I stared daggers at the man sitting across me. Despite my eye filled with animosity, he seemed not bothered by it. Probably because he could kill me without me blinking.
"I have a lot of questions."
My voice was calmer than I expected.
"Are you sure that your Mother will be okay?"
His voice was even calmer than me. It took a lot of convincing for Mother to leave us alone. She didn't even let me go outside of the hospital.
"That's not your business."
He shot me an offended look.
"I take it that you remember what happened?"
Sound of Leyla's skull getting crushed echoed in my head. Of course I remembered.
"What was that monster?"
Even I was suprised with the amount of disgust the word "Monster" carried. He looked at my remaining eye. I felt like he was seeing through my soul. I felt naked, nothing to hide myself. I felt uncomfortable by just by his eyes alone. He took a deep breath before talking:
"I am sure you familiar with the word "Werewolf"."
Of course I knew what a werewolf was. Everybody knew.
"Don't bullshit me. Werewolves aren't real."
When the Catastrophe first happened before I was even born, most beings we thought as tales broke through our perspective of reality and attacked us. Dire wolves, goblins, even dragons. But there wasn't no monster like werewolf. It stuck in our tales. Just in our campfire stories we told each other or in fantasies of horny teenage girls. I never heard about werewolves. He sighed again.
"They aren't really monsters as we understand. Let's see, what's makes a monster?"
I was taken back with that question. It was a huge point of discussion in our community. What was the difference between a normal animal and monster? While no one answer was accepted as true we had some widely accepted answers.
"Threat to humanity."
He nodded.
"A good answer. However, I cannot say it is true."
What he looked for?
"What do you think we would do if we could communicate with another species?"
"We would either see them as threats, equals or slaves."
He laughed.
"You really understand how humans work. Then let me ask you again, if there was a race who was smart as us and stronger but they hated us, what we could we do?"
"Wha…"
"That is werewolves. They arrived our world with Catastrophe. They just took one look at us and thought we were worthless."
I felt anger rise up inside me.
"We had no real way to stop them. Even our strongest could barely fight them."
He caressed a scar he had in his hand.
"So we had help from another one. Vampires."
I felt so confused, yet I wanted to laugh. First werewolves and now vampires.
"Then again, maybe I shouldn't say us. You are not human anymore."
My body froze.
"What are you…"
"Did you looked at yourself in mirror after you woke up?"
"What! I am not supposed to see myself in mirror or what?"
If my voice haven't cracked in mid sentence I would felt smart. But that crack in my voice told me something. It told me that I knew I changed.
"Her name is Elizabeth Bathory."
Her cheerful voice rang in my head. I remember her.
"She gave you her blood… Against my objections."
I remembered the burning sensation of her blood flowing in my veins.
"It is rare for a human to transform into a vampire. But you seemed to be perfectly absorbed her power… Except one part."
My eye.
"What I am going to do?"
Words flowed out of my mouth without my permission.
"You were lucky…"
"Bullshit! Lucky? Lucky? Don't fuck with me! I am only alive because I was tough!"
I stood up and screamed. Despite my hot-blooded behavior he was calm.
"I am only alive because I worked my ass off! I was that skilled, hardworking…"
"Then your comrades were weak?"
He cut me. Despite insulting my teammates his voice was devoid of any ill-intent.
"They weren't! Don't you dare to insult them!"
"I am not the one that insulting them. You are."
He pointed his finger to me.
"You claim that you survived because you were skilled. You were hardworking. Doesn't that mean that your friends, who died were lazy and unskilled?"
I broke down crying.
"No! No!"
I sobbed. Fuck! I closed my face with my hands.
"The fact that you survived is just by luck. They fact that I became a S rank is just luck. They fact that you were able to accept Elizabeth's blood is just luck."
I heard him get up.
"Most things in this world is just luck. However…"
I heard him leave something to the table.
"Just being lucky is not enough."
I felt his hand gently removing my hands from my face. I looked at his face. A mix of pity and sorrow.
"We are the only ones that could do something with our luck."
His grey eyes was directed into mine.
"You can't choose being lucky or not being luck. But you can do something with your luck."
He let go of me and turned around.
"I didn't wanted to do anything with you. However, my friend Elizabeth insisted that I would take care of you."
I could see what made that noise before. He left one of his swords to table.
"I am not someone that very patient. Nor I have a lot of time. I will be here for another week."
He headed for the door.
"Every night at midnight to 2. Top of this building. You can choose to come or choose not to."
He wanted to train me?
"If you want to come, I will be teaching you things. Now…"
He tipped his hat.
"Farewell, young man."
He left the room. I looked at the sword he left. I slowly pulled it from its sheat. It was heavy. Heavy, cold metal. I gritted my teeth. It wasn't heavy as feeling in my heart.