The Pendant

Have you ever felt so invisible you envied the bullied?

"Grilled chicken salad, Virgin piña colada, and you for dessert perhaps, handsome?" That flirty smile which sat prettily on beautiful pair of lips could obviously get her any male she wanted, and those manicured glass fingers she was using to push her phone towards me may have the ability to drive both genders crazy.

Except that I wasn't a boy, nor did I play for that team.

Either way I didn't get offended at being mistaken for a dude; thick bangs which concealed virtually every part of my forehead and washed grey hoodie didn't exactly scream that I was female.

It was in fact actually a wonder that I hadn't been mistaken for charity yet, since working different jobs to put myself through high school and getting so little sleep had made my skin pale, and my eyes sunken with dark circles.

But irrespective of the baggage I had to think about which included gathering money to pay my rent, I forced a smile at that healthy alluring face baked with expensive make-up, because frowning at customers wasn't going to get me any dime of tip.

And my empty account knew how much I needed them.

"Thanks but, I'm not on the menu." I infused humour in my words so as to not offend her, and she laughed in that high pitched squeaky voice, brushing her fingers over mine as I handed her order over to her. Good thing she wasn't offended, so I put up with the physical contact although it's one of the things I abhorred.

Or rather, feared.

I didn't flinch when she ran her fingers over my hand, her white teeth flashing more brightly than the dim lighting. In return, she slipped twenty bucks into my rough palms along with a piece of paper on which was scribbled some numbers with terrible penmanship.

"Call me when you're on the menu, I'm always ready to order." Her wink was perfect, I had to give her that, and I returned it with a grateful smile of my own, making no attempt to correct her assumption that I was a male.

I simply crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the trash, before slipping the fine crispy notes of twenty bucks into my pocket.

It would go a long way to ensure that I wasn't kicked out of my apartment, and so I endured the lingering smell of sweat which blended with cheap and expensive perfumes to make up a strong stench of odour lingering in the air, and served the endless customers who trooped into the diner, most of them simply ignoring me.

Irrespective of the resentment I felt at times for not having the ability to sink my teeth into expensive burgers and trade my faded denim jeans and hoodie for the softest material of cashmere, those unattractive clothes afforded me a temporary illusion of safety.

Because wearing them as I walked the ugly crooked streets which led to one of the oldest cheapest buildings in New York City after my night shift, I had one less thing to be afraid of.

And the universe knew that fear was an emotion that made itself comfortable in my heart.

Fear of humans who walked with a pair of legs, and animals with four limbs.

And the greatest of all, humans who could shift into animals.

Werewolves.

The thought brought an unsettling feeling along with a string of memories which traumatised me deep in the guts, my heartbeat accelerating abnormally as I forced my long feet to move ahead.

The harshness of the night air slammed hard into my face as I walked past trees, counting down to hundred as my old sneakers carried me into the old apartment building which didn't have the luxury of an elevator.

That being the least of my problem, I ascended the long stairs, consoled by the mental image of my narrow bed which served the purpose of warmth and rest irrespective of how short the hours were before I had to get up and prepare for school.

However, that image of comfort eluded my mind completely as soon as I got to the middle of the stairs and halted abruptly, my eyes shutting for the most brief time of a millisecond.

A duration long enough for my sixth senses to awake with alertness and enable cold dread fill my body.

They had visited; the cold-hearted mysterious creatures who had engraved the memory of fear like the weird tattoo on my thigh into my body, and strings of nightmares which had haunted me since that night they had torn my mother apart and left claws on her face hacked from the rest of her body.

Their scent was potent, reminding me of the haunting visual image of my mother protecting me against a dozen beastly animals who had wanted to take me. Her thick blood had drawn a map on my dress, her teary eyes filled with apologies for not protecting me enough even as her softly whispered words had been clear.

Run, survive. One day you will receive a pendant. When that happens, run, Artemis.

A gasp left my lips involuntarily as those memories crawled like worms again into my head, inciting a building headache which usually accompanied the mental pain.

The ones who had murdered my mother had been here, and for some reason although my heartbeat and sharp sense organs had perked up, my feet resumed moving towards the stairs, my body seemingly detached from my brain.

The cheap lock was undone, the door and windows thrown open as I stepped in front of the studio apartment where I had slept for two years.

A burning smell of fear hit my nostrils as I took another step into my small home, a large lump of nervousness going down my throat. For a moment, I savoured the lingering scent of beasts and blood mingled with the aroma of fresh meat, my heartbeat notably so fast and high my ears picked it up.

My distinctively sharp eyes drove me towards the old wooden desk where I had studied for exams and sometimes fallen asleep.

Tonight, as the open window brought with it the aroma of the woods and trees, my carefully arranged books weren't the only things on the table.

In the middle sat an expensively packaged small box, so tiny it could fit into my palm. It could have easily been mistaken for a simple box of Tiffany's dropped by some mysterious Prince charming who had somehow fallen in love with me.

