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They would leave in the morning.
In the morning, they would pack up their stuff, load it all in the car, and drive back to Morganville. Michel's dreams of being a singer, no matter how unrealistic, would be crushed, Shane's dreams of a life Vampire free life would be cut down in their youth, and Eve's enthusiasm and excitement over being out of Morganville would die.
It was depressing, to say the least.
Clarie was walking the streets of Dallis, savoring the last few hours of freedom she had. It was odd to be alone after so much time with spent with her friends from the Glass house. It was a beautiful night, though. The streetlights glittered off the wet roads, and there was only a slight chill in the air from the rain.
The dark roads were deserted, most people haveing gone inside and fallen asleep hours ago. Clarie couldn't bring herself to sleep, though. Not when she had so little time left. So she wandered the streets to tire herself out so she could get to sleep.
Clarie walked without hurry down the sidewalk, thoughts circling her head over and over. She was looking at the ground without paying any attention to where she was going, when she felt it.
She didn't hear the pant of it's breath, or the step of it's padded feet. She didn't smell wet fur or glimpse it out of the corner of her eye, Because if it didn't want to be seen, you wouldn't see it. Rather, she felt it's presence. The hair raised on the back of her neck and a cold stab of fear twisted in her stomach, and she felt eyes on her.
Clarie paused for a moment, then raised her eyes to the street, and saw it.
A wolf, there was no mistaking this thing for a dog, was standing at the end of the street, facing her. It was huge, much bigger than Clarie would have thought. Thick lanky,black fur covered the beast. It's yellow eyes held her captive, and her throat closed up and trapped her scream, and her legs felt like lead, too heavy to lift, and her mind numbed and clouded and her heartbeat slowed down to a crawl, and she stood hypnotized. Then it began stalking forward, slowly and without hurry.
Maintaining eye contact, Clarie struggled to push through the clouds in her mind, and she slowly willed her feet to move. Her left legg took a step back, but it froze when the wolf pulled back its lips, reveling viciously sharp teeth, and growled. The pressure on her mind redoubled, smoothing over her fear, calming her panic.
It continued to stalk forward, it's yellow eyes trained on Clarie's, much too intelligent for an animal. It wasn't more than an arms breath away when her mind broke free of it's fog and frantically screamed at her to run, to flee, to fight, something!
Clarie's legs suddenly remembered how to walk, and her heart sped up and she broke eye contact with the beast and turned to run, but too late. It leped forward and caught the edge of her pants, and it started to drag her across the street. Clarie screamed, but there was no one to hear.
Clarie kicked her leg out and it connected with something hard, and the teeth on her pants let go and the wolf growled and dived instead for her throat. She raised her arm in a panic and screamed again, and she felt teeth close around her forearm, and then everything suddenly went still.
The wolf, teeth still sunk in her arm, it's eyes so wide and surprised and locked on her face, an expression no animal had ever worn before. Clarie's eyes, wide and terrified. The moment hung suspended in time, too still.
And then she caught on fire.
At least, that's what it felt like. Icy hot pain raced through her veins from the bite, the likes of which she could never have imagined. Her eyes widened further, and then rolled to the back of her head. Her back arched up of its own accord, like an invisible string was attached to her chest and the pulled on, drawing her up closer to the wolf with its teeth still sunk in her arm, her stomach touched the beast's harry chest, and still the fire flowed through her. It molded her, changed her very atoms and the makeup of her soul and mind, forged it in fire and cooled it in ice, now unchangeable.
And then it ended as suddenly as it began. Her body slowly relaxed and dropped to the ground, her eyes rolled forward and focused on the sky above her, and all that was left was a dull throbbing in her arm.
Clarie was aware of cold air on her skin,and wet ground on her back, and teeth in her arm that still hadn't moved. She looked at her arm and thought that she might be hallucinating, because now the teeth digging into her arm were flat and round and most definitely human, and the eyes locked on her face were bright and blue and did not belong to a wolf.
