les, ached to the ends of his toes, set
his body aflame with it.

And the cat suddenly lunged against him, its sharpened claws biting
through his garments and into his flesh.

His hands reached down in a quick movement and gripped the body of the
cat. He tore the raking claws away from his body and held the cat in the
air beside him.

The creature writhed in his grasp, fighting madly to escape. And as his
grip tightened on the animal, the eyes of the cat suddenly locked with
his.

He felt the forces within him reach a crescendo at that moment. And his
body was frozen immobile, his eyes locked on the cat's eyes, burning
into the animal, the animal burning into him. Burning and burning ...

It could only have been a matter of seconds, he knew. But they were
seconds that stretched into the farthermost reaches of eternity. Seconds
that lived a million years and passed in another fleeting instant.

And then he could move again.

And he felt strange as he moved. It was as if he was another person, as
if the body he moved was alien to him, as if it had never belonged to
him, to any man, to any thing.

And his eyes tore away from the now dulled expression in the cat's eyes.
He did not find it strange that this was so. He knew in some inner sense
that the mighty life force in him had quelled the cat. Had stilled the
fighting in its feline eyes.

And he saw his hands clutching the body of the cat.

He stared at them for a long disbelieving moment. For they were not the
hands he had known. They were not the hands of Blair Gaddon. They were
not the hands of any man. They were long and tapered and claw-like.
There was dark fuzzy fur around them, fur that was cat-like.

Deep within him a fear struggled upward through his mind. A cold dread
that forced his lips to move, to utter a gasp of the terror he felt.

And the sound left his lips.

It left his lips and echoed terribly in his ears. A harsh sound. A
mewing sound. _A cat sound ..._

The creature in his grasp struggled feebly then. It was a small
movement, a movement without vitality, almost without life. And as the
creature moved, a sense of rage welled up inside him. A rage that he
could not control, an anger that he wanted to unleash to its fullest.
And as it took possession of him, the human part of his mind shrieked
and forced words from his lips.

"_You fiend! You fiend of hell!_"

And his fingers crept up to the neck of the cat and closed in a mighty
gri