Angel

The store just looks completely out of place in town. There are archaic-looking runes carved on either side of the door, which looks like a solid slab of wood and is iron-bound with a large elaborate carving of a cross that covers the entire door. The cross unnerves me a bit, though I don’t know why. The rest of the building is made of brick, with crumbling mortar and faded green wooden shutters. The two display windows are empty, draped in sheets, and the whole building looks hundreds of years old; but there isn’t a single piece of graffiti on it. I stand there staring at the graffiti covered buildings to either side of the small store until Fang, tugging on my sleeve to get my attention, pulls me to the door.

“Try not to touch the cross,” he says over his shoulder. I look at him confused, “it doesn’t burn us, but it’s very unpleasant, like when your foot goes to sleep.”

An old-fashioned bell jingles as he pushes open the door and holds it open for me. I step through warily, feeling a slightly unpleasant jarring sensation that sends a shiver down my back. I almost step back onto the street but Fang pulls me farther in. To my heightened senses the small shop seems musty, and I can smell what seems to be centuries of human lives that have walked through the building; more than eighty percent of them Hunters. How I know this I haven’t a clue, and my confusion is threatening to break through the walls I instinctively built around it. The moment we enter the building a small mousey human smelling slightly of fear, which he hides very well, comes out from behind a beaded curtain strung across the doorway behind the antique varnished wooden cashier’s counter. He smiles somewhat nervously, licking his lips. The man seems quite unremarkable to me; his brown hair thinning slightly, and wearing a very bland tweed suit, but I can tell that he has some inherent power. I automatically recognize him as the source of the unpleasant jarring in the doorway; which I now realize as a vampire deterrent if the cross should ever fail. He looks at me, and tries to make his smile seem more welcoming.
“You’re new,” he glances up and down my figure in a way that I feel inappropriate. I glare at him and he stiffens, averting his eyes. He is even more nervous now and I can smell the fear coming off him strongly, like too much cologne. “So,” he clears his throat, “what have you decided to call yourself?”

I blink, confused, and stare at him.

“Your name, what’s your name?” he clarifies.

I wrack my brains, something always on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t seem to remember my name. I can feel Fang watching me, and I know that he is concerned. Then the fragment of a phrase comes floating foggily to the front of my mind.

“…goodnight, angel…”

“It’s Angel.” I say, and I can’t help the smallest of smiles from tugging at my lips.

“Interesting choice,” the man smiles approvingly, “and as far as I know you are the first Hunter ever to use it. I am Marcus.” He extends a hand out to me, and I take it gingerly; humans, in my mind, being frail creatures.

He grimaces and I know I’ve squeezed too hard. “Sorry,” I murmur, letting go of his hand.

“Happens all the time.” Marcus rubs his hand slightly, and then he seems to change into an entirely different person as he turns and lays the entire store out with a sweep of his hands. “Welcome. Let me show you around. You’ve obviously come here for more than just talking.” As he moves down the small aisle between the counter and the rest of the room, the change becomes even more dramatic. His skin darkens to a rich cinnamon, and his eyes seem to alternate between clear amber and warm chestnut. The unappealing tweed suit melts into a tight black leather jacket, skintight black silk shirt, and black canvas pants that fit tight from the waist to the calves, then flare dramatically. His face changes, becoming dangerous, but still human, and he gains several inches in height. The farther he walks into the store, the brighter the room becomes, until it is flooded with light.

“A glamour,” Fang is right beside my ear, “Marcus is a mage, forge magic mostly, but the glamour keeps the curious humans at bay.” I am listening, of course, but most of my attention is drawn to the wall at the very back of the room.

