Abigail Moore

"Found you."

He's sitting in my living room. He's sitting in my favorite chair, a can of my beer on the table next to him. He's been here a while.

I slump against the wall and lean my head back. I whisper a prayer.

"I found you." He says again, and I hear him stand up. I hear a hammer cock back. Please God. "Say something, you son of a bitch."

"What's in that gun?" I don't open my eyes. I just hope he knows.

"What?" I hear the confusion. I hear him step forward. His leg knocks the table and I hear the beer fall. From the sound the can makes, it's mostly full.

"Listen, you can't-"

He fires. The bullet hits me in the chest and I feel it sever something. I feel my chest cavity fill with blood and my lungs close off. I fall forward, my brain sucking down the last bit of oxygen, and the other part of me waking up.

"That's for my wife, you-"

He doesn't finish, because he sees it starting. Sees I'm on my hands and knees. I'm not falling. The bleeding has stopped. It's inevitable now. He shot me too well, too clean. My body had no choice - Change or die.

"Run." I hear the word from my own throat. It sounds like a snarl. I fall asleep and hope he can make it to safety in the next ninety seconds...

-The Moon's Curse, by Matthew McFarland

Abigail can't control her shapeshifting. She changes under the full moon, when she suffers enough harm that she'd otherwise die, or when a sufficiently strong emotional response triggers a lapse in control. She doesn't retain any control over herself when Changed and is motivated purely by base instinct, near-mindless hunger and rage. Once she Changes, for whatever reason, she has no rational mind and retains no memory of her actions. Rumor holds some werewolves attain greater control over their shapeshifting, but if true, Abigail hasn't learned the technique yet.

Abigail is nearly immortal as a result of her Curse. Conventional weapons, poison, fire, and other methods of murder mean little to the Cursed. Her human body can suffer injury but once she takes enough damage that she'd die, the Change overcomes her. Her first order of business is usually to kill and eat those responsible for the injuries.

Abigail heals abnormally fast due to her Curse. Minor blunt trauma, such as punches or kicks or minor cuts, mend nearly instantaneously. More serious damage lasts longer but still heals too quickly to be natural. A broken bone, for instance, would heal in minutes as opposed to weeks. While seemingly a boon, it also makes it more difficult for Abigail to pass unnoticed around regular people. While Changed, Abigail heals all damage from nearly any source instantly. A hard enough hit can stun her temporarily but she'll recover in short order. Regardless, her resistance to injury makes it much easier for other people to notice something's wrong with her. The same regenerative factor also renders her immune, or allows her to recover faster from, different drugs such as alcohol, cannabis, or "harder" substances like heroin or cocaine. If she Changes, her hyper-charged metabolism will instantly burn such things out.

Abigail has a keen nose and can track by scent, even in human form, with a likewise heightened sense of hearing. When Changed, these senses are used to hunt down the best food source she can find. This includes living people, but when she thinks ahead, she can avoid fatalities by catering to the Wolf's mind. While Changed, Abigail thinks like a predator, and predators prefer to expend as little energy as possible when hunting. Dead flesh is therefore preferable to live meat and a werewolf would rather raid a butcher shop than kill and eat the passerby outside. Of course, wolves also have the instinct to chase and kill their prey...

When the Change comes, it isn't instant. It takes about 30 seconds before Abigail will transform, a process she can fight temporarily through willpower. The Wolf always wins in the end; Abigail's mental reserves will wear out and the Wolf will hunt. At most, Abigail can hold it off for a couple of minutes, but it's never very long.

When Abigail Changes, she takes the shape of a half-human, half-wolf hybrid form born out of ancient nightmares. She gains another half in height to stand roughly nine feet tall with a corresponding 250% increase in mass, mostly muscle. Her arms elongate, ape-like, which allows for bipedal or quadrupedal travel. Her face becomes more like a wolf's, complete with long fangs and a maw, while her fingers and toes end in long, sharp talons. Both teeth and claws are razor sharp and her strength, speed, and stamina heighten to inhuman levels. Her body grows a thick, hairy hide which repels minor damage and instantly heals anything more serious than that per the above. She has a lupine tail in this form as well and her howl, while loud, won't echo.

