Rebecca lay in the middle of a grassy area surrounded by an ocean of trees. The soil had sunk under her body where she had landed. Her neck, which had just come back together with the rest of her spine, was now allowing her nerves to continue sending messages to the rest of her body. Even when she should have been happy to be alive and moving, the excruciating pain that had come and gone made her remember how far from being only human she was.
However, a simple human being wouldn’t have survived the fall or the pain. So, for the time being, being a vampire was a blessing.
Slowly, her inner wounds closed, the muscles got back together and the bones felt comfortable again under her skin. What once had looked like an impossible position, now looked like she was simply resting under the partly cloudy sky.
The soreness that remained was nothing compared to what she had felt a few seconds ago.
She was, no doubt, a marvel. A miracle. No wonder vampires felt such a sense of superiority. In many ways, they were superior. She was superior. They could do so much more with their power and yet they chose to remain hidden, helping humanity without taking any credit for it.
Unlike the rest, she could not let any of these realizations change her. She had pledged to remain what she had once been - human, and she would do what it took to keep acting like one. Humanity was the treasure she most valued, after all. Being a vampire didn’t scare her as much as long as she kept acting and feeling human. Of late, that was harder to do than how it sounded. At least these last few hours she was drinking blood, getting shot at, clawed at, and even thrown miles from above; all resulting in no permanent damage.
She was not invulnerable. She knew that. There were beings far more powerful than she was and if she wasn’t careful, one of them would one day rip her heart out of her chest.
Although, what about her? How many had she killed? How many hearts had she plucked out of those furry beasts just a while ago?
Most important of all, why didn’t she care for their deaths? Because she had acted in self-defense? Because she hadn’t gotten to know them? Why did ending those beasts feel more like relief than something she had to do to survive? How could it become something she did so naturally after so little time? It felt as if that was what she had been born to do.
Sitting up and rubbing the back of her neck, she tried to figure out where she was. The pain was all gone now and she felt like she had felt before jumping out of that plane, healthy and strong. Well, almost the same. She was now starving.
There were many things she perceived, with her sense of smell and hearing, around her. None contained the sustenance she truly needed. Blood was more than a need, it was what she desired; that which would make her stronger. Healing from that fall had taken too much energy out of her body and now she needed to feed and replenish it. But, feed on what?
Her thoughts soon shifted to the approaching scent of werewolf. It was even more pungent when she was hungry. Not that she could forget she was covered in their blood. Still, the dried werewolf blood that permeated her clothes, her hair, and her skin did not make her react as much as the live werewolf that was getting near. The creature was coming from the trees behind her. It was getting closer, nearer. Without even having to think about it her eyes changed to their red tint and her fangs slid down. It was more like second nature to her now. The change was just as automatic as her reaching for her gun, only her hand did not find it behind her back. It must’ve slipped out when she had fallen out of the plane.
Her hands turned into fists as she prepared for the worst; although deep down she prayed it was only he.
Soon she heard the footsteps, the fallen dry leaves, and sticks breaking beneath his quick feet. Above her, the sun was starting to disappear into the sky, its rays still shinning for a few more minutes.
Finally, from the brush, emerged their new ally. William Woods. The werewolf who had started it all. He ran to her, ran as if he was being chased by someone – or something. It was then it finally dawned on Rebecca; the trackers. Had Grant taken them all out on time?
She doubted it.
“I heard your scream,” he panted once he was close enough.
Rebecca didn’t waste time before asking, “Are they following you?”
Nodding frantically, Will said, “Possibly, Grant left two of the trackers he found still in me. We need to take them out.”
“We?” she exclaimed with a mix of surprise and disgust.
“Well, yeah, I’ll need your help,” the werewolf thought he was stating the obvious.
“And how do you expect we do that?” She had nothing to cut through his skin. She had lost her gun and didn’t even own a knife.
The werewolf seemed to have a ready solution, “With these.” William raised one hand and with a thought, he conjured it to turn from human to wolf. The nails grew darker and longer, a few dark brown hairs sprouted on its back. It was amazing what an experienced werewolf could do after he’d harnessed his power. “Grant marked the spot,” Will explained, “all you have to do is dig in there and take them out.”
Before this existence, the request would have been the most horrifying thing she had been asked to do in her life. That was before she had stuck her hand inside a living being, ripping its heart out a dozen times. Right now, doing a simple extraction shouldn’t be that bad, especially since it could mean the difference between living and dying. They had no idea how long the crazed werewolves would take to find them. There was no real way to know how far they had flown or how fast.
“Let’s get to it.” William sat down, raised his pants up to expose his bare calves. There was a mark on each of them. “I’ll make the cut and you get your fingers inside my skin, got it? It needs to happen fast, before I heal.”
“Will it hurt?” she asked innocently.
Will turned to look at her incredulous, “It won’t hurt as much as having fallen out of that airplane. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Her stare could have killed him. “Fine, let’s get this over with,” Rebecca agreed. The truth was she wasn’t really worried or disgusted at all. It was more what she should be feeling. It was what a human being would naturally have felt when given the task.
