Running Into the Night (Part 5 of the Afterlife Chronicles) Kitty, age 16, 5’4”, werewolf. I guess that about sums me up in as few words as possible. I’ve been a furry for nearly three weeks now and I try to run with my wolves every night. They always wait for me at the edge of town. I’m worried they’d starve to death if I wasn’t there to hunt with them. You can’t imagine how hard it is to clean blood off the carpet of my dorm. After the first few days of coming home bloody, I almost gave up, but when a friend from class wanted to come over and hang out, I realized I had to work hard to keep up appearances. Now I buy bleach and cleaning supplies almost religiously. My bed though, is going to have to go. Kind of reminds me of that song by one of my favorite bands, about not being able to clean the blood off the sheets of my bed. It all soaks into the mattress and now my room smells coppery twenty-four seven, which isn’t bad for me, I love the smell of blood, dirt and sweat. It’s so… primal. Other than my nocturnal runs with the pack, my life pretty much stayed the same. Sure, I enjoy my steaks rare now and don’t drink anything other than water, but it’s nothing I can’t explain. I no longer grin when I look in the mirror and see the sexy, primal woman staring back at me, but that’s only because I’m too exhausted to smile. I know I can’t keep this dual life up much longer, I’m not sleeping enough and for some reason, when I don’t run with my pack, my head really hurts. Now, most lucky people never have a major event that reshapes their lives forever. Those pitiful few that do, never have a second major event to toss them back into chaos. I’m not even that lucky. I came back to my dorm exactly three weeks after my rebirth to find two police officers waiting for me. They told me they had some questions for me and to come with them down to the police station. I knew immediately what they were thinking, could tell it from the looks in their eyes. This was about my father, who I’d murdered the night of my rebirth, though of course they couldn’t know that. So into the back of a police cruiser I went, without handcuffs I must add. It only took ten minutes to get to the station, but the whole ride was as silent as the last few moments of a death row inmate’s life. Inside we walked, one officer on each side of me. We passed people sitting on benches, some were crying, some were handcuffed to the chair, others just looked distantly at nothing. What the hell, was it always this depressing? They immediately led me into a small square room. It wasn’t the kind with the one way mirror in the wall, but with a security camera up in the corner near the ceiling, its dark lens staring down at me like an angry god. I couldn’t change and escape this place; there would be too much evidence. At this thought, the wolf in me growled in my head, as if wanting me to at least try. That brought a grin to my lips, a grin that did not go unnoticed. “Just a funny inner thought about squirrels,” I explained when the officers looked at me curiously. I sat at one side of a small nondescript table while they sat at the other. Oh Jesus, good cop/bad cop. I could already see it coming. “Well, Miss Kitty. It seems there are a few people who say you were there on the day your father went missing. What were you two doing?” the taller man with black hair asked as he relaxed in his chair. Definitely the good cop, though he’d not offered me something to drink. Bastard. “My dad called and wanted me to take him to the liquor store since his car broke down,” I explained, immediately deciding sticking to the truth as much as I could would make lying easier. “I see. So you went and picked him up and took him right?” he asked, then leaned forward, “But I noticed that your car wasn’t in the lot, Kitty. What happened to it?” Shit. What the hell? Stalker bastards. “I wrecked it recently. It probably got towed from the wreck site,” I told him. The other cop raised an eyebrow at that. He looked of Irish decent, red hair and freckled skin. “Into a tree right?” the Irish cop asked, surprising me. Shit, they’d found my car. How the hell? Damn it this was getting bad. “Yeah, I swerved off the road and into a tree. I fell asleep at the wheel,” I add that last part in there as a mild explanation, as if wanting them to understand my ‘folly’. “To be frank, Kitty, we found a lot of blood in your car. It doesn’t match your father’s,” he added and the black haired cop nodded. Fuck. They weren’t doing the routine at all. Stupid cop movies. They didn’t help at all. “We think the blood is yours, but looking at how much was in the car, I don’t know how it could be,” he added. Ah-hah! Finally a kink in their armor. “I don’t know how there could be blood in my car though, officers. I didn’t get hurt when I wrecked, just bumped my head on the steering wheel. Maybe an animal got in there and died or something,” I offer, shrugging. Play it cool… play it cool. “That sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t explain why your father was found dead two hundred yards from the car, torn to pieces,” Black hair added then Irish went on to add, “It does look like he was attacked by wolves, but the claw marks on his body look a lot like a knife caused them. We also found a knife at the crime scene, covered in blood that wasn’t your fathers or even a wolf’s blood.” Fuck. They exchanged a look then start to open their mouths to speak the words that would be my damnation, when the door opened and another cop walked in. “Hey, we’re in the middle of questioning here,” Irish added, but the new cop just grinned. He had his head bowed so the rim of his hat hid his eyes, but that smile wasn’t human, his teeth were too sharp. On his uniform was a name badge that said ‘Callahan’. “Wait… You aren’t Jeremy,” Black hair added, an instant before the lights shut off. Eyes the color of gold shone in the dark before blinking out. I didn’t hear a sound, but soon the lights flicked back on revealing pseudo-Callahan standing by the light switched. I blinked then looked towards where Irish and Black hair had been, only to find the room empty. “What?” I started but the man just laughed and opened the door, gesturing for me to follow. Maybe if I hadn’t just witnessed the impossible, I would have sat there and twiddled my thumbs, but I knew this man wasn’t human, not like anyone here. I followed, nearly tripping over my chair to stand. My black jeans rustled and my boots thudded on the tiled floor as we walked nondescriptly towards the door. The station was empty. Not a soul around, not a whisper of life. I’d be freaked out if I wasn’t staring at the man with wide eyes. He had graying black hair and he was rather tall, but you could tell he wasn’t weak. Maybe it was just primal instinct but I was sure he was built with strong, lean muscles under that baggy uniform. We exited the station and he lead me over to a police cruiser, he told me to get in, it was the first words I’d heard him speak, but his voice was deep and rough, more like a sexy growl than anything else. The wolf in me howled at just the sound. Oh god, here I was slutting after a man clearly older than me who apparently made a police station full of people vanish without making a sound or leaving any evidence. Geeze, what was wrong with me? I got in the passenger side of the cruiser and he pulled off his cap, wiping a hand down his face before taking off the button up shirt of the uniform, revealing that he wore a tight black wife beater beneath, and yes, he was just as built as I had thought. The wolf in me panted as I soaked up the sight. “My name’s Alistar,” he told me and I blushed hard, realizing he was looking at me and had caught me staring. I stammered my name back and he laughed, the sound rich and deep. “A werewolf named Kitty. Cute,” he said then grinned a devilish grin at me. “Welcome to my Pack, Kitty. From now on, you follow me.” The shock on my face must have been too much because he cracked up laughing as he pulled the cruiser out of the lot and started to drive towards the middle of town.