Love & Duty

Chapter Two (Unleashed Terror)

Present day

Detective Sandra's footsteps faltered as she moved deeper into the ancient forest. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, as it cast ethereal beams upon the ground. Lingering in the air is a sense of unease which causes her to heighten as each second passes. She indeed had heard whispers of a deadly creature lurking in the woods, one that had been haunting the town for over a year now.

Rustling from under the brush shattered the silence, it caused Detective Sandra's heart to leap into her throat. Her eyes scanned the darkness, searching for the source of this disturbance. And all of a sudden it emerged from the shadows, she could see it - a tall figure, its form draped in its tufts of matted fur, its claws ominously glinting in the moonlight.

Detective Sandra's breath chained as she took just a sight of the creature, a werewolf. Its ferocious eyes, an amber mesmerizing, yoked onto hers, and it filled her with a sense of fear. This creature's snarling mouth revealed its razor-sharp teeth in rows, as its powerful muscles rippled underneath its fur. Every single instinct in her suggests that she flee, to run away and escape the clutches of the beast.

She always dismissed the idea or thought of werewolves as mere fantasy, one which she believed is just confined to books and horror films. But still, the sight of which she's beholding has shattered that belief. As amidst the trees, a creature unlike one she had never thought of seeing, stood there.

The bone-chilling howl let out by the creature caught Detective Sandra's breath in her throat, a cry so mournful that echoed through the night. The sound did wake up an ancient fear buried deep in her soul. The forest didn't fail to respond to this, as it left and cracked twigs transformed into a symphony.

As her mind raced, she tried to make sense of the impossible. It couldn't be real. A trick manifests as a result of her imagination and her exhaustion leading to hallucination. The creature's presence is quite too tangible to be deemed fake, too threatening to ignore. As it leaves her both vulnerable and raw.

Her legs trembled, ready to give way at any moment. Every organ in her body screams at her to take off but her body just clued there, held captive by curiosity with a mixture of fear. A small voice in her mind tells her to stay, another telling her to flee. The decision just hung in the air, till she heard footsteps and her name from a distance.

"Sandra!!!" Detective David, Sandra's assistant, shouted from a distance

In the blink of an eye, he was gone, he was not there anymore. In a bid to show bravery, she stood up, her leg still shaking as she said.

"Over here, David!"

He came down rushing " Are you ok?"

"Let's leave this place." She said taking the touch off his hands, leaving him a bit confused.

“Did anything happen?” He asked, trying to meet up with her pace.

“Of course, something did happen, but we're talking about it here unless you want it to happen to you too?” She whispered.

“Hell no!”

“Then let's leave here already.”

“I told you it's not a good idea to come here without back up”

“Really?” She stopped to take a look at him.

“I mean, …..yes…something could've happened”

“O well for your information, no amount of backup could have stopped that thing”

“Which thing?” He asked, looking around.

“We better get our a*s out of this place, before something dreadful happens,” she said as she continued walking fast.

He followed her closely, really scared now, but there was no time that David wasn't scared.

Detective Sandra's mind raced as they approached her car, a torrent of emotions, disbelief, fear, and a sense of awe. Just a moment ago she'd come face to face with what seemed to be the impossible, a creature shed since believed to be a fathom of one's imagination. Encountering this had indeed awakened an awareness that indeed this world held mysteries which are beyond her imagination.

Just a few hours ago, a young lady came bursting into the police station, complaining that her husband had been taken by the beast. It took them about ten minutes to calm her down and when they did, she was directed to her who was in charge of the disappearance case. She tried accumulating the woman's story and all she could get was that she'd married a few weeks back. And now a beast had taken her husband. There's no news about the ongoing disappearance in the town, but something had to be done.

The woman had confirmed that she was in the kitchen bringing dinner to the dining room and when she returned her husband was no more. It's within the law that no one can be confirmed missing until twenty-four hours, but if she's to follow this, she doubted if she'd ever find the presumed beast which she'd not believe as of then. So she'd rely on her assistant, David, to escort her to the forest.

"Are you ok?" He'd asked reluctant to go to the forest by that time.

"This is the only way we can find this beast, I'd there is truly one"

"O well if this is the only way, then we better drop the case"

"Do you think this is a joke?" She'd asked not in the mood for his jokes.

"No, I don't, I mean it's not. Come on, this is seven in the night and you're saying we should go to a forest where people say a deadly beast resides!"

"It took her husband just an hour ago, so definitely there will be traces and we're going to see if we can find anything to honor the four months we've been on this God damn case without any advancements"

"Fair enough, but what if we get killed?" He'd asked.

"You and I know there is no such thing as a beast inside that forest..."

She could remember saying those words to him, now she'd come face to face with the beast, only God knows how her night will be today. But now that she knows that a werewolf truly resides within the forest it's a step forward for them in the case, now they know what they're dealing with.

***

Donald watched as she left the forest from up a tree, he could tell that she was a detective, with the man too, the badges they wore around their neck revealed this to him. He wondered who the latest victim was because he knew they were definitely here to investigate another disappearance in the town. He'd scared the hell out of her, it wasn't his intentions but his now new nature overridden his former self. He'd wished they'd not come on a night like this - the full moon, as he is in his werewolf form unable to turn fully human till sunrise. He felt this glimpse of hope as he approached her, but how on earth would he have convinced her that all the killings going on in the town had nothing to do with him?