Something hurt. Then when I opened my eyes, I realised what. Everything. All my muscles were sore and screamed in protests when I tried to move. The intense pain caused me to cry out.
"You'll get used to it, the first change is always painful; it gets easier." Blaine's voice. Obviously he hadn't gone home.
"Like sex," I muttered. What had possessed me to say that? What was the matter with me?
"Huh?" He sounded a little confused.
"Sex is always painful the first time, or at least afterwards, for girls, anyway, and then it gets easier and more enjoyable." I had to deal with being a werewolf, and I was talking about sex, to a guy I hardly knew. Oh God, what must he be thinking?
I glanced over at him. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt and jeans. His clothes had changed, and I wondered vaguely whose they were. He had saved me, but he was also responsible for what had happened. I wasn't sure how to feel towards him. Part of me hated his guts, was silently screaming at him in anger about how he could have ruined me like this. Part of me was just thinking, god he's gorgeous. And he picked me.
What about my friends? Would I tell them? Would they believe it? No, probably not. What was I supposed to say to them? Amber was going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Going into the woods was her idea, and I'd suffered terribly because of it.
Okay, maybe I was over exaggerating a little, but I was still pissed.
My mom knocked on the door then, before I could say anything else. She stuck her head round. "Your friends are here to see you."
I groaned again. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, I felt like curling up and dying. But...hadn't Isabella said werewolves were immortal? In that case, then I was never going to die. Never. I wasn't sure if the thought thrilled me or terrified me.
"Send 'em up, I guess."
I glanced over at Blaine. He turned to leave. I wasn't sure why I felt a twinge of disappointment. This was all his fault. I wanted him to stay, and yet at the same time, I wished I'd never laid eyes on him. Why couldn't I make up my mind how I felt about him?
Mom left. Blaine hesitated for a minute. "Don't forget. It's a full moon tonight.
You're going to change again. And you'll need to feed." And then he left.
Damn. I'd forgotten about that. I glanced out the window. Pink and orange clouds were gathering in the sky, a rosy glow beginning in the west as the sun began to set. It would be dark soon. Unless I wanted to slaughter everyone in the house, I had to think of a way to get out. What was I supposed to do. Tell my parents, "By the way, I'm a werewolf now, and since it's a full moon I just have to run and eat a few people. I won't be back too late."
I could just see the looks on their faces.
"You're mad, aren't you?" Amber was peeking cautiously around the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks puffy, as if she'd been crying a lot. Good. At least she felt some guilt.
"Yes, I'm mad."
She came in then, followed by Jesse and Rick, complete with flowers and candy. How cute. Maybe I'd forgive them.
"Who was the guy on the stairs?" Rick asked suspiciously.
Shit. I'd completely forgotten about him. How was I going to explain Blaine to everyone? Without saying he was the werewolf who decided to bring me into his pack.
"He was the guy who found me and brought me home," I said, not bothering to sit up. I hurt too much and they weren't worth the effort. I was mad at them.
"What happened to you?" Amber asked. "We searched for a week!"
A week? I'd really been gone that long? "I left the tent to take a piss and got lost in the dark." The truth, but not quite the whole truth.
"We thought the monster had gotten you," Jesse said seriously.
I turned to look at him. "What monster?"
They exchanged glances. "Four people were found in the woods completely mauled to death as if by giant dogs. Two police officers and a couple of other campers."
I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that. I knew I was responsible for the cops, but the other campers? That hadn't been me. No way.
Not me.
But my memory of the last week was still completely blurred. What if I done it, and just didn't know it? Were my finger prints all over the bodies? What was the penalty for werewolf kills? Life?
I didn't know. I was being ridiculous. Just a coincidence, that's all.
"I guess nobody knows what did it?" I asked finally. I watched them shake their heads. They just looked at me, obviously knowing there was something I wasn't telling them. What could I say without sounding inside.
I turned my face away from them, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head.
"Just leave me alone," I muttered.
I hid under the bed covers waiting for them to go. After a few minutes I heard the door shutting. My life had become a walking nightmare. What had I done to deserve it?
Nothing was going to be the same again.
I had no choice but to learn to deal with this.
So far, I was failing miserably.
