Moon Blood (COMPLETE)

Chapter Twelve: A Meeting of Friends

Ruby didn't come to school for a week afterwards.

Neil worried after her, but he had no number to call her, or house to visit: even if he could change his body at will - which he still couldn't - he needed his olfactory to find the women's dwellings. As it stood, he didn't have a chance in his human form.

And so, it was back to normal. Only a few quizzical looks from his mother when Neil asked for some basic fitness equipment for his room. He had taken up the habit of vacuuming his room every day and dusting down the furniture. His mother near dropped dead when she saw him on his hands and knees, scrubbing the underside of his desk until it gleamed. Neil let her believe he simply wanted to live in a cleaner bedroom, not that any scent there would start to make him sneeze if he let it settle. Even if he didn't have full access to his olfactory, it was enough of a difference to notice in his nostrils.

Every night that he could, he gazed at the moon, shining bright like a white beacon in the sky. It brought him great comfort to be in its light, and he had taken to leaving his windows open as he slept to let its light and the coolness of the night wash over him, like a cosmic bath.

Most of all, Neil worried about the next new moon. What would happen? Would that other clan track him down again? Why could all the women use their bodies like weapons, whilst he seemed to have been left in the lurch?He hadn't caught their scent since the last time he was a wolf, but the mere thought of them frightened him.

As he lay on his bed, listening to the slow lull of the encroaching night in the growing autumn weather, his phone buzzed.

It was David.

"Hey, man. What's up?"

"Lowell! You coming out? I feel like we haven't hung out in ages."

He wasn't lying: Neil had been so absorbed with Ruby, his changing body and being pursued by a group of hormone-driven wolves that he sometimes forgot his life before this existence even happened. He looked at the moon: it was waning, but still half was left. At least half of the month was left before it would disappear.

"Sure, we can hang. What do you have in mind?"

"Me and James have a couple of spliffs and wondered if you'd like to join us?"

"Count me in, Dave." And Neil left his room, trudged down the stairs, threw on his coat before saying a simple goodbye to his parents.

*****

"It's been too long."

The three of them were sitting in James' dad's garage on an old dusty three-piece suite. The music blared and the smoke circled above them, mixing and dancing. James was lighting his small blue pipe full of dried grass whilst Neil and David passed a rollie between each other.

Neil had missed this. Just the feeling of being a normal teenager, feeling the mellow high of the marajuana and listening to music that would give him tinnitus in a few years. He leaned back and blew out the thick smoke from his lungs, watching it circle around his head and join the cloud above him. Shutting his eyes, he could forget all the nonsense of the last month.

"I agree, man. I just feel like I've been crazy busy."

"Busy at the gym, you mean. I've seen you sprinting off after school. You've been bettering yourself without telling us, haven't you?"

Neil looked at James, who had accompanied the accusation with a cheeky wink and smile as he puffed on the overly small pipe. Neil shrugged. "I guess, a little bit." The lie was as obvious as the pink on his cheeks, but James and David elected to either ignore or miss it.

"Man, I wish I had that kinda willpower," said David, taking the spliff from Neil. "I started and gave up BMXing like three times in two years. But look at you! Are you trying to make us look scrawny or something?"

They laughed.

"So you're finally leaving us with our video games and joining the other alpha males?"

It was a joke, but Neil had to stop himself physically shuddering. He wished it worked that way, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised he was preening just to appear as attractive as possible to a certain breed of woman. Or perhaps his changing body was appearing attractive on its own volition, like a bird of paradise earning a brightly coloured crest to dance and shake in order to seduce a female. "No, of course not! Come on, dude. Don't say it like that."

There was a pause. All three wanted to ask what they were thinking: most teenagers were thinking about it, or doing it, or thinking about doing it. David broke the ice, perhaps emboldened by his recent drag of the blunt.

"Maybe if we buffed up we would get a girlfriend too, eh, James?"

"We saw you disappearing into the woods with that new girl the other week. Don't tell me you did it with her? You've barely said two words to each other."

"No!" Neil stood just as the current song came to an end, causing a painful moment of embarrassment to last a lot longer than it deserved. He sat back as the guitar riff of the next song began, burning with embarrassment.

Of course, his reaction only strengthened his friends' theory, and both grinned incessantly at each other. "What was it like?" asked James.

"I don't know. Nothing happened," said Neil, his head now in his hands to try and cool his cheeks off.

"Oh come on, you can tell us, mate. Was it like that video I sent you in June?"

"I'm telling you, nothing happened. Look." He looked at his friends, as embarrassing as it was. "You can tell when I'm lying, because I'm no good at it."

James and David exchanged glances, and realised their friend was telling the truth.

"So, what were you doing down in the woods with her?"

Running, experiencing, listening to the sounds I can't hear anymore. It had been chaste that day, but so full of energy had passed between him and Ruby, that was undeniable. It was one of the most intimate moments of his life, and being naked with a girl he barely knew hadn't even come into it.

"I turned into a wolf," he said. The truth came out before he could stop it.