Running.

                                Leaping.

                                                                Hiding.

                                                                                                Climbing.

                                                                                                                                Falling.

                                                                                                                                                                Escaping.

                                                                                                                                They’re getting closer.

                                                                                                Can’t run forever.

                                                                I’ll be too tired, soon.

                                But they don’t slow, ever.

Can hear them behind me.

The leaf litter underfoot is damp, the earlier deluge keeping them silent as I smash through the forest. They can still hear me though, my gasps for air; they can smell me in the air, my sweat steaming off of me. The silent chase, the sky still cloudy, dimming the light and threatening to let loose.

They chose a good day to chase me, or perhaps they made it one. Can’t put it past them, those mangy curs. Can smell water ahead, the scent of algae and water flora registering themselves in my head. Splashes too, of birds diving into the water, their squawks falling silent as they sense the darkness chasing me. They dislike water, but they can still survive on it. ‘On it’ being the keywords, many of their victims wading waist deep in water whilst they pounded across the surface as if the water were dirt.

Last time, I managed to escape them only by surviving until the next day, their powers stretched to the limit unable to keep the sun from poking through the clouds. They just faded away, put to sleep by the natural light, and I’d just fainted near a forest path, later found by a bushwalker. The hospital workers treated the deep scratches in my thighs and arms, though they scarred dark. Those that had spotted me at the start of the chase had told of the wolves, but no-one could find them to cull them, and my banned me from leaving the house for anything except for school and education related activities. The government hushed it up, and the story only appeared in obscure tabloids of dubious credibility.

My friends walked carefully around me, fearful that whatever experience I had just been put through had turned me into some kind of psychopath. I became introverted, always alert, constantly watching everything around me for a telltale sign of the wolves’ return.

Packages arrived from anonymous and untraceable benefactors, mostly containing necklaces, bracelets, earrings, the occasional ring, but something in me, some instinct, made me bury them in a park far, far away. My parents didn’t disagree: they were just as suspicious as I was, and whenever one such package arrived, they would mutter about ‘trackers’ and ‘identification tags’.

This time, however, I hadn’t been their original target. In their lore, if the mark escaped them, they would never be hunted again. But only if the mark didn’t get involved with another chase. And that’s why they’re chasing me. They don’t want to lose the chance at catching the greatest one of the Bloodline, they couldn’t ignore the opportunity they had thought lost forever to awaken the ancient being inside.

I’d been on a school trip, a biology excursion to a national reserve, to collect information about the wildlife there. The school had not heard of the story, and even if they had, they would never believe it. My parents had tried to prevent me from attending, but the school had insisted, the trip being absolutely essential to the term’s assignment.

“They’ve stopped sending those packages, and nothing’s happened for over a year. Maybe she won’t be attacked on the trip. I suppose we’ll have to let her go, since…”

“Since the trip is almost practically her assessment for the term.” I sat there on a sofa as they discussed my life as if I wasn’t there. They turned and looked down at me. “You’ll look after yourself, won’t you? No going off the path, no leaving the main group, no hanging behind…”

I’d smelled the Blood in her, after my return to ‘normal life’. The chase always awoke part of the beast inside the marks, and now, I could sense who would be chased. She had a rather strong aura of the Blood, indicating that soon, she would become the mark. Being one of my close friends, I stayed close to her, hoping that when the wolves finally appeared, I could distract them, giving her a head-start.

It happened whilst we were almost all kneeling in the dirt, examining and drawing a particularly fascinating specimen of epiphyte. The sky had been overcast – something that hadn’t been forecasted on the weather reports last night – and my anxiety levels had shot up. A smell entered my nose, and I whirled up, terrified even though I had been expecting it, my clipboard falling down into the dirt.

“What’s the matter?” The teacher asked warily, also under the impression that I was slightly delusional. Everyone was also slightly uneasy, a dulled reaction to the approaching darkness. Perhaps ‘civilisation’ was the reason why they didn’t run and hide like the fauna around us had immediately done. “Something’s coming…” I whispered, and the teacher frowned, but didn’t say anything. I edged towards my friend, the only other Blood bearer in the group, and my eyesight flickered, steadied, and I could see them.

“RUN!” Picking her up and thrusting her into the forest behind me, the wolves reacted at the same time, bursting out onto the path. They saw me, and their memories fought with their senses and won. Before, I had ‘died’ to them, and they could no longer detect me, but now… Now they could see me again. Pausing, the tussled over who to chase: me, or the other. At the moment, I hadn’t really interfered just yet, but that was about to change.

