Daughter of the Night

“What do we have here?” one of the werewolves asked, a leering expression on his pockmarked, ugly, hairy, smelly face. Too bad there were no females among them; I found that they were more intelligent. As it was, these werewolves were exited about something.

I snarled at him, my black cape cascading around my body. “Get out.”

“No can do, girlie,” the leader laughed, his eye twinking evilly. “See, you’ve got yourself a human. We can’t be letting you suck him dry tonight, now can we?”

My eyes narrowed. I should have known this shared meal was going to attract attention. I flipped my black hair, letting it settle wildly. I knew this to be effective in making my appearance more savage, because I really didn’t want to spill blood in this cafe, especially in front of the boy.

“What makes you think I want to drain him?” I asked, my voice like ice.

The werewolves laughed like I had cracked a joke. Their faces turned red as they pounded each other on the back. Another reason I don’t like werewolves; not only are they irritating and disrespectful, but their senses of humor are just bizarre.

“Look,” I snapped, “if I was going to kill him he would have been dead hours ago. Can your tiny brains possibly produce a reason why I would wait all night to feed on somebody when I’ve had countless oppertunities?”

The men looked at each other, their faces darkening. As one, they looked at me, their eyes glowing a wolfish yellow. Apparently that wasn’t the most intelligent thing to say.

“In case you’re to slow to notice, girlie, the full moon’s out,” the leader growled. “This day is ours. Walk away peacefully and you won’t get shredded into pieces, all right?”

I hissed impatiently, showing my fangs. That elicited growls in response.

“How about you let me continue drinking my tea-” I ignored as one wolf choked with laughter “-and you can keep watch from afar. With your noses, you’ll smell any blood if I spill it, and I can have some privacy. We won’t have to bear each others presences.”

The werewolves looked at each other, their discussion in low grunts and growls, totally uncomprehensible even to me.

The leader looked back to me after a minute. “You leave, you live. You stay, you die. Got it?”

I sighed, breaking off a section of the table in frustration. I dropped the chunk of wood absentmindedly and was surprised to see the boy jump. I had practically fogotten he was sitting there. His eyes were big as he took in the ruined table and the widened further as he looked up at the giants called werewolves.

Swallowing, he stood up. Our attention turned to him.

“Look,” he said nervously, “I’m having a meal with a friend. I’m not going to die. In fact, she saved my life. So your precaution is gratifying, but unnecessary.”

The wolves looked startled that he had spoken. They exchanged looks before snickering unflatteringly.

“Saved your life my ass,” one laughed.

“You’ll become the meal,” another one told him wryly.

“Look here, kid,” the leader said, clasping a massive hand on the boy’s shoulder. “That wench there, she’s a vampire. That means she sucks blood. She’s waiting until you’re alone, with no witnesses, and then she’s going to suck you dry. I know her type.”

I scowled again, my features darkening. “I’ve tried doing this peacefully,” I snarled, “and that didn’t work. Now I’m going to resort to force. If you don’t get out, I will bring you within an inch of your life and leave you bleeding on the street.”

The werewolves cracked up. Angrily, I pulled my hair away from my neck to show them the burn mark on my neck.

“This should tell you who I am,” I hissed. From the way their eyebrows shot up and their faces adopted nervous expressions, I had spoken the truth.

“In that case,” I went on, “you will know that I can. So I’m going to give you thirty seconds to remove yourselves from this shop or else I’ll do it for you.”

They looked around nervously, as if realizing their location for the first time. The leader glowered down at me, although I could sense his fear. “We’ll be hanging around,” he warned, “and if you suck his blood, we’ll be on top of you.”

I bared my teeth in a savage grin. “You’re welcome to try.”

I watched with a sense of satisfaction as their massive forms crouched through the doorway. I followed them with narrowed eyes as they walked down the street, an intimidating gang that people went out of their way to go around.

“Who were those men?” the boy asked, breathless. I looked over at him and with a rush of clarity realized that he had no way of knowing that they were werewolves.

“They were the Children of the Moon,” I explained, rubbing my eyes. “The werewolves. They’ll be coming back with a greater force, so I should think of leaving.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

I put my hand down and looked him in the eye. “Tonight is the worst possible night to do something like this. You know why? Because the werewolves have the most power. However, they’re only willing to kill me because I’m keeping company with you. If I leave, they’ll leave both of us alone. And you won’t have to revisit the hospital.”

His eyebrows hooked in a V. “They were trying to split us up because they think you’re going to feed off me. They were trying to protect me. So how would I end up in the hospital?”

