Lesson Seven: Weapons

Tilla was kind enough to join Eden and me in our lessons that day. As she walked in front of us, I eyed the gun hiding in her under-arm holster. She turned and smiled mischievously at us once we were in the clearing.

"So Puppers, you may have survived with Eden as a teacher, but now it's my turn."

I groaned. "Does nobody know my name? It's-" I jumped as bullet lodged itself into the dead tree behind me. My silent plea for help from Eden was answered with excited giggles.

"Aw Pup! You thought I was the crazy one? Tilla was a madly skilled markswoman in her time." Eden commented with an implied "at the House of Night" as she tossed me a gun.

Tilla warned me not to break the gun, as it belonged to a faraway neighbor of theirs. "Now, Eden may go for the Vancha March approach, but the fact is people use guns. They do. So, to level the playing field, you're going to have to be able to too."

She smiled and pointed at the end of her own gun. "This is the muzzle end of the barrel: the part you need to worry about the most. Make sure it's pointing at the enemy, not your face." Continuing, she pointed to various parts of her gun. She explained the physics behind the bullet coming out, but dumbed it down for me: "You pull this, death comes here." Thanks so much Tilla. At the mention of the safety she noted that Eden at disabled mine, like a jerk.

After her rant on gun safety and theory, she placed her gun back in its home and held a black rectangle in her one hand and ammunition in the other. "This is the magazine. It holds the bullets inside a gun. Now to load it, you have to press hard; you can't be a pansy. You try." She handed them to me, as I mumbled that I wasn't a pansy. When I got it in, she proceeded to tell me to push it out, telling me to catch it after it was already under a pile of leaves.

No longer had I handed her the lost bullet, than she had started back on her lecture and by the end of the night I had at least met Tilla's lowest standard for gun usage. At least it was one day down.

After some bribing, Tilla came with us the next day as well. Eden tossed each of us sticks, which were apparently swords.

"Today Pup, Tilla will teach you about the art of the sword." Eden announced, causing a squeak of surprise from the fairer female.

"But I've never used a sword before! How can I teach someone!?"

Eden sent me more silent "House of Night" glances as she gave Tilla some crap excuse and some orders.

"Oh, duh. I may be a bit rusty though, Pup. But don't complain when you get beaten with a stick." she said, holding her sword in ready position. I saw Eden grimace slightly and excused herself to look for her cat.

Tilla smiled and began her lessons for the day. I was inevitably beaten with a stick, but apparently did pretty well.

Lesson Eight: Effective Communication

If there was one thing I learnt about Eden, it was that she loved the sound of her own voice a lot. It was the day after a long night over her talking that I found myself gaming with Tilla. She spoke unexpectedly, "How'd the lesson go with Eden last night? I know how much she loves talking about communicating. Quite the self-proclaimed diplomat, eh?"

"Yeah, a bit. It was boring, honestly," Grimacing at the long night and how many times I thought about socking her in the mouth to shut her up, I replied. "She kept rambling about 'the language of the animals' and how 'the forest will always trust you'. What is that all about?"

"She's king of the jungle out here, ya know. Didn't even take her too long."

"She also gave me some information with dealing with humans an- and social situations..."

"Oh? Do you think you'll be able to use them at all?"

"Probably more than the animal stuff. Though the stuff about seducing girls, I don't know." I sighed and thought about some of the things she did say. I snorted at the last bit of info she did give me. "She spread her legs and asked if she was doing it because she was just as good as a guy or a slut."

"Totally the slut!" Tilla cackled.

"Did she try all this creepy seduction on you?"

"Nah, I did it on her." She winked and looked back to the screen seriously.

Lesson Nine: Girls and Hunting

Eden was looking through the book and I was shielding my pet marten from its creepy stare, when I decided to ask her. "I was wondering ... if you could give me some advice." I kept my eyes from hers.

"What kind of advice? I thought that was the point of your apprenticeship. What have you been getting from me the last month?"

"Well, about yesterday's [dreadful] lesson. There's a situation you didn't really cover." I could feel myself blush as I became flustered from embarrassment.

"Oh? And what would that be, my dear canine?"

I muttered into Gwin's coat. Eden fell off her boulder, laughing. I blushed deeper and told her to put a cork in it.

"Oi, you watch that tongue of yours around your elders, boy, or I'll rip it out!" She threatened to no avail, due to her giggling. "So our little Puppers has a girlie-friend! So proud, our little boy is growing up! I should call Tilla right away; she'd love to hear this one." After a few more giggles she seemed to realize something. "Actually I'm surprised you didn't go to her instead. She seems more the one for dating, doesn't she?"

