Jamieson's Wolves (On Hold)

Chapter 3

A rustle stirred Adrian from his sleep, his wolf ears rotated towards the leaves scratching together as something moved through them. Something large.

The fur down the back of his neck transformed into bristles as he crept to all four legs. He was now glad he’d decided to change back into his wolf form and allowed his thick coat fight off the cold night air. His leg muscles burned even as he stood still, only his head moving to allow his narrowed eyes to glance around the dark forest.

The rustle disappeared, all he could hear now was the constant music of leaves shimmering due to the light wind. Was the large creature standing still. He lifted his snout to sniff the air, his large black nose wiggled as he took in the many scents of the forest. One stood out and caused his eyes to narrow at the surrounding darkness. That human smell is back. Not any kind of human I’ve smelt.

With more strained hearing, he picked up the creatures shuffled steps. Adrian kept still as he spotted a hunched over human like shadow move between the moonlit trees. He held his breath and waited to see what the creature would do. It stopped. Adrian’s limbs shook with anticipation, ready to take off running. In which direction, he didn’t know yet.

The creature turned to face him. Adrian’s fur stood along his spine, he could see now it was no human. It was similar to the monster that plagued his nightmares for years. The werewolf that sunk its fangs into him. Big, hairy, long spread fingers with sharp claws on the end and large muscle bound shoulders. The opposite direction, he decided.

This creature was no second-generation werewolf. It looked more like an ape, crossed between a gorilla and a human maybe. Though he’d never seen a real gorilla, just sketches from overseas explores he’d come across in his long life. I don’t want to meet one of them either. Adrian’s past time had always included reading of strange creatures and unexplained happenings. Two creatures jumped to mind upon seeing the creature. A yowie or a bunyip. This creature didn’t shape shift like a bunyip did so he was guessing a yowie. All accounts of yowie sighting say shy. Not once did he read about an attack. What’s made you all aggressive looking?

The yowie exposed the long maulers as it pulled back its lips and hissed. Adrian found his backbone and jumped to his fighting position, bared his fangs and snarled. So much for shy!

Adrian was usually the first move kind of guy. This time he waited. I don’t know what I’m really up against.

The yowie roared and ran at the wolf, its fingers stretched wide and sharp nails pointing towards Adrian.

Adrian snarled and leapt for the large beast. The yowie swang a large thick hairy arm as Adrian latched onto the appendage and sunk his long canines into the rough skin. The beast howled and continued to swing around.

Adrian yelped as his feet left the ground and flung like a sideways windmill. The yowies flesh around the canines ripped. He slipped free of the creature and flew through the air. A thorny bush broke his fall and caught him amongst the sticky leaves. Finding his feet, he tore free of the long creepers and leapt out to face the creature again.

The bush was quiet. The only sound his ears picked up was his own heavy breathing. He looked around for the yowie, checking every shadow and bush like figures. Where did you go? There was no sign of the creature anywhere. The yowie’s strange scent lingered in the air to taunt him. How could it just disappear like that?

A frog croaked behind him to cut the eerie silence of the frightened surroundings. All other sounds made a gradual comeback until it was noisy once again.

It’s gone, Adrian decided and with a flick of his bushy tail, returned back to his sleeping place.

The high thick foliage filtered the sun’s rays as the bright sphere peeked over the mountains. Adrian stirred from his sleep again and placed his white front paw over his eyes. Morning already! It was a long restless night, jumping at every cricket movement. An owl would flutter through the trees and almost cause a panic attack as his first assailant filled his mind with large red eyes that caught the firelight of a small, terrified village about a thousand years ago. Hell, I thought I was old back then at the age of fifty! His fight with the second-generation werewolf hadn’t been victorious and ended with him fighting for his life with large teeth marks on his arm. He still had the scars. Some reason they never fully healed, leaving dark marks to remind him of the magic transferred from the original spell caster. Magic which healed the wounds from the attack and his age. His grey hair and old wrinkled skin disappeared overnight as he returned to his mid twenties.

He also received the gift of transformation into a wolf, similar to the grey wolf that roamed the European forests at the time, much like what he did until the human population became too big and space to roam became scarce for him and his friends.

Where were his friends now? Joined the human settlements. He snarled at the thought then climbed to his feet. Today I find this blasted pack!