The werewolf used his long claw to make a small cut on his right calf while Rebecca dug in with her fingers until she found the tracker. It looked just like the ones she had seen Grant extract on the plane; they looked like pebbles or small marbles. With another quiet grunt, Will continued with his other leg, repeating the procedure.
Rebecca did her job a second time, quickly reaching for the second tracker and taking it out. “Well, that wasn’t that hard,” she expressed.
With a chuckle, Will said, “Maybe to you. Come on, we have to get out of here.”
Together, they ran in the opposite direction Will had come from while leaving the trackers buried in the ground.
The moon rose from the trees in its full magnificence while illuminating the dark sky. Rebecca and Will had been running quietly for a while. As much as they wanted to, they wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace for long because the more they ran the more energy they used. Soon it would be imperative Rebecca fed. She needed to replenish that energy before the vampire took over as it looked for something to eat. Will would be the first one to suffer if it came to that. Besides, the werewolf probably needed something to eat, as well. She doubted he would lose control like she would; it would not become a matter of life or death like it was for someone like her.
Without an intake of blood or food, Rebecca’s vampire persona would take over, and the scent of werewolf beside her would be irresistible. If she didn’t do anything about it, Will would surely die by her hand and she would only realize what she’d done after the fact.
Neither one of them dared to stop their momentum, but Rebecca knew it had to be her.
“A full moon,” Rebecca observed between hard breaths.
“It is,” Will added.
Stopping abruptly, Rebecca watched a confused Will turn to look at
her, trying to slow down until he quickly came to a stop, as well.
“What’s wrong?” Will asked. “Why are we stopping? We need to keep going.”
Rebecca said nothing at first, except turn to stare at the moon, the round, pale circle before her. When she spoke, she said, “It’s a full moon. What does that mean?”
Will nodded, understanding the question immediately. “You are worried I will turn into a senseless monster.”
She shrugged, “Well…”
A chuckle escaped Will’s mouth, “I told you when we were at the safe house. Full moons don’t affect me. I haven’t turned unwillingly for a very long time.”
Too bad the same couldn’t be said for her. Wondering if Will was aware of this phenomenon, she doubted she could stop the vampire from controlling the body before it starved.
“You must like the control,” Rebecca mentioned, “Can everyone do it or are you special?”
“I’m not that special,” Will frowned. “Most werewolves aren’t affected by the moon after a few years. It’s a natural and easy thing to control after a while.”
“So the moon doesn’t affect you at all?” She sure wished her craving for blood didn’t affect her either. From what she knew about werewolves, William almost made it sound as if being one was much better than being a vampire. Surely it couldn’t be that easy, since all werewolves turned out to be such ruthless killers.
“The moon does matter, unfortunately,” confessed Will. “It sure does.”
“Really?”
“It brings unbalance… it’s complicated.”
If anything, Rebecca wanted Will to be accepted into their society just to keep asking him questions. It was easy to talk to him. He was a likable guy. What if he was really a hundred-year-old-man? He still was more approachable than any of the vampires she had met so far.
Even Dylan? She wondered what Dylan was doing. She wondered if he had survived the plane crash - because surely it had gone down. She hadn’t heard an explosion, she hadn’t seen any fire. Perhaps it had happened while she had been unconscious. Hopefully, that had not been the case and Dylan was out there, somewhere, looking for her.
For now, here she was, a vampire and a werewolf talking and walking together. Not a single drop of bloodshed, no heart rolling down the grass.
Finally, she wondered if Will was afraid of her at all. There was no indication that he had. His pulse, his scent - while putrid - did not tell her any sign of distress coming from him. It was strange to think he knew she had the ability to destroy him and yet he walked next to her like he had known her, and trusted her, all his life. Perhaps he knew something she didn’t.
“Should we keep going?” Will asked after they had both regained their breath, sounding anxious. “I don’t need another encounter with crazy werewolves.”
It took Rebecca a few seconds to reply, “No. I need to eat something. Anything. Then, we can go.” She then looked into the forest ahead, “It feels we were just running without direction, doesn’t it?” She reached out for the phone she still kept in her pocket. The screen was cracked and she hadn’t been able to turn it on. “I wish this would work,” she said again.
Will agreed with a nod, “That phone is dead, might as well leave it behind.” Then, “I say let’s keep running east,” he pointed to the direction with one hand, “we’ll reach a road soon enough. We just have to keep going and not stop.”
Not being familiar with this part of the woods, Rebecca could only hope he was right. She had no idea where they were. She had had no idea where the safe house had been and she had no idea in which direction the agency could be found. She wanted to think they were still close to it somehow.
Nothing like that mattered as much as how much energy she’d lost and her need to replace it.
“Do you drink blood from animals?” she heard Will ask after she had been lost in her own thoughts.
“I can,” she nodded, wondering how much about vampires Will actually knew, “Or we could build a fire and roast what we hunt.”
“You mean… eat the meat?”
