Self Reflection

The blood in Skylar's vein's sizzled and popped. Her adrenaline rose and made her jump while she sat on the couch, jumped to her feet, and then sat back down again. Her father studied her with dark blue eyes. Eyes as dark as the bottom of the ocean, the eyes she had once loved as a child, but had grown to hate in her teenage years.

"Skylar!" He snapped, "Sit or stand, quit acting like a child." He picked his glasses up off the coffee table and balanced them on the bridge of his nose. He turned his attention away from her and back to his paper.

Skylar scrunched her nose at him. Ever since that terrible day he had become a different man. He wasn't the father he once was, the one who would come home from work and pick her up of her feet to give her a hug. Now he was the one who locked himself away without a sideways glance in her direction. He wasn't the husband who would come home and passionately kiss her mother anymore, but the man who would spend late nights at work sleeping with his secretary. Her mother never suspected, but had walked past his office two years ago on her way home from Ryan's fifteenth birthday party. She saw them lying on his desk kissing, through the window, she had to sallow the bile in the back of her throat. She could no longer look at her father a loving caring man, but as the devil in disguise.

The doorbell rang, Skylar hopped out of her seat and ran to the door. She didn't even look at the boy, knowing who he was, as she opened the door. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the lips. "How are you, Ryan?"

"Well, maybe I'd feel better if you got my name right." Skylar opened her eyes, only to meet the glowing yellow eyes of Matthew.

She pulled her body away from his and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I didn't know you were coming, actually I didn't think I'd see you again." She shut the door behind her.

"So, you kiss me?" he grinned at her wickedly, "You're a hell of a kisser, by the way. I prefer a little tongue action, but whatever floats your boat is cool with me."

"I thought you were my boyfriend." Skylar glared at him. She leaned back against the wood of the door, crossing her arms over her chest. She remembered the night before, the pressure of his body on hers, the heat that flowed between them. The sent of his blood as it poured on top of her. She shivered.

Matt chuckled and leaned against the white column with his shoulder. His black leather jacket made his eyes pop, as did the rest of his dark attire. She could make out the outline of his abs through his tight gray shirt. Skylar wanted to press her hands against them, to touch every part of his body with hers. She felt herself seem to extend towards him, she grunted and pushed herself harder against the door.

"Well, I don't think he'll be too happy to see me, what do you think?"

"No, I don't think he will. He's not too fond of my ale companions." Her fingers tingled, wanted to wrap themselves in his wavy blond hair.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't involve yourself with vermin like that." He winked at her. The look in his eyes burned through her boundaries and stared into her soul. Peeling away all the veils, exposing every secret she kept in her possession.

"I agree, now leave." she attempted to throw extra walls in his way, but he didn't seem phased.

"Ouch, looks like I have a bad ass on my hands."

Skylar couldn't help but smile.

"Cancel your plans with your lover, we have matters we need to discuss." He grabbed her elbow and towed her towards the car parked in the driveway."

"We aren't lovers," she said ripping her arm out of his grip," and he's more important to me than some stranger."

"I'm not a stranger, I'm your sire." He growled, "Be happy I didn't leave you to die." he gripped her arm in a painful way that made her gasp.

"I didn't know you before yesterday, you bastard! If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be in this mess. You invited me into a world I never knew existed, a world I was always told was never true. The worst part of all of this is that I can't walk away from it!" Skylar felt the tears burn in her eyes and run in hot streams down her face.

The cold stare Matt held softened and his features sagged, as if he lost confidence in himself and his words. He pulled her towards his body and wrapped his arms around her, pressing her into every muscle and curve of his body. She seemed to fit perfectly, her head into the crook of his neck, her hips pressed against his, and their legs lightly touching.

She let her hands find his abs and chest, allowing them to linger for awhile before she pushed him away. Throwing up every mental brick she could and sealing them with cement.

"These are matters we have to discuss about you being a Child of Nature." He whispered in her ear.

"Whatever you have to say, you can say it here." Skylar said, steeling herself.

"We have to kill you." Matt said, his cat eyes glowed with menace. He gave her a crooked half smile that sent a chill down Skylar's spine.

