Hunter

Chapter 3

17 years later.

1818.

"No, Agate! Come back here!"

Every day was the same: I had to fight my own daughter to dress her up. Agate was running around the kitchen table to prevent me from putting her dress on her, followed by our faithful dog, Ul. She was only 4 and already managed to drive her father nuts. I was strating to lose patience.  Going in circles around this table in an infinite loop was starting to seriously weight on me.

"Arthur! I need your help!"

In my back, the noise of the stairs resounded as my son came down. I took two steps in a way which would allow me to keep an eye on Agate and see Arthur come in at the same time.  A few seconds later, he appeared and casually leaned on the wooden door frame which served as an entry for the kitchen. I stared at him with intensity but he just grinned.

Mocking me was his favorite hobby.

"Well, what's going on?"

"Idiot! Catch your sister!"

Arthur put a knee down on the floor and simply called his little sister over. She came swiflty without a fuss. I sighed, put out to see how he could have her do anything so easily.

"Well? Someone doesn't want to get dressed up?" he said, picking up his sister.

Agate caught his hair and pulled on it. Arthur kindly struggled to make her laugh. His raven black hair was not done and rose in cowlicks in every directions, even in front of his gold speckled brown eyes.

I watched my children play. They had grown up. They were beautiful. I regretted Susanne was not here anymore to see them now.

A few days after Arthur's arrival, she had given birth to a stillborn baby and a few years later we had managed to conceive Agate. This wonderful child with hair as blond as her mother's and the grey-blue eyes of her father. Susanne had died giving birth to her. At the time, Arthur was 13.

I let my painful memories behind me and walked to my children. I gave Arthur his sister's clothing and he dressed her up straight away.

"I will be in my office if you need me."

"Tonight's intervention?" Arthur asked.

I nodded.

In appearance, I was a scientist. However, Arthur new the real nature of my job, although he ignored the truth about his birth mother and his origins.

With drawling steps, I went upstairs and headed for my office, entered and locked behind me. As I turned the key in the lock, I heard the satisfactory clang of the closing bolt. I did not want Arthur to discover things which would lead him to cross path with the research I conducted beside my work. For sometime now, a worry grew in me. When I had brought him home, seventeen years earlier, I had been convinced of one thing: Arthur had not inherited the werewolf gene. He had not turned the night his mother was killed, and at the time it had appeared to me as proof he was human. However, for sometime now, this certainty had been shaken.

I had thus started some research. I looked for every piece of information ever documented on werewolves. For a few months now, Arthur's nights had been agitated, especially during full moons. Which had put me on high alert. Agitated sleep, nightmares... sometimes, his nose would even bleed and his head ache.

Arthur did not talk about it. He was far too proud. But his room was close to mine and several times I had born witness to his brutal awakings in the middle of the night.

Sadly, my research remained vain. Deep down, I knew the worse could happen, yet I refused to see it. It was about my son.

I focussed on the preparation for tonight's intervention. I had think of something else... Like a good vampire hunt.