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 ^{(it's beta!)}

"Oh! My! Gooooood, Kaya, you-are-LIKE-the-sweetest-person-I-have-ever-met-it's-so-retarded!"

I wanted to ask her why it was retarded that I should be the sweetest person she'd ever met, but, frankly, when Corinn got going, it was just easier to let her finish. Corin's like a veral tsunami; your best bet of suviving her is staying put till it's over.

"Um, thanks, Corinn..." I tried to say.

"No, really-you-are-LIKE-so-nice-it's-just-disgusting-"

She went on.

And on.

Praise. I get a lot of it. People just look me in the face and they love me. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for giving me the PERFECTION gene, as well as the flawless skin, the blonde hair and the big, blue/grey eyes. Thank you for the petite body and the valnerability that people just love to suck on, like snakes suck on eggs, cracking the shells, splitting it all apart to get to the inside and drink it all in.

Still, why complain? I guess I'm lucky. It could be worse. I could've been this pretty AND dumb as dirt. Or socially awkward or something...

Except that no one ever tells me when I'm making a mistake. No one ever catches me when I fall. They just turn away and pretend they don't see because that's not what they want to see in me. No one tries to break through the shell. My perfect shell. No one ever acknowledges when I need help because I'm not supposed to need help. I'm perfect. I'm Kaya Dufferin.

"AAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEK! YOU BITCH!"

Okay. Screams and swearing in the cafeteria generally mean Dee'd arrived.

Corinn ceased her lucrative babble and turned her huge, protruding eyes towards the source of the sound, looking terrified.

Personally I don't blame her. Dee had come into the caf, and when Dee enterd a room, there'd BETTER be a reaction or else.

She almost caught me grinning when she turned back. "OH my GOD! I gotta go! Dee's on her way over and she so totally scares the buh-jeezes outta me! I don't know why you pick HER to be your best friend..."

"SHe's not so bad..." I began.

"SHe's the devil." intoned Corinn with the certainity of death, scrabbling away amidst the general chaos of people parting down the middle for Dee, like the Red Sea for Moses.

And there she was.

Dee Shaunecy, occupation: BITCH.

She sat herself down next to me, sighed and tossed her dark hair back flippantly.

"Who said you were allowed to sit with me?" I snap. "You're not worthy, don't you know. Apparently, I'm PERFECT."

Instead of replying verbally, she grabbed the lemon slice off my soda glass and smeared it down my arm.

"Hey! You WHORE!" I yelled, but to tell you the truth, I've always been secretly pleased by what Dee thought of my PERFECTION. That is to say: she thought it worth about as much as the spent gum under most desks in History class.

She grasped the tainted lemon slice more firmly, looked for a target, found one, and unfailingly chucked it across the room and into the cafeteria lady's newly brewed batch of soup.

It landed with a delicate 'Ploop!', splashing those close by and making them turn around and gape at Dee. She, of course, had already moved on.

"You ARE the devil..." I murmured, before calling, "Sorry!" to the outraged cooks. "Do you know how much soup you just ruined by doing that?"

"You and I both know there isn't any real nutritional value in that horse-piss that they serve us. I bet you it's not even FDA approved. I'm doing the student body a favour." Dee replied non challantly. "Now what I had for lunch....Mmmmmmm....DEFINATELY not FDA approved."

"What DID you have for lunch?" I asked.

"Daniel Andrews." she grinned like a Cheshire.

"THE SENIOR?!"

"Yup."

"Is that why your lipstick's smeared?!"

"I'm not wearing lipstick."

Why was she lying to me?! "Does his girlfriend know?"

"She'll find out eventually, I guess."

"Do you enjoy it when people hate you?"

"Just a tad." She sobered up fast when she saw that i wasn't amused. "Aw, come ON, Kaya! He was so BIG and MANLY! His smell over powered me!I HAD to."

"His SMELL?! One of these days you're going to get caught."

"Noooooo..."

"Yes. And then we'll BOTH be in shit..."

Dee stared at me with that expressionless mask she put on when she was feeling ...valnerable. "No one says you have to stick around."

"Don't be stupid. I'm sticking around whether you want me to or not. So don't fuck up."

She relaxed and there was an easing of tension between us. Then, she whispered, guiltily. "I guess...I guess I shouldn't have just left him lying there...naked...on the bathroom floor..."

I shrugged. "He can dress himself..."

She looked at me funny. "Not when I'M done with them, they can't."

"EW! Please no raunchey details!"

"RAUNCHEY details?" she frowned, her disconcertingly light green eyes glowing like embers in her tanned face. "What do you think I did in there-"

Suddenly, panicked terror came shreiking down the corridor like a war-time siren. The cafeteria doors flew open and more terror ignited through the school as Mark Glibb, a nineth grader careened into sight, skidded on the bloody footprints he was making and landed on the floor, writhing as if he were possessed.

"MARK!" yelled Mr. Kreach, sprinting across the caf, grabbing the boy and holding him down. "MARK! Where are you hurt? Is this your blood? What the hell's going on?!"

Girls were squealing, guys were howling; it was a mess! Teachers conglomerated around the still convulsing Mark. I watched their faces pale as they heard him babble. I watched them run out of the caf, heading up the blood smeared corridor, towards the boy's bathroom.

Dumbfounded, I turned to Dee just in time to catch her looking mildly guilty. It was a good thing everyone around us was caught up in the frenzy, because I couldn't stop myself from crying, "I thought you said you had SEX with him!"

"No," she shook her head. "I said I had him for lunch. I ATE him."

I watched numbly as her hand came up to wipe away what I had previously thought had been smeared lipstick...and now realised, wasn't.

"Hey Dee!" called Matt Lauwrey hopelessly.

She didn't even acknowledge his existence. "I think you should get over it." she was saying to me.

Dee was annoying me, today. I'd been snapping at her all morning and I knew that if it had been anyone else BUT me, she'd have rearranged my face or trampled my ego by now.

"No," I refused. "I can't believe you'd jeopardise us like this without a good reason."

"I jeopardized nothing," she scoffed. "Do you see us on the suspects' list?"

"I know you had something to do with THAT too." I growled. "What did you say to that detective?"

"I didn't say a thing!" she smiled, pink tongue flickering over a canine. "My bra did all the talking..."

She arched her back and, before I could stop myself, I looked down at her chest.

It wasn't hard to see the neon green lace bra through her white tank top.

"You're the worst." I said, trying my hardest to stay serious.

She arched an eyebrow cynically, "LIKE you didn't wear those hot-pants for any particular reason today. Nice legs. Is that tanning lotion?"

"Alright, I admit it. I was going to use the pheromones on the cops."

"I didn't even need to use the pheromones," she said proudly. "I'm just THAT hot..."

"Hi Dee!" called William Dawson.

"Fuck OFF!" she snarled.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Now, in light of recent tragic events," Mr. Lardner wiped sweat off his top lip. He was really trying his best to be gentle about the whole thing. I felt sorry for him. "I've decided to cancel the end of term exams..."

I turned around in my seat and took a look at where Daniel's girlfriend, Sarah, was sobbing her eyes out, being comforted by her usual gaggle of girl friends, her posse, her herd. I even felt sorry for HER.

And I felt a little ashamed of Dee. I understood that she didn't exactly give two fucks about Daniel (after all, she HAD eaten him) but couldn't she at least PRETEND like she was a little surprised? I knew that it was too much to ask her to act like she was in mourning, with the rest of the school. It was against her principals to show solidarity, against her nature to show remorse.

Fool that I am, kind of admired her for it. But mostly I was ashamed!

Anyway, so she sat there filing her nails in class, rolling her eyes every time Sarah sobbed a little too loudly from the back. And Sarah? Well, her heartbroken crying seemed to be getting louder and angrier the more insolent Dee got. It became a competition to see who would annoy the other more.

Dee won, of course.

She put up a hand, interrupting Mr. Lardner's already awkward speech.

"Um...yes, Miss Shaunecy?"

"Sir, I can't hear you over Sarah."

Oh shit.

"My boyfriend DIED, you bitch! I'm GRIEVING!" howled Sarah, shuddering with righteous rage.

"Um...Miss Parker..." began poor Mr. Lardner.

"Then grieve at home. That, or take a Valium." Dee sneered.

"You're just jealous because you can’t hold down a boyfriend, you frigid ice queen!”

"You‘re wrong. " sighed Dee. “I can hold them down just fine. I’m waiting for one who can hold ME down. Yours definitely couldn’t…”

"DEE!" I moaned, hiding my face in my hands and waiting for the earth to crack and swallow me whole. I wasn't alone, either. The rest of the class looked highly uncomfortable.

“WHAT?!" shrieked Sarah, bolting to her feet, fist clenched, spittle flying from her mouth. “HOW DARE YOU?! Daniel wouldn’t have looked at you twice, you bitch! He wasn’t like that!”

“Are we even talking about the same person here or are you this intellectually challenged all the time, Sarah?” Dee had now turned a full 180 in her seat to address the girl directly. This was NOT a good thing. Dee usually remained aloof when people launched full blown attacks against her.

Something… something was touching a nerve with her.

And I knew that Dee was at her most dangerous when threatened.

She commenced. “This is the same Daniel who regularly sexually harassed anything with a vagina, the same Daniel who regularly drops drugs into the punch at parties then calls it fair game on any girl that’s unconscious or drunk enough, remember? Or are we forgetting that part just because he happened to die?”

I suddenly understood that Dee’s sudden decision to NOT ‘brownbag’ it, a week ago, might’ve been in response to something more complex than a lack of impulse-control.

“Miss Shaunecy, I’m not sure this is entirely appropriate subject matter for my class!” Mr. Lardner nervously pushed back his glasses and nervously shivered and nervously stuttered and stomped.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Dee faced the front again, insolently giving her back to the speechless Sarah. “But if we’re going to fling dirt around, I’m not sure that hypocritically pretending that Daniel is the only victim here is the solution. The guy was a walking assault case, waiting to happen…”

Just then, I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye. Most of my mind was with what Dee was saying but some small part of me snapped…seeing the danger heading her way.

It all happened so fast even I’m not entirely sure how it went down, but one second Sarah was leaping towards Dee, hands up in claw position, the next moment she was curled up on the ground, coughing, turning blue in the face, clutching desperately at her own throat …

And I was standing over her and my hand hurt a little and…

Dee was standing next to me, yelling something, grabbing my arm so hard it hurt.

Mr. Lardner was yelling at me too.

People were crowding around Sarah. They were freaking out! She must be really hurt!

Oh God, what did I do?

The buzzing, roaring in my ears cleared just in time to hear Mr. Lardner roar, “MISS DELANEY! THE OFFICE! RIGHT THIS MINUTE!”

* * * * * ** * * ** * * ** * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * ** * * * * * * * ** *

"OMG, KAYA are you, LIKE, OKAY?"

COuldn't they leave me alone for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES? I was sitting on the curb outside school, on break, with my head in my hands. COuldn't they see that I wasn't exactly open to conversation right now?

ANd why was I getting sympathy? I'd almost KILLED Sarah! Shouldn't they be hating ME? Spitting on ME? COULD I DO NO WRONG?!

It was replusive. It was wrong. I was wrong.

"I'm alright, Corrin."

"Man, I heard you really nailed her good," Tommy snorted, the droplet of snot that was a constant in his life wriggling back up his nostril for now. "You, like, Chop Suey-ed her in the throat, like...KA PAAAOW!" He made a kung-fu like jesture, hopping from one foot to the other, barely keeping his balance. I wanted to shove him over.

"Listen, I'm not exaclty proud of what I did, you guys..." I snapped.

"Oh we know!" Corrin cut me off, damn it! "You're a good person, Kaya!" A good person? What kind of good person punches people in the throat?! "You were totally defending your best friend and that's, like, totally fair game!"

What.

"Yeah totally!" agreed Tommy.

"Um..."I tried notto burst into tears right there and then. "Could you...please give me some space?"

They barely heard me. Expressions of abject fear appeared on their faces and they scattered with furitive whispers of ,"OMG! OMG! OMG! IT's DEE!"

I turned to watch her approach. She had a tupperware box in her hand that looked like she'd just microwaved it. Well, at least she wasn't eating anymore classmates...

"Dee! Wait!"

Samuel Flint came running up to her. Dee rolled her eyes and didn't even slow her pace. He was completely out of breat hby the time he cuaght up with her and gently tugged on her arm. "Dee...hang...on..."

"What is it, Samuel?" she asked, rather gently.

"Um, I was wondering if um...you wanted to maybe grab a milkshake sometime?"

A milkshake? What was this, the movie set of GREASE?

Dee stared at him disbelievingly for a second before laughing uncomfortably and saying, "No."

"Aw, DEE! Come on!"he pleaded, chasing her down as she continued on her journey towards me. "You haven't held down a guy in years! Don't you want it? Don't you miss it?"

"Samuel, your grammar is attrocious and it has rendered me incapable of interpreting what it is exactly that I'm supposed to WANT or MISS? What ARE you talking about?"

"I'm just sayin'g: I'd treat you right, Dee. I really would."

She paused, biting her lip. "I'm sure you're a wonderful guy, Sam."

"Yeah? SO give me a go."

"No."

"WHY?!"

"Because I have issues."

"I'd deal with any issues you brought with you, Dee. I really like you..."

"TRUST me. You can't handle me." she smiled, patted him on the cheek, then left him standing there, looking after her like she was the last peice of cake.

In the distance, I could see his friends laughing insensitively at his embarassment.

I put my head back into my arms till I felt her shadow loom over me and the air when she bent her knees to sit on the curb beside me. I kept waitng for it, for whatever she was going to say about this morning...and finally, it came.

"What happened to YOU, Psycho-girl?" she whispered, a growl sounding deep in her throat.

I looked up at her, even though I knew she wasn't looking at ME. Her eyes were picking up the sun again, like a cat's. She was watching the other students on the playground like they were a buffet.

"I don't want to talk about it..." I began.

"When was the last time you ate?" she insisted.

"Breakfast!" I snarled, between clenched teeth.

"I ain't talking about your cereal and french fucking toast, Kaya, ao don't play me stupid!" she spat. Then, calming down, she purred, "When was the last time you REALLY ate?"

"Fuck off, Dee..." I said, putting my head down.

"You know, you might think you're doing humanity a favour by not eating regularly but that only makes it harder to control. You wind up losing it when you least expect to, at the worst times...you wind up BINGE EATING..." she sighed opening her tupperware container. It smelled like she was having lasagne again today. "Share my lunch?" she asked gently.

I peeked into the container and wound up recoiling in horror. "OH MY GOD!!!!!"

She screamed with laughter, wrapping an arm around her middle. ANyone watching from across the playground would've thought that she'd just cracked a really dirty joke.

"Is that DANIEL'S hand?!" I whispered furiosly. "Do you know what could happen to you if you get CAUGHT with that?!"

"Relaaaaaaaaax..." she said, grinning at me knowingly. "Between the both of us, we can get rid of all the evidence..."

"No."

"FOr the love of God, have a peice."

"NO! I've already gotten a detention on your account..."

"I didn't ask you to flatten Sarah. But I AM asking you to eat something. PLease? PLease? Pretty PLEASE? I put it in the freezer over night; it's almost fresh..."