Stretching my arm back into my backpack, I pulled out two sheathed scimitars. The other students and the teachers began running pell-mell at that moment, screaming about wolves and psychopaths.

“I escaped you once, I can do it again. This time, I’m prepared for your tricks.” They howled, a chilling sound which only lent speed to the frantic innocents and her, already far away. I had trained well with the scimitars, and many of the wolves fell to my blade, their bodies dissipating into mist, forming the shape of the human they had been before, then disappeared entirely after they had spoken their thanks.

I had realised immediately that my advantage over them, that they would not attack me because they weren’t sure if I was interfering deliberately or acting out of vengeance, was quickly wearing thin, and just as they decided that I was helping the girl escape, I was bounding away in the trees.

They hadn’t been able to climb last time, but it became obvious that their hugely boosted numbers had been the result of them learning how to, after I had utilized the weakness greatly last time. Leaving the trees, I let the newly awakened part of the Beast assert itself, then I grappled with it, forcing my will upon it. It acquiesced immediately, and my mind became that much stronger, that much more powerful. Other, newer skills came with the partial awakening, but it would take time before I figured them all out. Time that I didn’t have right now.

My hearing had been greatly boosted, and I could hear her as she pounded through the forest. A few wolves were chasing her, intent on not letting another escape, but most of the Pack were hunting me, the only one to have ever escaped them before, and thus the only one with the pluck to challenge them again.

If I won, there was no knowing how much the Pack would be fractured, how they would split over the fact that someone had escaped them twice. Once, they could say it was luck. Twice, and the very same mark, then something had occurred during the resurrection, the rebirthing process. Something that was definitely not to the current pack leader’s liking.

Whirling through the forest without stirring a leaf, I grinned a little: this time, I knew my awakened skills, whilst they were little advanced in their own. Except this time, they might have guessed that the other girl meant something to me.

Gotta make sure she survives the day and a half – technically, it was only the time ‘between sunset and sunrise’, but they had redefined it to mean when the sun disappeared to when it appeared again. Changing course slightly, I leapt upon the girl’s ten trackers.

Taken from behind, hehe, looks like they didn’t learn from last time. Two down, eight to go. The hand-carved wooden shuriken – throwing stars – in the little pocket-pouch in my pants had been useful, and I made a mental note to make some more later. Perhaps I could find someone to make them from metal.

Leaping once more into the trees, a short shower of shuriken rained down on the eight remaining but rather jumpy wolves, and three more stumbled and fell, all of whom I killed with my scimitars.

“Thankyou…” whispered the spirits of the humans the wolves had originally been.

Dang, out of the stars. No matter, only five left, and the other fifty or so chasing behind. I’d crossed a river to reach the girl’s path, and that had slowed the wolves down as the first few had plunged in, super-heated steam shooting upwards onto the other wolves, the direct and collateral damage probably taking out seven or so wolves.

Shooting off again, the birds silent, invisible to the human eye, and an hour had passed already. The other students in the biology excursion had probably made it to the closest town, and the SES crews and the army were probably making their way to the reserve. The wolves ahead would have been going slightly slower, to extend the chase, but with my interference, they had picked up speed.

But I was still faster. Throwing one of the scimitars ahead, it plunged straight through a wolf, startling the others. Ripping out the blade as I passed, I sped forward, aiming for the next wolf. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace, but I was more intent on ridding the girl of her shadows. The four wolves fell to my keen blade easily, and I could see her as well. A helicopter flew overhead, and I almost laughed. They wouldn’t be able to land here, and the ‘rescuers’ inside would have to parachute down. And get stuck in the trees.

“Fay!” I yelled ahead. Her footsteps faltered, and I pulled back my pace a little. Catching up with her, we ran alongside each other for awhile, while I explained a little between gasps for air, my waning stamina making itself known to me at that moment. And only an hour into the chase, and thirty or so hours to go.

Pulling out a bottle of water with glucose dissolved into it – something I carried around with me everywhere – I took a small sip from it, not enough to make me feel sick but enough to keep my energy levels up. The scent of wolves is strong, and I wonder if they know that the ten wolves chasing her have been incapacitated.

Taking the risk, I pulled away from the girl, and much to my surprise, all of the wolves changed direction to follow me. If they knew that she was no longer being chased, then they must have let her go, more intent on catching me, the most powerful of the Bloodline.

Even in my bound form, the power of the Beast within has leaked out from the two partial awakenings, lending me skill, power, brutality. I frown: some of the wolves in the horde behind have disappeared, and appeared ahead. The price for this ‘teleportation’ was that of other wolves, and I grinned. A bystander would have been unnerved, the expression being that much too close to feral. Less wolves that I have to deal with, I thought as I turned ‘right’ a little, putting the smaller group of wolves to my left and the main pack to my right.