"Get in the car." She opened the black car door, got inside, and shut the door before he moved towards it.

~~~

"What do you mean you're not going to die?" Matt slammed his hands on the counter in his apartment. The blue marble countertop shook, but didn't break. Either he didn't hit is as hard as it sounded or the marble was really durable.

Skylar did little twists in her chair, on the opposite side of the counter from him, partially because her adrenaline was still high and because she was nervous especially around Matthew.

"I don't see why my parents, my friends, and my boyfriend have to believe I am dead." She heard herself whine and realized how much like a child she sounded. She regretted speaking to him like that.

Matt raked his hands through his hair and groaned, "You can risk their lives by staying in their lives, not just because you have no clue what you are doing when it comes to being a child of nature, but you're also on every other super natural being's radar."

Skylar snorted and rolled her eyes.

"You won't think that way when you come home to find a vampire drinking your mother's blood or a werewolf fiddling around with your father." She gave him a skeptical look. "Werewolves are slutty." He answered her look with a proud grin he couldn't seem to wipe away.

Skylar's blood boiled, not with hatred, but with jealousy. She couldn't understand why. "I can't do that!" She said through her teeth.

"How hard is it for you to die?" He chuckled to himself, "I'm a professional when it comes to this sort of thing."

"No you're a professional at jumping into girls' pants," she spit at him, "I can't hurt my parents, not that way."

He grinned at her, "Jealousy is a lovely color on you Sky."

She glared at him, so he dropped that topic. "What do you mean you can't hurt your parents?"

"They've suffered enough." Skylar said, she didn't want to talk about that day, she didn't think she'd ever need to.

"Why? You can't drop this Sky!"

"Why do you call us Children of Nature?" She changed the topic, "Isn't it easier just to call us Nature's Children?"

"No! There's a difference. Children of Nature are shapeshifters who were once human. Nature's Children were born shapeshifters. Nature's Children can Change into any shape they want, while we can only change into the shape our body chooses. Also Children of Nature have to be bitten and take another shifter's blood, Nature's Children can skip the bite but they have to take the blood of another shifter in order to activate their abilities."

"Abilities?" Skylar was glad for the change of subject just as much as she was interested in 'her history', which was not very much.

"You don't need to know that," he said giving her a devilish look, "you aren't Nature's Child." He slammed his hands on the counter, making them shake again, "Why won't you let me kill you?"

Back to that topic. "I can't put my parents through that again."

"What do you mean 'again'?" His rage blinded him from the pain Skylar felt on this topic.

She remembered how she felt when she found out. At first she didn't believe it, she laughed actually. At the funeral she couldn't stand it, he was her best friend. She had fallen to the ground crying, digging her hands into the soil. She had to be dragged away so they could finish the ceremony.

The pain she felt then sparked in the pit of her stomach, she keeled over with a shriek, curling into a ball before she hit the hard wood floor. Her nails dug into her sides, hot tears rolled down her cheeks and throat. She couldn't muffle her cries, she felt as if he was next to her, holding her, breathing reassurance into her ear.

His hand stroked her back and brushed out the tangles in her hair. She wrapped her arms around him an cried into his shoulder. He felt familiar, strong, fit, but his scent was different not of burning cinnamon but a sweet scent mixed with mint.

"Christopher." Skylar sighed. She opened her eyes to find Matt cradling her to his chest. She let her arms fall away from him and he slowly released her. He helped her back into her seat, she didn't look him in the eyes.

"Who's Christopher?" He asked after a couple minutes. His eyes glowed, not with anger but with guilt.

Skylar stared down at her hands in her lap, silent. Twiddling her thumbs.

"I can't help you," he began to raise his voice, but caught himself before he continued, "if you don't tell me what's wrong."

Skylar took a deep breath and then another before looking him in the eye, "Christopher was my brother." She breathed again, "He died about five years ago."

Matt dropped his gaze from her and focused on the counter. "How old was he?"

"Eighteen."

How old were you?"

"Eleven or twelve."

He swallowed, she watched his Adam's apple move as he did so, "How'd he die?"

Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, but she answered anyway. "He was stationed in Afganistan,..." she sobbed any other words she thought of saying were lost.

Matt's hand had been on Skylar's shoulder, but he released her. She felt as if a block of ice rested in the pit of her stomach. Her hand reached out to him, but she drew it into her chest immediately.

"I hate war." She muttered to herself. He looked at her and studied her curiously, "I hate death, too. People believe it's the only thing they're here for: to conquer, to kill, or to be killed." She felt the hysteria rise when she grinned and giggled. "I don't know what I'm here for."

"Skylar," Matt said cautiously, thinking before he spoke, that's a first, "life is filled with many battles, some of those battles are harder than most."

"That's the funny thing," she stood up off the stool and walked up to him, "is that I have to face the toughest things life gives me." She let her fingers crawl up his chest, "I live with death and war, my dad cheated on my mom, my whole family is falling to pieces, and to top it all off you turned me into a monster." She looked down at his chest where what once was a hand was replaced with a mixture of a paw/ hand. A hand of a human with the claws of an animal. "Thank you for that." She growled at him.

"Your emotions are heightened, that's what this does, that's what the bite does. You need to breath, you aren't used to this."

She chuckled to herself, in a way that sent shivers down her spine, "That's where you are wrong Matt, Matthew, whatever I should call you," she turned away from his burning eyes, "I've always been like this."

She turned away from him and slammed her fist into the counter top like he had earlier, but when her hand made contact she heard a ear splitting crack. She looked down at her hand, thinking she would find it deformed from broken bones, but found cracks in the hard marble countertop. Traveling out from her hand like a spiderweb and she was the spider.