I blew out a long sigh. “Werewolves are hardly even intelligent in their human forms,” I told him. “If it came to a brawl and they had to draw out their wolf forms, their rationality would shrink even more. They might not recognize you as a human, partly because you reek of vampire and partly becuase you’d be siding with me. Vampires are solitary unless they have a mate. So if you were backing me they would link us together and it would most likely be your funeral.”

He frowned. “I suppose...”

“Our main goal here is to get out of this without spilling blood,” I told him. “So I’m leaving before they can get reinforcements.” To emphasize my words, I stood, looking distastefully at my tea before smothering a grimace and taking a sip. He would be insulted if I didn’t drink what he had bought me.

It tasted like smelly gym shoes and dead animals. I don’t even know what they tasted like, but it had to be around this level of repulsiveness.

Setting the tea mug carefully back on the saucer, I looked at the boy. “Thank you for your kindness,” I said honestly before turning to leave. He stared up at me like a deer in headlights, as if he hadn’t really seen me before.

“Let’s meet up again sometime!” he blurted out, as if he had overcome some mental barrier holding the words back. “I want to know more about you,” he admitting, flashing me a shy smile. He had dimples, I realized dimly as his green eyes flashed up at me. I have to admit, I was flattered by his request.

“Give me a location and a time,” I commanded, crossing my arms. His smile widened into a grin.

“Tomorrow night, subway station outside western Central park, eleven. Sound good?”

I closed my eyes, remembered the place he was talking about, and nodded. Turning on my heel, I left the coffee shop, too silent to be heard.

For the first time in eighty years, I had a friend. I smiled to myself as I glided through the darkness of the New York night, oblivious to the wolfman behind me until he tried to decapitate me with his huge clawed hand.

I whipped around in time to see an enormous grey wolf leaping towards me, its lips pulled back to reveal knife-sized teeth. I ducked and grabbed its throat as it flew over me, throwing the thing brutally into the concrete ground.

The wolf stood up and shook its massive pelt, entirely impervious to the crushing body slam I had delivered. I snarled impatiently.

“What do you want from me?” I demanded. “I left the human, and now I’m going to kill you if you continue to pester me.”

The wolf bared its fangs in a grin. “Bounty... on... your head...” the thing grunted out. Its words were barely audible, although I supposed it would be somewhat difficult to talk without a huan voice box.

I tilted my head, aprraising. Apparently my old roots were beckoning, after all these years. “Alive, I presume?”

“...yeah...” came the labored grunt of the werewolf. I snorted in disdain. As much as I hated talking to these despicable creatures when they were human, this was just ridiculous. And, of course, this was just a distraction so the real thugs could sneak up from behind. Werewolf ambushes were so transparent.

I whirled around in time to deflect a blow to my face, jamming the half-wolf arm in its socket and launching myself off the owner’s face. As I leaped into the air, my beloved cape snapped open and expanded on either sides, blotting the moon from the sky. I saw five.

Snarling savagely, I leapt into action, leaping and twisting and slashing and lunging at the dancing wolves, our teeth and claws and limbs tangling and disengaging in a rabid dance of death.

My skin was iron and I had massive strength; I was indestructible. The wolves had disgustingly fast recuperative abilities, yet healing at superhuman speeds was still not as good as not getting injured in the first place.

I whirled below a leaping wolf, breaking a jaw with the heel of my boot while simultaneously crushing a paw with my clawed fingers. It never even occured to me that I was airborne most of the time; I was too busy deflecting massive incizors and long claws.

Finally I completed a whirling kick that thrust three wolves into the side of a tall brick building, their impact crushing the bricks beneath them. I grabbed the last wolf by the jugular and crushed his windpipe in my hand. Dropping his deadweight to the ground, I allowed my cape, which had until that point had a life of its own, settle to my shoulders.

I had happily refrained from killing the werewolves; they didn’t deserve to die for something as simple as money. Although, from the damage I had dealt them, I sincerely doubted that they would try to come after me again.

I sighed, the boy’s face flitting across my mind’s eye. At least now I had a name to associate with the face; Aaron. His kindness would certainly lighten my mood for a long time to come, and even better, he had requested to see me again. As he had spoken those words, I had felt joy. Human companionship, after all these years.

Shaking my head slowly at the unnecessary violence, I left my foes to groan in the rubble of the buildings they had all been slammed into repeatedly. I looked at the sky and grimaced. Werewolves always took forever to kill because of their regenerative abilities, and so I had wasted almost an hour here in this filthy corner of the city. I had maybe a half hour to get to my church basement.

I began to walk, ruminating over the night’s events and the boy it had brought. I felt my cheeks pull up in a faint smile and realized that his grin was contagious.