The rabbits didn't scream when they changed. That was the first thing Veronica noticed, because the process was so brutal that there should have been sound, there should have been some sign of pain, but the twelve creatures merely convulsed in silence while their bodies remade themselves from the inside out.
The muscles tore first. Not all at once, but layer by layer, as if something inside each rabbit were pushing with a force the skin simply couldn't contain, and what came out wasn't blood, but new tissue, denser, redder, throbbing with an energy that had nothing natural about it.
Their silhouettes stretched. Their hind legs lengthened and straightened, their arms thickened until they lost all resemblance to animal limbs, and in a matter of seconds, what stood before Veronica were no longer rabbits, but something that only retained the ears of a rabbit and the rage built up in their red eyes.
