Beast Hunter

Chapter Seventeen

Everyone was quiet for a moment as the truck lurched forward.

I was about to say something – I hate long silences – but I stopped when I saw Sky make her way over to the large heap in the back corner. She moved cautiously at first, approaching the creature with a steady, careful pace. Kneeling next to it, she put out her right hand and touched it to the creature's back. The unconscious Sasquatch was curled up into ball, but breathing steadily, with Sky's hand rising and falling gently with each inhale and exhale. I realized what this moment must have meant to her. She'd been searching for such a being all her life, had devoted years to it. And now was the moment she'd long been waiting for. I could only imagine what that must have felt like.

She removed her hand and turned toward Grey who was lying in a similar posture on the other side of the truck bed.

"How is he?" she asked.

"Okay," I said. "Slater hit him with some kind of tranquilizer. Same as the Sasquatch. Only it got a triple dose."

"Probably Thorazine," she said.

"Any chance that thing will wake up any time soon?" Stu asked.

I could see his concern. I'm sure in his mind he was picturing a pissed off ape-man coming to life and taking its anger out on us.

"It's doubtful," she said. "Assuming Slater was using the standard dose, it will likely be down for at least several hours. The only way to wake it right now would be to hit it with an adrenaline shot."

"What would happen if we did that?" I asked.

Sky eyed me, and with no sense of irony or exaggeration said, "Have you ever seen The Incredible Hulk?"

I got the picture. Fortunately, none of us had an adrenaline shot handy, so we weren't in danger of being on the receiving end of a Sasquatch smash, for the time being at least. Seeing as how it had gone out of its way to protect me back at the forest clearing, I'd hoped that it would continue to see me – and by extension Stu and Sky – as a friend. But who knows what goes on in the mind of a mythical beast? After being tranked and kidnapped, it might just decide to attack first and seek friendship later.

"Who is this Slater guy?" Stu asked.

It occurred to me that we hadn't been allowed to talk back at Grey's place, which meant that there was still a lot left to unpack here. But now that we were sitting in the back of the truck with all the bad guys up front in the heated cab, the muzzle had been removed.

"I don't really know," Sky said. "I've heard the name before. But it was just rumors. A boogie man from a campfire story. That's all. I never dreamed he could actually be real."

"Tell us the campfire story," I said.

Sky took a seat close to us, thinking for a moment before getting into it.

"In my field," she began, "there's a level of fantasy that one has to deal with. I've pushed against it most of my life. We're talking about hidden animal species. There's a lot of lore and myth associated with that, which can sometime muddy the waters, especially when you're trying to convince people of the legitimacy of your field. It's a big reason why I lean so heavily into the science. I do it as a way to deflect any ridicule that the myth-makers throw my way."

I could feel Stu's uneasiness at that. Being a blogger, a creative type, he was part of the story telling tradition that thrived on these myths, yet another smack on the head of the wedge that had come between them, I figured.

"But the legends are unavoidable," Sky continued. "It's impossible to move in these circles and not hear them. And one of the biggest is the tale of Horatio Slater, the Beast Hunter. It is said that he came from one of the wealthiest families in the world. Not just the country. But the whole world. Yet they managed to stay out of the public eye. They've always shunned publicity, choosing to stay hidden behind the curtain. Many believe it's because their power reaches into every major government and economic system on the planet. It's said that they are part of a small cabal of global power brokers, a sort of international super government that has been manipulating the system and pulling the strings of geopolitics for generations. As such, they are privy to every fact that has ever been hidden to the public. Every legend, every conspiracy theory, they know whether it is real or fake."