Wolfblood
Hunters of the Dusk
Prologue
Author's Note: This is the beginning of a new horror multi-chapter story I'm working on. I haven't been able to do much lately since I have a mountain of college work and there have been other issues getting at me too. With all that going on, I didn't feel the mood to finish anything I was working on, but I was inspired to start something new. The sequel to The Collection is also nearly finished and will be coming shortly. Sorry it's been so long.
It was a quiet night for the city. There were surprisingly few cars on the roads, the pigeons were all sound asleep and even the people out to enjoy the night were all surprisingly few and far between. Anyone else would have seen such abnormalities and say 'it must be a full moon' or something equally as irrelevant. But the young Wolfblood leaving the library she worked at knew that a full moon wouldn't happen for at least another week.
She was surprisingly short for her age. Her mother always used to tease her every morning by asking if she'd shrunk. That was back when she'd looked 'sweet and innocent' as her father used to say. But she'd always been very alert. She'd always known when her class were about to gang up on her in high school, she always remembered every little change to her schedule and she always noticed when things were amiss. To her, the abnormalities of the night were not just merely arbitrary, but a definite sign that something was very wrong.
She'd started running even before she smelled it. The danger was able to keep pace effortlessly, its movements erratic. As much as she tried to keep a level head, she was struggling to place where it was coming from. It could have been the woman driving the passing car as easily as it could have been the homeless man in the bus shelter on the other side of the road who was coughing uncontrollably in the freezing air. Whatever it was though, it definitely felt like it was somehow above her.
Frantically, she sprinted into a side-ally. She pulled the hood of her sleeveless black hoodie over her head and shrank back into the shadows, letting the darkness conceal her. She waited, trying to hide the noise of her breathing as much as possible. Suddenly, a double-decker party bus roared past at high speed, decked out for what was obviously a hen night. Young women in clothes that ranged all the shades of pink were on both floors of the bus, cheering and singing. Every single one of them had beer bottles in their hands.
Mentally, the young Wolfblood berated herself. She'd always hated loud noises. She must have faintly registered that just on the edge of her range of hearing and mistaken it for something else. She sighed loudly, letting out a breath she didn't' know she was holding. It was at that moment that she heard something that made her stomach feel like it was made of lead. It was barely a tap, but it was there. She barely even had time to turn. The white hoodie, the flash of yellow eyes and the glint of the silver blade were the last things she ever saw as a set of fangs punctured her throat.