I WAS hungry. I was ravenous, actually. Uncontrolably so. I could feel my saliva glad working over time, my stomach growling and rolling around like a storm at sea. The smell was blinding; I was so...so hungry I wanted to cry.

Taking the tupperware into my lap, I delicately grabbed a finger, with my face so close to the rim I was almost eating straight out of the box, making sure no one could see what it was I was chomping on. I would've NEVER done anything so foolish as to bring something like this to SCHOOL! It was too risky. People were unpredictable, the spaces were too tight. The chances of getting caught were too high...

But it was there...right there...staring me in the face, out of Dee's tupperware box! Ludicrously like a dead crab on its back, five legs in the air helplessly.

I wondered if Dee's Mom ever asked herself what Dee was taking to school in the tupperware, when she washed the dishes...

I took a finger into my mouth and sucked, gripping with my teeth. The flesh came away from the bone like the best, most tender grain fed veal you could spend money on.

Before I could stop myself, I sighed loudly.

"Atta girl!" Dee put an arm around my shoulder as I chewed and swallowed.

I suddenly felt...okay. I even smiled as I chewed. I was making a mess too, and I didn't care. Blood was getting all over my fingertips and my mouth.

Dee picked up a napkin and wiped my face, laughing at me again. I let her, bending forward totake another bite.

"That smells delicious, Kaya."

I can honestly say I almost shat myself.

"Oh hi, Mr. Wellner," Dee said flirtatiously.

I stared like an idiot, tilting the box so he couldn't see into it despite the fact that he was standing over us...and blood was all over my face.

"What is it?" he asked, teeth flashing in a friendly manner.

"Buffullo wings." Dee lied smoothly, not even missing a beat, explaining the red smear on my fingers and face brilliantly.

"Wow. All I have is a tuna sandwich!" he held up a squishy looking package and made a face. "Listen, I heard about what happened in class today, Kaya. That doesn't sound like you..."

I blinked stupidly, my heart still hammering.

"SHe..er...hasn't been okay since what happened to Daniel," Again, Dee didn't miss a beat. "We heard some...pretty gruesome details, and while I think the whole thing is rather interesting, I don't think Kaya's...um...delicate sensibilities are handling it very well..."

"You're trouble, Shaunecy," he grinned at Dee. Then, he turned to me and said, with concern on his really...very handsome face, "I don't know who's been releasing all these details. They really shouldn't be, who ever they are; the police are having enough trouble as it is with this case. But if you need someone to talk to, Kaya, I'd like to think that I'm someone you can trust, okay?"

Dee elbowed me in the back. HARD.

".....er, yeah...sure, Sir." I muttered.

"Well, okay. I gotta run. Talk to you two later." he smiled again and shot off into the building.

"BYE!!!!" called Dee, checking out his butt as he left. "What is WRONG with you, Kaya? Can't you see what a perfect genetic specimen he is?"

"He's a TEACHER, Dee..."

"SO? You know those type of rules don't apply to us." she raised an eyebrow. "You'd get him in a second if you tried. Can you imagine all the beautiful blonde little babies you'd make?" Her voice got dreamy all of a sudden.

"I'm a little scared of how much you want me to mate, Dee. You're the one who's never so much as looked at a male since we hit puberty..."

"That's not true..."

"Yeah, you play and you toy and you snap them in two, but you've never actually settled with one for more than a month."

"I just haven't found anyone who'd be the perfect male for me." she shrugged. "I don't want someone I have to protect from myself, Kaya. You know that."

"I know."

"Besides, Kay, it's not like your tries at CONFORMING to what your boyfriends want you to be have worked all that well. Maybe you don't have quite as many notches on your bedpost as I do, but you have enough useless heartache and guilt issues to last you more than a lifetime. But Mr Wellner...James...HE'S different! HE really gets you all hot and bothered..."

"HE DOES NOT!"

"He DOES too."

"Dee! I just want NORMAL, okay? I want a NORMAL high school boyfriend, I want a normal life. I DON'T want to start a scandal and I definatley DON'T want to seduce Mr. Wellner and get him into trouble!"

"But we're NOT normal, babe." said Dee firmly.

She was right. I knew she was right. I knew that it was only a matter of time before my urge to nail James Wellner would overwhelm me. The clock had started ticking the moment the school had hired him and Dee and I had first set eyes on him.

Poor guy.

"Don't over think it, Kaya." Dee put an arm around me again and gave me a quick hug. "And finish your lunch."

"What about you?" I mumbled, my mouth already full.

"Oh, there's more where that came from, in the freezer, at home."

Sometimes, I think Dee WANTS to be caught.

But deep down I know that it's not that simple.

Contrary to popular beleif it takes a lot of effort to not give a shit the way she does. It takes a lot of mental effort to be living amongst humans, everyday, all day, and yet NOT live amongst them.

Dee and I are like a dog whistle; we're technically still a sound...but we're off the usual scale, frequency-wise. We appear normal but we can't blend in because our natures are so...so different.

People like us, they stick out in society. I stick out positively because I try so so hard to fit in it hurts. I wind up being better at being human than most humans, therefore defeating myself at my own game. In the end: I STILL stick out.

Dee watches me do it and she thinks I'm a complete idiot. But generally, she keeps that opinion to herself. After all, if you asked her, she'd shrug and say HER way is no better.

What's better is to NOT attract attention at all.

And Dee...Dee was an attention magnet.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

First of all, she's right: she's hot.

In that respect, we're both fucked. We can't walk into a room without people turning around to examine us. I chopped off all my hair a couple of months ago? Yeah, she laughed at me when she saw it. She laughed at me, raised an eyebrow, popped her bubble gum and said, "Well, if you're trying to UGLIFY yourself, it hasn't worked."

"What?"

"You're the sexiest Tom-Boy I know I'VE ever seen. I doubt the guys at school will disagree, and I think a couple of the girls at school might even attempty it themselves..."

"I...I wasn't trying to uglify-"

"So what's next? Popping an eye-ball? Getting a tattoo on your forehead?" Her sarcasm bored through me like raw lye. "It already seems like you've tried the 'Stop Showering' option..."

She turned and stalked out of my room at a leisurely pace, hips swishing insolently. I wanted to throw something at her head. I wanted tell her to shut the fuck up.

But I also got the message and I knew that she was telling me for my own good: Self hatred was NOT the answer.

So pouting bad-naturedly, I raised my arm, took a wiff, and decided to reapply deoderant before going to school.

Bitch.

But like I said, if I thought I had it bad inspiring constant papparazzi-like admiration, poor Dee seemed to inspire envy jusy by breathing.

Women LOATHED her. They LOATHED her with a passion, and I'd be kidding myself if I pretended I didn't see why.

First of all, men dote on Dee. Men of all ages and sizes, from the little boys in Kindergarten who hug her legs and make play-doh models for her, to the male teachers who seemed to decide that her rudeness was 'Cheekiness', her lack of effort 'Not being challenged enough' and her constant tendency to veer off the assignment requirements 'Good Initiative Taking'.

Let's not even get into what boys our age thought of her. And she ran circles around all of them with her eyes closed, never repaying any of their advances, never justifying her cruelty, never justifying her lack of investment in anything.

Then of course, there was the whiplash intelligence. Dee amazed me with how PERFECTLY she could fit in if she TRIED, if she WANTED to. How could someone so versed in human socio-pollitics find it so hard to conform?

Maybe that's why she got away with doing so little school work; maybe the teachers saw something we, her peers, didn't see: that Dee Shaunecy was WAY WAY WAY ahead of the game. Most of the time she just sat looking bored in class...but when she DID open her mouth? We'd be at Chapter 1: Introduction to the Russian Revolution, and she'd spew out something long and philosophical about the impending approach of the Leninist/Marxist era in Post Edwardian Europe!

I mean....WHAT?!

Impressive, right?

Well, it hurt her. She hated doing it but sometimes she got so sick of pretending to be a loser, pretending to the dumb kid, the kid who never did her homework that she just...spatthings like that out!

A+ on every report card. D- for effort...

ANd I had to slug through eighteen chapters to get to Marxism.

Again, I be lying if I said I didn't breeze through anyhting at school. Give me math, give me sience...give any fucking formula and I'd untangle it like a knott in string. THAT amazed Dee to no end. She couldn't grasp the concept to simple algebra if it bit her in the butt.

How? How could we both be like this?

Animal intelligence. Animal magnatism. Animal everything.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Something woke me up.

My phone was vibrating frantically beneath my pillow. It buzzed and convulsed and seizured, screen flickering spasmodically. The name on the screen: STUPIDFACE.

Groaning I got out of bed. The air was cold, away from my nurturing duvette, and the moonlight frosting my room made it look even colder. Shouldn't have gone to sleep in my underwear. I approached my window.

Sure enough, there she was, in her jeans, her black Jack Skellington hoodie and her hiking boots. "Come ON!" she mouthed silently, gesturing for me to descend with the same hand holding HER flickering cell phone.

"Uuuurgh...is it THAT time already?" I moaned, pulling the drawstrings to MY hoddie closed around my neck and sticking my hands into my jeans as I walked towards her.

"Dude, I can't beleive you're in bed already, it's just midnight." she sounded excited, happier than I'd heard her in weeks. "Are your parents in bed?"

"Nope, they're watching a movie downstairs." I replied as we began making our way to the backwoods near down town.

"It's a good thing you jumped out of your window."

"I HATE doing that. I always break my ankles. So painful..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Dee, we have to go deeper into the woods. This is way too close to civilization..."

"May I remind you that we don't have all night, Kaya?"

"Yes, but this is really close to farmer Mullins' fields. I can hear his dog barking and I bet you IT can smell US just fine. It's freaking out!"

"It's just a stupid mutt. They bark for all sorts of reasons." Dee was already taking off her hoodie and her shirt. She stood in her bra in the moonlight, folding her clothes tidily, then, putting her hand out to feel for dry ground, first, she shoved them under a bush. Then she proceeded to take off her jeans. "Besides, what the hell's Mullins' gonna do to us if he hauls his ass out here? He's just an old man. We can take him."

"He's a creepy-ass old man." I intoned, sitting on the ground and taking my boots and socks off.

"Darling," grinned Dee, her teeth abnormally white in the night, her eyes flashing like liquid. "WE...are CREEPY. Not poor, little, old Farmer Mulli-AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! OOOOWWWWWW! FUUUUUCK!!!"

In the distance, a light came on in Famer Mullins' kitchen. We dove to the ground and lay perfectly still. His dog was in a frenzy, barking so hard and so loud it sounded like it was choking itself.

In the dark, next to me, I could hear Dee's laboured, pained breathing.

The light in the kitchen went off again.

"What happened?" I asked, getting to my feet.

"MOTHER FUCKER!" she hissed furiously. "Look at THIS shit!"

I looked down. A massive, sharp toothed bear trap had almost taken her leg clean off. It was a miracle that it hadn't, but there was shattered bone protruding from the torn flesh and Dee was bleeding everywhere.

"Oh my God, how are you even concious?" I wondered.

"I don't know!" she sobbed, hobbling on her free leg to keep her balance. She turned her face away from me, but I could hear the tears in her voice. "Fuck....FUCK! I'm gonna fucking KILL him..."

"Poor, Little old Farmer Mullins, huh?" I snorted as I bent down and pushed my fingers between the thing's jaws and tried to pry it open.

"Be careful, alright?" she sniffled. "It's really sharp."

"I know what I'm doing," I snapped. Then, ".....You've gotta be kidding me."

My pinky and my ring finger had just come clean off, and I was gushing blood from my right hand.

I looked up at Dee and she looked down at me. We shared a moment of complete and utter mutual disgust with ourselves. Embarassment didn't even come close to describing it.

"I'll go get a log." I muttered.

"Just pick up your damned fingers first." she hissed. "Hurry, before you grow new ones and we have to get rid of those."

"Sheesh, alright! Man, you're snarky, tonight." I whinced at I pushed my fingers back onto their stubbs and twisted them around till they were centred. I could already feel the muscle knitt and the bone reattach itself. In a few second, it was as if I'd never lost them.

"You'd be snarky too if you had a giant metal contraption hanging on to you by the arteries!"

We tried everything. We tried putting a long stick between the teeth and forcing the jaws apart. We tried beating it to peices with a log. That only seemed to hurt Dee more than anything.

At the end of an hour, I was exhausted and Dee was starting to get really scared.

"There's only one thing left to do," I said, hating myself for thinking up this idea.

"What?" she asked without much hope. She could see the bleak look on my face.

"You have to chew through your leg."

"WHAT?!"

"Do it. It's the only way. Chew it off so we can get you out of the trap, then we can reattatch it after. Like my fingers."

Dee looked like she really WAS going to faint this time. "No!"

"Oh come on! What, you're okay with eating other people but when it comes to chewing through your own leg to save your life you won't do it?!"

"........YES!"

"Oh, Come ON, Dee!"

"No! No! I can't!" she burst into tears again. "Oh God, Kaya I can't! I can't! You should go get someone. We can get someone!"

"Get someone?! ANd how do we explain being buck naked on private property in the middle of the night, Dee?"

"We'll put on our clothes!"

"Dee," I said hopelessly. "You can't put on pants with your leg caught in a bear trap. Come to think of it, if you were a NORMAL person you'd have bled to death by now...and your leg would've come RIGHT off."

Silence. She knew I was right.

"B-but I can't chew through my OWN leg, Kay." she pleaded.

"It's the only way."

"No...it's not..." she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"You...you do it."

I threw up a little in my mouth. "W-what?"

"YOU chew through my leg."

"What?!"

"It's okay! I give you permission! I forgive you! Just do it!"

"DEE! I CAN'T CHEW THROUGH YOUR LEG!!!!"

"Why not?! You like leg meat!"

"Don't be ridiculous! This is YOUR leg! YOUR leg!"

"You're saving my LIFE, Kay! You're saving my LIFE!"

I couldn't argue with that.

But oh God, how could this be happening?

I looked at her miserable, miserable, pale face in the darkness. Poor Dee. MY poor Dee, sitting in the dark, in so much pain. I knew...I knew that there were limits to even HER strength. She would NOT be able to do it.

I had to.

"Fuck!" I howled. "Fuck! Fuck!"

"I'm sorry!" she whined.

"You owe me big time!" Snarling, I leaned forward, gently gripping her calf and thigh to keep things steady.

I put my mouth as close to the point where the trap had caused the most damage. My lips parted. My best friend's blood lapped against my tongue...

I coughed and pulled back, scrambling away.

"What?! What!" she screamed, sensing my panic.

"Oh God..." I gurgled, my voice thick with nausea. "I...I swallowed..."

I launched myself to my feet and ran a few steps before bending over and retching, throwing up what felt like everything I had EVER eaten in my entire life.

When I came back, I found that she'd dragged herself backward to lean against a tree. She looked peaceful, calm...weak.

"It's okay." she said softly, not even looking at me. "I can't ask you...I can't LET you do this. Just...just go home....I'll be fine. I'll think of something..."

"SHUT up, Dee." I hissed, running my arm across my mouth, smearing away my own bile.

Then, crouching down at her leg again, I let the savage thoughts of blood and hate break through into my mind. I let my teeth grow out of my gums, I let my pupils turn to slits...and I took my first bite.

As I chewed and swallowed, Dee shreiked in agony.

