NomiDomiLight: The Good Girl's Blood Boy

Tedious Ten

They finally did agree to let me go with Nicotine and Molly. The pair led me to their car, a dilapidated old Honda Odyssey painted a disgusting shade of green. Molly threw her shoulder into the door, and the mechanics sputtered, ending with the door inching open at a snail's pace. Molly gestured at the back seat for me, but instead, I ducked around her and slipped into the shotgun seat. Nicotine laughed. "Molly, she beat you. Get in the back."

"Oh, come on, Nic," Molly groaned. "You know that Lacey and Shep left a mess back here on Friday."

"Yeah, and it's your week for van duty, so it's your own fault it's still messy. Suck it up," Nicotine replied, buckling his seatbelt and putting the car into reverse.

"Who are Lacey and Shep?" I asked. 

"Friends," Molly said shortly. Nicotine lifted a hand. "Molly, if she's gonna learn the layout of the city, she might as well learn about us too, okay?"

Molly grumbled unintelligibly,  and Nicotine started talking. "Lacey and Shep are twins. They're in second grade, and they're great."

I blinked. "They're, um, yours?"

"Oh, God, no," Nicotine corrected. "Molly's my little sister. I graduated, three or four years ago, but yeah, no."

"So how'd you end up taking care of seven year old twins?" I asked as Nicotine turned left.  He looked surprised. "Oh, not just them. There's Benny, Mina, Wendy, Ethan, Chance..."

"Daniella," Molly supplied. Nicotine glanced at me. "Ethan's the one who answered the door yesterday."

"That just raises more questions," I said, pressing my palms to my eyes. Nicotine sighed, pulling over in an alleyway. "Here, let me explain."

"I'm twenty three. Molly's seventeen. When I was seven, and she was one, our parents died. Car crash, tragic, I know. Don't feel sorry, we got over it. Anyway, we needed to eat and stuff, but I mean, we were kids. We couldn't. I was freezing because I'd given Molly my coat, and we were in an alley under cardboard. That's what our life looked like. Then this guy, Linus, came up to us and was like, damn, these kids need help. So he took us, brought us to his house. He was basically our dad. He raised us good.

"Finally, when I was thirteen, I had my first transformation. I didn't know what it was, but Linus did. Evidently, when he'd taken us in, he'd run some tests on us, figured out we were lycanthropes. He was, too, lucky coincidence, right? As fate would have it, the country is crawling with us. Regular humans are just too blind to see it. This city is a particularly hot haven for our kind."

"Stop," I said, holding up my hand. "How did he know?"

"Anyone born on a full moon is a lycanthrope," Molly supplied from her place in the back, face cupped in her hands. "Linus had been, too."

"Anyway, Linus started taking me on runs with him. We'd help out girls who were, like, being followed by pervs on the street and stuff. Um, Linus didn't tell us this, but he had cancer. We lost him when I turned eighteen. I became the big man on campus. That's when I started the Lost Boys."

"It's sexist," Molly interjected again. "I said it should be the Lost People."

"That doesn't have the same ring," Nicotine said impatiently. "So, Molly, who knew all this by now, she was in school, but she kept an eye out for me, for kids who might need help. Any time we see a kid like us, whose parents dumped them on the streets, or anything, we take them in. When they turn sixteen, we give 'em a choice. They can join the gang, or they can go try to blend in with civvies."

"And the names? With, with the drugs?"

"Molly's actually her real name. But it's also a nickname for ecstasy. My name's Nick, so Nicotine made sense. Dusty- angel dust. It's actually just the three of us right now."

"But why would you fight the Musketeers?" I asked. "Do they know any of this?"

Nick laughed. "Hell no. And you're not going to tell them, clear? We fight them because... we both want the whole city. They want it to keep out the vamps, we want it to gather the cubs."

"Why in the hell why don't you work together?" I practically yelled. Molly started laughing.

"Have you read anything about wolves, like, ever? We're the same. We're a pack, and packs don't mingle. It's as simple as instinct."

"Instinct is stupid," I retorted. "But... why ? I just don't get it. They- if they knew, they'd help."

"Naomi, we don't need their help. That's literally the entire point. I would not, and do not expect you to understand. We're willing to work together on this. But only this."

Nick pulled the car out of the alley, beginning to drive again. After ten minutes of silence, I worked up the courage to ask, "Fine. But what's with all the guns?"

Nick grinned. "Oh, that's easy. They're fun!"

im having feels about my own trashily written story send help

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