Teethmarks and Wolf Pelts

Lewis doesn't even turn around, but I know he hears me approach. I'd ran after his scent and it lead me here, to a place in the woods that is dense with trees. You almost have to dodge and weave through them, more so than usual anyway. I come to quite a shock when I find him, however. Lewis is standing with his back to me, completely naked, with his clothes thrown around him. In any normal circumstance, seeing any boy's bare ass would have made me feel embarrassed or would have made me laugh or any variety of other things, but right now all I can feel is rage and blood lust.

Lewis lets out a long, low growl, but still doesn't turn. His back muscles are clearly defined, but that's not what makes me step backward. It's a small speck of black blood, like I had seen on Connor just moments ago. His hair is matted down to his head by his sweat, but I notice a couple specks of blood there. With fists still clenched, I crack my knuckles.

"I'm surprised that werefox let you live," he says, his voice remarkably hollow. Even though he can't see it, I grin evilly at his back.

"I think he knew I'd be the one to kill you."

Lewis laughs. I spin my head behind me, just for a second. Felix had been following me, hadn't he? Where is he?

"You've got no chance, Priscilla. Sure, you're newly turned and the wolf inside you is still wild and strong, but you couldn't take me on, not at all. Besides, you won't do a thing to hurt me."

"What makes you think I won't, huh?" I shout at him, my voice cracking. "You sent hunters after innocent two natured. You sent one of them after Connor!"

"Connor had to die," Lewis mutters. Any normal human wouldn't have caught it, but I did. "He knew way too much."

"What do you mean, Lewis? And you better give me a straight answer." At this, Lewis spins around to face me. I let my gaze shift from his feet up, drawing in every muscle for the last time. From his neck down, he looks as normal as can be, minus the few splatters of blood on his chest and neck. His face, however, is a different story. Black blood surrounds his lips and runs down his chin. His marvelous blue eyes are ringed in red, as if he hasn't slept in days. There's blood in his blond hair. He casually pushes it away from his face and grins. His teeth are stained with Connor's blood.

"No point in lying to you anymore. After you told me you didn't feel the same, I knew you weren't worth anything to me anymore. You're going to die anyway."

I bite down on my lip, trying not to yell back. I want to scream at him, go ahead and charge him, but he has something to say about Connor, and therefore, he can live a little longer. I want to hear his words, as some sort of way to get a grip on my friend's death.

"I'd been killing off two natured long before these recent ones," he says. I swallow my spit and try not to let my distress show on my face. It's a fact that dogs can sense fear... Could werewolves be the same way? "The first few I did myself. A werecat or weredog here or there. Even a few werecoon. All I had to do was tell the two natured police officers that I thought they were actually those animals and before I could realize the truth, they were already dead. I was very surprised when they believed me. But, it happened to many times, and they were starting to get suspicious."

"Why wouldn't they? You were flat out killing innocent people!"

"They weren't innocent!" He screams at me, his bloody teeth a disgusting focal point. "They were disgusting two natured! They didn't belong to packs, they didn't like the way they were. They needed to pay for what they did to me."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not a pureblood, Priss! I was bitten, turned against my will. It happened around the age of 12, so I just played it off to the others as being my first pureblooded Change. No body was there to help me, no one to explain to me how this world worked. And finally, I found a great friend. Someone who taught me all I know about this life, someone who has kept my turning a secret. He even kept my killings secret because I fed him the same lies I fed the cops."

My mind clicked into place then. His second in command, the too trusting, kind hearted Elijah. He is immensely loyal to Lewis, and I do applaud him for such loyalty, but had he known the truth -that Lewis had been killing for fun- I'm sure he would have had a different perspective about things. "He's such a sweet guy, you shouldn't have done that to him," I mutter. Lewis only shrugs.

"I thank him though," he grins, now starting to pace around. I have been standing in one place, not able to take my eyes off of the murderer standing before me. "Though he never realized it, he's the reason I began killing off the werefoxes. Sure, it gave me a tiny thrill knowing that they were dead, and it did give me an power in this world, but those aren't the reasons I did it."

