Beautiful Creatures.

Chapter 4

(Moonstruck.)

Now I know who and what I am.

I just don't know what I was born to do. My name is Moonstruck.

I am a teenager of fifteen years old, a dancer and sometimes a babysitter.

What I am, is a Werewolf.

Not those types of mixed blood, half human breed, but one hundred percent, pure blood, where my Mother and Father are wolves.

I live in Mala with our pack, we have lived here for generations. I dreamed of leaving Mala one day to go to College, or just travel the world. However, dreams like that had to be put in a mortar and crushed like parched corn grains with a pestle, to become the powdered food we call asham. No sugar was added to my asham, no sweetness to my dreams. I tasted my dreams and choked on them, because being next in line to lead our pack, there was no way I could leave Mala. I had to crush my dreams, but I didn't want to.

I was cutting across the cornfields, dodging obstacles, led to safety by my wolf's vision. Looking back I saw the Vampire still circling the house looking for the killer, but I had long gone before he had even exited the house.

I was not the killer.

I only understood that sticking around would have gotten me killed.

I was commissioned to take out the Vampire lady and her mate. Yet as I came up to the window to spy on what was going on inside the house, an arrow parted my fur and shattered the glass. I saw Simeon slump over in the chair as the arrow went through his heart. I needed to see no more, so lapping my tail between my legs, I fled like a scared puppy.

Running away, I thought of how much I wanted to be more than the hunter I was born to be, with this natural instinct to kill. Surely I was born for another purpose? I went right at the Ferris wheel and headed towards the water's edge, where stones zig-zagged to the other side of the river. I finally stopped running. The moon was full and I howled my frustration and fear at it.

My God I could have been killed tonight.

A trout fish leapt from the water and snapped a firefly into its jaws then splashed back in. With huge leaps, I skipped across the four largest stones to make it back to the pack. The weight of the world was too much on my shoulders and I just wanted to drop the heavy bundle and lie down.

How would I explain to my Mother that I had failed my mission? Failed my very first mission? What a disgrace.

I shifted back into my human form and stretched myself out in the grass, it tickled me in places that only my Mother had seen when I was a baby. The moon smiled at me, intimate kisses of silver that melted my naked physique into relaxation. I was on the only side of the river where corn didn't grow and the grass was a soft, wild swishing sound, swaying from side to side in the wind. The grass smelled like fresh vegetables on the side of a plate and I felt the urge to crunch it between my teeth. To taste the greenness mixed with my saliva and the juice of it going down my throat.

I must be the only Werewolf in the world who enjoyed eating vegetables.

Before me, trees appeared everywhere and cast shadows in the gleam of moonlight.

I wondered about the female Vampire and her mate.

What was so special about them that in the Supernatural world, there was a bounty on their heads?

Every Creature wanted them dead. Werewolves, witches, fairies, you name it. Even their own clan, the Vampires, wanted them dead.

I felt like there was some secret that my Mother was not telling me. How could she expect me to kill without even knowing the crime of the victim?

With such a close encounter with death, I was determined now to find out why the Vampires were worthy of death before I drew a drop of their blood myself. I was no cold-blooded killer like my Mother and the rest of the pack. I think she gave me this mission to test my savage nature because she said that I was too much of a human. In a pack of werewolves, that statement was an insult.

The wind stirred my long brown hair and I let it whip across my nose. Strands of hair tickled my nostrils, then rested as one cupped hand beneath my perky, left breast. I stayed like this for at least an hour before I got up to return home to the pack. In brambled branches of dry vines, I located my hidden clothing and got dressed. Down the meadows I went, dragging my bare feet along the moisture absorbed, drew drops, grassy path, all the way to the cottage.

I saw the cottage up ahead, my father had constructed the building with his own two hands. Chopping wood in the forest, transporting it on makeshift rafts down the river to the desired spot. I had loved to sit by the banks, my dress lapped between my legs, my hands on my knees and cheek watching the wood with twisted bamboo vines, go by me and down the stream. My Mother would be waiting in the waist-high water to catch at the rope and pull the raft to shore. I heard the river as I came closer to the cottage, it sang all the way to the sea where another tune would be caught and the sea would sing all the way to the ocean. One bulb shone light through the window of the cottage, where half of a curtain flapped its silky tail across the veranda. I went up the wooden steps, opened the front door and crossed the carpeted floor, to follow my parents' voice into the kitchen.

Lucinda Pitters brown eyes lifted and stared at me with hope as I entered. Eyes that I had inherited, along with all her beautiful features. I was a physical replica of my Mother, the leader of the pack.

Reading my expression, she tucked one long, brown strand of hair behind her ears, leaned her neck to the right and puffed out her agitation. Mother could always read me like an open book.

Father who was an extension of her, mating with her emotions, wobbled on his legs and sank with disappointment into the nearest chair.

" What happened Moonstruck, it was a simple command. Go to the house and kill the female vampire and her mate?"

Mother repeated the command she had given me earlier. She rested her back against the countertop, her brows knitted, a sure indication that she was already plotting her next move. I expected her to be furious and her silence was unnerving.

Nature's pantry was open and the essence of the night was released into the air and floated in through the open kitchen window. It wafted into my nostrils, a touch of night queen flowers, a pinch of mint, a tad of primrose and the aroma of dew-covered tree trunks. I sat opposite my father at the kitchen table. My father was the softer, more understanding one, while my mother was fierce.

"Somebody got to them before I did."

I stated, fingering the centrepiece of a glass-sculpted wolf folded into sleep.

Father's green eyes filled with wonder, while Mother's brown eyes filled with hope.

"Then they were dead?"

Mother asked. At this point she didn't care if I had failed my mission, once the vampire and her mate were dead, the job was done either way.

"Somebody is dead, but it is not the woman and her mate. Someone else was there."

"Who?"

Father asked.

"Simeon was there and he is dead."

"Simeon the Vampire?"

Mother's eyes rounded in disbelief.

"The one and only."

I replied. Thinking this would give her some pleasure, instead, her face was ashen and guilt-stricken.

Simeon was a terrorist to wolf packs around the world. He killed us without mercy. Surely his death was cause for celebration.

Mother's knees seemed to get weak. She sat in an available chair.

"My God, if Simeon is dead, then we might all be good as dead."

There was such fear in her voice. She was terrified.

I had never seen my Mother terrified of anything in her life.

I could not understand it. Our house went quiet. Mother and father looked at each other across the table and me looking at them both.

What the hell was going on here? I asked myself inwardly. I looked out the window into the night, into an open world with a vault of secrets.