* * *
Darkness was slowly spreading over the sky, the rosy pink and orange changing to dark blue to grey to black. Stars peeked out from where the clouds parted in the midnight blue sky. The moon would be up soon.
What was I going to do? I had no choice. I didn't want to change in the house? What if I went crazy and ate everybody? I shuddered at the thought. This was a disaster.
Was there any way out of this? Maybe I'd look when I felt a bit better.
I dragged myself out of bed, wondering how I was going to get out the house. A long hot shower took a way some of the aching. How many days was the moon full? Three? And this was *every* month?
I dressed in a black sweater and black jeans. With my hair darker now, glancing in the mirror I looked like the essence of darkness itself. Great.
My window overlooked the front yard, not a great window to climb out of. My muscles screamed a protest as I started to move, but I ignored the pain, I had no choice. I stuck my head out the door. I could her my mother's voice down the hall.
"...she's still asleep, she can't come to the phone right now."
Yet another person calling to see how I was. I was so miserable I hadn't felt like talking to anyone. How could I explain what happened to them when I couldn't even explain it to myself?
I turned back to my room quickly, stuffing some clothes in a person-like shape under the blankets. Old, I know. But I didn't have any better ideas.
I slipped out into the dark hall, and opened the door to the spare bedroom. This window overlooked the backyard and there was a convenient drainpipe right beside it.
I'd never done anything like this before, normally I just walked in all hours of the night not caring who yelled. But, this time, the situation was different.
The decent was slow and painful, my fear of heights was not helping now. I couldn't help the huge rush of relief I felt when I finally hit the ground. I moved stealthily through the darkness to the back gate where I let myself out. Okay. What now?
I glanced up at the sky. Clouds blanketed the stars, blotting out the moon. So I was safe from now. I needed to get away from the residential area, somewhere where there was no people for me to eat. But how else would I stem the hunger I could feel seeping over me?
Animals, maybe. But that meant going back into the woods. I made a face at the thought. Ick.
Footsteps sounded in a shadow beside me. I looked around as a familiar figure caught my eye. Blaine stood in the darkness, a little smile pulling at the corners of his lips.
"Oh no. Not you again." How was I supposed to avoid this guy if he kept showing up at every turn or corner?
"Who else are you going to learn from?" He had a point.
"You're the expert," I said. When he gestured forward, I had no option but to follow him.
Where he was taking me, I didn't know. It occurred to me then that I didn't know a lot.
* * *
The next morning the sun was far too bright. I winced, waking as the alarm went off. I would have liked an extra few days in bed, but my mom thought the best idea for getting over tragic events was getting on with life as it came and went.
My muscles were all sore and aching from last night's hunt. Blaine had taken me back to the woods he'd found me in, and taught me how to shift and hunt. It wasn't getting any easier, and still hurt like hell.
My mind was still fairly cloudy...it was like that after every shift, I tended not to remember what happened during, and at the moment, that was just fine with me.
As I dressed for school I realised I was dreading it. Normally, school didn't bother me all that much, but today...everyone's eyes would be on me. Everyone must know I had been missing for almost a week...
And I still hadn't figured what the hell I was going to tell them all. Oh, it's just a little thing, we went camping at the weekend...but here's the funny thing...this really cute guy who turned out to be a werewolf took a liking to me and decided to make me one...
That statement would be most likely to get me my very own padded room and straight jacket. What fun. (Gag).
I sighed with impatience. God, what a nightmare. I was going to have missed so much work. It was going to take me forever to catch up. My parents wouldn't let me out for months...
The entire situation then struck me as rather comical. Here I was...having just been turned into a werewolf and discovered a whole underground society of not only werewolves...but vampires, witched, other shifters...they called it Night World.
Blaine had explained all this to me when I'd finally gotten to grips with myself last night, about the history, these stupid laws. I still just couldn't believe it.
Why couldn't some nice sexy vampire have come and seduced me instead? That would have been so much more fun. Instead of a sexy vampire I got a fairly sexy werewolf. Lucky me.
I grabbed by bag and headed downstairs. My family took at least ten minutes fussing over me. The first thing that struck me as I headed into the kitchen was hundreds of mingling smells...and I could identify almost every single one.
