Growing Up Werewolf Page 5

  It looks like a mine shaft or a cave. Intensely black and lacking a lot of light. I gingerly padded forward in one direction. Hoping it’s the right direction.

  There is the slightest sense of cold air flow from the direction I am headed in.

  Air coming in has to mean, there is an open space somewhere. I sniff every so often. Trying to figure out what else is around.

  I can smell bat droppings. That makes me shake my fur quickly and I pick up the pace a little.

  There are other scents along the way. They get stronger as I continue on my way into the dark. Other fur. Copper, hay. Human sweat. Urine. Blood. It’s all there somewhere, dancing along the dirt and darkness around me.

  More than one of them. The scents overlap. Again and again. I smell metallic things too.

  My instinct tells me the metallic smell is bad. But I couldn’t figure out why. I huff out loud. I’m not used to this and I don’t know why.

  The human scents make me angry and the blood excites me. I want to prowl around and find what is leaving the blood trail. I want to hunt.

  I know there is a world at night beyond this passageway I’m walking and yet I can’t say how I know that. Because I haven’t seen it before, like this.

  But I feel compelled to run. To roam, to stretch my legs and put my snout to the ground to sniff for trails of those left behind in this world for me to pursue.

  It’s instinct that drives me forward. I know there is more than the blackness of this oppressing mine shaft.

  And as suddenly as the thought enters my muddled head. It happens. The night. It comes alive and there is light in the darkness. Well, darkness without the darkness.

  I’m at the entrance of the mine shaft, and I can see more things. The outside world. So it’s lighter out here, not as pitch black as inside the shaft.

  I lift my snout and sniff this new world. I can smell bark, dirt, grass, leaves, blood, sweat. I turn my head to the left and look around in a sweeping glance. Panting. I need water. My tongue is lolling out of my mouth because I need water.

  There’s a thought in the back of my head, that can’t quite form about water. Is there water in these woods? I need water. I feel parched and zapped of energy. I start to walk off to the left when the wind blows and my nose picks up the scent of something hostile.

  Blood and human. Prey and enemy. I know this. I don’t know how I know this. I just do.

  I look around in the shades of night coating the landscape before me. They are there. More than one. I can smell them. They’re upwind of me. Which makes tracking them all too easy. I crouch down low and move with a stealthy quiet across the land that would have you believe I weigh next to nothing.

  I barely make a sound crossing the ground of twigs leaves and earth. I know how to circle around on this prey. I know I have to.

  I can feel their eyes on me, watching as they lay in wait. I could go after them or I could draw them out. I’m going to draw them out of their planned ambush on me.

  I pad off in the opposite direction of my enemies. Walking off slowly, I want them to think I’m just wandering. But when I hit the density of the woods edge, I sprint through the landscape.

  Putting distance between us. Galloping over uneven ground and turning wide.

  Hunkering down and look around me, to see if I’m being followed. If I’ve been spotted.

  11

  They are noisy, I can hear them. Cursing loudly further away. I circle back around wide, keeping myself low and down wind of them. I can hear them and smell them all too easily. They’re clumsy in this environment. They’re loud and they don’t appear to have much instinct when it comes to hunting.

  I’m a werewolf and I want to take down those that are around me. Even if they’re bigger than me. They’re scent is distinctly not all animal. It doesn’t matter.

  My will is good to get into a fight with whatever is stalking me. For some reason this werewolf is itching for a good fight, wanting to feel blood and flesh dripping from my teeth, going down my gullet.

  I crouch and wait. I figure I can take one of them out and come back around for the next one if I’m quick enough.

  The woods lighten slightly with moonlight illuminating what is coming. I see the first wolf and sniff. I pull my lips back in a silent snarl. This wolf is not a friend, but a foe. It’s a lycan. I know there are others I heard them, smelt them. But they are not here. This lycan is walking alone.

  I have to wait, be patient. Till the moment is just right. Then at the last possible moment I will pounce. Show this lycan how dangerous it is to be out in these woods at night.

  These woods belong to werewolves like me. I don’t know how my werewolf brain knows that but it does. It seems right. It feels right. My legs ready to spring as the lycan walks close to my target area.

  A loud crack echoes across the cold air. The scent of acrid burning filters past my snout the same time the ember hot pain ripples through my hind quarter and I yelp.

  Staggering downwards towards the ground. The shooter reveals herself from behind a tree. Smirking down on me. Another lycan by her side in animal form.

  “Better run bitch. Unless you like the feel of silver.”

