Sofia had spent the whole afternoon in her bedroom, studying, while her loyal Kas dozed peacefully on her bed. The truth was that studying had not been the only thing she had done, since part of it also consisted of fighting the urge to turn on the computer to tinker with it, or doing a puzzle or building some of the figurines that were still in their boxes. Anything, even playing Windows solitaire, would be much more fun than trying to get into her head the contents of Biology, History of Spain and the different types of law she had to know if she wanted to become a civil guard. The need to get out of her house had been her main motivation to study, and fortunately it had worked out well. Now it was time to go for a run to clear her head a little.

Under the watchful eye of her dog, she sat up on her chair and stretched to relieve her back muscles. As she turned around she saw Kas's bright eyes watching her intently, eyes that were identical to hers. It was at that moment that she looked around and realized that it had been dark for a while, and she hadn't turned on the light. She didn't need to, the light of the almost full moon streaming in through the window was all the brightness she needed. Again she bit her lip with her fang, a small but pointed fang. Many humans had them like that, that didn't mean anything, but all cinanthropes had them like that. Yes, so did he, but that didn't mean he wasn't human. Her mother had taught her how to identify them, and she hadn't seen his fangs grow larger during the night, or silver scars on his skin.

“But I saw his eyes glow in the dark...” she said, hugging herself.

And more things, things she had ignored because she didn't want to see them, because she didn't want what happened with Angel to repeat, because she didn't want to fall in love with someone who wasn't human and end up losing him to a damn hunter. The problem was that it didn't matter anymore, because she wasn't in love with him but she loved him as if she was. He was her best friend and she didn't want to lose him, and the idea that he might not be human horrified her. Not because she cared, she would never stop loving him if he was a cinanthrope, but because they had too many enemies and a shitty life.

“Perhaps he hasn't changed yet. Some cinanthropes never change and can live a normal life. If he's one of those, the hunters won't go after him,” she told Kas, who listened as if he understood something even though he could barely catch a few words.

Maybe she could ask him, let him know that she was his ally, but there was a very real risk that he had no idea about the supernatural world. If that was the case and she told him everything, it would destroy his life as they had done to her. He would never be able to sleep peacefully ever again, and he would always live in fear that the full moon would claim what was hers, something that didn't necessarily have to happen. Besides, she would have to tell him the whole truth about what she was, about her supernatural nature and about her trade as a huntress, and all the victims she tracked down for her mother to finish them off. He would hate her, one only had to see how angry those three conspirator apprentices made him every time they talked about hunting the cinanthrope. If he found out about her past as a huntress of supernatural beings, she would lose him.

“I need to investigate more. I can't do this on the spur of the moment,” she told Kas while stroking his head.

Followed by her dog, Sofia left the room and went to the kitchen to get a good drink of water. The lights were on, and her eyes completely dark-adapted, so the brightness momentarily blinded her. Normally her eyes changed to their human version when there was light, but that time it didn't happen, probably because the moon was almost full and its influx was pulling hard on her energy. It was strange to see her house immersed in a pale clarity, all the colors dull and with no chromatism other than blue and yellow. The brown furniture looked pale and gray, because Sofia could no longer see red. It was what she sacrificed in order to see in the dark, full color vision.

When she entered the living room, she found her mother cleaning her work tools to get them ready for the following day. She didn't even look up when Sofia and Kas walked past her. Their relationship had never been very good, but now it was simply nonexistent.

“Tell me something,” Sofia said from the kitchen, after taking a big gulp from the bottle of water in the fridge. “Is the change painful?”

That question was enough for Helena to look up and fix those glacial gray eyes on Sofia. The girl immediately noticed that her mother was studying her, looking for some trait in her that would determine whether she had already changed or not. Uncomfortable, Sofia looked away and licked her lips. Yes, he also displayed the same body language as she did, as all weredogs dig. Shit!

“How would I know that?” The woman replied. “What's the matter? Are you worried about what will happen tomorrow? The only thing I've come to learn about those disgusting creatures is that, when the change is close, they feel it, but I don't know any more details.”