(This is for Kluny...who told me to 'Get on with it!' :D )

* * *

When Farmer Mullins finally dragged his ass across his fields, up the hill, to his backlot woods, with his three massive masstif dogs and his cocked shorn off shotgun in tow, he didn't see what he expected to.

Oh sure, his appetite was whetted like a knife when he put his foot out and it sank into a puddle of blood an inch deep, smoking slightly as it cooled and clotted in the night air.

Fresh. So fresh it had him almost coming in his pants.

He'd gotten it for sure, this time; why else would he have heard all the screaming and yowling from way down in his little valley? He'd come the moment it had stopped, the moment silence had fallen over the night again like an open-palmed hand. The sudden lack of sound had hurt his ears like a change in pressure.

He could see the trap, gleaming in the moments the moon was out between scudding clouds. He couldn't wait to find the carcass. He'd skin it, as his grandfather on his mother's side had told him the Icelandic people of the Great European North used to do with such beasts of myth. He'd skin it and hang it above his doorway for all to see, to scare the shit out of the darned troublesome brats that walked home from school, infront of his place. To scare the shit out of their soft-bellied, snot-nosed, nine-to-fiver parents, who sat at their desks all day till they grew as pale and round as maggots in their old age, never doing a day of true to God hard work, then looked at HIM and shook their heads and talked about the 'drawbacks of the drink'!

He'd show THEM! He'd SHOW them!

He'd break it's jaws apart so they could see all the teeth and replace the eyes with yellow glass from the Hunter's Store and he'd hang it over his front door.

Like a viking; like a king.

People would wonder, what IS that thing? Most would shrugg, say it's an especially big wolf, or a bear even, then go on their way. Though the sharp-eyed might notice that the head was too wide, the snout too short, the expression on its dead face...too suspiciously elloquent to be a wolf or a bear...

Only Farmer Mullins would know WHAT it REALLY was. ANd when the stories start to go around about a mysteriously missing person in town? He'd know WHO it was, too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Imagine how pissed he was when he found nothing in his great big bear trap but a few shard of bone, a few ribbons of raw, red muscle and swatches of pink, unremarkable human skin.

Human skin that would get him in trouble with the authorities if they came up here and found an unauthorised bear trap, a bear trap THIS close to where a kid might step in it! A bear trap, which had apparently, recently mauled a PERSON, not to mention his shorn-off shotgun!

He looked up from it, frantically skimming the darkness around him. They were here! The beasts were still here! He could FEEL them, laughing in the dark, watching him! He knew they were there! Why else would his dogs be quivering and whining the way they were, huddling together like a bunch of useless connies?!

"COME OUT AND FACE ME YOU RABID BASTAAAAAARDS!" he screamed into the night air. "COME OUUUUUUUT! YOU THINK YOU"RE SO FUCKING CLEVER YOU MANGEY SONS-OF-BITCHES!!!! I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE!!!!!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * *

Down towards the south east section of the woods, I knew my parents would be sitting up in bed and calling the cops, telling them that old Mullins was drunk and raving in his own fields again. Probably with that gun he used to scare the kids with, except he might acutally KILL someone, tonight...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He was right.

We WERE still there and we WERE laughing in the dark.

He hurried back to his degenerating hovel pretty fast, after that, knowing that the cops would probably be waiting for him.

But if he'd thought to look back, he would've seen his desired beasts, one tawney gold and gleaming in moonlight, the other a void of moving shadow, eyes alight, standing, panting beneath the trees, maws open in our canine grins.

I watched him a little longer than my companion did, curious as I was about this strange human who wanted to play. SHE was already sniffing the air for food. SHE had a one track mind, in this form, and was, as ever, eager to be the hunter, instead of the prey, tonight.

Turning away from the retreating man and his silly dogs, I walked to the hind leg SHE was favouring and sniffed at it. Her nose met mine.

HEALING NICELY, she said.

WELL, THEN, I grinned again, tongue lolling. LET'S GO KILL SOMETHING.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Deeper into the woods we ran.

When you're like THIS, like US, you live for summer nights: dim and smokey as the recesses of Hell one moment then clear and light as a mirror the next, with the moon turning everything platinum.

Mid July in the Niagara Region rendered this natural habbitat suitable for cougars, mountain lions and bears, foxes, wolves, deer and moose. From the owl to the field mouse to the salmon swimming up stream, it was one big cycle of fun, and WE were the centre spoke. The strongest link in the friggin' foodchain.

There's nothing like starting a stampede, with a herd of deer running before you, like emissaries and embassadors, to make you feel like royalty.

We could run faster, we could expend all our energy in bringing down the king stag, the master of it all, a prince of the woods in his own right, but why? Where's the fun in that?

We wait, we vanish and appear, we snap at their heals, till one seperates, one falls behind...one gives up, one dies fighting.

THAT blood is sweet.

Sweeter than anything fake and manufactured the humans could ever create to simulate sugar.

But this is only a warm up...a warm up for the real hunt: the hunt of the ultimate prey on the ultimate hunting ground.

As I slurp down the final intestine, SHE licks liver off her snout, not quite able to reach the gore that has gone up to past her ears, and says, HUMAN?

I agree. It IS time for a human.

So back to the city to play our war games.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rule number 1 of hunting a human: Pick a loner.

Rule number 2: they musn't see you before you're ready, or they will FIND a way to NOT be alone, in which case, your game is up.

RUle number 3: NEVER go for a group. That way lies an angry mob, multiple witnesses and, in a round about way, extermination. Beleiving ONE human, delirious with fear, is one thing, but big groups of people seeing the same thing does nothing but cement the community together, which, if nothing else, illiminates our ability to single individuals out for a hunt.

YOu spot one person, a hobo on a bench or a young Mexican migrant worker up for the summer to pick crops for a quarter of the money it would take to pay a student at the nearest university. An escaped convict, just made it over the border from the U.S., or a staggering drunkard, coming home from a night at the bar, pissing his children's college fund away, or even a hooker, trying to bring HOME her kids' college fund. In a moment of almost unprescedented beauty they look up and there you are. They SEE you.

They SEE you and they see YOU see them right back, and on the one hand they'll recognise your majesty, they'll recognise that they are in the prescence of beauty, majesty, creation at its best, Mother Nature's favourite bastards, Darwinian theories of evolution in their most complete form.

On the other hand, they'll see Death.

Death waiting in the gleaming eyes, death in the waving oceans of fur, the claws, the teeth and the war-paint of blood already on the snouts and skulls.

Death in the sudden ability to stand on your hind legs, towering six feet tall. Death in the sudden formation of five digits and thumb on what should've stayed your front PAWS.

ANd Death, ESPECIALLY in the sudden gust of carrion smell, when your lips pull back in an all too human smile...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We laughed all the way back to where we'd started or story tonight, leaping across highways, bounding over expanses of land faster than humans knew any living creature COULD run.

It had been a good hunt; the homeless kid we'd picked had been as healthy as a young ox. He'd leapt over walls and run down stairs to the trains, springing over train tracks, sprinting across our very own concrete playground, so boring and square during the day, but so sparkling and ominous during the night. He'd run across a busy road, sliding over the hood of a car that had barely stopped itself from flattening him.

We'd even lost him, part way through, but we found him again, eventually. Smelling, smeling, always smelling.

It had been good; he'd died with honour.

All the lights in Farmer Mullins' cabin were off. It was close to four in the morning, so that was no surprise. I vaguely wondered how much he'd had to drink before he'd possibly tumbled to his kitchen floor in a dead snore. I hoped he'd choke on his own vomit.

Dee thought of nothing but the rush of the hunt. One moment she was leaping through the air, a dark cloud against our friend the moon, letting out a proud, keening, beastial howl of triumph. The next, she'd tumbled to the grass, valnerable and sweet, in her human form, naked as a babe, rolling around the freezing, dew covered grass, still growling to herself.

I stood and panted at her, open mouthed, amused by my friend's machinations. She leapt to her feet and threw a clod of dirt at my head.

"Come on! Change back!" she demanded. "Come put your clothes on-"

In a split second, the wind changed direction and it hit me: the over powering stench of whiskey...

DEE! NO!

My mind screamed and I leapt forward to knock her to the ground but it was too late.

A deafening BANG! resounded through the night air and with an earth shattering scream, Dee was thrown backwards, as if a hand had pulled her over by the hair, black blood exploding from her chest.

Farmer Mullins leapt from the underbrush and fired at ME, but I leapt to the side and then stared him down my hackles high. Why didn't I charge him? I don't know.

No, I DO know. I was shocked that he'd shoot Dee in her human form, in her sixteen-year-old girl's body. It made me suddenly realise that this 'beef' between us and Farmer Mullins was FAR more than just a game. He wasn't out to shoot wolves...he was out to catch US. US. In our true forms or not, he didn't give a shit which...and we were in it deep NOW because he'd now seen Dee in her human form and it wouldn't be a stretch for him to know who my huge tawney ass belonged to during the day time.

FUCK.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to rip his throat out. Indeed, I charged him with that sole intention, moving faster than he could aim.

YEAH, BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW I COULD MOVE LIKE THAT, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH...

I grabbed the shotgun out of his hands and crushed it in my teeth, bending it, snapping it in two like a matchstick.

Dee moaned, from the underbrush. I was distracted for a second. My pack mate did NOT sound in great form. I could kill him NOW, right this instant. It would be over.

Or I could check up on Dee.

It would be so easy; he was frozen in fear, staring up at my teeth as my thick, gelatinous saliva dripped onto his sallow face, splashing into his eye...

HE'S GONNA NEED TO BUY EYEDROPS, I thought, detatched. MY MOUTH IS FILTHY...

But he didn't even blink, statuesque with his first real grasp that maybe we'd switched roles.

I turned away from the pathetic creep and loped back towards where I could see Dee's bare legs poking out of the shadows.

It only took Mullins a moment to defrost and careen back to his house as fast as his old legs and hammering heart could carry him.

"Dee!" I whispered, sprouting finger and standing up into my straight spined human shape. "Dee, you okay?"

"MOTHER....FUCKER..."

She was fine.

"Aaaaaaaaw....aaaaaaaw....Kay....shit! I'm not healing up!"

"What?"

She was right. Dee was sitting up, staring at the open wound that should've been able to push out the bullets and shut itself by now.

"What the fuck is this shit?" I whailed, crouching on the ground next to her.

We both pushed our fingers into the gaping gash and searched around. Dee's teeth came out and her pupils dilated back into slits with the pain, but all she did was snarl and swear.

I paused in blind grasping to admire that.

"Find...anything?" she wheezed.

"No...WAIT..."

I pulled it out.

It stung my fingers and burnt my palm,sending up amoke and the stench of burnt flesh, as I held it up to the moonlight, for our inspection, but I held it all the same.

We stared. My fear rose and I could smell Dee's wrath suddenly flame up.

"SILVER?!" she shreiked.

"Husssssh, Dee," I began, but I couldn't blame her. Suddenly, Farmer Mullins became a lot more of a threat than a hunting-crazed old man. He was a hunting-crazed old man who'd done his homework...

"SILVER!" she hissed. "FUCK! This isn't going to close by school tomorrow!" she gestured towards her chest. Indeed, the cut was seeping blood fluidly, her flesh attempting to knit together, but coming apart as if badly infected.

I had bad dreams all night.

Dreams where I could see myself crouching by Dee's dead body, eating her guts while flies laid eggs in the corners of her glassy eyes...those beautiful, beautiful eyes turned milky and void...

Dreams where Farmer Mullins popped out of bushes and shot me in the chest...and the dreams were so vivid I FELT like I'd been punched in the chest with something hard everytime...

Surprisingly, the worst dreams were ones where Mr. Werner and I were naked...naked and rolling around in bed sheets...and i was trying to stop myself because this was illegal and I had tricked him...I'd sent out my pheromones, knowing what effect they had on humans and he couldn't help himself...this was bad...I'd sunk to a brand new level of evil...

But I couldn't help myself either...and in the dreams I let myself have what I couldn't in real life, despite Dee's urging...I let my teeth grow and I bit his shoulder and he LIKED it...he didn't mind that my eyes changed colour or that my pupils turned to slits...He didn't mind that I was raking inch deep grooves into his back and letting the blood trickle in between my lips, or that my tongue had grown by at least four inches and was curling around his ear. It all turned him on...

Mr. Werner and I....JAMES...and I...did the deed in my dreams...and I woke up feeling dirty.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My brother threw a bread roll at my sister. SUre way to start a fight. I waited for dad to put down his paper and commence telling them to get along before I went up to my mother.

"Mom," I whispered.

"Yeah, honey?" she threw me a momentary smile before her eyes were drawn back to the omlettes she was frying up.

"Could you...drive me to school today?"

What is it with moms? Are they telepathic or something?

Her smile faded and she looked me in the eyes, worry creasing her lovely face. "Sure, honey. Is everything okay?" That little, impersonal sentence held a myriad of other questions: Are you upset? Who is responsible? Should I be telling your father to kill someone?

"I'm okay. I just..." Any admitance of emotional disturbance would merely invite her to pry more, and I'm NOT a good lier. THAT was Dee's corner. So physical it was. "I just pulled a muscle, in gym, yesterday. It really hurts."

"Oh!" I love my mom. "Oh dear! Do you want me to rub something on it? Or wrap it up for you? Is it your thigh again?"

"Um...no. I've already done all that. I'm just worried it'll get worse, you know?"

She wasn't sure. I could see it in her eyes. Or maybe she could see the fear in mine. I was trying my best, but I could tell that she wasn't exactly buying it.

In the end, she let it go. "Alright, Kaya. I'll take you to school"."

"Thanks, Mom." I said, appologetically.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As we drove past Farmer Mullins' place, I sank low in my seat, so that anyone looking into my mom's car would've seen nothing but my eyes and the top of my head.

I stared at the place, trying to see where the crazy fucker might be, but I saw no sign of him.

Just his dogs, who crowded around the front of his chicken fire fence, pressing their faces forward with ferocity, lips peeled back, barking and snarling as I rolled by.

Little bitches. Brave in the light of day.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Three periods over, they let us out for first break.

I sat in the sunshine, soaking it up with appreciation... when I heard it.

"Hey Shaunecy! They letting you come to school half way through the day now?"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALESTER, BEFORE I IMPROVE ON YOUR FACE BY PUNCHING IT!"

"Dee!" I cried looking up. What I saw made my heart ache.

Her face was grey, her lips blue, black trenches under her eyes. Her hair had been carelessly thrown up in a knot and she was wearing the same black hoodie from yesterday night.

"What are you doing at SCHOOL? You should be at home! Resting!" I exclaimed leaping to my feet.

She groaned. "Help me sit, will you? I feel as shitty as I look..."

I grabbed her arm and she slowly bent over, her free hand coming up hesitantly to where I knew the bullet wound lay beneath her clothing.

"Aaaaaaaaaw I hurt." she grumbled as our butts hit the steps again. "Arethe cops gone yet?"

"No, they're still around. Still asking questions, still collecting evidence, blood spatter, whatever the fuck they do..." Then, I asked,"Is it closed yet?"

"Not completely." she replied. "It's getting there, though. Man, I ought to be dead a hundred times over, by now..."

"Don't say that."

She studied me. "Hey...you don't look so hot yourself. Bad night?"

I said nothing.

"Bad night." She nodded. "I don't blame you. After all, you'll be shitting peices of ME for the next couple of days..."

"Uuuugh! DEE!"