  I know the metallic smell is bad. I feel the poison of the bullet that has passed through me trailing it’s residue in my limbs. This is not good so I scamper hurriedly into surrounding cover.

  The hunt begins.

  I’m being hunted by lycans in wolf and human form. The woman is in control of the gun, packed with silver bullets. I think she’s also in control of their pack.

  The more I am hit, the more lethal the silver is to me. So I can not afford to get shot again.

  Especially in my new form. This furry body is not used to just using itself let alone running for it’s life and fighting it’s instinct to flee. Dealing with the issue of silver is not an added bonus for my first time.

  We run, all of us, like the scenery is moving past us. There is no time for slow. Not when you’re being targeted.

  But already carrying a slow affecting injury, in a new body I’m not used to, makes me an easy target. As was the intention.

  Even if they didn’t know it’s my first shape shift. The bullet wound, a clean through and through was intentional. It wasn’t intended to kill, just to maim me enough to get them off and give them the advantage over me, again.

  In recognizing the pain of the silver wound more and more, I become disorientated in my way through the woods. Loosing the direction I’m heading in and they are spreading out to entrap me.

  She shoots at me several more times and hits me twice more. This time I’m not sure the bullets have gone clear through.

  I stumble to the ground and that’s when they catch up to me.

  The woman lycan points the gun at my underbelly. Leaning the nozzle against it. Puffing and panting, she stares me down. The other lycans crowd in closer. Waiting it appears for their leaders command.

  12

  The female lycan, still in human form kneels down beside me. Keeping the gun rested directly on me. She stares intensely into my werewolf eyes.

  Her hand wraps around my front quarter. I struggle against her. She pushes the shot gun nozzle down into my skin to make her point.

  I still and I feel something other than the cold metal of the gun on my fur. Like a tingle, like things crawling all over me all at once. Like moonlight flickering over me. Pulling me upwards, outwards. Pushing me downwards. Drowning the werewolf into the earth. I don’t know how she’s doing this, just that she is.

  I don’t realise she’s an alpha lycan till she brings me out of my shape shift.

  Only alpha’s can do that. I thought only werewolves, could do that. Help you in or out of a shift. It’s one of their advantages to being an alpha and not a beta. Which all comes down to blood and genetics. Something you’re pre-dispositioned to.

  She’s pulled me back to my human form. I come too blinking rapidly and throwing up stomach lining.

  I�
�m completely naked now. Having shed the fur of my tribal self. All the blood I was coated in is gone too. I haven’t eaten in what feels like hours and a ravenous hunger, pains my stomach.

  I haven’t had water or liquid of any kind either. I feel light headed and shaky. Apparently there are side affects from doing this when you’re forced. Nobody ever told me that!

  She’s drags me up to my feet before I’m ready for it by my wrist. My legs go to collapse underneath me and I hear the sound of the shotgun cock back into place.

  I pull myself upright. I can’t out survive a shotgun blast at point blank range if I don’t know how to shape shift.

  Which I don’t really, since nobody’s taught me yet. Because nobody had the chance to.

  Now here I am with an alpha lycan who knows more than I do about shape shifting. Even if she doesn’t know her subsequent attack on me with her fellow lycans is probably what brought on my first ever shape shift.

  Whilst I now have the ability to shape shift I don’t know how to bring it on at will. Which all werewolves can do. We don’t have to wait until full moon.

  The full moon thing, it’s kind of a miss told truth. Werewolves can shape shift whenever they need to. You just got to know how. My first time and I’m completely without guidance. Completely clueless.

  There’s an agonizing burn in my thigh. I look down at the bleeding wound and go to touch it. My shoulder flaring to awareness with it’s bullet grazed flesh and another lodged wound.

  I thought wounds were supposed to disappear after a shift. That’s what everyone’s been telling me for years.

  I wonder if she pulled me out of my tribal form before the shape shift had a chance to work on that. Because my leg, my shoulder and arm are still carrying the searing sensation of silver in them. Whether it’s from grazing or lodgement. I’m not a hundred percent healed.

  I hiss between my teeth, caving inwards, my hair draping my face. She walks over to me, grabbing my face in her hand. Squeezing it in her grip. Tilting it to look up at her.

  “Yeah, I can do this to you for hours. What do you think about that werewolf? Huh? Let that wound have more than enough time to fester and poison you slowly to death.” She laughs.

  I spit what liquid I have in her face. It’s not much but it sprays her ungraciously across her chin and lips. Looks ugly.

  The wolf in me wants to fight. It’s instinctual really. She raises the butt of her gun . I growl in anger now.

