Chapter Nine-Change

Elian wanted the night to be perfect. He was going to propose to Marie. He had been able to hold out for their sixth month anniversary. The entire house had been cleaned. He’d dusted the whole thing from top to bottom; even the rooms that he wasn’t going to use. There were LED lights that went up the walkway to the house. The house looked beautiful with the lights leading up to it and the blue-tinged lights that Elian had put in the porch light sockets.

It was under an hour before Marie was going to be coming over. Dinner was in the oven and finishing cooking. Elian made a simple pot roast so that he wouldn’t have to do as much as far as the food went so that he wasn’t tired or worn out from the cooking. Tonight was going to be special. As he moved around the dining room making sure that everything looked beautiful on the table, he stepped on the floorboard that hid the journals and the letters. He had one entry left to read.

Deciding that tonight was the perfect night to finish reading the journal; Elian dropped to his knees and pulled up the board. Quickly opening it, he started to read.

1900

I’ve searched the older half of the world over and found most of the wolves. They were butchered in the best manner befitting the dogs they were, but they held no knowledge of what the plans were. What the aim of killing the two families meant. They are going to never forget what they did to my family; I will make sure of that.

I wonder again why they never tried to kill me. Why was I not fit to be murdered? Why was I left alive and able to kill them?

Last night, I found out why. I was considered weak. Not a threat. Not even now that I have killed nearly fifteen of their members. The last member I had found laughed when I sunk my hand into his chest. He said that his family was safe, where even I couldn’t touch them. That meant the Colonies. It was the only place that I had never gone before. The Colonies; where humans rarely saw the likes of the Mystics.

I am ready to go. I have very little in the way of possessions, and I can pick up and move easy. My new life in the United States of America awaits me. This journal, while only halfway full, I am leaving it as it is. So ends this part of my life. Raven Shadow is dead. Who knows who is going to be born in her place?

Elian looked at the next page and at every single page after. There was nothing. He moved back to the hidey hole and placed the journal back in its box. Raven had to have taken the second journal book with her. It was somewhere, wherever she was. Elian wanted to get his hands on it to know that she was alive and okay. He felt a connection to her somehow. There was something there that intrigued him. He wanted to meet Raven. He wanted to get to know her.

The sound of a key in the lock surprised Elian. He quickly put up the journal and replaced the flooring. He stood up and started to straighten things on the table that didn’t need to be straightened. Marie came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him close to her.

“Hello.”

Elian turned in her arms to give her a kiss. “Hello to you too.”

“Dinner smells wonderful, and the house is beautiful.” Marie spared a glance around the room before she turned back to look Elian in the face. “You went all out.”

“Yes, I did. I thought you would like it.”

“Well I do, but I am afraid that dinner is going to have to wait. I know that we decided to take things slow but Elian, I want you so bad. I ache to have you inside of me.” Marie’s hand dropped down and cupped Elian. It was then that Elian noticed her clothing. She was dressed in clothing that she never would have worn to work. Her tits were nearly hanging out of her bra, and the shirt barely held them in. She was wearing a skirt that if she bent over, her ass and pussy would be showing. Elian liked where this was going.

“Let me shut off the oven, and I’ll join you upstairs,” Elian said as he let go of her. She gave him a wicked smirk and then she was going up the stairs. Elian moved quickly to the kitchen and shut off the oven. It should be cooked all the way by the time the oven cooled down. They would have to heat it up again to eat it. Once he was sure the kitchen was safe, he quickly moved to the upstairs. He took the steps two at a time until he reached the landing at the top.

The bedroom door was mostly closed, Elian walked normally until he reached it. Now he was getting nervous. Pausing outside the door, he listened. There was no noise from inside the room. Getting up the courage he opened the door.

Marie was lying on his bed in just her underwear and bra. Both were the red, lacy, silky kind. She looked up at him, and Elian lost all the moisture in his mouth. The room was full of the smell of burnt sugar, and it was getting to Elian. He had never smelled it so much before. The aroma was making him hot. He stripped off his shirt and pants quickly before Marie crooked a finger at him. He went willingly to the bed. When he got to the edge of it, he stopped. Marie got up on her knees and inched towards him.

Elian was unsure of what to do. He hoped that Marie wouldn’t mind him fumbling around a little. Reaching out, he pulled her close so that he could kiss her. He immediately traced her tongue with his lips and waited for her to open her mouth. This part he knew. Letting himself get lost in her mouth, he missed her arms leaving his sides and going down farther until one of them had reached inside of his boxers. Her hand curled around his flesh. Elian jerked in surprise but closed his eyes. He let the sensations of her hand all over him wake his cock up to full hardness. After a few minutes, he pulled back from her lips and shoved her back so that she landed on the bed. He crawled on top of her. She giggled as she wrapped her legs around him. Elian started to kiss her again as she ground against him.