"I'm just saying."

"Hey, Dee, you sick?" called some boy from tenth.

"YOUR MOMA'S SICK, MOTHER FUCKER! MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We had English sixth period, right before lunch.

James Wellner was talking us through a particularly sticky part of Richard the Third.

It said a lot about how much Dee wanted me to mate with the guy that she was sweet to him despite her HORRIFIC temper, today. Really. She didn't even snarl. She actually gave him a reply when he asked her if she wanted to put her head down on the desk and permission to go see the nurse whenever she wanted to.

She accepted his offer to rest her head on the desk...with her face directly facing ME, her eyes wide and impatiently insinuating. WELL? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? HOW MUCH MORE PERFECT CAN A GUY GET?

As IF I could jump him, right then and there, in front of the whole class. Honestly, what did she want me to do?

But it got me thinking, which, I suppose, looking back now, WAS her intention.

It got me thinking about his hand, which was level with my face, sitting in the front row, looking straight ahead. It got me thinking about how prominant the veins and tendons in his hands were...He must work out, with bloodvessels like that.

His hand left my frame of vision for a moment and my gaze followed it upwards involuntarily, to watch it as it casually brushed a strand of his blond hair behind his ear, soft as a carress.

I suddenly wondered what it would feel like to have those strong, gentle hands run down my back, over my buttocks, only to grip my thigh and pull me on to...

"Kay! KAY!"

"Huh?" I blinked and turned to the source of the frantic whisper.

Dee's head wasn't on the table anymore. Infact, she was sitting up so poker straight, I could see the muscles bunch in her shoulders, even with the baggy hoodie. Her jaw was clenched furiously at me.

She pointed at her mouth and breathed, "FANGS!"

OH SHIT.

I quickly closed my mouth tightly, my hand coming up to cover my mouth so quickly, it made a loud slapping sound as it hit my face.

"Um, Miss Dellaney?" Mr. Wellner grinned at me. "There's no need to hit yourself in the face. I'll be going through this again on monday."

The class laughed. I smiled...as best I could with lips tightly shut against a mouthful of long, sharp teeth.

Dee was right. My ovaries wanted him, even if my brain was screaming, "NO!". I had to be more careful, more in control. After all, it was a downward spiral from here on in.

Then, it happened. The laughter had just died into silence and Mr. Wellner opened his mouth to continue, when we heard the yelling down the hall and heard the running footsteps.

I was aware of two major things happening at once. The door exploded open, distracting the class (THANK GOD!) from the fact that Dee had given me a warning snarl, HER teeth sprouting like filmed plants on fast forward as she leapt on to her desk.

I whipped my head around to see what she'd obviously HEARD coming down the hallway, only to see...

FARMER MULLINS.

With his eyes swollen and red with tears and alcohol.

ANd his shorn off shot gun aimed right at Dee.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH!" he howled as he fired shots across the class.

I threw myself backwards out of my chair, as Dee dove off her desk and behind the teacher's.

People screamed! Furniture was overturned as everyone scrambled to get out of the way.

Shots thundered, glass broke...and James fell to the ground, caught in the crossfire.

Luckily for Dee, Mullins didn't have time to reload before the policemen on campus finally collectively tackled him and forced him to the ground. I could almost go as far as to think it was a good thing there was another crime scene at school. Or we would've been royally fucked.

The cops wrestled Mullins to the ground, tore the gun out of his hands, phoned in for back up and cuffed him, all in a matter of seconds. All the while, he had eyes only for Dee, tears pouring down his face as he screamed, "I'm gonna get you, bitch! I'm gonna get you for what you fucking did! What you fucking did, BITCH!"

I looked back at her. She was standing behind the teacher's desk looking just as shocked, terrified and confused as I was.

There was blood pooling on the ground.

"OH MY GOD!" I screamed. "SOMEONE CALL 911! Mr. Wellner's been SHOT!"

Some girl screamed again.

I knelt by James, who lifted his head and grabbed my hand. "Kaya?" he stuttered.

"Hang on, Mr. Wellner!" I sobbed. "Hang on!"

"Valium." snorted Dee, looking at the little blue pill the paramedic had put in my hand before the final ambulance had driven off.

I could tell she was emotionally drained; the disgust in her voice was mild, numb, listless.

"How do you know?" I mumbled, looking down fuzzily at the blue pill, trying to focus on anything...anything but the constant rewind and repeat of the first medics on the scene, prying James' hand out of mine, his eyes rolling back into his head amidst urgent, yet detatched, cries of, "Shock! He's going into shock!"

"My mom pops them like candies. There are always some lying around the house." Dee clenched her fist closed around the pill and forcefully tossed it into the underbrush around the school gates. "She wants me to start taking them. She says maybe if I took a Valium here and there I wouldn't be such a huge, raving cunt all the time..."

"Why-why did you throw that away?" I put my hand to my head, trying to drive back the pressure behind my eyes. I seemed to be sensitive to light, all of a sudden. "The guy on the ambulance said to take one..."

"-with food and go straight to bed, I know." Dee grabbed my hand and began to lead me away from the questioning gazes of the parents and the press, currently being kept at bay by Mr. Kreach and Principal Conway. "Come on. I'll walk you home."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Kids from school were trickling home in droves and groups. Maybe we'd been unified by fear. Or maybe everyone just needed a little comfort right now. First a dead student, now a shoot-out and an injured teacher? A lot of the parents who had heard at their work, were running like mad people, meeting their children halfway home, holding them, kissing them, fearfully dragging them home.

Our entire town was set helter skelter...and Dee and I both knew WE were at the bottom of it all.

Or were we?

Thank God Dee was leading me by the hand. I felt bad for depending on her when she so obviously was feeling under the weather, but I was walking in a haze and I wasn't able to pull myself out of it. I would've gotten myself hopelessly lost, given up and just sat on a curb, somewhere, all night.

I was exhausted, I felt so tired. I mean, being...what I am...means that my body is never actually tired but my mind...I felt so wrong, so evil...so dirty.

I couldn't beleive that my personal vices had led to James being shot. I kept seeing him lift his head up off the floor, and stare at his own bullet-peppered torso in disbeleif.

I kept feeling his hand grab for mine, fingers crushingly powerful in his fight against the pain, fear making his eyes open so wide I could see the whites around his blue irises, his jaw clenched, the bloodvessels in his neck and temples standing out as if attempting to abandon his failing body.

I started to cry again and pulled my hand out of Dee's to hide my face. I felt so alone. I felt like I couldn't even finish the short walk home.

Dee folded me into her arms and I hid from reality, burying my face in her shoulder, where it didn't matter if my canines were growing so large they were cutting my lips.

I could smell my friend. I could smell the warm, wolf-smell in her, and it comforted me limitlessly.

Dee was rubbing my back softly, her arm bent around my head possessively, protectively.

"It's not your fault." she whispered in my ear, as if she'd read my mind. "I don't know what made Mullins go gun-wild, like that, but it wasn't us. It wasn't YOU. Okay?"

"Okay..." I burbled through my snot, pulling out of her arms and into the harsh sunlight of reality again. "Hey," I suddenly frowned, staring over Dee's shoulder.

"What?" she turned, hearing the tension in my voice. "What's going on?"

"A crowd. A crowd at Farmer Mullins'."

We looked at each other, thinking the exact same thing. Could the crowd around that dilapitated excuse for a house explain why Mullins' had lost his mind?

Thunder rumbled above us as Dee and I slowly and carefully approached the growing group of on-lookers. Clouds were quickly amassing out of nowhere, waging geurilla warfare against the sun.

There were cop cars all around, lights rotating, blue/red/blue/red, but no sirens on. So whatever had happened, it was over; there was no state of emergancy.

Yet, we could sense the anxiety in the observers like a bolt of electricity running beneath the surface of a pool. I could feel the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end. I'm pretty sure Dee could smell the sourness of fear and the metallic taste of blood on the air.

She led the way, sheilding me as she shoved and pushed her to the front, ignoring the perturbed gazes shooting her way.

I had a moment to think: WHERE ARE THE DOGS? I could smell them, but they weren't barking. They should have been going haywire at our presence by now.

But nothing.

Nothing but the babble and murmur of quietly shocked people, the static-plagued squwak coming from the police and their cars.

Then, we saw them.

The dogs.

"Holy shit." Dee hissed.

The dogs had been slaughtered.

No, 'slaughtered' doesn't even begin to cover it.

There were no distinct features remaining to identify one dog from the other.

Rib cages lay open like clam shells, beginning to steam in the cooling air. Blow flies were provided a low, disconcerting buzz to the whole scene, of gizzards, lungs and guts smeared and scattered and TRAILED everywhere, as if whoever, whatever had done this, had boredly walked into the corpses after it was done playing.

Before I could stop myself, I turned to Dee and said, "Did YOU do this?"

It said a lot about how tollerant she was willing to be with me that her only reply was, "I've been with you all day."

Bewildered, I looked back at the mess, finally understanding what had set Mullins off.

"I'll tell you what, though." sighed Dee, eyes narrowing to gleaming slits. "This DOES look like a 'KILL'."

"None of them's been eaten." I said. "They're not food..."

"No," Nodded Dee. "This is a HATE kill..."

"We're the only wolves in town." I shrugged.

"So it's a crazy human," Dee took my hand again and began to push our way back out of the milling people.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When we finally got home, we found my mom standing in the doorway, pale with worry.

"I just heard! Principal Conway just called me!" she cried rushing forward to meet us.

Dee gave a quick description of what had happened in class, saving me the chore of having to form coherent sentences about the whole affair. My mother offered her dinner and a drive home, but Dee appologized and said she needed to walk for a bit. So giving me a wave as she walked out the door and I walked up the stairs to my bedroom, Dee left and headed down the back pathway towards her house.

I watched her walk into the woods, her black hood pulled up against the light drizzle beginning to descend, and waited for her to disappear between the brown trees before I retreated to my bed, falling into it face first.

After all, Farmer Mullins had been our only competition for supreme rule of the forrest. Now that he was under the jurisdiction of the NOTL police, and probably also taking the rap for Daniel's murder, I had no reason to worry about Dee's desire for a stroll in OUR domain. It was the faster route to get to her place anyway.

Dee LIKED to walk under trees. It would do her good...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was wrong.

Dee was only ten minutes away from her place when she picked up on a scent that made her stop in her tracks, frozen with complete and utter disbeleif.

WHAT?! Here? Now?

Where?

She spun around on her heel, nose in the air, constantly sniffing till she spotted him.

He crouched at the top of a rocky out-crock, looking down on her.

He was in his human form, black, curly hair on his chest, arms and legs, genitals prominantly hanging between his legs. Stubble decked his tanned face and thick brows ominously frowned above his honey coloured eyes, despite the leering grin he was giving her.

His snarl revealed two rows of long, pointy teeth. Fresh blood gurgled and bubbled out from between his lips, spilling down his neck and on to the rest of him.

Globs of furry flesh dangled from his claws, black bile and dried fluids painting his hands up to his wrists. But he didn't seem to care, because a moment later, he ran his left hand through his long, lank, black hair

Dee took a step back. She'd NEVER seen a MALE before. Neither one of us ever has.

Heck, we'd never met ANY other werewolves before.

And now that Dee finally had, she realised she didn't really want to.

He stood up, scratching his balls. "Hey, Beautiful," he growled low in his throat.

Dee took a few more staggering steps backwards, before spinning around and running all the way home as fast as she could, where she slammed the kitchen door shut, locked it, drew the bolt and chain, then ran upstairs to her bedroom, slamming and locking THAT door, putting her back to it before sinking to the floor.

"Dee!" screamed her stepfather from the living room. "Who said you could bolt the fucking door! Crazy bitch..."

Dee woke up in the middle of the night because she could smell him. She'd left her window open because the night had turned humid and oppressive, like a hand held over a screaming mouth, and his scent had shaken her from her dreams as surely as if he'd leapt into her bedroom and grabbed her by the shoulders.

Mostly in hopeful disbelief, but a little because some erect feminine part of her wanted to see what a MALE looked like again, she got out of her dishevelled nest of bed sheets and silently drifted to the window, half a sleep-walker.

There he was.

Standing in the shadows but looking up right at her, as if expecting her to look, expecting her to answer the call. He'd stood in the wind and let it carry a message into her sanctuary.

A message as simple and as threatening as: 'I’M HERE, WAITING.'

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * *

I thought it would be a pleasant surprise.

"Dee!" I said, putting my hand on her shoulder to wake her up.

With a snarl, arms flailing in the air, already in defence before she'd even completely woken up, Dee leapt from her bed and embedded her claws in the ceiling, hanging upside down.

I backed away, startled by her reaction, and by her readily elongated teeth and slit eyes, her savage expression.

It was a good thing I'd closed the door before waking her up, or her mother would've thought Dee was possessed. And who would've blamed her? The girl was currently hanging from the ceiling.

"JESUS MARIAN JOSEPH, KAYA, DO YOU NOT EVEN KNOCK ANYMORE?!" she screamed.

I stared up at her. Even though my hackles had risen, I calmly mused, "How does God not strike you dead when you swear like that?"

"He cuts me slack because I know YOU." she snapped back, sheathing her claws so that she fell away from the ceiling, flopping down on to the bed. The old thing creaked miserably at the impact.

"Come on," I said, picking one of her discarded dresses off the floor and tossing it at her. "Get some clothes on. I'm buying you breakfast. Then you can tell me why you're acting like an electrocuted cat."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"A guy?"

"No. Not 'A Guy'. If he were ‘A Guy’ we wouldn’t be having a problem, Kaya, because I’d eat him! I’d eat him just like I’m eating this ice-cream This ice-cream right here, Kaya!“

“Alright, alright…calm down…“

“It was A MALE, Kaya. A MALE."

"Yeah, I got you, I just...Here?"

"Yes."

Dee finished off her chocolate ice cream the way she'd finished off her five pieces of French toast, her hash browns, her corned beef and her mushroom and Swiss cheese omelette. I wondered if anyone did any dishes at Dee’s place or if they just handed stuff over to her to lick clean.

I picked at my melting vanilla mush, poking it with my spoon, swishing it around the bottom of my bowl. She ate when she was nervous; I lost my appetite.

"Why? Why here? Why now?"

"Fucked if I know." She licked her chops and looked around, seemingly at a loss. "I'm still hungry."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not MADE of money, you know. Drink some water, eat some fibre. Do you even eat any salad anymore?"

She stared me down, her eyes glowing green like plankton. "Salad," she insisted, "-is what MY FOOD eats. And THEN, I eat my food."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I have to say, I didn't really believe Dee.

Well, I believed her; Dee doesn’t lie…to ME, at least. I just....I don't know. It was bad news but I'd dealt with so much bad news lately I refused to believe that this was one more piece. Maybe he was just passing through. Maybe, he hadn't noticed that Dee was a Werewolf. Maybe it was irrelevant. Maybe he was just a creepy human dude and Dee had freaked out...

But I knew in my heart of hearts that Dee was right. Dee could never be wrong about this kind of thing. She was too wolf herself to ever mistake a human for a ‘WERE‘. Too much of her story added up. She'd mentioned eyes, she'd mentioned teeth, she'd mentioned blood and sex and scent.

Even if he'd been a lawyer in formal business attire standing in a rally for vegetarianism, Dee would've known.

