then it was all a fog. She remembered the surge of anticipation, the sexual

thrill unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. She had never, ever,

found

satisfaction with a man until the night he changed her, but this was

different... even better. This was the slaking of a thirst she'd never known

she

had, though now she realized that it had always been there, hidden deep

beneath

the surface, driving her. Later she had experienced a sated, languid, dreamy

aftermath, and she knew that she had finally found herself. She had been born

to

be a werewolf.

And now, like the creature of the night she had become, she stalked through

the

musty corridors of the dungeon, following the trail in the dust, anxious to

learn the secret that he kept from her. She wondered if this was the secret

that

would give her power over him. The thought made the hairs on the back of her

neck rise. He would be the ultimate challenge. But she could never let him

guess

what she was thinking, never, until the time came when she was ready for him.

And mat-time would come. Sooner or later she would find his weakness. After

all,

she always did. He was only a man. Wasn't he?"

She came to a heavy door at the end of the corridor. The trail in the dust

stopped here. She set the torch into a wall sconce beside the door and tried

the

keys in the ancient lock. One of them finally turned the bolt, and she swung

open the door, leaning against it with her shoulder. It opened with a loud,

protracted creaking sound. She took down the torch and went through into the

cell on the other side.

It was larger than she had expected. It looked as if it had been built to hold

a

large number of prisoners. Where she stood, just inside the door, was a sort

of

elevated platform, like a landing, with stairs leading down to the floor of

the

cell off to her right. The floor was about twenty feet below her. She

imagined

that prisoners had once been brought here in chains and thrown down off the

landing to the floor below. She held the torch up higher, and it was with a

thrill that she noticed a body hanging manacled to the far wall. When that

body

moaned, she almost dropped her torch.

She hurried down the stairs to the floor of the cell and ran over to where

the

man hung manacled to the wall. She held the torch up, so that she could see

him

better.

His unkempt hair was a dusty blond, as was his beard. He had handsome,

classically Saxon features, and he appeared to be in his late thirties or

early

forties. His chest was bare and well muscled. He couldn't have been hanging

there for very long, she thought, or he would have been dead by now. At the

very