The girl had neared the edge of the forest, and encountered a SES crew. She was safe, for now, with little more than a few scratches from the brambles in the forest. Though the forest was the wolves’ domain,it was, in a way, also mine.

Ten hours. Twenty or so to go, my glucose water all gone, my strength waning. What’s different, this time? Did I use too much energy to help her? I didn’t have glucose water last time, but there’s more wolves this time. Dropping the backpack, I buckled the scimitars onto two bandoliers, and then slipped them on. Okay, less deadweight, I can come back later for the bag.

The scars on my arms and legs burned slightly – not enough to make me stumble, but enough to make me notice – and I realised that the wolves had sacrificed two-thirds of their number to send the last third into a ring around me.

Well, they can’t leap from tree to tree, I mused, and as the wolves tightened their circle, I leapt up to the trunk of a tree, bounced off onto another tree, and continued jumping from tree to tree, getting higher and higher until I was settled onto a branch. The wolves behind howled, cheated of their ‘sure-fire’ victory. It had been unsettling to realise that they had been prepared to lose most of their number to trap me, and I wondered if the Beast within me had the power to resurrect the wolves.

Gasping a little, I slowed my pace as I travelled in the trees, occasionally taking a rest to stretch my muscles. So, the same number of wolves as last time, except this time, I’m more powerful but more tired, this time I’m armed but weighed down with the weapons, this time they can climb but they can’t leap from tree to tree.

This time, I know them.

Dropping down onto the ground, I revelled in the feeling of air rushing through my hair and my clothes, and smiled as a few spatters of rain fell. Perhaps, with the deaths of most of the wolves, their spell on the weather had become unstable, something I could perhaps work to my advantage. If the clouds dropped all their rain, then… there wouldn’t be any clouds, and the sun would burn away all the wolves.

Then the rain began, in earnest, and I wondered if it would burn the wolves. Some of them slowed, went off direction, and I smirked. I’d been worried that with the second partial awakening of the Beast, I would not only gain the strengths but also some of the weaknesses, but it seemed that water – or at least heavy rain – didn’t faze me. Yet.

The scars on my thighs and arms burned sharply, and ten silver forms loomed out of the rain. All the others had been sacrificed, and a few more to transform the ones remaining to the silver form. Their silver fur was impervious to water, like polar fleece, and their strength, speed, and power were unrivalled. It was then that I felt the chill of the rain.

“You’ve broken the rules, you know.” I called out half-heartedly. If they had, and if they still existed, then it really didn’t matter to them.

“Of course.” I stared. They spoke? Then I saw the wolves form into humanoid shapes, and I gasped as they strolled forward, closer. Oh $%*^, I cursed mentally, and made to leap up the trees, but one of them moved lightning fast, straight at me.

“All these years, and we finally caught you. Now you’re gonna bring us all back, even the ones you killed.” The wolf-boy snarled. I smirked, and his feral grin slipped. “Oh no, I was expecting you to be that fast.” Stepping back, leaving the scimitar stuck straight through him.

The nine others gaped, and as the wolf-boy fell, dissipating into mist, I leapt forward, grabbing the falling scimitar, and proceeded to slice the silver ones into oblivion. “You may think you have power, but you…” I swung a blade at the third to last. “… do not…” The second last one burst into smoke. “… know mine!”

The last one growled, and darted away. The last one. She would revert to the normal grey form, and in doing so, ten or so would be resurrected. And they would begin again.

I slumped down, against a tree as the rain clouds practically vaporised, the sun striking through the leaves and the branches of the trees above. It burned against my pale skin, not because I carried a Beast that had been partially awakened, but because of the sudden change from twilight to glaring brightness.

The rustle of humans stamping through the trees, as I slipped in and out of consciousness, they found me, deep scratches in the exact same places as the old scars.

Waking up in hospital, my scimitars confiscated from me. The wolf prints they had found around me and the heavy musk had been enough to prove that I had used them to defend myself, had had a reason to need them. But I wasn’t allowed to keep them, for obvious reasons. My parents sitting around me, my arms and legs yet again wrapped in bandages.

She visited the other day, thanked me for saving my life. The other students only came because their parents made them, to ‘help me settle back in after the traumatic experience’ – and in the hope that I wouldn’t become a psychopath. Flowers – ones that didn’t look as cheap as they really were – came, and my now highly sensitive nose was overloaded with the scent of various incompatible scents.