We know what we smell like, no matter what sheep's clothing we happen to be wearing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We kept our ears pricked and our noses to the wind after that, but there was no sign of the MALE in town for the next two weeks. I'd become convinced that he'd, in fact, just been passing through, if he had existed at all.

Dee was harder to convince.

"Oh come on, Dee. So where is he, then?"

"He’s around,“ she would reply, as if she were making me a promise. “Oh he’s around…I can FEEL him."

* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was in the school caf again three weeks after the shoot-out when Clara Sheffield patted me on the shoulder.

"Hey, Kaya? I just thought you'd like to know, a bunch of us are gonna drive up to see Mr. Wellner at Hamilton hospital, this weekend. We were thinking, because you're, like, his star student..." she said it teasingly, fondly, but I felt a tonne of guilt fall on my head like a sack of bricks, along with a flood of images of his pale skin, his frightened face, his hand pushing blond hair behind his ear..."-you're welcome to come too. Might cheer him up."

"Is..." I swallowed with difficulty. "Is he alright...enough...for visiting?"

Clara smiled at me kindly. The fact that I'd been the one who’d first realised that Mr. Wellner had been shot, then been the one he’d clung to, had spread around the school like wildfire. People had been treating me as if I were made of spun glass, which pissed Dee off royally, of course. She knew that the unnecessary kindness only made me more 'EMO', as she liked to refer to it.

"He's really really weak," said Clara. "Principal Conway was the only one allowed to see him along with his Mom and Dad, but she said most of the bullets went right THROUGH him and that that was actually a good thing. Go figure, eh?”

Clara had obviously never been stabbed, scratched, bitten, battered or shot before.

“Mostly he just needed to be stitched up coz he was bleeding like crazy. He got shot in the lung, you know…” No, how would I know that? “But the bullets were made of something funny…so he didn’t get infected.”

“Silver.” purred Dee.

Clara spun on her heel in shock. “What?” she took an involuntary step back , knocking into the lunch table, which wobbled dangerously. I put my hand out to steady my bottle of juice.

Dee leered over cafeteria trey she was carrying, a soft nightmare in Calvin Klein. I wondered if Clara could actually tell that Dee’s teeth were juuuuuuuust a smidge longer than they should be, or if her brain was registering, on a subconscious level that she was in the presence of a very dangerous, very big predator, thanks to the ever so faint smell Dee was currently spraying all over the place.

I liked to think of it as Dee’s “Essence de Burning Hatred”…or just her ‘piss-off-perfume‘. It was a sure way to make people leave us alone, whether they were ready to or not.

“Hi, Clara.” Dee murmured.

“Hi Dee.” I could tell that Dee set Clara’s teeth on edge, but Clara was a senior, and she’d be damned if she’d admit to think anything special of Dee Shaunecy….even if the girl WAS terrifying.

“The bullets were made of silver, right?” Dee went on, charming to all exterior examination.

“Yeah…that’s funny, how did you know?”

“It’s used as a disinfectant in some cultures.” Dee sat down next to me and gave Clara her back. “It has…purifying qualities…”

“Right. Um, well anyway, let me know if you’re coming, Kaya.” Clara began to hurriedly retreat.

“You said…MOST of the bullets…”

“What?” Clara stared at me.

I spoke louder. “You said ‘MOST’ of the bullets went through him…”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded. “One of them collided with his bottom rib, and because silver is such a soft metal, it didn’t shatter through.”

“So, he has a bullet lodged in his rib…” Dee was suddenly showing interest.

“Yes.” said Clara, before walking away.

“Well,” snorted Dee. “That sucks hobo balls.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because all his blood is flowing past that silver bullet now,” snapped Dee bad-temperedly. “As far as you’re concerned, his sperm’s a dud. It’ll never fertilize your egg. He’s no use to you now.”

It was easy for HER to say. She wasn’t the one getting wet dreams about him every night. As far as MY biology was concerned, my date with James Wellner was still on…and would be on till one of us died.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * **

About six of us piled into Jordan Nelson’s car to drive up to Hamilton to see Mr. Wellner. I hadn’t slept the night before and had wound up calling Dee on her cell phone to calm myself down.

To give Dee credit, she NEVER lost her temper with me when I called her at three a. m. in the morning with some paranoid notion spinning in my head. She always picked up the phone with a, “MmmrrrrrrrughYeah?” then did her best to comprehend my senseless babble.

This time, though, I felt her comfort to be lacking. I was nervous to see James because I STILL wanted him…BADLY. But Dee, who never wasted emotional attachment on men in general, did her best, but failed to understand why I was still twisted about an incompatible mate.

Well, there I was, wedged between the Honda Sonata’s door and Ryan Wainsfleet, who was wedged between me and Leila Mildred, who was wedged next to Anthony Ricko. Carla was in the front seat with a map and Sammy Raimy was driving. The radio was blaring, the windows rolled down against the surprisingly blistering heat and I tried to keep my bad parts to myself as much as I could, while having my personal space invaded.

Leila and Anthony were laughing too loudly. I think they might have been flirting a little. Carla and Sammy were yelling back over the blustering wind, discussing school, cracking crass jokes, being teenagers.

I turned my head back from watching the rolling Niagara countryside to see Ryan smile at me. I knew what he was seeing: a small girl, perfectly formed, bare neck, long eyelashes and a little yellow sundress falling to above the knee, dotted in little green flowers. I was the picture of innocent vulnerability, today, because I’d let Dee dress me. She was pimping me out again, spinning a gossamer web around me like a black widow, sitting and waiting for me to be followed home by a selection of puppies and boys that she could pick from.

Well, I’d caught my first fly.

I tried to brush my hair out of my squinting eyes and smile.

“You okay?” yelled Ryan over the bluster, radio and squealing girls. “I’m not squashing you, am I?”

“No, no.” I assured him.

“Oh my GOD! You totally did that on purpose, you DOG!” screeched Leila batting Anthony’s hand away from her breast. Carla was almost purple in the face with laughter.

Ryan rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out in amused disgust.

I couldn’t help grinning at him. Yeah, it WAS pretty sickening.

“Why don’t you two just quit playing around and get together already?” he yelled at the girl and boy currently play fighting ( i.e. copping a feel) with one another.

“RYAN!” shrieked Leila. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

But he’d stopped listening to her a long time ago and had turned back to me.

“Here,” he said. Pulling his arm out from next to us and putting it around my shoulders. “This makes more space.”

I found myself settling into the little nook he’d made me. He was right, it did make more space when his arm wasn’t between us. His shirt was slightly damn with sweat. I found that I didn’t mind.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dee decided she needed to tan a bit, so she too put on a summer dress when I left. She grabbed a little lavender number out of MY closet, the bitch, put her hair up, and leapt out of my window so she wouldn’t have to explain to my mother why she was walking off with my clothing.

A short walk and her flip flops were slapping against the down town sidewalk. Dee’s mom gave her money to compensate for attention, and her stepfather gave her money to keep her out of the house, so since I wasn’t around to keep her occupied, she decide to maybe blow her funds on things she didn’t really want or need.

She’d bought herself a mixed berry flavoured protein shake and was checking the price on a horrendous pink, frilly camisole when she spotted his reflection in the glass, watching her from beneath a tree on the opposite side of the street.

She turned, pushing her shades up on to her head.

Yeah, there he was, the MALE, standing against the wind, AGAIN, so she hadn’t even smelt him coming. He was clothed, this time, thank God, but Dee looked up and down the street anyway, just to make sure that she wasn’t by herself.

She looked back at him.

He sneered and waved.

Glaring, she pulled her sunglasses back down onto her nose and began to quickly stride away to the safety of the nearest café.

WHAT a CREEP, he was a scruffy and unshaven as a homeless man, hair long and uncomment beneath his TOUQUE. A TOUQUE? A woollen touque? Who the hell wore a woollen touque in the middle of MAY? It was 90 degrees in the shade and the creep wore a black leather jacket. What a fucking poser.

BAM! He stepped into her line of vision so suddenly, Dee screamed and dropped her shake. As he grabbed her wrist painfully, the Styrofoam cup’s plastic cap flew open, spattering the thick, rosy emulsion all over their shoes and the ground like the blood of a torn jugular.

People ask me why I stick with Dee.

She’s pack. It’s as simple as that.

But that’s the animalistic answer.

The more human reason is that I knew her BEFORE we were wolves and she started off sweet. She started off really, really sweet. And that’s when I first started to think that my friend Dee might be the only friend I’d ever need again. My life was complete: I had a great Dad, a great Mom, a little brother, a little sister and now I had a best friend forever.

Back then, she’d had a great Mom and Dad too, who loved her perfectly and put her in little pink dresses and brushed her hair back and tucked her in good night and bought her plushies. Her Mom didn’t need drugs to be happy, back then. Now, Dee’s Mom needed drugs to be anything but sad.

And Dee’s Dad? He’d been the type to hold her and hug her and kiss her and rock her. I don’t think he would’ve let Dee walk anywhere, if it were up to him.. He would lift her and twirl her, and get down on his knees and dance with her and tell her to dance because, when she grew up, his little girl was going to be a heartbreaker! She was going to be a heartbreaker and he was going to take her to prom and buy her any dress she wanted and matching shoes and a tiara, because she was his princess, his jewel, his beautiful dark haired angel.

Yeah, Dee had been a sweet four year old. I have flash photographs ingrained on the over-developed film ofmy memory of us holding hands on the first day of first grade, climbing on swings on the weekends, talking about unicorns and fairies and what MyLittlePony we wanted to be. She’d been the shy one, back then, following me around and thinking every single thing that came out of my mouth was GOLD.

We were docile and happy as our parents’ pet rabbits.

And then when she was seven, Dee’s Daddy’s Chevy ’69 got rammed by a truck on the freeway. They said the car had crumpled like the empty beer cans found in the truck driver’s passenger seat . The car had crumpled like Dee’s Mom, on the floor of their kitchen, making a messy, loud screaming sound that I’d only ever heard from badly castrated horses. They said the car had crumpled so badly, the twisted metal of the driver’s side door had virtually sliced Dee’s Daddy in half. They said the cops had to pull him out through the front windshield, top half by the arms, bottom half by the belt loops of his pants.

That’s when the change really started, not years later, when we were…’BITTEN‘. No. The change in Dee started with her hearing adults sensationalise her dad’s death, speaking about HER father that way, about HER father sliced in half like a salami, about HER father being roughly tugged and pulled out of his beautiful crumpled car by the police, top half by the arms, bottom half by the belt loops. Her beautiful daddy, with his big warm freckled hands and his honest, openly loving face.

That’s when Dee closed up and closed off, even from me. She did not cry over her father. I don’t think she knows how. Dee cries over spilt milk all the time…but she could never cry over her daddy. She wouldn’t know where to begin. She does not talk about him. He is hers and hers alone, her secret memory, her secret happiness that never happened. He is the one man she ever loved and all the rest could never live up. If the world had been SO cruel as to murder him like that, than she would NEVER let him out of her again. She would breath in his floating ghost and NEVER show that part of her heart to anyone ever again. Maybe outside her, he had died humiliatingly. But In HER heart, in HER dreams, he was NOT sliced in half and he was not TUGGED out of his car. In her dreams, the cops took the time to weld through the crumpled car and ease his body out, gently laying him on the hot asphalt like Romans laying out their general. In her dreams her daddy had an open-casket funeral. In her dreams, his memory is whole and sacred and safe. He sleeps.

I watched her change, that day, while the women from the neighbouring houses scraped her mother off the floor and brought her a gin and tonic and called the local doctor. I watched Dee stand in the kitchen, in the shadows and change. She changed into the beginning of what she is today. That’s when (ironically) her marks started getting better at school, though she started doing less and less of her homework. That’s when her flaring unyielding disgust and impatience with humanity manifested itself in the form of a scalding, uncontrollable temper. That’s when she stopped feeling much but a cloying, resentful pity for her mother, her mother who didn’t love her father enough to shut him away inside herself as her daughter had done. Her mother who drank like a fish and burbled and wept and raged about how Dee’s father had left her all alone in the world when he’d promised to always be there.

As if he’d planned this.

As if he’d planned this.

Dee’s eyes glazed over into stone, vacant stone, and I would not see them unglazed for another two years.

Two years later, we were playing in the backwoods when I ran into a wolf.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We got out of the car and walked into the hospital. The lady at the front desk seemed to be expecting us. I didn’t hear much of what was said because I was preoccupied with the fact that SOMEHOW, Ryan and I had wound up holding hands.

How curious, I thought. How did this happen?

I looked up to study his face and he looked down at me lovingly and smiled. “It’s going to be alright, Kaya.” he murmured.

I wondered what signal I’d given that this boy had interpreted as , “Be My Man.” Was it the arm thing in the car?

Yes, it probably was. After all, I HAD snuggled.

Then maybe it had also been the fact that he’d tentatively reached for my hand and I’d…not…pulled MY hand away? No…I actually GAVE him my hand to hold. I’d HELD his hand back.

I could see how this could confuse a human male.

Hhmmmm….maybe…maybe I NEEDED a male at this point. All cards on the table, I was TERRIFIED of what I was about to see, terrified of James Wellner with a foot in the grave, terrified of the hot, burning sensation he brought on in my groin. What if they left me alone with Wellner? What if I couldn’t control myself and I hurt him more? What if I really killed him this time?

Maybe it wasn’t so BAD having a boy-toy, as Dee usually put it. SHE certainly had no qualms about procuring a male out of boredom or insecurity and them setting him free whether he wanted that or not. Catch and release, catch and release. Dee was a ‘Catch and Release’ kinda woman. Maybe I could be too.

Maybe I could use Ryan as…a band-aid…for now…to stop up the feelings I had for James. I could lie to the wolf in me by saying, “Look! A Mate! I have a mate! He’s healthy and virile and young and really quite genetically suitable for the formation of the next Arayan FUCKING ARMY!”

I was losing it.

Going up in the elevator I found myself clinging to Ryan’s hand like a little girl. If Dee were here she’d be disgusted. Or she’d laugh herself silly, either one. I’d lectured her so, so many times on the vices of leading boys on.

All she’d ever said to me in reply was, “Human men are the candy, Kaya. They’re awfully tasty, but they don’t fill you up. If you have too much of them you make yourself sick.”

“So why aren’t you out there looking for a MAIN COURSE?” I’d snapped angrily.

“Because, frankly, I ain’t that hungry,” Dee had lounged back and put her feet up on my mother’s coffee table. “Human men work just fine taking the edge off my…needs. The moment a MALE werewolf comes into town, Kaya, we’re toast. We won’t be the top of the friggin’ food chain anymore.” She paused, realising that I hadn’t thought of this before. “Right now? This town is our fucking playground, Kay. This town…is OUR…fucking…playground…”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Right now, the town wasn’t being Dee’s fucking playground.

When the MALE grabbed her arm and twisted, Dee’s reaction was so fast, that anyone looking wouldn’t have understood what was happening. In a flash of reflex and instinct, Dees claws had snapped out of her fingertips like switchblades.

With an outraged snarl that twisted her face into a momentary mask of death, Dee brought her claws up and slashed the MALE, from navel to chin, in a movement that would’ve disembowelled him if HE hadn’t reacted just as quickly and taken a flying leap back out of her way.

