1. Beginnings
I used to have a name. I suppose it doesn't matter any more. I also used to have a family, friends, a budding college career. Amazing how quickly a life can be turned on its head. All of those things are gone, taken from me in a dark night that passed me by so quickly – like a knife through a hazy fog, cutting a path through something that seemed so material at one point. Now I can only perceive it as cold, grey nothingness.
It was Spring Break. Hardly surprising, considering how much chaos and trouble young people spread during that one magical week in March. Most of my superficial life before that night is inconsequential. I was in my sophomore year of college, destined to be another mediocre human being. Still undeclared, both in my major and also in the most other aspects of my life. I was living the American dream: using my parent's middle class income on school, but the only classes I was passing were the ones on social studies. I had a particularly strong report on the effects of tequila shots on a young woman's credibility and reputation. So when I went to Cancun with a few girlfriends for Spring Break, I didn't hesitate to go all out.
My first memories, real memories – hard, hot and clear – are of pain. A severe, burning pain that lash out in my mind with the vengeance of a million wrong choices. The choice of getting smashed and leaving my friends to puke in a back alley somewhere – not even remembering how I got there. The choice of sitting down to catch my breath and make the world stop spinning. The choice to not make a stumbling run for the main streets when I saw the gang coming my way. I didn't even make the rational choice to scream my lungs out when they B-lined for me, swarming like hungry locusts. No, not hungry. I know that now. Thirsty.
The first bite happened so quickly. Whether it was the alcohol or the lightening-quick speed of the Vampire, I'll never know. I'll also never know what business a Werewolf had in a Mexican alleyway at that precise moment. The term "destiny" comes to mind, but only when I'm feeling self-righteous and important. More likely, it was just dumb luck. At the time, I was more focused on the intense burning sensation that ran the length of my arm from the first bite to the second bite on my shoulder and down again to the third bite just above my hip. It is now the consensus of many intelligent beings that it was on one of these three bites that some of the Wolf's blood fell. Three Vampires against one lone Wolf. He was doomed. To this day, I wish I knew who he was and what he was doing in that same fated alley where I was attacked. As for me, I call him Angel, for that is what he was to me. By the time I had enough sense to find a dark place to hide, all four of them were dead before me. I was covered in blood that was not entirely my own, and my body was performing a circus of dark tricks – shivering and coughing and flailing, snapping my own bones around as if rearranging them for feng shui requirements.
I spent the remainder of my rebirth in a cardboard box under a fire escape. I'll never know if my friends even looked for me, if the Mexican police quickly began and ended a futile search for my body. They certainly never found three sparkling bodies and an enormous Wolf. I searched for them myself when I came to and found not a trace. What I did encounter was an intense hunger, at once squeezing and expanding my stomach, as if the hunger were a living creature trying to escape my body. The small streets around my alley held many new sensations. No – not new. I had been experiencing them all my lfe, only now they seemed real. After gaining my new-found senses I realized that all along I had heard the buzzing flies and smelled the layer upon layer of decaying garbage. Only now they were alive with a life all their own – my body was actively seeking out these senses, craving to know all the information that my body in its completely-human form had dismissed as unimportant. With this new sense of awareness, I hunted. Nothing as formidable as most New Borns would want you to believe. Instead of murderers and madmen or virgins and succulent students, I feasted on the rats of the alley. A part of me yearned for their blood while another part wanted the steaming meat they provided in such tantalizingly small quantities.
Very, very slowly, I began to feel again. I begin to think again. As if someone were unraveling an enormous yo-yo in a black hole, my memories came dripping back to me. And it was then that I knew I had changed. I was not the young college student that had left for a week of fun and excitement. I was more animal, more attuned, more aware. More alive. And it scared me.
Once I had gathered all the small and important bits of myself back together, I knew I could not stay in the gutters of Cancun like the rats I ate. The part of my brain that still considered itself Human toyed with the idea of gathering supplies and clothing in a pack before heading out. The new me immediately belayed that idea and set my feet to marching.
