Hunt

Chapter 39: Monsters 101

School was now in session, and Julie turns out to be a great student. She scribbles down every word I say, easily filling a journal full of information in one sitting. Her own version of my hunting journal, personalized to her needs. She would ask questions when she had them and I would do my best to give her an answer.

"Wait a minute... so vampires don't convert people through their bites?" She asks during my recounting of vampires.

"Nope. Otherwise I'd have become one a long time ago. There's a certain ritual that needs to take place for someone to become a vampire." I explain, "But most are just born a vampire. It's kind of luck of the draw. It's not genetic and it's impossible to predict."

"So they aren't immortal undead?" Julie asks.

"Not undead. But vampires are biologically immortal, given that they have constant access to blood and something doesn't take them out."

Julie scribbles something down in the journal. "Gotcha, so like blood sucking lobsters..."

I can't suppress the laugh that erupts from my mouth, I hadn't heard that before but it was spot on. I know that Heather would hate it if anyone called her a lobster. I flip through my own journal, making note of Julie's lobster comment under my own vampire notes. We had already gone through a vast majority of the contents within. Alphabetizing my journal was probably the smartest thing I've done in recent memory.

Julie looks up from the notebook, "What about the sun? It doesn't seem to turn Heather to ash like in all the movies."

I nod along to Julie's question. Finding the information in my own book, "It doesn't turn them to ash, but it does affect them. Heather has said that it's like a constant weight being pushed down on her. It makes them slower, which ends up making them easier to deal with. It also tends to be worse for them when they haven't fed off someone in a while."

Julie scribbles down the information.

"Alright... got werewolves up next." I say as I flip to the page to the section based on lycanthropy. There were a couple monsters between vampires and lycans but I had little to no information on them or the experience to accurately teach Julie about them. Despite the danger of being a Hunter, where we live is relatively safe in comparison to some places I've heard about. Paul has some real horror stories about his earlier hunting days.

"Seems like that's your thickest section in that thing." Julie says, eyeing my journal.

I nod. "Yeah, seems so. I've had more run-ins with lycanthropes that I'd like to admit. I also hold a bit of a grudge towards them."

There's an awkward silence, I can't help but think of Reyna when I say that.

"Alright!" I exclaim. Breaking the silence before it gets too drawn out. "Let's get into it..."

Our talk of werewolves was the most in-depth talk that we've had yet, not lending credence to a claim that I don't have a preferred monster to hunt. Julie had the most questions on this subject, as the topic of lycanthropy was her entry point into this crazy world. A second notebook begins to fill up quickly as I answer all the questions she has. And she did have quite a lot of them.

"So I understand that they're pack oriented. But what's the structure typically? Is it what we see in movies or books?" She asks.

"Believe it or not, a lot of books that depict werewolves in packs do it rather well." I say. "There is an Alpha at the top, followed by the Betas. They tend to be the family of the alpha or very trusted members of the pack. After that we see the rest of the pure werewolves. Followed by those turned and cursed the traditional way."