For a moment they stood there, facing down each other. He looked down at his bleeding stomach and chest, shocked, pained…impressed. Then, slowly, he looked up, eyes a-blaze with a hunger intensified and licked his chops at Dee.

With a leer that made him look like he had teeth from ear to ear, he growled, “…Goooooood…”

Dee dropped the Lasenza shopping bags she had and took off down the street. Within five minutes, she’d lost one flip flop, then the other. She could hear him careening after her, his breathing heavy like a bellows, his tread pounding like a tank engine.

Down an alley way and into the woods, where she could be free to REALLY run without freaking any humans out. Her feet barely touched dirt now, her muscles working like the steel works of a train engine, and still it seemed he might catch her.

He was bigger. Dee knew that her only hope was to out run him. To transform and face him down would be certain death too.

He put a hand out as he ran and managed to grab the hem of the sundress she wore and it came apart in his hand, ripping all the way up to her shoulder, as if the zipper had undone.

Barefoot as a savage, Dee sped up, flying over the ground, leaping over the river in one bound…

There was my house and the open window to my room, in the second storey. His hand grazed her bare back; he was catching up.

With one desperate, planetary leap full of all the need and desire to survive THIS, to outlive THIS, and outrun HIM, Dee catapulted herself through the air, and tumbled into the shady dimness of my room, rolling on the ground before coming to a thumping rest, upsidedown, against the closed door.

She heard a quiet bark of surprise and pain as the MALE rammed into the solid wall beneath, unable to stop fast enough.

My mom was in the kitchen when she heard a series of heavy thumps from the bedroom above. She went to check out the noise, something I would NEVER do, thinking that perhaps one of her children hadn’t gone out after all.

But there was no one in the bedrooms.

When she closed the door to my room again, Dee quietly crawled off the ceiling, down the wall and onto the ground. Then, panting and shivering and terrified out of her mind, she sat in the shadows like a gargoyle, waiting for my return.

“Where are you?”

“ I…I…” I couldn’t gather my thoughts. My head spun and swam in an ocean of pacifying hormones. A summer breeze made me shiver as it brushed its fingers across the blood bubbling out of my mouth, down my neck and on to my chest and stomach, flowing between my legs, a place that seemed familiar with blood.

The silence on the phone was full of patient wrath, the kind of anger that knew exactly what insipid reply it would receive but wanted to hear it just so that the producer of the excuse could feel stupid saying it.

I swallowed the mouthful of life flowing out from between my canines and blearily tried again. “I just ate…”

More silence. I could hear her breathing deepen.

I could hear her heart beat faster.

But Dee’s voice remained almost lifeless with frigidity, which somehow made her words more scathing and powerful, non-negotiable, when they finally came.

“Get your ass back here.” She hissed. “We have a problem.”

The click from her end ended the conversation. Numbly, I took my cell phone away from my ear and flipped it closed. It was smeared with blood. I stared at it as if I had never seen it before, trying to focus my bleary sight. The site of bloody technology seemed to call the reality of my world back to me and Felt a sudden stab of worry.

Where was I?

I looked up. I was in the alley behind Hamilton Hospital. Right. I was here visiting Mr. Wellner…James.

And the corpse lying at my feet? Well, that used to be Ryan. There wasn’t much of him left; I had picked his ribs clean and smashed his face in to get to his tender brains through his sinus cavity. Sometimes it was just easier than trying to gnaw a whole through a skull…especially when there wasn’t much time.

I’d been in a hurry, in a frenzy. What had started as impromptu sex for Ryan had quickly turned very, very ugly. Something had set off the beast inside me.

Something like the sight of James in that bed…and what had happened after….

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Dee hung up on me and started swearing furiously in a quiet hiss that was meant to keep my mother from hearing her, even though she had enough frustrated forced within her to warrant a fist through a brick wall.

“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!!!!” her hiss turned into muffled squealing as she disintegrated into a mess of desperate, frightened sobbing. She firmly put her hands over her own mouth, as if they belonged someone else, and curled into foetal position on the floor of my bedroom, balled up and paralized by panic.

She spent the next twenty minutes alternately letting herself sob uncontrollably or trying to calm herself before a plan started to form itself in her mind.

So obviously, she wasn’t going to get any help from me anytime soon. It was different when we were on a hunt, but an unplanned feasting like the one I’d just had meant that I was going to bleary and dizzy and lethargic for a while after. Besides, I still had about an hour’s drive back from Hamilton. That’s if I didn’t get caught covered in my dinner, which would then entitle a lot of lying, a check at the hospital for injuries or even, worst case scenario, waiting around for the police and a huge fucking mess.

Plus, Dee remembered darkly, I didn’t exactly believe that there actually was a male in town. An aggressive male. An aggressive male who had just chased her across town and ripped her dress virtually off her back.

Dee was livid with me. How could I do this to her? I was supposed to have gone for a visit…to see Wellner, not that he even mattered anymore. What lack of impulse control had motivated me to eat there? Especially that we’d just recently eaten here?

Well, Dee thought as she sat up, wiping mascara smeared tears from her cheeks, my sad summer dress sliding off her shoulder, it didn’t matter where the fuck I was because she was going to deal with the male herself. Dee had been at the top of the food chain for too long; she did not take kindly to being told she was on the menu, now.

In ideal predatorial fashion, as she slipped out of the torn dress (balling it up and tossing it angrily into the corner of my room to show me exactly what she thought of me) she began to think of her next hunt. She pulled on her jeans and her black Jack Skellington hoodie. She wiped away the evidence of her weakness and relined her eyes in heavy liquid liner, as if it were war painted. Indeed, on Dee, it had the same effect war paint would, emphasizing her disconcertingly light coloured eyes, making them glow menacingly even more than usual.

She pulled her hoodie over her head, casting her face in shadow so that those who dared to gaze in would see nothing but burning glare and flashing white fangs. Then, with a soft chuckle, she perched on my window sill, crouching on the frame. She raised her nose to the wind and took a deep breath.

No male.

At least no where close by.

Good.

She leapt out of the window, landed on her feet and ran silently into the woods.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

We had met the doctor coming out of James’ room. He hadn’t looked very pleased to see us, had looked downright disapproving.

You can’t stay long, he had said. This wasn’t show and tell; our teacher had been shot, multiple times. Most people didn’t survive things like that unless they were at the peak of their health, like James had been…but not anymore…he would never be at the peak of anything anymore…

“It’s alright, Kaya,” muttered Ryan in my ear. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t ant to.”

But I was the first through the door, which meant I had to be gently pushed out of the way when I set eyes on the patient in the bed and I froze.

He looked dead. Or on the verge of dying. “One foot in the grave.” That’s how Dee would have described him. I suddenly wished she was here; Dee would walk right up to that bed and wake him up, make it seem like he was fine, make him laugh probably. Not stood around in pale helplessness and voyeuristic horror, like the people I was with right now.

Somehow, Ryan’s arm found itself around me again. He drew me in and held me protectively, or possessively, I wasn’t sure which. I was content to stand there and stare. Stare at James, who seemed boodlessly grey amongst the beeping machinery and hissing apparatus. His lips were purple and dry from his constant gasping for breath and the blood vessels on his closed eyelids pulsed pink and raw.

“Oh my God,” murmured Carla softly. “Poor Mr. Wellner…”

“Dude,” said Anthony, taking his cap off respectfully. “He doesn’t look good…”

He opened his eyes. Leila gasped. He turned his head and saw us…his eyes widened and his hand shakily reached upwards…pointing right at me.

My heart clenched and twisted in sudden terror as he wheezed, “You. I know the truth about you.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

A dark, thin shape coalesced out of the mists and stood like a demonic shade on the periphery of his vision.

Farmer Herbert Van Dorven started fearfully, until he saw who it was.

“Dee!” he said laughing.

The relief in his voice did not escape her.

“Hi, Mr. Van Dorven,” she said sweetly. “A little jumpy?”

“Yes, well,” Farmer Herbert bent over and stomped his shovel into the frozen ground. “There’s a nasty spirit in the air nowadays. Even the weather’s actin’ strange. Would you believe it was warm just yesterday?”

“Weird, huh?” sighed Dee.

“And with all of the shootings and animal killin’s happening around the place, is it any wonder we’re all a little jumpy?” Farmer Herbert strained beneath the weight of the sod he was digging up.

“Yeeaah…about that,” said Dee, approaching casually, rubbing the back of her head in the most beguiling awkward teenage way. Farmer Herbert’s dog began to bark furiously from where it was securely locked, inside the house.

Dee didn’t worry about the Van Dorvens’ dog, Gus, and his barking. She knew she looked charming, to the old man. Precocious, naughty and charming. That’s what Farmer Herbert’s wife Nelly used to say about Dee, following this description up with gingerbread, cookies and cake as consolation. Dee always accepted gladly. In fact, she knew exactly how to encourage the childless couple’s adoptive response. “Mr. Van Dorven, have you noticed your livestock get skittish at all lately?”

Farmer Herbert paused and straightened. Running his arm across his sweating forehead, he frowned at Dee. “Tell you the truth, kiddo, I think there’s been a large predator around these parts for years.”

“Really?!” Dee’s eyes rounded to ridiculous diameter. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” said Farmer Herbert darkly.

“But...but…why hasn’t anyone done anything about it then? I mean, isn’t it dangerous to have an animal like that around?”

“Well, people don’t tend to worry themselves about things like that until they become a problem. And now…”

“It’s a problem.” Dee finished the sentence for him.

“Yeah,” the old man’s arm muscles bunched beneath the strain of his shovel. Dee thought of how gamey Farmer Herbert would taste. She was glad. She liked him too much to eat him. “I mean, Mullins complained for years about large wolves being on his property. I just feel that maybe his breakdown was because one of those animals is getting awfully brave…”

“Brave?”

“Either that or rabid,” Herbert grunted as he worked. “Did you see the number done on his dogs? You can’t tell me that wasn’t some sort of sick animal.”

“Farmer Herbert,” Dee put on her most earnest face. “ I think this…animal…I think it’s been circling Kaya’s horses…”

“The Delaney property?” Herbert dropped his shovel. “The horses?”

“Yeah,” said Dee.

“Kaya told you this?”

“I was there! I was staying the night and the horses started screaming.”

“Well, that could’ve been anything…” said Farmer Herbert.

“See, we thought maybe one of the torches had fallen and caught some hay on fire or something. So we go running down to the barn to see and we saw something go around the corner…”

“ The corner? Of the barn? On the Delaney Property?”

“Yeah! IT was huge! I’ve never seen anything like it…I don’t think it’s a wolf. Maybe it’s a bear…” said Dee.

“Dee Shaunecy!” Herbert Van Dorven advanced towards her and put his hand firmly on her shoulder. His dog’s barking became shrill and frantic in desperate warning. “I hope you and Kaya Delaney didn’t chase the thing down! I hope you had the sense to go back into the house and shut that door and call the police!”

“I gotta say we didn’t, sir,” said Dee.

“DEE SHAUNECY!” He made her name sound like a curse. “God DAMMIT, girl! Don’t you two pups know better?”

“IT was just such a shock, Mr. Van Dorven! I mean, now, afterwards, I know we shoulda just gone in doors and stuff but at the time I don’t think I could even move! And Kaya just ran into the barn because Paddy and Riverboy were screaming so bad; she just had to make sure they weren’t hurt!”

“Alright, alright!” Herbert patted her shoulder roughly. “No harm, no fowl, I guess. But if this thing’s moved as far south as to reach the Delaney property, then it’s gotta go…”

“Why hasn’t anyone caught it yet?” asked Dee curiously.

“Truth be told, kiddo, this…bear…if that’s what it is…has been a bitch to catch. Don’t tell my wife I said that word…”

Dee grinned. Then she sobered up. “What do you mean?”

“It’s too smart. Too clever. I’ve been using some wolf traps, and some of the other farmers have been going out to hunt it, but we’ve never found anything. That’s how come a lot of people don’t even believe this thing’s around…”

“Oh it’s around,” said Dee. “Obviously, it knows what traps to look out for…”

“See, I have never in all my life heard of a bear who learnt how to avoid a lain trap.” Farmer Van Dorven sounded genuinely confused.

“Has anyone just tried to…poison it?” asked Dee softly.

“What?” Herbert stopped in his tracks. They had been walking towards the house. Nelly had wave out of the kitchen window, and Dee waved back, throwing the woman a smile.

“You know…just poisoning it. Lacing meat with animal tranquilizers and leaving it around a couple of the properties.”

“How would that help?” frowned Herbert. “The thing won’t go near traps..”

“I wanna use meat without traps.” Said Dee. “I haven’t met an animal that will turn down safe meat yet. Or in this case, apparently safe meat.” She grinned up at the man.

His frown of suspicion deepened further. “Dee Shaunecy, what fool’s quest are you planning on?”

“No fool’s quest.” Dee shrugged. “Don’t you think if this bear or wolf or whatever were drugged or poisoned it might make the mistake of stepping into a trap or even just showing itself?”

“How are you going to find it to feed it your ‘laced’ meat?”

“I’m not.” Dee replied indignantly. “I don’t have a death wish, Mr. Van Dorven. I’m not stupid!”

“I know, kiddo. I’m sorry.” He said. “I don’t want you or your friend Kaya to think you can take this thing on by yourselves…”

“Nobody’s taking anything on! I just wanna lay down some random meat near the Delaney property and see if it gets eaten. We can’t wait till it goes after the horses or someone else’s dogs…or even a person next time.” Dee squeaked, making herself sound younger than she really was. “I promise if we find anything, or even if the meat’s just gone, I’ll let you know…”

“And I suppose you want me to provide the animal poison…” Farmer Herbert sounded unamused.

“Yes…”

Dee held her breath. Her entire plan hinged on Herbert’s poison.

He waited. He thought. He looked unsure.

“You’re just laying down the meat…”

“Yes sir.”

“You’re not going to go hunt it down or anything…I don’t think your two are certified with firearms anyway, are ya?”

“ No we aren’t…”

“IF you find anything…”

“I’ll run all the way up here myself.” Dee gave him another heart-breaking smile.

“Good.” HE didn’t sound so sure. “Follow me to the shed, then. The stuff I’m giving you? You can’t break the packaging then let your skin touch it. It’ll knock you right out and even kill ya. It’s meant for much bigger animals than us…”

“Okay,” she plodded after him timidly.

“You gotta handle it really carefully, you hear me Dee? If you were one year younger than you are now I wouldn’t be letting you anywhere near the stuff…”

“ Okay.”

“And come in for a cookie or something afterwards. If you rush off, Nelly will ask questions and I can’t lie to Nelly. She’ll skin me alive if she knows I didn’t beat your backside and send you home to your mother with your crack-brained ideas…”

“Okay.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“M-m-me?” I stuttered stupidly.

“Kaya…” wheezed James colour rising in his bloodless face. “I knew you’d come. You’d want to see how you’ve hurt me, right?”

“Wh-what?” I began to sweat. My head swam. I began to think of ways to kill everyone in the room, ways to hide the bodies. Could I eat so many all by myself?

Meaning well, but oblivious to the danger they were in, Leila and Carla began to physically shove me towards the bed. Ryan looked…disappointed…even a bit annoyed at their interference.

The two other girls sat me down on the bed, thinking they were doing James some great favour.

“I know, Kaya…” panted James weakly. “This…so-called ‘accident’ has helped me see the truth about you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I replied shrilly.

