Shaye

Marissa

They left with a loud cracking sound, and the ground was smoking where they used to be. The vines around my feet unraveled, and I immediately ran to Donovan and Jamie's side.

Even though they were smaller than they should have been, they were still at my elbow level. I rubbed their manes and patted their snouts.

"Are you guys okay?" I asked.

"I feel like hell," Donovan said with his mind. "So do I." Jamie agreed.

"Stay in this form," I told them. "When we get to the hotel, we'll put you both in some clothes and seek out a medic."

"I don't think I could transform back if I wanted to," said Jamie bluntly.

This has been an utter failure. I thought sadly. We'd found and lost Danielle, and Axel told us we were contagious. But I don't believe that crap for a second. Donovan may have bitten Allen, but nothing has happened to Danielle. I'm sure that he said that as a ploy to get us to chase after them. We were going to go that anyways, but in our own time. If we could find Allen and explain it to him, it would be even easier. With him on our side, our power alone should scare the rest of the werewolf race off of us, leaving only mages, vampires, and the other random weaklings in the sky.

"Something's wrong," Jamie said to us. "It's almost night, but everyone in the hotel is active. It's normally quiet at this hour."

We were about a mile or two from the hotel, Donovan and Jamie were pushing forward tirelessly in there weakened state, and I was running full speed in my human form.

Normally, the wolf form is automatically faster than the human form, but they were struggling to keep up with me, and that's how I know they were in pain.

Suddenly, they both growled furiously and stopped a second, bared their teeth, and looked at each other. Their wolf senses must've heightened so much I couldn't hear the conversation anymore.

"What is it? What's happening?" I knew they couldn't speak verbally, but they still could hear me. I was hoping they'd calm down their minds enough, so I could enter the conversation, but they didn't.

Instead, they took off, running with a burst of energy they didn't have before. They overtook me and made it to the hotel, leaving huge clouds of dust in their wake.

When I caught up to them, the hotel was in shambles. There were people running in and out, some carrying suitcases, some carrying children. The windows were smashed on the first and second floor, and there were scratch marks all over the walls.

They got here four minutes before me! How much damage could they have done? Something in the back of my mind told me that this wasn't them, but I was still unsure.

While I was gazing at the destruction, something let out a horrifying sound.

I turned around to see a wolf bigger than me, Donovan, and Jamie. There was already a lot of blood on his snout. There's no telling how many people he's already killed.

"Stay back," I murmured, watching it closely, "Stay... GET HIM!"

Don and Jamie came running towards my rescue, both back in human forms, fully clothed. They jumped on it's face and attempted to stab it's eyes out with their bare hands.

I also sprung forward and gave the colossal dog a punch straight into its snout. I heard teeth crack and felt the crunch. It stumbled backwards, and Don and Jamie chose that time to shift. They were in their wolf forms before the creature hit the ground. Chewing and snarling and barking, they didn't stop attacking until they knew it's heart stopped.

I bent down to look at the creature as it returned to human form. My stomach lurched, and I got extremely hot. Spots appeared in my eyes, and the world swayed.

"Marissa, are you okay?"

Jamie

Something weird happened when I touched the monster. It reminded me of taking drugs that make you wide awake. All of my senses brightened, and I felt great. It was like I took a bath in steroids and I absorbed it through my skin.

It appeared to have the opposite affect on Marissa. She was hunched over, holding her stomach. She was muttering something and starting directly at the floor.

"Marissa, are you okay?" asked Donovan.

"I'm fine," she mumbled, and started fanning herself. "Who do you think turned him?" She asked, looking at our victim.

I looked back, and I couldn't believe it. It was the short man at the front desk, the one that I mesmerized to let us stay here. I closed my eyes and used my enhanced senses to check the area. There was no other werewolf or creature in sight.

"There's no one around." I announced. "The true predator must have ran before we arrived."

But that's not what I actually thought.

"He was not a regular werewolf," Donovan declared. "They must have used magic to change this guy. Something happened."

"Or maybe... He was ancient blooded, like us," I told them. My answer was met with nothing but complete silence. "Come on, think about it. Axel said we had a contagious disease."

Donovan laughed. "That's stupid. How can we infect a person if we never got near them?"

"I was near him. I mesmerized him so we could stay in the hotel. Then I did it again after I got us clothes."

He stopped smiling.

"But, haven't we been around alot of people? Like, when we first got to the hotel. We had to have bumped into somebody.

"No." Marissa added. "It was so late, the lobby was empty. Jamie carried you, and we just ran in there so fast that whoever was in there would only see a blur."

Donovan let out a sigh of relief.

"That's good, I guess. At least now we know that if we actually are contagious, we haven't harmed anyone else."

