The sun had gone. Drew yawned the cool night air, head dizzy from oversleeping; of course, most of those his age did the same, yet he could not help but feel quite annoyed at himself for missing sunset. Usually, it was much more convenient to leave right when his eyes won't explode, as the nighttime hours were in little amount with the warmer months- which, of course, included the wonderful season of spring.

You're being a hermit, Drew, he scorned himself, grabbing his hidden spear from where it resided between two smooth stones in an overgrown patch of daisies, and consequently, bees, which were all sleeping away in their hives at this hour of the night. As soon as his fingers touched the artificially smooth surface, he felt the wave of secrecy engulf him, sending both a twinge of annoyance and throb of reserve through his blood. Why must he hide?

Because you're an animal, he reminded himself sullenly. Of course, everyone on the island was somewhat animal, but only he was a real animal. The real hunting and lurking and hiding and weird animal, because he was an idiot, because he had slipped up. His dumbass fantasies of a bat-boy had lead to this, and if anything, Drew had learned not only to avoid experimentation, but not to dream. Purposes were for large minds, and wishes for little; and it seemed that Drew's brain was of a pebble size.

Across the way, he could see his target- an owl, sunken in the meadow's wavy, angelic hairs, talons nestled in its bleeding catch. It had taken a breather, a moment to sit, to hide. It was unaware, unknowing, of the predator above it, and the owl's oblivion rolled over Drew's tongue like something sweet and sour. His stomach rumbled, and to his shame, he longed to taste its sweet blood; unlike human blood, animal blood had flavors. And he would never tell you how he knew the contrast of tastes.

Hunting was not easy, and Drew had taken quite a while to accustom himself to it. Birds were especially a challenge, and quite difficult to drain as well, but the reward was great; they gave more substance than rodents, and tasted all the much better because of the protein bursting in their bodies. Drew had always liked meat when he had actually been able to digest it.

Spear in hand, he crept closer to the owl, who lowered its beak to check its catch. Praying it not to be a morpher, Drew ran his spear between his fingers, finding the knot he used to grip with his thumb. Breath shallow and warm on the roof of his mouth, Drew seized in a sharp intake, and dove with speed only practice could provide. The owl shrieked, but it was too late to take flight, and it only half unfurled its wings before Drew plunged the arrow into its back and rendered it immobile.

His heart ached for the beautiful creature, which lay by his feet like some sort of disgusting replica, squirming and trying to move despite its crippled state. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and then picked up its dead weight and pulled from his pocket a shiny, silver dagger. He pressed the end into its neck, searching for the artery that would stop his stomach from roaring. He sliced its walls and the pumping heart sent blood spurting at his head, hitting him square in the eye with a crimson fountain.

The blood ran down his face and he directed his mouth in the way, clamping it down on the owl's neck and holding its head to avoid being clamped down by its vengeance-seeking beak. It tasted sweet and satisfying as it ran down his throat into his shrunken belly, and he all at once damned whoever it was that invented a creature as despicable as vampire bats; while the animal itself did not drain too much from a victim, nor did it typically kill it, when fused with a human, it was quite a different story.

When the owl was nearly dry, he loosened his hands about its face, and received a nasty bite on the cheek. It ripped his skin and Drew shouted out, jerking away, only increasing the wound's critical state. Then the owl's grip slackened, loosing its life lifeline, and died in Drew's angry grip. He dropped the body and stood up shakily, blood dripping from his mouth and running down his face, fright leaving the predator's crimson paint sitting in his mouth at the tightening of his throat muscles.

Finally, he swallowed, and squinted the eye that received apart of the pulses of pain, grabbing his wound with a dirty hand and pulling at his blood-soaked shirt with the other. Between his messy feeding and the pumping of his own lifeline down his face, neck and onto his shirt, its blue-and-navy striped surface tainted a nasty, deep red in the gleaming moonlight.

"Shit, shit, shit, SHIT, SHIT!" he shouted, kicking a lump of dirt in his anguish. Now he'd have to go around with a gash on his face, without a shirt, and be forced to go out in sunlight to get what he needed. Injuries were never on Drew's side- they led to infections, hospital fines, and who knows what else.

And then she was there. A girl, some morph, out of nowhere, not coming near him, but staying close enough for him to want to cut her up and drink her blood, too. And while he wouldn't, the appeal of it was tempting, and he swallowed what of the owl's blood remained in his mouth to shut up the urgings in the back of his head.

