Wild Blood by Nancy A. Collins

As they stood beside the dying animal, William Cade handed his son his folding lock-back knife.
    â€œHere you go, Skin. Finish what you started.”
    The deer’s eyes were already beginning to glaze as Skinner squatted beside it. His father’s knife looked like a bayonet in his young hand. Without knowing why, he placed his free hand atop the dying animal’s snout and stroked it gently. “Thank you,” he whispered as he slit the deer’s throat. Skinner then stood up and handed the knife back to his father.
    William Cade squatted beside the deer and began sawing away at its under- belly. “Look at this booger! He must weigh hundred-twenty, hundred-thirty pound, and dressed-out proper! We’ll be eatin’ venison all the way to Easter! And those points are gonna make one hell of a trophy, son!” With that, he reached into the animal’s steaming carcass and pulled out a length of intestine. He then stood up and motioned for Skinner to draw near.
    â€œThat was a damn fine first kill, Skin,” he said proudly as he looped the slippery length of gut about the boy’s neck and smeared his cheeks with blood. “I’ve known men twice your age who couldn’t shoot that clean.”
    The Change was on Skinner so fast there was no time for him to realize what was happening. All he knew was that that he was suddenly gripped by a pain that went beyond the ability to be expressed by word or thought. It was like he was dying and being born at the same time. And along with the pain was an overpowering hunger that made his stomach feel like an empty bag. After that was darkness, save for the blood and screams and the tearing of flesh, and the vague memory of running low to the ground at speeds impossible for a boy crawling on his hands and knees.
    The next thing he knew, he was lying curled up naked on a pile of dead leaves, his knees pressed against his chest. He was covered in dried mud and was gnawing on what remained of a squirrel.
    â€œSkinner? It’s Mama. Can you hear me?” Somehow his mother was there, kneeling beside him. There were tears in her eyes and her face had suddenly become old and colorless. She removed her coat and wrapped it around his shivering form as she wrenched the half-eaten squirrel from his gore-caked hands. “We’ve got to get you back to the house before someone sees you.”
    He lay in bed for the next three days with a raging fever, barely recovering in time for his father’s funeral. When he awoke, he had no memory of what had happened. His mother insisted that he’d fallen ill on the first day of deer season and had not accompanied his father into the woods. And for eight years, he had believed her …
    Skinner woke up naked and shivering, curled in the fetal position. Someone was shaking him and asking him if he was okay. For a brief moment, he thought it was his mother. Then he recognized the voice.
    â€œSkinner! Answer me! Are you okay?”
    Skinner slowly raised his head to find Creighton kneeling over him. He heaved a sigh of relief: it had all been a bad dream all along. He looked around, expecting to be greeted by Los Lobos’ gray walls, but only saw open desert and sky instead.
    â€œMan, I thought I’d never catch up with you!” Creighton exclaimed.
    Real. It was all real.
    The realization struck Skinner like a closed fist. The attack in the showers, the rape, the transformation, the killing—it had all actually happened. He wanted to scream, but all that came out was a choked: “Ah. Ah. Ah.”
    â€œYou all right, kid?” Creighton asked. “You don’t look so good.”
    Skinner’s reply was to noisily spewing forth the contents of his gut. Creighton nudged at the mess with his boot, and then bent over to retrieve a human finger.
    â€œYou feel better now?” he asked as he wiped off the severed digit, removed the ring affixed to it.
    â€œHow the hell am I