A/N: Believe it or not, the idea for this story spawned from a dream I had. It's really weird. I just woke up and thought, "Man, that would make a good fanfiction." Although I had to leave pretty quickly this morning and scribble down the jist of it in the car before it left me. Still, here's chapter one!

Remember to review! Reviews are the oil to my writing cogs! Without feedback they go rusty!

Warnings (for entire story, not just this chapter): Supernatural creatures-i.e vampires and werewolves but NOT in the Twilight sense. Free-for-all sexuality, maybe future non-con, violence, swearing.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.

Chapter One: A Birthday Walk

"You invited Delly?" Madge's voice wasn't angry, nor was it annoyed. It was simply ladened down with exhaustion.

Katniss smiled weakly. "I'm sorry," she said. "She asked me what I was doing and I couldn't just say we were going out without her, could I?"

Madge groaned and slid further down her seat in the car. Her irritance was almost comical but not to the point that either Peeta or Katniss would laugh. If they laughed, they risked having their mating organs ripped from their bodies by their best friend's bare hands.

Delly was a handful, which was why she hadn't been initially invited in the first place but now, it seemed, she was most definitely coming along. Peeta didn't mind. In fact, he just wanted this whole day to be over and done with for another year.

"Oh my god," Madge said. "This just took a turn for a worst. We're going to have Peppy Cartwright up our asses this whole trip."

"It's Peeta's birthday, Madge, and he doesn't seem too bothered about it," Katniss pointed out.

"I'm learning to take things as they come," Peeta replied. He craned his neck around to look into the back seat at his friends. "I mean, we're going to have to walk twenty six miles to the city anyway. Maybe Delly will help brighten the walk."

Katniss stood up, hunching her shoulders so she didn't hit the roof of the car and leaned forward to tap the gas meter. "For the love of god, how much worse can things get?" she muttered.

"So we have to walk a couple of miles, so what?" Madge said. "It's not the end of the world."

"A couple of miles?" Peeta repeated. "Madge, twenty six miles is not a couple of miles." Not that he was complaining, things honestly couldn't get any worse. Sure, normally a couple of things went wrong on his birthday, nothing was perfect, but everything on this particular day seemed to be going down to shit.

"Think of it this way," said Madge. "At least the car is telling us that it's not going to work now rather than when we're cruising down the road. I don't know about you two but I'm not too keen on asking to use a guy's phone only to find out that he's some pyscho surgeon who wants to experiment on us."

Peeta shook his head. "I knew I shouldn't have let you watch that movie," he said.

Katniss sat back down in her seat, her hands immediately going to her seatbelt. A force of habit, Peeta supposed. "We could just offer Delly to the guy and run," she suggested.

Madge laughed. "Yes, I like that plan." Speaking of the devil, there she was. Delly was a hard girl to miss. She was currently hurrying across the road in killer heels with a neon pink feather boa tied around her neck. "Oh my god."

Delly waved when she saw them looking and climbed into the passenger seat of the car. "Hello!" she said cheerfully. "Happy Birthday Peet!" She leaned forward and pecked his cheek, handing him a beautifully wrapped present. Of course, the wrapping paper was pink.

"Aw, thanks Dell, you shouldn't have," Peeta replied. He traced his finger along the patterns on the paper, admiring the intricacy.

"I wasn't going to show up empty handed now, was I?" Delly trilled. She climbed onto her knees on the seat and leaned into the back to kiss Katniss and Madge's cheeks as well. Both girls tried not to recoil or pull faces at the odd gesture. They treated Delly like she was a foreigner, by respecting her customs and not insulting them.

Peeta's eyes fell on Delly's shoes and he winced. They were extremely high, the heel spiked with metal points. "Do you have a second pair of shoes, Delly?" he asked.

Delly shrugged. "I've got my dancing shoes. I don't wear them too often though because they're too small and make my toes bleed. Why?"

"It's just . . . the car, it doesn't have any gas, my brother forgot to fill it up, so we're . . . we're walking to the city . . ."

"Oh, that's fine," said Delly. "I've walked my way home in these bad boys many a night. So how far is it? A mile? Two?"

