Blood and Beasts

Chapter 11

Cara and Andie had moved to a different motel after their encounter with the crew-cuts (as Cara began to think of them). This motel was very seedy, the type just off a seldom traveled road, but it was further north and closer to the werewolf, they hoped.

Cara grew increasingly certain that the crew-cuts were hunting the wolf as well. She thought she heard the loud engines of their trucks in the distance one morning, and there were a few times over the next couple days that she spied a drone flying in the distance. Maybe she was being paranoid, but it seemed to her like a clever way to look for signs of the wolf.

Andie suggested they could simply step out of the way and let these eager hunters take the risk against the werewolf, but that idea didn't sit right with Cara, for a couple reasons. These hunters may not have a real idea what they were up against, and though they were jerks, Cara felt it was a bit extreme to let them be torn to pieces. But even if they knew exactly what they were on the trail of, Cara didn't want men like that to be the ones killing this creature. She couldn't help picturing the one that had been catcalling them, mounting the werewolf's head in his dirty basement beside his liquor cabinet. Whatever kind of beast this wolf was now, it had been human once, and Cara believed its death should be treated with respect.

So they hunted onward, further into the forest each day. Cara had hunted down three werewolves before this, and Andie more than that. Both agreed their best chance was to find a reliable food source for the wolf, track those animals down, and then wait until the werewolf showed itself. Both Cara and Andie had been in full hunting gear for the past few days, carrying their rifles and pistols at all times; supplies of canned food too from the local grocery store. They were now on the trail of a herd of deer.

The forest grew more dense the further they went, but there was the occasional seldom used path they came across, sometimes even a path wide enough to navigate a car through if one were inclined. Still that driver would have to be very determined, which is why Cara and Andie found it odd when they saw one of these paths with fresh mud and dirt kicked up on it. They followed carefully, Cara knowing whom they should expect.

In a small clearing at the end of the path, they spotted the two black trucks and the van. Must have come here early in the morning, Cara thought, otherwise we would have heard them driving through. Cara and Andie kept to the trees, examining from a distance. Cara grabbed the binoculars out of her bag. She didn't see any of the crew cuts around the vehicles; one of the truck doors was ajar though.

They crept along the tree line, trying to get a better look at the truck with the open door, to see if anyone was sitting inside. No one was in the truck, but as they got a better view past the underbrush, they saw one of the crew cut slouched on the ground, just beneath the truck door. Cara gave the signal to move in. She realized as they were approaching that he was dead, throat slashed by multiple claws, surely the werewolf. The heart wasn't missing though; it hadn't stopped for a meal.

Cara, keeping her guard up, made sure the other vehicles were empty, before going for a closer examination of the body. Andie had already knelt down beside it.

"Looks like the wolf got the jump on him as he was getting out of the truck," she said. Andie reached for the pistol at his side, only it wasn't a normal pistol. She opened the clip and looked at the needle tipped vials inside. "It's a tranquilizer gun." She handed it to Cara to examine as well. Cara nodded and tucked the tranq gun into her waistband. Couldn't hurt.

"They're not trying to kill it," Cara said. "They're trying to catch it." Andie's face was set in a deep grimace.

"What sort of people would be trying to catch a werewolf?" she asked.

"I've heard rumours before of mercenary groups that do this sort of work; sell caged monsters on the black market to a truly fucked up clientele list."

"Great, just what we need, Bond villains with werewolf pens instead of shark tanks." Andie gave a sick laugh.

"What's that on his chest?" Cara asked, having spotted something black poking out over his blood stained muscle shirt. Andie pulled the shirt down, wiping the blood away as she did. It was a tattoo, three thin lines connecting three small dots and meeting in the center, tattooed in black ink mixed with the blood of a sacrifice: the symbol of the Imperial Cult. Andie stood up, wiping her hands. They both knew the symbol well. 

The Imperial Cult was a shadow organization, whispers of their activities coming up only on the most rare occasions, and usually without confirmation. Cara had never come across any of them personally, wasn't sure if Andie ever had, but Logan, Gregory and Bethany had all had brief run-ins with them. Logan had told her they'd never managed to get any information out of them. They'd never been able to take one alive.

"Good riddance," Andie spat. Cara could feel her heart racing a little faster in her chest, and one look at Andie said hers was doing the same. "So we got mercenaries of the Imperial Cult trying to capture a werewolf. Why?" Cara shrugged.

"Wish I could say. Maybe one of the members wants that werewolf pen you mentioned," Cara tried to say with a grin, but it didn't quite surface. She took a closer look around at the surrounding area. There were large tracks leading away from the body. Those tracks joined with the smaller ones Cara figured to be the other crew-cuts.

"Whatever these mercenaries want with the werewolf," Cara said calmly. "They're not the ones doing the hunting anymore."