“My body slid from human to wolf in a crack! of black smoke. Wolf was panting and I watched frost dissipate on my hot tongue, sending tiny rivulets of steam into the air. The world was sharp and clear, and I never realized how many different colors of shadow there were. It made me savor the dark beauty of night even more.”

“I found it easier to stare out into the infinite blackness, away from the fire burning itself out in his eyes.”

“I was falling for the man who had turned me. He could never know.”

“…the door banged wide open, and the most striking man I had ever seen stood in the frame, the black winds whipping around him like a chariot of storm clouds.”

“It felt as if I’d been teleported to the dark side of the moon, forced to gaze out at the stars and wonder which one I’d come from.”

“It is not often one chooses a demon over an angel.”So they told me. But this demon was the only one who made me feel safe.”

“I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn’t understand why the happiness never came, couldn’t see the flaw in my thinking, couldn’t see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. And all my efforts were doomed, because already drinking hadn’t made me feel good in years.”