I looked back at the man, and remembered the last time I talked to him. "Good morning, I was just shopping." The last time I talked to him was the day I went to the mall to get clothes for us.

I hardly even paid attention to him, didn't even get that close, and somehow, he had become a werewolf. So what was the trick? Was it being near us and catching lycanthropy, or was it the magic I used to mesmerize him?

"Wait...." Marissa spoke, interrupting my thinking process. "Jay... Did you get near anyone when you went to get us clothes?"

"I pretty sure that the mall was mostly empty, but I did talk to someone. It wasn't just a random person though, it was..."

The cashier. A person that works there daily, and could cause similar or worse damage than this guy did.

"Shit!" I yelled, and cracked the floor with my fist.

Unidentified

The man with the mysterious eyes was walking through the building he worked in. Business was booming, and it was midday, so lots of people showed up for work. He had casted a spell on his eyes, disguising them in public. Even though he wasn't concentrating like last time, he still had an eye on the five persons he was being threatened to watch. It might be better to say six, since a new contestant has entered the playing field.

He had received a random message from an untraceable source telling him to stop working. At 1:19, he was told to go into the elevator and go to the 19th floor, which was next to last up from the top.

That, of course, is exactly what he did. The vampires didn't allow any mistakes or screw ups, and for good reason. They didn't defeat werewolves with just sheer power alone. It took intelligence, planning and cunning, plus the magic that vampires could not possess. Without mages backing them up the werewolves would still rule. They were the only ones that could contend with the vampires, the only ones they saw as close to being their equals, despite the trash they always say to them.

The man in the suit wished the mages would rise up, but he knew how divided they were.

Nobody was studying the same thing. Everyone choose different paths, and it's hard for them to come together. Two mages fighting could cause twice as much destruction as a vampire and a werewolf fighting, but for some reason, they were seen as a minority.

The man intended to change that, if he managed to survive long enough. "It's kind of ironic," He thought to himself. "I'm speeding up their time, making everything happen in their lives way too fast, while my own time is running out." He took solace in the fact that you aren't supposed to be able to speed up the lives of certain individuals, and that this was going to affect everyone at a later date. He might not live to see it, but this type of magic always backfires. It was only a matter of time.

After avoiding most of his fellow employees, he reached the elevator. There was a cleaning lady was inside when it opened, but she didn't step out. He didn't try to move forward either.

"You can come in." She beckoned him forward.

"No," he smiled, trying to be polite.

"I'll wait."

He'd either be killed for riding in the elevator with her and showing her the 19th floor, or he'd already outgrown his usefulness and she was there to take him out . The vampires always had ironic and symbolic ways to kill a person. Seeing a cleaning lady that's not cleaning is a bad omen. Especially if you were just told to report to a secret location.

The elevator came back, and this time, the lady wasn't there. He let out a breath of air. He hadn't noticed how nervous that made him. He felt like he might die from anxiety. He got in, and pressed 19. As the elevator went up, he looked at the sign next to the buttons.

Levels 17-20 have faulty wiring, and as a result, the door will not open automatically.

You must push the button with the door open signal when the elevator stops. Thank You, and have a nice day.

The elevator jerked to a stop, and like the sign said, it did not automatically open. Instead of pressing the button, the man pulled out the key card he was given, and pressed it against the black glass under the buttons. A red light appeared, scanning his card, and switched green.

The elevator door opened, and he walked inside. He was in some weird hallway that connected to three rooms without doors. There were no signs and no buttons. He started to move towards the one closest to his left, and three men popped out of the rightmost room, and hurried to stop him.

"Sir, excuse me. That's the wrong room. You don't have authorization to enter. Please step this way." The security guy that spoke motioned towards the right room again.

"If I had a key card to get up here, shouldn't all rooms be accessible?" He asked.

"Not today. Please step this way."

He said it politely, but the other men went behind him and forced him to move into the right room.

There was a bald man in the room, a long silver table with chairs that matched, and television monitors all along the back part of the room.

One camera clearly showed the park, but it wasn't stationary. It was moving, boy just side by side, it was actually moving through the park. It couldn't have been controlled by a human though.

It was moving perfectly, it wasn't bouncing up and down like it would be if someone was walking. There was another in a room he was familiar with. Upon closer inspection, he saw that it was Allen's house, but that wasn't it. Every place he had been watching over was on display, even this building itself.

"Dr.Paige, Mr.Shaye has arrived for his appointment."

Shaye turned around and looked at the guard. "How do you know my name?" He asked.

Don't worry about it, Shaye," Dr.Paige called from behind him. "Personal information never leaves this building. We have work to do."