Chapter Two: A Disappearing Act

A cracked roar spilt the silence permeating the fields that night. Tree bark splintered and despaired under furious blows. Grass tore and ripped under the stamping and raging hooves as Olivia Lowan shamelessly howled and thrashed like a wild animal.

Ten years had been good to Olivia. No longer scrawny and petite as she was when she was but a little girl, her body became sharp and toned. Everyday, she ran around the fields with the air of a prancing goat, punched at defenseless trees until her knuckles became rough and tan with strength. Goat legs were healthy and well built with a thick sheen of rough hair. Her choppy hair had been kept short and pointed, with a porcupine-like quality. Teeth grew sharp and fierce like a cat. Horns grew large and curled, with all the power of the greatest ram on earth. Her clothes were short, baggy pants tightened with a leather belt and a black wifebeater. And her eyes, her golden snake eyes, always raged in anger.

When she could no longer stand the prescence of trembling, cowardly parents, or when they became especially irritating in her eyes, she would go out and show her power to the trees. Many times there was no need for them to make her mad. She just got mad all the time. Every since that day ten years ago, when her parents promised her as a future agent to the BPRD, all the familiar, childlike happiness was drained away. There was only two things to fill that void, anger and sadness. In the end, anger prevailed.

But tonight's rage was unusually unbridled. The reason is simple. It was Olivia's birthday.

Every birthday after "that day", birthdays became a nightmare. She was uncontrollable, inconsolable, and overall cruel. Her parents tried. They tried with all their might to calm their raging daughter. But it was exactly as the ram god had foretold. She was lost, lost to the wildness that had encased her betrayed soul.

Her mother was terrified of her new stregth. She believed it was part of the curse, so become so strong that no man could possibly conquer that beast within. Her father too felt defeated at the hands of his own child, his guilt and mistakes coming back again and again to tear him apart from the inside. All the couple could do in this ordeal was to watch. They were useless against the brute force and wild rage her daughter would unleash.

This birthday would be a record-breaker. It was her seventeenth birthday, the day before the BPRD would come bearing documents of all legal forms, packing up Olivia along with her belongings and whisking her away from the familiar woods and fields of her secluded home. Olivia had seen shows with cities and programs about everything outside, but being outside seemed an impossible task. Every time she tried to step over that border that seperated her land from the rest, she quaked from the inside, and turned back. Her parents didn't need electric fences. Their only triumph over Olivia was trapping her within herself. Her world would be robbed and replaced with another, all too violently. Once her parents made a deal with Manning, there was no backing out.

The bark smashing under Olivia's roughened hands barely twinged the tough skin. She bared teeth and shrieked into the open night. But all the release was about as effective as throwing a cotton ball at a steel wall. There was nothing to do but wait. If she refused to come willingly, the BPRD would no doubt catch her. They enlisted the aids of many fantastical beings and they were probably more than capable of capturing Olivia and dragging her by the hair all the way to New Jersey. She herself, strong and fierce as she was, would require several months of training before being allowed on missions or even being let outside.

She finally exhausted herself, and dragged her cloven hooves across long, sweet smelling grass. She didn't even make it to the house, but instead collasped on the soft bed of grass beneath her. She sighed in exhaustion, her breath coming out in small, tired pants. Nature was truly a wonder, forgiving and destructive, calming and frightening. She felt in her essence when she raced about it, taking in the wild scent of pines and sweetgrass, feeling soft earth tremble under mighty hooves, seeing the vast beauty of it. Beyond it laid the mountains which she knew to be called, "The Appalachians." She had never crossed the boundary of her home, but she did dream of it at night, prancing across the rocks and trees, splashing through its rivers, conquering the land and all who dared to claim it. It filled her with a strange estascy, and made her nights all the more appreciating. Though it hardly mattered now. She was trapped...

But was she?

A blinking light sudden flashed in her head, her eyes open in realization. What made her think she was trapped? There was no fence, no dogs to hunt her down, no SWAT team. The only guards were her quaking parents, easily overcome. And suddenly that invisible barrier seperating her from the rest of the world fell apart and shattered. She stood up with a crazed strength now electrifying her being into life. The world was open, free to explore beyond the reaches of the farm, with mountains and forests to climb and conquer. To live wildly...it brought back a strange repressed memory she never knew having...

There was a great circle of them, hooved and horned all. They cackled with glee as they grasped at beautiful gods and goddess, swinging them up and about in a wild and passionate dance. A billowing fire stood proudly in the center, slabs of meat skewered on sharp spears and roasting with a delicious scent. Baskets and baskets of fruit. Barrels of wine. Loaves pouring out of their plates. And a god, a mighty god, half ram, half man, sitting upon a great mountain, watching the festivities, a proud smirk upon his face as he drank from a roughly carved cup. All the noises came together in a hypnotic and intoxicating harmony, and Olivia saw herself among them...swinging around from the arms of handsome satyrs...

And then it faded, leaving her full of energy. Tonight, she would be unstoppable.

That same night, a plane soared over the farm in Ohio, close to landing in the airport in Cincinatti. In the crates, unbidden to passengers, two shadowed figures waited in anticipation to bring back their comrade to be...