Sofia curled her lip and let out a dry growl that didn't sound at all like something a human would do. As always, her mother didn't really care when her pup openly displayed her more aggressive cinanthrope behavior. Not only had she never changed and therefore could not do so at will, but even if she could she would not be able to defeat her mother. She wasn't one of the most feared and lethal huntresses for nothing.

“We are not disgusting creatures, we are people!” Sofia exclaimed.

“No, you are not people. You are beasts in human disguise, but you are still beasts. You are prisoners of your own instincts, of your bestial, primitive and savage behavior. Do you know how many times I had to correct you for walking on all fours? Do you know how many times I had to scold you for panting, for sniffing, for growling? And look at you, you still do it and have continued doing it behind my back. You can't escape what you are because you're a beast,” she said, standing up.

“I pant because I don't sweat! It's the only way I can cool down! What do you want me to do, die of heat stroke?” Sofia exclaimed, noticing how the energy in her chest stirred uneasily. “And what's wrong with my behavior? Just because we don't behave like humans is no excuse for hunting us. You're lying when you say we're dangerous, we haven't hurt anyone. Angel was a good man, a thousand times better than you, and he wasn't human.”

Suddenly she felt it again, her energy feeding on all that accumulated grief and rage to push against the barrier, wanting to get out, to overflow her body so as to fill it with vigor and strength. However, the barrier held, and that internal struggle tore a strong pang of pain that left her breathless for a few seconds, folded in on herself and with her mouth open in a choked moan. It was only an instant, but the icy cold of fear ran through her blood all of a sudden. As she looked at her hands, she saw that they were shaking.

“There's your answer,” Helena said, sitting back down on the couch to return to her task. “If you want some advice, Sofia, force the change and go through it already. Sooner or later it's going to happen, even if you want to convince yourself that you'll manage to live as a human without ever changing. The sooner you go through it, the sooner you'll learn to control the changes, and only that will give you a chance against the hunters.”

Sofia took several deep breaths to try to mitigate the trembling of her hands, which at that moment was caused more by fear than by whatever had happened to her. She was confused, this was the second time this happened to her, and she didn't understand why. Her mother knew what a cinanthrope was, but she couldn't help her understand herself because the only thing she knew about them was how to kill them. Her father would have come in handy now, if the bastard hadn't abandoned them.

“Another thing, the son of Diaz the hunter is beginning to suspect that this creature is not a common dog. He will soon come to the right conclusion, and when that happens I will recruit him. You'd better hurry if you don't want your cinanthrope friend to find himself a few months from now at the mercy of a real hunter. If you want some advice, stop trying to gain his trust. They're elusive and with good judgment. What works best in these cases is to let them know there is a hunter of supernatural beings in the vicinity. If he thinks he is being tracked, he will leave on his own.”

“Why are you doing this? Why do you care if the cinanthrope lives or dies?”

“I don't care about him. I could have hunted him down myself by now had I wanted. I've got him totally tracked down, but I'm not as much of a monster as you think I am.”

Sofia disagreed. She had no qualms about killing Angel, even when she knew her daughter was in love with him. Perhaps the estrangement with Sofia had made her reconsider, but she doubted it. Sofia went back to her room and opened her closet. In one of the drawers was her hunter's uniform, her black tracksuit and matching balaclava. She had also kept her silver dagger, she never knew when it might come in handy. Maybe what her mother had said wasn't such a bad idea. She hated it, hated to do this to him, but she needed to get him away from that area as soon as possible. The last thing that was needed on El Cerro was for a psychopath like Rodrigo to be initiated as a hunter of supernatural creatures.

After getting dressed, she smeared herself with a spray that hunters used to camouflage their scent. If he detected that it was her, he might not take her seriously. Then she hugged Kas and left the house. The tracksuit itself was not so conspicuous, but she waited until she reached the forest to put on the balaclava. The last thing she needed was to run into a neighbor and have the poor guy think there’s a bandit walking the quiet streets of El Cerro. She just wanted to scare a cinanthrope, not create a widespread alarm among the local population.

