Silver Bullets n' Roses - 3. Aftermath

Bony hands covered his eyes as he felt someone's presence behind him.

"Guess who."

Matt smiled. "The biggest bastard that ever walked the face of the earth."

Ted laughed and removed his hands, ducking his head to kiss Matt on the throat.

Matt looked up at the familiar face. It was a pleasant one, with a lazy grin and sleepy brown eyes that were always half-closed even when he was sober. Matt hugged him tightly, never wanting to let go.

Matt woke up slowly from a deep and not-very-peaceful sleep. The wound on his shoulder felt worse than it did before he passed out since it now had time to get stiff. He was afraid to look and afraid to move. Okay, where am I? He was lying in a patch of tall, wet grass and it was still dark outside, so he hadn't been out for long. Several dark shapes surrounded him. Tombstones. He was in a cemetery. Fitting. Oh, and he was naked.

Someone, probably Gabriel, had dumped him in a cemetery, completely naked. Had he been raped? Nothing hurt, so probably not. At least he could die knowing that he was still "pure" in a sense. Matt let his head fall back against the grass, closing his eyes. His shoulder hurt so much he couldn't think about much else.

"You can't go to sleep here," said an unpleasantly familiar voice.

He just couldn't catch a break. Well, since he didn't give a shit anymore, he could be a smartass if he wanted to. "If you were going to kill me, the least you could do was tell the truth and say you were."

"I didn't lie. One thing you'll come to know about me, Matt, is that I don't lie. You'll live, hon."

"Stop with the terms of endearment." Actually, when he could get past the pain, Matt realized that his voice didn't sound like that of a dying person. "You sure weren't treating me like a ‘hon' when you dug into me like a Thanksgiving turkey. What the fuck are you, anyway?" He didn't like hearing and not seeing Gabriel-whose voice was only several feet away-but the slightest movement set his whole body on fire.

"Werewolf." Gabriel said it as casually as one would say they were Jewish. He suddenly moved into Matt's field of vision. Matt's head was turned away from him, so all he could only see from his peripheral vision was that his feet were bare, and all he was wearing was a long trench coat.

"Like ‘rawr' sort of werewolf?" Matt was surprised at how well he was taking it. "Change at the moon, afraid of silver...all that jazz?"

Gabriel gestured at the blank sky. "Does that look like a full moon to you?"

"Can't really look at the moment, since half my neck is missing."

"Sorry. I have this nasty habit of gnawing." Gabriel was now standing at Matt's head, looking down the length of his body. "You know, for a little guy, you have a pretty big package."

Just when he had almost forgotten he was naked. An embarrassing, full-body blush made his skin prickle. A gurgling growl came from deep in his throat as naturally as words, and was abruptly cut short when he realized what he was doing. What just came out of me?

Gabriel, rather than angry, sounded excited. "Your first growl!" He said it like a parent praising his child for his first words. "The Change is coming more quickly than I thought it was."

Matt's blood ran cold. "I-I'm turning into...into-" He couldn't bring himself to say it.

"A werewolf," said Gabriel in that same casual tone. "Yeah. I'm a creature of night. I run around biting ‘special' humans to make an army. You'll get the story later on."

Matt's throat closed and his eyes stung; telltale signs of a waterworks. As hard as he tried to will them away, it wasn't long before he felt hot tears sting his cheeks. Gabriel might as well have killed him; he wasn't even human anymore.

But wait. Why cry?

He hated his parents, he hated his school, and frankly, he hated his life. So what was there to miss? The only reason he had to cry was the fear of the unknown. Would this change-or whatever it was-interfere with his connection with society?

"What happens from here?" he asked quietly.

Gabriel was pacing outside of Matt's field of vision again. He strained to hear the soft footprints in the grass. As terrified as he was of Gabriel, he was even more afraid of being left alone out here.

"We wait until you're healed. I take you in. I train you. We take over the city."

"Whoa...elaborate on that last line."

"All werewolves want power, Matt. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Most just want it to lead their Pack. I just like to aim high. Humans are so petty. We're surrounded by so many possible recruits-and maybe even snacks-that it's ridiculous we can't use them to our advantage. Some humans, like you, have a lot of potential."

"Potential to do what?"

"The potential to be a force to be reckoned with. You'll love it, Matt. People will never walk all over you again. Not parents, not school kids, no one. The town would be yours. And you will be mine."

It sounded good until the last line. Gabriel must have noticed it too because he added, "We'll work out that part later. Basically, I'm your blood kin. What makes you what you are comes from me. That means we have a bond. It's up to me to decide what sort of bond that is."

