“Come on, Dad,” Ryan called out to the fat man passed out on their brown, fabric couch. “If you stay there any longer, you won't get to sleep tonight. Not to mention your food is probably getting to be frigid right about now.”

His father belched in reply and buried his face into the stained cushions. His rosy red cheeks were like a beacon against the dark background. He scratched his right butt cheek then in a slurred, muffled tone, he grumbled, “Five more minutes...”

“That's what you said half an hour ago.” Ryan sighed in defeat and resorted to picking up the empty aluminum cans scattered across the hardwood floor and chipped counter space. The strong stench of alcohol filled the room, making it impossible to even smell the cooling dinner in the kitchen. As such Ryan opened a window while complaining, “It's a miracle that the post office hasn't fired you yet. You're supposed to work in delivery but they keep throwing you in the backroom because you show up too wasted to drive. Things can never go back to the way they were if you don't get your act together.”

He reached for another can but paused when he noticed a picture frame thrown to the ground, face down. Beside it was a partially rusted screwdriver with a blue, plastic handle. He grabbed both, placed the old tool on the coffee table, and turned over the display to see the photograph nested inside. At first, he noticed the evening sun setting on the horizon over the oceanfront. Before that was a pier with splotches of paint strewn about like someone had just finished a game of paintball. On either side of the pier were gaggles of strangers and colourful booths stretching all the way to the water. The second thing to snatch his attention was four people standing at the image's centre, all grinning ear to ear that he could see. The two on the left he could make out clearly: a man in a Hawaiian shirt and yellow jeans holding a plastic bottle of orange juice. In front of him was a little boy about half his height in a blue t-shirt and beige cargo shorts with a carton of apple juice. Besides both of them, concealed by a spider-web crack in the glass, was a younger boy in a white undershirt and coveralls as well as an adult woman in a yellow sundress. Her face had been removed from the picture and was nothing more than a hole allowing Ryan to see the floor behind it. Ryan dropped the frame beside the screwdriver and pushed the collar of his shirt aside, revealing a red symbol of four curled lines extending from a small circle. He glared at his father and swore under his breath, “I'll do what you couldn't, just you wait.”

It was then that he plopped down into the chair opposite the couch and gingerly rubbed his temples, only to be startled by a loud series of rings. He rolled his eyes and calmed his nerves as he fished through his pocket, looking for his phone. He answered with a tired, “What can I do you for?”

“Ryan?” The girl on the other end of the line yelled unnecessarily loud, prompting him to hold the device an inch away from his ear.

“Delilah,” He tapped his finger on his armrest, “I just reported into you only moments ago. Don't tell me you forgot already?”

“That's not it. We have a bit of a problem here.”

There was a short pause and Ryan began to also tap the ground with his foot. “Well, spit it out. I haven't got all day.”

“Doctor Raymond wants you to get here before, as he says, 'your girlfriend burns the whole place to the ground.'”

“My girlfriend?” He shot up onto his feet with a jolt. “Luna's attacking? How'd she even find the place? She's supposed to be laying low so there's no way she could have searched for it. Plus-”

“It's not my blood.” Ryan froze and his extremities began to tingle with adrenaline.

Over the phone, he heard a man cry, “She's just broken through the bay doors!” Then everything went silent with a click followed by quiet beeps.

Ryan threw the cell down without even looking for a clear space and dove for his book-bag, furiously pulling on the zipper. Inside, just under a batch of poorly maintained text-books, was a familiar ebony box devoid of decoration. As he grabbed it, Raymond's voice popped into his head. “There will come a day when she'll just start wandering, slaughtering innocents just because she's bored. What will you do when that monstrosity comes to our front door? Will you still sit and tell me she isn't what I think she is, or will you make the right decision?” Ryan gritted his teeth, grabbed the cardboard container, and sprinted out the front door without a moment's hesitation.

* * *

“Ryan?” A pair of kids called out as they limped towards the edge of the city limits.

“Tess? Rody?” Ryan replied and knelt down in front of them. Both sat on the ground, elevating their feet slightly and blowing on them as best as they could. “What happened?”

The girl, Tessa, shook her head. “The silver wolf came and blew open the main doors like they were cheap curtains. I don't know if it was because she didn't see us or not, but she left us alone. We got out the way she came in before she made a second run.” As she explained the situation, Ryan inspected the bottoms of their feet which were pink, raw, and blistered.

