“I’m sorry, Mother,” I whispered.

“Sorry, you’re not sorry!” she yelled at me, her brown eyes flashing orange, then yellow.

I moved away from the new toy, desperate to disown it, as I edged my way up the bed. I apologised again but this seemed to enrage her further. She angrily told me it wasn’t her I had to apologise to, but my sisters. Again, she went on about how my sisters had suffered at the hands of my father. On these occasions, she always emphasised the phrase ‘ Your Father’, as if he were my sole responsibility. She drummed into me how I had let my sisters down, and how ashamed she was of me.

I reached forward and picked up my birthday present and held it out towards her.

“I’m sorry, Mother. Go on, take it. I didn’t really want it anyway.”

In a stubborn and sulky tone, she snarled, “Keep it!”

“Please, mother, take it from me,” I pleaded.

“The harm’s already been done,” she growled at me.

Again, I held it out and beseeched her to take it from me. I was desperate for her to relieve me of its burden. Without speaking, she took it from me with two fingers, as if she were removing some disease-ridden carcass that she didn’t want to sully herself with. She forced the car back into its box, crossed the room, and placed it high out of reach. That was the last time I touched that racing car, and when I looked up for it a few days later, it had vanished altogether.

Spring came, and with it, a break in the monotony of living in the safe house. I still hadn’t been to school since my mother had run away from my father, neither had my younger brother or elder sisters. We did have schools in the caves, not really like the human ones, but the children gathered each day for lessons, where we were taught to read and write, learn numbers, science, and everything else we would need if we should ever decide to live secret lives amongst the humans. Some believed our education was better than the humans. It had to be if we were to get jobs amongst them and study in their colleges and universities. The Blackcoat Father Paul was a regular visitor to the safe house. He would come and speak to some of the families hiding there, waiting to be relocated by the Vampyrus so they could start secret new lives amongst the humans.

He wouldn’t preach as such, but he would talk about his faith and belief in the Elders. He always seemed to be happy and whatever the other people seeking sanctuary at the safe house thought of him, they seemed to take some comfort from his visits.

One spring morning, Father Paul arrived early and took me, my brother, sisters, and our mother out for the day. He drove a rickety old truck, which was blue with flashes of orange rust around the wheel arches and bumpers. Me and my younger brother, Rik were so excited to be away from the boredom of that house. Sure we played in the grounds, all day long if allowed, but often I would look up at the high stone walls and black iron gates and feel imprisoned somehow. I knew I couldn’t leave whenever I wanted, so I guess I was a prisoner in a strange way.

Father Paul drove us along the coast to the city, and as I stared wide-eyed out of the truck’s windows, I absorbed all these places that I had never seen before. There were buildings so tall that they seemed to touch the sky. Every street seemed packed with people, and I stared up at all their different coloured faces. We walked for miles that day, and I wasn’t bored once. Then the best thing ever happened; we passed a big grey building with huge white pillars outside.

“What’s inside there?” I asked, pulling on the sleeve of his black shirt.

“It’s an art gallery,” he smiled down at me. He must have seen my blank expression as he added, “It’s full of paintings.”

“Can we take a look?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, glancing up at my mother.

I will never forget the hour we spent looking at all the pictures hanging from the big flat walls. There were paintings of people that looked so real I thought they were going to reach out and touch me. There were pictures of places I had never seen before. They were so good I felt that I could step into them and go exploring. I remember thinking that it was like a building full of magic windows, looking out onto worlds and people so beautiful that you just had to peer through them. I knew then that I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to paint pictures like the ones I had seen hanging in that gallery.

Father Paul took me back again to that gallery, a week or two later, and again it was like walking into a place of magic. The second visit had been the first time I had seen Father Paul out of his usual black garments. He was dressed in a crisp blue cotton shirt, which he wore open at the throat, and a pair of grey flannel trousers. Out of his dead black attire and wandering the streets of the city with four children and my mother, to the passing person on the street, we must have looked like any ordinary family enjoying a day out.

However we weren’t a family – we weren’t even human. Five of us were wolves and the other a Vampyrus.

