A/N: To those of you who read the previous prologue, you're gonna want to go back and read the new one (don't worry, it's short). And you will also get a strong deja vu reading the beginning of this chapter, because, yes 'The Massacre' is the previous prologue. :p

This chapter, unlike those to follow, is split into three sections. This is not three stories. You may ask why I'm saying this. It's because EIGHT PEOPLE WHO READ IT asked me if it was three stories. Wait... only four people have read it. Well, two of them asked if it was three stories. So, I'm just clarifying now. You'll see how they all link soon enough. :D

Enjoy.

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What We Become

Chapter 1

The Massacre

Somewhere in the Natlit Desert…

The crowd stirred behind her. Sharply, her hand rose to face level, palm facing the crowd. The shuffling stopped; the people fell back into their previous unnatural silence. With the trace of a smile on her pale pink lips, she leant against the smooth, cool marble door frame, adopting a relaxed stance. She turned her head slightly to see the crowd from the corner of her clear eyes.

Her hand, which was still in the air, abruptly pointed to the two guards behind her, signalling them forward. They hesitated, and then their deep brown cloth-clad bodies scurried forward. Their long shadows joined hers on the white marble of the palace’s front steps in the light that spilled out from the room behind them.

The icy wind that came with the dark night blew her hair wildly about her face as they approached. She could smell the faint scent of their uneasy sweat when they came to stand behind her.

“Yes?” the taller guard asked, trying not to let the fear show in his voice.

The smile dancing in the corners of her lips grew. “Guard,” her voice was almost a breath. “Do you see it?” she asked after a slight pause. She could practically feel him shiver beside her.

Reluctantly, the guard stepped over her extended leg in the open doorway to the marble steps. He positioned himself in front of her torso, leaving her head unshielded for her to see the night-grasped world outside.

“There,” she breathed, pointing over his shoulder at the barely visible figure on the distant desert dunes. He wanted to shiver again as her hand came within the length of an eyelash from his face. The pale fingers seemed to radiate frosty air towards him. He could still recall when her slender hand had been golden brown, the natural hue of his people… or, what used to be his people.

The equally pale-skinned crowd stirred again.

“Silence!” she hissed suddenly, causing the guards to start. The fidgeting stopped once more. “What is it, guard?” she asked as her hand fell to her side.

“A… a shadow, Salihah – I mean, my – my master,” he replied, shaky voice betraying the confident look on his face, “nothing more.”

“Ah,” Salihah stood back up and leant in towards his ear. The stench of his profuse sweating flooded her nostrils. Her smile grew. “Nothing more? Indeed.” Spinning sharply, she turned and took a step toward the crowd, smile rapidly falling from her face and eyes growing dark. “Is anyone here brave enough to test this guard’s theory?” she called, her voice magnified tenfold than its previous volume as it rang against the marble walls.

No one replied.

Turning back to the terrified wide-eyes of the guards, she snapped, “A shadow of what, half-wit?”

She moved to stand back in the doorway, but too late. The shadow in the distance had suddenly multiplied and moved – moved into the palace doorway.

Salihah made to unsheathe her sword, but before she could, she tasted blood as the sword of a man in a black cloak ran her through.

The Mission

Outside of a secret settlement along Wood Creek…

Another second went by in silence. He waited. The deep, dark eyes that he watched them with flicked back and forth between the two figures. They didn’t move. Unable to take it any longer, he groaned in impatience, then opened his mouth to speak. He just wanted this over and done with.

Before he could utter a single syllable, the man before him snapped, “Shut it, Zephyr.”

Obediently, Zephyr closed his mouth. He didn’t like the warning glare he’d just received.

Finally, the woman spoke. “I really don’t like it, Rohyn. He’s only young…” Her face, half-shrouded by shadow from the trees surrounding them, turned from the man to the boy, Zephyr, then back, large eyes pleading. “I promised his mother. Remember, Rohyn? I promised her that he would be as safe as our kind can be if she put him in my care.”

Rohyn didn’t reply, still looking at her as he had been this entire time; light grey eyes dark in anger at her defiance. Or perhaps they just appeared dark to Zephyr in the late afternoon sunlight.

“Sending him out would endanger him, Rohyn,” she persisted, moving unconsciously closer to the man. “You know that.”

Zephyr noted her movements and desperate tone, wondering if they were having any effect at all on the man, who practically radiated power. He doubted it. Others, including Dimitri, had already tried and failed to convince Rohyn that he was too young, too immature, too inexperienced for the job. Dimitri, it seemed to him, was the closest thing Rohyn had and would ever have to a friend. If Rohyn wouldn’t listen to him, there was no way Manne could persuade him. There was no point in trying, if you asked Zephyr.

But had anyone bothered to ask the very seventeen year old boy they were trying to ‘protect’? Had anyone ever thought that perhaps he wanted to do it? Apparently not. It wasn’t as if it mattered, though. What Rohyn said went.

“Manne,” Rohyn interrupted her monologue, his voice surprisingly gentle, “we need this. For once, we have proof to the theory – thanks to our expedition in to Natlit.”

