Hunting The Dark Side

Chapter 18: Track; Don\'t Kill

“Sapphire!” Dominic and Jackson yell from the window, but she is already gone and nowhere to be seen.

Jackson spins around glaring death at his brother, “What the hell? Why would you do that? She didn’t do anything wrong! She was showing Dominic what a werewolf looked like, she was teaching him!”

“It only takes one cut and either of you could have turned into a werewolf monster!” Leo yells in his defence he didn’t understand why they couldn’t see what she was. A monster. A murderer.

“She was just sat there! She wasn’t doing anything, if she goes into blind rage and she hurts someone then it is all your fault so you dare even try to blame it on her if it happens.” Dominic speaks up poison in his voice, as he shoved Leo, the slams him against the wall.

“Blind rage?” Leo looks at Dominic confused. What the hell is blind rage? How can he know something about werewolves that I don’t already? He has only known they exist for a few days.

“Look at that, she teaches me for around 10 minutes and I already know more than you!” Dominic yells in Leo’s face all smug, he still has Leo pinned against the wall.

Leo pushed Dominic off him, before punching him square in the nose causing his nose to burst and pour of blood. “Tell me what blind rage is!”

“Where the werewolf takes control, where the human knows nothing of what is happening, it is just darkness then they wake up when the rage passes and they are terrified and clueless of what they have done. They only end up in blind rage when they are beyond pissed. It took Sapphire everything to fight the wolf inside her to not go into blind rage when you tried to attack her on the stairs.” Dominic explained as he pinched his nose, waiting for his nose to stop bleeding.

“So she isn’t in control of the wolf then, she lied to us, if she is lying about that then what else is that lying about?” Leo folded his arms and smirked an ‘I told you so’ smirk.

It was Jackson’s turn to talk again, “She is in control of the wolf, if she wasn’t then there would probably be parts of you all of this house, but there isn’t is there? She fled she didn’t fight you even though she could have torn you limb from limb. You can think she is the monster all you want but right now you are the monster; hurting her and provoking her, trying to get a response from her but it isn’t working is it?” He walked to the panel of her secret room opening it. He walks inside grabbing some weapons. He hands Dominic a demon knife and a gun. “We are going to look for Sapphire.” Jackson answered the question look he received from Dominic.

“Then why do we need weapons?” Dominic replied, though he slid the gun in the back of his trousers and sliding the knife in the front.

“She isn’t the only supernatural being in this city, we only use these weapons on them. Luckily we know what Sapphire looks like so we know what we are looking for.” Jackson states, as he picks up a stake and wooden bullets just in case the ‘to destroy all evil’ knife doesn’t work on vampires, he walks out the not so secret room anymore and closes it.

“Why are we going after her?” Leo grumbles out of spite, hatred was running through him. What makes her so special, we should be killing her.

“You aren’t going anywhere, Dominic and I are going to go look for her whilst you stay here. I do not trust you anywhere near her right now. In fact I do not even know what gives you the right to still be in her house. I am disappointed in you and frankly Leo I do not even recognise you right now.” Jackson shares his concern before walking passed him, Dominic right on his heels. They both leave the house before slamming the door behind them.

Leo spins and punches the wall out of anger, if they want to find Sapphire and save her then I will have to find her first and kill her before they even get to her. He runs down the stairs, out the door and to his car, he pulls out and thinks of forest locations in the area. There were 3 that he knew off that means he has a chance to get it right and get there for the others.

He speeds out of the street and makes a right, speeding towards the woods that is nearby, he assumed that she would go to the forest considering that it would be the only place that no one would be around. Since she is so ‘against’ hurting people then that has to be the place that she would hide.

He puts his foot down to go faster. Every time he had to stop he groans impatiently, it takes around 10 minutes for him to get to the woods, he parks up, walks to the boot of the car opening it up grabbing a gun with silver bullets, a silver knife and a torch.

Leo walks into the wood turning the torch on as he walks cautiously through each tree, he walks through the trees shining the light around. He hears a snap of a twig from a distance behind him, he spins quickly shining his torch around to see nothing.

He takes a deep breath shaking his head, Now I am just hearing things, she has me paranoid, the quicker I kill her the better. Leo starts hunting for his sister though he had to remind himself that he didn’t have back up this time.

He walks deeper into the woods, twigs snapped left and right then behind, he span around again seeing nothing. “Sapphire! Stop messing around and face me! Die like the monster you are!”

There was a loud snarl from one direction, then a group of wolfs howling. Oh s**t, are you serious? She is in a pack? She is going to get her pack to kill me?

