"This is not what it looks like." I said to Jack. "Please dont yell."
He stood looking shell shocked outside my bedroom door and he had good reason to look so freaked out. My face was covered in scratches and gore, blood dripped down my hand, and covered my arms in a dark crimson sleeve. On the floor in front of me was a large pool of drying blood, and in the middle of it was a body.
"What the hell is this!" Jack gaped at where I was crouching before the shredded body.
"I didn't do this I swear! I found him this way and..... and, I can't explain it. But I promise I didn't do this." I stood and reached out to Jack forgetting that my hands were covered in blood. He cringed away from my blood soaked skin and into the door frame.
"Why is he shredded up then? Why does it look like you were digging into his corpse?!" Jack yelled hysterically. He slumped to the dark wooden floor and put his head in his hands. "Why is there a dead man in my house? I know you say you didn't do it but this is obviously your work so what the hell happened? "
"Okay your right I did do it but he tried to hurt me. It was self defense! " I pleaded with some deity out there, that they might show me the smallest bit of mercy and not make my best friend leave me.
"What? What could he have done to you to warrant you shredding him into pieces?" Jack sighed. "Your three times stronger than any man on this planet so he couldn't have hurt you. Were you hungry?"
Jacks slate gray eyes met mine with a look of confusion and panic. He knew what happened to people when my hunger set in, and he knew we were going to have to move again because of me. I tried to be normal, I really did but sometimes I lost control over my senses.
"I wasn't hungry at all I promise Jack! He was just as strong as me, and I tried to control his mind but he was able to block me out. He's like me I think." As I said this I creeped over towards Jack. Slowly I sat beside him and leaned my head back into the door jam. "I'm so sorry Jack. I wanted to know if he was like me so I..... I......" I stopped talking.
He took a deep breath and craned his neck to the side so his eyes could look into mine again. That look said it all. It told me that even though we had began to build a life here and we had started to fit in, he wasn't angry with me just frustrated that we were going to have to clean all that blood up.
I'm not a serial killer. I'm not even human, I'm something else. For years Jack and I have thought I was the last full blood of my kind left but this body told me otherwise. He had the same skeletal structure as me thick heavy bones that only someone like me could break, the same mucles made from thick sinews, the same gold color of my eyes (which I hid with contacts), everything about me and the dead man on the floor was the same. The only thing that was different was that he was dead and I wasn't.
"Shannara we have to get this cleaned up." Jack whispered to me.
He was a half blood so the minute I moved into his little town he knew what I was. He accepted that I couldn't fight the hunger like he could since I was a full blood, and he was the only one who knew my real name.... the name given to me by my mother many many full moons ago. I wasn't a werewolf, that's just tacky. All Jack and I knew was that I was something from ancient myth that couldn't be explained fully to a human.
"Yeah..... yeah. I'll uh go get the bleach and mops I guess." I stood and stepped into the hallway.
"I'm not mad at you at all Shannara. I'm just tired. Aren't you?" Jack said.
"Yes I am Jack. I'm tired of running every time I lose my control, I'm tired of hurting people every time I lose my control. I'm not as bad as the stories say you know that right?" I replied quietly.
Jack smiled "Quiet evil one."
"Oo name calling. So fearsome." I laughed and walked to the kitchen.
Retrieving everything we needed to clean up from under the kitchen sink I sauntered back to the room. Jack had grabbed the mops and was folding the plastic that was under the body up.
"You must have been aware enough to put plastic under the guy so that lessens our clean up a bit." Jack looked at me. "Go take a shower get all the blood off of you and I'll be done by the time your out okay?"
"Okay. Are you sure you don't need my help? I did cause this after all." I sighed and looked at my blood soaked hands.
"I'm okay Shannara. I can do this, plus I think you'd do more harm than good because your completely covered from shoulder to fingertips in blood." Jack urged.
"Okay."
