Terror by Moonlight

Welcome to the Family Business

        "Derek! Please tell me!" Sarah pleaded.

        We had just got back from going out to eat when she started asking me, yet again, to tell her the story of how I became a hunter.

        I smiled. "I don't know. It's quite personal."

        Sarah crossed her arms and started pouting. "We're dating. I'd say that's pretty personal, too. Besides," she said, rolling her eyes, "You know how my last relationship ended. Not even my family knows about that."

        "True." I pretended to mull it over, and she hit my arm.

        "Seriously? I know you made up your mind already." Sarah smiled at me, and I laughed.

        "Right again. You're on a roll tonight." I laughed again, and she pulled me over to sit next to her on our couch. Some time after what happened several months ago, Sarah had me move in with her. She said it was unnecessary for me to still live in my cabin in the forest when we were dating. I agreed wholeheartedly, of course.

        "Okay, okay, you win. It all started on my 13th birthday..."

                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

        

        "Happy Birthday tooooo yooooouuuu!" I blew out the 13 candles on my 2-foot- high cake. Confetti burst around my head, and everyone cheered. As the youngest kid in my family, they really go all out for my parties. It's too bad I never had any friends to invite to them. I always have fun, though.

        "Happy birthday, little dude!" My cousin Danny ruffled my hair and handed me a card. "Don't spend it all in one place," he said with a wink. I smiled and thanked him. My parents sat me down so I could open my other gifts. Among them were a new comic, a pair of knitted socks from my Great-Aunt Cecilia, and a cool new video game.

        As I just finished opening the last one ("A guitar? Awesome!") everyone's voices died down. I looked up and noticed there was one more body in the crowd. It was the looming form of my uncle Vincent. I usually only see him during Christmas, and he usually goes into my father's study.

        "Derek, if you could follow me." I heard the others start whispering. I was a bit nervous as I followed Uncle Vincent to my dad's study. He sat behind the desk, and, all in all, looked very intimidating. He gestured for me to sit. I did, and just when he was starting to speak, my dad burst in.

        "Vincent, please. I thought we agreed to wait until he was older to-" Dad began.

        "I agreed to no such thing," Uncle Vincent intoned. "And now, I would ask you to leave." He stood up and grabbed one of the many books on the shelves in the room. It was a thick, dusty volume with gold leaf imprinted in the leather. I stared at him in shock, and was even more surprised when my father walked out of the room with barely a huff!

        I just stared at the man, eyes wide, when he got underway.

        "What do you know about werewolves?"

        I blinked. This is not what I expected. Needless to say, a no-nonsense guy like Uncle Vincent didn't like to beat around the bush, but this was really out of left field. Werewolves!

        "Um, not much. I guess what's shown in the movies, but there's a whole bunch of stuff about them. A lot of it contradicts eachother, now that I think about it." I frowned. "Why did you need to take me from my party to ask me a weird question like that?"

        He rubbed his gray-stubbled cheek and said, "Because they exist."

        "Huh?" This guy has got to be crazy.

        Uncle Vincent lauched into his explanation. He told me all about what real werewolves are like, their strengths, their weaknesses. Many old werewolf movies got pretty close to the truth.

        "Why are you telling me this?" I asked. What could all of this information be useful for?

        Now here's the real zinger:

        "Our family hunts these monsters so they don't overwhelm the world." I did a double take at this.

        "You're serious, aren't you?"

        "Our family, and a few other families all over the world keep the werewolf population in check. You are now part of this legacy, Derek." He gestured to the book, which until now I had payed no mind to. I opened it, and the first thing I saw was a grotesque picture of a werewolf presumably in mid-change. The faded black ink on the page made it almost as hard to read the words as the spelling was. Some of it was even in different laguages! I noticed the notes in the margins, written in modern english. It translated and gave me the gist of what was written down on these pages.

        "So what happens now that I know about our... special family history?" I wasn't sure how to act about this.

        "You will be taught to protect yourself. Something about us is a kind of marker that werewolves can identify. You will also be trained to hunt these beasts down, and a multitude of other things I don't really care to cover right now. Do you think you are ready to learn?"

        I thought about it. Did I really have a choice? And, if Uncle Vincent didn't think I was ready, why would he tell me any of this?

       I nodded. "Yes. I want to learn."

        "You start tomorrow." We both stood up, and he led me out of the room. Danny and his twin sister Megan were the first to greet me. (Danny and Megan are fraternal twins, but they look so alike that from behind, and a short distance away, they can be mistaken for eachother.)

        "Did he tell you?" They asked at the same time. Megan flipped her hair over her shoulder.

        "About our family of werewolf hunters? Yeah," I answered casually.

        "This is going to be so awsome!" Danny said excitedly. "Welcome to the family business, dude!"