The Tery

The creature was a lean, heavyset beast with no name, and to the human soldiers who left it lying there, it was just one more animal marked for slaughter. It did not die. Yet the extermination lists held more than animals, since certain humans had been targeted too. A band of fugitives found the wounded creature and nursed it back to health, and it became their pet and mascot, known only as the tery. Its keepers fed it scraps and rubbed its head without guessing what it was. The tery soon discovered that these humans were not ordinary, and that it was not an ordinary tery either.

The story is a beauty-and-the-beast fable told in F. Paul Wilson's distinctive style. Its setting is a world of strange landscapes and grotesque mutations produced by science gone out of control. Wonder and horror run side by side as the tale moves between them.

At its core, the novel explores the extremes of human nature, from courage and cruelty to innocence and evil.