[Chase] And, we're off...
Just finished the prologue. Already as creepy as fuck.
Chase is a runaway. She's just turned sixteen. She has this odd little ability that showed up with puberty and her first period: when she gets startled or stressed, she involuntarily shapeshifts into whatever form her psyche or brain chemistry or instinct tells her would be the most effective way of dealing with whatever the situation is. A few years of dealing with it later, she has better control of it, but while she can control what happens when she makes the conscious decision to do it, she has almost no control over the shapeshifting as an involuntary reflex.
About the only person who knows she has it is the person she inherited it from: her father. And he's the reason she's a runaway in the first place: Sexually and emotionally abusve and controlling doesn't begin to cover it. The result is that no one touches her in any way at all unless she allows it, and she trusts absolutely no one.
She's running east to west (old East Coast money). She doesn't really care where she ends up, so long as it's away from where she was and away from her father. She fnds herself at the other margin of the continent, and becomes one of the homeless community in Golden Gate Park.
One night, curled up in a sleeping bag, she's startled awake by being checked oiut by one of the park coyotes. The reflex kicks in and she shifts to what her psyche thinks will protect her the best: an even larger canid, a wolf.
Unfortunately for her, it's full moon. And the incident is witnessed by someone the SFPD aren't even aware exist: a "collector", stalking the homeless population for physical memento morae.
So Chase finds herself not only pitting her wits and her abilities against an adult psychopath, he also thinks she's a werewolf. Which she isn't. And he wants her coat.
Anyone want to wip-read? (edit: new keyboard, muust get used to it...)