  Before I can think any further I grab the forthcoming gun butt and shove it back at her before twisting around on her and throwing an elbow with my good arm up into her face.

  It connects with something hard. Her jaw, her nose, her cheek, teeth I don’t know. But the connection is solid and forceful enough to stagger the alpha lycan bitch back a few steps, on uneven feet. If only from the shock of my surprise tactic.

  The werewolf in me wants to fight. Still. More. It’s all but clawing at my insides to tear her face off of her body.

  But the girl in me from Brooklyn wants to run. As far away from these sick, twisted, fuckers as I can.

  That’s the feeling I give into. I know when I’m out numbered. Run away and live to fight another day. That’s the thought that fires through my head like a starter’s pistol gun. And I’m running, sprinting like I want to hold the record for cross country running.

  I have to ignore all the pain in my muscles from the bullet wounds. Otherwise my body will collapse.

  I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast in my life before. Ducking and weaving as I feel the land under my feet and around me. It’s like I’m in tune with it. I can predict it’s ebb and flow and dips and rises. I know how to move around shrubbery and not stop. How to move without losing momentum. I feel graceful in my panicked flight.

  At one with the world of night and land around me. There is a feeling out here in the otherwise calm, still of the darkness draping itself through these woods. It’s a feeling that’s permeating the air and I feel it press at my naked skin. But I refuse to stop.

  I’m never going to stop running. That’s what’s going through my brain. Run. Just run. Just keep running. Breathing is optional at this point.

  My body’s adrenaline is fired up and that’s what’s moving me. If I stop now, it will dissipate and they’ll catch me, again.

  I’m not going through that again. Ever. I will run for forever if I have to.

  I can hear the pounding of my heart ringing in my ears and my breathing is getting louder, a sure sign of tiredness. But I have to ignore that. Forget about it and run.

  Just keep running. The air twitches with a sense of vibrancy, of something old and very much alive in these woods. Something more than me.

  More than the pounding footsteps of the lycan wolves that are following in close pursuit of me.”

  Ripping through the undergrowth.

  I can hear the crashing sounds of the alpha lycan. She comes at me like she knows the lay out of this land as well as my instincts respond to the movement of it.

  But as I run, that feeling of charged air, there is no other way to describe it, gets thicker, the further I run.

  It never occurs to me to think that it’s my pack and their collective feelings of hatred, anger, concern, anxiety and absoluteness coming through.

  Because I’ve never felt it before. Didn’t know prior to my shape shift, that werewolves could feel everything deeper, harder, more intensely once they’ve shape shifted. Especially on a lunar week.

  The world now, after the shape shift is almost brand new to me again. Except I know things, I know this world. I just never knew this side of this world.

  13

  The certainty of my pack searching for me only becomes obvious when I’m snatched and pulled behind a set of trees mid stride.

  I’m pulled sideways like I weigh next to nothing. Like I’m barely moving. I’m ready to scream my very essence out of me, as a hand clamps over my mouth. My arms and legs are kicking and punching. I refuse to be remotely still. If I stop moving, it’s all over. Run. Just run. Just keep running. My fists connect with something hard and I try to keep slamming it.

  “It’s Markus!” My brother hisses at me in hushed tones. “Cadey, It’s Markus, you’re with Markus..” He says over and over again, hurriedly at me. “You’re with pack, Breuekelen. Altjid.” He says Breaking through my confused state of mind.

  I don’t know if I’m a wolf or a woman or something else entirely. I am just consumed by urgency and uncertainty. “Safe. I’m with you. Safe now.” He murmurs at me, kissing my forehead as I subdue under the influence of his words and voice. And that is all I needed to hear to stop thrashing at him.

  I flop in his embrace. My nose inhaling the familiar scent of family.

  The sobs are automatic. They’re coming out of me before I even realize I’m crying and making noise. That I’m being loud, too loud not to attract attention. I know I should be quiet, that I have to be quiet, to keep us hidden from the lycans. But I can’t stop the tears.

  “It’s going to be okay now.” He says softly, his hand dropping away from my mouth. He hugs me to his chest and keeps those warm, safe arms around me as I sob.

  I know I shouldn’t. I’m supposed to be more than this teary teenage girl. I’m a werewolf. I’m not supposed to be weak and pathetic and splotchy.

  “It’s going to be okay.” Markus is rocking me and my sobs are softening. I find myself clinging to his forearms. Not wanting to let go. He takes off the jacket he’s wearing and places it over me.