"Twenty six," Katniss answered.

Delly's face fell. "Oh, well, can't say I've walked that far before," she said. Peeta kind of felt bad. They should have rang her up when they found out that the car didn't have any gas and Katniss had blurted out that she invited her along to the party. He just hadn't thought to.

"We'd totally understand if you don't want to go," Madge said, trying to sound understanding. Now, Delly could be irritating when she wanted to be-showing up places she wasn't invited to, gossiping, stirring things up just for the sake of stirring them up-but Peeta would never be as openly expressive of his distaste to her company as Madge was. But then, Madge was like that with everyone.

"No, it's fine," said Delly. "If my feet start to scream I'll take the shoes off and go bare foot."

Madge rolled her eyes. "Great," she said unenthusiastically.

Delly grinned and threw her car door open again. "Let's go!" she cheered. "It's already getting dark."

Everyone clamboured out of the car. The streets were practically deserted. There was no sound, almost like there had been an apocolypse while they had been sitting in the car and life as they knew it had been completely obliterated. District 12 wasn't the most populated of places and on Friday nights nearly everyone left for the city with their friends.

Except they had cars. Cars that were filled with gas. Cars that were filled with gas that they could use to get to the city.

"Remind me to kill your brother," Katniss moaned five miles later. Peeta felt sorry for the girls. They were in skirts and uncomfortable shoes while he was still a-okay in his sneakers and jeans. For the tenth time that night he was glad he didn't let Madge dress him for the night.

"I will put it in my list of things to remind Katniss of," said Peeta.

Delly hobbled along, her heels still on. "How far do you think we've walked?"

"Not far enough, I'd say," Madge muttered. Even though she was only wearing sandals, her dress was so tight it restricted her leg movements. "We haven't even passed the District 9 sign."

"Haven't we?" Peeta asked. He knew that they hadn't made much progress but he thought it was a little further than what Madge had just described. The sky was getting darker and the air was getting colder. Maybe walking to the city was a bad idea. "Maybe we should just go back. Spend the night at my house."

Katniss shook her head. "No, that's what we did last year."

"It was fun," Peeta protested. Watching girly movies like John Tucker Must Die and 10 Things I Hate About You with bucket loads of popcorn and sugar was a great way to spend his birthday and he wouldn't mind doing it again.

"You're eighteen now, you have to celebrate!" Delly said.

"In Europe, you'd be the legal age to drink alcohol," Madge pointed out. "You have to celebrate that."

"But we're not in Europe," Peeta frowned. "There's still three years until I can do anything like that and I'm not sure I even want to do it then." The idea of drinking alcohol and doing drugs or having sex had never attracted him at all. All he could think about was what it did to people. Inibreated them, damaged them, gave them diseases, it just didn't seem worth it for a momentary high.

A brisk air bristled past, raising the hair on the back of Peeta's neck. He got the unsettling feeling that they were being watched but when he looked over his shoulder, nothing was there. Just the damp roadside and the grassy banks that flanked it.

"You know what they say about these woods," said Delly, finally giving up on her heels and carrying them in her hand. She pointed to each side, to where the road melted into trees. Peeta hoped to god that she didn't walk on any glass or sharp stones because they weren't in the position right now to deal with that.

"What?" asked Katniss.

"They're haunted," Delly answered, trying to make her voice sound spooky.

Madge snorted. "With what? Ghosts?" she asked, her tone bored.

Delly shook her head. "No. There's old legends about vampires and werewolves who live in alliance together deep in the trees."

"What? Like Twilight shit?" Madge asked. Her voice was teasing, humouring Delly and her fantiscal story about supernatural beings. "Aren't vampires and werewolves supposed to hate each other?"

Peeta somehow found himself defending Delly. "Not all vampire and werewolf stories are based around Twilight. No one seems to think about Dracula by Ben Stoker or The Other Side by Eric Stenbock when someone mentions one or both of those supernatural beings. No, everyone just immediately jumps to Meyer's destruction of both monsters in her silly frilly Twilight series."

