WARNING: Be prepared for some gore and possibly disturbing mental images. I have to tell you this chapter is a little dark and grotesque. And you might consider it kind of gross, and of course maybe you won't. Just read on and enjoy and hopefully I won't give anyone nightmares. Though, if you get nightmares from this, you might want to go back to watching Barney because this really isn't that bad, I just thought I should give you a little warning. Well, READ ON MY LOVELY DURGIES!!! And remember, if life gives you lemons, squirt Life in the eye and steal Life's wallet. =D

~Alex

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The fog was thick and heavy among the trees. It hung low around my knees, so that my bare feet were invisible under the misty white blanket. The sky was black and looming, starless, with only the glowing full moon to shed light in the darkness. I was alone in the haunting silence, not a cricket or owl to be heard.

I didn't know where I was going, or why, but despite that my feet continued to move slowly, one after the other. I couldn't feel my feet touch the hidden ground, or the plants brush against my ankles as I should have. The smells of the forest seemed to have seeped into the wood of the trees themselves and hid there, beneath the bark. I heard nothing; not the sound of my breathing or the sound of my feet below the fog, nothing, a deaf silence like cotton had been shoved in my ears. But no matter the feeling that my senses had deserted me, I didn't give a thought to it. My mind was blank, following the invisible path laid out for me. My movements were mechanical, my head straight, my arms swinging limp by my sides, my legs drifting easily through the fog.

"Maggie..." the whisper just brushed the barrier of sound, quiet even in the silence. I stopped in my tracks and turned my head to the side, looking among the towering trees for the speaker. Seeing nothing, I continued on my way.

"Pixie..." I heard the soft whisper and again I looked for the speaker. Again, no one was to be seen, so my feet picked up their pace once more. The path opened up into a circular clearing, also covered by the fog.

'Who's there?' No sound came out of my open mouth as I stood in the middle of the clearing, searching for any life among the trees.

"Maggs, over here..." A shadow moved through the trees into the clearing ahead of me. The fog swirled around its dark, up-right figure, turning it smoky and

white. It reached a hazy arm out toward me. "Maggie..." it sang.

"No, over here..." another shadow drifted its way into the clearing, but unlike the other one, kept its dark skin. "Come with me Pix..."

"I'll protect you..." their voices melded together to form one haunting tune.

My feet began to walk toward them and my arm reached to touch their outstretched hands. But before I could reach them, a large cloud burst out of the trees and plowed into the dark shadow, sending it tumbling to the ground. The cloud fell on top of it, consuming the shadows darkness in its white, smoky veil.

Everything began to happen in a blur. Certain things would happen so fast that it was near impossible to tell the difference from one speeding body to another, and some moved so slow that they seemed to not be moving at all. More shadows and clouds filled the clearing, ramming into one another with force that sent them flying. The fog began to fade, drifting away into the trees, and revealed people and wolves under the cloudy haze. The blurs of skin and fur began to move at a lightning pace, leaving trails of fogy light and color behind them, like a picture taken of something moving. People and wolves zipped past me as I stood frozen in the center. I could hear muffled yelling and screams of pain, but they were faint and seemed miles away.

The scene began to sharpen and I began to make out faces. Connor, Andrew, Davo, Elli, Cece, Bailey...they were all there, some fighting wolves and some fighting other humans. They were all bloody and showed the signs of battle, their clothes torn and covered in dirt and stained red with blood; some so tattered and matted with grime that they were falling off their bodies. They looked so different from the people I knew, so violent, so savage. An almost giddy look came to Cece's eyes as she broke the neck of her opponent, like she had enjoyed killing him, enjoyed the feeling of his fear as her arm wrapped around her neck, enjoyed it as his life lay in her hands for the taking and enjoyed the feeling of his life slipping away and the light fading from his eyes. It was almost scary to see her like this. She had always been so happy and optimistic, but now she looked like a killer, a cold, ruthless killer...just like the rest of the people that were filling the blood-soaked clearing with dead bodies.

Teeth chomped and claws ripped in the carnage. Blood soaked the dead grass a shining crimson red as it flowed out of the combatants that had fallen at the hand of their enemies. I tried to run to help my friends, but my feet wouldn't move. I looked down to see large hand-like roots anchoring my feet to the ground.

More roots shot up, wrapping themselves around my arms and body, holding me firmly in place.

'Help! Help!' again my screams were silent as I struggled against the bonding roots, only making them tighten their grip. The battle began to blur again, making me focus on the one thing that stayed clear and sharp. A shadow glided out from the war of blurry bodies. It was unlike the others; it flowed with grace across the blood-stained field, its bottom billowing with what could only be a dress. The darkness began to fade from it, revealing the angelic face I had missed so much.

'Mom?' I whispered.

Her hair was as long and as dark as ever. She had not aged in these past four years, her face held the youth and happiness of a twenty year old, though she

was well beyond that. The long dress she was wearing was white and elegant; pearls laced its collar that hung just off her shoulders. A small circlet of braided silver rested on her head and seemed to be woven into her shining chocolate hair. She was the image of an angel as she stood before me, smiling.

'Mom...' A lump came to my throat, and, though I could not hear it, I knew I was sobbing. She smiled at me, brushing her hand along my face. A single tear rolled from her eye to her chin, dripping to the ground where it mixed with the blood of countless others.

