In the beginning, Len McTirin was only a boy. He would have claimed otherwise, but the truth is that he was not yet hardened into a man; his tempering had only begun. His life, while not charmed, had been mostly easy. He went to school, he watched girls, and he occasionally walked in the woods near his home. Few times in human history have ordinary teenagers had lives as easy as they did in America at the end of the twentieth century.

It was a relatively normal day, in a relatively normal life, when a rather ordinary seventeen-year old Len left his house, drove into the forest, and began walking. There was nothing in the woods to show Len that the day would be different from any other. The air was a bit cool for the season, perhaps, but not uncomfortably so. He walked, following paths at first, then wandering off of them. The patch of wood was not particular large, and he had spent enough time there not to be much worried about losing his way.

Indeed, he knew where he was when he saw the wolf. He was not far from a road which was well used, and he thought it odd that a wolf was so near to it. He did not, of course, find it odd enough to linger too close. Slowly, he stepped away, hoping not to draw the animal?s attention. He was unsuccessful, however, and the wolf peered intently at him, hackles rising. Len shouted, waved his arms, tried to make himself appear bigger than he was, for he was tall but not particularly broad. The wolf advanced, lips drawing back from sharp teeth, and Len lost his nerve. He turned, to run, but the wolf was faster.

Jaws parted and closed, teeth tore through fabric and flesh, and Len fell. The wolf turned, apparently satisfied with its pound of flesh, and stalked off. Len, wounded and bleeding from his back, between the shoulder blades, crawled and stumbled to the road. A passing motorist saw him, helped him, took him to the hospital.

He needed a skin graft, and weeks of rest, but Len survived. In fact, a month later the only evidence of his injury was a jagged scar to mark the extent of it. He felt himself drawn back to the woods where he had been attacked, and was there when the sun sank, and the full moon rose for the first time since the wolf attacked him.

The torment that he experienced as the moon rose was beyond any he had ever imagined. Lips parted in a silent scream as he fell to the floor of the forest, writhing in pain. The world became a red haze to him, and he experienced nothing but the hurting. Bones broke, bent, shifted, and knit. Flesh stretched, tore, and grew back together. Organs moved, were crushed and expanded. Muscles and ligaments were torn from their attachments, moored themselves anew. It was agony.

Fire burned over his skin, or so it felt to him. The haze had lifted enough for him to discern light and shadow, but he was still unable to see clearly. He only knew that he moved, that he was closer to the ground that he should be. Scents assailed him, smells he had never dreamed of. His own breath was loud in his ears, and painful. Leaves felt larger, more solid than they should have, under his four feet. Time grew meaningless, and he was uncertain if minutes, hours, or days had passed.

And the pain returned, the haze blocking all from his vision once more, even the vague shapes he had been able to see moments earlier. Once more, his bones, organs, muscles and flesh moved, changed positions, grew or shrank or shifted. When the pain left, he was barely capable of movement, and he laid in the dirt, panting as he stared at the slowly brightening canopy overhead.

Eventually, when the sun had risen near to its zenith, he managed to rise. Two things he had failed to notice until this point. One was that his clothing was gone, likely torn and lost. The other, the far more disturbing, was that he found he was covered in blood. Terrified, he followed it, crouched low at first, straightening to walk normally when he realized how easily he could see, and even smell, the blood. He finally came upon the corpse of a deer, and heaved a sigh of relief, dropping to his knees.

Long moments later, perhaps minutes and perhaps an hour, he rose. Following the scent he would come to know as his own, the scent of both man and wolf, he found what remained of his clothing. He wiped off as much of his blood as he could, wrapped a length of fabric around himself, and carried his keys and wallet back to his car. A careful drive later, and a darting run to his door, and he was home, staring into his own eyes in the mirror. They were brown, but the left was growing paler. The difference at this point was slight enough, but over the next year, each full moon would shift it further. It was deep brown, originally, but lightened, becoming hazel, green, gray, and, finally, a pale, icy blue, ringed with near black.

Mac, formerly Len, grew lax as he got used to the city he had moved into. He stopped seeing the faces of his family, of his friends, of Anna on people he passed on the street. He remembered why he had to remain in control, but he came to terms with what he had done. He prayed, and he hoped for forgiveness. Time passed.

Anna had a brother, by the name of Donald. Donald Leeds never really believed in Len?s story about a dog attacking his sister, and he became certain that Len was a liar when he disappeared so soon after the attack. Donald went to Len?s home town, to try and learn more about the other man. He learned of the wolf attack, and went to those woods. He glimpsed the beast, for it was a full moon the night he hiked, and he returned to the woods many times in search of the wolf.

When he found it, he fired upon it with the gun he carried, and it ran. It was not mortally wounded, but it was bleeding enough to Donald to easily track it. When he came upon it, in the early light of dawn, he saw the wolf become a man, who begged for mercy. It was not given, and the man was buried there in the woods.

Donald now realized what had happened to his sister, and what Len truly was. It took him over a year, but he found others who hunted creatures like what Len had become. These Hunters worked with Donald, and passed on information on any unnatural beings which matched Len?s description that they found. One of these was the werewolf known as Mac who was living in a Canadian city.

One night, when Mac was closing up the bar where he worked, he caught a familiar scent on the air. He peered down the street in either direction, but saw nothing in the darkness, and dismissed the scent as a mere memory. He was walking away when the first bullet caught him in the back. By the time the second, and third, were fired, he was running at speed, and he managed to escape.

Mac gave up his pseudonym, giving his name as Grem as he hitchhiked across the continent again, back and forth across the border. Donald was never far behind, and there were some close calls. Finally, in New York City, Grem managed to lose his pursuer, though not in any manner he would have expected. He spent the moon in a motel room, shackled to the bed, and woke to the scent of Donald wafting in under the door.

Over the years, Grem had learned a number of skills that would not seem particularly useful to most living in the modern world. One of these, aided somewhat by his superior senses, was the ability to climb the tall buildings that dominated most American cities. Using his knife, he prised loose the glass from a window, pulling it into the room and setting it on the floor. He threw his shackles and his shoes in his pack, slung it over his shoulder, and climbed out the window. He could hear the door being kicked in as he inched his way down the wall outside.

A shot rang out as he neared the ground, silver shattering on the pavement below. He dropped the last ten yards, twisting his ankle as he landed in a low crouch. He moved quickly as he could while favoring that foot, heading down an alley. He glanced back as he stepped around a corner, his foot caught on a root, and he found himself, inexplicably, on a forest trail.

He followed the trail, and found himself in a city that seemed to combine everything from the middle ages on through his own age, with some architecture that did not look like anything ever made on Earth.

The buildings were only the start, however. Once he looked to the others walking the streets, he realized how strange a place he had found. There were men with wings, people with swept pointed ears, even those who claimed to be vampires and a few others like him. He spoke with some of the people there, and learned the nature and name of the city that was to become his new home.

He learned that his condition would not be the stigma in this new world he found as it had in the one he left behind, and so he did not need to hide what he was. He remained somewhat defensive, but he found he was occasionally able to let his guard down.

Gremlin James McTirin was in Rhy?Din.