Ahhh! Madeline listened hungrily to the tearing of flesh, the wet symphony of splashing, spurting blood, the unfortunate deer's last bleat for mercy. She dug her claws into the animal's heaving sides and it shuddered no more. Slowly, she slipped out of her half-wolf form, claws receding into round, pink fingernails, dark fur dissapearing from her face and arms. She bent her head to dig her sharp fangs into the fallen beast's neck, her hair falling in a carefully styled and straightened curtain over her eyes and obscuring the shame of her blood thirst. In transforming only halfway, I bet I can save hundreds of dollars on new clothes, her thoughts said in what would--if audible--be a conversational tone. "Nice. Maybe one day you'll move up to--oh, I don't know... Maybe these?" Madeline snapped her head up, blood dribbling in a dark red stream down her chin. Dimitri stood before her, shirtless and dirty with loamy earth and what looked like blood, holding a massive bear across his shoulders. He shrugged it off and dumped it on the ground next to her. He wasn't even sweating, she jealously noticed. And his warmly brown hair tousled gently from the fight, illuminated by a patch of golden light from the late sunset, made him look like a model. The illusion of his god-like, physical perfection was marred when he bent to his knees and used his shockingly white canines to tear into the bears side, making obnoxious sucking noises, occasionally coming up to wipe his vulgar mouth with his bare arm. Gross, thought Madeline.
"Where're the others?" she asked.
"Off devouring the flesh of the slain, probably." Dimitri wiped his mouth again and leaned back on his hands, gazing lazily for a moment at the surrounding forest and the feeding Madeline. She felt his eyes on her and gradually raised her head.
"Can I help you?"
"Sorry. You just... When Leif's eating, he never wastes anything. There're just bones when he's done, because he doesn't get to feed very often. The rate you're going, you'll leave more of a husk-like skin, like us... Even though you kill like a barbarian. Leif's like that."
"Leif's not a vampire?"
"No. Jeeze, where have you been. Leif's the Wolfman. We make fun of him. You know his wolf form's blond, too. Not white, but all blond and gold. He looks like a golden retriever with a chemical imbalance in its pituitary gland. Big, y'know?"
"That's not funny."
"He can't do the 'half' thing like you. He's jealous."
"Whatever." She bent to suck from a different incision. When she removed her teeth, "so tell me more about this meeting of yours. No. Don't do that. Tell me about the dangers of the meeting. Tell me about the 'slayers'."
"You say that like it's such a strange title." Dimitri was suddenly serious. "Vampires in folklore are always these evil, possessed guys with 'demonic gleams' in their eyes. Werewolves are looked at like people with a disease that should be put out of their misery. Either way, we're always the bad guys. Slayers, doing 'the work of God' or purging the world of 'evil' go out killing kids in this area and other meeting places if they so much as dress in black. We think some of the most violent groups have inside men who tell them when we're meeting. Around that time of year, the local teenagers are mostly unaware, so they're often in danger, too, if they look suspicious. There have been several accidental killings in this area because of poor judgment on the slayers' part. However, before you get teary about that, add to that death toll about fifty vampire and werewolf deaths."
"Is that over the years?"
"No. That was one meeting alone that cost fifty lives."
"Have... Have you ever participated in a meeting that was crashed by these monsters?"
"Yup. That was the fifty-person one."
"Oh, my God."
"And how do you kill a vampire, you ask? We're mortal, too, y'know. We stop aging when we get the bite, we don't need to breathe or eat anything but blood, and we won't bleed our own blood when you cut us, but sever our heads, let us bleed too much... We'll die."
"You don't bleed your blood?"
"We bleed that of those we consume. Yours would probably be a mixture. Good luck getting an accurate DNA test, like, ever."
"What about werewolves? How do we..."
"Die? A pure werewolf doesn't age, but they're mortal, too. Stronger, more resilient, more powerful fighters, better immune systems, but still technically mortal. The slayers came and shot those fifty dead at the last meeting. Corpses, corpses everywhere. I'd say it was like a battlefield, but a massacre is more like it." Dimitri, the effervescent, Dimitri the bitingly satirical, Dimitri the untouchable... looked on the brink of crying or killing something. He took another draught of the bears fluids so she couldn't see his face, distorted with a startling rage and wracked with deep pangs of sorrow.
"It won't be like that this time. No one will die. Through the ages, these militant organizations have worked to wipe our kind out, exterminate us, round up and label us as freaks to be strained from the mainstream and thrown out like so much putrid debris. They still haven't succeeded in taking us all out, have they? There are thousands and thousands, if not millions, the world over. Take comfort, Dimitri. I say again, nothing will happen."
"And why is that?"
"Because I am here."
"You're a baby."
"I've the best of both species, both kinds' strengths and advantages."
"And a crippling little affliction called mortality. You're either giving yourself delusions of grandeur or trying to give me false comforts. You're a liability as a newbie. Don't go trying to prove yourself. You'll get us all killed."
"I brought down a deer on my first day of hunting."
"Yeah. Let's repeat this slowly to ourselves, shall we? You brought down a deer." Of course she wasn't in the least bit confidant about her being the x-factor that saved the supernatural race from extermination. It was such a laughable idea to her, she had been sure it would bring a condescending smile to Dimitri's face. She had succeeded in reaching this goal and was glad that he was smiling and poking fun.
"It was a large dear. A buck." Dimitri saw the delight on her face.
"You can play me like a fiddle, can't you?"
"Damn straight." She punched his shoulder lightly and he returned the gesture. "What, you wanna fight now?" She laughed and shoved, displacing his hands, causing him to fall to his back.
"Hey!" He, too, was laughing now, and lunged, knocking the wind out of her. He pinned her arms to the ground and worked up a tendril of spit that he held suspended over her face.
"Gross! What are you, five?" Madeline brought her legs up and kicked him away from her. For what must have been a good ten minutes, the two wrestled in the dirt and bracken, running into trees and laughing hoarsely in the waning light. Occasionally her body would ripple into half-wolf form and flicker back and forth. When Cyprian and Leif heard and found them, Dimitri's bare skin was covered with cuts and bruises, and Madeline sported a black eye.
"Jesus, what are you two? Six year old brothers with nothing good on T.V., or something?" Cyprian sounded outraged, but looked immensely amused at the sight of the powerful and mighty young man, straddled over tiny, but nimble Madeline, struggling to keep her from tearing his eyes out. She had a firm grip on his wrist with her powerful jaws and razor teeth.
"This isn't wrong at all," said Leif. The darkness gave his golden hair the look of a ghostly haze. Without warning, he grinned evilly and transformed, then and there. His wolf form, while a pleasant, pale blond color, was mighty. His eyes were milky red, his mouth the color of blood against his enormous white fangs. He gave a playful bark and leaped at the wrestling friends. Cyprian joined the fray, rolling his eyes and sighing at their immaturity, but not wanting to miss out. By the time night's stifling curtain of darkness obscured all from the eyes of normal humans, the four had quite forgotten looming death, and the danger of their very existence.
Copyright 2008 C.B. Sanders
Comments (1)
I like this,
it makes them seem more like a family, and the last part gives it nice suspence.
: )