"You're the self-proclaimed ultimate diplomat, aren't you? And yesterday it sure sounded like you knew what you were talking about. And, well, I was afraid Tilla would say something stupid and girly like 'be yourself'."

She snorted and insulted me. "Who is she?"

I ignored the comment and passed her my worn picture of the girl, taken only a few months before, I wished to discuss. She stopped for a moment and stared curiously. Eventually handing it back camly.

"Someday I'd love to study genetics to see how coincidences like this happen." She commented, casually but with no reason. "So, you find that birds' nest attractive?" Eden was mocking me again. But with her blood, dirt, and foliage encrusted, matted excuse for a Jew fro, the Vampyre had no room to talk about anyone else. "Who is she, then?"

I looked away from her as my face became hot from blushing. "My twin."

She blinked stupidly at me, her mouth hanging wide open. Suddenly she was coughing and rubbing her throat. "So you mean that your sister and you had a row, and now you want to make it up to her?"

I could see what the woman in front of me was trying to do, but I wasn't any more comfortable with it than she was. My feelings were still my feelings and I couldn't change that. "No. I- I love her." I stumbled on my words slightly as I added, "and not like a sister."

The gears in her head were grinding, visibly. As she thought, I clutched my fuzzy forest animal as if a stuffed animal. Eventually she sighed and showed me her palm, confusing me. "There is a test that my friends were taught by the biggest bitch I have ever had the misfortune to meet when we were still attending the Baltimore House of Night. It is quite simple to perform, and the only thing you have to lose is looking stupid if the test turns out to be false."

"It's a test to determine soul relations. Clotho, the Spinner, assigns everyone a soul mate before birth. If your twin is truly your soul mate, you can blame Clotho for it (the bitch). Now, to find out, hold your hand up her to her like I am now. If she automatically, instinctively, and without thought reaches out and entwines her fingers with yours, then you're soul mates. If she doesn't respond or does anything else, then you aren't soul mates, and this romance you supposedly have is purely dopamine and norepinephrine and you need to get over it."

I stared at her slightly, "So, you don't think it's gross or anything?"

Grinning, she replied, "I never said I didn't think it's gross. It is. But once you leave here, you're free to do whatever the hell you want as long as it doesn't impact Tilla or me. If you want to pop out some mutant wolf-children with your sister, have fun. Now, like I tried to say earlier, to turn into a wolf you need to think like one. And obviously, highlighted by you being love-struck, you do not think like a wolf. Wolves are primarily hunters, so I think the best way to get you thinking like a wolf is to take you hunting with me."

I stood up excitedly, though this would only give her more chance to poke fun of me. I sighed at her recall of the trapping disaster and promised it would be nothing like that. Eventually I warmed up to hunting, Eden and I became quite a pack.

Lesson Ten: Transforming

I was reading a horrible part of the book Luna had left us. Eden was doing something in the small river, maybe catching fish with her hands? Whatever she was doing, it wasn't working so well for her.

I yelled at her, trying simply to get her attention. She fell into the flow of the water and emerged, soaked. I roared with laughter at her even worse than normal appearance, for which I was awarded a combat boot to the head, I chuckled a bit more as I dodged.

The laughing stopped, however, as she took off her soaked shirt. She stared back at me, confused. "Why are you looking at me as if I had just punched a nun?"

"Because you can't just start taking your clothes off in the middle of the woods!" I replied, though someone as smart as her should have realized that.

She rolled her eyes and threw her wet pants at me. "If you don't want to see a lady old enough to be your mother in her undergarments, then don't push her into a river next time!"

I snorted, amused by the fact that she looked young enough to be my sister, no matter how old she actually was. "Oi, I pushed you? You fell in all by yourself."

She huffed angrily, I smiled. "You yelled! You wanted to startle me! And those stones are very slippery."

"The wet rocks are slippery? I would have never guessed. And didn't you say to always be to alert? You should have expected my yell." I replied mocking her as much as possible.

She threw her other boot, which I easily dodged with a smile. "Just because you can dodge now, doesn't mean I can't still kick your ass." She threat was ruined by her proud, creepy smile. After hanging the rest of her things on a tree branch, she sighed and continued. "Our month together is almost over, I'm afraid. Our last lesson is approaching." She listed everything I had learnt from her. Her tone changed with the last statement, commanding. "Now you need to be an animal."

She kept talking. Telling me I was wolf and that I had wolf-paws and I was wolf-hunter... But Eden was a convincing person and I could feel myself as the animal she described. After several painful jerks of my body, I blacked out.