Lost in the sensations, Elian just moved with the flow. The feeling of Marie’s mouth was the only thing holding him in the world. A breeze from his open window carried the smell of crushed leaves on the wind. It brought Elian back to the moment. Marie was naked underneath him. He was also naked. He didn’t remember taking his boxers off much less hers.

“What’s wrong?” Marie asked as she ground up against him. The smell of burnt sugar came back to him, and he leaned down to start kissing her again. He fumbled for a few seconds before he found a position where he could get inside of her. Marie shifted her hips and then he was inside of her. It was then that Elian started to wonder about why she was so easy to get inside of. Elian let all thoughts flee his mind, and he quickly began to thrust. He knew that since this was his first time, it was going to go rapidly but not as quick as it normally would have been with someone else who it seemed didn’t have sex as much as Marie did.

He was there thrusting in and out of her and was figuring out every single thing that she had told him was a lie. Their entire relationship was a lie. The rush of release started low in his balls, and he leaned closer to her. He orgasmed as he leaned over and bit Marie on the neck. He felt his release empty into Marie and she was just staring up at him.

“What have you done?”

Raven was leaving work early for the first time ever. She had switched with another worker who had been happy to do it. Raven followed her usual path to her house. She wanted to change out of her human disguise and look like Raven. After that, she would go check on the wolf boy at his home like she tried to do every single night.

When she arrived the first thing that she noticed was the lights leading up to the house. Those were new. The second was that only the bedroom light was on. The third was that both his and the girlfriend’s cars were in the driveway.

Blood running cold, Raven moved up to the house, and when she found the front door unlocked, she entered. The house smelled of food, wine, and sex. It was too late. She moved up the stairs and found that she needn’t worry about getting caught. The bedroom door was mostly closed, and the people inside were talking.

Raven could barely hear them. The smells coming from the room were making her react. She knew that smell. She had smelled it before. Underneath the smell of human and rotten milk was the scent of crushed leaves and water. That she was expecting. What she wasn’t expecting was the smell of freshly turned earth. He had bitten her.

Elian looked at Marie’s neck in shock. She had nearly thrown him off of her when he had bitten her. His knees had been like jelly, and she had tossed him off the bed in her rush to get to the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” Elian said as he watched her in the mirror as she checked the wound. There was only a little bit of blood on her neck like it came from a cat scratch or a thorn catching skin. There wasn’t anything to be worried about, it was just a scratch.

Marie was standing in the bathroom with a shocked look on her face where she had seen the mark on her neck. Elian wasn’t sure what was wrong. He had heard of other guys biting girls during sex in high school and college.

“You aren’t a virgin at least.” The words came from her mouth with a sound of pure relief. He wasn’t sure what was so wrong about him being a virgin and biting her. It wasn’t like it was out of the norm.

“Not anymore,” Elian said simply as he reached out to trace the teeth marks on her neck. Marie jerked around to look at him without using the mirror. Elian took a step from the bathroom from the seriousness of her gaze. He had never seen such anger. It was the only emotion on her face.

“You mean you were a virgin before tonight?” Marie took a few steps towards him and then stopped. “They assured me that you were not a virgin. That you had sex before. That you had sex with her…”

“Her? Who are you talking about?” Elian didn’t like this.

“That red-headed bitch that you work with.” Marie grabbed her clothes and started to get dressed. Elian just stared at how she dressed. She had to be talking about Rae, but there was no way that anyone would have thought the two of them were having sex.

The smell of rotten milk entered his nose as he breathed, the wind had picked up again. The smell of burnt sugar was gone. It was like it had never existed. In its place was the smell of perfume and decay laced heavily with rotten milk. Elian reached down for his boxers. Marie was already dressed in her bra and underwear. She moved entirely into the room and started to put on her jeans. Her hands were shaking, and Elian wasn’t sure what had changed. He wasn’t sure what he had done, but he was sure of one thing, Marie had gone nuts.

“Just stay away, creature.” Marie looked frightened. He didn’t like that he had put that look on her face no matter what. He didn’t like that he scared anyone like that much less the woman that he loved.

“Creature?” Elian repeated. He started to reach out to touch her, but as soon as she saw the hand, she reached out and slapped his hand away. “Marie, please tell me what is going on?”

“You are going to die. I don’t want to be here when you are destroyed for the mutt you are.” Marie rushed past him and into the bedroom, clothes in her hand as she went.

