I keep walking straight ahead. Following Boden’s instructions. Sighing, I realise I’m getting thirsty and should have brought a drink of some kind with me. I hadn’t realised how far out the teenagers had put themselves this year.
Only one of us scouted out their location before dusk, Joel. He was fairly scarce on descriptive terms and details.
Which you would think would mean, he’d know the way here and he’d be the one trekking to the teens camp. But no, Joel put up such a damn fuss that we all had to draw straws.
I think he rigged it so I would have to do the walk because Joel is lazy. He is also an only child. He doesn’t have any brothers or sisters at the teens bonfire. The other part of the reason I’m the one trekking through the woods by myself at night is because of this.
A pup with siblings at campfire is likely to be received less hostile then an other pup. That and I’m a Sommers. So you know, respect for those of the leading pack family is pretty much a requirement.
So basically the whole drawing straws thing was completely rigged so I’d have to come out here. I’m the least offensive pup for the teens least that was the theory. The reality is, we are all offensively annoying to the teenagers. Just because we aren’t them. That’s bout it. So I don’t expect my appearance at their camp to be greeted any better than if I were someone else.
I can hear them before I see them. I hear them first not because I’ve super werewolf hearing. But because they are blasting out music loudly. With the music blasting they also shout and yell at one another with laughter. They are partying and it is barely the beginning of the night.
Young werewolves claiming their territory. The light from the campfire is evident too amongst the woods before I spot them through the hidden outlines of the surrounding landscape.
I stay back from stepping into the light spilling out from the trees. Spying on them all. A few of them are dancing together. The boys are topless, swinging their shirts around, swinging girls around. Girls who are laughing loudly and flirting wildly. Most of them are drinking beer or something. Probably alcoholic.
I can see a whiskey bottle getting passed around and hands and mouths randomly swigging from it. I’m thinking I should have come here earlier. Before the drinking started. Pretty sure they’re really not going to take to my presence at their party so nicely now.
I’m debating on wether to high tail it out there and make something up to the other pups about not coming back with what I came for. Would serve them right for not having the guts to come here themselves.
I’m struggling with my internal debate on whether to walk away rather than interrupt them. One of the boys lifts his nose to the air and turns his head towards my direction. I automatically duck down not wanting to be spotted.
I realise how stupid my reaction is. I can see the boy look away again, a suspicious look coming over his face. Shaking my head, I start to stand up. I am here to get one of their waffle irons.
I stand up muttering to myself about how stupid “I’m behaving. I have three siblings at this camp. Surely they’ll come to my defense if I need one when entering hostile territory. There is a noise in the bushes nearest me. I barely have time to turn my head and wonder if the boy from the campfire had spotted me when I am hit.
The torch fly’s out of my grasp. Something bites into my ankle. I’m flying backwards, until I smack my head on the hard earth. Biting my tongue as my back slaps the ground winding me. Searing pain flares up my leg. I don’t see what has hit me, until I’m on the ground. Another body. I can make out only make out the top of the head of my attacker.
Because whoever it is that is attacking me is biting into the back of my ankle. I’m kind of twisting to look around as their teeth cut through my skin sharply.
A werewolf attacking another werewolf?
My arms push at the attacker. I open my mouth to yelp and I’m grabbed. A hand clamps down over my mouth.
My reaction is to buck wildly upwards and try to bite the hand. Thrashing my body and throwing my arms up to the hand across my mouth. I try to pry at it scratching at it incessantly. But there is a weight on my arms. Someone else is holding me down.
There is more than one person. It’s not panic that surges inside me like an uncontrollable automatic reaction. It’s the fight. The need to fight these unseen attackers.
Another set of teeth bit into my neck. Howling with the pain, my voice is muffled by the hand practically suffocating me as more hands and teeth bit into parts of my body. There is nothing unrestrained about this attack.
The sound of a shout from the campfire registers briefly with me. I can hear voices in the distance. Distance. There is now distance between me and the sound of those voices. Distance. My mind works through this word. Letting me know I’m being dragged away from the teenagers camp ground. From the safety of my pack. I buck harder against all that clamps down on me.
There are human sets of teeth on me. I’m able to differentiate between them and sharper more painful, slicing things digging into my body. Wolf fangs.
