Bear Hugs - COMPLETED

Chapter 2 - Fangs and emotion

I slide my phone in my pocket. An ancient thing I definitely didn't steal from some lousy foster mother. I look back at the house, the window in which she was. I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel hungry, I want, need. I walk down the cracked pavement. I remember the rhymes the other kids used to sing when we were little;

Step on a crack, you'll break your mum's back.

Step on a line, you'll snap your dad's spine.

I make sure to step on every one. Besides your spine can't break if you're dead.

Fire? Really Oliver? I've come up with more creative stories than that. I kick a pebble off the cement and it hits a fence. Behind it a dog whimpers and I sigh. Why does every thing have to be like that. Those people, who have never experienced pain, at the slightest sound, they cower and whimper with fright. They don't want some big boulder to come down and wreck there perfect little lives. Even if, in reality, that boulder is a pebble.

My thoughts wander back to the girl. Willow. Unconsciously, my tongue runs along the inside of my teeth, slowing when they pass over my larger than normal canines. But then again how could human teeth rip open the necks of their prey?

I don't know how I feel about her, Willow I mean. Is it just the eclipse? Or am I just flirting to pass the time? Maybe I might just break my no human diet, but the only thing there is, she doesn't seem entirely human. My mind finds other possibilities. Could I be actually? I stop myself there. My kind don't do mushy mushy humany woomany stuff. We physically can't.

I shove my hands in the pockets of my jeans. I don't feel the cold but I wear jumpers and jeans when possible, for many reasons. I look up at the moon. There is a lunar eclipse in a week so this infatuation will have to wait. Mafi won't let my have some time off school, leading up to it and afterwards. He thinks my education is important. Well I think that's bull crap, I have as long as I want to complete school and I don't particularly feel like being expelled, again.

I reach the end of the street where it is just bushland. I look around to see if any one may be prying. Content that I am alone I spring of the ground into the skies. I always feel free when I'm spiralling through the treetops, the tips of my leathery wings brushing the leaves. Mafi thinks I'm a show off but the old geyser wouldn't know fun if it flew up in his face.

After a few minutes of a peaceful gliding I hear a glass shatter on a hardwood floor. In the distance there is a run down log cabin, barely standing with rope tied from the gutters to the surrounding trees to keep the supports from sloping. It's probably still half a kilometre away but my superb eyesight and hearing give me an advantage.

The world around me shrinks as my beaten up, hand me down converse touch the dead grass. I hear the old geyser going off at someone, Pollux probably. I walk up the wooden step onto the deck and kick off my shoes. I push the rickety fly screen door open and try to head to my room without being interrogated

"Oliver Keating, get your arse back here now!" Mafi yells. I was so close too. I walk back into the front room.

"Where the flaming hell have you been boy!" he leans back into his falling apart recliner.

"I was just out sir" I say looking down.

"Out where? When I tell you to come straight home, I mean no dilly dallying" He says sternly

"I'm sorry sir, it won't happen again sir" I nod, lying of course.

"This next lunar eclipse will be your eighth and you know what that means. I need you home to prepare you." He says in his rare fatherly tone

"I understand sir" I nod curtly. He heaves himself up from the ragged, brown chair and walks over.

"Good" he pats my shoulder as he passes. "Also drop this 'sir' crap, your such a suck up" He laughs

"Yes sir" I smile. As much as I resent the old fool, can't help but love him.

I walk into the room that we boys sleep in. There is two metal bunk beds against opposite walls with a simple wood dresser in between. I sleep on the top bunk of the bed on the right wall while Castor sleeps on the other top with Pollux underneath.

I jump up onto my mattress and slip my phone underneath my pillow and pull my shirt off. We'll have supper soon, maybe Mafi will get us some fresh cut lamb, my favourite. Mafi sleeps in another room which is always locked. To be honest I don't want to know what the crazy man keeps in there. I lay there, staring at the slightly mouldy ceiling, her name on my lips. Willow. When I first saw her I felt a knot in my gut and an invisible rope pulling me toward her. I wanted to bite, not to drink. But to make mine.  

But, that's not possible.  Our kind don't feel affection like that. We are a mostly lone type. To put it plainly we don't love, at least not in that way.  I shake the thought out of my head. I need to focus on the eclipse ceremony.

I slip on a plain, long sleeved shirt. and change into jeans. Preparing for the ceremony takes a lot of magic energy. And being a second generation Vampire, it takes a lot more training.