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Chapter nine (Luke)
The straps of my backpack settled gently on my back as I walked toward the gathered crowds. They were talking in hushed and excited voices, and some of their words carried to me.
“It was her,” one of them said.
“You don’t know that,” another replied.
“I saw it myself. I saw her fight them. She is just as powerful as they said. She moves like lightning.”
“There’s no way she killed the two of them. She is a skinny thing.”
I pushed past them. It was hard to imagine that they were all looking at dead bodies with the look on their faces, but I guess there is something enticing about chaos and death that excites the human mind. We love to observe it when it is detached from us, but only a number of us can actually face up to violence when it shows itself unless it is needed for our survival.
I got to the front of the crowd and was shocked by what I saw there. No one had bothered to cover them up, and I recognized them.
The Twins, they called them—a pair of very successful hunters who had never lost a bounty, at least not until now. The one closest to me had his head bent unnaturally, and he was looking up at the sky as though asking for help from it. I wondered whichone of them died first. I can still smell the anger from within them.
She must have killed one first, and then the other got angry and attacked blindly. The Twins were spoken about in whispers about how deadly they were when they attack together. They loved to work in the dark, too, because they could move quietly, even more quietly than most werewolves can achieve. It doesn’t look like they moved so quietly now.
I wished I could send them all away and try to map out how the attack happened, but they had defiled the scene, and any chance I had of that happening was gone. I felt someone beside me, and I looked down at them. It was one of the hunters, I don’t know his name, but I saw him back in the throne room.
“She did that,” he said, pointing at the twin with the twisted neck. “She is sick and very dangerous.”
He sounded worried, edging on fear. But he was a hunter, and hunters don’t scare easily. When they see their colleagues' bodies battered, it is sure to cause them to pause.
“We were trained to take in people like her,” I said.
He shook his head and said nothing. I wondered if the others shared his sentiment too. Were they all getting scared of Hayley?
Yes, I was thinking about her with the first name. It felt like we had formed a relationship already, and it only felt right to address her by her name.
If the other hunters shared this man’s sentiment, how many of them would drop from the hunt? Earlier on, I was wondering why the pack themselves didn’t go after Hayley, seeing it wastheir Alpha that she killed. Now, I could see why. None of those pack members, not even the new pompous alpha, could make a kill like this. They didn’t have that kind of power in them. She was the only one that did.
What more does she have in there, I wondered as I stepped away from the dead twin.
“Do you think it is worth it? Whatever they might pay? They are the ones with the dead alpha. Let them get the revenge themselves,” the hunter yelled at me.
I stopped and turned to face him. “I have a job to complete.”
Really, I was less and less concerned about finding her because she killed the Alpha. Now, I just wanted to meet her and talk to her. Of course, I would still get her back to the council so she could be punished. But I have to meet her first.
I walked towards the RVs, and when I got there, the rest of my lone wolf friends were waiting for me.
“I thought that was you,” Jared said. He has a scrawny look and is so tall that half the time when he walks, I get scared he would topple over and fall. But he was one of the most agile werewolves I have ever met, and his history was a dark one. We all have dark histories; that was why we banded together.
“I thought she was headed here,” I said, looking back at the crowd a couple of feet from the RVs. She either was headed here in search of me or was going into the woods, and the Twin caught up with her.
“She never made a detour,” Jared said.
“Just ran into the woods,” Ben added.
“How did she look?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Jared said. “It was pretty dark, but she looked angry and sad. I don’t know. Why are you doing this, Luke? Let the pack wolves handle themselves, and let’s stay out of their business. They don’t like us already, don’t heap heat on the coals, please.”
“It doesn’t matter what we do; they will always hate us. Besides, this is a way to earn some money.
Allister scoffed on the couch in front of his RV. He was one of the first wolves I found when I came to town, looking to heal. Bonne introduced me to him.