Clarie thought maybe she had imagined the wolf in the first place. Or maybe she was now imagining the face of the stranger on the wolf. Then the stranger was carefully removing his teeth from her arm. She didn't move as the stranger crouched above her raised his head and looked at the sky, the moonlight illuminating the blood on his mouth.
"I'm free." he said, his eyes on the full moon, wonder and surprise Clarie didn't understand coloring his tone.
"What?" Clarie asked, desperately confused. The man snapped his eyes back to the trembling girl lying below him, as if he just remembered her. He smiled, and it was not a nice smile.
"I'm free of it. It's your curse now." There was a gleam in his eyes that Clarie didn't like.
"I don't understand!" She cried out.
His smile widened. "Then die confused."
He sprang up with a suddenness that made Clarie flinch, and ran off down the street, laughing.
It was a long time before Clarie's body relaxed, and when she finally did, she still couldn't,t think.
She lay on the ground, her limbs heavy. She felt feverish, and sick. She was thirsty. Her heart sounded like a drum, ecowing through her head. Clarie decided to focus on that instead of thinking. She let the beat of her heart consume her addled mind.
She didn't know how long she lay there, not thinking, the only sound reaching her ears was the steady beat of her heart. Finally , seconds, minuets, hours later, she couldn't be shore, she sat up and slowly, so, so, slowly, used the wall of the building to pull her self to her feet. She staggered around for the minuet, then steadied herself and began to walk.
She didn't know where she walked, she only knew that there was a voice in the back of her feverish mind telling her she had to go, there was something she had to do, somewhere she had to be. Sounds filtered through the thrumming beat of her heart, getting louder and more distinct, and then painfully overwhelming.
The bark of a dog three streets over was thunder in her ears, the sound of a frightened cat tipping over a garbage can like nails scraping over a chalkboard, a baby crying ten stories up in a skyscraper was magnified tenfold to a painful screech. Sights became so confusing, all the little details jumped out all at once. Details that she shouldn't have been able to even see stood out in stark contrast. And the smells! Oh! The smells were agonizing! Perfume, garbage, greasy food, animals, sweat, calone, and strangely, even the smell of glass tickled her knose, and it all swirled together in a dazzling assault on the senses that left her dizzy and sick.
And still her heartbeat thudded above it all, the loudest thing thing that came to her senses. But then there was a voice shouting, and that came a close second. It was hard to make out anything specific in the whirlwind of noises, but it sounded like it was screaming, "Clarie! Clarie!" and then something managed to stick out in her vision, something that moved around and stuck out from the endless confusing array of color and shape.
All the little things finally came together and formed a picture, and Clarie recognized Oliver running towards her, but his sudden movements were confusing and hurt her eyes and made her head swim. But that voice at the back of her head urged her forward, and even though the wind felt like knives across her shin and the damp chill felt like an arctic night, she increased her speed and lurched drunkenly towards the vampire running at her.
"Clarie!"Oliver said, but it ecowed around her and reverberated back and forth in her head, and the force of it made her stumble, but then Oliver's arms were there holding her up, and the feel of his skin against hers felt like sand paper, but still that voice in her head told her that this was it, this was where she was ment to be, this was who she was ment to be with, right now, in this moment.
Clarie forced her eyes to ignore everything but Oliver's brown eyes, and although she didn't even have the strength to stand up without Oliver's help, she found the will to raise her arm, using some newfound instinkt that came from the voice inside her head, she placed it where Oliver's once beating heart was, looked him in the eye, and said, not knowing where the words came from, "You are mine."
A fire spread beneath her skin from her fingertips into Oliver, and everything became clearer suddenly. Oliver's eyes widened, and Clarie could feel their very souls touching as they were thrust into fire and lightning and storm, to be melded and formed into something new together.
Oliver and Clarie sank to the ground, still clasped in each other's arms, and their minds sank into darkness.
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