Her smile turned into a grimace as she put her hand to her stomach. A bright red began to seep though her dress and onto her fingers, staining the clean white fabric the color the ground now was. She fell to her knees, blood dripping her lips as her body heaved again and again.

'Mom! Mom!' I screamed. I struggled against the roots, but they held me tight in their embrace.

She fell to the ground, the whole front of her dress stained a deathly scarlet. She sighed her last breath, and collapsed completely, her muscles going limp, and her eyes going blank.

Only then did the confining roots let me go. I ran to her, shaking her and patting her face, begging for her to say something, anything. But it was too late, she was gone...again. I looked up through my tears to see the battle had finished, bodies were lying about the clearing, bloody and broken.

Only one was left standing.

A large dark brown wolf stood over six still bodies. He looked at me like a lion looking at a heard of gazelle, pray to be killed and eaten. His open maw dripped blood into the dead bodies beneath him and his eyes were as black as death, and endless void of an evil nothingness.

I looked down at the six faces of his victims only to have my stomach turn in horror.

The first was almost unrecognizable. His face was torn to the bone, muscle and sinew ripped and slashed from his forehead to his chin. His body from his right shoulder to his hip had been torn off, leaving the broken ends of his ribs sticking out of the bloody muscle, but I knew Davo when I saw him. The one

silvery eye left in his head was clouded and blank as it stared, unseeing, at the black night sky.

The next corpse was almost in perfect condition, other than the fraying white bone sticking out of her left arm. Cece's dark brown hair had clumps of blood in it from a large gash in the top of her head, making it stick together and to her face. Her eyes were closed, as if she were only asleep, but the chalky paleness of her skin and the missing rise and fall of her chest gave her true condition away, if her injuries already hadn't.

Connor lay beside her, his stomach torn open by the creature's four razor-sharp claws and his guts spilling out into the red grass beside him. He had a look of absolute pain and fear on his face; his deep brown eyes open wide and his mouth contorted in a grimace, almost as if he had been alive when he was disemboweled.

The body that lay beside him was almost too horrifying to look at. Bailey's eyes had been gouged out of her head, leaving nothing but bloody, gaping holes looking back at me. Her head had been bashed in, blood and brain slipping out of the cracks in her smashed skull and onto the ground or into her hair. Her jaw had been ripped open, leaving it hanging awkwardly to the side, the skin on her face ripped apart. Her arms were bent into impossible positions, as well as her legs, and there was a brutally torn gap in her chest, where her heart had been ripped out.

I couldn't seem to pull my eyes away from the grotesque bodies, like my eyes had been taped open and someone was moving my head for me. My eyes moved to the next one and my heart beats seemed to stop.

His throat had been torn out, the esophagus lolling to the side against his neck. Along with his right arm hanging by only a small piece of flesh from his shoulder, the calf of his left leg seemed to have been eaten away, leaving only bone showing form his knee to his ankle. But, Andrews face looked peaceful, as if he had died happy. I looked down at his left arm to see his fingers intertwined with the corpses the laid beside him.

A knife was plunged through her stomach, but that was all. She had the least damage of the lot, but as I looked up at her face, my breath caught and my stomach turned with nausea. The green eyes and short, spiky brown hair were all too familiar.

As I gazed at my dead body, I heard the monster above me laugh. It was staring at my stomach and grinning a sick and sadistic grin, its teeth stained red with blood. I looked down to see a knife jutting out from just below my ribs. I grabbed onto it and tried to yank it out of me...but it was too late. The blood flowed from the wound and there was no stopping it. I began to grow weak, my vision blurring and my head spinning.

Thump-thump...thump-thump...thump...thump......thump.........thump...

As my heart slowed to a stop the creature's evil laugh echoed through the bloody battle site. The corpses lay about, eyes open and staring, gaping at the starless sky above us.

The creature's eyes glowed as it stared at its work. It had won. The sweet sensation of the kill still rang clear in its mind as it gazed at the bodies. Its pink tongue lapped at its jowls, savoring every last drop of precious red liquid. It bent down to feed on its kill, but first it looked to the girl, lying but two feet away, a knife in her hand and a hole in her gut. With its yellowed fangs still dripping with the blood of its victims, it sat in its haunches and raised its nose to the moon. The creatures howl reached far in the silent night, seeming to echo off the dark shadows of mountains in the distance. It turned back to its kill, sinking its teeth deep into the sweet flesh.

"Maggie! Maggie!" My eyes shot open to see Andrew with his hands on my shoulders. "Maggs, are you ok? You were thrashing around and...and screaming something...I...I couldn't tell what." His eyes showed worry and concern. I noticed I was covered in a cold sweat, my breathing heavy and labored.

"What...what happened?" I asked.

"You had a nightmare or something. Davo called us down here when you started screaming."

"I...I was screaming?"

"Yeah, like someone was torturing you or something." Davo was standing some ways away from me, his arms held tight by Gunner and Cameron.

He didn't know how right he was...

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Yeah, yeah I know, you expected more after the long wait, well I have part of the next one written and was going to have a longer chapter, but I'm going to be busy for a while so it was this chapter now or no chapter for maybe 2-3 more weeks. I didn't want to make you guys wait so I put this one up. For you SOF fans, I'll work on that, but, like I said I have been and will be busy with some stuff but I'll try to get it out ok? Oh and THANK YOU TO ALL OF THOSE WHO DIDN'T DE-FAN ME FOR MAKING YOU WAIT SO LONG!!! =D