Not a pleasant thought. They smelled different than Blaine did...so poignantly human. They just sat their eating breakfast, my little brother talking about his Little League game on Saturday afternoon, my dad moaning about Congress being idiots, my mom burning the toast and the bacon.
They were human...and I wasn't. And that...hurt. I saw them exchanging glances, looking at me. I wasn't normally this quiet and pensive. What could I say? I had a lot on my mind.
My eyes scanned over the headlines on the front page of the paper Dad was looking at...MAULED IN WOODS caught my eye.
"Hey, can I have that?" Before my dad could do anything I'd taken the paper out his hand. PEOPLE FOUND MAULED IN WOODS. I stared in horror as I read the article about two people who had been hunting in the woods late last night, illegally, I might add, and they had been found ripped to pieces.
My hands were starting to shake. Could I have...no. No. No. I was barely getting the hang of killing animals...Night World law said shifter kills were only restricted to animals...Unless Pack laws were different...
"Seraphin?" my mom was asking faintly. "Honey, maybe you should go back to bed. A day..."
Before she could finish the blare of a car horn sounded outside. My escape. "That's Rick. I gotta go, I'll be fine." And I hurried out before anyone could stop me.
Rick was waiting for me outside, he smiled faintly as I got in. I didn't kiss him like I usually did. I wondered why. Blaine's face flashed in my mind and I shook him away. Rick looked a little hurt and drove off.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yeah." A lie, but he didn't really need to know that.
My mind was returning to those people found in the woods. I couldn't have, I kept telling myself. Not me. No way. Never. But I didn't know what I did when I shifted. Animals didn't have human thoughts...or Blaine had said something along those lines.
As I got to school it was the nightmare I had thought it was. People were looking at me and whispering as I walked by, everyone asking if I was okay, what happened, I was getting pretty sick of it by the time I got to my first class.
My temper was short at the best of times and this wasn't helping in the slightest. But what was worse then the stares and whispering...
A scent of flesh...human flesh and blood...thing inside them that I needed more than they did...
I was starting to panic. I had only fed last night, the final night of the full moon. I didn't have to feed again until it came up in another twenty-eight days.
What would happen if I couldn't control myself? I didn't want to know.
* * *
"You'll get used to it, the first change is always painful; it gets easier." Blaine's voice. Obviously he hadn't gone home.
"Like sex," I muttered. What had possessed me to say that? What was the matter with me?
"Huh?" He sounded a little confused.
"Sex is always painful the first time, or at least afterwards, for girls, anyway, and then it gets easier and more enjoyable." I had to deal with being a werewolf, and I was talking about sex, to a guy I hardly knew. Oh God, what must he be thinking?
I glanced over at him. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt and jeans. His clothes had changed, and I wondered vaguely whose they were. He had saved me, but he was also responsible for what had happened. I wasn't sure how to feel towards him. Part of me hated his guts, was silently screaming at him in anger about how he could have ruined me like this. Part of me was just thinking, god he's gorgeous. And he picked me.
What about my friends? Would I tell them? Would they believe it? No, probably not. What was I supposed to say to them? Amber was going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. Going into the woods was her idea, and I'd suffered terribly because of it.
Okay, maybe I was over exaggerating a little, but I was still pissed.
My mom knocked on the door then, before I could say anything else. She stuck her head round. "Your friends are here to see you."
I groaned again. I didn't really feel like talking to anyone, I felt like curling up and dying. But...hadn't Isabella said werewolves were immortal? In that case, then I was never going to die. Never. I wasn't sure if the thought thrilled me or terrified me.
"Send 'em up, I guess."
I glanced over at Blaine. He turned to leave. I wasn't sure why I felt a twinge of disappointment. This was all his fault. I wanted him to stay, and yet at the same time, I wished I'd never laid eyes on him. Why couldn't I make up my mind how I felt about him?
Mom left. Blaine hesitated for a minute. "Don't forget. It's a full moon tonight.
You're going to change again. And you'll need to feed." And then he left.
Damn. I'd forgotten about that. I glanced out the window. Pink and orange clouds were gathering in the sky, a rosy glow beginning in the west as the sun began to set. It would be dark soon. Unless I wanted to slaughter everyone in the house, I had to think of a way to get out. What was I supposed to do. Tell my parents, "By the way, I'm a werewolf now, and since it's a full moon I just have to run and eat a few people. I won't be back too late."
