Rat, her associates and the world in which they live are my own creation and thus belong to me.  Constructive criticism is welcome, but please be gentle! *hopeful grins*

Rat lay limp and cold in the dumpster as the sound of expensive shoes receded down the alleyway.

Her head spun.

She was a fighter.  It was what you learned growing up in the wilderness otherwise you didn’t grow up. 

Her kind was strong, very strong.  And tough.  Wounds knitted almost instantly when inflicted, except from silver of course, to which people like herself had a particularly nasty allergy.  If you were the natural predator of one of the cleverest and most violent animals that has ever existed, the Creator of All had been kind.  Like any predator worth its salt, they had strength, and resilience.  They had been gifted with healing, enabling them to take vast amounts of punishment from the weapons of the prey.  But they also had another edge.  An edge needed when dealing with something as sly as humans.  They could look like their prey.  Look like them, walk like them and talk like them.  Win their trust, their pity and their loyalty.

And then strike.

Of course, there were times when the trauma was just too much and the ones who were knocked down just never got up.  She could remember when a deer had put its foot clean through a friend of hers skull, knocking him back.  They’d shook him and tried to help, but he was dead before he’d hit the ground, the wound too deep and too great for his body to cope with. 

That was something that had always been impressed upon her from a young age.  “Remember that there’s worse things out there than you,” They’d said.  “There’s things that could end you in an instant, so don’t go throwing your weight around like an idiot.  Do it to the wrong thing and you could get yourself killed.”  She’d nodded and said yes.  She knew perfectly well that she was far from immortal.  She’d lost most of her family at a young age to assailants unknown.  They’d been protecting her and her sister…Her kind had not actively hunted for humans for thousands of years, their existence had all but faded to a myth.  What did they do to deserve what they did to them?

Oh gods

Not now…. this is no time to think of them. 

Why was she trying to help this woman?  Why when her kind did what they did?

Because she was her friend. 

A tear washed a clean patch on her cheek.  In its comet trail, the skin began to fuse.  She lay still, looking almost dead, barely breathing in her painful dream as the faces of her family watched her.

Her head swelled outwards in a sickening blister, swelling out the footprint.

Close…very close.

Good job he wasn’t a deer…

She lay as she healed.  He footsteps had stopped and the mindless torture of Sam had proceeded again, this time without rude interruption..

Silently shrugging off torn clothes, she lay, feeling the pain of the cracked vertebrae fade.  Rat closed her eyes and felt her body shift.  She sloped out of the dumpster, landed silently on the concrete and began to run, bunched muscle rippling under the thick fur

The man, holding Sam’s thin frame against the wall in front of him, neck exposed, was hit by 126 pounds of very angry wolf.

He in turn was sent skittering on his back across the alleyway, Rat travelling with him, the inertia carrying them both along.  Sam was released and came to rest in a heap near Rat’s dumpster.  At least she was safe.  Rat didn’t take the time to look, but she could hear her breathing. 

She tried to pin the man, using her own weight to stop him from getting up, and let out a primal growl.  Self-preservation overrode his own shock at the animal that had leapt from the garbage at him.  His fingers grasped at her but all his hands caught was thick fur, proofed for hard winters above the snowline.  Rat felt like she was getting the upper hand.  She went to lunge at his throat and that was when he rose to his feet like a leviathan.

“So…you’re not all dead after all eh?  Well, I’m sure that people would be very interested to learn that…”  Rat leapt again, but all she found was air.  She snarled and wheeled about to find the man standing behind her and bending to pick up his unconscious bargaining tool.  Nothing as crass as physical combat for him it seems…not when the thing that you are fighting can fight back.

Rat inched closer and coiled like a spring.  He stretched out his hand towards Sam and with every ounce of strength in her body she leapt. 

Once more, the arrogance of the man got the better of him…not used to fighting a thing not cowed by fear, he assumed that she would watch him grab Sam.

No.

Rat’s teeth clamped onto his wrist and sunk to the bone and beyond.  Her mouth filled with cold blood that made her want to vomit but she hung on and the pressure increased.

The man had become a hissing wreck.  His fangs had descended needle sharp and he was hissing through them and flailing like an injured snake, limbs coiling about themselves, animal instinct trying to shake off the source of the pain. Rat was thrashed with him.  She thought that her head was going to come off.  She clamped on harder and felt the bone start to give.  With a final snarl, teeth met with each other and rat, and the hand were thrown free.  She flung it from her mouth in disgust and rounded on the creature again, blood mixing with saliva and hanging in long tendrils from her mouth.  Her lips curled back in a growl as the creature held its bloody stump then turned to look at her.

She leapt, her body warping as she did so and connected with his chin, foot outstretched and used all the inertia, all her power to deliver a kick to its head.  Its eyes briefly widened and the neck snapped back with a stomach-churning crunch.  She hit the floor before the body of the man who lay motionless, his head at an unnatural angle and blood from the ragged stump mixing with the water in a foetid puddle.  She stood, breathing hard and became conscious of her nakedness.

She ran for her clothes and quickly pulled them onto herself, then, bare footed went over to Sam’s unconscious form.

A cursory examination revealed her to be broken but mendable.  The smell of fear from her was fading as unconsciousness gave her mind respite from the trauma she had just faced.  She would have to get someone to help…

In her concern for her wrecked friend, she didn’t notice the man get to his feet.

Rat convulsed in pain as the twin spikes embedded themselves up to the gums in her neck.  She twisted to get him off her but his grip was like iron, his cold hands tearing at the skin and she could feel the blood flowing out of her and into him, his strength building with every sweet corpuscle.

It wound its limbs around her and Rat felt her life draining away.  A new hand was forming from the stump of gristle that remained.  Blood, her blood dripping from its mouth like milk around the jaws of a baby.  She managed to stand and her parasite rode her as she staggered around the alley trying to rid herself of her parasitic load.  Her blind course, trying to claw at the face of her assailant led her blindly to the alley wall.  She slammed her back against it, but it is no use trying to knock the breath out of a creature that doesn’t breathe.  Again she slammed herself, again, again. 

She felt her knees start to buckle.

She dropped to all fours and shifted.  The parasite, suddenly met with a mouthful of fur disengaged its fangs and stood as if drunk.   Back she shifted again to two legs and used her remaining strength to send a dumpster across the alley towards it, knocking it off its feet with a crunch. 

She looked in disbelief as again the creature began to get up and prepare to lunge…the hand had almost grown back now and it protruded from his sleeve, mucous covered.  Things didn’t grow back…they mended, yes…but once you lost it, it was gone…

It started to get up and again Rat hammered it with the dumpster.  Again and again she smashed it into the form of the man, watching its head spread over the wall, her anger growing. 

The thing started to turn to ash.  She watched, sickened as it crumbled and soon only the suit and wet ashes remained, closely followed by the contents of Rat’s stomach.

She had never killed a human, never. 

But it wasn’t a human…

From behind her, Sam made a noise.  She went and gently lifted her, wiping her mouth with her sleeve and walked her slowly towards help. 

She stood with the crowd when the ambulance came, then turned and walked away towards the rest of her life.

So the legends were true.