Whispers to the wolf

The beginning

Chapter 1
The white tile floor of the science laboratory gleamed but her feet in the black pumps made a soft sound no mere mortal could hear. Chase Knight tried hard not to look up from his chemistry experiment, boiling hydrochloric acid with vodka to see what the result solution would be. He had noticed Indira Kona since the first day he had gotten to Kamuzu state College, in the poverty stricken and underdeveloped African country. She wasn't hard to miss with her elegant posture, beautiful features and past shoulder length natural African hair safely tied up in a bun. To Chase, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen but her one fatal flaw was the instant dislike she had developed for him from day one.
'Damn,' he muttered as his super hearing and heightened senses felt her draw closer but his eyes stuck to the boiling liquids. Her light brown hand came into his line of vision and he looked up into her eyes. She smiled down at him and said, "Hey Chase, I'm your new lab partner." She was practically oozing excitement and that was new especially around him. Her bright smile lit up his day but he couldn't tell her he felt that way, she would stare at him with daggers in her eyes. He had noticed her hair was always tied up in an elegant bun, long flowing skirts paired with matching coloured ballet flats, she called them pumps, and print tops. She was still standing there so he rose to offer her his seat.
Indira looked into his grey eyes and couldn't tell if she was imagining it or not but Chase seemed to freeze right after she spoke. I was probably hallucinating, she thought as he straightened to his full height, towering over her. Her conscious automatically switched to defence mode and her smile vanished as intimidation crowded her mind. She liked him a lot and instead of being nice, fear always made her cold to him in hopes of keeping her feelings a secret. She did not know but it confused Chase, who thought she was bipolar, one minute she was sweet and the next uncaring and he had noticed it was only to him. It was a defence mechanism to protect herself, the world had turned out to be a cruel place than the wonderland she thought it was at childhood, now the only people she trusted were her grandmother and Mr. Jones, her deceased mother's lawyer.
"Please take a seat Indira." Chase said, motioning to his vacated seat. She sat down, stony faced, thanked him then proceeded to ignore him for the next five minutes before the experimentation was called to an end. They cleared up the equipment in silence each ignoring the other. Indira washed out the experiment tubes and placed them back on their rack. She carried them to the storage room where everything was kept, as she rounded the corner Chase appealed seemingly out of nowhere and they bumped into each other.
"Oh no!" Indira exclaimed as the tube rack fell to the ground. It took Chase only a second to register what was happening and rescue the rack. All but one reached the ground and broke into a thousand tiny shards of glass. Her hands on her mouth, it took Indira some seconds to realise chase had caught the rack in an impossibly short time, 'he must have cat like reflexes' she thought. He walked away to leave the other tubes where they belonged. As she had been in the room several times, she knew exactly where to find the cleaning materials. A broom and dust pan in hand, she set about sweeping up the broken pieces. On his way back from the tube section as they called it, Chase expected to find her still in shock over the broken tube but instead he found her kneeling as she swept up the broken parts. An admiration filled him. He knew from his African house keeper, Mrs Thom, that it was their tradition for women to be so careful about dirt or anything else on the ground. It was a nice feeling knowing the girl he liked was such a sticker to her tradition. She made sure no piece was left to hurt anyone that she didn't notice him standing there until she stood and turned. A small gasp as she realised the look in his eyes was warm towards her but instead she blurted, "You should join a sports team." He knew why she said it, she had noticed his speed after all, "What do you propose I should play?" he said helping her put the cleaning stuff away and lock up the lab. She smiled at him then, "With that speed, you would make a great football player."
Chase laughed, his voice so deep it vibrated in his chest, she turned her eyes away, glad her cheeks hadn't heated up as they do in movies. She hadn't meant to think of his chest, especially after coming in such close contact with it not so long ago. His laugh was so nice to hear and his face transformed as it lit up with his smile, she was glad he was laughing coz of her, that smile was a sight to behold. "I will be at practice tomorrow then, you gona come watch me?" he asked her and still reeling from his smile all she could do was nod. "I'll see you tomorrow then." Chase said as he walked away. As soon as he was out of sight, she jumped up and down, doing a little victory dance at having not pushed him away as she usually did and tomorrow she would see him play......because she had suggested it! She walked home with a smile.
***
Chase was walking down the stairs when the phone in the foyer rang. He walked to it as Mr Matato, the indigenous butler, went to open the front door. The visitor sounded female but their conversation was muffled as he focused on the caller, "Chase is that you?" His father's voice sounded authoritative as usual but this had no effect on Chase, 19 years of living with a person builds some sort of resistance he thought. "Yeah dad it's me, what's up?"
"Good I wanted to speak to you." He rolled his eyes at this, "You could have called my phone." He heard his father breathe in slowly, the way he did when he had no time to argue with someone. "It's a full moon tonight and I want you to be in doors all night. Tell the butler to lock the basement door behind you."
"You aren't coming home?" he asked incredulously, knowing full well that was what his dad had just meant. A ruffle of papers and an obviously loud exhalation on the other end of the line, "Not tonight son." Mr. Knight said matter of factly. Chase stared at the portrait of his late mom, hanging over the fire place; he felt the urge to break something or someone, but her beautiful face always calmed him down. "Dad you can't leave me on my own, not at a time like this anyway." He tried to plead with his father but to no avail.
"Nothing will go wrong." His father said, but they both knew that wasn't entirely true.
