Hunter: Eclipse

Chapter 10

The small group that gathered in the conference room were all straight-faced and silent. Someone coughed as we entered, and the eerie quiet that greeted us shouldn't have been possible with twenty or so people in such a small space. It wasn't even the nice room that I'd found the week before on level twelve; which may have been a good thing as I think I left the cushions on the floor from where I took a nap after deciding to drink two bottles of the champagne I found in the archives section. There was a chance the cleaner that had woke me up from the other room had tidied up my mess. Then again, maybe they didn't.

Either way, there was a much nicer room upstairs that we should be using, especially if Gonzo was so important. This one had the chairs without the wheels and the itchy fabric covering them. Plus there were no windows, and seeing the vampires that all sat together at the other end of the table, it did make sense to be in here. V wasn't among them, which kind of surprised me. In fact, he wasn't here at all.

"Sit," Ailin muttered as she moved towards the middle of the table, subtly motioning to the empty space between a werewolf and the familiar face of the witch, Carole.

I smiled at her as she looked away from her notebook. "Hey, Carole!"

"Ms Bunting." She greeted with nowhere near as much as enthusiasm, but she still smiled back.

She'd been the one to give me a tip about the case of champagne and catching the werewolves eye, the rather hairy man seemed quite content to try and resemble one of the beasts even as a human. His hair was in knots, needed a wash and a cut, maybe not in that order, and I wondered if perhaps they just dragged him out of the wilderness as a leaf sticking out behind his ear caught my attention.

"Love what you've done with your hair." I mused, making Carole snort beside me.

It then occurred to me, this wasn't the usual group Ailin called together for a meeting. Apart from Carole, and Gonzo, of course, none of the people here looked familiar. Ailin didn't sit. Instead, she stood with her hands at her chest almost as if she was going to clap.

"Thank you all for coming on such short notice." She started with.

"Why is she here?" The wolf beside me growled; the she he was referring to was obviously me.

"Ssh. The people are talking." I hushed him, causing a deeper and slightly more menacing rumble to leave him.

"She is here because she needs to hear this," Ailin carried on, giving me a look to shut up as she did so. "The treaty we swore to protect by accepting our place within this organisation is yet again under threat. With the events of the last few years only acting as a trigger to those that have always been against the laws of this realm, an uprising is-"

"Let them try. They will fail as all the others have." One of the vampires spoke up.

"Perhaps. You know as well as I do Tish, this time is different." Ailin sighed.

"Your answer is the god-killer? She is but a girl." Genzo spoke up now, looking at me with more concentration than I was comfortable with.

"I know Gonzo! And we girls are just so-"

"She is, yet what she lacks with age she makes up for in other ways. Elise, there will be another war." Stepping in yet again, Ailin managed to keep control of the table, though the blue idiot turns a darker shade so now he's more blueberry than blue sky. "You came into your power when they opened up the portal to the other world. You survived the Warlocks attack on our way of life, not just for the supernatural, but for the world. You have journeyed into the realm of the first gods. You defeated their supreme king. I do not know what will happen, but I need to know you will stand with us and do it again."