Blood Dawn

Chapter Three

It’s him, it really is him! Elirah repeated over and over in her head.

Where is all the f*****g air around here?! She panicked internally knowing damn well she was breathing. The ocean’s salty breeze filled her lungs to capacity. But for some reason, she felt as if she was suffocating.

Draven Lee. God even thinking his name made her want to cry. She wanted to deny that it was him. That the young man she chased to the cliffs was simply someone who looked similar to him.

She had followed them at a short distance trying convincing herself that it was just that. And if she could just get close enough to confirm it wasn’t him, she would be able to relax.

Oh, who was she kidding? Of course it was him. That deliciously enticing cotton candy scent was specific to only him and unintentionally she thought about the first she had scented it. Elirah winced at the memory.

Gosh, he looked so different from that last time she saw him on the last day of freshman year. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes as memories of that day surged to the forefront of her mind in rapid succession. She felt suddenly nauseous.

That day and subsequent night had been the absolute worst. She had been betrayed, hunted down, tortured, broken and left to die.

Elirah shuttered.

But if she had to be honest with herself, what did she think would happen when Ashlynn, Draven’s girlfriend, found out about them? Then again she never imagined that it would have been Draven serving her up on a platter to Ashlynn.

Back then, Draven had been your typical lanky, c**k sure, preppy, rich kid that would regularly skip class and didn’t mind getting down and dirty whenever a fight presented itself.

She remembered so clearly the day everything for her changed. Elirah had been in the library when her guidance counselor, Mr. Riley, barged in with a manic look in his eyes and a bruised cheek.

At first she had been alarmed to see Mr. Riley in such a state of panic and had tried to ask him what had happened but he deflected by explaining that he had a tutoring opportunity for her.

He succeeded in distracting her with the "opportunity" to tutor one of her peers.

She had been completely on board, setting up a tutoring schedule and the list of subjects the student needed to desperately catch up on. She was more than ready to help a fellow student and hopefully, finally gain a friend out of it. That is until he mentioned the name of who she would be tutoring everyday after school for six weeks.

The outcome for her had been grim. To say the least.

Elirah refocused on Draven.

Now..

He was a big boy. A really big boy.

About a foot than she last remembered, his body meatier with muscle in places she definitely didn’t remember him having but he was still lean like a runner or a swimmer. Through his ripped loose long sleeve gray shirt, she could see the bulging of his pecs as he panted. Noticed the thickness of his round biceps and his broad shoulders. Where ever he had been for the last two and a half years had definitely done his body good, which she dispised herself for noticing.

His black hair fell like waves just above his shoulders now, which she hated to admit made him look really good. In their freshman year, he had loved the slick side part sculpted with enough gel to make the thing hard as cement. Aside from the physical differences, there were still those tell tell attributes that let her mind, her heart that it really was him.

His jade green eyes that were still just as alluring as they were when she had first looked deep into them about two and a half years ago. They were the same eyes that haunted her dreams every once in a blue moon.

From his eyes, she followed the line of his straight nose down to the cupid's bow and his full pale pink lips. His lips were parted as he panted hard revealing large overgrown canines that were large and no doubt sharp.

An unbidden burst of desire fired through her core and she could feel her innermost muscles clench in anticipation. Suddenly she was parched of not just blood, but him.

Which was a little unsettling.

The lycan lunged at her and Draven’s sudden move to tackle him is what snapped her back into the reality of their situation.

He had rolled with the lycan until he was able to straddle him and was currently laying into him with everything he had. His fists were iron hammers raining down head and body blows in quick succession.

Draven yelled out in pain suddenly and grabbed onto his injured side. The lycan took the opportunity to land a sharp right hook on Draven’s cheek with enough momentum to knock him off. The lycan quickly recovered and used the momentum of his powerful legs to kick up onto his feet and face Draven with a snarl. Long canines bared in fury.

The assassin roared as his face ripped apart at his cheeks and his face began to elongate that was slowly turning into a snout. Light gray and brown fur erupted across his face and across his body. Sounds of clothes tearing and of bones breaking and rearranging themselves were louder than the ocean breeze.

After his transformation, the lycan stood tall about eight feet tall with the very large head of a wolf and the tremendously muscled and lean body of a powerlifter covered in fur with enormous claws were splayed out at his sides in anticipation of tearing Draven apart limb from limb.

Just as she would have taken the step to intervene, Elirah hesitated for a moment.

A voice somewhere in the depths of her told her to leave him to his fate. This was his karma for doing what he had done. He had had no sympathy, no compassion to what he knew Ashlynn would do if she found out about them.

And even if he hadn't been there when Ashlynn had viciously attacked her, he was just as complicit in what had happened to her.

Now here she was, contemplating if she was really going to save the boy who had ruthlessly betrayed her heart and her trust by serving her up on a platter to her bullies.

Yes, yes she was.

Because Lisa didn’t raise a piece of uncompassionate s**t. Elirah had grown up trying to prove to everyone around her that she was kind, compassionate, worthy of being a friend to someone but everyone at New Brighton High would say otherwise.

They would say she was a monster, an animal, a freak. It was hard to not believe in everything they made her out to be.

Though deep down inside here was a part of her, maybe the demon in her, that also wanted to prove them right.

***

Draven was spent. More than spent, he began to feel an exhaustion that rivaled death. Oh wait that's right, he was in fact dying.

He had made the move to tackle the lycan before he knew what he was doing. His body reacting before it could reach his … Well he didn’t know what she was, but she was most certainly not his.

Nope. Not at all.

Draven continued to try and get up to put some real distance between him and the angry wolfy but all he could do was fall on his ass. Gah, he was pathetic.

The lycan roared and advanced to attack. Looking at the haunting beauty one last time. If this was it. If he was meant to die now in this moment, he wanted her, whoever, whatever she was to be the last thing he saw.

