So, as a treat this time around, I am using a different set of characters and prompts from other places. It helps break up the monotony of the prompts, I think.
If any of you were curious about the cast of "Pale Moon", which is another of my in-progress works, this prompt should offer you a hint at a few of them.
Most people wouldn’t think so –most people really didn’t seem to see the boy at all, but I did. I saw him weekly as he entered my bookstore, his wire rim glasses crooked over the bridge of his nose and magnifying his whiskey eyes. He was one of my regulars, but it was months before I learned his name: Shayne.
He was slender and lean, well adapted to slip between bookshelves and tenuously stacked columns paperbacks. Shayne rarely spoke, either –he seemed quite shy, which I found made him even more perfect. That he was short was an added bonus.
I wasn’t sure if it was fortunate or unfortunate that the little brunette was defiantly my type. If given the choice, I would wish to keep him, but that wouldn’t be possible –not with the way Marcus Gregory had his lieutenants prowling about. They would find me before long, that I knew without a doubt. The goal was to be long gone before that happened.
Still, if I left before seeing the youngling one more time, I would surely regret it. I loved all the youthful anger and determination that shown in his studious gaze –I loved it, and I wanted to make it all mine. I wanted to shape him and force him into such a form that he would remember me each and every day of his life. It was his responsibility to repay me for being the one who could see him when no one else could. He would be my legacy, this precious one.
So I would smile and plot behind it. I would hide myself behind my careful façade just a bit longer. The taste of young Shayne would be my repayment. His blood would be sweet with his fear and his body would sing with it. Oh, he would be a beautiful one to Change, just as my master had Changed me. I could almost see him shuddering with the force of his first Moon coursing through his rail-thin frame. I wondered what color his pelt would bear, what markings would cross his fur, if his eyes would retain their clear color. Yet I knew his anger would only circle and grow, until the boy would destroyed the entire pack just to be free.
Oh, this beautiful angry boy would be so beautifully useful, like a Norse Berserker destroying anything and everything in his path before returning to the original stirrings of his ire. I hoped I would be able to follow as he tore a bloody path across the map to destroy the ones who put that first spark of wrath in his gaze. And then he would see me as the one who freed him, surely enough. The one who gave him the power to do what his heart had desired all along. I wondered if he would thank me then, still soaking in the blood of the useless ones who got in his way.
I hoped this sweet boy’s agony would be all mine to cherish. Still, I would have to work fast –Fallon Jackobson was nipping at my heels, the mongrel, and I knew he would take the boy from me if he knew what I had in mind. How wonderfully lucky for me that I am quite skilled at deception, even with those who could smell a lie in the most literal sense.
The bell on the shop door clanged softly and my attention jerked to the boy walking into the shop. Well, the wonders would never cease: I dwell upon him and my sweet boy appears.
“Welcome to Pale Moon,” I greeted, modulating my tone and adopting my usual genteel drawl. “Let me know if I can be of assistance.”
He nodded toward me, a short and silent inclination of his head. His hands fluttered against his thighs, clenching and unclenching in short succession.
Oh, the glorious anger of the young! It bore an aroma so pleasant I wished I could wear it everywhere.
This is the night, I told myself abruptly. This is the night that my sweet little Shayne will become mine, will Change and shift under the Moon. This is the night that will start the spiraling hate that will curl up so tightly inside of him until it chokes out all else.
My palms dampened in my anticipation and I swiped them against my jeans, carefully measuring the boy’s movements with my gaze, even as he traipsed back toward the paranormal and fantasy shelves. Oh, if he knew how close a werewolf lurked, he would never bother with such driveling fantastical stories. Wolves didn’t generally take the time for romance. Hell, most of us barely retained a mate beyond a mating season. Such fanciful notions that the humans spun about us!
Still, something about this boy made me wish I could ask his consent in the things I must do. Never mind that it would destroy my satisfaction in things, this boy would be my greatest creation, an angry indiscriminate killer who would use his teeth and his claws and anything else that struck his fancy until no one stood in his way.
I shook off the notion like a wolf shook off rainwater. The boy would thank me eventually, anyway. He would be grateful for his gifts like the good boy he was. Or I would have to destroy him, just as I had done to each of his brothers before him.
And it would be a shame to destroy such a beautiful boy when things were just beginning to be set into motion.
Oh, Goddess Selene, grant me your favor. Let him live and let him thrive. Bestow upon him the gift of gratefulness and we shall ever be bound to your service, I prayed silently, eyes flickering after the boy.
My beautiful protégé would be born tonight, and I would not wait to see the destruction he would reek upon his first moon, the blue moon. Such a rare boy, to raise to his potential on such a rare night.
Perhaps it was fated.
It occasionally worries me how well I can hop into the mind of a deranged man --then I shrug it off and keep writing.
So, Shayne is my protagonist for "Pale Moon" and this piece is narrated by my antagonist. The future love interest was mentioned in there, too, as was a few other key players.
Hope to see y'all around when I get more done on that, even though I barely have time to work on "Bibliophile" right now. Alas, I like getting paid, but I really hate the working part of the equation. I'm gonna have to write full-time just so I don't have to sweat in that damn kitchen, I think!
Anyway, hope to have more to post a little more regularly soon!