This first excerpt is the most recent writing in the book, Part 3 Chapter 12: The Need to Feed, the short Chapter 13: She's Gone, and the beginning of Chapter 14: More Information. Enjoy!
Oh, and, just so you know-they're not vampires.
Chapter 12: The Need to Feed
"You need to calm down," Alison said with a sigh as she rung out her wet hair over the kitchen sink. "I can't. I am just full of energy right now. I feel like I need to bounce off some walls." Engala looked up at me and wrinkled her eyebrows, "You need to feed." I shook my head, still bouncing, "No, I'm not thirsty." She was in front of me then, and she tilted my chin up so that she could see my eyes better, "Holy rosebuds, I do not think I have ever seen an eye whiter than that. You better feed before someone thinks your eyes have rolled to the back of your head permanently." I swiped her hand away, "I'm not thirsty," I hissed. Gnicka laughed, "Oh, yea, you sure aren't acting like you are. No angriness, no energy boost, no biting of the lip. You definitely look full." I hissed at him. "I don't want to feed," I said, turning back to Engala. She rose an eyebrow, "Why?" I ducked my head, wishing I could disguise my thoughts. She laughed, "Oh please. When was the last time you slipped up?" I glanced up at her with guilty eyes, "A month ago." She blinked. "You've been home for more than a month," Gnicka said slowly. I sighed, "I know. I'm..." I paused, looking down at the floor again, "Not used to this." Engala took in a slow breath. She hated slip-ups almost as much as Gabriel and Adalyn did. "Who..." she swallowed, "who died?" I ran a hand through my hair, looking at the floor again, "Some man. Late thirties, early fourties. He was following me."
"That's no reason-"
"I didn't mean to," I hissed angrily. Jace came between us quickly, the smoothest mover of our clan. I slid out of my chair and moved to the couch. ''You really need to feed," Jace said, looking at me with a worried expression. I nodded with a sigh, "I know."
"Gabriel and Adalyn are coming home tomorrow. Gabriel knows the best spots to hunt," Gnicka said suddenly. I turned to him quickly, "What?" Engala closed her eyes and Jace looked at the ground as I looked over at them. Alison turned away from me. Gnicka blinked, "Oops..."
"Why did no one tell me they were coming?" I asked, my voice coming out louder and angrier than I meant it to. My tongue was tingling with thirst, I could think of hardly anything but feeding. It was taking all my energy to stay in this conversation. "We were worried..." Engala started, but her voice drained out. "We were worried you would leave again," Alison filled in for her. I blinked. "What?" Everyone was looking at the ground. "Why would I do that?"
"It just..." Engala paused again, and finally looked up at me, "It just seems like you leave whenever things are settling down." She took a breath in, "Whenever we are starting to feel more like a normal family." I was at the wall then, glaring at all of them. "A normal family?" I asked, my cheeks heating, my eyes burning angrily. "We were never a normal family. We will never be a normal family!" Engala closed her eyes, aiming her head toward the ground. Don't do this, she thought. I moved in front of her, "Don't do what, Engala? Don't curse the day I was born into this filthy life? Don't envy you pack of mutts your time as normal, human beings?" She shook her head slowly, sadly. I pulled back, away from her, and backed away toward the door, "Maybe all of you were once normal. Maybe you had your normal families and your normal lives." I put a finger to my chest, "But me?" I laughed, "I was never normal." I narrowed my eyes, "So forgive me if every once in a while I get sick of this facade, if sometimes I need time to embrace what I am, what I always have been, and what I always will be." I tilted my head, "Forgive me if every once in a while I get sick of all of your pretending to be a normal family." I turned, heading toward the door. "Dunreb!" Engala called, and I stopped. I turned slowly toward her, the anger in me swelling at her use of my born name. "Where are you going?" she asked pitifully. "Where you want me to go," I hissed, smiling. "I'm going to feed." I heard her sharp intake of breath and I slammed the front door behind me.
Chapter 13: She's Gone
"She's gone?"
