Barnabas awoke reluctantly, dragged up through the layers of darkness against his will. He opened his eyes to grey twilight and, for a long moment, lay without moving, without thinking, simply feeling the cool brush of the moonlight against his skin.

The moonlight...

Memory came flooding back in an almost painful rush, shattering his fragile peace. He gasped, releasing a breath he'd been unaware of holding, and bolted upright. Wildly, his gaze searched his surroundings.

There...on the pine needles where it had fallen from his hand, lay his spent pistol.

Unconciously, his hand crept to his temple, where memory insisted there should be a fatal wound.

There was nothing. Nothing but smooth, unblemished flesh.

His heart stuttered in his chest. Why hadn't it worked? Why hadn't the silver bullet killed him? It should have worked, experience told him, as it had worked when he had been forced to shoot...

He shied away from that thought, that memory, and turned his attention back to his surroundings. Beyond the rough shelter of the pine tree's low-hanging boughs, the snow lay in deep drifts. Even in the moonlight, he could see the dark remains of the werewolf's last meal.

His hand went again to his temple. Something was very wrong... He should be dead, not sitting here in the soft glow of the full moon and wondering what the hell had happened.

Barnabas froze, suddenly realizing...The full moon?

He scrambled to his feet and out from beneath the tree, casting his startled gaze skyward. Riding low above the tops of the trees, the swollen moon seemed to gaze impassively back at him. It was indeed full, fat and baleful, a wolf's moon. And yet...he felt nothing. No searing change coarsing through his body. No terrible urge for fresh meat.

He was no longer a werewolf.

Barnabas threw back his head and laughed -- with relief, with joy. The curse was broken. He had beaten her, had beaten the witch!

He was free.

Quickly, he moved to his hidden cache, in the rocks nearby, and retrieved fresh clothing. As he changed, he felt a strange chill rush through his body, but he shrugged it off. Surely, it was nothing but the cold wind shivering across the snow drifts....

Tucking the pistol back into his small pack, he set off through the snow, in the direction of the hunters' camp. He hoped they would once again extend to him the hospitality of their fire...and their food.

He was starving.

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