Sunday Night January 9th, 2011. Beacon Hills, California.
The night air was crisp.
Nothing like the vibrant sun-kissed winds of Botswana, but for Mo, it was better than his last home.
Brooklyn was not his kind of jungle. The concrete was stale and felt stiff— dead, on his bare feet. The pollution made the air taste like piss and car exhaust. And there was no true wildlands to escape to.
Beacon Hills was a good middle ground. The city slept, but so did the woodland in all its expansiveness. At least that's what he was getting from his first night out. Even on a full moon.
He slept all day to make sure he could spend the night running. It was the only time he could truly let loose in the west. Camera flashes, cars and creeps were everywhere when the sun was up. There wasn't enough pure nature for him. And it had been that way for years. Ever since he left home. Ever since he found the pelt—
Good thing he was a nocturnal being. At least sort of…
Under the cover of midnight, his eyes sharpened— slimming into amber feline slits, his ears lengthened ever so slightly, growing more sensitive to the subtlety of a world without the sun.
His leg muscles and lungs didn't truly come alive until he'd been sprinting for two miles. It had been a while. But once his speed returned, he used it like it never left.
It came like an adrenaline rush to rival all rushes. A second wind to overtake every breeze. Suddenly he could inhale forever— taking in all the worlds richness. Excitement flooded his mind as his potential felt endless and his feet danced above the clouds.
An amber eyed blur in the shadows. It's all he was. Energy and speed given hybrid form. Human, animal, two skins, two feet, one thief with one love.
His ears twitched as police sirens echoed miles away. They'd never catch him. Even so, he ditched the highway he sprinted down with a single powerful leap that left him gripping onto the stone cliff walls bordering the streets.
His palms were dark and thickened by paw-like flesh that allowed him to grip the cold and wet January stones. Curled claws unfurled from his fingers and cut the stones two inches deep as he flipped and swung his way up the cliff.
He landed on the high-ground wilds in pure silence. His breaths visible in the cold dark.
His ears twitched again and he came face to face with a buck. It stamped its hooves and snorted.
Mo grinned, revealing his feline fangs extending from his darkened gums. "I don't even run from Rhinos. What are you gonna do, Bambi?"
The buck stood its ground. A pillar of masculinity and fertility. Resisting the fear that rose in its chest.
Mo dropped into a low agile stance, "Mmmm ok. Let's dance….."
The buck swayed it's massive rack of antlers back and forth slowly, invi—
Mo moved so fast he disappeared in a poof of lifted leaves and dirt.
The buck stood up straighter and gazed at the edge of the cliff where the long legged teen once stood—
"Too slow!" Mo yelled and slapped its backside.
The buck yelped, jumping and spinning ten feet into the air and took off into the forest to his left.
Mo remained, laughing hysterically.
"Thanks for the laughs, Bucky-boy! Maybe next time the win is yours, akere?" Mo called after the fleeing creature. "Until then…." He bounced on the balls of his feet and rolled his shoulders, "I run."
He took off, rejoining the beauty of speed.
Now in the forest, the world was dense and perfectly cluttered. He picked up speed and hit hard cuts and turns to evade and blow past trees.
He jumped over rivers and swung on trees, flipping to and from the branches that could hold his weight until he decided to land once more on solid ground.
His paw-skinned bare feet soaked up the damp cold earth and he was filled with an exciting chill.
Then he smelled it.
Death.
And anger. A deep foul anger that rode the winds with the same musky thickness of rot.
Mo pinched his nose and hissed, "Bathong, what the hell could've caused that smell???"
With his sense of smell quieted for the moment and his euphoric run halted, he was suddenly made aware to the distant world.
The police sirens neared. Tires screeched to a halt in the distance. Chemical fumes lingered— someone was running through the forest downwind. Dogs barked in their wake. Large shepherds. Police dogs.
"Oh shoot!" Mo dropped low and stalked through the forestry, walking the edges of the hill to peer down at the woodland below.
It was there that he found a boy. Not much older than himself. He ran….
"So slow…." Mo commented almost in disgust.
Then he quieted as the boy stopped and hid behind a tree to take inhales from his inhaler. In his urgency to gain extra wind, he hadn't noticed the small stampede of deer speeding toward him. One of which was the buck Mo just scared off.
The teenage boy stepped out from the treeline and was nearly trampled. He took off, dropping his inhaler and everything else in his hands. He reeked of terror. And he hadn't even taken notice of the creature stalking him.
The smell of anger wafted from the quadrupedal wolfish thing in thick miasmic waves.
The focal point of all things negative in the forest. The sirens, the dead, the fear in the boys.
