It was agony worse than anyone should have to endure.

The bullet had shattered Clara's hipbone; it felt like half her body had been ripped away too. She searched inside for a sign that Marney was still with her. She asked for guidance to calm the panic, begged for soothing medicine to ease the pain. What she found was the empath's box of secrets, imparted by a kiss, alive and vibrating at the back of her mind. It told the changeling to let go, to accept the inevitable, to realise that this was a good thing . . .

Clara withdrew from the advice like it was counsel offered with a poisonous sting.

Alone, bathed in silver light, slumped upon the hard and wet cobbles of a foul-smelling alleyway, she was finding it too hard to recall who she was, to remember all she had learned. Hot blood slicked her skin; her heart thumped a fiery tempo. The pain had sapped much her strength and she couldn't open her eyes, let alone move her body. And in this state, lost and incapacitated, Clara decided she would die.

That was when the first growl came to her throat.

"Clara! Did the avatar give you a symbol? Quickly!"

She recognised the voice, but could not remember the man who used it. She wanted to reply, but the blood in her veins had turned to molten metal, and only a groan passed her dry lips. Her temples pounded, her muscles cramped, her skin suddenly felt too tight for her skeleton.

"Do not touch her," another man hissed.

Clara growled as her magic gathered momentum. Broken bones began to knit; torn flesh began regenerating. A ache pulsed in her jaw; her teeth felt long, her tongue a fat slug in her mouth. Skin burning as hairs sprouted from follicles like thick, hot needles, Clara used a supreme effort of will to pull from her pocket a tin filled with tablets of monkshood, the medicine she had taken for most of her life to keep her inner monster buried inside her.

Greasy fingers struggled to open the medicine tin, but she had no real control over her actions. When the lid gave, the tin slipped from her grasp, and her medicine spilled in a small fountain of tiny white pills. With another growl, she looked up and forced open her eyes to meet the glaring silver disc of the moon, high and cold in the sky.

Vision painfully sharp, Clara faced the two men in the alleyway. They stood either side of a slim pedestal that was topped by a stone box. One of them, metal plates covering his eyes and dressed in simple black garb, held a cane made from glass so deeply green its facets seemed to ripple in the moonlight like emerald waters. The other man seemed older than the first, his short hair and goatee beard practically white, his face lined with age. He wore a long brown coat, and held a rifle in his hands, its glowing power stone reeking of thaumaturgy.

Both men were covered in grime, and Clara could hear them breathing. She could taste their fear. Didn't they know they should be running from her?

"It's coming," Clara warned them.

She tried to scream in anguish, but the slow-burning fuse of her magic touched the explosive, and it was a howl of triumph that escaped her mouth.

A series of dull creaks and pops filled Clara's head as bone and cartilage shifted, broke, grew, and the brutal reorganisation of her skeletal structure began. Clara's face stretched forward, cracking loudly as it snapped into its new elongated shape. With each white hot break and pop inside her, a cough-like bark escaped from her constricted throat. She fell and thrashed on the floor as muscle and sinew morphed, expanded, ripping clothes at the seams. For a moment, her boots refused to give, but then the leather split and buckles bounced off the alley walls like a spray of bullets. She scrambled forward onto all fours: her arms were now powerful forelegs, covered in thick silver hair; hands were now meaty paws, tipped with nails, long and sharp.

She waited for that moment when the monster strangled her humanity, that moment when animal rage drowned all memory of who she was. But, within Clara, Marney's box of secrets opened just a little more, and when the agony and suffering subsided, that moment of forgetfulness did not come.

She was the wolf.

With a sharp slap of recognition, she remembered the men before her, and she remembered them well. They seemed puny now.

Van Bam stood with his back to Clara, facing the alleyway that stretched ahead. Samuel didn't seem to know where to look, and the aim of his rifle swung between Clara and what his friend was watching. He directed his desperate eyes to the stone box that sat atop the pedestal.

"What's the damned symbol?" he hissed.

A sharp crack filled the air, followed by several more, like ice breaking under pressure. Ahead of the two men, a barrier of green magic blocked the alleyway from wall to wall. The barrier was already fractured by a series of jagged lines. It groaned as it bulged outward, and then the magic shattered into a hundred pieces that swirled away like smoke on the breeze. An empty blackness was revealed, scratchy and darker than shadows, its surface uneven and studded by sharp objects like shards of night protruding from water. The clamour of distant violence reached Clara's erect ears, the already cold air turned to bitter winter. The stench of age and corrosion filled her nostrils . . . along with the reek of wild demons.

