The Hunters

Part 18

18.

Tyler

     She sulks for the rest of the day and she doesn’t move from her bed. Her eyes are closed but I know she is still awake. I don’t try to make conversation with her; I doubt she will answer me even if I tried.

     Afternoon sunlight leaks in through the window and lights up the room. For lack of anything better to do, I watch the swirling dust motes float and flit about in the rays of light. It is strange, just sitting here, watching the fairies dance on the sun. It’s is quite surreal. It is like with all of the violence and bloodshed and mania in this frenzied world, I almost didn’t expect that such tranquil delicacy could coincide with it.

     I suppose that every coin has two sides. Every beauty must have a beast. In then end it comes down to balance I guess. Without balance, all that is left is madness.

      That is what is happening now isn’t it? Madness. They tipped the scales by destroying the Hunters and now the natural balance has been knocked off kilter. They want chaos and they’ve got it.

     The bandage on my arm needs to be replaced so I go and fetch the first aid kit from the cabinet in the bathroom. Inside the green box with a white cross painted on it, is a few rolls of gauze, some plasters, a packet of antiseptic wipes and an over the counter box of pain killers. Not great as medical supplies go but it was all we had.

     I take off my shirt and find the bandage covering my left bicep. Carefully, I undo the bandage from around my arm and peel it away from the skin. Almost immediately blood begins to dribble down from the wound, running all the way down my arm to my fingertips and then dripping onto the white sheets on my bed.

      Pressing my fingers to the nasty cut, I swear under my breath.

     “Rowan?” I ask but she continues to pretend that she is asleep. “Rowan will you answer, I know you are awake.” She huffs delinquently but sits up.

     “What?” she grumbles but when she looks at me her eyes dart right to the blood oozing from my arm and her mouth drops open.

     “I need you to do me a favour,” I nod my head over to the corner of the room to the chest of draws. She follows my gaze and gets up from her bed without argument. “In the second draw there should be a sewing kit. Found it?”

     “Yeah,” she croaks.

     “Good, OK in your bedside table you should find a bottle of vodka. I need you to bring it all over here.”

     She gives me a look and I know she is wondering why we keep a stash of alcohol in a bedside table but she doesn’t wait for me to explain that for some of the guys, having a nightcap is the only way to chase away the nightmares. You see a lot of traumatic stuff being a Hunter. They stalk your thoughts and haunt your dreams, drives some of us near the brink of insanity although to want to be a Hunter you have to be out of your right mind in the first place.

     She gathers up the sewing kit and bottle of vodka and then comes to sit beside me on the bed. I expect her to throw the stuff at me and then stalk off to her bed again but she stays right by my side, her eyes following the stream of blood gushing out of my arm.

     “Thanks,” I say and she nods.

Rowan

     He was shot. When I saw him alive, I just assumed that Faye had missed but the grotesque bullet wound on his arm begs to differ. I’m not squeamish with blood per se but the amount of blood pouring out of his arm makes me feel a little faint and queasy.