Zephyr grinned almost instinctively at the addressing of a mass-killing of half-breed as an ‘expedition’. It wasn’t that he found it funny so much, but more that it was how he’d always reacted to his kind’s senseless massacres of anything not suffering as much as they were.

“I’ve picked my candidate,” Rohyn was saying now. “There’s a reason I was titled ‘leader’ of this pack, Manne. And it wasn’t so that you, Dimitri and everyone else could tell me that my judgement is wrong.”

Manne ducked her head, face turning red at being accused of doubting her leader. “I didn’t mean it to be disrespectful, Rohyn. I just –” she started to babble quietly, but Rohyn’s deep voice interrupted her.

“Just leave, Manne. I’ve made my decision.”

He hadn’t even needed to say it. It had become final the moment he’d pointed out his title. Manne knew it, and immediately bowed and left in silence back through the woods the way they’d come. Watching her retreating back, Zephyr mused that the way everyone just caved to Rohyn really couldn’t be good for his ego… not that he could talk.

The man turned to him, grey eyes looking weary. “You will go tonight,” he said, flashing his overlarge canine teeth as he spoke, “to the town. Find one.”

Nodding once, Zephyr was unable to hide his slight smile before he bowed to Rohyn as Manne had. He turned to head back through the trees to the camp.

“And Zephyr,” the boy stopped and turned back, “don’t mess this up.”

Suddenly, he realised the fact that he could see Rohyn’s canines was not simply because they were too large to hide. Every word to him from the leader’s mouth had been a threat.

The Girl

The city of Wood Creek, St Patrick’s High School, dorm room number 207…

“No way in hell am I coming out, Kari.” she called from her position in front of the mirror.

“Aw, Jacey!” Kari’s voice called back from the other side of the bathroom door. “I spent so long on that outfit. You can’t just not show me!”

Sighing, Jacey looked at reflection once more in the mirror. She flat out refused to wear this anywhere in public, let alone to The Patron Saint, the only underage nightclub in town – where every teenager in the city was likely to be tonight. Jacey was the kind of girl to wear jeans and tee-shirts, not tight singlets and mini-skirts.

Could it even be called a skirt? Why did Kari even own these clothes? People in their line of occupation (or, what was soon to be their line of occupation) shouldn’t wear anything one wouldn’t do a high-kick in anyway. In disgust, she tried to pull the skirt to cover more of her legs, which just pulled it lower down her hips. Ew.

She groaned in frustration. “I’m not wearing this, Kari.” She began to pull the singlet over her head, then added, “And as if it took you a long time to pick this ‘outfit’ out. It only took two seconds. I was in the room, remember?”

Kari’s laugh drifted to her through the locked door. “Jeez, Jace.” she said, still snickering.

Jacey rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” Kari called after a moment, voice sounding further from the door than before. “I never thought you’d wear that anyway.”

“Then why the hell did you give it to me?” Why she still hung out with Kari, Jacey didn’t know. But that must be what happens when you have the same roommate for three years in a row, she reasoned. She’d met Kari on her first day at St Patrick’s, the only ‘specialisation’ (and it was never called that without a smirk or two from the students) boarding school in this part of the country. Instantly, the two had gotten along – despite their differences in fashion sense and attitude toward school work. If only Jacey could party all night, at least once a week and still manage to get the grades that Kari did in school.

“Here,” Kari was saying, her voice back to its original position right outside the door. “Put these on.”

Hesitating, Jacey unlocked the door and opened it wide enough for Kari to shove a couple items of clothing in. After shutting and locking the door again, she picked the garments off the floor and examined them. Another singlet, though, much less revealing and looser than the last, and a pair of skinny-leg jeans – Kari’s not hers, of course – that looked much tighter and lower-cut than any pair she owned, but acceptable.

Defeated, she changed into the clothes, then observed her reflection in the mirror. The blood red singlet wasn’t actually all that bad, especially compared to the last one. And Jacey had always thought dark blue jeans looked good with red tops… Damn Kari for knowing her so well.

“You coming out sometime soon, Jace? I wanna be leaving in the next twenty minutes or so, and I haven’t done my make-up yet.” the devil herself called through the door. Jacey reminded herself never to call anyone ‘the devil’ in front of Tahnya. Then she smiled, wondering how Tahnya would react to see her dressed like this.

She’d probably say something like, ‘How are you supposed to hunt a damn thing in jeans that tight?’ Which was a reasonable enough question, but Tahnya just never seemed to understand that, unlike her, most people don’t assume they’ll be attacked every second of the day. It was probably a good thing she was like that, Jacey suddenly thought, since she was Head of Hunting, and second only to Anneka, the principal of St Patrick’s.

For the millionth time, Jacey wondered why those two hated names of authority. Everyone called the teachers of St Patrick’s by their first names. It was just another thing that set St Patrick’s apart from most other schools in the world.

However, it wasn’t even close to the strangest difference.

Finally, with one last rueful look at the mirror, Jacey unlocked the door and opened it for Kari to see.

Kari grinned. “I knew there was a hot Jacey in there somewhere.”

Mental note to Jacey: Apply for new roommate in the morning.

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