Hunter's Moon

Hunted

His arm burned, every movement lodging the bullet deeper into the muscle. He kept running, gaining ground on his pursuers. A shot rang out behind him, the round slamming into a tree next to him. He flinched, tripped on the overgrowth, and threw his arms forward to catch his fall.

A howl of pain escaped from him before he clamped his mouth shut. The forest fell eerily silent.

The young man rose, stars spotting his vision, but he refused to die here. He had a brother and sister at home eagerly awaiting his return. Gritting his teeth, he pushed on, the pursuing footfalls getting closer. Thoughts of his siblings kept his muscles flexing.

When his knees started to buckle, he dove into the thickest brush he could find. If he kept running, he would pass out, and then the Hunters would have him. The thorns bit into his arm, pulling at the bullet wound. Snarling in pain, he got an idea. In order to get back to his brother and sister, he needed to get the bullet out.

But time was running short.

He picked a stick up off the ground and bit down on it. Focusing on the taste of dirt, he stuck his finger into the wound and used his nail to widen it enough to fit two fingers. Groaning through the stick, he found the bullet in his muscle. With as much care as he could manage, he extracted the round, grunting when it hit the ground.

"Did you hear that?"

A twig snapped near him. The Hunters were close. If his nose worked right, there were four of them pursuing him. Not a bad number, but not necessarily easy either. They had caught up while he was distracted with the bullet. But his arm felt better now, with less burning.

His muscles clenched when another twig snapped. They were creeping closer. They must know he stopped running by now. Steadying his breathing, he focused on narrowing down their positions. Two of them were south of him, there was one on the right, and one on the left. He wasn't completely surrounded but he felt a rise of panic as if he were. The Hunters would figure out his hiding place and he then he would be surrounded, if he wasn't shot first.

"He couldn't have gone far," the Hunter on the right whispered before he got shushed.

The brush shifted, his legs tightened, and he had to close his throat to keep from snarling. The barrel of a rifle pushed through the branches, next to the boy. His consciousness shifted to a more primal sense.

Lightning fast, he snatched the weapon and pulled it inside his hiding place, the Hunter following with a yelp of surprise. The boy's fist connected with the Hunter's face. There was a knife on the Hunter's waist, and the boy grabbed at it. They struggled as the Hunters hollered from outside the brush. The boy managed to get his hand around the hilt, yanking it from the holster and slitting the Hunter's throat. Blood splattered his face as the Hunter gurgled above him.

The young man shoved the body off and pushed to his feet. The Hunters were hollering still, wary at firing their weapons and hitting their comrade. He sprang through the remaining brush and took off sprinting through the forest after shoving a Hunter to the ground. In surprise, he shot off a round.

The teen's feet kicked up dirt from his speed, adrenaline coursing through his body as his survival instinct took over. His eyes sharpened, his hearing increased, and his nostrils flared at the assault of new scents.

In his haste to escape, he didn't notice the tripwire laid across the ground. A flash of pain in his ankle and he tumbled to the ground, mouth filling with dirt. Coughing out the soil, a boot slammed into his side, forcing him to roll over. A new rifle hovered in front of his face, an angry man at the other end of the barrel.

"Thought you could trick us, huh, boy?" the Hunter asked, cocking the gun. "We know what you are."

The other two came up beside him, grinning at their triumph. The young man looked between the three, the oldest one holding the rifle to his face. When he grinned, the younger Hunters dropped their smiles.

Spitting out the rest of the dirt, he told them, "Apparently you don't know me at all, or you would have brought more men with you." His felt his eyes change, barely seeing the Hunters' eyes widen as he let the beast take over.

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2nd draft