Matt repressed another growl. "But I had no say in this!"

"You were human," Gabriel said matter-of-factly, "so of course you didn't."

"And if I refuse?" Matt's tone wasn't defiant or angry. It was quiet and unsure.

Gabriel shrugged. "Then you die. It won't be the first time I killed off a wereling. The vast majority go for it, though. I mean, who wouldn't want that position?"

"They only agree because you kill them if they don't."

He grinned. "You got it."

"It might as well be slavery."

Another shrug. "Then so be it. I get what I want and they get some power in return. We pillage towns; take over their ruling Packs, fun stuff like that. It's not a bad life, and if you don't like it now, you'll love it later."

Living the rest of his life killing people and being some werewolf's sex slave? Somehow he doubted he would enjoy that.

By now the pain had subsided to a dull ache. He could still feel his pulse pounding in the gaping wound, but it wasn't bleeding and he could move his neck without it hurting too much. Slowly, Matt rose up on his elbows and got his first look at Gabriel since the club.

He didn't look too good physically. His tanned skin was paler now, and blood-Matt's blood-dripped from his chin. However, his eyes were wide and shining with a sort of wild excitement. His lips were curled into a dangerous grin, revealing those horrible fangs. The closest Matt had seen anyone look like that was while they were high. But Gabriel's excitement wasn't drug-induced; it was utterly demonic. Just one look at him made Matt's decision for him.

"As tempting as all that sounds, I really don't want what you're offering."

Gabriel was on him like white on rice in an instant, slamming Matt's head back into the dirt and making his shoulder feel like it was being ripped in two. He couldn't keep himself from crying out in pain, and Gabriel seemed to savor the sound.

"Too fucking bad," Gabriel snarled in his face. He still had that serial-killer grin on his face. His perfect teeth were stained with blood. Matt felt like he was staring into his worst nightmare. "You're making a terrible mistake."

"Sparing lives will never be a mistake," Matt said, feeling extremely cliché.

Gabriel apparently felt the same, because he rolled his eyes as he lowered those horrible, blood-stained fangs to Matt's throat. Matt could do little more than push against him a few times. For the second time that night, he closed his eyes and got ready to die.

His soon-to-be killer froze, hearing something that Matt could not. The pause was long enough that Matt dared to open one eye in curiosity.

"Blood is supposed to be spurting out of my throat with each heartbeat," he muttered, "so-"

"Shut the fuck up!" Gabriel snapped. His head was cocked slightly to the left, like a dog. It would have been almost comical if he didn't look so murderous.

Matt still couldn't hear much more than the whistling wind in the trees, but he didn't dare interrupt. This was buying him some thinking time. Not so long ago, he heard on the news about some lady that kept a shooter from killing her by talking to him about God. Hmm, maybe...

Just as he was exploring this new idea, the leaves rustled audibly to his left. Someone-or something-else was here, and he wasn't sure whether to be ecstatic or worried about it.

Gabriel slowly backed off by a few centimeters, so maybe these were good guys.

This deep, macho-man voice echoed from the shadows, but it was too dark for Matt to see who it belonged to. "You're breaking every code here, Gabriel."

"Who are you, the police now?" Gabriel sneered. Matt was good at reading people, so he wasn't fooled by Gabriel's tone. His reddish eyes were wary; whoever these people were, Gabriel was afraid of them.

"Only for you," said another voice, this one much younger than the first's. Yes! Two against one.

"He's mine," Gabriel argued. "I Marked him, so by this code I can do whatever I want with him."

"Yeah, about two hundred years ago. I don't want to hear it," said the first voice, sounding angry now. It was enough to make Gabriel visibly withdraw a bit.

"This isn't over," he said ominously, and disappeared.

Really, he did. Not like poof, in a cloud of smoke, but in a super-speed sort of way. The pressure vacated Matt's chest, and he could breathe again, or at least breathe as well as he could with a gaping hole in his neck. It was getting pretty sore again, and he wasn't feeling so hot, either: he had been freezing from the cool night air moments ago, but not now his bangs were damp with sweat. He closed his eyes.

"Kid, you okay?" said the younger voice, standing directly over him.

Matt opened his eyes to look up at a blurry, pale face before darkness clouded his vision. His heart began pounding and his breaths came quick and sharp. Suddenly feeling extremely sleepy, all sense of consciousness vanished as easily as you would snuff out a candle.