“Marie?” Elian started forward, but as soon as he took a step, he felt a rip in his stomach. The pain dropped him to his knees, and he bit back a scream. He could feel something shifting under his skin. He crawled onto the bed and sat there on his knees. He looked down at his skin where it was like something was crawling underneath it.

Elian closed his eyes and concentrated. He would do what he always did as a child to try and chase away the nightmares. The mantra spilled over his mind like it had so long ago. He was normal. He was normal. That’s all he said to himself as he felt the pain and the change. Marie was looking at him like he was a monster but the glint of metal in her hand showed that she wasn’t that scared. She had a weapon in her hand. Elian shoved himself backward off the bed, and he scrambled as far from her as he could get. The smell of earth and trees was strong as was the other smell…the smell of rotten milk. That smell sent all the hair on his body standing on end.

Something shifting on the other side of the room had him looking over to the central doorway. He turned and there she was, but she wasn’t covered blood like his dreams. She stood there, and for a few seconds Elian thought it was Rae, his new friend from work, but she was wrong…she looked all wrong. The hair and the skin tone were different but what set them apart were the eyes. The purple eyes.

“Rae?” Elian didn’t know what had him speaking and he almost regretted it because when he did talk, she took her eyes from Marie and turned to look at him. It was then that the smell hit him, cinnamon. Cinnamon like Raven in the books but there was no smell of roses. Just cinnamon.

“Vampire,” Marie hissed as she turned to face both Rae and him.

“Run, Elian!” Rae yelled as she picked up a lamp and threw it at the window. The shattering of the glass reminded Elian of his visions. The voice was the same. This had to be Rae but the voice and the look but the face. The face was exactly the same. Rae looked at him, and when he didn’t move, she was there at his side and grabbing him. “She’ll alert them. They are going to kill you.”

Elian was dragged to the window and shoved almost through it. Rae was stronger than he thought she could be. She was so small. Marie had called her a vampire, but Elian had seen her out during the day. There was no way that she could be a vampire. She had to be a werewolf, and Marie didn’t know the difference. It was then that Marie’s words washed over him. Creature. Mutt. She thought he was turning into a wolf. He hadn’t been bitten. There was no way that he was turning into a wolf. There was something else happening.

Pain shot all over his body and Elian felt like someone was trying to pull him apart limb from limb. Rae grabbed his arm again and shoved, this time he went right out the window to the upper deck. He landed on the glass and felt the cuts all over, but there was no pain from the wounds. He turned to look in the window while trying to stand but the pain worsened, and he fell. Rae was there, and she picked him up and threw him to the ground a story down. Elian was expecting pain and broken limbs, but there was nothing.

The only thing there was darkness.

Raven entered the room at the same time that Elian looked up at her. She could see recognition and then confusion wash over his face. She looked at the woman, Marie. Marie had her hand in her jeans. She had to have alerted those who sent her to the fact that it was all going downhill.

“Vampire,” the woman hissed at Raven. There had been no shock at seeing her enter but there was a shock at the vampire. Raven knew that her fangs were visible. Elian wasn’t concentrating, so he probably didn’t see them.

“Run, Elian!” Raven picked up a lamp, and when Elian didn’t move, she went to his side to pull him up and shove him towards the window. The smell of earth was getting stronger, and Raven could barely contain herself.

The foolish boy wasn’t leaving so Raven had to shove him out the window and even then he didn’t move. Raven had to pick him up and toss him to the ground. He landed on the ground and then blacked out. Raven cussed. He had been too ready for the change. His instinct knew of the danger and knew he needed to change.

“Who are you?” Marie asked as she held the dagger in her hand. Raven laughed at that. There was no way it was taking her head off, and Marie would be hard pressed to destroy her heart with that.

“Who am I? You mean that they sent you to destroy the Darkan line and didn’t tell you all of the facts?”

“Darkan? No, I was told to seduce him and then set him up to be killed once we had access to all the familial things that he was left.”

“They sent you in and didn’t tell you anything?” Raven looked at her with a smile on her face. Raven took a step towards the human and another when Marie hit the wall. She reached out her hand and grabbed her pants from her. She flung the pants hard and next came the dagger. There was so much fear on Marie’s face that Raven could taste it in the air. “You fucked with the wrong wolf, Marie. The Matians have left you alone. They are afraid that a vampire or wolf in the area will smell them out. I smelled you on Elian the first time that he came to work after having a date with you. I wasn’t worried until the smell became stronger.

“For the first time in a very long time, I was unsure what I wanted to do. You fixed that for me. You jumped into bed with him to solidify a bond and didn’t check to see if he was a virgin. Thanks for that. You just resurrected a powerful line that your bosses wanted dead.”

