Chapter 30

**********

Midterms are next week. At least I learned how to argue, sort of. The midterm for this class should be easy enough.

“Here is an example of a good argument. All collies are dogs. Lassie is a collie. Therefore Lassie is a dog.” Mr. Tomlinsky stated. “And this is a bad argument. All mafia members are Italian. All Italians are mafia members.”

Yeah, yeah. Lassie is a dog. I wonder when he’ll quit using that example.

I wonder how Tom is doing. I mean we’ve pretty much had the same scores on our tests and homework assignments. I’ll find out on Tuesday when Mr. Tomlinsky shows us our grades going into the midterm. Poor Tom doesn’t even know we’re competing for the best grade, but he is the only one that presents a challenge and he’s cute too.

I should really stop obsessing over him. He deserves better. He’s really not that into me anyways. I’d once hoped he would be, but hey we’re still good friends and I’m fine with that. He finds me a little intimidating and weird, can’t blame him, most people do. I even find myself to be a little creepy and annoying sometimes. I mean I prefer blood to food, but most of my kind do. I just choose to eat food around humans, so they feel safe and at ease. And so they don’t find out what I am.

Thanksgiving, probably the most boring of holidays. Well whatever. We get a few days off from school. Okay so it’s probably not boring to human families but for mine seriously, it’s boring. We will be hunting most of the day, but this year Donnie says we are going to have family visiting. So maybe it won’t be as bad as usual.

Ben, Scott, Rose, and I went hunting together in the mountains. We made a game of it. The others didn’t like to play with us because Scott and Ben could see the future and Rose and I could read their minds.

I loved the excitement of the hunt. Chasing the deer and goats through the mountains was entertaining. I would chase them and herd them together while the others watched in anticipation. Once I had them in the meadow, the others would come out from their hiding places. We would then take turns dividing them up. Then one at a time we hunted them giving them a chance to get away only to take it back. This was more fun when we hunted bears, horses, mountain lions, or the occasional wolf pack. These animals were smarter than the deer and goats of the mountains, but harder to find here. They were plentiful out west. But today we were hunting deer, the easiest of our prey. There was a thick fog, but we didn’t need our eyes to hunt.

Scott heard them first. And the rest of us became aware of their presence. There were hunters in these mountains today. People who thought they could do some father-son bonding. This was not a good time to be here. Mostly for them. We were the most fearsome of predators and they were our predestined prey. There was no doubt they didn’t notice our presence and even if they had, would they be aware of the danger we represented? We weren’t going to take any chances. We took off at full speed, Ben leading the way.

After an hour running north, we were out of the fog. We did not find any humans here and we began looking for the deer.

We skipped lightly and nimbly across the mountains. To humans this might have been a difficult task, treacherous even. But for our kind it came quite easily.

I took the lead jumping over or around the rocks and crevices without so much as a thought. Each leap found me freer. I felt like a dancer on ice, so light on my feet and elegant. Flowing fluidly across the landscape.

I stopped suddenly. The wind blew and with it came the scent of blood. It was not a deer but a bear. I listened closely. The bear was injured but not fatally. Maybe we wouldn’t be having deer for dinner. We were all still for a few minutes while we each took care to listen and watch. What had injured the great bear? We scanned the trees that darkened the valley; there were no humans in the area. Ben and Scott did not see anything coming either.

We left the bear to Scott and continued. After about a mile, Scott and Ben called Rose and I telepathically. We were being followed. None of us ever saw it. We would occasionally catch the glimpse of a shadow, but nothing more. Whatever it was, not even our extra senses could grasp it. It stayed in the shadows. Scott soon caught up to us as we searched for it. While he fed on the bear, Scott noticed that its injury came from another attack. It looked like we might have a vampire following us. But why could we not see it or hear it? We decided that it was probably curious about us and was probably attacked by the bear first. Since this unknown vampire hadn’t eaten the bear we assumed it preferred human blood. We would let him or her be and continue our hunt.

Rose found another bear and finished it off. Ben and I became competitive and took off in the night. I found a mountain lion in a cave just above the treeline. As I approached it, I noticed it had cubs. Well I’m not heartless, so I let them be. I went back the other way, maybe I could find a deer.

Half way back to the others, I heard it. The snapping of several twigs at once. It was all I heard. I found it strange that this vampire would make itself known to me in such a way. I stayed where I was and called for the others to approach cautiously. I didn’t want to scare off our new friend if he was indeed a friend.

He slowly stepped from behind a tree.

“Hello, who are you?”

“I should ask you the same thing,” I replied. I knew there were others like us in the area, but we had not encountered them in the year that we lived here. Mostly because we lived differently so we avoided them.

“I am Michael.”

“I’m Strix. Are you hunting tonight?”

“I was,” he replied rather eerily. “I found some hunters a while ago. Heard you and your friends approaching so I stopped. Thought you were hunting them. Then you fled instead. I couldn’t understand why, so I followed you. Then I was attacked by that bear your friend finished off. I understood then. You have an aversion to real blood. My father and mother would be interested in meeting you.”

“Why did you not make yourself known earlier, we knew you were following us. You had to know we looked for you.”

“Oh, I saw.”

“Why would they want to meet us anyway?”

“We are curious mostly.”

“We don’t like your tone with my cousin” Scott jumped in.

“Scott, this is Michael. Michael, my cousin Scott.”

“I’m Ben and this is Rose” he said as they stepped out of the trees.

“We think you should leave, you’ve interrupted us” Rose stated.

“Oh, but I just wanted to have a little fun.”

“You are creeping us out, dude. Either say what you want or leave.” Rose said.

“Well I don’t think you’ll let me have what I want, so I’ll take my leave. But I will be back.”

“We’ll be waiting” I responded in kind.

Well that was weird. I thought.

I know, but at least he didn’t want a fight.

Thanks Rose. I was curious about him and his silent thoughts. I probably would have left with him. So thanks for getting rid of him.

Not a problem. I have your back. We all do. Don’t know why he picked you though.

Me either, that was kinda creepy.

“Thanks Scott. I had a feeling he might not have been that friendly, but I was curious.”

“I figured as much. Didn’t want to wait for you to call us in.”

“Thank you too, Ben”

“You’re my sister; I’m not going to let you get hurt while I’m around. Plus he seemed to have ulterior motives behind this little visit.”

“My thoughts exactly. Let me catch dinner and we can go.”

“I would have thought you beat me to dinner. You are the best hunter I know.”

“I would have eaten already, but I couldn’t kill the cubs and I wasn’t going to leave them motherless either.”

“Okay, go get your dinner.”

I climbed a nearby tree to get a better view. There were some deer downwind from us. I jumped down and went after them. I caught myself a buck and wrestled it for a while. Finally I finished. He was a wily one. We raced back home.