Leo turns to run but there is a large muscly man his eyes were still glowing green which meant he had either just turned human or he was angry. Leo glance down as he heard low growls he saw a werewolf either side of him. Oh no, the Alpha.

“Hunter. Why would you want to harm Sapphire? She is in perfect control. She taught us all how to be in control of our inner wolves. There is one rule though that we must abide by.” The man speaks in a deep warning voice, his hands by his side.

“You are her pack? She didn’t inform us that she had the protection of a pack.” Leo stated carefully, he knew that it would be very stupid to piss of the Alpha.

“No, she didn’t want to be in pack. We owe her our lives though. Even though she is not in our pack we can link with her, she helps us with the pups, taught us the rules of hunters like yourself. That is how I know that you cannot kill her, hunters’ only kill supernatural being that hunt and kill humans. We do not and neither does she. Even what she is she has never harmed a soul. When she first turned she kind of stumbled upon us and asked us to make sure that she didn’t hurt anyone. So during her first turn I personally ran with her to make sure that she didn’t harm anyone. Now whenever a pup or we have a newly turned she runs with them, she is faster than us all so she is the best to run with.” The man stares Leo down, his breathing was deep and growling a little.

“Oh so what, you all think that she deserves a medal or something? She is unpredictable. She is a monster and evil runs through her veins.” Leo snaps gritting his teeth together. He gulps hard when the Alpha’s eyes flare with anger.

“If she is such a monster why is she asking me not to lay a finger on you?” Alpha stands strong, the wolves either side of him look up at him waiting for his command.

“Asking? She should be telling you!” Leo shouts angrily, his hands in fists as they tremble with fear.

A growl sounded from deep within the Alpha, “I am the Alpha! Sapphire respects that, she knows that even though she isn’t in the pack she has to honour what the Alpha wants. Luckily for you I respect her enough to grant her wish. Leave this woods and never return.”

* * *

Jackson drives the car with Dominic in the passenger seat. “Do you know where she would go?” Dominic questions Jackson anxiously hoping that she is ok and that she hasn’t hurt anyone because he knew that it would destroy her. It is something she would never forgive herself for.

“There are three places she could go to, a woods, a nature reserve or a park than has a river flowing through it.” Jackson answers glancing at Dominic as he drives, his eyes shift back to the road. “She didn’t go into blind rage as you call it. I only know that because if she did then Leo would be dead. So there is no need for her to go to the woods.”

Dominic nods, then lets everything she recently told him about wolves. He finally concluded. “That narrows it down to the nature reserve or the park. If she doesn’t hurt humans but she lets the wolf run free once a month that means the wolf needs to feed right? That means she probably went to the nature reserve so that she could let the wolf feed. Right?” He turned to look at Jackson for conformation.

Jackson nodded impressed, “She managed to teach you a lot in the short amount of time, didn’t she? I didn’t know she would let her wolf run free every month.” He stated though it sounded more like a question.

“Oh, she said that if she lets the wolf run every month then it makes it less likely for her to fall into a ‘blind rage’.” Dominic explains to him, before turning to look out of the window.

“She taught you from what she has experienced, it is certainly a way to teach a new hunter I suppose.” Jackson smiles a little, “From their point of view, I never really thought about how they felt about it, I mean they didn’t chose to be a werewolf, they are either born that way or turned with a scratch or a bite.”

“oh, she didn’t tell me that part, so since you aren’t a werewolf that means she was attacked?” Dominic sounded shocked. She has been through so much yet she is still so strong. I suppose she has had to be.

“Yes she was attacked but I do not know the story behind it. She told me the story behind her being changed into a vampire, it was all our fault. Mine and Leos I mean.” He sighs deeply. He parks up at the nature reserve. “We told her to stay in the hotel, her job was to see to us when we got back. She saw some messed up s**t growing up. We are alive and human because of her, she was always at the hotel when we got back so we always assumed that she stayed there, but she didn’t. she followed us, she got bitten on one hunt, she was passed out asleep when we got back so we let her sleep. When we woke up she was gone. I wanted to go look for her, she could have been in trouble or anything but Leo said that there is no demon activity which meant she left on her own accord. I believed him. Now look at the way he is acting.” He hit the steering wheel hard.

Dominic nudged Jackson playfully, “Hey come on; she won’t want you beating yourself up. Don’t blame yourself, come on lets go find your sister.”

“Do you like her?” Jackson says out of the blue, staring straight ahead as he rested his arms on the wheel.

