Viktor Tiranul smiled in satisfaction at his handiwork even as his body transmuted back into human form. The crumpled and broken corpse of Don Salvatore Morello lay at his feet, the dead man's blood streaming off of his hands, repelled by the alien nanites, which were actually more like an intelligent colony, that resided in his bloodstream and which made him a werewolf. In fact, the entire luxurious living room was a charnel house, with great splashes of blood defiling the walls, ceiling and floor, and soaking the human bodies that lay all around, some of which were mostly whole while others were dreadfully torn and shredded. Not all of the dead bodies belonged to Don Salvatore's Mafia family. Slumped beside the main door was a man in a suit who looked to be Russian. Bullet wounds blossomed red and wet at the side of his neck and to the left of his chest. Diagonally across the room, splayed awkwardly over the end of a sofa was a Chinese man, his torso shattered by several hits from a shotgun.

"The house is clear, Viktor. They're all dead," Jenny Smith said, pressing her naked body against Viktor's side. She preferred to undress before changing into her werewolf form in order to preserve her clothes. The nudity didn't bother the pretty ex-prostitute. "This is the last bunch of holdouts. We control every bit of the London underworld, and probably most of the country. So what's next?" she asked. She knew Viktor well enough to be sure that this success would not be the end of her lover and leader's ambitions.

Viktor put his arm around the female werewolf, touching her with a familiarity that would have gotten any other man killed. He chuckled. "All of this is just the start, the mere foundation. These criminals will supply the cash and manpower to carry out the next step."

"Which is?"

"Taking over the country, of course," Viktor said, his human smile every bit as savage and merciless as when his face had a muzzle and fangs.

"Oh good! I'm assuming we get to kill lots more people?" Jenny said eagerly. She had grown to love killing with an almost sexual passion.

'Of course my darling. It wouldn't be fun otherwise," Viktor replied. He kicked the Don's body and laughed at the mushy sound of cracking bones.

 

***

 

"Why do I have to get naked?" Tara Harker asked, hands on her hips and head tilted quizzically. "I know you've seen me in the buff before, but a girl has to maintain her standards, you know!" She assumed John Seward had a good reason for his request, and she trusted him enough that if they had been in a life or death situation she probably would have obeyed without question. But since they were in his private gym, she felt justified in asking. To her surprise, instead of replying, John began to undress himself.

"What I'm going to show you can be done with your clothes on, but they tend to be worse for wear afterwards. Honestly, I don't even know if I can teach you to do it or if you have to just find out how to do it yourself. I discovered I could do it when some unpleasant people set fire to a tower I was in. But I think that simply knowing it is possible will help."

"Knowing what?" Tara said, exasperated by his mysterious manner.

"This!" John said as his trousers fell to the floor, leaving him nude except for his underpants. Then in a flowing movement of his body that was almost too fast to see, his human form was gone and in its place was a vaguely bat-like form, still bipedal, but with longer, more delicate arms and a fine membrane wing stretching between the underside of each of his arms down to his legs. At the same time his body shrank and lightened, although the overall appearance was of compact strength rather than fragility. With a thrust of his legs John sprang into the air and took flight.

Tara stared in shocked amazement as John flew in a short arc towards the far end of the hall, rolled in mid-air, and bounced off the wall like a swimmer to fly back and land where he started. "You … " Speechless, she waved her arms at his changing body and then in the air, as if to mime his aerial performance.

Once more in human form, John calmly smiled at her as he dressed. "If we are to meet with the representatives of the other vampires in Britain, I thought you needed to at least be aware of this potential capability." He raised an eyebrow. "It took me decades and a life and death situation in order to discover how to do it. But given your ability to um, communicate with our little guests, it's quite possible you can accelerate the process."

Tara was still so stunned at what she had just witnessed that she undressed without further comment or hesitation. John's gaze was speculative and analytical, and she wasn't sure if she was pleased or disturbed by his lack of sexual response to her nudity. They had become close during the recent weeks, but his ability to seemingly turn off his emotions at will still bothered her. She had wondered more than once whether it was his natural personality or something the alien medical system had done to him – and whether it would do the same to her. "So what do I do now?"

John rubbed his chin and frowned. He had mentored new vampires before during his long life, but never one that had the potential capability to interact with the alien nanites like Tara did, thanks to her father's own far more primitive nanite based command interface. "I'm not really sure. Different people have reacted to different stimuli. Most had to be provided with an incentive."

"Should I ask?" Tara said raising an eyebrow.

"Being thrown off of the roof of a barn often worked," John replied. Then he grinned. "In your case let's try something less dramatic for a start. Flex your knees, get up on your toes, spread your arms out, and imagine yourself lifting up into the air."

