Bloodborn

(Flux, 2011), sequel to Other

It isn’t working. The doctor said it would, but it isn’t, even though I keep taking the pills twice a day, and I keep seeing Dad sneak into the bathroom and count how many are left. As if I would stop taking them. As if I would let myself become a werewolf.

Brock Koeman lost his older brother Chris to werewolves. Now he’s in danger of losing himself. Bitten by a werewolf at sixteen, Brock fights the transformation, taking the excruciating pain as a punishment for his mistakes. There are more like him, bloodborn werewolves and vampires, changed against their will when bitten by one of the Others. And then there are the naturalborn Others, many who look down on the bloodborn and consider them diseased outcasts.

Brock’s mother passed away when he was only eleven, leaving behind a withering rose garden and photographs he can’t stand to look at anymore. Now that Chris is also gone, Brock and his dad live alone in a farmhouse too big for two, on the dairy that’s been in their family for three generations, in the little town of Klikamuks, Washington. It’s not like Brock can help Dad out anymore; before it happened, the cows trusted Brock. Now they panic at the smell of him. They know what he is, what he’s becoming, even though Brock hasn’t yet given into the urge to transform into a werewolf. With the help of anti-lycanthropic medication, he’s managed to fight the change for two full moons. But he knows he can’t last much longer.

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