wood still dangling from its bleeding eye socket. Then, as it paused by the wooden fragments of Morlock's cot, it spat deliberately on them. The blood it had drawn from Morlock's wound set them aflame. Then it darted across the room and spat the rest of its mouthful of blood on the other cot, which took fire and began to burn-slowly at first, then with increasing strength.
Morlock watched gloomily as his potential armory went up in flames kindled by his own blood. His nimbleness was now very much in doubt, due to the leg wound, and his materials for making new weapons were vanishing as he watched. But the worst thing about all this was the deliberate intelligence the werewolf had shown. He had thought of it as a beast, but it was not merely a beast. In fact, it seemed more like a person now than it had when still in man form.
He sat with his back against the cell wall and watched his enemy. It didn't seem disposed to attack, so Morlock tore strips from his shirt to bandage his leg wound. It was a terrible wound, and if it festered it might kill him ... but only if he lived through this night.
The werewolf itself was hardly in better shape. It shook its head frantically and clawed at its eye, finally dislodging the bloody chunk of sharp wood. Then it crept forward to the middle of the room, toward the wedge of moonlight falling on the cell floor. It kept its one eye warily on Morlock as it moved, but it seemed intent on entering the moonlight.
Morlock didn't understand this, but he did understand that anything the werewolf wanted was bad for him. He stood and brandished his remaining club. He closed one eye deliberately and opened it: a warning to the beast that it could lose its other eye.
The werewolf snarled and continued to inch forward.
Morlock thought the beast had understood his threat and was disregarding it. If so, it was even more important that the werewolf not rest in the moonlight. It had transformed there: did moonlight hasten the beast's power to recuperate and heal? It seemed likely.
Morlock dropped his club and jumped for the window. His left hand caught the bars' iron sill, and with his right he slammed over the wooden shutter. There was a latch on the shutter and he set it. The only light in the cell now came from the smoldering flames set by Morlock's blood. The werewolf howled in fury and disappointment.
Morlock dropped back down to the cell floor, and a wave of pain darkened his vision as the fall jarred his wounded leg. Sound and smell warned him before sight that the werewolf was attacking again. He lashed out desperately with his fists, by luck battering the blunt snout aside before its teeth fixed on his throat.
Its jaws clamped down on his right upper arm. Morlock saw that the wounded eye was already healing: the orb was whole again, if sightlessly white. The healthy eye met his, and the werewolf seemed to grin at him around the blood bubbling out of Morlock's wound. Morlock clutched at the werewolf's eye with his left hand, digging deep into the socket with two fingers. The werewolf gave a muffled shriek, a strangely human sound from the lupine mouth, and fled, one eyeball dangling by a thick gleaming nerve from the empty socket.
Morlock stood with his back to the wall beneath the window and wearily tore more strips from his shirt for bandages. He did so with a sense of futility. In every encounter where the werewolf hurt him, it came closer to killing him. He could hurt it, but he could never kill it. The absence of moonlight might slow its healing, but would not stop it. And now it didn't even need to attack; it could sit and wait for him to pass out from blood loss or weariness.
If only he could kill it. But he had no silver and no wolfbane. How else could you kill a werewolf.?
The wounded beast sidled through the red smoky shadows of the cell. It issued a harsh, rasping sound like a cough.
Morlock thoughtfully twisted the bandage in his hands. He let the blood fall unregarded to the