Once Upon a Blue Moon

Trouble finds you

I stumble backward as I tried to turn around to see the man behind me. I reach for Leona who has now gripped Asher closer to her chest.

I knew I sensed something off when we stepped foot into this place.

Leona's grip pulls me back, preventing me from falling back on the man standing behind me.

I look up slowly now to find a stiff body towering over mine.

"Tsk tsk tsk.." he hissed his teeth, and I finally found the courage to look at his face, disregarding all the voices inside my head telling me to run because everything about this man screamed danger and I need to take off from him.

Have you ever had a nightmare where a clown is staring at you, giving you a long ear to ear grin in a very terrifying way?

That is exactly what I'm seeing as I stared up at this man. His hair is the perfect shade of jet black, styled in a way that the fangs are scattered across his forehead, nearly completely concealing his bright blue eyes. His fangs are protruded to a length as he grinned at me.

There was absolutely something nasty about his grin, and the way his eyes watched me.

And I find myself gulping hard.

He starts shaking his head as he continues to tick his teeth, amusement glistening in his eyes.

"What do you want?" I ask him, my attempt to show him that I wasn't scared.

"What do I want?" He throws his head back as he laughs deeply. His Adam apple bobs in the darkness. When he looks back to me, his once laughing face has now been replaced with a serious and scarier one.

His eyes narrowed down at me and he takes one last step closer to me, forcing me to take a step back.

"You are in my territory, Wolf."

"Look we didn't know okay? We can just leave." Leona says as she starts to tug at my arm.

This is an absolute nonsense. Why do I have to be scared of this man? For all I knew he could just be bluffing, knowing we were just strangers just to scare us off. He is too young to own a territory. He doesn't look to be much older than me.

As I try to understand why I need to be scared of this man, I pull my arm from Leona's grip and face him properly, putting my chin up and taking a deep breath secretly so he doesn't see the effect he had on me.

"We didn't see any signs that says we cannot walk through here," I tell him "in fact we've seen many people walk past here after getting off the train."

He doesn't reply, and instead just watched me. His lips pulls up in an amused smile again and he started to nod his head again.

When he opens his mouth to speak, I look closely to find that his tongue is also the same black color like the other two guys on that rooftop.

Who were these men?

He starts closing in on me and instead of moving back, I remain still until there's merely a symmetrical line between us.

His eyes glows once again, his smile widening like the clown that he is before he put his tongue out and licked his lips. I notice how weirdly long his tongue is, like some serpent.

My heart starts to beat uncontrollably and every nerve in my body was telling me to run. But I stubbornly stayed.

"Run." He says into my face before laughing in a really really sick manner.

Strangely enough, this sends shivers running down my spine, forcing my legs to give in. His voice seemed to paralyze me for a quick second as I struggled to get my legs working. I wanted to run but it suddenly seemed so impossible.

Suddenly, everything seemed to be mixing up around me. My vision is getting weak, just as my body and I don't know how to control it.

"Vivian!" Leona's voice is barely audible on the background, her hand frantically trying for pull me by the arm.

What is wrong with me?

The strange man is still laughing wickedly, and the other two guys from the roof tops joins in now.

I hear them jump off the roofs and I still couldn't get myself to move.

Move, damn it! I mentally scream at myself.

But I just remain still, watching his fangs grow longer and his eyes glowing stronger. I notice his skin start to change into a different color.

He's going to shift into his wolf!

I don't know if I'm strong enough to fight yet. The best solution right now is to run.

that seemed to break my paralytic spell because my legs are finally sprinting away.

I hear sinister laughters following behind us but we don't stop to look anymore.

I searched for possible exits towards our direction but all I saw in the distance was tall walls. The one way we could find an exit was from the opposite direction where we are currently being chased.

I don't know how long I could keep running before my legs give in and I collapse.

As we closed in on the walls, I expected that they'd catch up with us already, but instead I hear a troubled gasp followed by sounds of someone thudding hard against the floor, followed by the sound of whimpers.

Leona and I stopped running and turn quickly to find one of those guys on the floor. But that wasn't what caught my attention.

What caught my attention was the tall figure standing in front of us, their back turned to us.

They have a black hat seated on their head, a stick in one hand.

The guy with black hair is standing far away from them as he watched angrily.

I looked closely and tried to see who was this person that has just saved us.

And I knew immediately when I heard them laugh. Henrietta.

Why was she here?

"Shame on you, Theo," Henrietta says to the dark haired guy "preying on a weaker wolf."

For the first time this night I'm actually witnessing the said Theo's angry face. His eyes are turning pink now, his brows hollowed.

"You never learn to mind your business, Henrietta." He says with an angry scoff. "Perhaps I should fix that for you."

"Why will I? When there's still guys like you around." Henrietta says, before slightly turning her face to the side to see me and saying "are you alright?"

I nod slowly, unable to get past the fact that Henrietta actually knew these guys, and the fact that the umbrella she held by one hand has a sharp knife protruded at the tip of it.

Henrietta's lips pulls up into a corner lip smile at my response before looking back at them.

"You will leave them alone, Theo. They're with me."

Theo laughs deeply before responding, "this isn't your territory, Henrietta."

"This might be your territory, but that doesn't give you a free pass to torment people that come across it unknowingly. They're new in town and have no idea, okay? There, I spelled it out for you."

Asher stirs in his sleep, finally waking up. He starts to cry from Leona's arms so I quickly reach out to take him from her.

His voice catches Theo's attention and he looks from Henrietta to me.

Looking fiercely back at Henrietta, he said "she has a child, damn it. You know that's not allowed."

Wait, what?

"That shouldn't be any of your concerns. I will take it from here." Henrietta replied sternly.

Theo watched her for a considerable amount of seconds, obviously contemplating on whether to kill us or to listen to Henrietta and leave us alone.

After a while, he pulls back and the other two guys joins him before they turn around and started walking away.

Henrietta watches their backs until they disappear before she turned around to see us.

"I'm sorry about that ladies..." She says as she pulls back the knife sticking out the tip of her umbrella.

"Thank you." I say as I started towards her.

She nods "that was a very unpleasant way to start your stay here at this city." She says with a smile.

"No child allowed," I repeat to her "what did he mean by that?"

Henrietta looks up at me, as if fighting for a reply.