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Thanks to her improved vision, Sofia had no trouble finding her way in the dark, but the snow was already icy and it crunched with every step she took. Trying to be quiet was not going to be at all easy for her, unless she started using the footprints to get around. There weren't many, but she did find several tracks of footprints, mostly deer, but also some of humans coming in and out of the forest. She had no idea which ones might belong to the cinanthrope so she picked some at random and followed them. They seemed a bit small for a male, which she figured would have slightly larger feet in human form, but she wasn't sure which way to go either.

Indeed, she had gotten the wrong footprints, but what she saw was very interesting. Following the trail she reached the spring. Someone had removed the snow from an area around two square meter big, exposing the frozen ground just below. There they had drawn a pentagram using a white powder that, when she rubbed y against her fingers and smelled it, turned out to be only flour. If they had used salt they would have contaminated the earth, killing the vegetation, so those witches were concerned about the environment. Around the pentagram were a series of letters similar to runes, but this one was a language lost in time. In the center of the star were the burn remains of a campfire. The similarities to Sara's sisters' spectacle were undeniable, but there the large cast-iron cauldron had not been used. If anything a normal sized pot, in view of the size of the fire.

“A perfect size for cooking an infusion…” she bit her lip.

She wasn't going to get anything else out of there, so Sofia kept walking, going deeper and deeper into the depths of the forest. There were far fewer tracks there, but she did find some evidence of the cinanthrope’s presence, his pads marked in the frozen snow. It was a very old trail, but at least that meant he was still in the area. After a good while moving through the trees she located another trail, that of bare but perfectly human feet. Sofia bent down and checked the snow’s consistency on the footprint, and she was able to sink her finger into it. If it wasn't frozen that meant that he had recently walked through there. Stepping on them, she was able to move forward while minimizing the noise as much as possible. A cinanthrope's hearing was very fine, but she hoped to be able to ambush him, or at least make him think that a hunter was after him.

“Dave has proven more than enough times that his hearing is even better than mine..” again, she bit her lip, knowing what this implied.

Her train of thought was interrupted by something resembling a strangled moan, a muffled sound that was halfway between human and dog. With the hair on the back of her neck bristled, Sofia crouched down and walked very carefully, using the frozen snow-covered vegetation as cover. Peeking out from behind a tree trunk she saw him, and for some reason felt sorry for that creature, and a little afraid for her future as well. He was too far away to see him clearly, and his back was turned to her, but she didn't need to get any closer to see that he was suffering. He was kneeling on the floor, completely hunched in on himself, and Sofia was unclear whether he was trying to hold back the change or forcing it. His breathing was very fast and his muscles seemed to be spasming, as if they were being shaken by electrical currents. That looked like it was being very painful.

Suddenly, it happened, and it was much faster than she thought it would be. Thick white fur covered his bare skin and a long tail grew from the base of his back and curled over it. The ears migrated high on the head, and the face became a dog's snout. The leg bones shortened a bit to allow for quadrupedal movement, and the feet became canid paws, even with pads and claws. What really gave them away were the arms, as they maintained a human-like shape, with prehensile-fingered hands, albeit thicker and clumsier. The whole process, which Sofia watched in fascination, happened simultaneously and in just a handful of seconds. When it was over, the cinanthrope plopped down on the snow, panting and exhausted, but also looking relieved.

For several minutes the canine simply laid on the snow, his eyes half-closed and his breathing increasingly slow and relaxed. When he seemed to have rested enough, the animal rolled around on the ground just as a dog would, his muzzle open and his tongue hanging out between his jaws. Sofia couldn't help but smile. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. Her mother's words echoed in her mind, calling them beasts for their behavior. Yes, cinanthropes had to constantly fight against their own instincts, and it wasn't always easy to mask their doglike behavior. However, if that display of absolute freedom and relaxation was beastly behavior, then Sofia would rather be a beast than a human limited by a stupid society.

