SHEPHERD, KAEL - DOWNWORLDER

KAEL SHEPHERD

IF I STAND UP I'LL BREAK MY BONES

he was just a boy. maybe he deserved it. maybe if he'd taken being a boy more seriously it wouldn't have happened. looking back, kael sees that he wasted his humanity, but the boy he used to be had to die for him to understand. he never tried in school. he skipped classes and hung out in the slummy areas that his mother warned him about. they'd moved to the city from a small town in kentucky a few years back, something kael hadn't had a choice in. his dad had ended up in prison and his mother got a job in the city. a new start, she'd said. a new start would be good for him.

it wasn't. he acted out in rebellion. he stopped trying in school. he shut his mother out. he refused to answer the letters from his friends back home. he experimented with drugs. that's when it happened. he took something and he got into a fight with some guy in an alley. except the guy wasn't really a guy. it took kael a long time to come to terms with what he saw, but as he threw a smug punch, a set of claws raked down his arm. claws. and when he looked up, the eyes he saw weren't human. a bad trip. a really bad trip. that's what he told himself.

kael pushed that day to the back of his mind— until it happened. he woke up one night and thought that he was dying. he must have overdosed on something. that was all he could think of when he woke up in agony, tangled in sheets drenched with sweat. the last thing he could remember was his mother bursting into his room when he started to shout, and then nothing. nothing. it was just gone. it was blank from midnight til dawn, and the next thing he recalled was standing outside his house naked. when he went back inside, the house was destroyed. the furniture was upturned, broken glass on the floor. his mother was locked in her room sobbing, and when he walked up to her door there were marks on the wood that only an animal's claws could have left.

she tried to tell him what he was, what to do, but he went into denial. why did she know about that? werewolves weren't real. he wasn't a werewolf. except then it happened again, in the middle of the street when he lost his temper at vendor, and he couldn't lie to himself. he panicked. he ran. he couldn't stand the way people looked at him, and it killed him that his mother wouldn't look at him at all. he knew it must have broken her heart when he disappeared without a note or a goodbye, but it was better that way. if she thought he wanted to go, she wouldn't try to look for him.

kael ran from lexington to magic city. he snorted at the name when he saw the signs, but that was only the beginning. when he finally accepted what he was, he began seeing things that had been there all along — things humans miss because they choose to be blind. he's been here for a month now, wandering the streets and trying to find the right faces to forge alliances with. he's caught the scent of other werewolves, but so far he's been too wary to approach them. joining a pack would mean embracing it. he doesn't embrace it. he still fights it. maybe if he stopped resisting it would be easier, but he can't let go of the old life he used to have. he still dreams of it every night.



he has no magical abilities. unless you'd like to call his knack for transforming into a grotesque beast at uncanny moments magical — but kael would beg to differ.

[b]10 DAYS WITH MY DEVIL, kakeru kamui [/b] as [i]kael shepherd[/i]