#monster-eli

Eli stepped through the vortex, not knowing what would happen. He heard a sound like running water and his stomach lurched as it felt like the ground was being whisked away from him. He felt an ice cold chill as everything went pitch black for a moment, then he emerged on the other side, off balance and slightly shivering, he looked around to get his bearings, if that were possible in this strange place, then his jaw dropped as he stared at a palatial mansion not too far away from him. 'That can't be it..' he thought to himself. Eli's childhood was ended quickly and brutally when he was ten years old, when unknown assailants came to his home and butchered his family. He had been over at a friend's house or he would be dead too. The home he lived in could scarcely be called a cottage, one common room, a bathroom and two bedrooms, one for his parents and one for him and his sister. The whole house would have fit on the front porch of this one. He remembered her saying her parents were wealthy though..and the dice in his head were unmistakable, fate was going to bend around him again.

Love for his wife and natural stubbornness pushed him forward. To say the place had a creepy vibe would be an understatement. There was death and suffering infused into the very leaves of the grass. A lot of wrong had happened here. The place looked ..  haunted. It was a funny term, considering he was a werewolf and Bora and her family were vampires. But that was the only way he could think of to describe the coldness and sense of foreboding. The house was still beautiful..but all the warmth of a loving family had gone out of it a long time ago. Bora told him that for a few precious years they had been a family. The doll he was here to get was from that brief glimmer of happiness where she was allowed to be loved and be a child.  Before her clan discovered who she was, before her life turned into a living nightmare. He growled again in anger at the thought of it and his senses were alive as he readied himself to shift in an instant. The place looked abandoned but if creepy and wrong were products this was the factory where they were made. 

A chill ran up his spine as he walked onto the front porch. He tried the handle. Locked. Not a problem for a master thief though, even locks on Erebus were still locks. He slipped out a small, curved, slender instrument from one of his many pockets and in a couple of minutes, he was inside. There was a light on upstairs, and his senses were on full alert. The vampire scent struck him, not the faded scent of Bora and her family, which surprisingly he could still smell, but a fresh scent, two of them. They smelled...cold, and full of malice, not like his wife's scent at all. He smiled a little to himself as he thought about Bora being reunited with her doll as he readied himself to shift. He wondered if they were the same people who abused his wife. He was starving. If they were he would eat them slow. Very slow. 

"I smell a werewolf!" He heard a female voice say. Eli had forgotten that with the exception of he and his wife, vampires and werewolves didn't get along, particularly here. Two vampires, a male and a female, came running out of a room and to the head of the set of stairs Eli was climbing. Eli's eyes were a golden orange as he grinned at them. "I'm here to pick something up for my wife. This was her old house." 

"You are Ameretat's lover!! Tell us where she is!! " The male vampire yells and throws a dark energy ball toward Eli. The dice in his head roll loudly as he easily dodges it. "I"m her husband and I don't suppose you're from her clan?" Eli asked, grinning.

"We are and we're bringing her back home." The female vampire replied as a blue flame erupted in her hand. "Tell us where she is and we'll make your death quick." 

Eli looked at the note on his phone he had made while he and his wife Bora were on honeymoon in Fiji. He had acquired vampire relics through some underworld connections so they could have an intimate vampire wedding ritual on the moonlit beach in addition to their public wedding. That way they would be bonded forever not just in mortal eyes but also among immortals. Bora had mentioned off-hand that maybe he could find a porcelain doll that belonged to her as a child. Those few precious  years when she was a little girl with parents that loved her. Before her clan  found out she was the reincarnation of their creator.  Before her life as a tortured and abused slave began and before the nightmare started. His eyes glowed a fiery orange, a mix of his werewolf and newly discovered demon heritage, whenever he thought about it. He loved his wife with all of his heart and soul and the thought of anyone abusing or torturing her threw him into a murderous rage, There was no one to direct it towards though, her clan had all been wiped out as far as he knew. He wished his jaws could close around just one of their throats...

He shook his head. "Eyes on the prey, not the horizon." He muttered to himself. He was going to find a way to get to Erebus and get her doll and nothing was going to stop him. He wasn't sure why this was so important to him, only that it was. He would get that doll if he had to bring Erebus down around him. The only question was how to get there. Even though he was part demon, he coudn't shimmer, not yet anyway. Using his thieving skills, he snuck into her room while she was out and snooped around some of her items that came from Erebus. He knew she'd kill him if she knew what he was doing, but he also knew he was getting that doll. When his mind was set Eli could teach rocks how to be stubborn.

 He looked through some of her old books, hoping to find a clue on how he could get there, when he found one that looked older than the rest, the language was neither English or Korean, or from anywhere on Earth,  it had to be from Erebus. He was shocked when he discovered he could read it. His visit with the fox spirits had given him thousands of years of ancient memories and an ability to understand and even speak long-forgotten languages, from this world and others, but he didn't know he could read them until now. He could hear dice rolling in his head as he read. A grin spread across his lips. "It's time to roll the dice."  