The wall, it seems, is a glittering mass of steel. Every type of sword ever created, or close, hangs in pairs on it. Every one of them is perfect and beautiful; some simply made, some covered in what seems like hundreds of gems and gilt. Even from across the room, my eyes can pick out every detail of every weapon. But I am drawn to one pair in particular. I cross the room without even noticing and stop; reflected in my eyes are two perfect oval sapphires, each set in the hilts of two elegant Spanish fencing swords. The base of each blade is a perfect delicate one-and-one-half inch, and this width extends out two-and-a-half feet then narrows to a delicate six inch point. A shallow trough runs from the base to just before it narrows; and each blade is engraved with different runes.

Wolf

The rest of the journey was uneventful, and I stopped five miles from the meeting grounds around dusk at the end of the second day. I brought down a small doe and a pair of rabbits earlier in the day, and though I was eager for venison I refrained, grudgingly, saving it as a gift for the bitch. Alphas expect gifts from loners returning for the meet on the full moon, it shows that the ‘wolf is successful and able to take care of themselves; so the bigger the gift, the better. I grimly set to skinning and cleaning the rabbits for myself, though with many longing glances at the plump young deer that I had tied up in a tree to keep it from scavengers. I was still hungry when I went to bed. The winter fur on the rabbits helped to disguise how scrawny they were, but it was too late to get more. I stared at the fire, ignoring both the grumbling of my stomach and the tempting smell of the deer, and then slowly drifted to sleep.
I awoke early, with the sun, and resumed my trek in human form to be able to carry the deer without ruining the hide with puncture marks. If I had been in a normal pack, the whole ordeal would have been ceremonious. Werewolves don’t normally leave the pack out of spite towards the Alpha, or out of anger. A lone werewolf is simply that, lone. They leave the pack because they would prefer to live a solitary existence. But, since I am no ordinary werewolf, I carried my burden toward the pack-meet with my heart sinking to my boots, and anger replacing it.
A werewolf pack-meet isn’t a meeting at all, but a holiday of sorts. A time for new births to be celebrated (yes, werewolves can have children, they just aren’t always werewolf because we weren’t at first), special announcements to be made, and rank challenges to be made, allowing for advancement within the pack. It’s also a time for the lone members to regroup and catch up on pack news. And to possibly meet some new faces. In Farra’s pack, however, there are no new births or special announcements; and hardly any challenges. And you can basically forget seeing any new faces. Farra hasn’t made any new pack members in a very long time, and she most likely won’t start again. As for the births, Farra is sterile as far as any of us know. She’s tried several times, though not with me, but with no results, so she gave up.
I heard the pack-meet long before I saw it, and almost turned in the opposite direction, when the directional gut-tug that had led me all the way gave a vicious jerk that nearly sent me sprawling and Farra’s snarling, whiney voice rang out in my head.
Danny boy you made it! And here I thought you would ditch.
I made my way sullenly towards the clearing, knowing what I would see when I got there, and silently seething at her stupid nickname for me; I didn’t even care if she could hear me. In fact I flung my thoughts at her, all the resentment and anger that I had build up since the last pack-meet, and hit her square in the face with a mental slap.
The whole pack was growling when I reached the clearing, both those in human form and those not. My mental slap had reverberated through all their minds and they were quick to defend their leader’s wounded pride. As for their sniveling bitch of a leader, she stood in all her glory, five-foot nothing with her blonde hair obscuring her face and her green eyes blazing through the curtain of hair.

OMG I've been busy!!!!!

Holy shit, its amazing how much time has gone by since i last wrote. I've barely had any time though. It's pretty unbelieveable how much time a boyfriend can take up. Well, fiance anyway since he's proposed; and then I had to move out of the school dorms. Mom and dad don't have internet so I was out of luck then. Now I'm living with my future husband and his parents and we actually have internet; but his mom is on there alot so I was still out of luck until I got my own computer.
I've had my Toshiba laptop for about a month now, but I've been too busy planning the wedding for September 12 I haven't had time to get on. No worries though, I've been working on this baby hardcore for a while now, so posts are good to go.
It feels pretty good to be back, and living with a guy has given me some good inspiration for Wolf's character. I have even picked a name fianally. So here goes. the restarting of Wolf and Angel.