“Thankyou… for saving my life.” She giggled a little from the undoubtable but highly appropriate cliché, used so much in action movies. If she had followed that train of thought – which my super-wired brain did before I could stop it – the saviour and the girl would then fall in love and live happily ever after. Assuming that the rescuer was male, that is, which I’m not. Shaking my head a little and accidentally cricking my neck joints at the same time, I shakily grinned at her. “It’s okay. I escaped them last time, so I had a good chance of escaping them this time as well.” I gazed at the bedspread to avoid looking at her. “Err… do you remember what I told you in the forest? About there being a Pack, once, a long time ago? And then something wiped them out, but they reincarnated into humans?” She nodded, and whispered “Yes”.

I sighed. “There are many of us who have the Blood, who have the Beast sleeping inside of us. And those wolves, they’ve been awakened: they used to be humans. They want to awaken all of us, and so far, they’ve been able to awaken every single mark they’ve chosen, except for me, and now you.” She mumbled something, and the only human who could have heard what she said was me.

“No, they won’t try to get you again. It’s in the Lore. If they fail to achieve any particular goal, they cannot try again.” She was surprised that I had heard her uncertain query. Her mouth opened and shut, her mind trying to formulate a question. “How could I hear what you said? Because… when they make you their mark, they awaken part of the Beast, and me? I’ve been chased twice, and a lot of the Beast has been awakened, but… When they started chasing you, did you feel there was something inside of your mind, trying to take over?” She nodded, eyes wide open. “That was the awakened part, and since you’re still here and entirely human, you managed to control it, you managed to bend it to your will. It’s part of you now, and you might find that you can do things you’ve never been able to do before, like… Uh… Like I can jump a lot higher, I can run faster for longer, and well… Stuff like that, but I’m not sure which part of your Beast they awoke. It’ll take time to figure out your new skills, and I’ll have to too.” Stretching a little, yawning, I didn’t notice her eyes roving over my arched physique. When I settled back down, I noted a slight glint in the cast of her eyes, but it disappeared quickly, fast enough to make me wonder if I had been imagining things. But not fast enough to convince me.

“So… how’s school been?” She grimaced, an expression one didn’t see often on her face. “Everyone’s so… so paranoid. They think I’m some kind of raving lunatic who’ll whip out a gun and start shooting everyone around me. I guess this was what happened to you, last time.” I smiled sadly, and inclined my head, concurring. “But I think they’re really freaked about me now, because they saw me with the two swords. Did you hear them scream ‘psychopathic murderer!’?” She laughed, but quickly quieted when the enormity of the situation sank into her.

“I just wish the government wouldn’t hush it all up like last time.” As I spoke, I heard the clatter of a horde of people rushing up the stairs further down the corridor of the level, and the very same people rushing towards my room. The security guard outside was rendered useless as the crowd of yelling journalists, all asking questions like “What happened in the forest?” and “Why do you think the government didn’t do anything to stop these attacks?”, along with the constant flash of light-bulbs as the cameramen took photo after photo, all of which would have completely overwhelmed someone else’s senses and rendered them totally disoriented. As for me and the other girl, we could still rely on our sense of smell, knowing exactly where we were in relation to the other people in the room.

Pressing the buzzer for the nurse discreetly, I waited for the cameramen to finally tire of taking photographs and for the reporters to actually fall silent to hear the answers to their numerous questions. As it was, the nurse, along with a small bunch of security guards, arrived at that moment of seemingly perpetual peace, and escorted the reporters out.

“Well… I guess they aren’t going to hush it up just yet.” I stared at the door that had burst open just minutes ago. “Press conference?” I shot at the girl. She quirked an eyebrow, tilted her head in consideration, then smiled and nodded.

The next day, when I was released from the hospital, I had been locked back inside of my house, only going out for school. The reporters swarmed around our house, one or too trying to get into our car as we boarded to get to school, but that stopped when the police started keeping around, and they were only too happy to arrest the offending paparazzi.

I woke up the following morning, and in the dim darkness of my room, I didn’t notice anything strange. When I pulled up blinds on my window, a feeling of uneasiness settled onto my shoulders. It was only when I stepped in front of the mirror in the bathroom to brush my teeth that I saw what was wrong.

My hair, normally straight and when down it reached the lower part of my shoulder blades, was now spiked all over the place, like Vash the Stampede, or perhaps Uchiha Sasuke. And where it had been black in dim light but dark brown in strong light, it was now jet black, no matter how strong the light was shining on it. Groaning, I pulled out a comb and tub of gel from the cupboard underneath the sink. I stared at my arms. The hair on my arms – my parents refused to buy me a razor or waxing strips – was now finer, lighter in colour like the fibre optic-like hair of a polar bear, and all lying flat on my skin in the same direction: up my arms. “Oh gawd…” As I fought with my hair, making it at least stick to the laws of gravity, I realised that the light wasn’t on, yet I could see clearly.

