Sanctuary

Chapter 1 Finding, again.

"I hate my life. Okay, I really don't hate my entire life, but at this exact moment, I do. Every lustful stare directed my way from the human males, all the envious scowls from all of these stupids cows, they all make me want to turn tail and scurry back to my transportation, before I'm infected by their stink. Another shoulder slamming into me makes my teeth grind. I hate humans, hate, hate, hate them. They're stupid, pathetic, useless, and they only live for a miserable nine decades at the most.

But most of all, they surround the single male member of my species. He has chosen to live among a people not his own. He won't live anywhere near me, and I guess to a certain extent I can't blame him. Okay, okay, before I get ahead of myself, I guess you should know I am not human. My name is Catherine Elizabeth Velstrom. I was born in the year seventeen twenty five within the walls of the north American Sanctuary and I am a Shaper.

The Shapers are a sisterhood of supernatural beings tasked with keeping peace within the yperfysikí koinótita. We are the ones who make sure the Vampires don't call attention to themselves by preying on humans like they did during the dark ages. Or the werewolves, by howling at the moon too close to humans. We police and hold accountable the beings that in our modern world, most humans no longer think exist.

Until almost three years ago, we shapers had been an exclusive sisterhood, males need not apply. The genes needed to manifest our power were passed only from mother to daughter, never to male offspring. There was once a time when there were male members of my race, but that was over two thousand years ago.

Why was it me who had to find him? I mean, I didn't want to find him. I was fine just as I was, a zi̱ti̱tí̱s of the sanctuary. Enforcing the edicts and pronouncements of our high mother. Then I had to go and run across him, Varden Core. The first time we met, I might have been a bit overzealous in what I'd found. He was male, therefore I was superior to him and ordered him to come with me back to the Sanctuary. He refused. From there, our argument escalated until I kinda took a swing at him. Varden did that to be. He still does.

I thought I had nothing to fear from him. After all, no male on this planet is a match for one of the sisters of the Sanctuary. I held onto that thought until he nearly took my head off. Never had I seen anyone move that fast, and when he formed his blade, it was blue. I was lucky he wanted answers from me more than he wanted to kill me, because if he'd wanted me dead, there was far too little I could have done to stop him.

I shiver at the memory. Oh, come on, it's a major blow to a girl's ego to get her butt kicked by someone she'd been brought up to believe was her inferior. But that was the past, this is the present, and while my mind was elsewhere, my body was nice enough to bring me to my destination.

Why did he have to pick this for a profession? He could have done anything, been a surgeon, a policeman, a lawyer, anything, but this? I approached the front of a very nondescript building nestled among a row of monotonous buildings. The large windows facing the street let anyone walking past know what was within. A crowd of middle aged two teenage women were gathered before the biggest of the windows and alarm bells went off in my head. Was something wrong? Had someone found out about Varden? I quickened my pace until I was almost running until I too was facing the window.

My shoulders slumped in relief. It was only Varden. He was practicing one of his katas on the work out mat just on the other side of the glass. In just his gee pants, his chiseled chest glistened under the candle light. As he moved every head on the other side of the glass from him moved with him.

That was when I went from amused to annoyed, then to angry. These humans had no idea who or what they were looking at. I had known him for almost three years. I was the one who had found him, told him what he was. He was mine. They had no right to leer at him like he was some piece of meat.