Shifting Shadows

It seemed appropriate to Lunus that her first night should be a hunt for Balthazar. After all, he had been her personal target all along, regardless of the hunting team's nightly objectives. But it was a competition now, and one which she was sure to win. So, as Lunus rode through the gates and held tight the reigns of her horse, she kept her eyes fixed forward and focused on the shifting shadows of the trees.

The trouble with Balthazar was that he was careful, calculating, and black as the forest. He moved swiftly and silently through the woods, undetected and unseen. He used the darkness to his advantage to stalk the Hunters, do his deed, and steal away in the night. It was rare for a human to see him, but even rarer for a wolf. 

The hunters had for some time maintained werewolf informants who would exchange information about their pack for some form of compensation, which was negotiated on an independent basis, and, of course, their life. He would spend his nights in cages, his days in service, and he could never leave the town, but he was free to live and gifted with payment commensurate to the information he provided. 

However, it was known that the first requirement for a wolf requesting informant status was always the names of the wolves in the pack whose human identities were known to the applicant. Those names were checked and, if the list proved true, the imposters were offered to be brought on as informants. If they refused, they were shot and executed in the streets as a warning to the others. 

It was through the informants that the hunters knew what they knew of Balthazar. He had killed every Hunter or townsman to see him... except for Hollis, or so he claimed. But the wolves could never give him a name apart from Balthazar. They assumed that he had one. They knew that he was as much a werewolf as they were, but they had never seen him change. No one had. His identity was carefully kept and never known. They said he was meticulous in his work and insisted that none should see him as a man, neither human nor wolf-man. When they pressed him, he asked if they questioned his authority, and so they never asked again. 

There was some question as to the level of control a wolf had over changing, but it seemed to prove true that the more powerful the werewolf, the more control he had over his changing. Balthazar, being the Alpha, was the strongest of all the wolves of the forest, and there were many who claimed to have seen him still a wolf long past dawn. So, it stood to reason that if he so chose he could remain a man far into the night. But even Balthazar had his limits, and the closer they came to mating and harvest, the less control any of them maintained... even the Alpha. 

Balthazar could have been anyone, but he wasn’t. He was a monster, like all wolves, and a worse one than most. It was he who directed the wolves of Banglador. It was he who plucked a Hunter from his horse without a sound. It was he who was mysterious as the shadows. And it was he who Lunus was determined to kill with the shining frame a single silver bullet. 

She kept with the group in loose array as they sped through the misted woods. The farther they journeyed into the forest, the thicker the fog became until visibility was entirely scarce. Surrounded by the dark wood of barren trees, she heard the sound of the wolves howling in the night. Their voices became one and echoed seemingly endlessly in her mind. It was the call of a cold-blooded killer, and it sent shivers down her spine. 

“I have visual!” one of the hunters shouted from the front right. 

“They’re circling!” another man cried.

“Lunus, take left flank,” he father ordered.

“Sir!” she called back, quickly maneuvering her horse to the far left of their party.

She heard some leaves crumple and her heart beat faster. The crisp autumn air was cold against her skin, but the fear made her blood run colder. She readied her gun, taking tight hold of the reigns with her offhand as she held firm the pistol in her right. 

Another cry of the wolves, then... silence. They were coming. She knew they were. She heard a loud thud and the neighing of a spooked horse, then shots, the sound of a man gasping for air, then some firing again, and, at last, she heard another man scream the most horrendous scream she had ever heard. Then, there was silence, and that Lunus found to be more terrifying than anything. 

Her heart beat quickened and her eyes darted all around her, watching the shadows of the forest with heightened alertness and steepening paranoia. She caught a glimpse of a leaf move, a minor rustling near her front. The sound was faint, so faint she nearly couldn’t hear it over the pounding of her heart, but she watched the shadows as they shifted - a little movement here, another there. The beast was moving towards her left, circling around to take them from behind and outmaneuver their left flank. 

She knew that she would have to shoot at an enemy she could not see, a beast she could not observe and knew only where it might have been a moment sooner. So, she began to watch the trail of movement and adjusted her shot accordingly, calculating the wolf’s trajectory. Lunus turned far to her left, extending her arm and taking into account the wolf’s speed and distance. She would have liked a few more seconds of consideration, but she was running low on time. So, as best she could in the darkness and the moment, she took aim at the moving shadow of the invisible beast and shot a bullet out into the night.