The Wolf Girl: A Short Story by Lore Scarlet
I knew I could die at any moment, but that was okay.
It was just that morning that my pack–my family–was killed by vampires. I was the only survivor.
In this world filled with blood-sucking Monsters, we called ourselves Wolves, but we were merely human.
We traveled during the day, when the monsters were asleep. And at night, we slept while someone kept watch.
I thought we were careful, but apparently not careful enough. We all heard the watcher’s screams of “Vampires!” It was too late. His screams were silenced as his throat was torn apart.
I ran, but they were faster—they moved inhumanly fast. They caught me, and I was face to face with them. I had expected them to be hideous, misshapen monstrous things.
They were monsters, but they didn’t look any different from us, except for the fangs in their mouths, and the blood smeared on their faces.
Now I was bound by chains to several girls around my age, sixteen. We were all washed and given formal gowns to dress in. Mine was a tight white satin dress. Great, I was going to die in a dress.
We were in front of the Vampire King, his queen, the two Vampire Princes, and one of the Vampire Princes Princess.
“Alastair,” the Vampire King said and the Prince with the shorter black hair stood up. “Adrian,” and the other Prince with the longer hair stood up.
They all walked towards us.
Adrian sighed and he looked at each of us with a bored expression, but when he looked at me his eyes opened wide.
“Lissa?” he asked and he stepped towards me.
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lupita.”
In a flash he was suddenly standing inches from me. “I want her. The rest can go.”
“Are you sure?” the Vampire King asked.
“I want her,” he repeated.
A servant undid my chains, but Adrian held my wrist, tight like the chains were.
***
I had seen beauty in sunrises and sunsets, in the moon, or in the changing colors of leaves. But the room Adrian took me to was exquisite.
The floors and walls were black, and water cascaded down the walls like waterfalls.
He let go of my wrist and I stepped into the middle of the room, in awe. There was a massive bed with four posters and a red satin curtain hanging above it.
I’d never seen a real bed before. I slept on the dirt like an animal all of my life.
But the real beauty was beyond the furnishings–it was on canvases that littered the ground as it they were trash. More canvases were on stands.
There were images painted on them of nature: rivers, the moon, the stars, all of the night sky. But when I saw the other canvases I shuddered and stepped back. They were of me…?
“How?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“Don’t be frightened,” Adrian said. “I was in love. Just a year ago. With a human girl, who looked strikingly similar to you.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.” He touched his masquerade mask. “I barely escaped death.”
I wasn’t sure I had escaped death. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing. I only want your company, if you’ll take it.”
“I hate vampires. That’s not going to change.”
Before he left he said, “I’d like to change your mind.”
***
Each day I tried to escape, to no avail.
Every night, Adrian came and gave me paintings of the moon and some of me, “not Lissa,” according to him.
He never hurt me.
“I like the paintings with the moon,” I told him one night. After that all he gave me were beautiful paintings of the moon.
Another night he turned to leave, but I walked over to him. I stroked the metal of his mask. He brought his hand up to the back of his head, and the mask fall down.
Half of his face was scarred. The right side of his lip curved down awkwardly, and his eye was misshapen. But somehow the scars made up something beautiful in him.
I stepped backwards. No. There was nothing beautiful in them. They were monsters. My mind flashed back to them decimating my pack.
“Do I frighten you?” He frowned, and his eyes glittered like the water that dripped along the walls.
“No, that’s not it,” I said. I couldn’t believe that I was comforting a monster.
He left, looking as unsure as I was.
The next night, I touched his mask again. “You don’t have to wear this around me.”
His eyes were bright and he smiled before he left.
One night I asked him to stay with me.
He sat next to me, but not too closely—like a perfect gentlemen.
“Do you know how I got here?” I asked.
“I do not,” he said. “They bring us humans to drink from. That’s all I know.”
“You haven’t drunk from me.”
“Because you’re more special than that,” he said.
“Vampires came and they killed my pack,” I whispered. “It was a massacre.”
“No!” He grabbed my hand, and I let him. His skin was cold as ice. “That can’t be true.”
“It is.”
“I am nothing like the others, Lupita,” he said. “We don’t have to live like this, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you miss being outside of this castle?”
I nodded and I looked him right in his bright red eyes. “I’d rather be free in the woods than be stuck here.”
“Run away with me,” he said. “We can be together, forever.”
“You mean…?”
“Only if you want. But you will be stronger, faster. We can live by the moonlight in the woods.”
“Like wolves,” I added. I always thought my pack and I were the wolves, but we were sheep. If I was going to survive in this world, I had to become the wolf.
“Okay,” I told him.
His nails extended into sharp claws and he slit his claw against my wrist. He drank the life from me until everything went black.
When I woke up, I was in his arms, as he ran through the woods, under the Full Moon.
Lore Scarlet 