I could just see the looks on their faces.
"You're mad, aren't you?" Amber was peeking cautiously around the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks puffy, as if she'd been crying a lot. Good. At least she felt some guilt.
"Yes, I'm mad."
She came in then, followed by Jesse and Rick, complete with flowers and candy. How cute. Maybe I'd forgive them.
"Who was the guy on the stairs?" Rick asked suspiciously.
Shit. I'd completely forgotten about him. How was I going to explain Blaine to everyone? Without saying he was the werewolf who decided to bring me into his pack.
"He was the guy who found me and brought me home," I said, not bothering to sit up. I hurt too much and they weren't worth the effort. I was mad at them.
"What happened to you?" Amber asked. "We searched for a week!"
A week? I'd really been gone that long? "I left the tent to take a piss and got lost in the dark." The truth, but not quite the whole truth.
"We thought the monster had gotten you," Jesse said seriously.
I turned to look at him. "What monster?"
They exchanged glances. "Four people were found in the woods completely mauled to death as if by giant dogs. Two police officers and a couple of other campers."
I wasn't exactly sure what to make of that. I knew I was responsible for the cops, but the other campers? That hadn't been me. No way.
Not me.
But my memory of the last week was still completely blurred. What if I done it, and just didn't know it? Were my finger prints all over the bodies? What was the penalty for werewolf kills? Life?
I didn't know. I was being ridiculous. Just a coincidence, that's all.
"I guess nobody knows what did it?" I asked finally. I watched them shake their heads. They just looked at me, obviously knowing there was something I wasn't telling them. What could I say without sounding inside.
I turned my face away from them, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head.
"Just leave me alone," I muttered.
I hid under the bed covers waiting for them to go. After a few minutes I heard the door shutting. My life had become a walking nightmare. What had I done to deserve it?
Nothing was going to be the same again.
I had no choice but to learn to deal with this.
So far, I was failing miserably.
* * *
Darkness was slowly spreading over the sky, the rosy pink and orange changing to dark blue to grey to black. Stars peeked out from where the clouds parted in the midnight blue sky. The moon would be up soon.
What was I going to do? I had no choice. I didn't want to change in the house? What if I went crazy and ate everybody? I shuddered at the thought. This was a disaster.
Was there any way out of this? Maybe I'd look when I felt a bit better.
I dragged myself out of bed, wondering how I was going to get out the house. A long hot shower took a way some of the aching. How many days was the moon full? Three? And this was *every* month?
I dressed in a black sweater and black jeans. With my hair darker now, glancing in the mirror I looked like the essence of darkness itself. Great.
My window overlooked the front yard, not a great window to climb out of. My muscles screamed a protest as I started to move, but I ignored the pain, I had no choice. I stuck my head out the door. I could her my mother's voice down the hall.
"...she's still asleep, she can't come to the phone right now."
Yet another person calling to see how I was. I was so miserable I hadn't felt like talking to anyone. How could I explain what happened to them when I couldn't even explain it to myself?
I turned back to my room quickly, stuffing some clothes in a person-like shape under the blankets. Old, I know. But I didn't have any better ideas.
I slipped out into the dark hall, and opened the door to the spare bedroom. This window overlooked the backyard and there was a convenient drainpipe right beside it.
I'd never done anything like this before, normally I just walked in all hours of the night not caring who yelled. But, this time, the situation was different.
The decent was slow and painful, my fear of heights was not helping now. I couldn't help the huge rush of relief I felt when I finally hit the ground. I moved stealthily through the darkness to the back gate where I let myself out. Okay. What now?
I glanced up at the sky. Clouds blanketed the stars, blotting out the moon. So I was safe from now. I needed to get away from the residential area, somewhere where there was no people for me to eat. But how else would I stem the hunger I could feel seeping over me?
Animals, maybe. But that meant going back into the woods. I made a face at the thought. Ick.
Footsteps sounded in a shadow beside me. I looked around as a familiar figure caught my eye. Blaine stood in the darkness, a little smile pulling at the corners of his lips.
"Oh no. Not you again." How was I supposed to avoid this guy if he kept showing up at every turn or corner?
