The Darkness 5: Ender Game (Part One)

I remember when I was first bitten. It was a foggy Thursday night and I was walking home through the woods. I was just walking out of the woods into my neighborhood when a huge wolf came charging out of the fog from behind me, jumped up, and bit down on my shoulder. It was so sudden, I was stuck in shock as the wild beast's fangs sunk deep. For a minute everything went slow motion and my heart sink into my chest; I was scared. Finally the pain set in and I knocked it off of me and it disappeared into the woods behind me. Still in shock my eyes never left the wood from where the beast came from. The bite barely bled and did hurt at all so I went home and washed and cleaned it. The next morning the wound was completely healed over. I went for the rest of the week not caring about the bite, until the full moon. The night of the full moon where the bite had once been began to burn. Soon that burn turned into my whole body overheating; I couldn't stay in the bed. I left my house for the cold night but that didn't help, something deep inside me sent me running into the woods. My body was burning, I ran and ran until my energy was drained. In the middle of the dark woods I suffered what felt like fire being pumped through my veins; it was unbearable. My eyes looked to the sky for answers but all that was there were the millions of stars and the moon. My eyes never left the moon. Suddenly power was pulsating through me from the moon straight to my soul. My senses exploded. I could hear the heartbeat of a scared baby deer watching me from three trees away and the stream running in the distance. I could taste the ocean air in the fog and the freshness of the woods. I could smell the soil, the wood, and all the animals around me; everything so vividly and alive. Everything became crystal clear, clear as it was day and within a few feet of me. The feeling was amazing. Then there was another surge of power. An unreal feral power now surged over my body; it was fueled by the moon and sourced from the bite. It felt like it was growing inside of me, trying to be let free. The feral pressure built until I let the savage animalistic power out. Fur grew all over my body, my muscles grew, every bone in my body broke down and reconstructed, power rushed me. My canines grew, my nails grew to claws, and grew a tail. I was no longer a human but something else. Under the power of the full moon, the bite I had gotten a few nights before had turned me into a werewolf. That night, I ran throughout the whole woods trying to get a handle on what had just happened. I was no longer just viewing the woods, animals, and nature; I was it and living it. Everything around me was alive. I could sense the urgency of the bobcat that had just made a kill, feel the owls flying over the rustling tree tops, and smell everything in the woods as if I could see it in broad daylight. I could sense the life of every tree and animal like they were a part of me. It wasn't until I seen my reflection in a broken mirror in an old broken down tree house that I fully accepted what happened. I was a werewolf. My fur was pitch black and my eyes were a glowing emerald green. I was really a werewolf. The feeling was unbelievable. The remainder of the night I ran the woods howling at the moon. The next night, after the full moon, I tried turning again, but instead I turned into a huge black wolf. In this wolf form I was twice the size of even the largest normal wolf. These new werewolf powers had seemed to be a blessing.

Less than a week later, while at school I was approached by a Native American man named Black Eagle. He told me he knew that I was a werewolf and that he wanted to talk to me. It wasn't too much of a surprise that he knew. Many people in our town knew him as a famed Native American Shaman, but dismissed it has a Native American legend; so I agreed to meet him. After school he met me at the town's pond. He told me that I was bit by a dying enchanted wolf and turned into a werewolf. Werewolves were nature's answer to keep the balance between the mystical, the supernatural, the spiritual and nature. There were many entities, beasts, and animals in the world that needed to be controlled. One of the most common known, and parallel to the werewolf, was the vampire. Vampires were nature's answer to prevent man's complete destruction or revelation of the supernatural side of nature. I was turned to keep the balance in my small town and the woods that surrounded it. Nearly everything we read in the books or watched in movies about werewolves was false; about the werewolf I was. Wolf’s bane did not kill werewolves but turned forced a human from a human to his werewolf form and killing the wolf that turned you didn't "cure" you. The wolf that had bitten me had turned me into an Omega Alpha werewolf or a lone Alpha werewolf and I had to start a pack. I had to turn 6 other people to make my pack. Once I had my pack I would know what to do. I expressed my only concern was the vampires and the so-said long held rivalry between the two. He told me that once I had found and turned my pack he would tell me the rest of what I needed to know

My pack. Naturally it was the people closest to me; my 13 year old nephew C.D and my 20 year cousin Ray and my closest friends 19 years old Audio, Cee, Ciara, and Marie. I showed them what had happened to me and they all agreed to be turned. A week before the full moon I bit them all where I had been bitten, then on the night of the full moon, we went to the woods and they changed. They, unlike me, changed to wolf form then to werewolf before they regained full control of themselves. Instantly the ranks in the pack were formed Ray, Audio, Cee were Beta wolves. Marie was a Delta. Ciara who was stronger than Marie, was the Alpha female. And C.D., being an immature wolf was an Omega wolf. They, unlike me, all had yellow eyes. When my pack had turned I could feel we were all more connected than we had been before. With my pack, I could feel my power triple. Just like real wolves, there was power in numbers. We ran the woods that night as both wolves and werewolves, as a pack. True Beasts of The Night. Now that we had become a werewolf pack we howled at the moon together and our eyes glowed blue; we were the guardians of the woods.

The following week we visited Black Eagle. He informed them on what he had once told me and gave them all the knowledge I had. When their briefing was done, I asked him about the vampires again. He told us that the vampires belonged to one huge network, or hive, of vampire. There was a clan of vampires in certain towns, just as there was wolf packs. Naturally we would have bad blood towards each other but we had to co-exist. The hard part was that we would probably find people we knew to be vampires. He also explained that our pack had a distinct color that our bite scar and eyes would glow to show we were of the same pack. It was the Navy blue that our eyes glowed when we all change. On days that were not full moons we would have to change into our wolf forms before turning into werewolves. At times it would be an inconvenience but it also had its advantages. We each had our each individual strengths and weaknesses that would carry over from our human selves but would be balanced out in the pack. Black Eagle also warned vampires were the least of our worries. There were plenty of other things out there that would we see and face that would be a handful. We had the night, the moon, and most of all, our pack would guide us through whatever. We just had to do our best to keep humans from knowing about our existence. Black Eagle then gave us each our own necklace and told us to never take it off. He all gave us his blessing and said any questions we had would be answered in time. Most of all, remember as werewolves, we were given a gift that we should not abuse.

Since then we did what we had to, accepting our gift, and ever since our first encounter, we've been closer ever since. Even on our first supernatural encounter as werewolves. As a pack, we worked in sync perfectly and renewed our bond as friends.

As an Alpha.... I went and found out what happened to my pack. Why it only affected my friends and not C.D. They had contracted....or was cursed with something called the Slender Sickness. A sickness that started when we faced and defeated the Slender Man....or thought I had defeated him....He had inflicted my pack and stalked me for weeks, by trying to send the Mothman into our town, provoking an ill sasquatch to attack us, and even leading a Bladenboro Beast onto my grandmother's farm....but that wasn't the end...