THE RANGER

Chapter 1.

I take a sip of the extremely rich coffee and let out a sigh of relief. As I sat there thinking I became afraid of the task ahead. As brave as I, Clifford. B. Ranger had become over the years, my next mission sent a chill down my spine. Because of the severity and intensity of this task, I was forced to team up with my older brother, Thomas.

I look up and stare at the clock, 10:08, he's late as usual. Suddenly a tall tan figure struts into the doors. He winks at the waitress then comes by my table and slaps my head.

"Enjoying the coffee lil sis?"
"Oh shut up Tom!"

He chuckles and I stare at the ceiling. I let out another sigh and tell him to cut straight to business and not to joke around with unnecessary rubbish.

As he talks my mind drifts off to the first time I worked with Tom. I was 18 and as Ranger family tradition had it when a male turned 18 he would become a hunter. Now I had never been given this background lesson before and my brother suggested to me that it would be fun to spend my birthday in Nepal. I agreed to go with him but little did I know that a rouge werewolf wandered the mountainous paths of Nepal. As I lay in the tent, fast asleep Tom woke me up.

"Get up sissy, dress warm we gotta go!"
"Go where, what's going on, Tom!!?"

My brother has a chronic problem of not replying when you say something to him but in fear I hastily did as he had said. I had to jog to keep up with his pace and I was ready to give him a piece of my mind when I saw it.

The monstrous beast which stood at approximately 2 and a half meters stood towering us. It turned, growled then began to move toward us. I froze dead in my tracks and I promise you I could have crapped myself.

I would have died if Thomas didn’t yank me out of its path when it hurled itself at me. Panting and perplexed I lay on the ground trying to comprehend what had transpired. As the beast got up I looked at Tom and he simply smiled. What? He handed me a crossbow and a quiver of silver tipped bronze arrows. Once armed I felt a sense of power and the feeling that I could actually survive. It all felt surreal but even in a dream, I could not be killed by a myth. Standing up I carefully drew my arrow, focused, and fired. Well off the target. What a flop, I looked at Tom who shook his head in disappointment. I had missed a perfect chance to kill this thing, and all I had done was further aggravate the beast.

I began to run away but noticed that my high school gold medals in track events were useless in this rough, uneven terrain against an opponent of this nature. I heard a gunshot and a growl. Suddenly it stopped chasing me and shifted attention to Tom. He was buying me time so I loafed my crossbow, said a silent prayer before I turned to see Thomas on the ground with a broken leg. I screamed and the wolf again began to chase me.

Oh God, I turned and ducked and found myself behind the wolf. Desperate I ran to Thomas and took his handgun, sweet gun, loaded with the precious silver bullets. I had to act fast with the wolf now in point blank range I closed my eyes and fired 5 times. The cracking sound filled the air just before a deafening silence took its place. I opened one eye to find a pale bloody man with the ugliest moustache on mother earth looking at me.

“Curse you Ranger” he muttered.

This was before he collapsed and died. I was traumatized but could not get one thing out of my head.

“That, that thing knew my name,” I stuttered to Thomas, “it knows me?”
“They all do,” he calmly said, “our family has been     killing these bastards since the 1700’s”
“What?” I asked, perplexed, but no response came my way.

I recover from my flashback and see Thomas finishing off my coffee.
“Wake up baby girl," he jokes
“ Oh Shut up Thomas, just get on with why you called me here!”
"I tried, but you've been gone for about 6 minutes, anyway the basic dilemma is that there is a pack in Cambodia”
“Finally,” ever since Nepal I had been taking on Solo wolves, 4 years now and it was getting boring. I  was craving for a real challenge and an enormous grin began to spread across my face
“Lets go hit ‘em!” I exclaimed
“I knew you’d pull through kid!”
“I’m not a kid...”
No response again, Thomas can be a real pain at times.

We decided to pack our stuff and head for Cambodia. Wolves alone were dangerous and deadly but wolves in a pack were an impenetrable force. Wolves drew their power from one big bad wolf, the Alpha. Take down the alpha and these others become regular werewolves, they lose the extra power, pace and the 5th sense of anticipation making them much easier to destroy.
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We arrived in Cambodia and were met by a priest. Chanda was a plump man and he took us to his church.
He sat us down and gave us coffee, oh my! This coffee was much better than the one in Britain. I made a mental note that when I retire I should live in Cambodia, for the coffee.

Anyway, the problem was that these wolves had lived in Cambodia for over 25 years but we were never alerted because they had made a deal with Chanda. The terms of their deal were quite fair, the locals would leave 10 fat cows and 15 pigs out in the moor every Wednesday night and the beasts wouldn't harm the locals.

"Then one cold evening tragedy stuck, the Alpha wolf's oldest son murder his father. There was turmoil in the pack, the son came hear to my church. He said his name was Drawl. He told me he had an ultimatum. He said that the animals they had been giving my father were sufficient for his pack but he as the alpha wolf demanded a bit more of a meal, to differentiate himself from the rest of the other scrawny wolves. I asked him what he could possibly want and he said human meat."

Chanda then broke down.
"What's wrong Papa C?"
Papa C (Chanda) then looked up and told us that he had refused this deal and the enraged youngster went upstairs and took his daughter Mia. He told the old man that the only way he'd get his daughter back was if he saw 7 young men and women in the moors by Wednesday
Night.

"Wow," I uttered. "Today is Sunday, that gives us 3 days"
Thomas looked down "I've never had to hunt something this sadistic, it's got a hostage. We can't just walk there and start killing, what if she dies and...."
"She won't die," I shouted. "Papa C, we got this.

I got up and left. I needed to rest. As I slept, I couldn't stop thinking about Papa C's daughter. Who was she. I imagined she was a pretty damsel in distress. I made it my personal mission to save her and return her in one piece.

I slept well that night and in the morning I woke up feeling fresh and rejuvenated. I wanted to go out to the moors and find this Drawl bastard. Tom and I set out to the moor late afternoon after packing and loading on supplies. The local silversmith was surprised but overwhelmed with joy when we bought silver worth $1300. We liked to smelt our own stuff so we gave the old man an extra $200 to rent out his place for the morning. He had questions but he asked the wrong person, Tom doesn't answer questions.

We arrived in the moors at dusk and set up camp, we'd hunt the next day. As I put my head down to sleep I said a short prayer then looked at the stars and whispered
"Mia, hold tight I'm coming."