So on my return to school, I had real difficulties in catching up with my schoolwork and was placed in remedial. I spent a lot of time making things out of cardboard boxes, drawing, and painting. In a way I was content with that. I loved to do anything creative and I had decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be an artist and paint pictures like the ones I had seen hanging in that art gallery.

My mother had become a member of Father Paul’s church. It was something I think he encouraged the Lycanthrope to do. He believed that if they prayed and worshiped the Elders, they would lift their curse. After all, it was they who had placed it upon them. Believing this, my mother spent much of her time on her knees in the small stone building with a twisted spire, which was where the Lycanthrope who wanted to find redemption gathered. It was surrounded by an overgrown graveyard. The headstones were grey and old, covered in cracks, ivy, and moss. None of them looked as if they had been visited in hundreds of years. Behind the church was a hill where Father Paul lived in a small house. The tiny church and graveyard were set at the end of a narrow dirt track, which weaved its way up the side of the small hill.

My mother would rarely take my sisters or my younger brother along with her, but she would take me. Every Wednesday morning, she would wake me at five a.m. to attend the church.

My weekends were also dominated by visiting this small church. After the service, I would sit in Father Paul's lounge before a roaring fire and clean the brass candlestick holders. Father Paul would make me a large pot of sweet tea, and butter several slices of toast for me to munch away on while I worked. I really enjoyed being in his company. He seemed to take a real interest in me and encouraged me to draw and paint. He would give me sheets of brightly coloured paper and pencils to draw with. Although I enjoyed my time with Father Paul, I guess, so did my mother.

Sometimes, as I sat cleaning the brass candlesticks or drawing before the fire and eating the warm slices of toast, my mother would slip away into another room with Father Paul. I guessed she was praying with him, trying to get the curse lifted.

Just before that first Christmas living amongst the humans, and much to my own happiness, we left the safe house – Lycanthrope holding centre as I thought of it by then – and was relocated to a new house on a rundown estate on the other side of town. Our departure from the safe house couldn’t have come at a better time. My mother had become very unpopular amongst some of the other female Lycanthrope that lived there. I believe some of them thought she considered herself to be better than them. I got the impression Father Paul's ever increasing visits – where he would spend the majority of his time with us – only led to resentment amongst the others. After all, wasn’t he meant to be helping all them? I guess he wasn’t allowed to be seen helping us more than others.

“How come that Blackcoat is always round here with you?” one of the other women asked my mother. This woman had a mass of frizzy blonde hair and a pinched-looking face. She wasn’t the prettiest wolf I had ever seen.

“He comes here to help support me and my children – and yours,” Mother explained.

“Bollocks,” she said. “You’re in that room with him for hours while your kids are out in the backyard. I reckon you two have got something going on!”

“How dare you!” my mother exclaimed.

“He’s a holy man!”

“They’re the worst!” She continued to press my mother.

“Besides, he is a Vampyrus. It is forbidden for us to mix,” my mother gasped. Then looking the woman up and down, she added, “I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.

You have no faith. I’ll have the curse lifted for mine and my children’s sake”

“What makes you so special?” the woman sneered just inches from my mother’s face.

“Because I’ve been praying to the Elders,” my mother replied, implying we were in some way superior to this woman because of her prayers.

A few days before we finally left the holding centre, we returned to find someone had been into our room and had pulled apart a set of praying beads that Father Paul had given to my mother. The wooden beads lay scattered across the makeshift beds on the floor. Mother dropped to her knees and let out an agonising moan. She slumped forward as if being shoved from behind, and picked up the scattered pieces. Her shoulders shuddered as she sobbed out loud. I looked at my brother and sisters. Lorre squeezed my mother’s shoulder. I saw Kara begin to cry. Seeing my sister’s crumpled face made me sob, and then Rik began to wail along with the rest of us.

Above the sound of our weeping, I could hear sniggering coming from the lounge. It wasn’t the sound of children sniggering, it was worse. It was the sound of adults taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. Mother bolted from the room and we stampeded after her. We charged into the lounge behind my mother’s flapping skirt to see three women laughing. One of them was the woman who had argued with my mother a few days before. On seeing my mother’s enraged face and burning eyes, their laughter subsided. The woman with the frizzy blonde hair shouted, “Oh look, here comes the Blackcoat’s favorite!”

“He’s trying to help us,” my mother barked. “Don’t you see that?”