It was a lot of fun and I could see it made my mother very contented. For the first time since leaving my father, she looked happy and I couldn’t ever remember her smiling so much. Over those few weeks, I’d come to learn that being a Blackcoat prevented Father Paul from marrying and having children and a family of his own. He had taken a vow to the Elders that he would spend his life trying to find peace with the Lycanthrope, the Vampyrus, and the humans. I learnt also that he did have an older brother, who had two children. Not having a family himself, I believe Father Paul enjoyed spending time with me, my brother and sisters, and mother. My relationship with Father Paul grew from this point on and secretly I began to see him as a father, even though I was a Lycanthrope and he was a Vampyrus.

Chapter Six

Kiera

“Did you miss your father?” I asked Jack, and I stared through the darkness at my own, as he sat forward, slumped in the chair.

“Months are like years to a nine-year-old boy,” he said, looking at me. The light had gone out of his eyes, and I could see two black holes in his face. For the first time since meeting this killer, Jack Seth, his voice was softer somehow. I had noticed how controlled he could be while telling his story. While talking about his past, his voice had taken on a calmness which I would have never thought possible of this man – this wolf.

Jack stood up, his long arms swinging by his sides. He took a lamp from the shadows in the corner of the room behind my father and switched it on. The light from the bulb was weak and cast long, eerie shapes up the walls. I glanced over at the window and the night sky was black. Snow had built up along the window ledge. Looking down at the floor, I dropped my head. Just under the chair where I was chained, I could see that little pile of dust had grown. It looked like the shape of sand that been poured through an hourglass.

I heard Jack sit back down in front of me and I looked up. My hair hung over my face. He reached out and gently brushed my hair away so we could see each other. Now that he had switched the lamp on, I could see his eyes again, but they still didn’t burn with the rage I had grown used to seeing in them. He looked kind of ancient and it was hard to reconcile the image of this emaciated man sitting before me and the little boy holding the toy racing car at the foot of a bunk bed. “Did you miss the caves – your home?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, looking at me. “Although I had been taken to the world beyond the forests many times before by my mother and father, I had never lived there. At first I felt uncomfortable with it. I didn’t like that big house.”

“Why not?” I asked him, and I wasn’t trying to string out the conversation to bide myself more time. I sensed that he had come this far with his story and he wasn’t going to stop until he had told me everything. I was now genuinely curious to find out about the monster which lurked inside this man.

“That house was full of Lycanthrope who believed that by leaving the caves – their homes – they could find better lives living amongst the humans. But the caves were home, right? Can you ever really run away from what you truly are?”

“I guess not,” I said, a part of me understanding him. I had grown up in a very human world, with my mum and dad, on a normal street, in an average town. That had been my home. But just like Jack, I had a parent – my mum – who wasn’t what I thought her to be. She had been a monster just like Jack’s father had been.

When my father had died and my mother gone, I had run away to the Ragged Cove – that’s the real reason I had volunteered to take up that posting. But what I truly was – what I truly am – had followed me. It had to; it was inside of me.

I looked at Jack as he sat before me, his long hands resting on his bony knees. I remembered my own inner conflict when I discovered I was a half-breed. I thought of the turmoil I felt starting a new life living alongside the Vampyrus. I had lost all contact now with humans. My friends were all Vampyrus, as too was the man I was in love with. So looking at Jack, I slowly twisted my wrists in their chains and said, “Did you find it difficult living amongst the humans?”

As if thinking about my question, Jack pushed his baseball cap to the back of his head and sat forward in his chair. He sat silently for a moment, then looking up at me, he said, “It was something I had to get used to…

Chapter Seven

Jack

When summer ended, we returned to school. Not to my teachers in the caves. Mother sent Lorre and Kara to the local secondary school, me and Rik to the local junior school. Both were a short bus ride away. I admit I was scared, as I didn’t know anyone. Worse than that, I was keeping this big secret. I got used to keeping secrets. The Blackcoat Father Paul told me and my brother and sisters that the schools had been chosen very carefully for us. Unbeknown to other teaching staff, there was one or two Vampyrus teaching at the schools. We would never know who they were – just like the humans who worked alongside them, but they would be watching out for us. This eased my fear a little, but school wasn’t the same. It wasn’t just because I was learning alongside humans and pretending to be something I wasn’t, I had missed so much education in that year, and I had fallen behind.