Hunt

Chapter 11: The Bravepelt Incident

It's a warm night, uncomfortably so. Nothing like the weeks prior. A freak heatwave had hit the region, bringing record high temperatures even into the early hours of the morning. Nonetheless the sixty or so of us stalk through the underbrush. Slowly. Quietly. The full moon hanging low in the hazy sky, a constant reminder that we aren't alone out here in the dark. Our target is the Bravepelt pack, a ragtag werewolf pack that've been stirring up a mess of trouble after peaceful negotiations fell through. We've managed to track them down to a small cluster of cabins about a mile off the main service road.

A nudge on my arm alerts me to the immediate flanking by Amelia Harland. "Psst! Hey! You hear the briefing? I didn't really have a good position to hear." She whispers to me.

"No, not really. Something about ambushing them in the cabins. That's all I know." I whisper back, having not really heard the briefing as well. Between the two of us we had very little idea of the current plan, something that didn't really sit right with me but I didn't want to ask Paul or Sam about it now. That time has long since passed.

"Well are you ready for the test tomorrow?" Amelia asks, changing the subject to school.

"Should be. As long as there aren't any curveballs thrown our way." I reply in a hushed whisper. Amelia and I had grown to be good friends since we both found out we share a hobby. It was all we really talked about besides our schoolwork.

"Hey!" A loud whisper ahead of us is directed our way. "Keep it down! Do you want to give us away?!" Paul growls back to the two of us. He had a way of making even whispers more threatening than the monsters we were supposed to be fighting. This time was no exception.

Again we all fall to silence. The slow creep towards the cabins was taking longer than I thought it would, but I wasn't about to begin complaining about it on my first real hunt. It felt like the training wheels were being taken off for the first time, I was high on the adrenaline of being able to prove myself. I would be able to show everyone just how capable I was.

A few whispers can be heard here and there from the other hunters, one catching my ear: "Anything from Amy? She was supposed to report back to us a while ago."

Someone else whispers a response. "No, nothing. Something doesn't feel right here."

"Well we can't let them slip away now, we've been cleaning up their messes for weeks now..."

I didn't really know what was going on, I'd been briefed along with everyone else back in town, but with how many of us there were I wasn't able to really hear anything. I remember that we were going to fight werewolves and the whole pack. The meeting room was quite packed and I was crushed between Paul and Sam near the back. Some people had concerns with having two first blood hunters on the team but Amelia and I were both vouched for quite aggressively. It was quite a boost to my confidence that both Paul and Sam had my back. It made me feel like I was really apart of the group, something that up until now wasn't the case.

Just as we begin to see the lights of the cabins we're motioned to stop. Tension arcing like electricity among the group. I have never felt so nervous and alive.

"Wait... they're empty! All of them!" A whisper goes up to my left. A man pulling the binoculars down from his eyes.

"Nonsense, surely they didn't..." The reply is drowned out by sudden and frantic shouting from behind us. I whip around just in time to see the man behind me being dragged off into the darkness. In the low light he vanishes before anyone can react.

"It's an ambush!" Nick's voice shouts out as someone launches a flare into the sky above the treetops, illuminating the dark forest around us in a deep bloody crimson.