Find Me Under The Moon

The Middle of Nowhere. Three months after: It was a good night to hunt, my father would have said. It was the kind of night that day bled into, slowly, the sun drowning beneath the waves of the sky. The kind of night that came with restless wind, with darkness which was as solid as a wall. In the wind, the grass whistled. So also did the leaves on the trees, their combined rustling making a high-pitched sound that was like a wail in the night. In the dark, the trees stood like tall, dark men. Tall dark men with hundreds of arms. I was thankful for it, the loudness, the whistling. That, coupled with the night's darkness, helped to mask my movement as I crept through the woods. Mine and that of the twelve men with me. I did not need to look sideways to know they were there. I could smell them with me, I could feel them. A kill squad closing in on a target. I could tell who wore what cologne, who smelled of clean sweat, whose shampoo held the fragrance of papaya and citrus. I could hear the palpitations of their hearts, could sense their feet on the ground, even though they all moved as I did: as silently as they could, barely disrupting the peacefulness of the night. Even with the night's mist, my senses were arrow-sharp. We crouched in the short grass, dark figures awaiting a signal we all knew would come eventually, but hoped would not. It all came with the territory. With fear. Fear makes you hopeful and ready all at once. The ground was warm under my feet. Warm and slightly damp. I slunk downwards further, closer to the earth like Ivan taught me. Shoulders straight, back tense, feet ready to throw me forward like a spring. My heart thudded in her chest. Ivan. It was insane that merely hours ago, we had danced here, on this dew-damp grass in the middle of the unending woods. He twirled me with the ease of a Caliente dancer, dipped me and kissed me, his hands on my body in a way that felt practiced. The sun was beginning to sink and its rays washed over us. His eyes were spun gold; he was beautiful. The world had felt right at the time. Now, there are eleven men between him and I, each flanking us, each one there to protect us from whatever came bounding up the slope. There was a small sound nearby, a rustle, and I turned swiftly towards its source, read to spring. It was only Gabriel. He held a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet. His pumpkin-orange hair was blood-red in the moonlight. Like me, he was bent in a crouch. He spoke in a whisper. “We did not find anything on the plains. No paw prints, no markings. Ivan thinks we should retreat, go back to the house. If they are out here, we might be walking into an ambush. It might be safer to let them come to us.” I had very recently seen what they could do to a man locked up in a house, even if it was his own house. I did not want to face the Sabers inside a house where they could corner me, box me into a tight space. I have never been good at fighting when my back was against the wall. Fang or not. I opened her mouth to voice my dissent. I would face what was coming here, out in the open, I wanted to say. The scream stopped me. It was loud, raw, and unhinged. Painful to listen to. It pierced the night sky. Gabriel's head swivelled towards the direction of the scream so fast, I could almost hear the bones in his neck crack with the force of it. For a moment immediately afterwards, there was silence. A tense, expectant silence. The kind that builds up to an explosion of sounds. A cacophony. For a second more, the silence held. I was starting to believe I had imagined the scream. Then another voice broke the silence. This time, it was Ivan's. “Vampire!” He yelled. It was not the signal we had expected. A signal to converge. To tighten our circle around our target. It was, instead, a warning. A warning to stay away. A warning that we, all thirteen of us, had somehow become the targets. Hunter had become, by a stroke of sudden bad luck, the hunted. Fear rushed at me like a jungle cat, going for my throat. I raced towards at it, rushing through the woods at inhumane speed, towards the sound of his voice. Gabriel made to stop me, but I was faster. Reeds whipped past me. The night was blur of dark, moving colours. The Sabers had come. They had come, but with more allies than I and Ivan had expected they could gather on such short notice. I had never met a vampire, but I knew they were there somewhere, lurking in the shadows. The woods smelled heavily of them, of something beyond the natural, something cold yet alive. I could guarantee them one thing: they had never seen a Fang in a fight. I ran as far as I could go, then I threw myself into the air. Where there was soft flesh, hard skin grew. Where there were perfectly manicured nails, claws grew. Muscles swelled uder my skin, growing and growing. My clothes exploded around me. The world turned gray, black and white. And like that the night came to live.