60. Rejection

I'm used to rejection; I've been rejected and ostracized by the town I grew up in my whole life. I mean, my family accepted me and my siblings looked out for me when I actually went to school instead of being privately tutored, but everyone else in the town treated me like I was a demon, a plague on the town.

Of course, being a Hellhound might have something to do with it, but no one else knew that I was a Hellhound; they all hated me because of how I looked. My black hair, my red eyes…the people were really scared of my eyes. My personality didn't matter; I could have been a saint and they still would have seen me as evil, as a sinner.

I never did anything to hurt them; I just tried to live my life and stay out of trouble. I just wanted to be normal, have a family, be loved; I had no reason to hurt anyone, to hunt any souls. Why should I? I had everything I could want. I was safe, loved; I was happy. Free. Even after I was expelled when I was eleven for fighting, I had no reason to cause any trouble.

Then, Harrison Talbot came into my life in the form of a private tutor.

At first, things were fine; he acted like a nice guy and everything, but I could sense that there was something off about him. He was too nice; I knew it wouldn't last. As soon as we were left alone while my mom went out to buy groceries, things went downhill.

He pulled out a knife made of pure iron and slashed my face; by sheer dumb luck I avoided losing an eye, though the knife did cut a nice little slice down my left eye from just above my eyebrow to the top of my cheekbone, just beneath my eye. The instant I saw that blade, felt it on my skin, I knew that someone had found out about me; someone knew what I was.

I got lucky, though, because my brother had the flu and was home from school that day; he heard my yelp of pain when the knife slashed me and came rushing into my room, wielding a baseball bat. Joshua struck Harrison with the bat and then positioned himself between the two of us, protecting me. Before Harrison could say anything to Joshua about what I was and why he'd attacked me, my dad came into the room, no doubt to tell us to keep it quiet since it was his day off and he needed his sleep.

Harrison tried to explain; he said that I'd mouthed off to him. Dad wasn't hearing any of it; he told Harrison that he was dismissed effective immediately and that he should be grateful that he wasn't going to be charged with child abuse. Once he made sure Harrison was gone, he took me and Joshua to the hospital since he couldn't leave Joshua home alone; at the hospital, my eye was looked at, the cut treated, and I was sent home.

Later that night when everyone else in my family was asleep, I walked outside; I loved the feel of the cold, crisp winter air on my fevered skin. Not that I was sick or anything that would give me a fever, but being a Hellhound, my body temperature is naturally higher than most; after reveling in the feel of the air against my skin for a minute, I transformed into my Hellhound form and started running, following Harrison's scent.

I tracked him all the way to the church; I got lucky tonight. He was outside the church, outside the hallowed ground surrounding it; it wouldn't have been hard for me to enter the church or the area surrounding it anyway, but still…I'd prefer not to kill on hallowed ground or inside a church.

I crouched down, stalking him as he started walking toward the church; once he was close enough, I pounced on him. I tore into his throat before he even had a chance to scream; I closed my eyes and surrendered to my Hellhound instincts, allowing myself to rip him to shreds. Afterward, I snuck back to my house, wading in the stream that ran behind it to wash the blood off of me; once I was clean, I transformed into my human form and returned to my room.

I hadn't wanted to kill him, but if I hadn't he could have told someone else about me being a Hellhound; the person could have been a Hunter or a demon possessing that person. Really, it didn't matter; what mattered was that he could have told someone and then my life would be over. Either I'd be killed or a demon would drag me back to Hell; my family's lives were in danger as long as Harrison was alive to talk to someone, tell someone about me.

I mean, the town already hated me. If they found out that I was a Hellhound…

The next day, my dad investigated the murder of Harrison Talbot; he pronounced it a wolf attack, but all the locals suspected me, I know. After all, they know what a wolf attack looks like and what I'd done to Harrison's body…no wolf could do that. Of course, on that note, no human could do that either so they couldn't really accuse me of doing it. I was still the town outcast, though.

After the murder, my dad started to be very cautious around, uneasy; it was almost as though he expected me to turn on him, to kill him the way I had Harrison. I don't think my dad knew what I was, though. He did however believe that I was somehow connected to what had happened and that scared him; it scared me too, because it meant that he no longer trusted me.

I could tell he no longer felt safe around me, no longer accepted me; that hurt, hurt far more than the entire town's rejection. I could feel that my own father was beginning to reject me just like the rest of the town…

Things haven't changed much, six years later. I'm still the town reject; my dad still watches me out of the corner of his eye with such mistrust that it makes me want to cry. The only difference is that I've now found some form of acceptance; I've found people who do accept me for who and what I am without judging me.

Artemis, Magnus, Louis, and Sirius…they accept me for who I am; they accept that I'm a Hellhound who wanted more than dragging souls to Hell at the command of a demon. Of course, the fact that Louis is the Devil, Sirius is my brother and a Hellhound, and Artemis and Magnus are Hunters of the supernatural might have something to do with the fact that they accept me so easily; it'd be pretty horrible if they rejected me even though I'm just as different as they are.

I suppose in someway all five of us were looking for acceptance and we found it when we started hunting together; we all faced our own rejections and found what we were looking for in each other. Strength, solidarity, unity, a mismatched family of sorts…acceptance. We've finally beaten rejection…