Samuel had decided exactly where to point his rifle now. With a degree of disgust, Clara noted the old bounty hunter's hands shook as he took aim at the doorway to the Retrospective. Van Bam stood beside his fellow agent, clutching his green glass cane, facing the danger with courage that Clara sensed he did not truly feel.

With the way ahead blocked, with only a dead end behind, the sole option left was to stand and fight. This did not displease the wolf.

"Here they come," Samuel whispered.

The Retrospective opened its door. The jagged studs parted and the fluid blackness clung to a crippled form that pushed its way through. When the Retrospective finally released its denizen, the monster stumbled into the alleyway with a low belch, as if it had emerged from a burst bubble of vicious liquid.

Spindly and hunched, the wild demon paused to taste the air with a fat, lolling tongue, dripping grey saliva. With a round mouth opened wide and full of sharp teeth, it turned its elongated head one way and then the other. Insectile eyes, as large and smooth as the metal plates covering Van Bam's sockets, settled on the Relic Guild agents. The demon stepped forward, dragging clubbed feet over wet cobbles, and raised its long arms, displaying sharp horns for hands, like monstrous rose thorns.

Clara growled.

The demon screeched.

Samuel's rifle flashed and spat.

The bullet smashed through the creature's gaping maw, and the hairless bulb of the back of its head burst with a steaming spray of oily blood. Its scream abruptly silenced, the demon dropped to its knees and fell backwards. The doorway to the Retrospective boiled, reaching out with tentacles that wrapped around the corpse and dragged it back into the depths. No sooner had the body disappeared than the doorway opened again. Three more demons stepped into the alleyway. They differed in shape and size to the first, but each of them had monstrous horns for hands, and faces mostly comprised of gaping tooth-filled mouths and large, insectile eyes.

Two more followed them.

Van Bam stabbed his cane down against the floor. With a high, discordant chime, three fist-sized globes of green sped down the alley and punched three of the demons to their backs.

Clara barked and bounded forward to meet the two still standing.

With a screech, the first demon struck at the wolf with its horned hand, swinging the sharp point in a wide, clumsy arc. Clara easily dodged the blow, and the creature stumbled. She set about the second, jumping into it and bowling it over to the floor. Its breath was cold and rancid as she trapped its head between her huge jaws. She growled and crushed and shook and tore the monster's head from its neck. The demon's flesh and bone had a damp, pulpy texture, and filled Clara's mouth with the taste of rot.

Spitting out the mauled mass, Clara met the challenge of the second demon. Rising on her hind legs, she used her fore paws to shove the monster back against the wall. Its head cracked black brickwork, and it sank to the ground. Clara again used her powerful jaws to rip its head loose.

The other three demons had recovered from Van Bam's assault by this time. They clambered to their feet, shrieking with quick, stuttering voices, and converged on the wolf.

Samuel's rifle flashed and downed two in quick succession. Clara disembowelled the third with the sharp nails of one paw, and tore away its chest with the other. The corpses quickly melted to thick oil that ran along the cobbles to be sucked back into the Retrospective.

The wolf howled to Silver Moon in victory.

"Stand clear," Van Bam shouted.

The illusionist tried to cast another protective barrier. He failed. As soon as his magic spread across the liquid doorway it fractured, shattered, and blew away on the cold air. Slurping like feet pulled from mud, the surface of the Retrospective began lapping in folds, excited, agitated, preparing to unleash its next monstrosity.

If she could have, Clara would have smiled.

Legend said there were an infinite number of wild demons within the Retrospective, a never-ending horde of merciless beasts whose passion for violence and blood knew no heights. Clara wanted them to come; she was ready to fight them all, and she faced the doorway with battle-lust raging in her ears.

Behind her, Samuel and Van Bam were arguing about a House symbol. The weakness in their voices angered the wolf, the desperation that searched for a way out of this situation when it was obvious that all options led to the fight. Her tail pointed to the ground, as rigid as a rod of iron; her front quarters lowered, hackles raised, Clara – huge and fierce - bared her teeth with a series of barks. Once again, the Retrospective opened its door and sent its warrior out to meet the wolf's challenge.

The sickly green colour of disease, a monstrous worm slumped onto the cobbles like a flaccid limb. Its blubber splayed across the alley, pressing against the walls, blocking the doorway. Patches of thick hair grew from its glistening skin like tufts of wild grass. Slowly, as though yawning, the worm opened its mouth: a gaping hole filled with row upon row of finger-sized teeth. A putrid stench invaded Clara's nostrils as she gazed into the filthy maw. The worm hunched the segments of its body and slid towards the wolf with the greasy sound of slimy flesh over stone.