maleficar | kieran & henry
Trees told no tall tales. They were the perfect secret-keepers, providing him shelter from the rest of the world. Even now, so late into the year, they afforded enough protection to not be seen from the trails dotting the park, unless a person was to look close enough at the foot prints dragging through what little remained from the year’s first snowfall. Cracked leaves and broken grass, brown and orange and pales shades of green marked his way away from civilization, towards what had become his sanctuary for the past few summers. In all that time, he’d never seen another soul enter its clearing. It was a safe space. If the Grill was Kieran’s getaway from home, then this was his hideout from his getaway.
Dropping his bag from over his shoulder, he leaned against the trunk of a massive oak tree. It was what drew him to this place — the tree was visible from his bedroom window, towering over the others. He felt a connection to the tree, some visceral bonds tethering them together. Pressing two fingers against the bark, Kieran crouched down, finding a comfortable, dry spot to set, calves aching from a day of walking. Being home was difficult enough for the few hours he was there during the week, but weekends were another issue entirely. Nearly impossible. The thoughts of Erin, his parents, it all came to a head when the four of them were sharing a space. Instead of subjecting himself to the torment, he would wake up early, make himself some sandwiches and a bowl of cereal for breakfast, pack up his bag and take the day to himself, only coming home after dark, when he figured he could slink into the shadows and hide out in his room for the remainder of the evening.
It was going on dusk, now, but he still couldn’t bring himself to return home. There was a nagging in his head, a voice drawing him to his spot. It was that same voice, whose speaker he couldn’t identify, offering him words of little comfort and solace, but promising him so much. Show your devotion, it asked of him. Show me your faith.
He reached over to his backpack, pulling from it a small purple sack, tethered together by golden drawstrings. From it, he took a small athame, the blade no more than a few inches, the hilt almost non-existent, merely a shift from the silver of steel to the bronze with laurel emboss. He set it on his lap, using his right hand to draw a line in the ground before him, digging his nail into the soil, covering it with dirt. First, he drew a circle, then two intersecting lines spaced equally through it. With those, he created the shape of a four-pointed star, staring down at it long and hard before deeming it even. His finger blackened with earth, he drew a cross on the palm of his right hand, his lesser hand, and picked up the blade with his left.
Eyes closed, he pressed the knife into the pad of his thumb to the point of drawing blood, hissing as tears filled his eyes. “He is cast into the mire, take his hand. The sin which I have sinned, turn to mercy. The iniquity which I have committed, let the wind carry away. My many transgressions tear off like a garment. My God, my sins are seven times seven. Forgive my sins.”
He pulled the knife away, expecting the blood on his palm — but he hadn’t been expecting quite the rush of it, the spurting from the wound. “Fuck,” he murmured, in a panic. He must have nicked the artery. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck.”
His routine was different on the weekends. Five days out of seven, he made a pit-stop at the Grill. Talked to some of the locals, had a drink, allowed himself to have some enjoyment. The other two, he just kept walking. Through the neighborhood, the cemetery, past a small pond he found one day off of one of the beaten paths and passed some brush. The water was calm, and if the moon was out—the light would reflect off of the surface in the most brilliant of ways. It was there that he often sat, thought about his reasons for being in this town. The goals of the pack and their mission. Those thoughts were always fleeting, though, brief and unclear. Easily replaced. The mission of the pack no longer felt like something he was tethered to—the connection wasn’t severed, but the rope was frayed. It was just…weaker. His mind often drifted to the boy he approached weeks ago. Kieran. Henry didn’t want to call him a project, someone that just needed fixing; but he felt surprisingly drawn to him, this desire to watch over him settling in his stomach and refusing to leave. He wasn’t sure why, and although he wanted to be able to say he knew, he found comfort in realizing that maybe there didn’t have to be a reason. Maybe things were just the way they were and instead of questioning it, he should have been attempting to make peace with it all. He had learned over the years that if something made you happy, you were to spend more time doing it. As a creature that had an eternity to live, following those words certainly made the abundance of time a little less miserable. And throughout the hundreds of years he roamed the earth as a hybrid, nothing made him feel more human than sharing a cup of coffee with a lonely teenager who preferred using a pen over his mouth. Most humans around that age were toxic—ungrateful, selfish, little to no ambition. But Kieran; he was different. Withdrawn from society, undoubtedly fragile. But not weak.
Henry froze, eyes closing for the briefest of moments as he concentrated on the scent as it struck him. He tuned out of the sound of the passing car and the dog barking across the street. He tuned it all out and just focused—focused on what was all too familiar to him. It was blood. Fresh, new, had just fallen from the vein. There were vampires and then there were hunters, but bloodsuckers (a common insult from werewolves—personally, he didn’t mind anymore), were hunters of their own. Predators. Henry sped off into the night, latching onto the scent and following it directly to the source. He stopped for a fraction of a second, noticing Kieran in the distance. There was a wound and…an object. Sharp. He growled, picking him up once he was close enough to push him against the tree. “What do you think you’re doing?” he barked, his eyes falling down to the wound. Henry then removed his jacket, wrapping it around the cut and taking a couple of slow breaths as he applied pressure; one for his anger, one for his urges. “Why, Kieran? Why would you do this to yourself?”
