The storm raged outside, sending sheets of icy rain battering against the windows. A thick blanket of dark cloud smothered the moonlight. A bolt of bright white lightning split the sky, sending warped long shadows sprawling across the ground. In the distance thunder’s roar echoed across the plains. As Blanca looked out of the window into the storm, her thoughts began to wander to her family. Her mind struggled to picture her parents, but the booming roar of the thunder kept her thoughts swirling aimlessly inside the maelstrom of her memories. Another bolt of lightning split the sky, causing Blanca to jump slightly. As Blanca’s eyes swept the rain sodden ground, she took in the puddles and rivers of muddy water forming over the old playing field of the academy. In the confusion and roar of the storm, Blanca didn’t notice the small yellow envelope being slid under her door. Blanca turned and resumed writing in her notebook.

It was nearly an hour and a half of the storm pounding against the old glass windows before it began to ease. Slowly the rain began to ease, the puddles and rivers began shrinking down gutters and drains. Unwillingly the clouds began to give way to shafts of white-hot sunlight. Casually Blanca put down her pen and closed her notebook. Her stomach growled the insistent growl of the hungry. With a slight sigh, Blanca pushed herself and her chair back from the desk and eased herself out of it. Blanca turned towards the door, and began moving silently across the small room that barely qualified as a large cupboard. As Blanca strode silently to the door, her gaze was drawn to the small yellow envelope sitting on the floor. Slowly Blanca reached down and picked it up. As she turned it over she could see the name ‘Blanca’ written in a flowing, crisp script on one side of the envelope in strong black ink.

Blanca opened the door and looked down both ways down the long winding corridor, expecting to see someone. Only silence and shadows answered her. Blanca stepped back into her room and closed the door. Quietly and with practised ease Blanca slid down against the door, turning the envelope over and over in her pale hands. Cautiously she began opening the letter, her hands trembling slightly as she pealed away the small flap. Blanca took the crisply folded paper out, turning it over in her hands. As she turned the crisp white paper over a smaller scrap of yellowed paper fluttered to the ground, leaving the two carefully folded hand written pages in her pale hands. Blanca’s eyes drifted from the immaculately folded letter in her hands to the small scrap of paper on the floor before gliding back to the letter. Deciding to read the carefully folded letter first, Blanca gently prised the thin pages apart and began skimming the elegantly flowing script printed neatly upon the pale paper. As her eyes skimmed the letter Blanca’s eyes grew wider and wider, the letter spoke to her in a tone that seemed too familiar to be faked and too sincere to be made up. Blanca reread the letter several times before carefully folding up the letter, along the original folds, and tucking it gently into the opened envelope. As Blanca tucked the opened envelope in her pocket, her eyes drifted back to the small piece of paper that had sprawled itself on the ground, after it had fallen out of the original letter. With a trembling hand, Blanca reached down and picked up the small scrap of paper. As she picked it up, she turned the small piece of paper over and saw a pair of lines of text written in the same flowing script. Slowly Blanca began reading the small note…

Blanca was stunned as she read the small note. Who could know what her true secret is, when she herself did not know? Blanca’s mind began to spin. She felt the ice edged fingers of fear and suspicion slide up her spine and grip at her heart. A thousand thoughts roared through her head as she tried to decide which of her many class and school associates be responsible for leaving such a strange and troublesome note. Blanca’s mind swarmed with wondering whom she should tell and who she could trust to keep it a secret.

Blanca gradually began isolating herself over the remaining days, never telling another living soul of the letter or the note, and feeling the days dragging slowly. Her few remaining classes seemed to merge into one long boring blur as she kept a careful eye on everyone; the ice edged blade of suspicion grinding against her mind every second of every day. In what seemed a month of Sundays, the course at the academy came to a close. On the dull gray morning of old hallows eve, where even the air felt thick with moisture, a small red car picked Blanca up from outside the massive carved oak doors that guarded the inner sanctum of (Academy name). The drive back to the home of Wolfgang and his family seemed nearly endless under the gloom filled sky as the small red car battled its way through the dozens of cars filling the strips of cement and asphalt in a multicoloured flood of metal, moving endlessly towards an ever-shifting goal.

That night, the sky was swollen with clouds, and the moon had donned a cloak of darkness. With no visible moon, Wolfgang and his associates held a long meeting in the opulent study in his manor. Nearly one and a half dozen lycans crammed themselves into the well-decorated study that occupied most of the northern wing of Wolfgang’s manor. Whilst Wolfgang and his wife were distracted by the meeting, Blanca slipped out via one of the many windows that decorated the ivy robed western wall. With the care of a mother canine and the grace of a thousand expert dancers, Blanca descended the ivy clad wall and began creeping into the shadows of the forest that covered the land of Wolfgang’s estate. Blanca followed a carefully hewn path that wound through the forest, knowing that if she strayed from this kinked and warped path a variety of tripwires and mines intended to keep out unwanted vampires and other visitors, and protect those who lived within. The path was vague and obscured as the trees and other vegetation had made a determined effort to reclaim the path as their own. The winding path seemed to twist and bend of its own accord as Blanca hurried along the path. The long bony fingers of tree branches reached out to try and catch Blanca but their razor sharp claws barely scratched Blanca’s pale skin. After nearly ten minutes of running, the path twisted to the right and a small wrought iron gate, hidden in the deepest of shadows. Blanca looked around, making sure the darkness held no unwanted people observing the gate.