“These are some pretty bad burns.” He commented and slapped his pockets quickly before recoiling. “I forgot my phone so I can't call for help. I need to go make sure everyone else is safe so I can't stay. Here's what I want you two to do, tear strips of cloth off of your shirts and wrap that around your feet. Once you get past those buildings there,” he pointed behind him without turning around, “there should be a payphone on one of those streets. Call an ambulance, you don't need money for emergency calls, tell them about your injury and where you are. Once they have all that information, make sure they're aware that other children may also be lost out here with similar or worse wounds. Can you do that for me?”

Tess nodded and started tearing up Rody's shirt while he hugged her tight, refusing to let go. While she did, she asked Ryan, “What are you going to do?”

He stood up, took a deep breath, and started looking around aimlessly. “For now I'm just going to worry about getting there on time. When I do... well, let's just take this one step at a time. Currently, the only thing you two need to worry about is getting those burns looked at.” He walked several feet behind them, eyeing a growing red glow over the top of the trees of the nearby woods. “Go, quickly.” He barked at them and sprinted down a dirt path, deeper into the forest.

Before long he ran into a larger group of kids whose eyes lit up when they saw him. Without stopping he yelled, “Tess and Rody are that way! Go meet up with them and follow their lead. Get away from here as fast as you can.”

He then halted when he reached a clearing of yellow grass around a tall, rundown hospital that appeared to be in disrepair. He tore off a shred of his own shirt and wrapped it around his mouth in an attempt to shield the smoke from his lungs. He couldn't be sure if the sweat that now soaked him to the core was because of his apparent lack of exercise, the sudden rise in temperature when he left the concealment of the foliage, or a combination thereof. Before making his way to the ruins, he stopped by a white shed with several chips in the paint and grabbed a wooden pallet. He dragged it behind the hospital to a ramp leading to two fallen steel doors that were coated in a heat mirage. In the centre of said doors, they were still glowing orange but the edges had mostly just turned into black, blue, and brown heat marks. Ryan tossed the pallet down, putting as much of it on the heat marks as he could, trying to keep it away from the red-hot section. The corner of the pallet still nicked it and lit ablaze on contact. Ryan jumped onto the wood quickly, wasting no time hopping from there to the cool panels inside.

From there he stubbornly caught his breath and lowered the mask while looking over the trail of charred footprints leading through the facility. He rounded the next blood-stained corner and vomited in his mouth slightly, retching at the sight. Before him laid multiple dismembered limbs and blackened bones. His eyes watered as he forced himself to search among the disembodied heads, squeaking, “Kyle?” as he went. He held his breath from the first to the last as his heartbeat deafened him. After looking at the final piece, he cried, “Kyle!” and dashed towards the main chamber. He recklessly climbed over fragments of steel like they were shards of glass, cutting himself on their edges. He fell onto his knees when he finally got through all the debris and looked up to see a silver-haired girl with the ears and tail of a wolf standing just before the centre of the room. “Luna?” He asked nervously and she turned around non-nonchalantly. If she responded, he didn't hear as he became focused on the teenager at her feet, gurgling crimson bubbles. “Kyle...” He mumbled and crawled forward slowly.

“Who?” Luna responded, her face scrunched up.

“Who?” Ryan echoed silently, his shoulders starting to tremble and his blood boiling. He clenched his teeth together and slowly got up onto his feet. “Did you really just say, 'who'?” He tore the lid off of the little black box, pointed the devilish flower inside at Luna, and screamed, “You damned monster!”

“Why the hell do you have that?” Luna hollered and clasped a hand over her mouth while reaching for the back of her belt.

“Why the hell is Kyle dead at your feet?” He shot back.

“This little prick? He tried to attack me from behind. All of these sorry cretins were brainwashed to want me dead, how could I just ignore that? I gave him the choice to run away, to do anything else with his life. He didn't take it, this was the alternative. He made his decision.” She explained, simultaneously clawing at the air around her waist. After several swipes without any kind of contact, she cranked her head around to investigate. “Fuck me.” She whispered and remembered that the pouch housing her mask had been thrown away when she was attacked in the classroom before.