When I came back to, I was in the same clearing wearing nothing. My clothes were over near the tree I had been sitting at, or what was left of my clothes. Eden's pants looked like a giant dog at gotten to them... One did: me. My arm felt as if it had been shot and then burnt... I reached into one of the wounds and pulled out what looked like a silver bullet, I tossed it into the creek as I focused on another problem: the taste of fresh blood in my mouth.

Looking around, I figured it wasn't Eden's or Tilla's, otherwise the bullets wouldn't have went in my arm. Then I saw her. My eyes welled with tears as I crawled over to the small woodland animal I once rescued. Eden and Tilla eventually wandered upon me. The more gruff female took Gwin from my hands and buried her as the markswoman treated my wounds.

I took her death hard, but was managed to be convinced that it was Luna's fault, not mine. When I finally came to grips with it, Tilla jokingly commented that "Your original goal was to kill her"; Eden decided to call me a slow learner in response.

Over time I received pieces of my first transformation: Eden in a tree, her arm gushing blood and the shots. Soon I was able to transform with minimal pain and while retaining my sanity, though. My skill in hunting increased as well. The lunar month was near its end and the full moon was so close.

Lesson Eleven: Self Control and the Hardest Lesson

On a whim, Eden decided to test my doggy-paddle skills, for which I shook the water from my furr onto her. She also wanted to test my wolf-form's reflexes. After dodging some more acorns, I turned back into my human form, got dressed, punched her playfully on the arm not in the sling.

"What-what the fuck are you?! You're a monster! You were just a wolf! And now…" one of Eden and Tilla's distant neighbors yelled, brandishing the gun he lent me for my shooting lessons. I put up my hands and moved toward him to disarm him. Panicking, he shot. I moved my head but got a graze to the shoulder.

I dropped to a defensive position, cupping my wound as my teacher darted forward. She supported herself on her good arm and gave him a kick to the neck; the man immediately collapsed to the ground. I rushed over and checked his pulse.

"What the hell are you playing at? You could have broken his neck!"

She looked down at him like any of the woodland animals we had hunted for food. I wondered quickly if that was because of her being a Vampyre or her being her. "I had to kick him. I couldn't have used my arm, could I?

I gaped at her, forming words in my head. "You didn't have to hurt him at all, you bitch! We could have calmed him down! You could have fucking commanded him to!"

She grabbed the collar of my shirt and looked at me seriously. I really wanted to spit in her eye. "He could have shot us both before I finished convincing him to settle down." I looked away, but she shook me. "Human lives are precious, and should be preserved. But yours is much more precious. Luna singled you out as her single heir, while there are millions of humans. You must not die. Remember that." She pushed me away and walked away.

When I walked into the cottage with the man in my arms Tilla rushed to help him, but on Eden's words she stopped. "He can't wake up. He knows what Pup is, Tilla."

"You call yourself a medic!?" I shouted at the vampyre; she flinched. "You let a man who has helped you die just because she told you to?" I held out the shirt Eden had abandoned the first time I shifted, as I turned to her. "Look what I found with him! He was only doing you a kindness!"

Tilla looked toward me with a steely, detached look that she sometimes wore if I stumbled on what was apparently the wrong topic. "We must protect ourselves."

Snarling, I ran out of the house, transforming mid stride. Eden found me in a clearing, pacing. She told me to follow her, and I did (grudgingly).

At the edge of the forest, as we could see the Vancouver city skyline, I turned back to myself. I looked around the city I had grown up in like a tourist, I knew it, but there was something about the buildings and people that seemed unfamiliar and unnatural. Eden mentioned the French Canadian mafia as she dragged me into the pizza shop I was drooling over.

I watched her look out the window as I dug into the grease covered pizza. She looked as if she wasn't a crazed psyco-bitch from hell for once. "Do you see all those humans out there? Going about their lives? There's a nice mother doing the shopping. And over there a surly shopkeeper. Haha, do you see that business man over there?" She pointed happily at the flustered man trying to call a cab. I was less interested in that than my pizza, but I looked at all the people she was pointing out. "What do you think could be so important that he is panicked over?"

I shrugged and tore off some crust. She lowered her voice. "The answer is nothing. In his small, insignificant life, whatever he is late for is important. But in the wide scale of things, it is not. The Fates singled you—and your sister, I'm guessing—out. Your destinies are strong and powerful. What happens to you can affect not only the Vampyre community, but future generations of werewolves and the human world. You have to protect yourself, don't you see? You cannot be selfish about one life when so many could be affected. No human is as important as you, and very few Vampyres."

As we left the city, we both stopped to look at the plaque marking our real home: the House of Night. When we got back, I didn't talk much for the rest of the night. Full moon was in two days.