Except that in my unfortunate life, fairytale only consisted of fresh blood used to design a strange regal emblem on the box, and on opening it with shaky fingers, my eyes took in the undeniably regal pendant designed with tiny unrefined diamond.

Beside it was a small paper in the same recognisable terrible penmanship I had thrown out earlier, my name engraved on it...

ARTEMIS

My fingers were numb and my senses heightened by the brewing rain and howling beasts somewhere in the dark, my eyes watery as they took in the paper and the pendant. I could still smell the furs and feel the aura of powerful creatures who had been here for probably the same reason they had come when I was ten.

To abduct me.

My mother had died protecting me; I had watched her countless times practice martial arts and not once had I understood her paranoia till she had been hacked to death before my eyes.

She had given me one instruction, and I wasn't going to mock her death by not obeying it. I would do that one thing she had asked me to...

Run.

With cold shaky fingers, I threw jeans and hoodie and papers into a bag, grabbing water and cheap bread which I laid somewhere beside the box of contact lenses. Apparently, concealing my sapphire blue eyes with dark contacts and cutting and dyeing my flaming red hair hadn't been enough to stop me from going unnoticed.

That bitch who had come to the diner had somehow taken note of me. I should have found it strange that she had kept trying to flirt with me for a week without asking for my name.

Somehow she had managed to conceal her scent because I hadn't noticed anything off about her.

Except now that I was putting the puzzles together, after she and a number of others had been in my apartment.

Five minutes later I had sent a message to the only man my mother ever trusted, the one whose contact I had found stuffed into her purse after her death.

Dr. Cock.

Were I in a less fearful mood where I wasn't thinking of making the run for my life, I would have perhaps laughed at the choice of that name. Maybe I would have also stopped to consider why I had to be on the run, and get angry at whoever that controlled the universe for not letting a young girl who wasn't even up to eighteen, go through a life this hard.

I wasn't greedy. Although I resented the girls who could wear designers' dresses and expensive make-up without worrying about where their next meal would come from, all I ever wanted was a simple life. A bungalow perhaps, where I could live in peace and fall in love without the nightmares and occasional fear.

It wasn't also too much to ask for parents who were both alive.

But I hadn't only been denied financial and emotional stability, but had also been cursed with some weird traits that somehow made me hear and see and smell things so sharply I was even better than a hunting dog. While some other teenagers had the liberty of walking into tattoo art shops and choosing what they wanted, I had somehow been born with a weird mark of a moon.

Every fucking thing was being forced on me without any consideration.

Nothing about my sham of a tragic life had ever been normal, and now I was out in the heavy downpour, hailing down a cab which would take me to Dr. Cock's house.

He had replied instantly with the curt words, 'My house in five' and sent his address which I muttered hurriedly to the chauffeur.

Somehow he wasn't fazed or asking questions about who was after me, nor had he questioned why we had to bury different pieces of my mother's body after her death. He was the only one who had attended the funeral...

Well, the only human who had attended. Sometime during the brief teary ceremony, I had felt the presence of those monsters and with fear begged Dr. Cock to take me out of the city.

He hadn't asked questions then, but had taken me into his roof and moved to New York with me.

I hated being a bother and so moved out as soon as I was fifteen, especially since those body pains started to develop along with migraine and voracious appetite.

But now, in my state of panic I discarded the pact I had made with pride and sent him a message.

"Miss, we are here." The chauffeur pulled me out my thoughts, making me realise that he had in fact halted in front of a condominium a good distance away from the buzz of New York. It wasn't where I had lived with him, but was even more sophisticated and elegant with walls washed in white and wheat, and brick layered fence.

"Oh... Thanks." I muttered to the older man watching me intently through the rearview mirror. I was always paranoid, but something about the way he was looking at me made me uncomfortable.

Slipping the bill to him, I gritted my teeth as soon as I opened the door, my soaked body meeting another gush of heavy downpour.

The splattering of water against the floors and thundering drowned out the sound of my drenched sneakers as I ran into the spacious compound, my head lowered to keep the rain from beating me up too harshly, my hands holding my worn out bag which wasn't waterproof and was therefore dripping with being soaked.

I was here in Dr. Cock's house, from where I hoped to travel out of the country again and lay low till my hunters probably died.

Except that misfortune enjoyed taunting me with unexpected visits and I always managed to fall into its baiting trap.

It was less than a minute after I ran into the compound that streetlights and security lights went off, along with every other kind of light which had been turned on in the building.

I halted right there in the middle of the rain and harsh gust of wind, my eyes and body taking in the unnaturally fast object that passed us by.

Followed by another, a third, and more numbers moving back and forth past me.

They didn't smell of furs and whistling pines of the greenest forests, but of fresh human blood and...

Death.

My heart stopped, and before I could do as much as utter a word, a burning pain slammed into my head, my legs giving way as I lost contact with consciousness.