My skin is being pierced and torn while my clothes are clawed at. Tearing from me to expose more flesh for all those teeth to sink into.
I try to thrash, to move against them. But it’s like being held in place by an immovable force. Pressure.
For all my efforts and energy all it does is tighten everyone’s hold on me. There are more than two sets of hands on me. More than two sets of teeth on me. More than three. But as I fight for movement, I realize I’m being immobilized.
Being pushed, pulled and dragged around. Struggling to cry out because my voice is all I have left since my physical body is being taken over. But getting sound out is difficult because I’m slowly being suffocated at the same time I’m being ripped to shreds. I tense and try to move. I try to breathe, to scream. I try to do anything. Everything. I try and I try.
But my hands can not grip anything.
My fingers brush across the top of nothing but air. Useless in their design when I’m being brutalized and outnumbered.
My body struggles to breathe as I’m being bleed out by large bites, small bites and teeth digging into my flesh as deep as they can go.
I feel something inside me pop and I groan. Sharp incisors hit bone and I flinch in response.
There is a roaring sound in my head and the world goes black as my eyes squeeze shut tightly. The attack is endless. I think it was me screaming but no sound is coming out.
I feel like I’m not in myself. All I can hear is the rabid sounds of my flesh being shredded. The wet sucking of their mouths on me. The squelching of their mouths and teeth’s feasting on my diminishing and exposed flesh.
7
My eyelids feel heavy. They are hard to open because I’ve been hit in them, and my face. I can feel the swelling. The vision out of left eye is small. Blurry. The vision out of my right eye is better, but slightly hindered by my eyebrow and socket swelling around it. The smell of blood is strong and it’s evidence that I’m covered in. My own blood. I feel cold, slimy and shaky.
Air rushes into me as my mouth opens wide to gasp it down. It burns my throat raw from the inside. Like someone has been shoving something down it. Grazing my larynx.
My body is shaking. Muscles convulsing and tightening.
The ground underneath me, hard, sharp and uneven. I smell dirt and something else. Stale air? I don’t know if I’m in the woods anymore. I can’t feel teeth or hands on me. Which should be a relief. But actually builds my anxiety that they’ll jump me again when I’ not ready for it. I can’t feel much more than pain flaring up inside me.
Absolutely everything hurts. My body is racked with spasms and I’m gagging on my own blood.
My head drops to the side and blood flows out my mouth as I cough. A vice like grip of pain sears into my skull, punishing me for the movement. I black out momentarily. Coming to in time to see feet beside me. Walking past me.
“She’s one of us now.”
“She’s mine.
”
“No, she’s not.” A female voice states angrily.
I can’t make out where they are. My right ear feels incredibly sore. Like it’s blown. Maybe even torn. The voices on that side of me are muted, not as clear to hear. How many of them are there? All I can do is lie here trying to live.
“Don’t you guys smell it on her?”
“What?”
“The fur, asshole. The fur. They always smell like fur underneath everything else is the fur. The essence of the beast.” The female voice said disgustedly.
She’s talking about my base scent. What all werewolves have when you get past the synthetic smells like body deodorant, perfume, clothing detergent, shampoo and the like. The real me. “Can’t you smell it on her, she’s ripe with it. She’s one of them.”
The silence of her statement stretches onwards and I choke and splatter up more blood. My chest rising and slamming me back on the floor harshly.
My body is out of my control. I’m not sure it works anymore.
Who knows what damage my attackers have done to me. I felt heavy and cold, slimy and unable to move.
Air stings at the exposed cuts on my skin. Blood pours slowly from me. I’m so sensitive to the feeling of it trickling out everywhere.
My fingers feel cut up. My eyes flick downwards. It’s all I can do without moving my head again. Without alerting attention to me. My nails have been ripped off. Soft pink fleshy stumps are at my fingers. Tears slid down my eyes.
“She’s a god damn werewolf!” One of the male voices yells angrily.
“A fucking werewolf.” Another voice.
“Fuck!” Someone else yells from the back of the group.
I can hear his voice against the confines of walls. Only we’re not in a room, so how can there be walls? It’s dark.
Almost pitch black and very hard to see anything with my swollen eyes. Maybe we’re in a cave. I try to focus on what I can figure out without doing more than using my brain.
But focussing as my body bleeds it’s slow human death is too great a task even for me to do. I can feel the life of me slipping out of me, with the blood. Leaving itself wherever I’ve been dumped.
