Tell Me Lies

Prologue

The blood dripped slowly from the dagger in my hand, the silver it was laced with mixing into the blood as the droplets fell drop by drop to the concrete floor. Guilt consumed me once more as I watched the beast I had just killed transform into a human I once knew. But I didn't have a choice.
The once grey and white werewolf I had just stabbed to death, now was a small blonde human named Eric. He used to work at the little cafe downtown, a busboy. Only 17. He didn't even have his drivers license yet, he was supposed to get it next week.
That was the horror of being a hunter. The werewolves had merged with the human world 23 years ago, and they had hunted us mercilessly. They raped and killed, no, slaughtered, humans by the hundreds. To this day, humans are seen as slaves to them, sold and treated as pets or worse.
Some of us were still free, like me and my family.
But we lived in poverty, struggling to survive. The abandoned warehouse where I stood over Eric's now dead body had once belonged to my ancestors. It's where I made many of my kills, although never by choice.
I hate the kill. I hate the mess my dagger makes each time I'm forced into this position. But if I didn't have it, and if I didn't kill them, then they would kill me. Or worse. Even sweet little innocent Eric. He hadn't been so innocent when his teeth were aiming for my neck.
We were food to them. Or things for pleasure. He was just trying to survive in a way, just as I was. Luckily it wasn't very often that I had to take a life. I was protected usually, my family knew how to make it to where we smelled like one of them. It was how we could go into town unnoticed. But I had been at home, fresh out of the shower when he had caught my scent. The warehouse was only a block from where I lived, and while my room was destroyed from the fight at least I was alive.
My brother was mildly injured from the break in, my father was furious at me for being so reckless, and Eric was dead. All because I wanted to rinse off the dirt and grime that had built up for the past two months. Because I wanted to wash my hair so it wasn't so oily and gross.
I hated being a human, I hated being born to a family of hunters. My brother wouldn't have had any guilty thoughts about killing Eric. He killed wolves for sport, just like Father had taught him to do.
Unbeknownst to my family I often went to town instead of hunting like I was supposed to. There was a longing to belong to something, to not have to live in fear. It's how I knew Eric. He had always seemed so nice when I had talked to him, impossible that he was a stone cold killer like my father had always taught me.
Yet he had broken into my home just because he smelled my true scent. How though I'm not sure, as I made sure all the windows and doors were closed and locked before I even took off my clothes.
It proved father was right, something in my heart I already knew, but the heaviness of my heart refused to lift as I stared at the kids dead body. He was evil. Stone cold killer. Ruthless wild animal. Everything changes once they're in their true form. I shouldn't feel bad about his death, it was just one less evil creature in the world.
I sighed as I began the clean up process. It was the main reason I had lured him here instead of killing him at the house. Clean up is a lot easier to do on concrete than on carpet.
I was half way done when father appeared at the doorway.
"Good. You're alive. And there's one less fucking animal in the world. At least something positive came out of your stupid mistake." He glared intensely, watching me scrub the blood from the floor. I dared not meet his eyes but rather focused on what I was doing.
After what seemed to be a life time of silence my father let out a large breath, "Honestly Zamara I trained you better than this. You are lucky your brother just got scratches from the broken wood and not that stupid fuckers claws or worse. You put all of us in danger and for what? So you could smell like flowers? We hide our scent from them for a reason. They can smell the difference between our kind and their kind, you KNOW that."
Another large silence followed, there wasn't anything to say. We both knew I had been stupid and reckless, and there wasn't a good excuse for it. Wanting to be normal wasn't an excuse it was a fantasy. And it had almost gotten us killed.
"Dirk will take care of the body. He's better at that part. Maybe next time you want to smell pretty you'll remember this. We will never be safe as long as there's a single one of those motherfuckers alive." His rant done and most of his anger gone, Father walked out of the room. Leaving me with my guilt and fear.