When he seemed to have finished rolling around, the cinanthrope stood up on all fours and shook, ridding his fur of the snow that had stuck to it. He then began to retrace his own footprints to bury them, thus preventing his human feet to be linked to the ones he now had. So concentrated was he on his methodical task that Sofia saw him getting closer and closer, unaware of her presence. He was a very beautiful creature, with fur so white that it was easy for him to blend in with the forest’s winter blanket. His body was slender but firmly muscled, and he moved with grace and elasticity, as if he had been doing this for years. Biting her lip, she realized that she also found him attractive, and that was a new thought she had never had before when she had been in the presence of one of these creatures.

So engrossed was she that she didn't realize how close they both were until he stopped and looked up. The canid's sky-blue eyes met her gray ones, the only visible part of her face covered with a balaclava. Suddenly his tail dropped to tuck between his legs, and fear flashed in his pupils. He was no pup, he knew perfectly well what was in front of him, and he knew how dangerous it was for him. Sofia felt dirty, she was causing that fear with her looks, with her attire. She caused him that fear because their people had been persecuted and killed until they were forced to hide in order to survive. Yes, it was what she wanted but it seemed so unfair.

Before the girl could react, the cinanthrope turned tail and ran. His body moved gracefully through the snow, as if he had little trouble wading through it, and in a few seconds he had disappeared among the tree trunks. The crunching of his footsteps faded into the night, moving farther and farther away from her in a desperate flight. Suddenly she heard the metallic sound of a spring activating. The next thing was a sharp yelp of pain that made every hair on her body stand on end, and the energy in her chest flare up.

“No...” Sofia whispered.

That wasn't part of the plan. He didn't have to get hurt, just scared, nothing more. Sofia broke into a run in the cinanthrope’s direction and soon found him. A foothold trap had caught one of his hind legs. It was not a razor trap, but the force of the impact had broken the bone. That wasn't a problem as it would heal as soon as he got free. The problem was that he wasn't doing it. He fumbled with his hands, as if trying to figure out how to open the mechanism, and when he found himself unable to do so, he began to bite it in desperation. During the whole process he kept crying and whimpering due to the pain.

“Come on… I taught you how to open that… come on, you can do it…” Sofia, who was watching him from a distance to see if he was able to free himself, said to herself.

He was not able to. Sofia pondered how she should act. The plan had been to scare him into leaving. If she helped him now it was like doing nothing, but she couldn't leave him like that either. As she pondered how to act she heard a series of footsteps approaching. The cinanthrope also heard it as he suddenly fell silent and looked in the direction they were coming from. It was a person, that was all they knew so far, and from the lack of care about not making noise it didn't seem like he was too worried about being heard.

“Shit…”

Time was up. Either she acted now, or she left the cinanthrope at the mercy of a common gunman, and that was not going to happen. Aware that she'd just blown her whole plan, Sofia ran towards the creature. Seeing her approaching, the cinanthrope panicked and began tugging at the trap, desperately trying to free himself. Sofia dropped to the ground and, with the dexterity she had acquired from years of handling such objects, pulled it open. His paw freed, the weredog fell face first to the ground, then turned to the girl with a look of confusion on his canine face. Indeed, the plan to scare him had not worked as she would have liked.

The hunter’s footsteps were still approaching, and Sofia didn’t want to save his life a second time. Brusquely, she pointed at the forest depths, urging him to leave. Confused, the weredog tilted his head, but he understood her silent message. Still limping a little, despite his wound being already healed, he stood up and ran off towards the deepest part of the mountain. Relieved, Sofia did the same but in the opposite direction. When Rodrigo reached the place where the trap was set, the only thing he found was the empty foothold trap, and two pairs of footprints going in different directions; ones were human and the others of a canid.

Once she was far enough, Sofia stopped and let herself fall onto the cold ground. Panting and trembling, no quiet sure whether it was from running, or because of the anxiety she felt, she hugged her knees. The plan had gone horribly wrong. She could have scared him, all she had to do was aggressively show him her silver knife, but she couldn’t. When she freed him from the foothold trap, she had caught a whiff of his scent, and if she scared him off, he would leave.

“Fuck!”