon. A need for raw meat. He'd never believed that werewolves truly existed.
Not until he realized he had become one. He'd wake in the morning to find dirt beneath his fingernails, sometimes blood on his hands and the taste of it in his mouth. The newspaper had started reporting accounts of a wolf roaming the streets of the city. He tried to convince himself it was impossible?a man could not assume the shape of an animal?but deep down, he knew it was possible, and that he was such a man.
Rick brought trembling hands to his head, burying his face. He didn't want to think about when he had come to accept the curse that fate had dealt him?the day his dead brother had paid him a visit. Rick had almost died of shock. He'd thought he might be hallucinating, had prayed he was dreaming, even though he was overjoyed to see his only brother again. But he hadn't been dreaming. It took seeing Jason to convince him that what he suffered was also real.
Jason was a werewolf. He wasn't in the casket Rick had flown home with. Confused and delirious, his brother had escaped the hospital. Rick later figured the hospital didn't want to admit they'd lost a body, so they'd played along with a hoax. But Jason soon learned what he'd become, and convinced Rick that he shared the same curse. His brother told him he would return to Canada, find the wolf that had bitten them, and kill it. Only then would they both be free. That had been three years ago. Jason had obviously not found the wolf.
He wondered if his brother had lost sight of the human within him, and now ran wild in the Canadian wilderness. Rick had a lot of questions he wanted answered. He'd done research, of course, but one claim disputed another, and he didn't know what to believe. If the curse could truly only be broken by killing the werewolf that had bitten him, he feared it would haunt him for the rest of his life. Finding that one particular wolf in the wilds of Canada would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
An ad for a country vet had caught his attention one day. A secluded mountain town nestled against the rugged mountains of Montana sounded like a good place for him.