Xenomorphic

Chapter 31: Cain

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

May 20, 2007

Medicine Bow National Forest

Nighttime

Cain, the name the hybrid had decided to call himself, did not know what he watching.

Since that amazing hunt in Washington, the hybrid had been remarkably bored, especially with the lack of worthy prey. So, he had eventually struck out, leaving his lair behind for a time as he hunted for more prey. By the grace of some deity, he had happened across a massive set of pawprints. Dozens of paw prints.

Wolves, mostly, with one set of human prints. Judging by the size of the wolf prints, these were larger animals, not as big as the ones in Forks, but bigger than your average lupus. Judging by the human print, it was a man, thirties, about 6'2 and 193 pounds. Further, based on the spacing of the prints, Cain determined that this pack was running, and they were running fast.

Why a human was travelling with a pack of wolves this big was a mystery to Cain, but it was one he intended to find out. With that, the hybrid set out on his next great hunt.

For months did Cain track this pack all across the continental U.S. From the forests of western Washington all the way to the Appalachian Mountains in the far east, the bayous of the South, the wheat fields of Kansas, all the way up to Oregon. There were a few times when Cain caught up to his prey, and he did battle with them, only it was not the pack itself but a few wolves, most likely sent to Delay him to as to allow the others to escape.

Unlike the breed in Forks, these wolves were smaller, but they were faster, had more numbers, and better coordination. Still, from early October to the present, Cain had singlehandedly cut the pack down to half its original size. While he couldn't bring his trophies with him, unfortunately, he did make several lairs across the continent that contained his prizes, safe and unseen from the public eye.

Never the she-wolves though, for they were needed to repopulate the game.

When Cain tracked the pack to northern Oregon, he noticed a drastic difference in the tracks. For one, they were closer together, indicating slower movement. Two, the distance between rest areas had decreased, indicating burdened movement. Three, there were exactly 20 sets of tracks that weren't there before.

All female, all very young, the sizes of the tracks indicating ages of about ten to seventeen. There were three distinct groups, two of six and one of seven, with a single girl, about thirteen or fourteen, by herself, in front of the female procession. How strange...Cain knew that there was a human male leading the wolf pack, with other humans sporadically popping up here and there within the rest sites, leading Cain to believe that the wolves were also shapeshifters, but why human girls?

Breeding, perhaps?

However, what were twenty girls between the ages of ten and seventeen doing in the forests of Oregon, far from any human civilization, with no signs of camping equipment or vehicles within miles of where they were presumably kidnapped. On the subject of breeding, at each of the rest sites Cain found and examined, there were no scents of sexual intercourse that lingered in the air, except for the same one that had been a constant since October.

So why did the wolves take a troupe of females, some of which weren't even old enough to be bred? And why put them into groups, presumably bound? Speaking of binding, from all the tracks and scents, the wolves hadn't even let any of the females away from their groups...last time Cain checked, females still urinated and defecated, yet there were no new scat scents at the rest sites.