"What are they then?" I ask through my gritted teeth. Lewis beams and steps toward me. He circles around me, his cold, blood-slicked fingers sliding on my chest. I close my eyes and try my hardest not to whimper. Where are you, Felix? I ask myself, but dare not project it. Lewis would hear it.

"He let me see how superior werewolves were to the rest of them. The others are useless creatures. Wolves are best- able to run in the wild and feared by everything. They're prefect creatures."

"And that gives you the right to kill those who aren't like us?" His fingers drum against my chest, just as mine would against my school desk. I shiver and let out a soft moan of fear. Lewis seems not to notice.

"No," he sighs, "But it gave me some more initiative."

I clench my eyes even tighter, but call out in my self-created darkness. "Why Connor, then? Why kill him if wolves are so perfect."

"Heh, I tried to kill that bastard the first night he joined us for a bonfire. Everyone loved him, kept saying how strong he was, how fast he was. It was all true and I needed him gone. I tried to poison him that night. I put on some gloves and ground up some aconite into a fine powder. I then slipped it into his drink."

He pauses while I draw in a breath.

"But he didn't die! He just said that his drink tasted funny! He didn't even get sick!" He shakes his head and returns to his place in front of me. I quickly open my eyes again. "I tried it three more times, and the same result came from it. He was just fine. Connor was immune to aconite!"

"That's impossible," I tell him but oddly enough, I sort of believe him. "An aconite dagger is what killed him- at your orders."

"Priscilla, anyone would die from a fatal stab to the stomach. It wasn't the aconite that killed him," he pauses and licks the blood from his lips. I shudder and my stomach churns. "So, with this talent, he became very valuable to me. I confessed to him my plans of ridding this area of the werefoxes. He thought I was crazy, like literally crazy, and said we needed to tell the police. I told him that if he did such a thing, that I'd kill that pretty girl he loved- you." Lewis grins. "So, he ran."

I let my mouth fall slightly. All this time I had been concerned with keeping Connor's whereabouts secret, then all I had cared about was finding him, and even now, all I care about is avenging him but not once did I ever consider why he had run away in the first place. As Lewis speaks and I fill in the pieces, it is all coming together and it just awakens even more anger within me. Ember howls within me, yearning to exact my revenge for me. But I force her away.

Lewis wanders slightly to the left where a clear water bottle sits. I hadn't noticed it before, but now that I have, I can see that it's filled nearly halfway with a dark liquid- Connor's blood. He had scraped out the blood and drained him of it. Lewis opens its cap and takes a long, drawn out swig. He looks at me and says, "Now, with his blood in me... I should be immune as well. I have no weaknesses now." He speaks with confidence, but I can tell that not even he is sure if the blood with grant him the immunity he seeks. He then dumps what little remains of Connor's blood on his head, letting it drip down his large muscles, his back, and it just keeps dripping down.

This fuels my anger up to its limit. The Change comes then, out of nowhere, and I throw myself at Lewis before my transformation is even complete. He stumbles backwards a bit, but he pushes me backward. Even in human form, he's much stronger than any other person should be. I land gracefully on my feet. I've now taken Ember's form and with her help, we rush at him again. Lewis steps out of the way at the last minute, but luckily, we turn fast enough to hit him in the back. He falls forward, drops to his knees and let the Change overtake himself as well. In a matter of seconds, the muscular blond boy had become the large white-coated Alpha. His blue eyes, somehow the same level of animalistic as before, narrow at me.

"You're making a mistake, Priscilla. You may not love me now, but you could learn too. We can drink Connor's blood! We'll be invincible," he projects.

"You ruined any chance of me having any human feelings about you when you had Connor killed." I let out a low growl and pounce again. Lewis is knocked backward with a loud grunt, but he gets to his feet again. He snaps his large jaws at me, but I dodge them. He swipes out at me and suddenly, his claws rake along my right side. I throw my head up in howl, the pain in my side now a burning sensation. I snarl at the other wolf and got to bite him, but he swipes again. He narrowly misses my first set of scratches, but digs in right under them. I send out another howl.