"What if I kill someone?" There was a sharp intake of breath from his father but the soft gasp behind him made Chase turn around. Brown eyes filled with fright stared back at his grey ones; "Indira?" she turned to run from the entrance but the chain lock resisted her efforts and being unaccustomed to these types of doors, all she could do was keep pulling. "Damn it, I'll talk to you later dad." Chase said and put the phone back in its cradle.
The floor length green skirt she had on had a marked contrast to the pale white of the tiles and walls of the house Chase noticed as he walked up behind her. He placed his hand on her shoulder and felt her flinch, "Don't touch me!" she screamed at him, whirling around to fight him off. "Whoa! Calm down," he held his hands up to show he wasn't going to touch her again. Her breathing was heavy and he could feel her fear as her fast heartbeat filled his ears, the moon was about to appear in a few hours as the sky was darkening and his inner wolf was coming alive. "What are you doing here?" he asked her, hoping a distraction would calm her down.
"I came here to start on the lab report," she gasped, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop but what you said, did you just say you might kill someone?" she couldn't stop trembling but as she looked, his face went from concerned to stupidly grinning. He put down his hands then started to laugh, "Oh that was just an insider's joke I share with my dad."
"Really? 'Cause it you seemed rather serious to me right there." She said but with a slight relief washing over her. He smiled boyishly down at her, "Do I look like I could kill to you?" Looking that cute I doubt you would, she said in her mind but outwardly she said, "Pssh no you couldn't, I just overreacted coz I like dramatics." Her hand went to her heart and his eyes followed, "I bet if you were white, your face would be red all over." The smile vanished from her face the instant he said it, he wanted to take it back but the damage had been done. She moved away from the door to let him open it, "I think I'll be leaving now. Please open the door Chase."
He could do nothing but open it anyway, it was better she left before the sun set completely, though there was still time he wasn't about to take the chance, because then if he turned with her around, his secret would be revealed. Indira walked briskly out the door and he followed, intending to escort her past the gate at least and then ask the guard to take her all the way home. "I can get out of here on my own thank you." Her voice sounded cold even to her but his comment had hurt her. Pointing out her skin colour in that joke had made her feel inferior; this was added by being in his huge house and the intimidation he always caused her to feel. The intimidation was not new but the house, even though she had seen it from afar and heard about it from those who claimed to have visited it, had made her realise just how different they were in terms of class. He was white, smart, immensely handsome and over that stinking rich. She decided to give up liking him and resolved to always treating him coldly. She had her pride to spare, she thought, a poor girl like her would never have a guy like him. Despite the friendliness that had bloomed after the lab accident, it had all been a fantasy to think more would come of it.
"I'm sorry about that comment back there, I didn't mean to sound so racist." His words brought her back to the present. "It's ok, I'm just not used to being reminded my skin colour is different from the person with me." She lied. They had reached the gate and she decided to make a quick exit, "I'll see you tomorrow." She said hurriedly and left before the guard finished opening the gate to let her out. Chase stood looking after her departing figure through the door; he hadn't even had the chance to properly apologise. He walked back up the stone pavement to the house and went straight to his room. The room was huge and gray; the four poster bed seemed much out of place with the forest print beddings lying on it as the rest of the room looked more like an office. The carpet was deep shade of blue running all the way to the bathroom door on the right. The left held his desk where there was a huge bar of chocolate and some paper. He sat down and took out his sketch pad. He had always drawn pictures of his mom but lately he had taken to drawing some of Indira and soon enough he was immersed in his work.
The knock was faint but he knew who it was for only one servant remained in the house when the full moon rose. It was his father's strict policy. Mr Matato walked in silently knowing full well his young master could hear him. He knew the family secret and as he descended from an ancestry of witchdoctors, he had no fear of the white people or their curse. It was his dream that he would one day find a cure for it. He walked over to the desk to see what Chase was working on, it wasn't a sketch of Daniella Knight as he had suspected but rather it was of the girl he had met earlier. "You like her don't you Chase?" he said, as he was very close with the boy that nothing was a secret between them.
"Yes I do." Chase replied without even looking up from the sketch. Maybe they had planned on having a date, he mused as the boy drew on, highlighting every feature of her face perfectly.
"Will you give her that as a present?"
"No," Chase said silently, "She doesn't know how I feel for her. She can never know."
Mr Matato knew the reason for this but he also knew that when in love, it was better to tell the girl how you felt before someone beat you to it. This lesson he could never forget as 20 years ago, when he was Chase's age, he had fallen in love with the village beauty, a girl he had known all his life. Her name was Omega and he knew she felt the same for him, but pride and fear had kept him from going to her father to ask for her hand in marriage as was customary to them. Instead his own best friend Phillip had beaten him to it and in the process, because he hadn't been able to contain his jealousy at their wedding, he had caused a scene and lost both the people he cared about the most. Patting the boy's shoulder in a sign to show he understood, he muttered "Life is too short to live in fear when it comes to love. Trust me I know." Chase could only nod as they left the room and went down to have dinner.
An hour later they were down in the secret basement, the chains had now been fastened to Chase. Everything else was in place, the pile of meat that Chase had insisted be cooked first was in a plate close enough for him to reach. As his father had insisted, the room had trees grown in it and a small pond installed to make it seem like a proper forest and not the prison cell Chase knew it was. Michael aka Mr Matato locked the door behind him and he knew he was finally all alone. The pain started to intensify, the bone breaking feeling adding on to the anger that always came along. Fighting it was ineffective so he gave in to it. His mother's face floated in his mind for a few seconds then a smiling girl appealed. "Indira" he whispered and she was the last thing he saw before the beast took over.