The forest was silent. Even the birds and the small animals could sense something was about to happen and had taken cover. The light of a full moon would soon be visible but twilight had not yet fallen, the sun still shone above the horizon. Even with the light of the full moon this dark pervasive forest was going to be tricky to maneuver in. He smiled; this was going to be fun.
He lifted his head and took in a sniff of the pre-storm air. He would have to finish this quickly before it began to rain. He had taken his place in a tree several hours earlier; he hadn't even moved to massage away the cramps. Not a leaf had fallen from the branch since he had taken his position,
A werewolf was hunting the people of a nearby village, that much he was sure of. He had been sent to investigate, and had found his quarry. It was a woman who had been living in the village 18 years now, as long as the attacks had happened. A lone werewolf was rare but it happened.
His suspicions had first been raised when he'd spotted her in a bar, she was a waitress there. She was pretty, he would admit that much.
She had blonde hair as pale as silver, which she wore fairly short, shoulder length. She had a long face, small features, altogether very normal looking, except the eyes. Her green eyes were unusually prominent, dark and deep, but knowing somehow. What made her beautiful however wasn't a youthful face, it was a face etched with memory in the creases. It was a face, heavy with sorrow that echoed with meaning; as much as she tried to seem inconspicuous she stuck out of a crowd, with a grace that defied age or time.
But what had truly made him question her, was the scar. It was three scratches running from the bridge of her nose down her cheek and neck to where it disappeared under her hair. She wore the bangs on her hair long, parted her hair on the side and wore it over the left side of her face to try and hide it. But it was livid red, and he knew a werewolf scar when he saw one. He had several, from werewolves that hadn't turned yet, they never really healed.
He had gotten the owner of the bar quite drunk and asked about her. It had taken a lot of patience to listen to the slurred phrases and he realized the man had already been quite drunk when he'd bought him a round. But he listened carefully.
She had lived in the village the previously mentioned 18 years; but according to the bartender she had never aged a day, apparently he had been around since then. As beautiful as the day she'd stumbled into town, he'd garbled.
She was quiet, never gave anyone any reason to suspect her. Her only problem was her temper. In the beginning, before people got wise, men did what drunken men did to pretty bar waitresses, or they tried to. According to him, the first man to try it had gotten a quick one to the face and a threat with a knife before she'd been stopped. The owner had threatened her with her job.
But that had been a long time ago, most people knew now just to keep their distance and she was pleasant. However anyone who hadn't learned that was quickly escorted outside and seen the next day with several bruises. He couldn't suppress a laugh when he'd heard that. That was as much as anyone knew about her.
She was the perfect suspect, it was clear, no matter what story she used, she'd been clawed by a werewolf, she didn't age, was stronger beyond any reasonable explanation than most men, and kept to herself.
The scar also explained why she was a lone werewolf. He knew a fair amount about pack order. When a werewolf was exiled from a pack but refused to beg for mercy it was branded by the alpha male or female according to the corresponding sex. The scar, a paw across the face was a way of being honorably discharged from a pack. The Were was free to join any other pack from that point. If a Were was exiled and did plead for mercy from the alpha, it was usually killed or left in dishonorable exile, without a scar, to be shunned by other packs.
The scar revealed something; she was smart or brave enough to fight against her exile, but she had been bested enough to have lost.
So that is why he was sitting in a tree, giving dirty looks to the squirrel who refused to leave, and waiting for a pretty girl to come through the faint game trail, aiming a gun at where she would eventually emerge. Because he had to hunt the creature killing people, because he was Van Helsing.
