Streak of Black

"Seeing as it was my idea to come here, Lovett seems to think that I should tell you guys what we've been up to all these years, completely defeating the purpose of having an older brother." My family laughs at me, and my Pack snickers a little.

"You have your father's attitude at that age," Lunette tells me, causing a smile to tug at the corners of my mouth. Her face mirrors mine, and she urges me on.

"After Uncle Rollo died, Lovett and I didn't know what to do. We weren't sure if we should stay with you guys or just leave. We both felt a little responsible, silly now, yes." Perhaps not seeing as I did have a little warning before hand, but they don't know that just yet. "But at the time, we just thought that death would follow us to you all if we stayed, and we didn't want you guys to go through what our parents had and what he had. We didn't want to go through that again. Later that night, however, we realized that we didn't have any way of getting anywhere, we didn't have any supplies. So, at around 4 in the morning, we snuck back in.

"We just wanted to get some clothes. We didn't know what to do about money, but we thought that we'd just figure it out as we went along. We were as quiet as possible, but one of us must have woken up Kenley—Louna was with you, Aunt Lunette. Kenley woke up and demanded to know what we were up to. We—I—begged him not to tell you, to just let us go and let that be that. But he didn't. He led us downstairs and out to the shed where Uncle Rollo kept his little cabinet with the lock code. Kenley typed in some numbers and handed us a jar of 10,000 euros that our parents had left behind for us." Lovett is a bit surprised that it was actually left for us, but he stays silent. "We stashed it with our stuff, said good-bye, and left. We paid some adults to play our parents and help us get passports and were off to America.

"We landed somewhere in Pennsylvania and decided to just stay in the forest after exchanging the money we had for U.S. dollars with the help of a very suspicious man. There weren't many options for us. We weren't old enough to buy or rent a place and we needed to stay close to the forest and stay far away from people. We didn't want to interact with society—we just wanted to be us against the world.

"So, we paid a cabby to take us to the nearest forest—we had to give him a little extra money to stay quiet and forget that he ever saw us. We stayed there for a few weeks, living off the land and the few supplies we had. We cleaned our clothes in streams, ate fish that we caught and snacked on berries that we picked off the bushes. It wasn't ideal, but we managed. Each day, we explored further, reaching deeper and deeper into the forest. We didn't even know where we were anymore, how far from the road we had gotten, whether we had gotten turned around. We honestly didn't care. We were depressed, the only thing keeping us going being each other.

"After a few months, we came across a fairly-sized house, really more of a large cabin. It was a little run-down but already had furniture and seemed to have been abandoned for a while. We figured we'd just stay there. There were a couple of unnecessary rooms, but the plumbing worked, it had electricity, and it was warm. We decided to stay and picked out the best looking rooms. We finally had a home again. We began making monthly trips to the grocery store and go clothes shopping whenever we outgrew what we had. We still had a lot of money left over, and whenever we ran out of food, we would just eat off of the forest for the rest of the month. It was a pretty good life. We were finally starting to do okay.

"After about three years, we were shopping and saw a boy, no older than 15 who just looked so lost and alone. We could sense that he was a werewolf, and we introduced ourselves. When he said that he had nowhere to stay, we told him that we had plenty of room and would gladly except him into our home. And that is how Eyulf joined our Pack."

My family gazes at my Pack mate with interest. "How did you come to meet my cousins, Eyulf?" Louna asks.

Eyulf shyly clears his throat and looks down at his hands. I stop in my story as all eyes turn to him—I always found Eyulf's story tragic but fascinating. "When I was almost 15, my father kicked me out." He always tells his story in an ominous voice, his thick accent making it even more dramatic even though he isn’t really trying to make it so. "My mother had died of some type of disease, and he blamed me for bringing foreign germs from school into his household. He beat and yelled at me, calling me many names that I wouldn't care to repeat. He threw a credit card in my face and told me, 'Get lost, you ungrateful little bastard! How dare you kill your mother, after everything she's done for you! Do what you want with that card, but never come back, or I swear, I will risk touching steel to shoot you between the eyes!'