You can do this, I tell myself. I try and ignore the pain and lunge for that bastard again. My fangs sink right into his neck. He screeches out and thrashes around until I pull away, his white fur now dripping scarlet. I don't even want to think about my side. I raise up on my hind legs and use both my front paws to nudge him backward. However, he gets to his feet as well and as I'm about to nudge again, he Shifts and uses all of his body weight to push and ram me backward right into a tree. My head hits the wood with a crack and I fall down in front of the naked boy. I had fallen to the ground and I'd hit my head once more there as well. I groan in suffering and clutch my burning side. I feel something sticky swell between my fingers as I scream out.

Lewis snarls and kicks me right in the gut. Just like that day in the woods, I start coughing up blood. "Stop screaming or I'll make sure your death is slow."

I whimper, tears coming to my eyes. Even though he has the upper hand, I'm not about back down yet. I use my elbows to propel myself across the forest floor, trying to somehow get to my feet. Lewis just kicks me once again, knocking me back down with a loud grunt. He shakes his head down at me condescendingly. "Give up, Priss. You've lost. You're in no shape to fight me. You never had a chance. And now, with Connor's blood within me, not even aconite can kill me. I am invincible!"

But, as irony would have it, that's when the best thing in weeks happens. Lewis yells out and stumbles backward. In the mid-morning sunlight I see the silver head of an arrow protruding from the right side of his neck and smoke rising from it. Lewis keeps yelling and even tries to pull the arrow out by its shaft but it's a futile attempt. The arrow is lodged in his neck tightly. The smell of burring flesh fills my nostrils and that's when I realize it; the arrow head had been laced with aconite. Lewis had been wrong about Connor's blood.

I whip my head around as Lewis calls out for me to help him. Suddenly, to my right Elijah stalks out from behind a tree, armed with a crossbow. He is being closely followed by Felix. He's gone to get helpful. If it weren't for how much pain I'm in, I would have rushed to hug and kiss him. Elijah is dressed in just his tight gym shorts as is Felix, the collar of his dress shirt still hanging loosely from his neck. Elijah's hands shook violently as he raises the crossbow again. He shivers. "Felix got me here just in time. I was already on my way when he caught me and brought me here. I heard almost everything."

Lewis didn't say anything to him, but rather tried tugging on the the arrow shaft, his hand close to the laced head. Elijah grunts, "You lied to me every day since I met you. I trusted you, I protected you. I taught you all I could- and all that amounted to this?" He is seething now and I see a tear spill down his cheek. Elijah pulls the trigger back and another arrow flies at Lewis. It spears straight through his hand and into his neck, pinning his hand to his flesh. He screams as loud as humanly possible. He falls to the ground. Elijah is crying now as he steps closer. He points his bow down at Lewis's chest.

"Apologize," Elijah says through his tears. Lewis can't stop bawling himself, still screaming in fiery agony.

"I'm sorry, Elijah," he whimpers through his screams. Elijah kicks him as hard as he can in the head and the boy at his feet howls out in pain. Elijah steps on his face, turning it so it's facing my body, lying on the ground as well.

"Now her," he says.

"I'll kill you all," he growls. The arrows are still smoking and I can sense that he's in much more pain than I am. "I'll never apologize to her. But, if you take these fucking arrows out and I'll let you two live."

"I'm sorry Lewis," Elijah says through even more tears. "We can't let that happen."

With that said, Elijah steps around Lewis, aims the bow at his chest and fires. Lewis lets out one final gasp of breath before the suffering within his body consumes him completely. Even though he doesn't make any more noises. Within a minute, Lewis is dead.

Felix runs to me, picking me up gently into his arms. He's careful to avoid my side and my bruises. His lips touch my forehead but all I look at is Lewis's naked body, one arrow in his neck, another pinning his hand to his neck, and a third sticking out of his chest. I should feel happy or relieved or scared or something, but I'm not. I should cry. I should be grateful it's all over, but for some odd reason, now that my problems are all solved, there is only one thing I can do. And I do so.

One last glance at his naked body, I laugh harder than I have in ages.