The orange glow of a newly lit cigar flashed on the side of a busy street in Hongdae. It was twilight, the end of the evening and the beginning of night. Eli loved this time of day. The sun threw out it's last rays, painting the sky in beautiful colors as it made way for the moon. Eli's race had a strong connection to the moon. Although Eli was one of his werewolf brethren that could control not only his shifting into a werewolf but could remain in control and conscious in his Wolf form. He was what was called an alpha, unbeknownst to him. Eli had met few other werewolves and had to undergo his change alone behind a bar in a Japanese village. His eyes glowed a golden color as the moon hit them. 

He got inside his car amidst a growing throng of club-goers, starting the engine and starting toward his sister Hyojung's house. He suddenly had an image of a worn, battle-weary soldier, being the sole survivor of a blood-soaked and wasteful battle, starting a long journey home on an equally weary horse to his family, wondering if he would survive the trip. "Why didn't King Archius warn us?!?!" He yelled out in a long-dead language to nobody. He blinked his eyes, the battle ended over a thousand years ago on another world. He carried the memories of thousands in his head, most were old, very old. A "gift" from the fox spirits after they had taken him.  He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, shook his head and made his way to Hyojung's house. Damn foxes. 

The doors of the underground casino opened to reveal a young man with a blond mohawk, an uncommon hairstyle in Korea. Even less common were his eyes that occasionally glowed a golden color or the werewolf blood in his veins. Immortal blood was not uncommon in this casino though. It was run by a criminal family of vampires. Eli had done some work for criminal organizations in the past, both mortal and immortal, so he wasn't one to judge. Eli had an affintiy for wicked and devilish fun. This time however, the casino was the target, not just the setting. Eli was going to rob it, because it was fun and because he could. Not by himself though, even his uncanny luck would be stretched thin to pull that off, he was expecting his adopted sister Lidia. 

Lidia was an almost three hundred year old vampire and mother of four. Eli's family were killed in an attempt to murder him as a child, so he never really had family. When he and Lidia met their familial kinship and bond was almost immediate. Not long after they had adopted each other as brother and sister. They did cute brother and sister stuff like going to the movies or carnivals, and also wicked and diabolical stuff like hunt humans and acts of criminal mischief. Tonight was sort of in the wicked arena, the robbery of a casino, though the owners of the casino were far from innocent. Eli supposed it balanced out in the end in some way. 

The small flame of a match flared into the night as Eli lit a cigar. He took a couple of puffs, sending scented smoke up into the night air before walking down the street to his car. It had been a good night. He had won a few hundred thousand won in a poker game and left before anyone suspected him of cheating. Thanks to his "visit" with the fox spirits he didn't need to cheat. Lady luck had been good to him. Really good, he smiled to himself as Bora's face crossed his mind again. That loving, naughty smirk was in his mind all the time now. 

He chuckled as he walked to the car, never would he have bet that he would have his heart stolen away by a vampire. He was supposed to be the thief after all. Before the night he asked Bora out on a date, he had seen the companionship of young ladies as being something pleasurable and temporary. Fun for both involved but love was never in the cards. But he knew he loved Bora. Really loved her. No other girls existed for him now. Life was about having fun and he didn't want it with anyone but her. He smirked as she crossed his mind again. What have you done to me baby bat?

Eli smirked a little as he idly played with the golden foxhead medallion he wore on his neck. It was a "gift", a souveniour from the time he was taken by fox spirits to another realm, a place they called Erebus. They were speaking a language that he had never heard before, a language he doubted many had ever heard before. He wouldn't have believed it himself if it hadn't happened to him. Taken by foxes to a place that sounded like the name of a nightclub, not the crazy, macabre world with twisted architecture to which he was taken. It looked to him like someone had tried to design a medieval town after many, many hits of acid.

Of course, Eli wasn't exactly a stranger to the supernatural. Oh no, after a night winning a drinking contest in Kyoto he stumbled drunkenly into a forest on the outskirts of town. Where, of all things, a werewolf was waiting for him. Eli was a decent fighter, had to be when you made a living as a small-time criminal, wandering from taver to tavern. But a werewolf was too much for him. He survived the attack but the transition was .... difficult. Life was crazy enough as a gamber, thief and smuggler living in the underbelly of Korea and Japan. Add "werewolf" to the mix and it led to some .. wild times. Including a brief stint as an assassin, doing dirty work for the Yakuza. 

He smiled as he looked down at the foxhead medallion, golden with emerald eyes. Before all this crazy otherworldly stuff had happened to him, he might have pawned it, using if for gambling money or booze, another side effect of growing up in bars. But he held onto it as a keepsake and to remind himself of just how fucked up the mythical world could be. A world he was now inextricably linked to. When he woke up from his "visit" to Erebus. The golden foxhead medallion wasn't the only parting gift he received. He also had the memories of many, many other beings in his head. Some old. LIke thousands of years old. He also had an unnatural affinity with ancient weapons, able to wield them as if trained from birth in an ancient dojo. And his luck.

He assumed it was another "gift" from the foxes. At least that's when he started noticing it, when he was brought back. Fortune seemed to favor him more often than not. Luck was no longer just a made-up concept.. it became a physical force. One that seemed to twist in his favor. This was fortunate as a gambler, but not as fortunate when the other players accused you of cheating. That was when the werewolf part came in handy. Now, he was betting on that luck when he picked up the phone to call Bora, his friend, a vampire girl he had taken the job of protecting shortly after his "career" with the Yakuza turned sour and he had to ...retire his former bosses.