Other werewolves are said to take the form of a dire wolf, standing roughly five feet tall at the shoulders and ten feet long, making them the size of a small horse instead. With sharp teeth and claws, this shape is said to be faster, at the expense of some of the man-wolf's power. Abigail isn't able to consciously take this shape herself and only transforms into a hybrid form. With time, she may be able to learn to become a dire wolf as well.

Where do the Cursed come from? How is it spread? There is no "default" answer, maybe because there's too many intriguing possibilities...

Spirits Curse... the Cursed are claimed by spirits of rage, of the hunt, and of murder. They bond with a human being, creating a unique hybrid. If the Cursed can't die peacefully then they can at least share their eternal hunger with others...

Heredity... the Curse might be passed down through a family line. The true origin could be spiritual, demonic, lost to the mists of time... but the family that carries it might not care. It manifests after some milestone in the individuals life such as puberty, their 18th birthday, when they lose their virginity, when they first taste human blood, or some other poetic circumstance.

Cursed by Witches... folklore is full of tales of people who refused kindness to an old woman who turned out to be a witch or fairy capable of cursing them to lifelong misery. Did the Cursed turn away someone in need? Choose greed and comfort over work and charity? Darker still, were they living a life of sin akin to a serial killer, so the "Curse" is actually a reward?

Sex... the Curse might be transmitted through a night of unbridled and unprotected passion. It's not a disease in the truest sense, transferred through fluid contact. The Curse is spread because the werewolf truly opened themselves up to their partner, abandoning caution and common sense of a few hours (or moments) of pleasure. There need not be a morality play behind it either; perhaps the Cursed passing along the infection doesn't know they're the vector. Or maybe they do and are trying to make a Pack. The victim could be guilty of nothing more than following their passions and become a monster for it.

Wolf-Bite... the classic method, of course, to become a werewolf is to be bitten by one. The person becomes a werewolf not because of any flaw but because they were unlucky enough to survive a werewolf attack.

Which version is true? Maybe some of them, all of them, or none of them. The Curse is what the Curse needs the story to have it be. While Abigail's default is that she was bitten, that could only be her own recollection of the matter and not represent the truth of her situation. Abigail is as prone to being wrong as anyone else and knows little about her condition beyond folklore she can find online or in books.

Every Cursed has a means of dying. They're not invincible though they can seem to be to their unfortunate prey. Perhaps...

All Cursed die the same... silver bullets, tea made from wolfsbane, their throat slit under the new moon... whatever the method, it works on all Cursed. There may be competent and fearsome werewolf hunters, especially if the method of death is something easy to procure and well-known, like silver.

Different for all Cursed... perhaps the method is more complicated by far and unique to the werewolf in question. One can only die if killed by a member of his immediate family in the spring. Another is immune to all forms of damage except from weapons treated with a plant that only grows in the forest where she was Cursed. A third is vulnerable to attack from one particular weapon, currently on display in a national museum. The Cursed may not know their own method of death and search for the means to die. Otherwise they may take pains to avoid circumstances they know are fatal... though traditionally they meet their fate on the same road they take to avoid them.

Curable?... can the Cursed be cured? If so, it should be unique and as difficult to obtain as the method of death, if not more so. Once cursed, does that absolve the werewolf of the crimes they committed while Cursed? The story certainly can't end cleanly... and once cured, perhaps the person even discovers they miss the power and freedom they possessed as a werewolf. They might regain their humanity only to lose their lives at the hands of the relatives of those they killed and devoured.

What's the ultimate truth? Again, it can vary by story. Abigail thinks silver can kill her because she's read that it harms werewolves... but whether it's true or not, as frightened as being Cursed makes her, she's never tried to commit suicide to find out.