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their sockets like hardboiled eggs. He grabbed the Bible with a trembling, bloodied hand and held it as if he meant to swat me across the muzzle with it.
    â€œChild of evil! I command thee! Get back, Satan!”
    I snarled and knocked the book from his hand, grabbing him by the throat. I pulled him out of his chair and slowly crushed his windpipe. The Reverend opened his mouth wide and issued a muffled shout, his body bowing upward, as I shoved the pair of knickers down his throat. He thrashed under my grip for several seconds, and even though he was a very strong man, there was never a chance of him breaking free. And he knew it. I left him there for the others to find—his mouth filled with a dead girl’s underpants. I doubted the whores down at the saloon would be surprised.
    I crept from the Reverend’s shack, pausing to warily eye the approaching storm. Weather on the plains has a tendency to be sudden and violent, quickly metamorphosing into the fierce devil-winds the Mexicans called tornado. And something told me that was exactly what was brewing out on the prairie.
    I stood there for a second, studying the sorry cluster of buildings that comprised Vermilion. Pricking my ears forward, I could make out the Spread Eagle’s piano in the distance, along with the occasional shriek of whore laughter. Maybe they knew there was a storm coming. Maybe not.
    Buffalo-Face had been right. Whites were crazy, although some seemed crazier than others. Wherever the knowledge I needed to understand and contain my beast-nature might be, it certainly did not lie in Vermilion, Texas. I turned my back on the town and headed into the surrounding night.
    Less than an hour later, the storm caught up with me, pummeling me with hail the size of a child’s fist. The wind was so fierce it knocked me down and kept me there, as if a giant hand was pressing me to the ground. I knew that if I remained in the open, I ran the risk of being sucked into the storm—I’d seen a buffalo shoot into the sky like a stone from a sling the season before. There was so much dust and dirt kicked up by the storm, it was impossible to see more than a foot in front of me, but I had the impression that the air above me was alive and angry, seething with raw power.
    Using all my strength, I crawled on my belly until I came to a dry riverbed and rolled down the bank, pressing myself against the overhang for shelter. By this time, the rain was coming down with such force it stung like nettles, and jagged fingers of lightning tore at the night sky. There was a distant rumbling that seemed to be growing closer, and at first I thought it was thunder—until I realized I wasn’t hearing it, but feeling it through my feet.
    I looked up just in time to see a six-foot-high wall of churning water, mud and other detritus come rushing down the riverbed in my direction. Even given my superior strength and speed, there was nothing I could do. The flash flood hit me with the force of a full-throttle steam engine, pulling me under and dragging me along as it raced towards nowhere. I surfaced once, long enough to glimpse a sliver of moon peeking through the heavy clouds, then the branch from an uprooted tree crashed into the side of my head and everything went dark.

Chapter Five
    â€œYou dead, son?”
    I peeled one eye open—which was quite a feat, seeing how it was caked with dried river mud—and looked up at a clear blue sky. I opened my mouth to answer but coughed up a lung full of dirty water instead.
    â€œI reckon you ain’t dead, then,” the owner of the voice said as a pair of hands grabbed me under the armpits and levered me into a sitting position. Staring down at my mud-caked belly and genitals, I realized I was wearing my human body. Before I could gather my wits, a bottle was pressed to my lips. “Here, boy. Take a swig of this—it’s good for what ails you.”
    I took a swallow. The liquid tasted