My eyes. They weren’t dark brown anymore, they were electric blue. When I returned to school, Hira had just blinked, but knew it had something to do with the Beast inside having been awakened twice. The other students, however, stared, gaping. Of course, the paparazzi loved it, and continued swarming.

The school had implemented a system which only let in the students and staff, but when some desperate reporters got their hands on a school uniform and stuffed their equipment into a school bag, we were required to show them our ID cards. From how they acted around me, it seemed that the teachers expected me to get a swollen head, so to speak, from all the attention I now received from the media. The students, those that were the most vindictive, were spiteful, but their cheap barbs were nothing compared to the ‘traumatic experience’ I had just been through.

Hira and I sat together in the few classes we shared, and when the school realised how the other students were treating us, they changed our timetables so that we were in the same classes for all of the subjects we shared. There were still two subjects that I did that she didn’t, and two that she did that I did not, and in those we sat alone. They – that is the principal and the teachers who were more open-minded and less paranoid – suggested that we change subjects, and so I dropped my language class for her society subject, and she dropped her arts class for my technology subject.

At the press conferences we held – conferences, one wasn’t enough – we answered the questions that weren’t too personal (“We hear that you two spend all your time together. Are you… involved?”), and ignored them when they were thrust at us. Every time they asked us that question, I noted that she shifted uneasily, a slight pink tinge appearing in her normally pale cheeks, although no-one else spotted it.

Diving into the waiting car, the journalists rapping against the windows – “I’ll make them pay for the damage they’ve done to my car.” My dad was not pleased. – we drove to Hira’s house. My dad inspected the car for whatever damage had been dealt to it, whilst I accompanied Hira to the door. Her parents answered the door immediately, and smiling at me, they invited me in for a cup of tea. When they glanced at my car, I waved away their query about my dad. “Oh, he’s more intent on checking his car for damages. Those reporters put a few scratches into it, I think.” They laughed a little, and whilst I sipped the tea, Hira retired to her room.

“You want to go up and check on her?” I nodded, put down the cup of tea, and strolled up the stairs. Her parents gaped at the fluidity of my movements, how silent I was going up the normally creaky stairs. I stopped outside her door – I could smell her Blood – and inching it open, I leaned against the door frame, gazing at her lying curled up on her bed, her back to me. She rolled over, and cracked an eyelid open, then sat up.

I backed out of the room, apologising profusely for disturbing her much-needed rest. She grinned sleepily, waving away my apologies, and beckoned me inside. I edged in nervously, looking around her brightly decorated room, but not to the point where it seemed like an explosion of colour had occurred. “Can you close the door?” Wondering what it was she wanted to talk about, I complied.

She sat there on the bed and patted a spot next to her. Warily, I sat down next to her, but leaving a sizeable gap between us. We sat there, looking everywhere but at each other, in the easy silence until it became stifling, uncomfortable. “My dad’s waiting for me.” I said abruptly, standing up again, opening the door and striding out without looking back.

Silence behind me, silence in the hallway, down the stairs, no-one in the living room. A note on the table, from Hira’s parents, informing Hira that they would ‘be out for awhile’ and that they ‘hoped everything went alright’. I paused, hearing her hurry down the stairs behind me, but I knew my father was waiting outside, impatiently.

I reached the entrance, was about to open the door when she caught up with me. She made to hug me, but I twisted out of her embrace. A small choked gasp of pain, and as I exited, I turned and looked at her through the outer screen door. “I have to go, Hira. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” She stood there, hand on the inner wooden door, as I walked away, head high and back straight.

My father starts the car immediately, “About time!” he grumbles, then proceeds to rant about the scratches the reporters did to the car. I smile a little, then stare out of the window watching the scenery go by.

I could tell what it was she had wanted to do, and I wondered why her parents would approve of something like that, what with her being an only child…  There was nothing wrong with the idea, except… Except I still didn’t know myself, and probably never would.

The Beast, though I had lived with it for over a year, still fascinated and frustrated me. Occasionally, I would utilize the gifts that came with being of the Blood, other times, I would curse and revile it. The sky was clear blue, with not a single cloud in sight. It was then that I noticed the clouds rolling in from the horizons, cloaking the sky in a grey haze, the area darkened into twilight.

Someone was going to be awakened today, and I wouldn’t be there to save them.