I poked my head out of the window, my fur rustling in the grass as I popped out in a place I barely recognized as my own backyard. The whole neighborhood looked so different from this angle, and in this lighting. The moon, of course, was shining brightly over us, leaving a blueish glint on everything. Crawling out past the driveway, finding it a little bit easier to move on all fours than it was to walk on my hind paws, I got a sense of how terrifying that first meeting of ours must have been for E.B. My old two-door hatchback had never seemed particularly large to me as a human, but from down here it looked huge, the glow of the moon reflecting against the headlights to make them pop out like bright and menacing eyes on the giant, darkened beast. We could have easily crawled beneath its undercarriage as we left the house behind, but E.B. was giving it a wide berth and sticking to the grass next to the pavement. I couldn't blame him.
I followed his lead through my neighbor's front lawn, past the end of the cul-de-sac, and into the adjoining patch of forest that I'd never paid all that much attention to before. As I looked up at the dense thicket of trees that now loomed over me, slowly gaining back their leaves as spring took hold, I felt like I was slipping into another world entirely. And, in a sense, I was - a world where magical energies turned people into rabbits, and gave them the night-vision eyes and floppy ears and sensitive noses to experience everything differently. Before I started changing, the forest might have looked like nothing more than a bunch of plants. But now I could feel, and hear, and smell, that it was teeming with life. I couldn't see them, but immediately I just knew that there must be animals prowling and hiding behind every stump and every rock. And I remembered what E.B. had told me last night: "those other creatures are not our friends."
I felt invigorated by the cool night air, as we crawled away from the street filled with foul-smelling gas-guzzlers and charged further into nature. E.B. was moving at a steady and cautious pace, and I followed the twitching of his cottontail just as I had promised. But I had a sneaking idea of just how much faster I could run with this energetic body I'd been shoved into, and it wasn't easy to resist the temptation to start trying it out. My legs - my hind legs, for now - hopped frantically behind me on each four-legged step, nervously burning off the energy that wasn't getting exercised. They kept unconsciously raring to go like that until I heard a sickening crack underneath my paws. I had stepped on a twig. The noise echoed loudly through the trees, and I could hear a hundred creatures suddenly stop their rustling and pay attention. It was as awkward as if all of them, whatever they were, had turned around to stare directly at me.
But the only creature that actually did that was E.B., who looked back over his shoulder with a frightened grimace on his muzzle. "You need to be careful!", he hissed at me in a low whisper. "You put one paw wrong, that can be the difference between life and death. That's how a predator finds you!"
"Sorry," I whispered back. I kept on behind him, trying to keep my body's nervous enthusiasm in check with the fear that permeated my mind. My senses were heightened even more than before, as I instinctually expected danger to follow from an incident like that. But even with my super-hearing, it was almost completely silent in the forest - for a moment, until the sounds of animals going about their nights gradually came back in. I could have sworn I heard a tiny, high-pitched giggling coming from somewhere above me in the tree canopies. I looked up and saw a squirrel quickly, but quietly, scurrying away up a branch.
The two of us didn't get much further before E.B. suddenly stopped. I did the same, waiting right behind him. He leaned back and started to whisper directly into the base of my long ear. I shuddered at the intimate contact as our heads gently touched, the feeling of the fine fur of his lips brushing up against the fluff that had replaced my hair. I fought back an urge to start thumping my foot against the ground in anticipation, and I strained to focus my attention on his words, knowing they would be much more important than the silly, immature way his touch made me feel. What he said was simple, anyway: "This is it."
I looked over in the direction he was gesturing. I couldn't see a thing in the darkness, even with my greatly improved night-time vision. But something about that spot made my fur stand up on its end just standing near it. The feeling was very much like getting goosebumps as a human. I could sense the danger, even if I didn't understand what it was. I looked back at E.B., and his fur was fluffed out in exactly the same way. "I need to know if you can do this," he whispered to me. "I know it's all very new to you, but this is serious. When we go into that grove... The slightest noise, and we're both as good as dead. We'll be completely outnumbered by those werewolves, not to mention their raw strength. Even just one of them could easily take us both. The only way we can do this is if we get in and out of there completely undetected. Do you understand?"
Somehow, I worked up the courage to nod a silent response. That was enough for him. Creeping into the underbrush, one paw at a time, he led the way without making a sound. I copied his movements exactly, my heart pounding in my chest as each thorn of the bushes slipped past me without ever quite touching. And as we moved silently into the grove, I could start to hear these deep, growling voices. That menacing sound, obviously coming from something much larger than me or E.B., froze both of us where we were crawling.
"Okay, Alpha, so what's this big idea of yours?", said one of them.