Katniss chuckled. "Okay, shimmer down you book slut," she teased.

When not being teased by his friends and called 'Peeta-pie' they very often called him the book slut of the group. He was extremely fascinated with literature and would always bring a book somewhere with him. Except for tonight because he didn't want to risk one of his books getting destroyed if it rained. Peeta didn't mind the nick name that much. In fact, he prefered it over Peeta-pie.

"The legend says that the vampires and werewolves, every eighteen years, steal a baby from its cradle and give it a lycan or vampire bite. These children are then returned and kidnapped again on their eighteenth birthday to become the leader of their community. But, some day, one of the children will be given both bites and they will become the leader forever," Delly explained.

Madge wasn't able to control her laughter. She had to stop in the middle of the road so she could bend over and get it all out. Everyone stood watching her, unable to decipher whether she was okay or physically dying on the ground. Eventually she calmed down and said breathlessly, "You're just making it up because it's Peeta's eighteenth."

"Am not!" Delly protested. "It's true!"

"I wouldn't believe that rubbish anyway," Katniss sniffed. "I don't believe in anything I can't see."

Peeta's eyebrows knitted together in a frown. "What about gravity?" he asked.

Katniss paused. Peeta could practically see the cogs turning in her mind. "I can see the effects it has. It keeps us on the ground so it is therefore real," she finally explained. Okay, fair enough.

Just as she spoke, the sky rumbled. Peeta looked up just in time for the rain to splatter his face. They all ran to the side of the road and huddled under the trees, where the downpour was less heavy due to the leaves catching the water. Peeta peered out and directed his eyes to the sky. The clouds were thick and dark grey. No way they were going to be able to walk the remaining twenty one miles. It looked like a storm was coming.

"Just fucking perfect," Madge cursed.

Delly hopped around, trying to keep her balance as she pulled her shoes back on. Peeta offered his elbow and she took it gratefully. Even though the rain had only began three minutes previous, the cold was already beginning to settle in and Peeta felt the rush of cool air through his body as it prepared itself to try and heat up. His teeth chinked together as they chattered and he felt like he was going to catch pneumonia.

"Brilliant!" Madge declared. "Just brilliant! My dress is ruined. Can this night get any worse?"

"Don't test the fates, Madge," Delly warned. For once, Madge listened. It seemed like the fates weren't to be messed with and they had made it clear through everything they had done to them over the past few hours.

"We better head back," Katniss said, saying what everyone else was thinking.

"I have Mean Girls at home?" Peeta suggested, trying to lift everyone's spirits.

"Not the sequel, right? The original?" asked Delly.

"Yeah, the original."

"Okay then! Let's go, back to Peeta's!"

Something stopped them. A low growl ran out, so deep it vibrated through Peeta's bones and forced out a shiver in response. A wild animal of some sort? The woods were famous for their wild animals, one of the reasons why the supernatural stories Delly described had arose in the first place.

Peeta turned around slowly, his heart in his throat, trying not to show fear. The girls mimicked him, not wanting to have their backs to whatever creature was behind them.

A large dog-like creature crouched a metre away, it's green eyes glistening in the darkness. Its teeth were bared, each one sharp as a knife, and drool leaked and snapped out of its mouth. Peeta ushered the girls behind him, feeling a duty as the oldest to look after them. It was his fault they were all out here anyway. If this animal was about to attack, the others should at least have a chance at running.

Rain water dampened his hair and beaded on his eyelashes. The wolf didn't move and Peeta's vision began to blurr. He was frozen with fear, too afraid to even wipe his eyes so he could keep the animal in his eyeline. If he moved to suddenly, it might attack. And if it attacked, he stood no chance of surviving.

"Remember," Katniss whispered, "it's more afraid of you than you are of it."

As if hearing her voice, the creature snarled angrily. Delly whimpered, pressing her face against Peeta's back in fear. As he stared right into the creature's eyes, Peeta wondered if it could hear how fast his heart was beating, see how truly frightened he was.

Then, as if it had been jolted to life, the animal lunged.

A/N: Let me know what you think! As previously said, reviews are greatly appreciated! (: