A Luna's heart

CHAPTER 3- A CONFRONTATION

GREY'S POV

“Hey!" I called, going closer.

Four pairs of eyes turned towards me. The person holding the knife straightened. The figure on the ground lay shivering in fear. Now I had gotten close enough to see clearly, I could make out four men. Their appearance reminded me of a movie on Vikings I had seen. These men were big, really big. At 6'4" I was pretty tall myself, but the largest of these men was about 6'8". Peering closely into their faces, I realized that these men were actually boys. Not one of them would be above twenty one years of age.

I had thought them older because of their hair and beards. All of them had long, flowing hair and beards held at intervals along it's length by what looked like gold rings. They were all dressed in black, short sleeved leather jackets and trousers studded with wicked looking metal spikes. Their jackets were all unbuttoned revealing chests covered with a large quantity of hair and tattoos. The fading scars on almost every part of their bodies we're testaments to the fact that they were as dangerous as they looked.

The person who they had been molesting turned out to be a boy who was still in his teens. From the looks of him, he was not well to do. He was dressed in a baggy t shirt and faded blue jeans. These bullies must have attacked him just for the fun of it. He saw me looking at him. He looked pointedly at the men, then at me. He shook his head, a silent warning for me to proceed with caution. He was the one I felt should get out while he still could because I had the feeling that things were about to get ugly.

I sighed inwardly. Here I was, barely a few weeks old in Lair Falls and I had already attracted the attention of people who were likely the ruffians in the town. I did not particularly regret my decision though. There was no way I could have stood by while these men molested and probably killed their victim.

The one holding the knife took a few steps towards me, stopped and looked me full in the face. I could feel his hot breath on me. I backed up a step. I wrinkled my nose as the stench hit me. He stank. Now that I thought about it, they all stank. His face tightened when he saw the expression on my face. He was so tall, I had to crane my neck to look at him. The other three followed him but stayed a few steps back. The one holding the knife seemed to be their leader. The others seemed to orient themselves around him like planets orbiting the sun.

For men as big as they were, their footsteps were noiseless. They moved smoothly and stealthily like cats about to spring.

“And who might you be, pretty boy?" the one holding the knife asked.

His comrades snickered. I became conscious of a wheezing sound. It was the man on the leader's left hand side. He was the only one of them with a potbelly. The others looked fit and trim. I noticed he hung back a little from the rest. He saw me looking at him and bared his teeth in a ferocious grin, a snarl erupting from him. It seemed he was the least important of the gang.

“Easy Doug," said the leader "Let's hear what this mutt has to say for himself."

While he spoke, he made circular motions with the knife blade inches from my face. My eyes were riveted on the tattoo across his wrist. It was in the form of miniature wolf heads encircling his wrist. Each head had fiery red eyes. The tattoo was so realistic and detailed that I felt the wolves would come to life at any moment.

“He ain't too pretty with that scar on his face," said the auburn hair man on the leader's right.

Self-consciously, I touched my scar. It extended from my cheekbone to my jaw. It was the only scar I had that didn't heal. It had been there for as long as I could remember. My father said I had cut myself with a shard of glass when I was a baby but his eyes had shifted when he told me this. I suspected he was lying. I felt that there was more to my scar than my parents were going to tell me.

Moving so quickly his hand was a blur, the auburn haired man brought out a dagger and cut the other side of my face. Drops of blood pattered on the floor. Looking at me and grinning, he wiped the blade slowly on his beard.

I noticed he had the same kind of tattoo as the leader, with a slight difference. He had two small rings of wolves heads drawn around his wrist. I looked at the others. The other man had two also, while Doug had three really small wolf tattoos around his wrist.

“Aren't you going to beg?" the one who had cut me asked. "If you ask nicely, I may just let you go with that cut on your face." He peered at it and smirked. “It sort of improves your look if you ask me."

As if on cue, his cronies threw back their heads and laughed uproariously. At that moment, a feeling of anger coursed through me. These men evidently wanted to play a cat and mouse game with me. I was impatient to get this confrontation over and done with.

“Hey... looser," I stepped forward and clutched the knife of the leader unheeding of the deep cut it made in my palm. "Your pals doing the dirty work for you? Why don't you pick on people your own size?"

Eyes widening in surprise and anger, they leaned closer just as the sound of a police siren split the air.