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face.
    I knelt down to see if I could
pick him up, yet again amazed at my strength.
    As I lifted him, I looked down at
his face, and realized two very terrifying things.
    One: The person that I was
holding was Daniel Cotton.
    Two: I thought that he looked
delicious.
    I tried to push both thoughts out
of my head as I carried him back to the cabin, but the second one kept popping
up again and again.
    I truly had become a monster. I
couldn’t believe that I wanted to eat another person.
    But I guess it wasn’t really another person, because I wasn’t a person anymore.
    Once we were back at the cabin, I
laid him down on the mattress that was on the opposite wall from mine and
backed away from him. I realized that the farther away that I was from him, the
less I thought about tasting him.
    He groaned in his sleep, but
there wasn’t anything that I knew to do for him, except to bring him back to
town, which I couldn’t do. I couldn’t even make that an option. The people
there would probably kill me, and they would probably think that I did
this to him. No, there wasn’t anything that I could do for him.
    I didn’t want the sun to ever
come up. I was so afraid of what he would do when he saw me.
    “Thank you,” he mumbled as he
regained consciousness.
    “You’re welcome,” I said.
    His face still looked like he was
in a lot of pain, but I could tell that he was trying to hide it now that he
was out of the rain.
    “Who are you?”
    I stammered, “Uhh… just a hunter,
camping out in the woods.”
    “Oh,” he said, “By yourself?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have a vehicle to get us
back to town?”
    “No,” I explained, “There is no
way that a vehicle could make it out this far.”
    “Oh, how did you get me here?” he
asked.
    “I carried you,” I said.
    His face looked astonished, “You
don’t look very strong.”
    I looked down at myself. I was
sitting up on the other mattress across the room with a blanket wrapped around
me so that he couldn’t see my arms.
    “You’d be surprised,” I
whispered, “You probably need some rest, and then we can figure out how to make
you better tomorrow.”
    He didn’t answer, and in moments,
I could tell that he was asleep. It seemed unreal to me that he couldn’t see
me, but that I could see him so well.
    I didn’t want to go to sleep
because I was afraid that he might need me in the middle of the night for
something. I fought with all my might to stay awake, but I kept nodding off as
I sat against the wall. I finally gave in and lay down on the mattress. I might
have been stronger than usual on the outside, but I was emotionally exhausted.
    I dreamed that I woke up and all
of this beast stuff was just a nightmare, but I woke up only to see that it
wasn’t. It was still dark outside, but the storm had finally passed. Daniel lay
fast asleep on his mattress, and it wasn’t long before I fell back asleep as
well.
     

Chapter Eleven:
Daniel
     
    The pain woke me up, as it had
throughout the night.  I also experienced the fear of not knowing where I was
every time I was woken up. It had been a long, long night.
    I turned over to see if the girl
who brought me here was awake, but was surprised to see that she wasn’t there.
    In her place, lay an animal,
curled up and fast asleep.
    I backed up as far as I could
until I hit the wall, but I still didn’t feel safe. The fear overwhelmed me.
Why on earth would there be an animal asleep in the cabin? It made no sense.
    I looked closer, careful not to
wake it up. It was unlike any animal I had ever seen. It had long hair on top
of its head, resembling either a human or a horse, and the body was completely
covered with shorter hair.
    I held my breath as it turned
over.
    Underneath the hair on the face
were human features, and they were almost feminine.
    I exhaled. I didn’t know
particularly why, but the delicate facial features eased me in some way.
    “Ahhhh,” the animal said as it yawned.
It was almost cute.
    Then, it