"Who else are you going to learn from?" He had a point.
"You're the expert," I said. When he gestured forward, I had no option but to follow him.
Where he was taking me, I didn't know. It occurred to me then that I didn't know a lot.
* * *
The next morning the sun was far too bright. I winced, waking as the alarm went off. I would have liked an extra few days in bed, but my mom thought the best idea for getting over tragic events was getting on with life as it came and went.
My muscles were all sore and aching from last night's hunt. Blaine had taken me back to the woods he'd found me in, and taught me how to shift and hunt. It wasn't getting any easier, and still hurt like hell.
My mind was still fairly cloudy...it was like that after every shift, I tended not to remember what happened during, and at the moment, that was just fine with me.
As I dressed for school I realised I was dreading it. Normally, school didn't bother me all that much, but today...everyone's eyes would be on me. Everyone must know I had been missing for almost a week...
And I still hadn't figured what the hell I was going to tell them all. Oh, it's just a little thing, we went camping at the weekend...but here's the funny thing...this really cute guy who turned out to be a werewolf took a liking to me and decided to make me one...
That statement would be most likely to get me my very own padded room and straight jacket. What fun. (Gag).
I sighed with impatience. God, what a nightmare. I was going to have missed so much work. It was going to take me forever to catch up. My parents wouldn't let me out for months...
The entire situation then struck me as rather comical. Here I was...having just been turned into a werewolf and discovered a whole underground society of not only werewolves...but vampires, witched, other shifters...they called it Night World.
Blaine had explained all this to me when I'd finally gotten to grips with myself last night, about the history, these stupid laws. I still just couldn't believe it.
Why couldn't some nice sexy vampire have come and seduced me instead? That would have been so much more fun. Instead of a sexy vampire I got a fairly sexy werewolf. Lucky me.
I grabbed by bag and headed downstairs. My family took at least ten minutes fussing over me. The first thing that struck me as I headed into the kitchen was hundreds of mingling smells...and I could identify almost every single one.
Not a pleasant thought. They smelled different than Blaine did...so poignantly human. They just sat their eating breakfast, my little brother talking about his Little League game on Saturday afternoon, my dad moaning about Congress being idiots, my mom burning the toast and the bacon.
They were human...and I wasn't. And that...hurt. I saw them exchanging glances, looking at me. I wasn't normally this quiet and pensive. What could I say? I had a lot on my mind.
My eyes scanned over the headlines on the front page of the paper Dad was looking at...MAULED IN WOODS caught my eye.
"Hey, can I have that?" Before my dad could do anything I'd taken the paper out his hand. PEOPLE FOUND MAULED IN WOODS. I stared in horror as I read the article about two people who had been hunting in the woods late last night, illegally, I might add, and they had been found ripped to pieces.
My hands were starting to shake. Could I have...no. No. No. I was barely getting the hang of killing animals...Night World law said shifter kills were only restricted to animals...Unless Pack laws were different...
"Seraphin?" my mom was asking faintly. "Honey, maybe you should go back to bed. A day..."
Before she could finish the blare of a car horn sounded outside. My escape. "That's Rick. I gotta go, I'll be fine." And I hurried out before anyone could stop me.
Rick was waiting for me outside, he smiled faintly as I got in. I didn't kiss him like I usually did. I wondered why. Blaine's face flashed in my mind and I shook him away. Rick looked a little hurt and drove off.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yeah." A lie, but he didn't really need to know that.
My mind was returning to those people found in the woods. I couldn't have, I kept telling myself. Not me. No way. Never. But I didn't know what I did when I shifted. Animals didn't have human thoughts...or Blaine had said something along those lines.
As I got to school it was the nightmare I had thought it was. People were looking at me and whispering as I walked by, everyone asking if I was okay, what happened, I was getting pretty sick of it by the time I got to my first class.
My temper was short at the best of times and this wasn't helping in the slightest. But what was worse then the stares and whispering...
A scent of flesh...human flesh and blood...thing inside them that I needed more than they did...
I was starting to panic. I had only fed last night, the final night of the full moon. I didn't have to feed again until it came up in another twenty-eight days.
What would happen if I couldn't control myself? I didn't want to know.
* * *
