Eric gagged, his eyes widening as the man tightened his grip. The man shook his neck as though he was wiggling a rag doll.
“What are you looking at?” The man growled.
“Elias!” Someone at the back called. Hands reached out from the backseat and grabbed the driver. He loosened his hold on Eric’s neck and the boy coughed and gasped for breath, clutching his chest.
“Stop it!” A woman said, leaning out of the backseat and staring into Elias’ eyes. She had tightly curled ginger hair and a lean, well-toned body. She had her back to Eric and the earthy smell of woods and wet soil hit his nose as she shook her head in objection. “Snap out of it.” She said “We don’t want the death of a human added to the list of our problems.”
Human. There’s that word again, Eric thought to himself.
“If he looks at my scars again, I’ll tear him limb from limb.” Elias snarled through gritted teeth, his eyes on the redhead.
“Why do you keep calling me a human?” Eric managed to blurt, rubbing his already sore neck “What are you all, Pokémon characters come to life?”
“Shut up.” The redhead snapped her head to him, her eyes shining with the same manic light he’d seen in the driver’s eyes. He quickly fell silent.
“The Alpha is right behind us.” A voice called from the back and Eric peered into the darkness of the backseat. There were at least a dozen people sitting in the two rows of seats, and he wondered how he’d not noticed them. The windows at the back were tinted all right, but a noise from them throughout the ride should have given them away. Eric wondered if he had been so preoccupied with Lauren and Beth that he hadn’t paid attention to the other people in the van.
The redhead nodded, turned to Eric and snarled “You. Stay here.” She moved back into the backseat and opened the door, letting the other people out of the van. The driver himself gave Eric one last, despising look and stepped out of the van. Eric followed him with his eyes, wondering what had caused those scars on his arm and why he’d reacted like that because someone had only ?????? at them.
The people that stepped out looked funny to Eric: a group of the most motley people he’d ever seen. They were all dressed in varying clothes: from the driver in a basketball jersey to the redhead in a ripped denim shirt, and it was obvious they didn’t care about what they wore. They all had muscled bodies that rippled almost fluidlike as they moved. They didn’t seem to mind the rain; although it had reduced from the steady downpour to a sort of drizzle.
Another van was approaching them, a brand new one like the one Eric sat in. It stopped some metres from them and the doors opened, releasing another dozen people who were all similarly dressed. At their front was a stocky man with graying hair. He stopped in front of Elias and the redhead.
“We stop here.” He said without preamble. “The Perkins border is not too far from here, so we can morph and run the rest of the way. We know that the doctor is definitely expecting us, so it would be to our advantage if we can take him by surprise this time.”
The redhead shifted uncertainly “But Beth and those men she brought said the doctor has dozens of werewolves now. Even if we catch them by surprise, the doctor would have us cornered in no time.” Her voice had an edge of impatience, as though she’d been saying this severally but no one wanted to listen to her. “You’re leading us to our certain deaths.” She added and several of the people murmured their assent.
Eric waited with bated breath as the man paused. When he spoke again it was with an edge of power. Even Eric felt goosebumps run up his arms at the man’s voice.
“Who’s the Alpha here, Robin?” The man growled, low and menacing, and Robin the redhead stepped back involuntarily, her eyes still glowing with defiance and her hands fisted.
“With every minute we spend arguing and weighing the dangers of this, Lauren’s freedom and the freedom of everyone in the clutches of the doctor hangs in the balance.” The man said.
Eric’s eyes widened. Were they talking about the same Lauren?
Suddenly one of the people, a small girl with closely cropped hair who looked fourteen or fifteen snapped her head up and sniffed once. This short sniff was followed by another from another person.
“Emma.” The stocky man turned to the girl “What do you smell?”
“Something, someone.” Emma replied, her nose in the air like a dog “A human.”
Murmurs rippled through the part of the group that came with the stocky man. Eric promptly drew his head back into the van, his eyes tightly shut in fright. From the way she’d said it, a human in their midst sounded like a bad thing.
The man mimicked their sniffing and his brow furrowed in a frown. He turned to the van and walked slowly to it, all the while sniffing the air. He reached the van and peered inside through the passenger window, locking eyes with Eric’s in the darkness. His eyes flashed with anger for a while, then he opened the door and ordered Eric: “Get out, boy.”
Eric slowly came down from the van, still in Lauren’s pale green parka, his phone clutched in his hands like a shield. He stared at the people that stood around and swallowed hard. For some reason, his heart was thudding frantically, and he silently chided himself for being afraid unnecessarily. These are people like him, he thought. Or are they?
The man looked at him with something close to shock, then turned to Elias and Robin “Who’s this?”
“A human boy we found on the road.” Elias spoke up “He was only going to hitch a ride with us to Perkins.”
“Human boy?” Eric found his voice again “I keep hearing you all call me human like you are not.”
“Shut up.” Robin growled, her eyes on the man beside him.
“And so you picked up a human who could endanger all our lives?” The man asked, his anger hidden behind calm. It sounded like the word “endanger” held more meaning than Eric could decipher.
“Is it more dangerous than leading all of us to a place where we might never return from?” Robin growled. She was still standing where she was, but Eric could see that she was trying to control her anger.
“Wait. What’s going on?” He knew he should be on his way but the people, their violent behaviour and the very way they’d called him “human” had made him want to find out more.
“Seriously, would it kill you to shut up?!” Robin roared and turned to him. Eric’s mouth fell open as he saw her face. It had changed quite unexpectedly. Her eyes were gray and glowing, her chest was heaving, fangs were jutting out from her thin mouth, and Eric barely had time to process any thoughts before a terrified scream escaped his lips.