The Hunters

Chapter 1

"Anything?" Stillinski asked, his voice full of hope.

"Sorry, Sheriff, it was another dead end," Scott quickly added on to that. "But Mason and Corey are looking into another lead right now. We'll find him."

"It's been over three months, Scott," Stillinski said sadly. He was giving up, Scott could tell.

"I know, but I'm not giving up. I won't stop looking until we find him," Just then, Liam started calling him. "Listen, I gotta go. I'll let you know what Mason and Corey found out."

"Okay, bye."

Scott sighed before answering the other call, "What is it, Liam?"

"Scott, we got a problem," Scott immediately perked up at Liam's urgent tone. "A group of hunters came into Beacon Hills today. They killed the Omegas."

"All of them? There was over a dozen," Scott asked, surprised.

A feral alpha had come into Beacon Hills a couple of weeks ago and had been turning people into werewolves left and right. It was mostly joggers in the Preserve or whatever dumb teenage couple ran off into the woods to make out. The Alpha was more animal than human. He didn't turn people for a pack. If so, he wouldn't have bitten some twelve-year-old boy whose body they had found last week. He was doing it for sport. The Omegas were just a bonus to his fun. Like how people who hunt wild game just so happen to get a few meals out of whatever poor animal they had been hunting.

The people he turned typically hid out in the woods, occasionally wandering into town, unless the alpha called them, so they had started calling them the Omegas. They hadn't been able to catch any of them. Thank goodness there hadn't been a full moon since they had been turned. That many new werewolves in one place would have been a massacre.

"We found 'em all in a clearing together in the Preserve. We brought a couple of bodies to Argent to see what he knew."

"Where are you now?" Scott asked, grabbing the keys to his bike.

"The animal clinic," Liam replied.

"I'll be right there."

*****

Scott rushed into the animal clinic to see Argent, Derek, Liam, Corey, Mason, Theo, Malia, and Lydia crowded around two bodies on exam tables, "Anything?"

"See these marks," Argent pointed to the bodies, two young men, probably only twenty. "There were four different weapons used: a crossbow, a blade of some kind, a gun, and a spear."

"So, four hunters, at least?" Scott asked.

Argent nodded. He crossed his arms and leaned back, staring at the bodies, "I think. . . I may know who it is."

When Argent said nothing more, Scott pressed him, "Who?"

"I've heard rumors," Argent started. "About an old group of hunters, a company, really, called WICKED. I don't know what it stands for, no one does. And no one's heard anything from them for years According to my sources, they had one more training facility that no one knew about, and for good reason. They did awful things there."

"What kind of things?" Malia asked.

"They kidnapped kids, mostly teenagers who had been affected by the supernatural. They wiped their memories and trained them to be hunters. A couple of weeks ago, a few managed to break out and take down the last of the people who worked there. All of them got their memories back and went home to their old lives, except for the four leaders of the group. Three boys and a girl who call themselves the Gladers, which is supposedly in memory of the ones who didn't make it."

The others glanced at each other before Mason spoke up, "What do you mean, 'the ones who didn't make it'?"

"Their training program was long and harsh. Not all of the kids made it. Most of them didn't make it. They originally kidnapped two hundred and only twenty made it out alive."

A deafening silence filled the room before Theo spoke up, "They really live up to their name, huh?"

"Yeah, tell me about it," Malia answered. "I mean, the number one rule of naming anything is making sure it has a good acronym."

"So what do we do now?" Liam asked.

"We need to figure out what we're up against," Malia said. "We need to see what they're capable of.

"I have an idea," Derek spoke, for the first time that night. "I found the alpha's hideout earlier. He's got this cave on the edge of the Preserve. It's barely within the county limits. Based on how fast the Gladers have taken out the Omegas, they'll be going after the Alpha pretty soon."

"As in tonight," Scott realized what he was suggesting. "So we go to the Alpha's cave and wait until the Gladers come. We watch and see if they're dangerous."

"Not to be a downer, here, but what do you think they're going to do when they find a pack watching them from the shadows? Have a nice little chit-chat about this weather we've been having?" Theo asked, sarcastically.

"I'll go," Corey said, causing everyone to look at him. "They won't be able to see me and the rest of you just hang around nearby. "

"No," Scott said immediately and Mason looked very happy with his reaction. "You're not going alone. They've taken out all the Omegas in less than a day and we don't even know what they're capable of. If they find you spying, they might kill you on the spot. Plus, the Alpha will know you're there."

"Just stay close by and listen to see if I need you," Corey countered. "The Alpha won't care about me when he's got four hunters to deal with. I have to be touching someone for them to be invisible and more than just me could be even more dangerous than me alone."

Scott was about to argue some more, but Argent cut him off, "That's the best plan we have. Let me give you a gun, just in case."

"Corey," Mason said to his boyfriend who gave him a please-don't-argue-with-me kind of look. "Just. . . be careful. Please."

Corey smiled at took Mason's hand in his own, "Always."

"If you guys are gonna start making out, could you at least get a room?"

"Malia!" Lydia elbowed her side softly.

"What? We were all thinking it."

*****

Scott approached a very nervous Mason while Corey was getting a quick gun safety lesson from Argent, "Hey, Mason."

Mason stopped nervously chewing his nails to look at Scott, "Yeah?"

"Did you guys find anything about Stiles?" He asked.

"Sorry, Scott," Mason said, frowning sadly. "It was another dead end. The guy we were looking into has only taken people from this one college in New Mexico. We were planning on calling the cops there to tell them about-"

But Scott had stopped listening when Mason had started off with saying. "sorry".

I was reading this book again after uploading the prologue and realized this was very cringey and bad, so I'm going to be doing some editing for a bit. I'll post in an author's note when I'm done.