Raven: Chapter 2

Chapter 2:
         Early the next morning, the girls were up and throwing their few belongings into their bags. Lara glanced my way and smiled.
         “You get any sleep?” she asked.
         I shook my head. Just then, there was a knock at the door.
         “Hello? Who is it?” Lara announced, employing a fake Mexican accent. If looks could kill, she would have dropped dead right there from the glare coming from Tyra as she opened the door. Whit, Ethan, and Jinn entered, all giving Lara looks that ranged from annoyance to amusement. Whit turned to me where I still sat in the corner.
         “Raven, Ethan’s going to take you back to your place to get your things, but don’t grab too much. We got a plane to catch.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I didn’t have much to grab.
         “Where we off to, love?” Lara asked, quickly throwing her long, red hair into a loose braid.
         “New York,” he said with a grin.
         Ethan smiled and stepped away from the door so I could lead the way. Outside, we caught a cab. I was surprised that I didn’t get any strange looks: an albino in nothing but an oversized trench coat. But then I remembered we were in L.A. I tried to keep silent for most of the ride, but Ethan kept talking to me, asking me questions about my life before last night. He reminded me a bit of Evan in that moment. He asked me about what I liked to do in my spare time, and why I was working at Sunrise.
         “I’m not sure,” I responded to the last question. "I have insomnia. I needed something to do at night.”
         “Really? Is that it?”
         “Yeah. Why?”
         “Oh, uh…” He began staring out the window. “No reason.”
         When we got to my apartment, Ethan waited in the kitchen while I grabbed everything I could fit into my backpack. I made sure to take my new laptop and my cell phone. Then I threw on a pair of jeans, a black long-sleeved shirt, and some sneakers. I decided to keep the trench coat. As I was packing a change of clothes into my bag, I heard Ethan call from the kitchen.
         “Hey, Raven. Who’s this guy in this picture here?”
         I threw my pack over my shoulder and joined Ethan where he was standing in front of the fridge. He pointed to a picture of Evan with his arm around me, in a protective, brotherly kind of way, but with two fingers sticking up from behind my head. He was smiling as he always did when he was acting like a dork.
         “Who’s that?” he asked again.
         “My brother, Evan. He’s back home in Chicago.”
         “He looks like a cool guy.”
         “Yeah,” I said, taking the picture down and putting it in the inner pocket of the trench coat.
         “You ready?”
         “I guess so.” Ethan and I made it back to the motel in time to leave for the airport.
         “Let’s go,” Whit called as we exited the cab. “We’re running late.”
         “Wait a minute!” I said. Ethan grabbed my backpack from the back seat and flung it over his shoulder. “You said I’d get some explanations this morning. I’m not going with you to New York until you tell me what’s going on!”
         “We don’t have time right now,” Whit responded. “When we get to-”
         “No!” I shouted back at him. The pierced girl, Tyra, stiffened and started to walk toward me. Whit held his hand out to stop her. I ignored her. “Explain it to me now!”
         “Raven,” Ethan began. “You don’t understand.”
         “Ethan!” Whit shouted. The forcefulness of his voice made us all jump. “We don’t have time to baby this lost pup!” He glanced around quickly. The streets were bare. “You’re a monster,” he said. “Just like us, okay? We’re werewolves.”
         The air fled my lungs as if I’d just struck the ground after falling. I stood there on the sidewalk, staring at Whit. I didn’t believe him. It couldn’t be true.
         “Now let’s go!” Whit yelled. When he saw that I wasn’t moving, he barked out, “Ethan! Bring her!” The four of them got into a white van that was parked at the corner, leaving Ethan and me standing on the sidewalk.
         “Shades lent us a van to get to the airport,” he said. He put a hand on my shoulder. “You know, you may not think so now, but things’ll work out alright.” I turned to him, still in shock. I looked up into his dark eyes which showed a degree of compassion I had only ever seen in the eyes of my older brother. “I promise,” he continued, “that I’ll help explain as best I can when we get to where we’re going. It’s just that it’s not safe to discuss it out in the open like this. We have to wait until we’re safe with more people like us.”
         “More?” I asked, glancing over to the van. “Like us?”
         “Yeah. There’s a whole group, a nation even, of people like us. And one of the largest communities is in New York. Come on.” He took my arm and stepped toward the van. “Trust me on this, Raven. It’ll be better.”
         For some reason, I did trust him; this man who I’d just met and yet reminded me so much of my brother. I followed him to the van.
