Changing pallet.

Marthinus stood in his shower, letting the scalding hot water cascade down the top of his head, down his back. He had been standing in there for a good thirty minutes, but he could still not feel clean. One hand was on the wall and the other was twirling a soap bar, gathering up lather. For the one hundredth time, Marthinus soaped up his chest, his hands and then his face.

He could still smell the blood.

A sob wracked his body as he covered his mouth and neck with soap lather. His eyes open and ignoring the sting as he tried to forget what his mind refused to let go. It was if he had been watching a movie or in some sort of three dimensional world - a detached feeling the world changed in front of him. Sights, sounds, smells - a dream within a dream where everything felt so real. Marthinus, an educated man in his fifties who's entire existence had been involved with creatures who's sole existence was a complete mystery to the world - suddenly thrust into another world, so secret that even the secret holders didn't know about it. All these years, he thought the vampires were civilized killers but killers nonetheless. Now these completely feral, primal beings had not only infiltrated his world, but had taken over it as quickly as they entered it.

Marthinus let the hot water wash the soap away as he stared up into the shower head spray. It was in him, taking over him. Something so far from his human center had changed him physically into what he dreaded the most about the vampires. Something so not human.

He had lunged at the doe, just as it turned and noticed him and what he should have expected and tried to avoid, the doe's rear hooves, came up and kicked him in the gut. With a loud whimper he hit the ground but regained his footing - the blood rage now at its pinnacle forcing him to take down the doe. To taste its flesh. Despite the injuries he once again snapped at the doe, this time digging his teeth into the doe's tender shoulder. The doe continued to kick and buck with him, a smaller wolf hanging onto it when the other two joined the kill.

The other two. Hammerthynn and the Alpha. Two much larger wolves than he was, easily brought the doe down. Marthinus released his grip and watched the two disable her. The doe's black, lifeless eyes looked at up him as its blood covered its fawn colored fur. The smell of the blood was dizzying and invigorating. No longer able to hold back, ignoring his ribs poking out of his own flesh, Marthinus dug into the doe's flesh, tearing her throat out, effectively ending her suffering and feeding his own.

The sobs came again as Marthinus unconsciously started to later the soap again on his chest, then up his neck to his mouth. Scrubbing furiously at his mouth, he could not rid himself of the doe's blood, much less forget the taste of it.

Hammerthynn was standing at the entry of Marthinus' bathroom, listening to the old man cry. It wasn't his hyper masculine disposition that kept him at bay, but the deep seeded pain of going through his own first bay at the moon. He had been expected to take down his first kill by himself, so he travelled the darkness of the forest alone. His size and gruff manner meant nothing in the darkness of the night. The silence of the forest had been deafening and frighting at the same time, so as he listened to Marthinus try and cope with what he was, he could not offer a sympathetic hand - even if he wanted to.

Hammer retreated into Marthinus living room and waited for him to suffer through his pain alone.

Marthinus reached out and blindly shut the water off in the shower. It had finally begun to run cold and he shivered as he reached for his towel. Immediately he was struck with the smell of something familiar. It was so odd, his new abilities, they came at him as if he were playing some sort of demented dodge ball game. His environment opened up to him on such a level that it overwhelmed his senses, especially after his first transformation. His hands were jittery from the sensory overload.

Hammerthynn was in the other room.

He was finding it hard to try and find some way to relate to his creator. He had fully expected to either die of a heart attack or become a vampire - this was an alternative he was not prepared for - could not have prepared for. Drying off quickly, Marthinus dressed in a light linen outfit, drawstring pants and quietly padded barefoot out to the living room.

Hammerthynn was sitting with his back to the door to his bedroom, staring at something...or nothing. Wasn't reading, wasn't sleeping as far as he could tell, just sitting in the living room - in the dark. No, he would never understand this giant of a man and he seriously doubted that Hammerthynn would ever let him.

'How can you stand it?' Marthinus finally said. 'I would think one would take solace in the natural family orientation of this ... pack, but you...how does one become second in command of something so powerful, so secret without uttering more than a handful of words?'

Hammerthynn did not hear Marthinus come in, much to his surprise, but thinking of Lily often did that to him.

He had been thinking of the softness of her hair and her sweet scent that he had gone without for so long. It was these quiet moments, although few and far between, that he took a moment to recall what he had so close to him for so many years. He had gotten over the uncomfortable remorse and regret that came with this feeling he had for her. Her husband had been his best friend and his Alpha - but who leaves their wife to such a cold and heartless man who'd sooner kill someone than talk to them? She deserved so much better, but it wasn't his place to say and didn't. She was probably the only one that he felt comfortable enough with to talk at great lengths with, granted it took several months. She taught him the finer aspects of life - social interaction and the softness that the world encompassed, he wasn't sure he was able to teach her anything. What could he offer, other than the ability to kill with his bare hands and reach the books on her high bookshelves?

Hammerthynn felt a smile touch the corners of his mouth as he remembered the little things that made her happy...that made him happy. So long ago...

'How can you stand it?'

Hammer turned around to look at Marthinus as he continued with this queries. How does one become the Beta? It was not having social graces and diplomacy, that much was for sure. Marthinus had questions, Hammer felt that maybe answering them might help him with his transition - but then he didn't really care.

'My family has always been the protectors of our pack. That's what we are. What we are bred for. Hammerthynn's have been Beta's for the past several of our generations.'

'Females as well?' Marthinus added.

Hammerthynn turned and stood, straightening his jacket and buttoning his extra extra long and wide light weight suit coat.

'There are none. Hammerthynn females, that is. As far as I know, there has never been.'

It wasn't as if Hammer's separation from emotion was any different than how Ellis embraced it or how Simon denied it. He just never understood the extremist attitude, from one end of the spectrum to the other. It was comforting to know that the pack was stable and had been for sometime, at least it appeared that way. Marthinus wondered what his purpose would be within the pack. Marthinus wondered a lot of things.

He reached up and touched his mouth, still feeling the doe's blood on his face and he unconsciously wiped at it again. His face was raw by now, a soft shade of pink and the pain jarred him back to reality. He pointed to his mouth and tried to form the words.

'The doe...' He felt a thin sheet of sweat on his body as he tried to articulate the sheer terror of what he had done. 'I know you must get used to it but...there are so many things in your world that I just can't comprehend.'

Hammerthynn's minimal patience had grown thin. Marthinus asked too many questions, but he supposed that was his way as a human, having been one longer than Hammerthynn had. How difficult it must be, for someone so old to accept the gift.

'How is this life any different from the vampires? We eat to survive and to survive we must feed on flesh. Your vampires are no different, they're just prettier about it.'

The Kadzait were by no means a pack of dirty dogs in their dank, cold den. To have evolved beyond their primal beginnings to something more civilized and control was a genetic feet in itself. He had heard the stories of their origins trickle down from what was found and even then he surmised that the vampires used their primal urges and forced a darkness on their kind for far too long.

'This is something you will learn to cope with, Marthinus. You do not have a choice. It will pass and become second nature quicker than you think, but till then try not to question what you feel now - but embrace it.'

That's all Hammerthynn had to say to Marthinus and with that, he nodded, taking his leave of the old man. If Marthinus had something else to say, he failed to acknowledge it.

((ooc - Hammer and Marty out))