Lost
Chapter One
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Prowlers, that belongs to Christopher Golden, and I'm not making any money from this fic
Summary: A young female Prowler ends up trapped in the spirit world. While there, she struggles with her desire to hunt and her thirst for violence with the help of one of the ghosts there
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Bill paused as he was walking back to the pub from the market, and sniffed the air, ignoring what his ears were telling him in favour of his nose, the more powerful sense.
Lavender.
The scent of lavender was not totally unusual. Many humans wore the scent. It was a pretty popular one nowadays. What was unusual was what the scent of lavender almost masked. What Bill would have missed had he been walking across the other side of the street, for example. The scent of the wild.
Prowler, Bill's instincts told him.
It was very unusual for Prowlers to wear scent. Perfume would end up obscuring their nose, causing them not to be able to smell so much. A crippling thing for animals who relied on their sense of smell almost as much as dogs did.
The streets were quite busy at that time. Bill was getting jostled this way and that, but he didn't really care. If there was a rogue Prowler on the loose, that was bad. There would be killing soon if the Prowler was one of the ones which gave in to their bestial natures.
Young, or just inexperienced? Bill wondered as he inhaled the scent again, more in an attempt to see if he could identify the Prowler than to check that he had actually found one.
Jack will not be happy, Bill told himself. Neither will Molly or Courtney. We had thought that we were safe from them, with Jasmine's death.
For a moment, Bill toyed with the idea of just ignoring the scent and returning to the pub without checking it out. Just returning to Courtney and being the bartender and try to forget what his true heritage was.
But Bill knew that, having found an unknown Prowler, he couldn't just walk away. He owed it to his friends, to Courtney, to check it out.
At the thought of his girlfriend, Bill smiled slightly. But the smile quickly faded. The last thing he wanted was for Courtney to be in danger.
Bill glanced around, and then started walking in the direction he thought that the scent would be coming from.
After a few moments, Bill almost tripped over a dark-haired girl strumming a guitar and singing softly. "Sorry," the Prowler muttered, straightening.
Brown eyes filled with humour and laughter turned to gaze at him as the song faded. Lips parted in a smile, and a light, faintly accented voice, said, "That's quite all right."
"I wasn't looking where I was going," Bill apologised. As he did so, he inhaled deeply of the girl's scent, and stumbled back a step.
Lavender with a faint taste of the wild.
The girl's smile faded, and her eyes darkened. "Oh," she said flatly. "I was just idly wondering if that really was you across the street."
Bill tilted his head to the side. "You've heard of me?"
"I don't pay much attention to the old myths," the girl said with a slight shrug. "All happened before I was born." Laughter filled her eyes again. "I'm not one of the oldies."
Bill almost slapped her across the face for speaking like that to him, but he realised how that would look to any passerby's. And it looked like someone else had already slashed her across the face. He could see three faint scars down her tanned skin.
The girl tensed up slightly, and then relaxed a little. "Sorry, my parents have always told me that I should learn to guard my tongue."
"This is my turf," Bill hissed at her.
The girl laughed softly. "I'm not here to hunt," she replied. "Neither are you, actually, if what my parents told me about you is true."
Bill allowed himself to relax just a little. For all her words, he was pretty sure that this Prowler wasn't much of a threat. But he would still remain on his guard around her, at least a little, until she proved that she could be trusted. "What do you know of me?" he asked.
The girl blinked up at him. "Well, some say that you're little more than a lap dog," she said slowly. "But I don't believe those stories. I can sense the wild inside you just as you can sense the wild inside me."
"What's with the lavender scent?" Bill demanded.
The girl shrugged a little. "To mask my true identity from the others," she replied.
"I hate to break it to you, but it doesn't do that good a job," Bill told her. "I know that you're a Prowler, and I'm sure that any other Prowlers passing by will recognise your scent as well, despite the lavender perfume."
The girl gave him a pitying look. "That's not what I'm masking."
"Then what, exactly, are you masking?" Bill was frustrated. Even if this Prowler was harmless to humans, she was still extremely annoying.
The girl looked steadily at Bill for a moment, considering, then lifted her hair from her neck with one hand and beckoned Bill closer with the other, her guitar resting across her lap.
Bill slowly leaned closer to look.
There, on the girl's throat, normally hidden by her hair, was an imprint of Prowler teeth.
Bill took a slight step back. "So... the resistance does exist," he said slowly.
The girl let her hair fall. "Of course it does," she answered. "Didn't you know? Every rumour has some basis in fact."
"I realise that," Bill muttered. "There's Prowlers as a good example of that. But how any of us could accept a mark like that on our throat without at least trying to fight back..." He slowly shook his head.
"If you truly believe in something, you'll accept, and welcome, any amount of pain for the cause," the girl said, her attention turning back to her guitar.
"What's your name?" Bill asked after a moment's hesitation.
"Shaia," the girl answered without even looking up.
Bill nodded slowly. "I'll see you again," he said shortly before leaving.
Dark eyes watched him leave before a new song was started.
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