While she was lost in thought, something was driven into her abdomen, knocking the wind out of her. She tried to take a step back and get into a defensive stance but this time she was clipped in the temple, forcing her to stumble slightly. Unable to recover in time, she lashed out blindly with her free hand and caught Ryan under the nose mid-swing which bought her a moment of reprieve.

In an attempt to create some distance, she jumped back twice but slipped on the second. By that point in time, her extremities had already started to go numb and her legs felt like Jell-O. Holding her hand up to her mouth felt like she was holding a boulder over her head. She exhaled sharply when she started seeing doubles of Ryan in front of her and deepened her breathing, restoring her sight while she focused. Not confident in her ability to move without diving onto the floor, she tried to reason through her fingers, “You know as well as I do that they were going to come and kill me if I left them to their own devices. You said you would be on my side, but what were you doing the whole time they were plotting? Did you make any attempts at having them see me as anything but a monster? Did you try to encourage me to make friends with any of them? You never even told me that any of these other people even existed. You did just the opposite in fact. You tried to keep these people a secret from me. You allowed the people who wanted me dead to keep skulking around in the shadows, preparing for the day they could do the deed. What was your plan for when they decided to come after me? Would you have fought against them? Would you have turned your back on me? Would you have sat on the fence and try to weasel your way into the heart of the victor?”

Ryan didn't respond. Rather, he grunted in frustration and charged straight for her, dipping his head down low. With a war cry, he rammed himself into her waist and tried to clamp her with his arms. Luna attempted to sidestep, but her lead leg gave away, resulting in nothing more than a sad, bunny hop. They collided and both crashed onto the ground where Luna, being the one on the bottom, gasped from the impact. Ryan grabbed her wrist and pushed it away from her mouth while trying to shove the beast bane into her face. Luna tried to use her other hand to force him back but couldn't move her withered fingers to get a hold of him so instead, she swatted the flower down towards her shoulder. The dastardly petals brushed against her skin, causing her to let out a short cry of pain from what felt like a thousand wasp stings all at once. She bit her upper lip and mustered all the strength she could to first bridge, then throw Ryan off to the side. He rolled to a stop and got back onto his feet, rubbing the back of his head. She quickly gazed at her shoulder, which had turned an abnormal combination of bruised and swollen. The skin surrounding the affected area was also gradually becoming a sickly grey.

Luna looked up at Ryan who was now wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve. She tried to stand up and immediately fell back down onto her hands and knees. Unless she was watching each limb, she couldn't be sure they were moving at all. She tried to drag herself to a nearby pile of debris in an attempt to boost her elevation. As she did, she noticed that she was unintentionally leaving behind charred handprints on the floor.

Ryan lunged forward and kicked her in the rib cage, knocking her onto her side. He threw the beast bane down beside her head, grabbed both of her shoulders, and forced her onto her back. He then knelt on her chest, fists clenched. Luna blinked once, barely managing to keep her eyes open as her head wobbled slowly back and forth. “Stop...” She sputtered, “seriously... I can't control-”

“Did you stop when they asked you too?” He snapped and began to rain punches down on her face.

Whack!

“I didn't-”

Whack!

“Torture-”

Whack!

“Anyone...”

Whack!

Whack!

Whack!

The strikes continued hammering down relentlessly even as Ryan's breathing grew heavy. Before long Luna wasn't even conscious of the fact that she was taking hits. Her eyes gingerly shut and everything around her became still and silent. “You're too hard on yourself.” Someone sighed and pulled her eyelids open, blinding her with the bright sun directly above her. She was suddenly carpeted in shade as Abaddon looked down, leaning in from behind her.

“Shut up.” She whispered.

“That's not very nice.” A woman mused and when Luna blinked, Abaddon disappeared. In his place was a young woman with long, red hair, a moderate amount of freckles, and emerald green eyes.

“Who...” Luna started to ask.

“Who?” The lady echoed, maintaining a blank expression. “A guide? Maybe a contract? The trumpets perhaps?” She suddenly smiled and exclaimed, “I don't really know myself but some of the other residents here have taken to calling me Fearg. I'm not certain that that means anything to you though.”

“It sounds vaguely familiar but I'm not really in the mood to care enough to think about it.”