He was annoyed, furious, angry. He wanted to kill himself for being so stupid, for thinking that morphing was so easy, that it was something to experiment with. He wanted to throw the owl in the fires for biting his face, and he just wanted to get his hands on something and maim it until it was nothing but churned flesh and then suck its blood and leave it dry. Stupid vampire bats.

"No, I'm not okay!" he shouted, and bit his lips at his outburst. It wasn't nice, he reminded himself, to scream at random strangers who ran up to see if he was dead or not. But he was frustrated with life, especially with the rising sun that began to bleed into the horizon, and the way his eyes slowly began to ache with the pressure of it all.

"Sorry," he mumbled, still gripping his wound, and tugged at his blood-soaked shirt. It began to dry onto his body, and he tore if off quickly, knowing all too well how hard it was to get off dried blood. He threw it onto the grass as if it were some sort of bomb he just wanted to be rid of, covering the owl's mangled body in the process.

"Sorry," repeated Drew, and he removed his hand. As he did, blood dripped down his face at a fast rate, dappling the increasingly green meadow below. He swore below his breath and placed his hand back over the wound, applying more pressure than needed. His pale, defined chest was splattered with the red as it dripped of his scarred jaw.

"I- I need to get somewhere, and, like, stop the bleeding, uh... before the sun rises," Drew said quickly, urgently, almost pleadingly, throwing himself on a whim to rely on the generousness of this girl. She would stare at him funny, laugh, say he's crazy, and run away, morphing into a beautiful whatever and flyingrunningswimmingjumpingsomething into the sunset, leaving the bat-boy to go blind.

"Because I'm stuck as a half bat and I'll go blind in the sun so likepleasehelpmepleasepleaseplease," he added quickly and then wiped his hand on his face, smearing his blood without meaning to.

He held back a smile that was so bright it could have blinded him anyway. Without any argument or comment, he followed his guardian angel, his savior, the one who wasn't going to leave him to rot in the meadow covered in blood with a dead owl nearby. Her comment didn't even shake him; lions, bah, whatever. They reminded him of the Wizard of Oz.

He stopped at the cave entrance and arched his eyebrow, watching her face suspiciously for any play, that maybe her movie-class comment was simply a dramatic tease. That she was threatening him somehow. But nothing was on her face but pure fear, guilt, and something else. All at once he wanted to dive into the cave's shadows and away from the emotional mess he had run into, but the decency and good manners his mother had taught him did not waver.

"It's not any worse than what I've done to myself," he said with a small, pained smile, the intake of breath sending a wave of dizziness from his head. The blood loss was getting to him. He staggered and grabbed the edge of the rock, his head throbbing, a wave of nausea wiping over his body. His stomach churned and gurgled with what it had just recently taken in, and in one smooth motion, Drew belched loudly and a crimson waterfall spilled between his parted lips.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm fine don't worry," he said quickly and straightened up, wiping the blood from his mouth. How to heal, how to get better? He thought of the vampire bat, its face unmarked, unscathed, but all he could think of was all the blood he had just lost from both his belly and his body. All of that wasted blood, and now he'd have to sleep for days to recover, go on extra hunts... he wanted to slit his throat.

But instead he smiled weakly. "Thank you, liongirl," he commented, an irritating flutter erupting in his heart. He ignored the urge he had to assist the girl, to make her feel better, knowing that she had her mind made up about keeping away, even if he wanted to offer her a hand and help. She smelled lovely, and it was not her blood pumping below her skin that scented of the fresh ocean on a bright and early morning.

He watched her face, and suddenly, he blanked. All at once he felt his body fall away, crumpling into something uglier, much more terrible. The vampire bat squealed, Drew squealed, and he fluttered into the cave, into the darkness, where she couldn't see his pushed-in face with the ugly spurting teeth or the rodent-like body stitched with stout, hideous fur. Instead he hooked the top of the cave, as far away as possible, and squeezed his eyes shut and waited for her to leave.

If she thought he couldn't see her, she obviously didn't know too much about bats. He could see, from the map in the back of his head, the tears, a watery substance that reflected sound all too well, as they welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks, all the while stabbing Drew in the heart.

He nearly chuckled. Vampire, stabbed in the heart? Haha, that was funny. But he knew that it was particularly rude to let a young woman sit on the floor and cry her heart out without providing some reassurance; but he didn't want to. He didn't want to try to comfort her, say the wrong thing, and end up pissing someone off. Hide, little bat, hide.