Dominic gulped a little, Oh man, I am in for the big brother speech. Please don’t kill me. “Yes, I like her a lot, I have never met anyone like her.” He noticed a slide glare from Jackson as if to say, ‘no one has’ so he adds.

“No, I mean before I knew what she was, when I first met her, I knew there was something special about her, her stance her speed, how she could worm me into the scene. The way she can just think on her feet. She is so intelligent. She is just overall amazing and stunningly beautiful. That is just her human side, there is a whole new side of her that we haven’t even really seen except for the werewolf. That side of her is just as mesmerising as the human side of her, she is so selfless and caring. I can see that she would never hurt anyone.” Dominic turns to look at Jackson who just nodded in approval.

“Alright, just try not to hurt her, on the outside she may seem like nothing can hurt her but she is probably breaking on the inside. Look out for her better than we ever did, that is all I ask of you.” he turns to look directly into his eye, “But if you do lay one hand on her or hurt her you will regret it.”

“Got it, let’s go.” Dominic rounds up the convocation by opening the car door walking up the trail.

Jackson followed him, taking out a torch to shine around. “She will be in the woods so over there.” He points where all of the trees are. They take the right trail and walk through the path with trees either side.

They walk silently to listen out for anything that might give them Sapphire’s location, Dominic looks left whilst Jackson looks right. All they hear is the crunch of stones under their feet. They both sigh in frustration, until they suddenly feel a breeze next to them, then a birds wings fluttering come to a stop. They spin to look around to see a white wolf, pulling the wings off then the wolf devouring the bird, pulling its meat then the intestines out.

They both stare stunned at what they witnessed, they weren’t sure if it was Sapphire at first until they saw that the wolves leg has red blood on it. They both stay silent so that they don’t become her next meal.

When the wolf is finally finished devouring its food, its head snaps to look at them. Dominic gulps hard, but Jackson stays still. The eyes turned from murderous to horror then shame, the wolf looks down then turns to walk away.

“Sapphire?” Jackson questions cautiously before taking a cautious step forward. The wolf turns to look at then, Jackson relaxes as he now knows it is her. “Your leg, let us see to it. Let us take you home.” He says softly and carefully not wanting to spook her or her wolf.

Sapphire was ashamed of what they witnessed. She had just woke up and Sandalio was hungry, well starving so Sapphire went hunting, it was one of the reason that she chose the reserve to run to, when her brother talked to her she turned and walked back, her leg was hurting like mad.

“Why haven’t you turned back to your human form?” Dominic asks in the same voice he always talked to her, he thought that she wouldn’t want to be treated differently.

Sapphire looked at Dominic then at Jackson, she attempted to do something that she has never needed to do before, she tried to talk in their mind. If a werewolf is injured then they cannot turn back until they are fully healed. So I am in this form until I am healed.

She waited to see if her message was received. They both stare at her stunned not expecting to her to reply like that. “Well uh let us get you healed.” Jackson replies still stunned.

Sapphire started to walk with a limp to the car park when she heard a voice she hadn’t heard in a while; “Sapphire we have man in our woods calling out your name calling you a monster, wanting to kill you. Want us to deal with him?” Aaron her friend an Alpha of the Newcastle pack.

Sapphire lets a groan out which caused the boys to look at her she just shook her head for now. “Please do not hurt him. He is my brother.”

“Your brother wants to kill you because you a werewolf?” Aaron sounds angry she doesn’t know if it because of her answer or if it was something Leo said.

“Because I am a monster in his eyes, being a Demire-Wolf in his eyes automatically makes me a monster. Please though, I am trying to prove to him that not all supernatural beings are monster, it is why I didn’t fight him when he attacked me. I just ran.” Sapphire explained though she knew that she couldn’t make him back down, he is the Alpha after all but she hoped that he would be listening to her.

“He attacked you? Where are you? Do you need help?” Aaron sounded concerned like he always did whenever she was hurt, he really cared about her as if she was part of the pack; he always treated her that way.

“No, it is ok. My other brother and my friend is here, they accept me for who I am, do not worry I will be fine with them I promise. Just please do not hurt my other brother.” Sapphire pleas which she very rarely done, she was scared that everyone would blame her.

“I will not hurt your brother.” Aaron replied then their link disappeared.

Sapphire realised they actually made it to the car already. She looked up at Dominic then she looked to Jackson. She opened her mind to them.

“Leo was trying to find me in the woods, he ended up finding the Newcastle pack. Luckily for him I am friends with the Alpha, or he would be dead.”

“He went hunting for you?” They replied in harmony stunned.