The Hunt

The look on the young man’s face betrayed his impediment; the panic that had long welled up inside him. Barely suppressing the shiver that clambered up his spine, he turned his head to cast a quick look across his shoulder.

There! The shadow that had been following him for miles crept closer, smoothly gliding across rain-slick walls. It was ever creeping closer, and the way before him was blocked. It was a dead end, and one of them wouldn’t get out of it alive.

The sharp intake of a shuddering breath, and already the shadow was upon him. He didn’t dare to look, but clamped his eyes shut to blindly await the end of this madness.

Then a gunshot, and a thumping noise.

Reluctantly, he turned around and opened his eyes to glimpse down upon the dead beast at his feet.

“Well done, my dear boy,” a cheerful voice called over to him. The hunter was standing in the twilight of the alleyway as if he owned the world, grinning as he rested the shaft of his still smoking gauge across one shoulder. “You make for excellent bait.”

As the armed man sauntered over to take a closer look at the lifeless lump of fur, the young man all but stared ahead into the smudgy greyness of the early night. His dark eyes blinked rapidly, repeatedly, as if to blink away the image of the razor-toothed creature at his feet, but to no avail. It was when some unbidden teardrops made their way across his cheek—straight to the corner of his mouth, where he could taste the salt—that he became truly grateful for the constant patter of rain that seemed to ever increase.

To let the hunter witness any sign of emotion was among the very few things that would not do. Not now, not ever.

“Quite a big one this time,” the hunter cooed, kneeling before his prey. “Never before did I have any such luck. Not until I met you and could . . . persuade you to help me with my hunt.”

Another shiver, this time mostly caused by the cold that seemed to creep through his every bone. “Thank you, Sir. You’re most kind, Sir.”

“I know, my dear boy. I know.” With a broad smile, the hunter rose from his knees and fingered a golden coin from a pocket in his vest. “Here. For your efforts.” And he snipped the coin up high with his thumb.

The younger man snatched it from the air, lightning-quick, to tuck it away. “Thank you, Sir. I take it you do not require my services any longer for tonight?”

A calloused hand closed around his bony shoulder, half-patting, half-grabbing at him. “No, it’s all right, my boy. I shall have my hands full with this one for now. I’ll see you around.”

A curt nod. “I bid you goodnight, then, Sir.”

“Good night,” the hand fell from his shoulder, “and don’t spend all of the money at once.”

He didn’t bother to reply as he slipped away, and he was aware that the hunter would never have paid attention anyway. Already, the weathered man was kneeling alongside his trophy again, blade in hand, and let his fingers run through the soft fur of the dead beast. Whether this was to estimate the value of tonight’s hunt or merely to savour the feel of it, was hard to guess.

The young man never looked back as he walked away. Only when he’d rounded the next corner and proceeded another half mile along the deserted street, did he stop and lean against a wall. Letting his head rest against the cold, wet stone, he blinked up into the rain as it washed another flood of tears from his face.

For a long moment, he stood there and silently cried, tattered clothes melted to his slim body and black curls plastered to his head. He cried, and yet the pain would not go away. He let the rain pelt down on him, and yet it washed away nothing more but his tears. The guilt remained.

“Why did it have to be you?” he finally sobbed out into the dark. “Why you? Was casting me out of our clan not punishment enough? Being forced to live in this so-called civilised world? And now this—did you have to pile this up on me on top of everything?”

His slender frame shook with sobs, and he let himself slide down the wall until he came to sit on muddy heels.

“Forgive me, father,” he whispered as he dropped onto his hands just before another shudder rushed through him.

He left a heap of tattered clothes behind as he finally trotted on. For once, he didn’t bother to pick them up. With his fur all soft and thick, he needed no artificial skin to shield himself against the cold of a night like this.

THE END