You're becoming a hermit, Drew, he told himself and nearly sighed, but bats didn't have the same breathing patterns as humans, and it came out a shrill shriek that shocked even himself. He fell from the roof of the cave and hit it in a loud thump, and morphed back into a human before the pain could come. It did anyway, and he rubbed his throbbing elbow.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he said as softly as he could, hiding the strain in tension in his voice as he crawled over to her, sitting right before her face, cross-legged. She couldn't see him as well as he could see her in the dark, every inch of her as clear as she would be to any normal person in the daylight; minus the fact that he couldn't see the pigmentation, or the colors.

She was quite... pretty. The thought stung him, a sour reminder of something before the island, but he pushed it away and instead fascinated over his thought. Her face, even with its puffy red eyes and downward-twisted lips, held a sort of beauty that made Drew's hands get clammy, and he prayed she wouldn't grab them for whatever a reason and be repulsed by their moistened state.

What did people do when people were sad? He didn't know- he didn't know much about communication in the first place. He had wandered the island on his own for so long, away from other people, it had mostly just been talking to himself, the other bats, or sleeping, and neither of these involved pure human interaction.

A thought crossed him, a memory of before the island, and he followed the motions of the memory, reaching out and brushing a hair behind her ear. He pursed his lips and said, "Shhh, it'll be okay..."

She was a lion. Drew pulled back in shot, moreso in fright, his body tingling as if it were begging him to turn into a bat; yet he didn't, and suddenly, she was back again. Of course she wouldn't have stayed lion for long. Her concentration was blurred because of her emotional state. To morph you had to have a clear mind, and your eye right on the target.

Like a boy with bat wings? He shuddered.

"Lucas? What's wrong with him?" he asked, the name somewhat familiar, though not so that he could think of anyone by that alias. Instead he cocked an eyebrow, and then said, "You can't control your morphing." For some reason, this innocence made him smile, but he smacked his hand over his mouth. A lion could cause major damage, nothing near as meek as a vampire bat.

"Sorry," he apologized in a mumble, and watched her for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and said, "You're not going to do yourself any good sitting around and crying... morphing takes practice, and... it's not a game." Of course it wasn't a game. It hurt him that he could admit it when it was impossible only a month ago. But this wasn't about him.

"What happened between you and Lucas?"

Lion attack? Drew frowned, and for some reason, he couldn't help but want to hug the girl out of pure happiness- and also pity. So maybe he wasn't so alone, maybe he wasn't the only morpher with animal troubles. But this could be far worse than any bloodlusting teenager; even he, a vampire bat with an appetite, was no match for the strength of a lion.

Zoe was. He could remember Zoe, the wild teen he had ran into in the forest, nearly peeing himself. She was a freaking tiger.

"It's okay, it's alright," he said quietly and, despite the squirming in his stomach that made him reluctant to act, he took her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. Drew had nothing else to say to her, and the quiet began to itch and burn at his skin. It roared in his ears despite its hollowness.

He should tell her something to make her feel better. To make her situation less... terrible. Drew took in a sharp breath, and then he forced a smile. "It's not that bad. It's not as bad as me, and I can promise you this much; there's always going to be worse." His smile disappeared and he drew in his lips to bite then with fanged teeth, another feature that made him more vampiric. It was annoying, as it often led to bleeding tongues or lips, and he wondered how vampire bats could ever operate with them jutting out of their mouths, as his weren't even as large in comparison to his other dental tools.

"I'm an expert morpher," he explained slowly and searched her face for any indication of relief as he continued. "I can half-morph, quarter-morph, toss human and animal attributes around... but I don't anymore. It's dangerous. I thought... I thought maybe I could get bat wings as a human, or maybe something cool, like bat-senses. But I screwed up, and now I can't eat normal food, I have to drink blood." He let out a light laugh and squeezed her hand again. "It's crappy."

She smelled like the fresh ocean breeze; it was pleasant and made him slightly dizzy, but it was the good kind of dizzy that made him want to press his nose into her hair and breath it in more. Which would be creepy. So he didn't. Instead he focused on the smell of her blood below her skin, which was appealing, yet scented strange and unnatural, as did most human blood. Bats had an acute sense of smell. He hated that.

Then an idea came into his head. He could teach this lioness how to transform, how to morph to expertise and prevent the wild from taking over. He was an expert morpher, and although he refused to recklessly experiment, he knew the basic animal-to-human and vice versa all too well. And it would give him an excuse to see her again.

"If you want to learn, I can help you. There's no risk with the typical morphing, and I can teach you how to not loose it," he offered slowly and averted his eyes to the floor, not wanting to see what they held when she rejected. "I have a friend, Zoe, she's a tiger. A Siberian tiger, and they're the largest big cats on Earth, bigger and stronger than lions, so there's no risk of you hurting anyone..."