Through the windshield of his parked jeep, the werewolf watched the ponderous steel colored clouds in the sky. Night would be falling in an hour but the snow laden the clouds washed everything with a muted gray light that defied the coming darkness. The rising wind broke a small hole in the clouds and he glimpsed the waxing moon floating in the encroaching twilight. It was more than half full with a bright shimmering ring of light encircling it. A Winter Moon, he'd heard it called. The hole in the clouds closed, hiding the moon away.

Stepping from his battered red jeep, the werewolf lifted his nose delicately sifting the air for her fragrance. From the scent that floated on the breeze, there would be snow tonight. There was going to be a lot of snow, and soon.

She wasn't here. 'Shit.' This was the third week in a row he'd sought her out at the club Gothic Noire and she wasn't here.

Closing his eyes, he concentrated, shutting out the odors of rubber, metal and gasoline as he stood amongst all the cars crammed in the parking lot. He closed his mind to all other human scents except for the perfume he sought, baby-powder and woman, his woman. His steps brought him to where her vehicle had been parked. An old Mazda sat in the space but her pick-up truck had sat here briefly and not too long ago.

'Ah, a trace,' he thought. The scent was an hour old but she had been here then left. 'Now what?' He sighed deeply. 'I guess it's time to hunt the old fashioned way.' A frisson of excitement raced through him. He was finally going to see Sherl again. Tonight.

He strode back to his jeep and shrugged out of his leather duster then peeled off his tee shirt. The air was below freezing but only the nip of the wind-chill registered. Sitting in the driver's seat, he pulled off his boots and socks. Yanking the thong from his hair, the loosened waves slid down his muscular back but did nothing to keep the frostiness of the wind from his flesh.

He closed and locked the jeep, stashing the key behind the front tire. Naked but for his leather pants, he looked sharply about with eyes that saw better in the dark than in daylight. There was no one watching, not even a car on the street driving by. 'Good.'

On the hardened soles of his bare feet, he jogged to a stand of trees and bushes in the next parking lot then hunkered down. Searching within, he felt for the sleeping power humming just below the surface. It uncurled from the base of his skull and swept over him in a wave of warmth and fierce joy. He felt the stretch and pull of muscle and sinew as his body shimmered from one moment to the next into another form.

A large rangy wolf in full winter coat of gray and white trotted out from the bushes. Nose to the pavement, the wolf cast about the parking lot for the trail he sought. To the wolf's nose, far more sensitive than in his man-form, the trace of the female's perfume became as clear and bright as neon. Head lifting, the wolf set off in a ground-eating lope to follow the aroma from the side of the road, tracking her scent by the vehicle she was driving. Time became meaningless in the 'now' of wolf-thought.