“Yes! You do!” he suddenly grabbed my wrist. I was amazed at the feverish power that seemed to run through his cold grip. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to; frozen by horror or remorse, I didn’t know which. Maybe both.

“Kaya…you came to see how you hurt me…” he began again. Something was wrong with his expression…it was the wrong one. He wasn’t angry, he was sad…and frightened. “Kaya…you think this is your fault, don’t you?”

“Huh?” So. Confused. Was he or was he not accusing me? Did he or did he not know that it was Dee and I that Mullins was after?

“I know that that man was aiming right at you, Kaya.” Said James Wellner gently.

“No!” I stuttered. “No he wasn’t…I-“

He fought against my squirming. “Yes he was. He was aiming at you and you…you had the fore-sight to jump out of the way…”

“Kaya!” Carla cried softly. “Is that true, honey?”

“You didn’t say anything about it!” said Anthony in shock. “Does the principle know this? Do the cops?”

“No! Shut up!” I snapped. “It doesn’t matter! Who cares where Mullins was aiming, he was nutts! He shot Mr. Wellner! That’s who he shot! So what does it matter who he was aiming at?” In perfect performative timing, I began to sob.

Ryan intervened instantly. “Leave her alone, you guys!”

“But Kaya!” said Leila. “You need counselling! You need counselling and stuff…”

“I don’t need shit!” I shrieked. “I wasn’t shot!”

“Guys…” James’ voice, ever kind, ever soft, but ever with the authority of a teacher broke through the tumult. “Guys, could you wait outside for a few minutes? Kaya and I need to have this conversation alone…”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When Dee explained her plan to me later, I could only sit back and stare at her in dread and wonder for a good ten minutes as my mind whirled and whizzed at top speed, trying to catch up. It was no wonder, to me, that the male had not been able to foresee her twisted and malignant plot.

Carrying the large tin of poison paste given to her by Farmer Herbert, she quickly sniffed the air to make sure there was still no sign of the male, then ran across town, going through the woods again, towards Mullins’ cottage.

There was a line of yellow crime tape circling the entire property, wrapped around tree trunks like the border of a rich country. Cops were swarming it, of course. But they were no where near the shed that stood remotely between the trees at the top of the hill, mostly hidden from view. This is where Mullins’ kept most of his illegal shit, just in case his property was raided one day, the son-of-a-bitch.

Slipping quickly to the front of the shed, quick and quiet as death itself, Dee grabbed the ancient rusty padlocked hanging from the door in her right hand, and literally tore the lock off, as if it had been made of putty. She slipped inside, leaving the smoke of her breath on the cold night air.

Shorn off shotguns, animal skins and something rotting. Shovels, pikes, hunting knives and, in the middle of the shed floor, like masterpieces in a macabre museum…two, huge bear traps.

Dee slowly walked towards them, fond memories of her last encounter with one of these things making her pupils slit and her teeth grow long, a growl bubbling in her throat. Dee was glad that Farmer Mullins was…out of the way. You could NOT induce her to feel any sympathy for the bastard. She hoped they gave him twenty-to-life. She hoped they’d hang him.

Making sure the safeties were on the giant monstrosities, she reached down and hauled them both up by the chains in one hand. Normally, it would have taken three teenage girls to lift one of the traps an inch off the floor, but Dee…well, not only is she a werewolf, but she’s a werewolf with rage. She lifted them high enough and dangled them in front of her own face, grinning at her reflection in the well-shined traps. Mullins obviously took good care of his gear, loving deadly metal instead of living people.

He would writhe in agony if he knew that his beloved jaws of pain were now being utilized by his worst nemesis, the very same ‘dumb animals’ he had been so eager to murder, the ‘dumb animals’ who had now landed him in jail. Dee made a mental note to send him a postcard to thank him.

With that, Dee tossed the traps over her shoulder and snuck back out of the shed. She did not waste any time looking at the hive of badges poking around Mullins’ property. Every minute she avoided the male was instrumental to her plan.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“I know the truth about you, Kaya…” said James.

We were alone now and I was coldly plotting how I was going to end his life as painlessly as I possibly could. HE knew about me, which probably meant he knew about Dee too. I might have risked him knowing about the werewolf condition if it was just me. But I couldn’t risk Dee. That wasn’t my choice to make. The pack comes first. Always.

“How did you find out?” I asked numbly. Maybe if I punched him in the stomach he would start internally bleeding and they would blame the bruise and the hemmorage on a reopened bullet wound. Or maybe I should just smother him with one of the pillows….

“Like knows like, I guess…” he said introspectively.

That shook me. “…….What?” I sat up straight. My nostrils flared, looking for any indication that this man was also wolfen. I couldn’t smell it…but I’d never smelt a male. Maybe I just didn’t know what to look for…

I suddenly wished Dee were here.

“You heard me, Kaya,” James stared me down, his eyes burning with intensity. “I…I’m like you…I’ve been lying…”

Wait a minute. “Lying?” For once, my bewilderment was not an act.

“Yes.” He turned away, stared at the ceiling. “I’m a bad teacher, you know. People think I’m a great teacher. And I was. Until you moved into my class this year.”

Oh shit.

James sighed. “Kaya…you…you must hear this a lot,” A tear squeezed out of the corner of his traumatized eye. “But you’re a very beautiful, innocent looking girl…Innocent looking!” He laughed bitterly. “You are innocent. You’re innocent and sweet, and clean and pure…”

Dee’s voice laughed in my head; I had to stop myself from joining in.

James Wllner resumed his revelation. “You know, I used to be an advocate for male teachers in the classroom. Now, I know I was wrong. I thought I could trust myself….I thought I could never sink so low as to…as to…”

“You’re in love with me.” I murmred.

He looked horrified. “ NO! NO! I mean…I…it may feel that way but it’s wrong! This isn’t love!”

“What if it is?” I heard my own heart-break in my voice and marvelled at it as if it were someone else’s. “James…”

“Mr. Wellner!” he snapped.

“James…” I insisted, fighting to keep a hold on his hand without hurting him.

“Kaya, no! You’re young. You don’t understand. I’m too old for you…”

“You’re double my age…” I said softly, sadly, happily.

“I have an ethical responsibility!” he cried. “I’m your protector! I should be safe-guarding you! I’m the Sheppard! Not the FUCKING WOLF!!!” He was almost hysterical with grief.

No, my love. I am the wolf…I am the wolf, and I love you…I love you…

It seemed so clear and so simple to me. I wanted him and I wanted him now. But I knew that if I made a move, I would lose him forever. He would recoil from me and from himself…Plus, I would probably hurt him.

“I love you.” I informed him.

“You don’t know what that means.” He spat. “You don’t know what those words mean…”

I laughed. “What is it you don’t think I understand? The way my bloodcells want to touch your skin…all of it, everywhere? The way my heart would crawl out of me to go be yours if you ever needed one?”

“Kaya! NO!”

“Or the way I want to lick you better, lick you clean and wrap myself around you forever,” I couldn’t stop talking. The wolf in me was speaking, now, and it could not understand why I hadn’t told him this before, or what was stopping our union. “James,” I laughed again. “You would be surprised how warm and safe sleeping with me can make you feel…” My teeth were growing; I was seeing the world in familiar monochrome, and so I knew my pupils were becoming slit.

James did not seem to notice, in his distress. “Oh my God, KAya! No!” He shook his head. “Kaya, listen to me. This could wreck your life…”

“No it can’t,” I said miserably. “But it can ruin yours. That`s why I never said anything. Never did anything. Even though I know for a fact that I must have you. I must. There‘s no ifs, ands or buts about it. The only thing that‘s been stopping me has been the prospect of you being hurt in anyway. I’m wiling to wait. For years if I have to.”

“Kaya,” he was desperate. I could feel it, in him. “Kaya….you’re traumatised. You’ve been through a lot. I…I can just pretend you haven’t said any of this…”

“Fine.” I said. My voice was calm, resigned, even though part of me was screaming inside. “But I won’t forget. And you won’t either. Pretend all you want. And I’ll pretend too, James. Or Mr. Wellner. Or whoever the hell you want to be.” I got up to leave. “And for your information, it is my fault that you’re hurt.”

“No-“ he called.

I opened the door of his room and walked out.

“Oh my God, Kaya! Are you okay?” asked Leila worriedly. She and Clara surrounded me. I began to cry, wordlessly miserable. My wolf wanted James and I couldn’t have him. It hurt. It hurt as if I were trapped in Farmer Mullins’ huge contraptions, with no way to get free.

“We…we should go inside and see him, if…if we’re going to go at all…” Anthony looked extremely awkward.

Feelingly suddenly claustrophobic, I began to walk away from them they trickled into James’ room again. Ryan looked torn for a moment. “KAya! Wait!” he cried. I ignored him.

“Um,” he turned to Carla. “I’m going to go make sure Kaya’s okay…”

Carla frowned. “Ryan, don’t be a creep. We’re here to see Mr. Wellner, and that girl can’t handle anymore bullshit, okay?”

“It’s none of your business.” He sneered at her, as he began to sprint after me.

* * * * * * * * * * *

She could smell him…the male… She knew that if she stood in the wind for a while he’d hear her call. He’d come. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Males, wolfen or human, were all the same like that…

Dee pulled down her pants and peed onto the patch of damp earth she’d watered before, just to make sure. The second watering was always more potent anyway, less diluted with water that hadn’t been replaced after the first whiz. Steam rose from the steady streaming spray and her own smell wafted upwards towards her, before blowing away, down the valley, towards…him.

Wriggling to release any hanging droplets, she rose from her crouch, buckled her jeans closed and turned to listen. She could hear his feet strike the ground as he ran, now. He was close.

Scampering into the bushes, she huddled in the dark, a creature barely human, barely corporeal at all. She waited till his smell suddenly filled the glade. Then she closed her eyes. It would not do for him to see her bright irises gleaming in hiding and understand that she was actually waiting for him. Her ears painted a picture in the darkness of her head.

She could hear him enter the glade then pause, confused. He could smell her, for sure, but he couldn’t be sure whether the strong evidence of her presence came from her urine or more. Well anyway, for it to smell so powerfully it would have to be exceedingly fresh. So she would be near, he knew.

He stepped closer. Dee held her breath, euphoric and terrified all in one go.

Closer….closer to her patch of pee. Closer….

BANG!

A loud, agonized scream.

Clanking. The clanking of the traps’ chains as the motor from the back of Dee’s stepfather’s wagon began to pull.

More screaming from the male as he was dragged upwards till he was hanging upside down from the trees.

Dee opened her eyes to take in her good work.

A beauty. It had worked perfectly.

She walked out of the bushes and stood before him as he twisted and whined and scratched at himself, at the air, at life. Patiently, she watched, smiling malevolently, like a cat watching a dangling mouse as he writhed like a beached fish, struggling to free himself.

But the traps held true, digging into his legs, hanging him securely, painfully, terribly.

The male suddenly stopped his struggle and hung helplessly, arms swinging, eyes wide and rolling. Dee leaned in closer, to examine his face, to drink in his fear.

Aaah, this was refreshing. For once. So many things had gone so wrong lately.

“Not so hot, now, are we?” she wondered.

“I should’ve known.” He growled, pain making the vein in his forehead throb.

“Maybe.” Was all she said in reply to this.

Silence.

He swung around, helplessly, in the wind, his face level to her own, in macabre parody of the Spiderman kiss.

“Alright, so you got me.” He hissed. “You win. Now let me down.”

“What makes you think I want to do that?” he could barely decipher her words through teeth that were so long they were overlapping her lips.

“We need to talk…”

“I don’t want to talk.” She cut him off, pulling a large hunting knife out of her hoodie. “I didn’t lure you into this for the pleasure of your company.”

He stared at the hunting knife, then looked back into her face. Suddenly, it dawned on him. “You’re not going to…are you?!”

“Why not?” she purred.

“I’m not PREY! I’m a wolf! Like you!”

“You’re not prey, but you are on my territory.” She said, approaching his throat. “There can only be one predator here.”

“It won’t be your territory for long!” he snarled, swinging at her with his claws.

“Pointless threats. That’s nice.” She remarked, swiping his reaching arms aside as though the were no stronger than a baby. She dodged him easily and his face twisted in confusion and fear as his own clumsy movements failed to make contact.

“What?” she laughed. “Seeing double? Feeling dizzy? Maybe a little nauseous? It ain’t just the blood rushing to your head, you know.”

“What…what do you mean…?” he gasped. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was finding it hard to breath.

“These traps digging into you? These jaws of death inside your flesh? I smeared them with enough poison to kill a shark. A whooooole canister.” She sang, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth as she began panting cheerfully.

“That…won’t…k-kill me…” his words were beginning to slur, his pupils dilating to the outer rims of his irises.

“No, ” Dee breathed on to his face. Her carrion breath was like his, which titillated him even as it terrified him. “That’ll just keep you nice and… ‘polite’. But this will kill you.”

He heard her and gave a hopeless sob, before beginning to struggle again, frantically and weakly. Dee reached out brutally and grabbed his wrist in hers, twisting till she heard a snapping sound and he gave another shriek of defeated pain. Closer still she stepped, until they were almost in an embrace. Then, she put her icy blade against his bladder. “Good bye.”

And with that, she dug in and drew down, pulling her blade through his guts till she hit his rib cage. With a sickening sloppy sound, the male’s gizzards fell out of him, hitting the ground in a scattering spatter.

“Ooooooh!” Dee mock-howled pleasantly to herself as she busily began to jerk her knife in a sawing motion, hacking through the ribcage bones. The male noiselessly bucked and convulsed, his eyes rolling up into his skull, blood pouring out of his mouth and trickling down into his hairline. “Hurts, don’t it?”

We were playing in the backwoods when I ran into a wolf.

Saying it like that, summing it up in one sentence makes it sound like some sort of fairytale, like the wolf stood on its hind legs and tipped his hat like a gentleman before asking where I was going on the fine summer day.

Well, the reality of it was nothing like a fairytale.

Firstly, it was a dark, dim, dull fall day, and winter was approaching fast. Dee and I were alternately November and December babies, so we were excited about our tenth birthdays coming up fast. Dee’s mum never bothered to actually throw Dee a party anymore, so my mother had offered to throw us both one on my birthday, considering that we were really each other’s only friends, even back then, before we became…pack.

We had been on the swings and the slides. I could’ve stayed on the playground forever, but Dee always felt really sick easily after half on hour of swinging or so.

“Let’s go play Catchers!” she begged, dark hair falling in heavy angelic bangs across her brow. She was in this beautiful pink dress, little white socks, a white woollen sweater and black vinyl shoes. I felt grubby, in my striped shirt and jeans overalls, but I also knew this meant I wouldn’t be hampered while running.

“Fine!” I yelled leaping out of the swing while it was still in the air. I landed with a thud, in a crouch and got up and dusted my hands from the rain-dampened playground sand. “You’re it!”

Dee shrieked excitedly as she raced after me. We ran around the playground for a bit, but that quickly got tedious and unchallenging. Perhaps our mutual mothers’ warnings not to play in the backwoods unsupervised comes off a little fairytale-like.

But that’s where the ‘magic’ ends.

I started it. It was my fault.

I laughed at Dee’s inability to catch me and spun off into the woods, galloping on ahead of her. Giggling, she raced after me, never one to be out-done, even at that age.

