Bad Blood

Kei danced in the living room. He wasn't sure what had possessed him, but he needed a distraction. A big, noisy, fill the room and house distraction. The farm house had to echo before his heart would find the pace it needed to calm itself; to bring itself back into rhythm. He found the previous owners old boombox. His prayers were answered when the old CD within was not actually country music.

It was dance music. He surmised that someone had found the abandoned barn and had a party, drunk, stoned. It made sense. The other three victims were teens as well, their body parts found in various nearby fields. He realized at that point, too, that toxicology did show drugs in one.

He supposed he could start searching the corners for syringes, but he elected not to. In the lingering dark, he would only stick his finger and have that added stress on his back.

The wind plungered the window, snapping the tattered blind from the impromptu hook he had made to keep the moonlight in. The room turned from blue to yellow as his own torchlight filled the space. He hit play and carried the derelict sound equipment with him. He went to the open window and held it up high, as if the bewitching electronic arts spewing would somehow encourage growth in the cornfields just beyond the rotted farm house. The sound echoed further, and he pulled back the blind.

And it's rings broke, cascading the fabric to the floor. Kei heard something scurry, but they were minor, not what he was looking for.

He started to dance. He knew he should be reading, seated, playing with his gun, but, for some reason, this appeared as the right thing to do.

He danced. Poorly. But he knew that no one was really watching him, all alone in the farm house. He waited for the CD to skip, to jump, with the sway of the wooden floors. His feet tripped and his brow began to sweat, more from the stress of the situation, than for the actual activity. He watched his shadows move about, the motions like ghosts in the house itself. The full moon made a square now, a trapezoid, barely touching the red stone fireplace. He moved over to the blue light shape, away from this his two flashlights, and kept dancing. There was no style. No finesse. No dirty dancing. Not even a single motion that would make a mother blush.

And there was no joy.

He did not hear the werewolf enter the room, not that there was any creak or sound from the lone hunter. It was something he had felt as he turned in that square. He knew that the monster had heard the music, the temptation, the openness of possible food. He kept his eyes out the window, hopeing the shimmer would shift if the beast came closer to him.

The werewolf was dying already. It had not fed in these three nights of the moon, and with each night, it got smaller and smaller, looking more like an overdeveloped German shepard than a beast of the night. It drooled at the sight of Kei's activity, his distraction the perfect way to get up closer to him.

It leapt.

Kei turned, his knife pulled from his sleeve. He timed the cut across the monster's throat. He knew it would not kill the creature, but it would give him the needed space to finish his plan.

And contact the others, if they had fallen asleep by their monitors.

The knife was special, ornate.

All silver.

((TO be continued...))