“Tastes better than animal blood,” she stated.
Will still looked confused, “So, you eat meat.”
“Or blood. Either works.” She then asked, “You don’t know that many vampires, do you?”
“The ones I know, I fight to survive. I don’t stop to chat.” He then looked up at the almost dark sky, puzzled. “At night, I might add. We fight at night. Most vampires I know don’t come out during the day,” Will explained. “You know? There’s them and then there’s you. Like I said before, once I saw Dylan that night I knew he wasn’t like the others.” He looked at her from head to toe, “You are like Dylan, too. Everybody in that safe house was. You are not like the vampire gangs I used to fight in New York when I was younger.”
Quietly, Rebecca nodded, “I am beginning to understand that, as well. All this time I thought to be a vampire meant being like me. Lately, I’ve been thinking there must be different types of vampires in the world.”
“At least two of them,” Will agreed. “You haven’t been one for long and I think you and I still have a lot to learn.”
She didn’t like hearing that. She didn’t like being compared to a werewolf, no matter who he was. She blamed Dylan; he should have told her about this and more.
“I’m going to go hunt for something to eat,” she said instead. “Would you like to build us a fire?”
He was shaking his head right from the start. “A fire will tell them where we are. Why would we get rid of the trackers if we were going to mark the spot for them anyway? Besides, I can see in the dark. Can you?”
“I can,” she felt so stupid having suggested anything in the first place. Making a face of disgust, she added, “Well, animal blood it’ll be then.”
Will smiled, “I will hunt, too. Might as well get my dinner.”
“As a wolf?”
Nodding again, he said, “As a wolf. You better turn around, I need to take my pants off.”
After dinner, they continued on their way at a much slower pace. They walked together with only the wild night sounds as company. The sky was pleasantly illuminated by the full moon’s reflected light, but not so much they couldn’t see a plethora of stars. The summer breeze blew enough to take the werewolf scent in the opposite direction, which made Rebecca happy. She was still covered in dried werewolf blood, but its stench wasn’t as pungent anymore. That, or she was getting used to it.
She had no idea what to say to Will. She had no idea what to do with him or if she could really trust him. She wanted to trust him. He looked like someone she would like to be friends with. Maybe in another time, a different present. Whatever was on the werewolf’s mind was also a mystery to her. So she kept walking beside him quietly, hoping everything would turn out all right in the end.
Will walked in the cargo pants they had given him back at the building earlier that day, he still wore the shirt Alyssa had asked for him at the safe house. His feet walked bare on the uneven ground beneath him without complaint. He was, she decided, a nice looking boy. With his brown hair and round face. If she had known him when he was just a human boy, she would have liked him.
“So,” her thoughts were interrupted by Will’s new attempt at conversation, “how did it happen?”
The question confused her, “How did what happen?”
Turning to look at her for the first time in a while, he offered a gentle smile before asking, “How did you become a vampire? I know you must get this question a lot, and I know it must be personal, but I can’t stop myself from asking it. That said, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’ll understand.”
He couldn’t have been more wrong, it wasn’t a question she got asked a lot. She lived like some kind of prisoner inside the agency’s compound. Everyone there knew who she was and how she had come to be. It wasn’t a secret how she had become a vampire, nor who had turned her or why. They all knew.
Will spoke a
gain after her long silence, “It’s ok. Like I said, I was just wondering. You don’t have to tell me.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have, but she did. If only she hadn’t felt so compelled to do it, “Dylan turned me.”
“Ah,” he exclaimed. “Was it done the old-fashioned way? You know? He bit your neck and all that, asked you to drink his blood? That’s how I know it’s done.”
She considered it, “Not exactly.”
“No?”
“He didn’t bite me,” she couldn’t help laugh a little bit at the thought. No one had ever bitten her, nor had she ever bitten anyone. So much for vampire lore. Nevertheless, she was equipped with two long fangs that fit the job description perfectly. “He gave me a pill.”
Chuckling, he repeated, “A pill?” Yes, it sounded completely unconventional.
“That’s right, a pill,” she smiled.
“And you just took it?”
I thought I loved him, she thought. “I did. Willingly, as a matter of fact.”
Will took all that in. “And so you became a werewolf hunter? That’s crazy! What possessed you to willingly agree to that?”
“Well, I thought my life would have meaning,” she said.
“Fair enough,” he raised his hands in a quick show of surrender. “How did he choose you?” Will continued, “Were you in some kind of special forces group or the military or… How did that work? How did the great Dylan Torrence recruit you?”
Raising both eyebrows at hearing his suggestions, she confessed: “No. I had no military training whatsoever. I had never even seen a real gun before. Not up close. If I was trained at anything, it was dance.”
Suppressing a smile, the werewolf asked, surprised, “You were a dancer?”
“Well,” she continued, “Not professional, no. I tried, but I had an accident and ended up just being a teacher for a small ballet school back in my hometown.”
Werewolf Phenomenon: N.A.V.S.A. Series Book Two (The North American Vampire Secret Agency) Page 13