"I'm sorry, Andrew. It's just...her. She was never a human. She was born an akeishka. All of us, we were all humans at one point. She envies us that, and sometimes she just needs some time to herself," she paused, and I waited, "to be what she is." I took in a breath, "You mean she's...?"
"Most likely. I'm sorry. I know you don't want to hear that."
"I can't believe she would do that."
"It's who she is, Andrew," Engala said, sighing. "It's who we are. We're not supposed to be good, not supposed to be tamed." She laughed half-heartedly, "You can take the girl out of the water, but you can't take the water out of the girl." I groaned. "Sorry. That was... inappropriate." I sighed, "No, it's fine. Do you know..." I trailed off. "Do you know when she'll be back?" Engala fell silent, and I waited. "Um, that's the worst part," she said eventually. "We don't really know."
"Well, I mean, she's done this before, right? How long is she usually gone?" Engala sighed deeply, "It's different every time. Sometimes she's gone for a few days, sometimes a few hours, sometimes a few months."
"Months?!" I asked in horror. She fell silent, "I'm sorry, Andrew," she said eventually, "but the last time she left, she didn't come back for four years. And even then, she didn't come. We found her, convinced her to come home. She was living like an animal, she was like a hunter, just... she had these methods, these ways of luring them in..." I swallowed, and I could almost hear Engala shiver. "Sorry."
"Four years."
"I wish I could say something else, Andrew, but that's really all there is to it. She's never... never had a... boyfriend, before, so maybe... that will change things."
"I doubt it. When ravenous, many animals even abandon their children. Some eat them." Engala was quiet. "We're not animals," she whispered. "Not right now you're not," I replied. "Yea," Engala replied quietly, sadly, "I guess you're right."
Chapter 14: More Information
The frail body of the coyote lay in front of me, and I could feel myself calming. I was still thirsty, of course, this was hardly enough to fill me, but I could feel my mind calming, my thoughts draining themselves of this ravenous state, this anger towards my family, this overpowering hunger that I had been pushing away for weeks. I sighed and lay back onto the dirt. Groaning, I pushed the frail body of the filthy animal away from me, disgusted that I was thirsty enough to sink my teeth into such an unsanitary creature. Why had I let myself go for so long without feeding? Andrew. Of course he was why. Everything was just happening so fast, I could feel myself... pretending. When I was with him, I just... wanted to be normal. I wanted to forget who I was, what I had spent the last four years of my life doing. I wanted to be human. I felt the tears trickle down my cheeks now. Always crying. I sighed, wiping them away only as more came. My never-ending water supply. Well... never-ending as long as I refilled it. I scoffed, disgusted with myself. With what I was. I just wished that I could have had... just... just one moment of humanity. Just one fleeting second of human sensations, human longings, human hungers and pains and feelings. Everyone else in my clan had. They had all had years of humanity, feeling the wind as a human does, tasting foods and drinking juices and feeling too hot or too cold. They had all kissed someone, all been kissed-even as akeishkas, they had that over me. I sat up, sighing, and looked out at the view in front of me, the ocean. Where I really belonged. It would be so simple, just to cross the highway, dive into those waves, swim out to my real family, the others of my species, the ones who could just hunt and live by their instincts and never had to wonder about human life except when they were sinking their teeth into a human's stomach, sucking out the water. I got up and turned away from them and from civilization, running further into the mountains to feed more before returning home. I wouldn't slip-up again.
This next excerpt is from a future chapter. Sorry that these are both about feeding and there's none of the romance of the story... I'll just have to show you some of those excerpts another time.