"I was just a kid. I didn't know what to do with myself. All I had was the card, my passport, and the clothes on my back. I walked alone on the streets of Norway for several weeks, hardly eating, not caring what happened to me. I didn't think it was my fault that my mother had died, it had to be some type of poison—werewolves don't get sick. I just didn't understand. Finally, I figured it out. My father had poisoned her and framed me. I'd been so blind, so stupid. I had simply accepted what he told me and left well enough alone. I drank with the alcoholics in the gutter that night, the night of my 15th birthday. I wanted to get drunk—I wanted to block out that pain and anger, opting for the comfort of the rum's embrace. But the alcohol only amplified my anger. I felt invincible. And I wanted to kick my dad's ass.

"I took one of those drunk's gloves when he passed out and went to the nearest gun store, a shady place near my old house. I paid him extra to keep his mouth shut and to just give me a gun with two steel bullets. He did so, and I was off. Before I knew it, I was banging angrily on my father's door at around midnight, the gun in the hand with the glove and the bottle in the other. My father was surprised and tried to slam the door in my face, but I was stronger. I kicked it in and chased him inside.

"We ran around the house for a while—it was pretty big—before I had him cornered in his room, near my mother's side of the bed, right where she spent her last moments. Strangely, even through my intoxication, I maintained my coordination, speed, and strength. My father was trying to pry the window open, but before he could, I smashed the bottle over his head, and he fell to the ground. I kneeled down by where he quivered, placing the gun on his leg, the only thing keeping it from touching his skin being the sweat and urine soaked jeans he wore. I breathed right next to his ear and whispered, 'How do you like to be poisoned.' I shot him in the calf, and he screamed this wretched shriek of pain." Eyulf looks pained as he recalls his father's final minutes. I once asked him if he regretted it. He told me that he regrets nothing that happened that night, but he also said that he will never kill another man, whether in revenge or in cold blood no matter whether he's as sloshed as he was that night or not. Zeeva grabs his hand comfortingly and squeezes.

"I looked at my father with a cold heart and wicked intentions that night as the smell of rum mixed with blood tickled my nose. I asked him angrily, 'Do you like that!' I asked, 'Do you like the poison in your blood! Do you feel that! That's how mom felt!' Then I yelled at him to answer my questions, and he yelled back, 'No, you heartless son-of-a-bitch! I don't like it!' I told him, 'Too damn bad!' and pressed the gun against his head. He screamed out in pain again, but I didn't care. I was hollow, soulless, my mother having taken everything of me with her to the grave. All the money in the world didn't matter when I lost my mother, and my father had done it. 'How did you do it?' I demanded. He told me that he'd spiked her water with drops of liquid steel every day for 5 days, and it fried her from the inside. That enough was what made me smack him with the gun. He shrieked out one last time, but I ignored him. The cry of pain had barely passed his lips when my second bullet was placed directly between his eyes, exactly what he said he'd do to me if I ever came back to his house.

"I knew I couldn't stay there. All of that yelling and the gun. There weren't any police there yet, but I was paranoid. I got out of there as soon as possible and didn't stick around to be questioned. I knew that they wouldn't be able to get any accurate prints from the bottle because my prints were mixed with those of the homeless men that the bottle was shared with. I cleaned the gun, wrapped it in a pillow case, and threw it down a pothole a mile away.

"I came back the next day. My father was gone and the house was blocked out to the public. I snuck in, hacked his computer, and transferred every last penny of his billions into my bank account. After that, I went to the airport and bought a one-way ticket to some Pennsylvanian small-town with cash only. In Pennsylvania, I created my own bank account there and transferred the money from my Norwegian account to that one. With nothing else to do, I simply walked around, and after a few days, Lovett and Louve found me, broken, hollow, and ready to give up on life. They gave me hope, and with that, they gave me back life." He smiles at us. "I can never forget what you guys did for me."

"You better not, you pacifist," I tease, using the word Rudi had to describe him when they first met. He grins sheepishly at us, and I wink at him.

"So you gave up on violence altogether?" Lunette asks.

