Love and Attraction

Prologue

PROLOGUE:

Walking down a narrow street that was strewn with litter on a cold winter night, Daniel was thinking about what Sharron, his beautiful, caring wife would be doing at this moment. Would she be cooking dinner? Watching TV? Already finished dinner and putting the two girls to bed perhaps? Maybe even lying in bed reading a book, waiting for him to come home to snuggle close and wrap his arms around her in a loving and warm embrace? He didn't know, but he didn't plan to not know for long. He hurried on.

He had a half hour walk home. His car had broken down back on Crawl Street, during his journey home from work. He didn't have his cell phone to call Sharron, as he had absently left it back at the office when he had left earlier. He had not passed any phone booths or service stations on the way, and neither did he see any taxis driving around this quiet and rundown part of the city.

The wind blew the icy air around him. Somehow the chill had penetrated his sweater and thick black coat, seeping into his bones and making him shiver. He pulled his coat tighter around himself.

The wind was mercilessly blowing into his face, making it feel like the muscles there had frozen themselves solid. Yawning and rubbing his face to thaw it out a bit, he looked up and saw a shadow move at an impossibly fast speed a hundred metres down the street. Fear began to crawl up his spine as a realisation dawned upon him: there was no way it could possibly have been a human. "A dog maybe?" He thought to himself, desperately trying to rationalise what he saw. But deep down, he knew that it was too large to have been a dog either.

Daniel considered that he may have just been seeing things. He had been running on an empty tank for the past week, and to add on to that, it had been a long and stressful day at work. Sleep deprivation, he knew, could have been playing tricks on his mind, making him see things that were only a figment of his imagination and a result of his paranoia. As if sensing his doubt, the shadow whizzed past the street again, only appearing in the dim halo of the streetlight for a second. It was closer now. Only about sixty meters away. This time, he knew that his eyes had not fooled him.

The instinct to flee overcame him. But he ignored it and continued walking on towards home, as casually as he could manage. He felt tension fill the air and a disturbing feeling that something was watching him, listening to his every footfall, just waiting for the perfect moment to pounce overcame him.

Then, bang! A loud crashing sound came from close beside him in the darkness beyond the hedges beside the sidewalk. This was accompanied with an angry growl that sounded uncannily similar to that of a wild animal. Whipping his head towards the sound, he caught a glimpse of something. The last few seconds had put him on edge. Like a tightly coiled spring, he suddenly burst into a sprint, terrified. One foot in front of the other, he ran, stumbling over his own feet, his motor skills failing him. He prayed that he wouldn't trip and fall down. His legs were already turning numb from the cold, but he didn't stop, couldn't stop. Every single cell in him screaming at him to run faster, to get away from whatever was behind the hedge.

Deep down, he knew it. He knew what had caused the sound. He had seen its big glowing brown eyes staring back at him. It was a wolf. An angry wolf that, surely, had been sent here to kill him. But this was not just any sort of wolf, it was a werewolf, much deadlier than any wolf could possibly be.

He was halfway down the street to the intersection with a larger road when he heard a furious growl resonate from in front of him. Panicking, he swiftly spun around on his heels to turn back the way he came. Suddenly, he found himself on the ground. He had been slammed into the ground by the sharp and powerful paws of a dark brown werewolf. The werewolf stood over Daniel with its chocolate, almost human eyes, staring down him with rage.

Desperation filled Daniel, clouding over his sense of fear. "Get off me, you bastard!" He yelled, punching the side of the werewolf's head with his fist. It didn't seem to have an effect on the werewolf. It didn't even budge from its position. Looking into the werewolf's eyes, he knew that he had just made a fatal mistake. Without a warning, the werewolf then took a vicious bite into Daniel's arm and gnawed, ripping out a mouthful of flesh.

Daniel's scream of agony filled the night air. His arm felt like it had been brutally ripped from its socket. His sense of desperation increased tenfold. Gritting his teeth, he thrashed under the werewolf's heavy paw, pulling at its fluffy dark brown fur at wherever he could get his hands on. He felt himself rip a thin, but strong and long chain from the werewolf's neck. He could now feel the sticky and viscous blood from the wound on his arm seep through the back of his coat.

Suddenly, a thought struck him and he stopped thrashing almost immediately. He had a large silver pocket knife he had in his front right pocket. He inched his hand on his non-injured arm down towards the pocket. But although his movement had been minimal, the werewolf seemed to have somehow sensed what he was doing, and it didn't seem to like it one bit, snapping its massive jaws at his face. He flinched, but continued moving his arm towards the pocket nonetheles

Sliding his hand into the pocket he felt the cool silver pocket knife in his palm. Not wasting a second, he quickly whipped it out just as the werewolf made to take a bite out of his other arm. Daniel let out a roar and plunged the knife hard into the wolf's side. It let out a loud whimper and removed itself from on top of Daniel and stumbled to the ground.

Daniel picked himself up slowly, not wanting to unnecessarily jostle his injured arm. He then walked slowly towards the werewolf, which was now laying down on the ground, unmoving. He pulled the knife from its side and then stabbed it straight back in again, this time in its shoulder. It whimper again, this time more loudly than the first.

He stepped back and stared down at the wolf. Remembering the reason why this werewolf was sent here to kill him. Thinking back to the past, he only wished that his daughters, Spencer and Anna would forgive him, and that his beautiful wife, Sharron would forgive him for what this man, this werewolf, hadn't.

"You killed him!" Someone cried out in anguish from the shadows behind Daniel.

Daniel turned to see a man he had thought was the werewolf that had attacked him. "You killed him!" He cried again running towards Daniel.

Daniel turn back to the spot where the werewolf was lying and in its place was a young boy, about the age of 18 with the knife, his knife, in his shoulder. 'What have I done?' Daniel thought to himself. 'I killed a boy.' The thought seemed strange and foreign in his mind. His mind felt woozy from the blood lost from the wound on his shoulder. He glanced down at it and grimaced. It was not a pretty sight.

He turned to look back at the man running towards them with angry, teary eyes. Running past Daniel, the man ran straight to the boy's side and pressed his fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. After a minute, the man shook his head and began to break down sobbing.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't know. I'm sorry," Daniel began.

The man look up at Daniel with undiluted fury in his icy blue eyes. The man stood. "You killed my son!" The man quickly reached for his waist band and pull out a small, black and shiny pistol. "I was willing to forgive you last time, but this time..." He trailed off.

He pointed the gun just below Daniel's left shoulder, where his heart was. "Since you don't seem to have a heart, I'm wondering if this will kill you...." Before Daniel could respond, the man pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.

The last thought that passed through Daniel's mind was, "Sharron, Spencer, Anna, I'm sorry. Please forgive me." He was dead even before his limp body crashed towards the ground.

The necklace he had ripped from the werewolf's neck still lay, clutched tightly, in his hand as the pool of dark red began to grow in size around him. His brown eyes looked up into the inky, black and starless night sky, his gaze cold and empty. Dead.