         The plane trip was uneventful, for which I was eternally grateful. When we got to New York City, we headed straight for Central Park. It was late afternoon when we arrived and the streets were flooded with people who weren’t looking up and weren’t smiling. As we walked farther into the park, I began to wonder what a “nation” of monsters was doing out in the open like this. After a while, though, the throngs of people began to thin out until, somewhere near the middle, it was just us. Finally, Whit, who had been leading the way, stopped and turned to the rest of us.
         “Alright,” he said. “This’ll do.”
         I looked around, more than a little confused. “But, we’re in the middle of Central Park.” I glanced at Ethan. “How is this a safe place?”
         “Oh, don’t you worry about a thing, love,” Lara said, leaning up against the trunk of an elm tree.
         Jinn smiled. “We have protection. Wards and charms that keep humans from wandering too close.”
         “Now,” Whit began, “we will explain as promised. We are part of a nation of creatures who were created by the spirits of the earth and the moon as guardians. We, as a race, have been around for millennia. Ancient peoples saw us as monsters and they dubbed us as lycanthropes, or werewolves. While we can, in fact, take on the form of a wolf, many of the myths surrounding our kind are wildly inaccurate.”
         “Though not all of them,” Lara added.
         Whit continued, ignoring her. “Being a werewolf is something that you’re born into. It’s a gene, we believe. A double-recessive one by the scarcity of us in the world. Humans with only one of these genes are not werewolves, but are considered our extended family. Most of them are known to us and are our allies. Sometimes, however, a few can slip through the cracks, so to speak, and they have no idea about their relation to these creatures of myth. When two unknown carriers of this gene give birth to a werewolf, the child is forced to deal with the monstrous aspects of himself without any guidance. They are known to other werewolves as ‘lost pups.’” His grey eyes, already locked with mine, bore deeper into my soul. “That’s what happened with you, Raven. Since the more…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Obvious aspects of being a werewolf don’t appear until puberty or later in a pup’s life, lost pups tend to go through a large portion of their lives without any knowledge of what they truly are. It was fortunate that we ran into you when and where we did. Some pups are pushed to madness with the endless questions about their true natures.”
         I wasn’t exactly sure what to say or do. I sat down on the grass. I felt the blades between my fingers. They were real. Tangible. Something I could grip and hold on to while my brain tried to rationalize how all of what Whit was saying could be possible. It wasn’t logical. And yet, somehow, it felt right.
         “But, if I’m a werewolf…” The phrase felt weird on my tongue. “Why don’t I go on blood-thirsty rampages on every full moon?”
         They laughed at me. “We’re able to control when we Change,” Whit said, crouching down in the grass in front of me.
         “But we can’t always control it,” Lara piped in from her tree. Whit and Tyra shot her a look, but she continued anyway. “If something really gets to you; pisses you off, you know, infuriates you; you might lose control and Change. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, love?” she asked me, winking. “That’s usually what causes the Change the first time around.”
         “Thank you, Lara.” Whit nearly was growling.
         She smiled sweetly. “Whatever I can do to help, love.” Meanwhile, every werewolf myth I’d ever heard was running through my head.
         “What about silver?”
         Everyone seemed to straighten up just a bit. “That one’s true,” Whit said. “Silver is very dangerous for us when we’re in our other forms.” Even Lara didn’t have anything to say about that.
         But I did. “Wait. Other forms? As in, ‘more than one other form?’”
         “Yes, but before we get into that.” He gestured to Tyra, and Jinn. “You two. Go find the elders and let them know we’re here. Then come back and get us when it’s time for the Gathering.” He then noticed Lara attempting to look innocent. “You too.”
         “Oh, come on, love.” She began to don a fake pout. “I’ll be good. I won’t say another word. On my honor.”
         Whit sighed. “All right.” The other two turned and jogged down the path and Lara squealed quietly with joy.
         I turned my attention back to Whit. “So how many other forms are there?”
         “Three, if you count this one,” he said, indicating himself.
         “What are the others?”
         “You’ve already experienced them both,” Ethan said, speaking for the first time since we’d reached New York. “Even if you don’t remember. The first Change is always out of extreme emotions. Usually anger. When a werewolf Changes for the first time, you take the form described in myths and legends: a huge half man, half wolf. You’ve taken the other shape, too. You took it last night when you ran from us in the lobby of that building. That’s the pure wolf form. It’s natural to take that shape when terrified.” I must have looked confused because he quickly added, “It’ll be clearer when we show you.”
         “Which will have to be later,” Whit said, pointing off into the distance. I turned to see Jinn and Tyra coming up the walk. “The Gathering’s starting.”

Continued