It must have been waiting. It must have been watching. Because I remember that I hadn’t really run beneath trees for more than a couple of seconds before I ran into something as solid and large as a wall.

But walls don’t grow fur.

It took Dee and I another three years before we could actually talk about that day, which was strange, since the change started almost instantaneously in both of us. IT was just that…how do you talk about something like that with someone it also happened to? How do you compare and contrast notes and being mauled by an animal? It’s almost easier to describe it to someone who wasn’t there because then…then, the telling of it almost makes it seem unreal.

But to talk about it with Dee…

And to realise how differently we remember some things, but how similar we remember others.

“Golden fur.”

“Yes….”

“He…”

“Yes…a male…”

“I know…surreal, right?”

“Yeah…”

“DO you think we’ll ever see one again? Another one? Like us?”

“….do we want to?”

“I don’t know…”

Silence. Then…

“He was big…even by our standards…big and healthy…”

“His fur was thick and shiny…like, well-fed shiny…”

“He herded us…”

“ I know…I mean, by some standards, you could say he was gentle…except for the whole mauling part…”

Another silence.

“He picked you up in his teeth and shook you like you were a rat or something….I remember that that’s what scared me the most…I felt like my heart was gonna explode…I couldn’t move…it already felt like I was dying with fear…”

“You should’ve ran…”

“I would’ve if I could…but…I couldn’t….This might be a stupid but…did it hurt too bad?”

“I saw colours of pain, Dee…stripes…and spots and wavering patterns….fuzz…I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I could feel the teeth ripping my stomach open when he was shaking his head from side to side like that…I felt the bones in my neck snap a few times with the force of it…thought my head would either come off, or my side would rip away and I’d go flying across the forest, leaving a chunk of me in his mouth, you know?”

“Oh God…”

“ I know…then I blacked out…I never saw what he did to you…”

“I….I don’t really remember much…I guess you could say I saw colours of fear…I could hear myself screaming…but I was fading in and out of my life….and when I would fade out? It was like a coloured screen from a television with no broadcasting was coming in front of my eyes…red screens, blue and green, blindingly bright, as if my brain was cutting out, editing reality…trying to save me…but I kept coming back in…and everytime I did, all I could hear was my screaming, though it didn’t feel like it was ME screaming….one I fazed in and all I saw was teeth and tongue and blood coming right at my face…”

“When I saw you…your face was all torn up…”

“…and the next time I faded in, I was trying to crawl away…I looked back and he was standing over me with his claws out…then he jumped….and hooked them into my back…and…dragged…downwards…”

“Oh shit…”

“We weren’t even ten years old, Kay….can you imagine that? Skinny little shits too…there was no two ways about it, he had to know he was hurting children…babies…”

“Why?”

“Who knows? I mean, we’re beasts…what makes us any better? We all have the same sickness, really…”

“No…why would he leave us alive, Dee?”

“………....”

“He had to know we’d survive.”

“He meant to change us, not kill us. We weren’t prey.”

“No….we weren’t prey. He made us pack….would you make to complete strangers pack?”

“NO. Especially not little ones…especially if I wasn’t gonna stick around and make sure they made it….”

“Yeah see? That just seems wasteful to me…making cubs and then tossing ‘em…”

“Well, we’re not really his cubs…”

“We carry his genetics. He turned us. In a way….he’s our father…”

“EW. Don’t say that.”

We laughed. Quietly, confusedly. Then we went hunting. We were twelve.

Looking back now, I remember, coming to and seeing Dee, back against a tree, like a discarded rag doll, bloody and torn from head to toe…I remember feeling like m whole body was on fire…so many parts of me were broken and torn and knocked and bent that there was no particular localized sensation of pain…I simply felt like I was floating in a swimming pool of acid and my whole body was burning, inside out…dissolving away…crying out to me to help it, to save it…

But all I could do was stare at the one eye that was open in Dee’s mauled face. The one open functional eye, staring out into space, the only sign that she was still alive, other than the wheezing, gasping hyperventilating breath smoking out of her ripped mouth, into the evening air.

I could hear my own lungs gurgle…I couldn’t breath…and I couldn’t watch the terror in my friend’s single gaze. So I turned my head over to the other side, stared at a mushroom next to my face, and decided to sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The next time I came around, it was dark. Stars were bright gold in a sky that seemed such a deep vibrant midnight blue. I took a deep breath…it didn’t hitch, and it didn’t gurgle. IT didn’t even hurt. In fact…I felt my lungs open and expand…I felt…different…

I felt…huge inside…like there was more of me packed inside me than you could see on the outside. I sat up…what was I doing sleeping outside?

Then I saw her. She was standing up and staring up at the sky just as I had been. Her dress was wrecked and torn and bloody…but the smooth skin of her back was flawless. Her face seemed radiant to me. I had gotten used to seeing heavy black bangs covering half of Dee’s face. They were smeared back with dried blood, away from her face.

Her eyes glowed.

I had always though Dee was cute. I mean she was my best friend, and old ladies and not so old men were constantly telling adults around us what fine looking children we both were…

But I had never before looked at her and felt a kind of breathless excitement. My friend Dee was beautiful…and I don’t know how, or why, but somehow, I knew that it meant I was beautiful too. Something had replaced a timidity in her and I…something wild, and hungry and strong…

We were still children, but we knew that there was more in store for us that other human children would never experience. We were feral, now.

“Can you hear that?” she whispered.

“Yeah….” I tilted my head back and stared into the vastness above. “What is it?”

“…..I think…I think it’s the moon.”

* * * * * * * * * * * *

My mother dragged me to the hospital the moment I walked through the door. She called the police and filed a report. She made the nurse check for injuries…

She made the nurse do a rape kit.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I was fine. There was nothing physically wrong with me.

My mother cried.

She screamed at the police that there was no way I was fine if I had come walking through the door in the dark covered in my own blood. They let her throw her tirade, standing helplessly with their hands by their sides.

When asked, I said I fell.

But there wasn’t even a cut on my knee to prove even that very obvious lie.

My mother begged me to tell her what had happened.

I…didn’t want to. Telling her seemed somehow to go against my survival instinct. I was the cuckoo in the swallow’s nest, now. I was the changeling, returned in her daughter’s form. To tell her what happened was to tell her the truth, to tell her that I was no longer her little angel. And I needed to be adopted by an unsuspecting mother for a while…I was a wolf now, but I was also just a cub…I would need nurturing, still.

Years have passed, and the sensation that I do not belong to my mother anymore has faded. I feel guilty, like I’ve cheated her, somehow, because even though I know my heart has returned to my mother, there is this huge gap I cannot bridge between us: the ‘gap’ of what I really am. Not human. Not right, by her standards, because my mother is a GOOD human woman. Killing other people, to her, can never be justified…

But that is what I do.

I am a killer of People. I EAT people.

I don’t feel the need to justify that, and so I would fail miserably if I ever had to.

It would break her heart.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe I’m way out of line.

I lie to myself all the time.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

My mother’s eyes were still puffy with grief the next weekend, but she still threw Dee and I that party. My father’s face was still pale as a sheet too. He tried to talk to me, gently, coaxing…but I could smell my mother’s influence on him…they were afraid for me. One of their cubs was injured and they two parents were trying to nurse it back to health in their pretty little cave of a home…humans are like wolves in so many ways. I guess all animals are they same with their young.

But anyway, Dee made the mistake of coming over the very next day.

She walked in through the door, as she did every other day, in a black sweater and her jeans and running shoes. I looked up from my breakfast and our eyes met in silent communication before my mother suddenly lunged at her and pulled her into her arms. My Mom began to sob again. Dee stared at me in complete bewilderment over my mother’s shoulder, trying not to be strangled by my mother’s desperate embrace.

“I thought she’s never be able to tell.”

“Of course she could tell, Dee.”

“How?”

“ I don’t know….something’s changed in us…on the outside, not just inside. I mean, you and I feel stronger, somehow…but Mom…Mom says it’s in our eyes…she says we have Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and she can see it in our eyes…”

“What does THAT mean?”

“ I don’t know…but the nurse said it means that we might turn out to be sociopathic…”

“Okay, what does THAT mean?”

“ It means we won’t feel stuff….like other people do…normal people…”

“But…but that’s because we’re not…people…”

“Yeah, but Mom thinks it’s because of this Post Traumatic stuff…”

“Huh…”

“Is your mom freaking out?”

“She’d have to be NOT DRUNK to freak out. ‘Sides, she got a new boyfriend now, and they were in the bedroom all night.” Dee suddenly laughed.

“What?” I said, quirking up an eyebrow, feeling a smile breaking on my own lips.

“DO you know? I walked in there, dress ripped, bleeding from head to toe…and then I heard them…Ma and her new boyfriend? In the bedroom? Doing it…”

"DOing what?"

"....Oh KAya...like, where babies come from, Kaya..."

"...Like, the stork?"

"No...Anyway, no one was waiting for me."

"Oh Dee."

“No it’s fine…I mean…I was pissed at first. But then I went to the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk. Then I sat on the couch and watched cartoons for an hour! In my own blood!” She shrieked with laughter.

“DEE!” I was horrified.

“I sat there for a good hour, watching TV and drinking milk….IN MY OWN BLOOD!!!” Dee was laughing so hard tears were crawling down her face. “It was so funny Kaya. I wanted to see if anyone would notice! And then I got up and gave myself a bubble bath. The bathtub was red when I was done, but I didn’t wash it. Mom will. But she won’t ask too many questions. And then I put my dress in the wash basket. And she’ll see that too, but she’ll throw it away. And NOT ask questions. You know why?”

“Why?” I asked softly.

“Because asking questions would mean she might have to think that maybe I got hurt…and that would mean caring if I got hurt or not…which would totally kill her buzz!” Dee’s laugh this time was all teeth and narrowed eyes.

It was the first time I’d seen her do that, express pain through ferocity, through a cold, controlled, cynical ferocity. I loved that look. It was the first time since Dee’s Dad died that she hadn’t looked defeated to me. Just hurt….hurt, but alive…and happy…happy despite everything.

Happy to be alive.

And so when her and I were blowing out the candles on the birthday cake my mother had made that next weekend, face to face, across the table, standing on chairs so we could reach, our eyes met.

And we knew.

We knew we were pack.

Pack forever.

Pack for good.

“Mom?” I tugged on her sleeve.

“Yes honey?”

“Dee and I don’t feel like cake.”

“Oh? What do you want me to make you, then?”

“We want steak.”

I met the others at the car when their visit with Mr. Wellner was over. It is amazing what you can get away with, with two swollen red puffy eyes, tear stained cheeks, a red nose and a sullen look. In any case, they simply asked if I knew where Ryan was, and when I said that no I didn’t, when I said that he had come after me and upset me by trying to make out with me, when I said that we had fought and he had said that he needed to go for a walk to clear his head the others merely shrugged, before leaning against the car, in the parking lot, to wait.

“What a dick,” muttered Clara, after forty five minutes.

“Yeah…” I said weakly.

“Do you know? I told him not to go after you…not after we’d just heard that you were…I mean…that guy shot at you…and all-“

“I really don’t want to talk about it…” I said, blinking away tears again.

Dee would’ve loved it. She always said that I was an amazing actress when I had to be. Well, I can’t really help it; it’s part of the animal in us. Deception kind of comes with the territory.

At any rate, it took another forty five minutes of waiting and several tries to contact Ryan on his cell phone before Anthony left a callous message on the answering machine and we left Ryan to fend for himself and find his own ride home.

Or rot in a shallow grave.

Whatever.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When I got home, I went straight to my room, avoiding eye contact, dismissing worried questions, denying dinner. All I wanted was my bed. I felt like someone had hit me over the head with a brick; I felt heavy, tired, aching in every limb, except that my aching was more psychological than anything.

The truth of the matter was that my heart hurt. It ached with the things that I’ve done, all of which seemed to lead up to James lying in that bed…and probably hating me…or trying to.

I shut the door, without turning on the light. Leaning against it for a moment, I strove to orient myself, to stay upright, to stop drowning in air.

“I can’t do this right now.” I said.

She said noting.

Again, I pleaded, “Please…I know you’re angry…but I can’t do this right now…I just can’t.”

A shadow shifted in the darkness in my peripheral vision. For a second she was close enough for me to feel a breeze where she passed. Then I heard the gentle thump of her landing outside of my window.

Prying myself away from my support, I walked to the window to watch her go, hoping that seeing a wolf run would somehow lift my spirits, but Dee was fuelled by fury, tonight.

And as if her prompt disappearance wasn’t depressing enough, a moment later, as the clouds scurried like frightened sheep from in front of a gibbous moon that seemed too close for comfort, a blood-chilling, wretched howl permeated the night air, filling the breasts of anyone in the vicinity with a silent, primeval fear.

In the warm glowing kitchen below, I knew my whole family had stopped talking and had raised their heads to the sky, like rabbits. This action would be repeated by anyone within earshot of that howl. Farms, neighbourhoods, all action would freeze.

Cops handing out tickets would pause in procedure.

Humans never seemed to realise how their everyday trappings didn’t change the fact that there were still bigger things in the bush until times like these.

Only I understood that under the threat, there was insurmountable loneliness.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

When Dee got out of bed the next day, she wasn't just hurt anymore, she was pisssed too. She got out of bed, and the first thing she did was switch off her cell phone, cutting off any attempt from me to even apologise. Dee decided that she didn’t want to hear it.

Of course, being pissed as all hell, she decided that she was going to look stunning for school. She was going to stomp on some hearts today. That always made her feel better.

Thinking about it now, I smile a little to myself. Dee has these thick dark lips; she’s trouble when she pouts….but anyway.

It was a chilly, grey day. Summer was definitely turning into Fall. Dee took the opportunity to wear a rabbit-fur-lined hood under her leather jacket….the more people she offended today the better she’d feel. Tiny black skirt, black leggings, army issue Doc Martins. The contrast with her face, pale with fury, made for quite the portrait.

She looked like death warmed over….in a good way.

She grabbed her school bag, not even caring if there were any school books in it, and slammed the door behind her when she left.

She stomped through the woods, so pissed she couldn’t even enjoy the male-free environment.

She pouted, sneered and made snarky remarks all through the morning classes.

And her head almost exploded with fury when she realised that I wasn’t at school. So she couldn’t even have the pleasure of choosing to avoid me.

That was IT.

Se had to kill something…..

So at lunch, she walked around to the section of school gate behind the main office buildings, bitched at the grade nines who were making out there till they left crying, looked around once for good measure and, with one good jump, made it over the eight foot iron bars, landing at a run on the other side.

It was an hour for lunch. She’d catch something quick, probably use her teeth to clamp down over its air-pipe till it suffocated instead of killing it quick, eat semi-quickly and be back with fifteen minutes to spare. Being hungry always made her more emotional. She’d feel better all around.

The rest of the world would thank her, she thought grinning.

In hind sight, Dee couldn’t decide whether it was her mood or her hunger that did her in.

Whatever it was, she never knew that the male was stalking her till her she turned around and found herself standing with her face a hand’s breadth away from him.

She only had a moment to take in the breath for that scream clawing its way out of her throat before he, with a snarl of effort and feeling, swung something heavy at her head.

Dee heard a sonorous clanging sound as whatever it was met with the side of her face.

Her last thought as she toppled over into oblivion was, “Was that a tire iron?”