"I still fight, but it's just for training purposes only, or when, you know, we're being attacked by hunters as has become a regular occurrence for us. The only reason I would ever fight is in self-defense, but even in that case, I wouldn't kill unless it's my life or theirs, but I really try sticking strictly with incapacitation only. I made a vow to myself after that night that I would never kill again and I would never attack anyone else again unless I was provoked."

"So do you regret your acts against your dad?" Louna inquires quietly.

"Not a day goes by that I don't remember what I did that night with the rum bottle and the gun. Of all those days, I've regretted nothing that happened that night."

My family looks a little taken aback by that, but they don't judge my friend. I sigh and decide to proceed with the story. "After we met Eyulf, Lovett and my sole purpose was to revive him and put life back into him. He suffered from nightmares, was depressed, was sometimes very angry, but we refused to give up. And then one day, out of nowhere, he seemed to get over it. He shook it off and told us what had happened and told us that he would never be that person again but that if we wanted to kick him out, he would understand." I glance at my brother and roll my eyes at his wide smile. "Lovett told Eyulf that if he ever said that again, he would personally whack him over the head with a full wine bottle made from grapes grown at France's finest winery.

"A few months after, probably around the first or second Cycle of the next year, I wasn't feeling well. It wasn't that I was sick or being poisoned. There was just something strange happening to me." Now that I think about it, it could have just been Monique draining me, but I don't say that out loud. "The guys were worried about me, but it was the Full Moon, so we couldn't do much about it. I shrugged off their concern, and we went out. I was still a bit...off. I ran a bit further from the boys than I should have. I ran straight through the forest until I found people. The girl shrieked at the snarling wolf and ran, but I got the boy before he even knew what was going on."

"And that boy would be me," Ryder says playfully, feigning annoyance. He squeezes my hand, and my family looks at him expectantly. My best friend and mate sighs and looks at them. "Back three years ago, I was some rebellious kid with mommy and step-dad issues. I didn't have cash to throw away like these guys, and I was in a pretty bad situation. I cut school a lot which caused my mom to hit me and tell me to get my act together. My dad had over-dosed a few years before when I was about 10, and I kind of followed in his footsteps. I wasn't all that fond of my step-dad, so that made my entire home situation that much worse. I started smoking pot with some guys I knew which caused my step-dad to beat me and tell me to stop pissing my mom off. I ran away a lot and hid out with my brother at Penn State University for a few days every now and again to calm down. I didn't care what happened to me or anyone else. I felt like, if this is what life in the real world is like, then what's the point of giving it any effort. I fell into a black hole.

"I got around a lot at school. Girls who were looking for a fix came to me and exchanged a 'date' for some pot. I was perfectly fine with that—everyone was happy. And then, one of my 'dates' led me into the forest. It was some hippie chick who wanted ‘to be one with nature while high.’ I didn't really care. I got what I wanted, and she was driving. We wound up in some little clearing that she knew, and I didn't even really care—I was already kind of high to begin with. We started kissing, and out of nowhere, the girl looks up, shrieks, and disappears. A very high and sluggish me looks up and doesn't realize that a giant freaking wolf is standing right there. I thought I was hallucinating or just looking at some dog and got ready to pet it even as the fur on her back stood up and she bared her incredibly, like unrealistically, sharp teeth at me.

"I didn't realize what was going on until those sharp teeth had clamped down on my arm. I remember this sharp pain shooting through my entire body as I fell down and began to writhe all over that hippie girl's blanket. I passed out, and when I woke up, I was immediately met with the same exact pain. I didn't understand what was happening to me. I thought I might have gotten rabies or something. I passed out again. The next time that I woke up, I was in a bed with a pretty but terrified girl by my side. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes were her green ones, the same exact eyes as those on the wolf.

"I flipped out. 'What the hell did you do to me?' I asked angrily. I tried to get up, but it felt like needles were prickling all over my body. I asked the usual questions: where am I, who are you, what the hell is going on. I was freaked out. She calmly explained everything: who she was, what she was, what she had accidentally turned me into. She tried to explain that it was that sickness, that she normally wouldn't have done that kind of thing. But I wasn't hearing it. I didn't want to. I wanted to kill this girl for what she'd done to me. I wanted her to suffer. I started yelling, and her brother and other 'Pack mate' came rushing into the room. That was the moment that her brother hated me." He glances at Lovett, and my brother reaches around me to punch Ryder playfully in the arm.