He closed his eyes and waited for the shattering impact of the lycan against his body.

One breath, two breaths, three breaths…

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Draven opened his eyes and stared into the horizon of the ocean.

Wow his death had been so swift, it had been painless. In those soft tranquil moments when all he could hear was the sound of the ocean breeze and the crashing waves below, and an image of lovely dark blue grey eyes. Strange.

Wha... Who's...

A high pitched, pain filled yelp sounded off to his left. He snapped his head to the direction of the sound and froze.

She was straddling the lycan swiping down and across his body tearing and shredding at the broad fur covered chest, face and throat with her long glittering blood red claws. The lycans torso and legs tried hard to buck her off but she remained on him, riding him as if she were a bull rider and he the bull.

The movement did nothing to help him as it did nothing to deter the long, powerful swipes she was inflicting. Gods, she was relentless.

Soon, the lycans arms fell limp at his sides and stilled. Aside from the involuntary autonomic jerks his body made, she continued to turn him into minced meat.

Literally, there was no more facial structure or discernable features on the head and chest. It was all bloody mush that reminded him of blended cherry jello. Draven gagged inwardly.

She slowed down and finally her arms went still at her sides. She sat back onto the stomach of the dead lycan. Her back straightened and her face tilted towards the sky. She inhaled deep with her eyes closed and slowly exhaled. The exhale came out like a burst of white smoke that dissipated in the ocean breeze.

She was covered in the lycans blood. Bloody chunks of the lycans fur and flesh clung to her. Even covered in the entrails, she was just as beautiful to him as she was when he first laid eyes on her.

She opened her eyes and slowly turned her face to look at him. Her brows furrowed and she made a move to stand.

Draven watched as he grabbed the dead lycan by the ankles. As she got closer to the edge, she took a walking turn for momentum and flung the body out towards the sea. Without looking at him, she walked over to Nut-twist and did the same to get rid of the body.

She stood with her back to him, watching as the last lycans body fell like a rock to the ocean below.

With the last reserve of strength he had, he stood. A wave of lightheadedness crashed into him and he swayed forward. Draven held out his arms weakly in front of him to break the fall but then arms were around his middle holding his full weight.

Her body was pressed against every inch of him. He was suddenly aware that if he hadn't already bled all over the forest, he'd be sporting a hard on.

And he was also suddenly aware that her head was tucked into the nape of his neck. He felt the tip of her nose glide against his neck. Starting at the base, she inhaled soft and slow. His eyes rolled back.

The sensation of her cute pointy nose trailing against the sensitive skin sent goosebumps across his entire body. .

When the tip of her nose reached the spot just behind his ear and felt her lips lightly caress the lobe of his ear, Dravens knees gave out. He slumped into her embrace. He knew he must have weighed a ton in his current condition. By the end of his stay at APEX, Draven was eight inches taller making him six three now and he had gained about thirty pounds of lean muscle at the tender age of eighteen.

She took his weight on without so much as a huff.

He wasn't surprised though. How could he be when he had just finished watching her launch a fully grown unchanged lycan and a fully transformed lycan like she was skipping rocks into the ocean. She had had excellent form with each launch too.

A ten out ten.

"Draven? Draven, are you okay?"

Her voice was such a shock to him that he concentrated on the sound of her voice more than actually registering what she had said.

Her beautiful voice was like a sing-song whisper but with a dual tone. It was as if two voices were coming out of one mouth. One was light, high in pitch and breathy. The other, deeper and darker in tone . He had never heard anything like it.

She pulled back to look at him. God, as terrifying as she looked, she was just as ethereally beautiful. Draven closed his eyes to take in the image of her and brand it into his memory permanently.

Draven opened his eyes and realized that their orientation their bodies had been in had changed. Just before he had closed his eyes, she had been holding him up. Now, he saw her leaning over him. Her platinum white hair fell from her shoulders, framing her face. The pale blue sky was a perfect backdrop to her beauty, except for the panicked look in her eyes.

They were filled with unshed tears and her brow furrowed with worry and concern.

“Draven. Draven. Stay with me, okay? Draven, please stay with me!”

Her voice sounded like it was coming through over a vast distance. He concentrated on her voice but to him, she was too far from him to understand what she was saying.

A warm hand cradled his cheek and his eyes fluttered open. Funny, he didn't remember shutting them.

“Draven! You bastard! Don't you dare die on me!

It sounded like she was saying his name. No, pleading for him to live. But why?… He must be hallucinating from the blood loss. His mind playing tricks on him in these last moments of his life.

Weren’t you supposed to see your life flash before your eyes before you died? There was nothing but her voice and her heartfelt plea’s. Her uniquely beautiful voice begging him to stay would be the last words Draven heard as he succumbed to his injuries. He couldn’t have thought of a better way to go.

Wait, had she called him a bastard?

“Draven?” Her soft voice trembled.

Clarity suddenly hit him as panic filled him. She was saying his name. His name.

And she had called him a bastard like they were familiar. What the hell?

“H-ho-ow?” Draven coughed and registered the taste of his own blood. He coughed again and tried to clear his airways. The how do you know me now forever stuck in his throat.

Her fear filled eyes continued to bore into him as he tried again to speak but now it was suddenly hard to take a breath and his heart started to skip and fumble with the beating.

Wishing he could have asked her how she knew his name or better yet asked her how they knew eachother, Draven focused the last of his remaining strength into his arm and lifted his hand to her beautiful ethereal face.

As he felt his heart begin to palpatate and the invisible elephant on his chest made sure he couldn’t get any more decent breaths in, he couldn’t help but think of a better way to go than to be lucky enough to die in the arms of this extraordinarily out of this world beautiful demon woman.

And with that last thought, Draven exhaled his last breath and died.