Raven grabbed Marie by the neck and walked her over to the window and threw her out of it onto the deck. Raven followed out, and before Marie could get her feet under her, Raven had her by the throat again and was lifting her up. The smell of blood was getting stronger, so she knew that Marie had cut herself on the glass on the deck. It would all help with her plans. Marie didn’t notice when they rose higher. It wasn’t until the light started to fade from the area that she looked around. Raven had her nearly a quarter of a mile up in the air.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m using you to send a message,” Raven said nothing else until they landed in a small wooded area. The locals called it a hollow. It was perfect because people rarely entered it unless an animal was lost. Marie was so scared that she couldn’t talk. Raven loved it. She hadn’t killed a human in a very long time. It had mostly been wolves for a long while. She forgot what a human looked and smelled like when they were scared. She could understand why the crazies drank human blood.

“Elian will be blamed if you kill me.”

Marie was dropped from a height of about ten feet, and she landed very poorly on her leg. Raven could hear the snap of the ankle bone, and she smiled. Marie immediately started to crawl away.

“Are you not going to scream?”

“There is no one around. No matter what happens to me, the cops will go after Elian. You won’t drink my blood.”

“No. No, I won’t. I have other methods of killing.” Raven made sure that Marie was watching her when she shifted. The form of the panther had been one that Dmitry had said fit her perfectly. Marie screamed so loud that she was sure that someone heard the scream. The hollow had many houses along it. Someone was going to come soon.

Leaping, Raven landed on top of Marie in a single bound. Marie looked up at her the fear in her eyes so great that Raven was sure she would pass out soon. The first rake of claws over Marie’s face squirted blood all over Raven. She knew that she would be covered in blood. She was going to use that in her favor. Losing herself in the feel of killing the woman, Raven didn’t hear the footfalls behind her. She grabbed an arm in her mouth and jerked until the arm came free from the body.

The sound of a chuff of surprise had her turning to face a wolf standing there. Dropping the arm, Raven started to turn around to face Elian. As she turned she shifted forms; until she was standing in front of him dressed as Raven. She looked down and saw that her dress was covered in blood. The white dress that she had bought not too long before. It was ruined, but Raven was used to that.

“Elian?”

Elian woke up in on the ground of his garden. He heard a scream in the distance and quickly made towards it. It sounded like Marie. Through the fence door, Elian started off towards the far end of town, where the scream had come from. He passed trees and houses and cared not for anyone seeing him. As he neared the hollow, he heard a crack, and he wasn’t sure what that sound was. He turned to head right towards it.

As he entered a clearing lit by moonlight, he slowed down. He was never happier that he had than the second when he saw the panther sitting in the clearing hold a human arm in its mouth. Exhaling, Elian started to back up, but the panther turned to look at him. He stopped hoping that the panther would be happy with its current prey. As he looked the panther in the eye, it started to change. The short hair on its head grew out a few inches, and the fur on the rest of its body turned a near white. The person stood as her form shifted. It was Rae looking precisely as she did in his dreams except she was no longer holding the arm.

“Elian?”

It was then that Elian noticed whose body it was. It was Marie’s. Elian started over towards her, but Rae grabbed him and pulled him back she went to yell at her, and it only came out as a snarl. That stopped him, and Elian looked down at himself. Instead of seeing arms, torso, and feet, all he saw was the legs of a wolf. A large wolf but still a wolf. He backpedaled from her, and she let him go.

“Elian, calm down. You don’t want to hurt yourself.”

Anger flushed over him. He lunged at her; attacking. It took only seconds, and she was a panther again. Up a tree she went, using her claws to climb while Elian was stuck at the bottom, watching her go from tree to tree. Elian chased her until he lost sight of her. After that, he stalked around the woods trying to find her.

The smell of a werewolf’s first turn is something that lets every single vampire in nearly a three-mile radius knows is happening. The scent could travel that far in these modern times. Before that, it was up to twenty miles when the smell had only nature to contend with. The drive to hunt and feed is at its strongest when that smell reaches a vampire.

I have never been able to control my thirst when I smell the change of a werewolf. While the wolf gives into his urge to rip and shred and kill, so do all vampires, including myself.

Stopping myself from killing the human and eating it when Elian changed for the first time was the hardest urge ever. I did not want to become another crazy, and that was what stopped me from feeding on her.

Her life was not forfeit though. I ripped her limb from limb. While I was holding one of her arms in my hands, I heard Elian come up behind me. I turn to face him, my fangs out, blood all over my face and front. He just stood there in his wolf form, looking at me. He saw me for what I was.