“The only thing he has been helping himself to around here is you!” the woman snapped back, her eyes now flashing orange to match my mother’s.

This comment brought more cackling laughter from her allies. Then, without warning, my mother was on the other side of the room. Her hands didn’t have fingers anymore, but long, hooked claws. She thrust these into the woman's frizzy blonde mane. The woman howled in pain, pin-wheeling her arms and her own wolf-like claws out on either side.

The other two women stopped laughing at once, got to their feet, and moved out of harm’s way. Any Lycanthrope found to be fighting – breaking the Vampyrus rules – would be banished back to the caves. I stood by the door with my brother and sisters, my mouth wide open and feeling sick. This was the first time I had ever seen my mother as a wolf, and it terrified me. Her face had changed shape, long with a pointed snout. She had rows and rows of jagged teeth brandishing through her gums. Her hair had grown thicker – longer – somehow, and her eyes blazed a fiery yellow like two burning suns. I remember the woman thrashing around on her belly on the floor, as my mother continued to pull and drag at the woman's hair. Although the other woman now looked like a cross between a wolf and woman, my mother seemed far stronger than her. Part of me wanted to cheer my mother on as I was upset for her, but another part of me just wanted to scream, “Stop! Please stop! You’re scaring me! ”

The whole thing seemed so fucked up. My heart was racing and I felt like pissing all over the floor.

I didn’t like the expression etched across my mother’s face. She looked like an animal and I never wanted to look that way. Worst of all, and what scared me the most, was behind her crazy spinning eyes and foaming snout, she looked scared. I wanted her to stop. I hated seeing her like that. My mother was no longer the woman with the mop of curly black hair, dark brown eyes, and pretty smile. She was someone I didn’t recognise, someone who looked as if they had lost their mind.

During the remaining few days at the safe house, we spent as much time as possible away from it. The Vampyrus didn’t seem to have found out about the fight which had taken place between my mother and the other woman. We would walk the village High Street or along the sea front for hours at a time. Strangely, and although my mother had scared me and my brother and sisters, during those last few days I felt we were thrown closer together. Our little unit became even tighter and more secluded. The only non-family member we were prepared to let enter our pack, was Father Paul.

I hadn’t spoken about my father for some weeks now. I had come to understand he was a taboo subject and I dared not speak about him in front of my sisters, for fear of raking over painful memories. I had no idea or understanding of how to broach the subject of my father, although I had a thousand questions that I needed answered. Day by day, my previous life, along with my father, diminished to the remotest corners of my mind. So much had happened in the year we had left my Dad, it seemed an eternity ago.

Chapter Eight

Jack

My mother collected the keys for our new home from Father Paul and he gave her directions. It was nothing at all like my home – the cave – I had lived in, hidden from the humans behind the fountain. It was an end of a terrace, with four bedrooms, and had a small front and back garden. As mother closed the front door on the rest of the world, we stood together and soaked up our new surroundings in silence. All the floors were bare and the walls were painted battleship grey. It was barren. Even so, we sat on the cold floor in the dining room and made plans of how we were going to decorate it, and how we would make it our own. We sat there and dreamed until the day grew tired and old.

The following day, a few fellow Lycanthrope, who had been relocated from the caves into the human world, arrived at the safe house and helped us carry our belongings to our new home. Our first Christmas – my first Christmas ever – in our new home, was bleak.

We had no real furniture and we sat on cardboard boxes, with pillows placed on them for extra comfort. We had no carpets and the floors were always bitterly cold. Even though the floors in the caves were made from stone, they were kept warm by the heat from the fire place. There was no fire in our new home. The bedroom floors were wooden and I lost count of how many splinters Rik and I picked out from our feet. We shared the same bedroom and the single mattress on the floor. This didn’t trouble me, as I loved to cuddle my brother. My sisters had their own rooms, where they too slept on the floor, as did my mother in her room. Gradually, as time evolved, Father Paul often arrived with secondhand furniture that had been donated by other Lycanthrope and even some Vampyrus. It was in their best interests to help us settle amongst the humans. It wasn’t too long before our home began to resemble something habitable.

About a week before Christmas, Father Paul arrived. Once he had knocked on the door, he would call my mother’s name through the letterbox so we knew who it was. The estate we lived on had a bad reputation and you didn’t open the door after dark, unless you knew who was on the other side. Crime seemed to be rife in this part of the human world. Father Paul came in holding a bag containing sheets of brightly coloured paper.