She opened her hands and her eyes, as if seeing for the first time.

She opened her eyes. The razor stood before her. Not as some dark and frightening intangible, but a stark physical reality, held in the iron grip of her fellow man. Because malicious evil is still only a weapon, and requires willing human hands to wield it.

For a single instant she sat there numb, neither believing nor comprehending. But then he seized her violently by the front of the blouse, lifting her to him. And with a quick insertion of the blade and a hard jerk backwards, he cut away her bra, ripping the garment wide open as he threw her back onto the ground.

A startled, 'William, don't do this,' tried to form in her throat, but was drowned out as he screamed in a wrath no longer his own, but that of all creatures brutalized and turned vicious by the bloody hells from which man has barely begun to raise himself.

'And do you know who's going to PAY for it! YOU ARE!'

One word alone would form from her terror, a last, instinctive cry against the Razor, and the trickle of blood at her breast. She screamed, louder than he.

'KALUS!'

*

>From a distance of three hundred yards he heard her. Instantly his senses were trained upon the spot and he was running, leaving the startled cub far behind. The broken, undulating ridges kept her from his sight, and tried to impede him. But he did not need to hear the sound twice to locate it, or force his hammering body to respond.

And by the time he reached the final crest, his anger had turned to a rage that bordered on madness that ANYONE, EVER, would DARE to attack his woman. All his pain and frustration now found release in thoughts, soon to be acts, of violence. The sight of them struggling, of William again throwing her down and glowering over her, knife in hand, undid the last thin strands of mercy and restraint. He all but flew down the hill, and from atop the same mound of slag, leapt out like a panther with a savage cry.