A Howl In The Night by Lorelei Sutton (life books to read .txt) 📕

I shakily raise the corner of my shirt, revealing the small marking near my hip. "Is that really a marking, Ulysses?" Cyrus asks, "you know I can't see very well."

"Oh, it is," Ulysses remarks, staring hard at it. "Mona, when did you receive these marks? What talent are you?"

"I'm... not sure. I was not conscious for either," I reply, "and I do not have a talent."

"Surely you have a talent," Markus says, "even if it is just developing, every werewolf has one."

"She is a strange creature," Gizelda smiles rather coldly, "she seems very confused and misguided. It would be best to terminate her, no matter how much of an asset she could potentially become."

It is at this point that I begin to seriously panic.

"Please, High Ones, I am not a werewolf! You must believe me!" Tears slip like raindrops from my features, and I stand up.

They look at me for a few seconds. "She is obviously a very confused creature," Gizelda repeats slowly.

"I promise, High Ones. I was never meant to have any characteristics of a werewolf, I-"

"Bring in the rest of her pack," Gizelda orders, "maybe she will stop spouting nonsense if she sees them." The doors open again and one by one each member of the pack are led in. Danae is not among them, but it seems that they captured Ray. Yi is still nowhere to be found. I begin to cry even harder when I see Xavier's stunningly beautiful features covered in dirt and grime. His reaction is similar to my own.

"Gizelda, Mona is not speaking nonsense." The door bangs open again, and Griffin walks in. His hair glows along with his brown eyes, a smile on his features. He travels to my side, touching my shoulder once. "She is a Spier."

"Griffin, act as befitting your status," Cyrus sighs, "it is not your place to be defending her. It is obvious that she is a werewolf, and a unique one at that."

"But is it?" he responds, "she does not have super strength, eyesight, or speed. She does not possess a talent as well, and was carried over to Headquarters because she couldn't keep up. In addition, she also possesses an ability that we would regret terminating her for. She is an asset so valuable that throwing her away would be like throwing away one of you, even. Her pack has done nothing wrong."

"What is it, Griffin?" Gizelda asks impatiently, "get to the point."

"She can heal the possessed," he says triumphantly, by which point the entire council is laughing with incredulity. I am even more puzzled. How did he know that? He must have questioned Xavier or something.

"Good one, Griffin," Ferrars chuckles.

"Seriously, if you like her that much, you could have come up with something better than that," Ulysses says.

"She really can!" Xavier pleads, breaking from the line he had been forced to stay in. He walks forward, and the others do as well. "We saw it several times."

"Well, obviously you all "saw" it, considering that every one of you clearly has a great attachment to this woman," Gizelda snaps, "excuse us if we don't take your testimonies as evidence."

"Please give me a chance," I beg them, trying to smile through my tears, "I was a Seer since I was a little girl. Ray awakened me, but the conversion was going unsuccessfully so Xavier added some werewolf blood."

  "So you are saying you are both werewolf and Spier?" Gizelda asks dryly. Obviously she is taking command of the conversation.

"Yes, High One." I nod my head.

"Okay, fine. Then you should be able to conjure a spirit spear for us."

Oh no. I look at Xavier, then back at the council, fear in my eyes. "I am still developing that skill." I lower my eyes.

"Then you have no proof," Markus says calmly.

We stare at each other as the council continues to converse in loud tones. "I'm doomed," I mouth to Xavier and the others. As he weakly smiles back, it is like a band-aid is ripped from an open sore, the pain swallowing me whole. It feels like everything shouldn't end this way. Like I would leave something unfinished if I was terminated now. Whether that something is mending my broken relationship with Xavier or not, I can't really tell.

"Council, do you really not remember her?" Griffin speaks up, interrupting the banter of the others. "It was only a few years ago that you considered her as a Candidate."

All movement stops in the room, even time seeming to halt.

"Surely... you don't mean that she is the one that died under your care," Gizelda boomed.

"Yes, I was assigned to her. I was there when she died in a car crash. However, I was also there when she came back to life, with eyes of bright green, crying about a dark creature that turned her father's eyes red."

I am frozen to the spot. This is a pretty fanciful tale, though a shamefully convincing one, that he is spinning.

Cyrus pounds his hands on the table as he rises to his feet in indignation. "You can't possibly tell us this now when over ten years ago you told us she was dead. You are lying to us."

"I am not lying! As your oldest and faithful son, I am not lying to you. What I speak is utter truth. Mona is the only living Candidate for the prophecy, and if you terminate her and the pack, we will all be condemned as fools for the rest of eternity."

Shock ripples through me as I realize he was the son that wasn't suitable to be the successor to the throne.  All because he's a crossbreed.

"WHY did you lie to us, Griffin?" Ulysses thunders.

