Hunters, Hunted (Wolfblood Fanfiction)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Maddy

As I hop through the undergrowth I make a silent vow never to tease Jana about her fascination with toilet paper ever again because, in the middle of a cold winter’s night, it’s another one of those things I sorely miss. I always take myself right off towards the river, away from camp to go to the toilet because I can’t get my head around how everyone else just goes outside their shelters. It’s disgusting.

            So now I have to go all the way back, though it doesn’t bother me too much because it’s a beautiful frosty twilight and I wasn’t really going to sleep anyway. I can’t escape the thoughts that have preyed on me since last night: one being how Rhydian coped all on his own, and the other being how terrifyingly close to being wild I was. No, how wild I was full stop. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

            As I near camp, I slowly pull myself up, listening. The night is still and calm, but too still. Too quiet. The woods are never silent, never without life stirring somewhere. Except for now. I cock my head slightly, intent on the sound of nothingness that is so utterly wrong that I don’t know what to make of it.

            Which is when I hear Ceri’s scream.

            I’m off like a shot towards camp. In that split second the forest around me has exploded with noises, most of them completely unfamiliar, all of them terrifying. My instinct screams at me to run but not in the direction I’m taking so that I have to force myself to stay on track, head towards the danger. My family is there, and Rhydian’s, and Jana, and I can’t just flee from them. What could it be? Another wild animal? Another pack? Humans? What kind of humans?

            Onwards I crash, not heeding the noise I myself am making, and only lurch to a standstill when I reach the edge of camp and hear the echo of a shotgun. I can hardly breathe with the rate my heart is going: all I can see in the darkness is the vague form of moving shapes, some wolf, some human, and the bright white glare of flashlights darting between them. Screams and howls ricochet through my body, jarring me.

            I skirt camp, desperately looking for my parents or for Bryn or Jana, running straight into one of the packs omegas before she bolts in the opposite direction. She’s gone before I can call out to her. I weave onwards, so far undetected, and in the same moment that I see my mother in the deadly grip of Dr Whitewood a torch beam blinds me.

            “Run, Maddy!” Mum screams at me. I can’t leave her. “Just run!” She cries again as Whitewood shoves a hand across her mouth. In the second I hesitate, frozen by the light, another shot rings out and something light buries itself in my thigh, tearing a cry from my own lips. It’s enough to drag the instinct up and out and turn me, give me the power I need to fly over the ground and away, no time to feel guilty, no time to wonder what it is that’s in my leg. I rocket through the trees half-blind in the dark, the sounds of my fleeing pack growing more and more distant, the shotgun going off again and again.

            The world tilts, twists, my vision stretching and blurring, losing its colour. I am fighting to keep moving, to stay upright, to avoid the trees that suddenly loom towards me as if they are people. I am dizzy and so tired it’s unbelievable. My feet don’t want to move anymore, my head doesn’t want to hold itself up. With one final effort I try to get down behind a bank but my leg doesn’t lift properly and catches a root and I’m falling, falling, falling into the night.