For weeks I traveled. Only at night, as that seemed the most natural time to move. I was amazed at the ease in which my vision adjusted to the foreboding darkness of the open wilderness. That time is also a haze to me. Perhaps my brain was still adjusting to all the new sensations, and trying to hash my previous memories and experiences into this new perception of the world and myself. I know the days were spent sleeping in whatever cactus shadows I could find, far from any roads or towns. I know the nights were spent wandering in a general northern direction. I know that the startled jackrabbits I consumed were far from satisfying my ravenous hunger and the few cold springs I found only teased my intense thirst. Misery was my constant companion, hope my enemy.
The first interaction I had with the Human race was also the first memory I have of Changing. I remember that my nose found him first. A musty, earthy smell. He smelled of dirt and gasoline from his farm equipment, but also of arthritis cream. Next came my hearing. Well before he spoke to me, I could hear the blood chugging stoically through old, tired veins. My thirst leapt to life when I heard his blood moving, his heart pumping doggedly. I could almost feel my teeth growing at the thought of all that blood. His rusted voice distracted me. I must have already cross the Rio Grande, for the voice that called out was in clear English, though it bore a strong Texas accent.
"Hold it right there, Paco! I've got a 12-gauge pointed square at the back of your head. Turn around slowly – we're gonna take you to Boarder Patrol, comprende?" His voice cracked with age, but I heard no weakness in it that would leave me to disbelieve his determination to bring justice to a river-crosser such as I.
I'm sure I looked a complete mess in the darkness. I'm surprised the old man even thought me to be human, never mind him confusing my short, dark red hair and pale skin for that of a Hispanic. Perhaps his old eyes were even worse at discerning shapes in the moonlight than my previous, dulled Human eyes had been. At that thought I almost took pity on the creaky old man.
Until he cackled. "Oh ho ho! Forgive me, it appears I've done caught me a Paquita!" From behind me I easily heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. "Ho there, Fred. Bring the van around. We've got a little senorita here that needs transport!"
In his defense, perhaps he was an honest South Texas farmer intent on returning an illegal safely across the boarder to her natural homeland. But I wasn't about to chance it. A different kind of fire flowed through my veins – not the streaking burn that had created my new body. No, this was an almost pleasant warmth, like the feel of hot cocoa warming your insides to fight off the chill of winter. Despite the warming sensation in my veins, goose bumps raced across the length of my body, leaving me shivering. And smiling. I remember that I smiled because I could feel the change in my lips and the way my teeth grew longer, sharper. The goose bumps grew stronger as black hair pushed its way through them and out of my very skin. I don't remember feeling a tail grow out of me, but I do remember noticing its presence when I swished it back and forth, encouraging the blood to pump through my hind legs. Before I knew it, my hands - or rather, my paws – were sinking closer to the ground until I could feel the very comforting and rather pleasant feel of sand between my webbed toes. I dug my claws into it, feeling reassured by the solid weight of earth beneath me. I spun on my heels to face the old man.
All of this happened in the space it took him to drop his walkie-talkie and gasp his shock. My launch was intended to be less of an attack on the farmer and more of a defensive move to knock the shotgun out of his shaking hands. Not being accustomed to my new-found strength and speed, I succeeded in knocking the entire man to the ground before I sprinted away. Within moments, I heard the sound of the shotgun blast behind me. He had missed me by a literal mile, but I'm sure it made him feel better knowing that he'd made some sort of effort at the departing streak of black fur.
I ran for miles upon miles. I ran until the landscape changed from Chihuahua desert and scrub-brush to tall pines, bursting with their sweet scent, and then I ran some more. I did not run from fear or distress. I ran because once my legs had found that beautiful harmony of running they refused to stop. Joy filled me in that run. My long, lupine body would stretch as far as it could from toe to toe only to curl into a tight ball, back arched and feet crossed beneath me with the ground speeding away below, and then back into the stretched pose. Never had running felt so invigorating to me. So, naturally, I ran until I almost collapsed from it.
By that time, the sun was peaking its head up suspiciously, but I gave it no notice. After all my meaningless human life, I was finally alive. And after many uncertain weeks of blurry memories and fuzzy decisions, I was finally thinking clearly. I did not yet know what I should do, but at least I was getting some inkling of what I was. I knew, rationally, that I had been attacked by Vampires. They had taken me and bit me multiple times. There was no denying that their taint ran through my blood. The confusing part was that my blood was, indeed, running. Even more confusing was the apparent fact that I was also, somehow, a Werewolf.