Never in my life had I been hungrier. Never in all my time on this Earth had I allowed myself to go so long without feeding. I could feel nothing at all but the rhythm of adrenaline bursting from that place that I kept it locked up for when I was hunting and surging through my veins, over and over. I was shaking-not like a calm twitch or a subtle shivering, but full on shaking-so that my body looked like I was sitting in the middle of an extremely high magnitude Earthquake. There was nothing in my mind but thirst. It overwhelmed me again and again as the adrenaline pumped into my veins. I was sitting in the living room and there was so much energy in me-too much. I couldn't stand up because the energy was literally overpowering my ability to do simple things- I forgot how to control my hands, how often I should take breaths. My eyes flitted around the room but I saw nothing but white. A sheet of white, the color of my eyes, overpowering any thought. "I don't know what to do," a voice hissed, but I didn't really register what words were being said. I heard them, but for all I knew, it could have been the sound of a dog barking or the wind passing through the trees. Nothing was separating itself from anything else-the whole Earth was one big blob of white, one big wave of hunger that repeatedly threw itself at me. "Take her hunting! Make her eat!" a voice said. I voice, or a wave, or a cricket, or a tree. I didn't know. "I would... but she's so hungry, she doesn't even register what's going on. She's lost control of her limbs." Silence followed. Maybe. Maybe there was more sound. I wanted something so bad, but I couldn't even register what I wanted anymore. I just knew that I needed it. Now. "What will happen? If we leave her?"
"I don't know. But I'm not going to wait and find out." I don't know how long I sat there, consciousness only staying with me because of the surges of adrenaline, before I felt something sliding down my throat. Something wet and warm. Something unbelievably delicious. My body started to function. At least, my insides did. I could feel the adrenaline stopping, stopping it's routes through my veins and turning in the direction of this liquid, lapping it up as it came down my throat, crawling farther up, begging for more. The supply stopped for a minute and I felt my mouth open. A noise escaped from me. A deep, pleading moan. The liquid immediately flowed into me again, like a waterfall. The adrenaline lapped it up and it kept coming, more and more, until I started to be able to register some things. That this was what I needed. I felt something moving-realizing that it was me- as I reached out for whatever it was that was pouring the water, and I pumped more and more into me. When it was empty, my vision was still gone, but I could hear, almost normally. I could almost distinct noises from each other. And words came back to me, or at least the words that I needed. Water. Thirst. More. Now. I heard these things escaping from my throat, but I barely registered them as the fire of the adrenaline begged for more, more, eating away at my insides. I could feel everything inside me being eaten as the adrenaline grew impatient. "MORE!" I screamed. And more came. More and more and more until my vision started to come back in spots and my hearing filled in the holes. I registered figures moving in the whiteness. I saw them handing something down, filling something up, handing it to me. And I heard myself screaming, begging for more of this. More came. I just kept drinking. For hours, it seemed, once I was able to register time again. By then, everything in front of me was clear- I could move, I could hear, I could see. But I was still only an animal, I felt nothing for these people in front of me other than a connection between them and the water supply. I must have been drinking for the better part of the day before I was normal again. Finally, when I realized these people were my family, realized their voices were English words and that I could speak English too, I accepted only another gallon or two of the salt water before I finally told them enough. I stood up, out of the chair, and moved over to the couches, falling onto one in exhaustion. "Incredible," Gabriel said, shaking his head in awe as he watched me. "I have never seen someone drink so much." Alison scoffed, "You've probably also never seen someone put off feeding for so long. Honestly, Akeishka, what were you thinking? How could you ignore the hunger, when it hurts so much?" I shook my head, no words described the answer to her question. "I don't know."
"You were like an animal," Engala whispered in awe, watching me. I laughed half-heartedly, "Only after a good sixteen hours of drinking. Before that, I wasn't even that. There was just... nothing. Everything was just one big blob of white." I shook my head, "The only thing that kept me alive, up, was all the adrenaline." I shook my head again, not believing what I had just lived through, "It was unlike anything I've ever experienced. It just never stopped, and it was beyond pain. It was far beyond pain. There is no word in any human language that describes that feeling." Engala tilted her head and Gabriel said, "Fascinating." I shook my head, gritting my teeth, "No. Excruciating. Beyond excruciating." Jace smiled and said, "So have we learned our lesson then, young one?" I laughed, "Definitely." Gnicka laughed, "You better have. I was worried you were gonna drain out the whole ocean, the way you were going at it." I smiled and sighed, falling asleep.
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