"Well, at the time, I thought that she deserved a life without us watching her every move. I observed that she had suffered great trauma at the hands of the Shifters, and you know that the Candidacy is affected by the Candidate's mental health. I thought our presence as well as the trauma of losing her parents would affect her for the worse. What if she caught me morphing one day? We couldn't hide from her forever. By that time I had already had some close calls. However, the most important reason why I had the courage to leave her at the orphanage and travel back to Headquarters was that I believed if she was truly the Candidate, she would somehow find her way back to us. And I was right."

"Son, I did not raise you to so blatantly lie like this," Cyrus says angrily.

"I am not lying," Griffin responds, just as frustrated.

"Griffin, either you are lying to us now, or you lied to us then. Either way that is a disgraceful act that we do not condone. However, if you are lying now, the consequences will be far worse. I must have your absolute assurance that you believe this to be true," Markus says calmly.

"I am not lying," Griffin states with such conviction that I would have believed him if he said that the world was made of marshmallows and lollipops.

"We will take your words into account," Gizelda responds, looking down at her paper. "However, we will need proof before we can be certain that Mona is a Candidate."

"Griffin, is one of the marks on Mona yours?" Ferrars asked him. Griffin's cool demeanor all but evaporates in seconds. 

"Yes, I left a mark on her right before we parted ways," he replies slowly. Gizelda raises her eyebrows.

I cast a glance over at Xavier to see how he is taking this. He is literally shaking with anger, and the others are looking at him with curiosity. Ray catches my eye and shrugs.

"Which all but elevates our need to gather more evidence in order to accept this as truth," Gizelda says, "We still have not seen any of Mona's abilities as of yet-"

Suddenly everyone's nose perks up. I watch in confusion as several of the guards begin to morph. Griffin grabs my arm. "Stay by me," he whispers, "I'll protect you."

"No, I'll protect you," Xavier shows up by my side. "Get lost, crossbreed," he scathingly insults Griffin.

"Be nice," I elbow him in the side, "he may have gotten us out of being killed." No matter how much I am entertained by his jealousy, I feel like Griffin will be hurt if I don't say anything.

Both of them squeeze my arm. "Would either of you tell me what is going on?"

"No other way to describe it except that it smells like puke mixed in with blood and terror in here," Griffin wrinkles his nose, "yeah, pretty sure its a Shifter attack."

"I didn't know terror had a smell." If I wrinkle my nose enough, I can smell the hint of pure nastiness.

"Well it does. And it’s getting closer," he replies, "seems like an insane number of them too."

“How did they get in?” Markus exclaims, “we have impenetrable walls around the Headquarters!” Of course, no one answers.

All of the werewolves are looking around anxiously. "Call a Spier!" Gizelda orders. Within seconds, three or four march in. All of them look like normal human beings, none particularly pretty or ugly.

Then the fear sets in.

Claws of icy coldness dig into my chest, chilling me to the bone. I can barely think as the fear chokes me, squeezing all the life out of my body. Griffin and Xavier's presence don't help at all... all I can feel is the sorrow, hurt and pain.

Then everything is black. To me, everything is dark and gloomy. I see glimpses of the empty forests, the lonesome castles, the large oceans, and everything begins to make sense. No wonder the world is empty.

They are all coming here.

The lights flash again as I see them—big and small, skinny and large—coming by the thousands into the room. I can't breathe as they crowd the floor and walls, stuffing the room with their dark energy.

"I should have known this was going to happen," I whisper softly.

"How, Mona, how?" Xavier asks, rubbing my hand. I saw the signs. I have no excuse. And now we are all going to die here. "How many are there, Mona?"

"Too many to count," I choke, "they are everywhere... their red eyes are all staring at me." I feel dizzy, and almost faint into Xavier's arms. I cannot take their red eyes.

Gizelda looks at me, and I can feel her desperate gaze. The Shifters are vanishing into trees and fountains, making the water turn to lava and the leaves into burning coal.

The Spiers step forward and begin murmuring strange chants. To my amazed eyes, enormous spears are formed, which they then throw with incredible accuracy through dozens of Shifters. As the spear stab each one they disappear, simply ceasing to exist. However, so many more are taking their place that they seem impossible to fight all at once.

"Mona, move!" Griffin pushes me out of the way as a mass of burning, tangled vines fall where I used to stand. For some reason, the raining vines and leaves remind me of the hail that beat upon me on the day I tried to commit suicide. How can the werewolves fight against something like this? They can only kill the host of the Shifter, and if the Shifter chooses not to take a host until it is in a position that makes it impossible to kill, then there is no way to defeat them.

Maybe I have looking at this from the wrong angle this entire time. I have always thought, kill the Shifters. Create a spear, so you can kill the Shifters. It is all I have been told by the werewolves, and maybe for them there really is no other way. But I am different. An oddity. I mean, look at my crazy ability to basically extract the Shifter from the host.

I guess the real dilemma I should consider is that if I