"Yeah!", said another. "You've been talking this 'plan' up since the moon turned full. Are you gonna fill us in, or do we have to wait another night?"
Then a voice lower than either of the other two spoke up, with a sense of laid-back confidence that made it all the more terrifying to listen to. "I won't keep you waiting any longer, Betas. I do believe we're ready to start our... preparations... for the greatest Easter in history. I just wanted to make sure I had fully cast off my human form before our pack got underway."
My stomach dropped. That voice sounded so familiar. A name and a face came to mind immediately. He sounded exactly like Dirk, my bully of a coworker. But that didn't make any sense - Dirk wasn't a wolf, he was a human like m- Human. Hadn't that werewolf just outright said that he was, like me, a human who was turning into a were-creature? And - wait a second - is this what Dirk was talking about when he told the office he was going on those "monthly hunting trips"?
Carefully, I cocked my head downward, straining into an awkwardly contorted pose until I could see through a hole in the bushes. There they were, three wolves covered in dark gray fur, each one in the same sort of humanoid shape that E.B. and I had. They were several times our size, perhaps a little bigger than an ordinary human. And the one in the middle of the pack, the one that had the other two looking up at him expectantly... I could see that his cold blue eyes hadn't changed one bit, even as the rest was unrecognizable. It was him. Oh, God, it was him. I nearly threw up right then and there. What had I gotten myself into?
Dirk kept speaking. He had that 'villain monologue' voice down pat, too. "Every year, when springtime comes around, us wolves are left to hide in the shadows while that dumb little Easter Bunny soaks up all the glory. But my friends... no longer. This is it. This will be the year we take over that precious holiday for good!"
"But why, Alpha?", asked one of the Betas. "I mean, I'm all for chasing down and killing a rabbit. You're making me hungry right now just thinkin' about it! But what's the big deal about this holiday thing?"
"Let me ask you something," Dirk replied. "How many humans are there who really care about a rabbit bringing them eggs every year?"
"Uh... I don't know, Alpha," said the other Beta. "You're the only one here who knows about the human world."
"I'll tell you how many," Dirk said. "None! And that stupid little bunny is probably wondering why people aren't celebrating Easter like they used to. He's letting his holiday slip right out of his tiny paws. Compare that to our time of the year..."
"Halloween!" Both of the Betas shouted that out in unison, their tails starting to wag back and forth.
"Exactly. Halloween is only getting more popular with every passing fall. I can tell you, it's a lot bigger than it was when I was a kid- um, a pup. We've proven that we know how to run things. So here's our plan. We've got three nights left to pull it off. We catch that little bunny, and when the time is right, at the stroke of midnight, we kill him, and we take his magic in the process. Then that holiday is ours. I think the 'Easter Puppy' sounds pretty good, don't you?"
The three wolves were all amped up now. The moon poked out from behind a cloud, and they all started howling. I had to cover my sensitive ears.
"Let's do it, Alpha!", one of them said. "Do you think we can find him tonight? 'Cuz I'm getting real hungry! I haven't eaten anything in, like, an hour!"
"We're going to start the hunt right now, Betas," Dirk assured them. "Remember, we've got three nights before Easter's eve. And that bunny could be anywhere in this forest - he could even be right under our very noses. But I'm sure we can get plenty of practice in, killing any other little bunnies we find, before we hit the jackpot. Let's go!"
They ran off, Dirk leading the way. When they had gotten out of earshot, I started to catch my breath - and then I just fell over there in the dirt, exhausted by the weight of what I'd just heard.
"Oh, this is bad," E.B. was saying, pacing back and forth next to me. "This is really, really bad. In all my years, I've never seen the predators try to pull off something like this. Usually, they barely even know what Easter is. That one who said he was human, he must be the mastermind of the group. And he sounds a lot smarter than the rest of those brutes - I bet he could actually pull it off, too."
I wasn't sure if I should tell him about how I actually knew that wolf in his human form. I decided not to say anything - it might make E.B. think we were in cahoots or something. "What do we do?", I asked instead.
"We're gonna need someplace to hide," E.B. told me. "Somewhere they'd never think to look, because they'll be combing this whole forest searching for me."
"W-we could go back to my place," I offered. The last time I'd said those words, a lady threw a drink in my face, and I was still embarrassed about what I'd done while thinking about him earlier. So I tried not to sound like I was propositioning him in any way.
"Hey! Yeah, that's clever!", E.B. said. "There's no way they're going to be looking for me in a human house. And even if they start to suspect I'm not in the forest anymore, your houses all look the same! They'll never know which one we're hiding out in! Buddy, you're a genius!"
And he suddenly wrapped his arms around me for a hug. I took in his intoxicating scent and tried to keep my sheath closed up. My heart rate wasn't any slower than before, I can tell you that much.