"Well you guys certainly don't hate each other now," Kenley notes with mild amusement as the boys begin shoving each other behind my back, and I shift forward to avoid getting caught in the crossfire as I roll my eyes.

They exchange sheepish looks and stop. Lovett looks Ryder over and shrugs. "Recent events have forced us to re analyze the dynamic of our relationship and have made me realize that he might not be the enemy."

Ryder grins triumphantly at my brother and continues with the story. "Despite my initial reaction and all of the negative feedback she received whenever talking to me, Louve continued to come and see me every day. She'd talk about her life, ask me about mine. She brought me cool compresses and blankets when I went through withdrawal from all of the drugs. She'd bring me food, and tell me all about my new abilities. The one thing that really stuck out in my mind was the super strength. After a couple of weeks, I started to feel a bit more normal, if all of my senses were more advanced. On the day that I was able to sit up without flinching or gritting my teeth in pain at the action, I cornered her. I told her that if she was truly sorry, she would come with me to get payback on my step-father and mother. Not knowing what she was walking into, she agreed, despite the obvious certainty that this would end badly.

"We walked to town, an action that took hours. I complained several times asking why they didn't just get a car; well, I kind of asked why we didn't steal one. Like I said, I wasn't a good kid before all of that happened. She calmly explained that they would never be able to hide it, and they enjoyed the physical activity. She told me I'd eventually come around and appreciate it. I told her that I highly doubted that as I've never been one for athletics, but she was optimistic. I then considered killing her for probably the 20th time that day. I had no doubt that she could read my thoughts, because she told me in that moment that in order to kill her I would need a steel knife or gun and that death was also possible by the consumption of traces of the element. 'Make that 21,' I had said. When she shot me a questioning look, I told her, 'Make that 21 times today that I consider killing you.' She shrugged and basically told me in layman’s terms that if I tried, she'd castrate me with her bare hands and not break a sharp nail doing it. I shut up after that.

"Once we got to my mom's place, we snuck inside using my key. My step-dad was in my room in my stash. He looked up with shock at my arrival. 'Ryder,' he had said tightly. 'What a pleasant surprise,' a reaction I seem to get a lot around people from my past. I hadn't cared what he'd said or done at that moment. I just grabbed him around the throat and shoved him up against the wall in a matter of seconds. I was shocked by this new found power, this new found speed—the strength. I felt like nothing could get me down. My step-dad began to turn purple. I let go of him, and he fell to the floor. He'd done so while clutching his throat and glaring at me with anger and fear. I told him, 'While she doesn't deserve it, you better never hurt my mom again. Because I will be watching, and if you ever hurt her again, I will know. No one can hurt her but me. Got it?' He hadn't looked like he was going to respond, so I wrapped my hand around his throat again, this time banging his head against the wall in the process. He had uttered out an alright, and I turned to go, but not before I grabbed my pot that he'd been trying to smoke and pouring it all down the toilet. I had looked at him and said, 'And no one smokes my pot but me,' before walking out of my room with a surprisingly quiet Louve behind me.

"We ran into my mom on the way out who instantly began chewing me out for disappearing. I called her an evil, self-absorbed, unloving bitch and slapped her, knocking her off of her feet and onto the floor. Before we left, I told her that I loved her despite that, and...I haven't seen either of them since, or anyone in my family for that matter." No one noticed that pause, but I did, because I know it's not true. But I'm not about to give up one of Ryder's few secrets.

A silence falls over everyone when Ryder finishes talking, not knowing how to react to his recollection of his criminal past and disturbing and upsetting childhood. While everyone in my Pack has come from troubling pasts, none of them have lived through some of what Ryder has, and we all know what he's capable of when he’s angry—we've all seen it firsthand both on the battle field and when confronting his past. He knocks the Pack and my family into a tangible silence for several moments.