She didn’t need to look at her talons and fangs to know. She could feel the beast and its terrible hunger within her. The hunger was there all the time now, an aching hollowness. She felt it even in her dreams. Sometimes, when the craving was strongest, Hugh came to her. Smiling his perfect elven smile, he urged her to satisfy herself. He offered her a choice of bodies, but they all had Ken’s face. At least at first. Just when she was ready to rip out his traitorous throat, Ken’s face always changed into someone else’s. Sometimes it was her father’s, sometimes her mother’s, and occasionally it was one of her brothers’. Most often, though, the face was unfamiliar, just the terrified visage of a harmless norm. The faces she recognized took longer and longer to change to strangers now. But so far, she had resisted. Maybe she hesitated because, in the dream, Hugh urged her so fervently to do it; she saw no reason to please him. Maybe she remembered Dan’s last words. But each day, she grew closer to satisfying her hunger.