The slightly rusted gate gave a squeal of protest that seemed to screech loudly in the still air. With an agonisingly slow pace, the gate gradually gave way, opening out onto the deserted dark street. With ninja stealth, Blanca slid through the opened gate, out onto the abandoned street and began hurrying silently towards Rick’s diner. Whilst Blanca made her silent escape from the grounds of Wolfgang’s manor, she was unaware of a single silent electronic eye saw and recorded her every move. As Wolfgang and his associates continued the meeting, a black jump suited aide entered the room silently and slid along the wall towards Wolfgang. The aide placed a hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder and quietly whispered

"Sir, Blanca had been spotted sneaking out a hidden iron gate located of the south western wall. Shall I organise a couple of soldiers to keep an eye on her?" into his ear. Though the other lycans in the room had the ability to hear what was said, it was out of both fear and respect for Wolfgang, that they paid the aide no heed. Once the aide had fallen silent, Wolfgang turned and in a solid and cold voice said

"Do it." And with that simple order the aide scurried quickly out of the room, and began organising a couple of lycan soldiers to follow Blanca. Blanca kept a quick pace as she hurried down the narrow alleyways towards the diner. As Blanca hurried down the narrow and darkened alleyways, past several battered and dented dumpsters, two pairs of golden eyes watched her from the shadows at the end of the alleyway. Blanca hurried down the labyrinthine alleyways, all the while being followed silently by a pair of Wolfgang’s most loyal and most trusted soldiers. After almost ten minutes of hard running by Blanca, she turned down a short alleyway opposite Rick’s Diner.

Rick’s Diner was a modest establishment just on the Lycan side of the no man’s land. Faded paint, the colour of wet sand, coated the diner’s walls just as a black grime jacket guarded the windows. A single door at the front of the building partially warped, though a plain steel frame attempted to straighten the tired old door. Inside the diner, the conditions were not that much better. A floor that had seen a thousand feet coated in dirt had long since yielded any link to its former colour. Along the rear wall a long bench, half-scratched and chipped glass and half-stained pine, guarded the door to the staff room and kitchen. Scattered across the dirty floor were a dozen tables, many with three chairs or less seated under half a dozen dirty naked bulbs. Each of the tables had seen better days, many had noticeable chips, scratches and gouges scarring the surface. Along the right hand wall, a futile effort by management to attract younger patrons, three over stuffed couches leaned drunkenly against the wall.

As Blanca sat at one of the damaged tables, sipping away on her coffee. Her eyes rimmed crimson from the information that spewed forth from the wrinkled letter she held in one hand. Staring absently at the letter and trying to comprehend the power contained in the perfectly formed ink letters etched onto the letter, her mind raced wildly, the letter had answered some questions in her life, but left so many more unanswered and unasked. Her attention remained on the letter that had been stuffed under her dorm rooms door whilst she had been away at the academy, she never knew who had written it nor had she thrown it away thinking it was a cruel joke. In the dim light of the dirty lights of the coffee shop, several men with close ties to her father remained on the couches silently kept their eyes on her form.

Taking a sip of the coffee, Blanca read the letter softly to herself for the thousandth time…

The unsigned letter had brought much pain and suffering to Blanca, yet she found herself unable to simply discard the battered letter. As she looked into the letter, Blanca did not notice the diner’s door swinging open, nor the two people and the box entering the diner. The first person entering, one of Wolfgang’s soldiers, peeled off and took a seat on one of the battered and dirty couches, whilst the other silently moved closer to Blanca. As the courier got closer, Blanca’s eyes flicked up off the letter and onto the courier. Clearing his throat the pale teenage courier, whose hair glistened like oil in water, asked in a husky voice

"Blanca?"

"Depends on whose asking" retorted Blanca

"Look…are you Blanca or not? I’ve got specific instructions to deliver this package to a Blanca who is supposed to be here. So are you her or not?" the courier spoke, anger clouding his voice.

"Yes, I am Blanca" she responded, her voice filled with calm and humility, and with that the courier handed her the box. The box wasn’t large, roughly the size of a shoebox. The box was covered in brown butcher’s paper, with a single strip of clear tape running down the center of the box. On one side of the tape, the word Blanca was printed in the same flowing script as the letter. Blanca tentatively ripped open one end of the package, and carefully slid out a single blue shoebox, a pair of yellow stripes ran along the lid. A small note was taped to the lid of the shoebox.

With careful movements, Blanca detached the note and began reading the careful and well formed script that lined one side of the page

Dearest Blanca

I’m sorry I have to do this but it is for your own good. Once you finish reading this letter, count to ten, then open the attached box. If you survive what is in the box, then look under the lid of the box. I will be waiting…