The Wolves of Cain

Just Hanging Out

Her face suddenly lights up with excitement. "Let's play a new game! Storytime! Who is this Ivie to you?" Vine girl asks, which makes the entire situation that much creepier.

"Is she your soul mate?" She asks like a starstruck little girl who believes in true love and fairy tales.

"No, she's the sister of a friend." Lucas plays along while he figures out what to do next. Mason is still lying on the ground, but he's groaning in pain now. That means that he's still alive.

Vine girl giggles uncontrollably at that and Lucas decides to attack. He leaps from the tree and straight at her, his claws extended, knocking her flat on the ground.

He raises his clawed hand to slash her face, but when he sees it's Ivie with green hair and eyes, Lucas just can't do it.

The anger diminishes and he's left completely confused. His claws retract and his eyes go back to their normal brown color.

Then vines grab him around the waist and he's suddenly hanging upside down in the tree above the Ivie look alike. She giggles again and scoots away from the tree.

Out of nowhere, a blond guy jumps in front of vine girl and, in one fluent movement, bends down and shoves her away. She gasps in shock as she rolls and hits a tree a few feet away.

The blond stranger guy looks up at Lucas. "Need help?" He asks.

Lucas stares at the guy in shock, not able to say a thing. The guy is tall, possibly taller than himself. He has blue eyes to match his blond hair and he's slightly paler than most of the guys in town. He looks a few years older than Lucas, probably around eighteen or nineteen years old.

He grins and winks at Lucas before turning to vine girl. She suddenly stabs the vines at him with an angry face, like a child throwing a tantrum. The vines enter and exit his chest quickly, leaving behind blood stains on his white shirt.

Lucas stares shell-shocked, waiting for the stranger to drop dead. But he looks down at his ruined white shirt and says with a smile, "You missed my heart." Then he rushes forward, making it halfway to vine girl before he's rapidly stabbed by vines again.

The guy grunts in pain but tries to keep going. Vines wrap around his feet and hook into the ground so he can't move, but the guy stays completely calm, seemingly pleasing her.

"Would you like to play my game?" She asks him, giving him a courtesy she hadn't shown the other boys.

The new guy smirks and says, "Sure. How do you play?" Lucas notes that this guy is as sarcastic as vine girl is playful. Maybe even more.

Vine girl smiles sweetly. "You run, I chase."

The guy frowns at that. Lucas thinks maybe he's not crazy after all. But that thought goes away after the guy responds. "That doesn't sound like fun to me. I should be able to fight back."

This makes vine girl pout in return. "That would make it less fun for me." She tells him. Then, so fast Lucas barely sees what happens, the stranger rushes forward and knocks the girl unconscious.

As soon as she falls to the ground, her hair turns back to its natural orange color. "Well that's new." The guy comments.

"What's new to you? Because everything that's happened here is new to me." Lucas exclaims in frustration. The guy turns to him lazily.

He snorts at that, in a way that girls would deem attractive, and looks up at Lucas. "Like that wasn't obvious? Did you need help down?" His words drift of unexpectantly.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name." He says with a seriously thoughtful expression on his face. For the life of him, Lucas couldn't tell if the guy was being sarcastic again or not.

"It's Lucas. Lucas Hallow." He doesn't believe it's smart to give strangers your name, but this one saved his and his brother's life.

At the sound of his voice, Mason starts to sit up in a daze. "Lucas? Is she gone?" Mason takes in a sharp breath when he sees a stranger standing near his twin...who is hanging from a tree.

Mason concludes he may have passed out for a bit.

"Who are you?" He questions as he clutches at his bloody stomach.

"I'm Adrian, no last name. My parents disowned me." He reveals with a shrug.

"Why?" Mason blurts out. Lucas just hangs upside down silently in the tree, unsure of how to proceed with this overly strange situation.

Adrian grins at the answer he's about to give. "Because I'm like you two! And they were afraid of me when they found out."

"You're a werewolf?" Mason asks in wonder.

"Mason!" Lucas growls in warning at him.

"What? He said he knows." Mason defends his actions.

Adrian nods enthusiastically. "Yes, I do know! I probably know a lot more than you two put together."

Lucas scowls but keeps his mouth shut. They could definitely use a teacher of sorts.

"Are you okay, Mason?" He suddenly inquires, eyeing the wound that had been hurting Mason a few minutes ago.

His younger sibling looks surprised when he answers. "Actually, it doesn't hurt anymore. What about you? You're hanging upside down in a tree."

Adrian steps over and pulls Lucas loose. "Not anymore, you're not." He quips with a huge grin. Luckily, Lucas had the sense to do a flip to land on his feet. If he hadn't, he might've landed on his neck. Who knew if he could heal from that?

"Do you know her?" Adrian asks them. Lucas nods and Mason gives him a meaningful look. They'll be talking about that later.

Adrian has lost his grin for a moment and is being practical. "Good. Take her home. She won't go psycho again tonight, but this is the woods. It's not the safest place."

"I suggest you two boys go home now." Adrian's trademark sarcastic grin comes back as he speaks. Then he makes a dramatic exit, running away so fast that he's only a blur, leaving Lucas and Mason to carry Ivie's unconscious body home under the light of a moon that is no longer full.