I was born on the outskirts of Chicago in the backroom of a little roadhouse called The Falcon's Nest. So it's really not an exaggeration to say that I was born into the Freeway Falcons. I came into the world kicking and screaming and six weeks early, much to the surprise and dismay of the burly biker dudes standing around terrified that my mother had become possessed and was going to rip my father's head off during my birth.
Guns, brawls, and bikes, it's what I've always known. Life's pretty simple for those of us that live on the fringes of society. Mom home schooled me and my little sister, Kimmie. I showed signs very early on that the old saying, 'Like father like son', rang true in our family. I was only three the first time my mother found me in my crib with with a wriggling mass of mice crawling all over me while I giggled and laughed like a little fool. No, my dad wasn't Willard, but he was a powerful sorcerer; granted his power was limited to only two things, but he was powerful nontheless. First, he could control animals. He could call them forth like a reckoning and have them do his bidding. Second, he could shapeshift, although the shape he could shift into was limited to… you guessed it, a Falcon. See, it was the old man that started the Freeway Falcons when he was barely legal.
Learning the family 'craft' never seemed like work to me. It was my time with the old man and something I grew to look forward to. I was good at it; insanely good at it and I excelled. I was able to change and fly by the time I was seven. I was always in trouble for summoning this or that and bringing it into the house. I never wanted for friends, that's for sure.
I have my friends of the human variety, too. Being raised inside the brotherhood of the Falcons didn't completely cut me off. My made sure me and Kimmie got all the proper socialization and lots of the other members had kids our age, considering most of them were mom and dad's age to begin with. I may have learned to fight and fire a gun at a young age, but I grew up feeling safe in spite of it all. Maybe I felt too safe. I always believed nothing bad could ever happen to us. But it did.
I'd been working at dad's garage since I was fourteen. I was eighteen and had been left more than once to close up the shop on my own. I had a few buddies over that night. We were drinking, having a good time. It was after hours, right? Kimmie was sixteen, overall a good girl, quiet. I didn't notice she was gone until the next morning. It took two weeks to find her. The rival gang responsible paid the price, but Kimmie was never the same again. I go to visit her as much as I possibly can. She just stares. I like to believe she knows I'm there. I believed nothing bad could ever happen to us. I was eighteen when I learned different and my baby sister paid the price for my mistakes. My next difficult life lesson wouldn't come for two more years.
Dad was never really the same after Kimmie. He still ran the Falcons, he still ran the garage, my lessons with him continued\, but he was hallow inside. Maybe if I'd been older I would have seen that he blamed himself, not me. He started taking greater risks with the club, getting involved in deeper and darker things. He also started spending more and more time flying free as a falcon. He didn't need drugs, in fact the Falcons pretty much kept their drug usage down to a little Mary Jane from time to time and lots and lots of alcohol. They strived to keep the heavier stuff out of their territory. That made enemies. It was a shootout with a minor drug cartel. Dad took a hit, fell off the peir. They never found his body. I'd just turned twenty, still too young to take the leap from Prince to King.
I was grateful when David stepped in and took over the Falcons as their President. The fact that I sat at his right hand as Vice President was nothing more than symbolic at the time. I was just a kid that had just lost his father. I spent more and more time away from it all, hanging out in the woods, feeling the 'Call of the Wild'. It was so easy to forget it all when I changed. It started to become more and more difficult to make the change back to human. I could leave it all behind if I really wanted to. But then I found Max.
Max, he's like a big untrained puppy on two legs. He's a weredog. I found him living on his own in the woods. By that time, I'd already surpassed my father in the 'family craft' and, to a degree, I could control shifters. So much was missing in my life, so I did what I so often did. I brought the stray home. How was I supposed to know he was a vampire's pet?
It all came out in the wash at the end. The Falcons? Well, we've always had an open door policy when it comes to shifters, psychics, witches, just not vampires. No love for vampires. Their very nature, that whole being dead thing, it goes against the grain of what the club's about, what my dad was about. Max's master ended up being a piece of cake for us to dispatch and he's kind of been with us every since. He's loyal, I'll give him that\, and sweet in the way that only a wild animal can be. The trappings of human life don't chain him like they do the rest of us.
It's been a few years since then. I still run the garage, it makes a great front for some of the clubs less than legal ventures. We still hold our meetings in the back of the Falcon's Nest. David still runs the club, but I'm much more active in my role as Vice President. Still a Prince being groomed to take over as King one day, I suppose. It terrifies me. I hope David lives forever. But I can't walk away\, it's all I've ever known. Some days, well, I wish I could live life as simply as Max does. Maybe one day I will. Until then, I guess I'll just be terrified.