“I told you I want a mate of my own.”
“Well you should’ve been more selective of your intended before you snapped her Achilles tendon in your mouth like a scooby fucking snack!” A male voice yells back.
“I don’t want her now.” The other voice says, the one who wanted me as his mate. “No werewolves.”
No wonder I can’t feel my foot. That must’ve been the one who’d struck first. Hard and low. Taking out my ability to run and flee. Smart tactic really. If not somewhat sadistic.
“You’ve ruined our night.”
“Oh like you got it right the first time you did it.” Comes the reply.
I’m not the first person to suffer at this group’s hands. That can’t be good. Because I’m fairly certain I’m the only one here with these sick fucks.
“I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen, all the ones around that camp fire are fucking werewolves! But no, like a fucking gazelle, you wanted to strike out at the one furthest from the fucking heard.”
“Come on, she looked ripe for the picking.”
“She wasn’t with them.”
“When are you going to learn?”
“You got to get smarter than this.” A softer recrimination. “Think more like them.”
I blink slowly as they argued my worth and their mistake amongst themselves. Breathing feels like something pressing on my chest. Every time I breathe, small stabbing pains in my side flare with each movement of my torso’s muscles. Around my rib area.
“She was with them. Has to have been.”
It sounds to me like one of these personalities has had plenty of interaction with werewolves. Because they’re the angriest voice here.
“Look at her, she’s too young, those others were older.”
“But were they alone?” The female asked the males caustically. “Think next time asshole.”
“What a waste.” Someone mutters unhappily.
“Not entirely.” The voice I now recognized as the one who had wanted to make me his “intended”. The sound of a zip on jeans being undone.
I silently beg the universe to let me die first before he can get to me.
“They’re going to come searching for her. I think they heard her.”
Footsteps walk around me as I look at bare feet, covered in dirt and blood. Denim jeans bagging under his feet. Warm liquid pours onto me in one stream. Stinging my cuts and running into my eyes and mouth. Making me gag and splutter. The smell of it lets me know what my use was to them now. Not much more than a toilet.
Just kill me already I want to mutter at them.
“Who?”
“Her pack stupid! She’s clearly part of one at that camp group. You heard them as clear as the rest of us did when she screamed out before you knocked her out cold.”
I smiled to myself in my head. I’d screamed? Go me.
I scrunch up my face as my intended’s urine flows over me. A grunt and the urine stops. The sound of his jeans zip going up again, thankfully.
“How’d you know she has a pack? Maybe she’s the only one and they’re just naive humans.”
“No way would so many of those kids be gathering out here at this time of the month, without ulterior motives. They’re werewolves. These woods are regularly littered with the fuckers.”
“That how you got bitten? Wandering around here by yourself on one of their annual pilgrimages?”
Silence.
I’d say that was a confirmation if ever I didn’t hear one.
No sympathy here, for what happened to the female lycan or for me. Great, there’s a psycho lycan thinking she’s justified in doing this to me because she got bit.
“How long you think till she’s dead?” My intended asks the group again, switching topic.
Not long enough I think silently, keeping my eyes closed. Death can’t come quick enough for me to greet it. But sleep is quick and I passed out at some point.
8
I wake up in the same place. Covered in blood and urine and other things. My body battered, torn and shredded. Wheezing and trying to breathe, trying not to choke on blood. Muscle and tendons severed from the bones in one wrist that I can see are exposed.
Human’s can’t do that kind of damage to me. They just didn’t have that kind of raw animal power. Even in a frenzied attack, like the one they blitzed me with, it takes more. In the ferociousness of my attack I knew they weren’t humans.
Shape shifters or lycans are my best guess. Well, it’ s my only guess. I don’t really know what else exists outside of these. I’ve never needed to know.
I’m a modern day werewolf. I live in a city, a concrete jungle. A house. I have neighbors. I go to school. That’s the world I live in. I’ve never even met a lycan.
That’s the world I want to get back to, I keep thinking as I struggle to breathe continuously through aches, pains, stabbing spasms and now a burning fever.
I want to return to the safety of my otherwise structured and ordinary life. I’d even settle for getting bullied at school for an entire year if it meant never having to have to experience this.
Growing Up Werewolf Page 3