"Werewolf…." He'd known them since he was young. They were everywhere. Back in Botswana, they were bigger— more violent, than what he'd seen in the west. But the thing that stalked the boy below put everything he'd seen before to shame.
With that being said. The one similarity they always held was the behavior. They formed gangs hellbent on breaking, bleeding and corrupting anyone that was in their way.
The boys were in the beasts way.
They'd die. Or worse….
Mo was almost killed by a three in Botswana when he was eleven— when he stole the pelt. Then almost again in the United Kingdom when he was thirteen.
He knew the fear of seeing them for the first time. Hearing their howls.
Mo's leg began to bounce without his command.
"Aye! Stop!" He grabbed his leg, trying to stop its restlessness.
The beast howled.
Mo's leg quickened its pace.
After failing, he rolled his eyes and snarled, "Fine, I go."
He sprinted down the hill, mind working as fast as his legs. Legs that moved faster as even he began to feel fear.
The beast ran to the boys left. In the distance.
Mo ran to the right.
He was now closer to the beast. It was horrifying. A true monster. With dark leathery skin, a massive jaw studded with razor sharp teeth and endless layers of muscle. Even lions were less scary.
The beast barked at him. Territorial in its rage. As if the boy was already his.
Mo wasn't strong enough. "That things probably stronger than twenty men combined..." He looked ahead at the stampede, "Hmm…."
Mo backed away and sprinted ahead.
In a flash, he ran beside the herd of terrified deer with a new idea fresh on his mind.
"Bathong, forgive me but I need your assistance." Mo herded the deer, turning them around to run back the way they came.
In the distance, the beast closed in on the boy.
Mo sped up, snapping at the deers heels and snarling like a Lion.
The beast lunged for the boy. The sound so familiar, he had to fight not to be consumed by the memory of the wolves descending on him.
It closed in with horrifying grace.
At the same time, the herd of deer crashed into the beast, knocking it out of the way in a large mass of heavy screaming furred bodies.
Mo's senses were overrun with foul smells, wolfish snarls, the yelp and scream of deer and police sirens.
He skidded to a halt in the grass.
The teenage boy lay below him, cradling his head.
The werewolf was no more than one hundred feet away, getting to its feet with three dead deer surrounding it. One of which was the buck.
It didn't kill them out of fear for its safety. Or dietary need.
Just out of spite.
Suddenly its foul smell made sense.
The werewolf snarled.
Mo hissed and tried his best to take the shake out of his legs. He tried his best to force more of his skin to change. It was an agonizing and slow process. He didn't understand much beyond running. He had no teacher— at least not for a long time. Even so, he grew. Taller. Stronger. He rose to the occasion.
"You ruined my night. I ruin yours." Mo felt an intensity rise in him.
Whatever had changed wasn't the usual. The werewolf eyed him with a weird mix of confusion….. and something else.
The beast lunged.
Mo hopped over the boy and met the charge.
It went high. He sped up and slid low, gliding beneath the beast with his claws outstretched.
Blood splattered as he sliced open its stomach. He snarled as it slashed at his chest in return with impressive speed in its own right.
The sting was nearly blinding as the wounds leaked. He drifted around to face the beast again.
It was already healing when it hit the ground.
Before the beast could turn to the boy, Mo ran in a blur of claws and fangs.
The beast didn't try to evade. Instead, it stood up with and earth-splitting stomp and roared.
It was then that its eyes blazed red and a single word echoed in his stunned mind.
"Alpha."
Mo tripped in his superior speed. The beast caught him by the throat and slammed him into the ground so hard four of his ribs broke.
The werewolf held Mo there, turning his head to face the boy. To make him watch.
The beast descended on him, bitting into his midsection with a wet and meaty crunch.
With the deed done, the werewolf stood up and turned back around to face Mo.
He was about to d—
"HEY! Anybody out there!? Scott!?"
Lights and voices grew close.
The werewolf snarled and took off.
"Damn…." Mo faded out of conciousness as the police approached. By the time the officers arrived, all they found were two teenage boys. One with a bite wound and another with assumed knife wounds..
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I'll use this area below as post-chapter additives etc etc.
Since Mo is obviously a foreign mc, he uses terms and words that aren't part of common English vernacular, so I'll explain here. Most of the terms he uses will be a blend of NY slang and Botswana English/Tswenglish which is a blend of English, Afrikaans and Setswana. I may get some terms wrong so anyone who speaks the language and corrects me you have my infinite thanks.
Bathong: Means people, can be used respectfully in front of elders but it's used by Mo in this chapter as a means to express exclamation for surprise, disbeleif or frustration.
Akere: Basically means right or correct. Used as a means to confirm what you're saying.
P4tr3on link: https://patreon.com/TheFuryverse?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan&utm_content=join_link