Children of The Moon Chronicles: Echo (Book I)

Chapter 9

The day went by quick, before we knew it, night was falling once more. We feasted on leftovers once again, it’s good that Beuregard has lots of cafes and delis and only a few homeless people, we don’t need to steal or beg for food, all we need is to dig into the trashcans near the cafes and delis to feed ourselves. We used taps on public restrooms to drink and keep water on plastic bottles. We had washed ourselves but we still stank pretty bad that I was sure that Alex could smell us from the harbor of Caul.

We watched the HQ carefully and learned that the guard got relieved of their duty every six hours, the horses stayed, they were fed and tended carefully by one long-haired man in dark clothes with a sour expression on his face. None of the Hunters we’d seen with Scianna went out the whole time we were watching, and she never went out as well.

According to some of the people we asked (other homeless people of Beuregard) the HQ was an apartment, owned by a man who was known as J.W. Howard, though what J.W. stands for, no one knows.

We were eating our dinner (consisting of half-eaten pork, a wilted salad and some chicken legs with more bones than meat) when Iyanna suddenly said:

“Why don’t we just attacked and kill them all, Echo?”

I looked at her, surprise by the cold, serious tone of her voice.

“What?” I asked even though I had heard.

“I said, why don’t we just attack and kill them all? Then, we’ll take Scianna with us and go back to the Young Ones. We can do it, you know. The Hunters are not ready for us, we’re stronger and faster than them, maybe it’s time to give them a taste of their own medicine.”

I stared into her silvery grey eyes and fought a shiver.

I now realized that there was something her eyes, something dangerous and feral like an animal long asleep and just waiting for the right moment to wake. Her eyes were the lightest and coldest shade of gray that I have ever seen.

“We can’t do that, you know we can’t. We’re not animals, Iyanna and we’re not going to step down into the Hunters’ level. We are not going to be like them, murderers and slaughterers. It’s against our laws to attack people without being provoke.” I said firmly.

Iyanna smiled bitterly.

“But they’re provoking us, Echo. They’ve been provoking us for years’, murdering our family, hunting us, isn’t that provocation for you? The truth is, we’re all fools, allowing them to walk over us, letting them to treat us as if we we’re animals whose lives are of no importance. Since they think that we’re animals, why don’t we show them what an animal is really capable of? We should fight back, kill them all, burn their houses to the ground the way they did ours. Then some of them will be orphans, then they will know what losing love ones feels like, what being hunted feels like. I want them to feel the pain, Echo. The pain we all felt, even pain is not enough. I want them all gone, tortured to their deaths, the way they torture every shape-shifter they capture alive.”

“We are not fools, Iyanna, but we’re not cold-blooded murderers either. Besides, they’ve also suffered losses, everytime they attack us, there are always casualties on their side, the Hunters we’ve killed might have a child who misses them terribly, a mother and a wife who grieves for them, a family who needs them and yearns for their presence---__”