Or maybe not. A moment ago he’d been afraid of some gas. Now he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d been worried about. He could only react to the bursts of pain in his head and a wavering of his senses, as though he were suddenly fathoms under the ocean, weighted down by layers of water above him and viewing the world through layers of green.

A bright spot above him winked in and out of his vision, spraying light into the darkness then abruptly clicking off. And when the door opened a crack, he was almost blinded by a shaft of light stabbing him like a Jedi saber.

A logical thought fought to stay in his brain. If this stuff were poison, they wouldn’t chance opening the door.

But the intended effect of the gas made no real difference to Knox.

He fell back against the floor, his whole body on fire. He managed to turn his head to the side just before he threw up. The awful taste in his mouth brought him back to some sort of consciousness.

He tried to push himself up, but his limbs had turned to palm fronds.

Palm fronds? Yeah, like extensions of a big plant gone rubbery. No not rubbery. They threatened to break off if he pushed too hard. He looked down at the rest of his body, expecting to see a tree. Instead he saw scales.

He had turned into a giant lizard. Or maybe a snake.

Could any of that be true? What if he grew feathers? Could he fly out of here?

Yeah, that was a better idea, but first he had to be mobile.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself to his knees, then his feet. He was in a shed. At least that was a deeply embedded recent memory. But the walls pulsed around him, as though he were in a huge, beating heart.

Outside he heard a voice. “Close the fucking door. We don’t want to breathe that stuff.”

A banging sound reverberated like a giant drum all around him.

Coherence was spinning out of control. Still, as the door rattled, the primal reaction of his kind welled up inside him. He was a man now. He’d have a better chance as a wolf.

He was already shirtless and shoeless. He scrabbled at the button at the top of his jeans while he muttered the ancient chant that would turn him from man to beast.

“Taranis, Epona, Cerridwen,” he said, slurring the words together in his haste. He repeated the same phrase and went on to another that had been a part of his consciousness for almost fifteen years.

“Ga. Feart. Cleas. Duais. Aithriocht. Go gcumhdai is dtreorai na deithe thu.”

An angry voice reached him through the fog of transformation.

“I told you not to open the door.”’

“Oh come on.”

As the door gaped wide, he leaped forward, hearing a gasp from the men who blocked his path.

“Jesus.”

“What the fuck?”

He might have stopped to gouge out a throat or two, but even with his brain in another county, he knew that escape was more important than attack.

He fled into the night, hearing the sound of gunshots behind him. A stinging pain in a leg didn’t slow his pace.

He plunged into the shadows under the trees and kept running full tilt, with no plan but putting distance between himself and the men.