“Good because who I am doesn't really matter at this immediate point in time. I'm more interested in what's currently happening to you. You could have spared yourself all this trouble if you had just killed him the moment he opened that box. With just one rose, being exposed from that distance would have only amounted to at most a headache. Honestly, what went through your head to make you fumble on making a decision as obvious as that?”

“He's special...”

“He's trying to kill you. He's just another common human after all. They can't see past their selfish desires and refuse to recognize their faults. Look at him now, protecting a bunch of murderers in training, trying to kill the woman he swore to protect, isn't that right?”

“He never said-”

“He did say that he would have your side no matter what comes. Look at where that brought you. He's scum, and scum deserves to be punished.” She put a hand on each of Luna's cheeks and lowered her face closer to Luna's. “Let's kill him now before he has the chance to stab you in the back a second time.”

“I don't need your help.”

“That's cold but luckily, I don't require your permission to offer assistance. Really, you and your father are just like each other, foolishly believing that you have a choice. I'll have to tighten your restraints as I did to him.” At that moment, their lips touched and everything became black.

Ryan panted loudly as he looked over Luna's motionless body and wound up for one more swing. He gritted his teeth and put all of his weight into his final strike. The second he made contact with her cheek, however, her right eye snapped open and his arm was enveloped in a crimson mist. The room echoed with the combination of a blood-curdling scream and something slimy being torn apart. He fell backward and clenched his arm, blood dripping through his fingers. Strings of muscle dangled from his elbow where the air also tickled the exposed end of his humerus.

“You should have listened to her.” Luna giggled. Ryan stared at the stump he once called a limb for a moment longer, his face pale and clammy. He scanned the room in a panic but Luna was nowhere to be seen. He reached for a nearby chunk of steel to use as a weapon if necessary but he suddenly felt like his veins themselves were being pulled on. He was lifted clean off the ground and thrown into the wall, fifteen feet high. Before he could fall, there was a thunderous boom and the entire room shook. He could no longer feel anything in his right arm which flopped beside him like a wet noodle. He slowly turned his head, beads of sweat dripping onto his shirt, to find an ebony rod, almost like a railroad spike, had been run through his shoulder and into the concrete he was pinned too. The pulling on his veins ceased and like a picture frame on a nail, the rod suspended him up there. Something pinched his chin and he blinked, dumbfounded. Luna appeared in front of him, red, curved lines extended from under her eye patch and occupying the entire left side of her face. Eight large, scaly black wings extruded from her back, leaving only rags of her tank top left which fell to the floor below. The backside of her bra hung loosely, the hooks broken off.

She pressed her forehead into his, smiling mischievously. “This is exhilarating, is it not? It's been a long time since I got any notion of the thrill of the hunt.” She then pressed her fingers together, claws sharpening. “It's too bad you humans have such frail bodies though. I don't even have time to get warmed up before you're keeling over, waiting for death. Honestly, for such a weak race, you people like to stir up trouble. Maybe the next one will be more entertaining.” She chuckled and lifted her hand up beside her head, pulled back slightly. Ryan closed his eyes in a hurry as she jabbed towards him like her arm was a spear. One second passed, then two, then three but he felt no different. He didn't see any light, didn't hear any voices from his past and he wasn't relieved from the phantom throbbing in his once-was limb. He cracked open one eye to see Luna, the red lines gone, looking down at the ground instead of him. Her hand had punched through the concrete wall up to her elbow which she tore out effortlessly, bringing chunks of rock with it. She grabbed the ebony spike and threw it aside with a loud clang as it landed. She hooked her own arms under his shoulders and softly descended to the ground, laying him down gently. Her wings shrank into her back and she turned away from him, throwing her bra away. Her body was encompassed in a warm, green glow that quickly turned into a black t-shirt.

When she looked at him again, she wiped her eye and grabbed his stump. She exhaled and a lime flame burned the wound, sealing it shut. She then moved to his other side and did the same to his shoulder. He didn't make a sound, not because it didn't hurt, but because he didn't have the strength to wince or scream. “I didn't want this.” Luna whispered, her voice quaking and then she dashed out the shattered door.

* * *

“How'd it go?” Stella asked Luna as she walked through the front entrance. She didn't respond, only stomped up the stairs while hiding her face. “That's about what I expected,” Stella stated under her breath and gave the window an empty stare.

Luna barged into her own room, fell into bed, and buried her face into her pillow with a muffled weep.