Mary Alder sighed, shrugging her bag of groceries closer to her body. She was tired, ready to rest, but her apartment building was only a block away. She might as well keep going.
 
As she approached the corner of the street on which she lived, a tall, dark figure turned the corner, walking at a rapid pace. Too rapid for either of them to avoid the collision.
 
Mary's groceries crashed to the ground, as both took an involuntary step backward. The other walker, a well-built feline, nearly lost his balance, catching himself against the adjacent wall. The young woman made an exasperated noise, looking at the torn bag and fallen food. As she raised her gaze, opening her mouth to scold the other pedestrian, she froze.
 
The man who collided with her was a well-built melanistic jaguar. His burnt-sienna hair hung in limp, stringy strands, tumbling over his face, neck, and shoulders in an unkempt way. His lower jaw gaped open slightly in a feral pant, baring his big ivory teeth; his clothes were old, filthy, and worn through in many places. A few little round pins were attached to his coat lapel.
 
What caught her eye, though, was the fact that some sort of animal skull was attached to his belt. And that the belt itself appeared to have smaller bones sewn to it.
 
Mary wondered just what exactly the homeless man had in his irregularly bulging pockets.
 
Too late to stop herself, her irritation overwhelmed caution, and she felt her mouth form the words: "Watch where you're go -- "
 
The look in his eyes stopped the sentence dead in her throat. A hot, hideous rage blazed into being, like a rabid dog unleashed in a preschool.
 
Too late, Mary realized she should flee. Far too late.
 
---
 
The knife slides deep into the woman�s belly and she shrieks, but Shawcross doesn�t hear her scream in fear. He sees an angry woman, a dominating tyrant. He hears her strident demands, echoing in his ears: Can�t you even stab me properly? You�re incompetent at everything!
 
Snarling, determined to prove the horrible old harpy wrong, Shawcross slashes again, twisting the knife so it rips and tears rather than leaving a clean slice. Again and again, leaning in close to feel the blood on his face, shuddering with excitement.
 
The harpy has disappeared. There is no sound in this place, no one to bother him, just the wonderful warmth and scent of blood on his skin, the taste of it in his mouth, his knife digging entrails from a treasure chest. Reality pulses and swirls intensely around him, bathing him in a synesthetic universe of scented sounds, singing scents and caressing shadows.
 
Crouched at the back of a blind alley, not so far from where the bitch had ambushed him, Shawcross laps the blood from his fingers. Amazing, the power of blood to silence the wicked. If only for a while...
 
Stupid bitch. Shouldn't have hit me. Shouldn't have made me do the things she did. Shouldn't have come back after I killed her the first two times.
 
Crazily, spinning inside, Shawcross feels that hungry rage torrenting upward again.
 
The next thing he knows, his hands plunge deep into the wounds, grasping talonlike about slick warm mysteries to bring them out into the moonlight, and his bloody hand regrasps the knife, plunges it into the upper chest, ripping away, and the other hand follows. It�s a very long time before the sternum cracks and the ribs give way but he manages it, and then he pulls out the heart and before he can think of maybe having heart chow mein or a sandwich like last time his hand simply stuffs it in his mouth, and he ends up enjoying it very much raw anyway.