Feeling like a schoolgirl asked to imitate a chicken, she did as he said. Despite the absurdity of her position, she had seen what John had done and was well aware of the capabilities of the awesome and as yet barely understood alien technology that had been implanted in her body. To her surprise, the internal HUD which originally functioned with her father's experimental aircraft faded into view in front of her eyes. The alien medical implant had somehow found a way to communicate and even control the HUD and used it to interact with her. The "flight systems check" symbol flashed, followed by the "undercarriage retracting" symbol, followed by the "standby/hold" warning icon. She had grown better at interpreting the alien AI's attempts at communication and guessed that it was trying to tell her that it understood her desire to morph the way John had, but that it would require some biological changes that couldn't take place instantly. At the same time she felt subtle tingling feelings in her limbs, and more alarmingly, twisting and shifting sensations within her body. The things that the medical nanites did to her body never seemed to hurt, and both she and her father suspected that it was blocking the pain rather than everything being actually painless. She turned her head to look at John. "I think it might work, but it could take some ti – " She stopped talking because her face, along with the rest of her body was suddenly changing. Not just her form but the very composition of her flesh, bones and internal organs. The alien medical system was unleashing its full power to mould and transform her body into the image of the original alien that it had been designed to serve and protect, or as close to it as possible. Despite her test pilot training, her iron will, and all that she had seen and experienced since becoming a recipient of the alien medical nanite system, she still felt a rush of primal terror and a near irresistible impulse to scream in horror. Unlike John's transformation, hers was slower, more gradual, as if the medical system within her body was carefully mapping a vast wave of alterations that had to radically alter her body without killing her in the process. And then just as suddenly, it was done. Tara looked at herself in shock and amazement. If it hadn't been for her experience in melding with her father's aircraft, she might have gone mad from the radically different sensory input.

"Don't try to talk. Just relax and get used to how your body feels. Stay calm and focused," John said in a brisk commanding tone that demanded obedience. He distinctly recalled how he had felt when the change had first come upon him. "Remember who you are, Tara. If you lose that anchor you can become as lost as the poor sods who turn werewolf."

His words cut through the fog of panic and confusion, replacing it in Tara's mind with a greater concern of being lost in the instincts and thought patterns of the alien form. Fortunately, the bat creatures were social and omnivorous, and even had two distinct sexes, so the mental and emotional conflict wasn't as great as when a human took on the form of a werewolf. Instead she focused upon the alien creature's ability to fly, treating her new form as if it was an aircraft that she now controlled. The "All Systems Ready" indicator brightened on her HUD, followed by the "Autopilot On" icon. Then suddenly she was in the air. "I'm flying!" she cried, or at least she tried to. What came out was a garbled mixture of English and a rapid pulsed set of squeaks and high-pitched barks. Flying wasn't at all how she imagined it would be. The flapping of her arms and wings happened without conscious thought, as did all the other fine movements of her body that were required for her to fly and to glide in a circle around the huge exercise hall before landing back where she had started. The "Autopilot" symbol went dark in the HUD just as she landed, and she staggered when she was given full control of the alien body. Before she could fall, the change started to reverse itself and in the time it took for her foot to take a step to the side and rear, it and the leg it was attached to, had returned to human form. The speed of the transformation was both shocking and disorienting.

John reached out to support her with his arm. "Careful! I fell on my arse the first time. Not very dignified at all. It completely spoils the whole 'Creature of the Night' thing.

Tara leaned gratefully against him, still trying to mentally grasp what had just happened. "That was … incredible! Terrifying, but incredible. Do you think that is what the aliens are actually like?"

"I think so. I've studied every case of vampire transformation I could find and according to all records and reports, the result has always been the same shape and form. I've also seen some poor bastards whose bodies or minds somehow resisted the change. Some went insane during the change and became trapped in a half-way state. These were the creatures that became known in legend as Nosferatu.

"You mean there's a chance I won't be able to change back again?" Tara asked in alarm.

John shrugged. "Do I look like a bat? But there is always a possibility of error when dealing with something that was never meant to happen. The alien system knows it's in the wrong kind of body, and is just muddling along as best it can. My hypothesis is that the more cooperative the host is, the better the thing works. Viktor seems to have embraced the nanites from the very beginning, while you have the advantage of your own built in interface. At any rate, I'd advise not changing except under the most extreme circumstances."

Tara realised that she was leaning against John's body in a most familiar fashion and that she was still completely naked. She liked him, but there were still so many questions lurking in the background that she wasn't ready to be physically intimate with him just yet. Trying to be casual, she pulled free of what was close to being an embrace and turned away to get dressed. "I don't think I'll be trying that again anytime soon, although I'll have to tell my father about it and he may want to run some tests." No longer naked, she said, "Why didn't you tell me about this earlier? What else are you hiding from me?"

John stiffened and frowned, a trace of the ancient nobleman appearing in his expression and posture. "I'm not hiding anything, not in the manner that you're suggesting. You already know that you are now capable of physical changes, and the werewolves are a very clear example of how far it can go. Are you suggesting that the obvious conclusion never occurred to you?"

"Of course not!" Tara snapped angrily. "I …. " Then she sighed and nodded. "You're right of course. I was simply avoiding the thought that I might become … like Viktor."

He put his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. "You're not like Viktor in any way. Many, most, people are incapable of handling the truth of the transformation and I suspect that they mentally shut down when in werewolf form, leaving their bodies to be run by the werewolf form's basic instincts. Some may even develop a form of protective amnesia when they return to human form again and may truly not know what happened and what they have done. The fact that we are even talking like this proves that you're not one of them."

Now that she was dressed she felt more comfortable with allowing him to embrace her, and she leaned her head against his chest. "I need you to keep telling me that. I still have nightmares of – " Her words cut off when John kissed her. She stiffened and pressed her hands against his chest as if to push him away, but then just left them there as she kissed him back.