Chapter 5
12 Hours until Dawn
The moon sat in the sky like an unwelcome eyesore. Behind it, Mars sat in close proximity, bouncing the light of the sun from the other side of Earth back at the dark side. The background light stained the moon's surface a blood red shade for anyone who looked into the sky. As Tom and Shannon ran through the Moors towards Stoneybridge, they couldn't help but look up at it with hatred. If it weren't for this happening, they would all be enjoying life as usual. They would probably be sitting on the sofa at Shannon's place watching movies before eventually falling asleep on said sofa. Maddy and Rhydian would be wolfing out in the den together, rather than Rhydian being forced to stay in Shannon's wine cellar. The blood moon had already claimed one victim. Even that was too many but if they could help it, he'd be the only one of the night.
"Shan, look." Tom stopped running and pointed to something that had been torn apart by an old farm fence, heavily guarded by trees and brambles.
"What is that?" Shannon wondered aloud as they inched closer. "Oh god, I hope that's not what I think it is." Suddenly, she broke into a run and grabbed her phone. She used the torch on it to light up the area. The wreckage of Jana's caravan sat there in plain view. The door was bent outwards and the sides had been torn at from the inside, but none of the holes were very big. The door had just about held too, keeping whatever had locked itself in secure. In the end, it was the window that had let the Wolfblood's plan down. After they'd locked themselves in and transformed, the window seemed to have offered no resistance.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Tom asked.
"I think one of the wilds came back here for security during the blood moon." Shannon muttered. "Her plan didn't work though. Obviously, she's either stronger as a wolf than she realised or the wolves gain additional strength coupled with going feral."
"And I presume by the way you said 'she' you already know who it was?" Tom knew who it was already, but Shannon's words just cemented everything in place.
"If there was any doubt, this would prove it." Shannon said, reaching into the broken window frame and pulling a bloodied tuft of red fur from the glass. "Jana's come back to Stoneybridge."
"We need to find her." Tom's eyes were wide in realisation. If someone found her and shot her, how would any of them live with themselves? Without another word, the teens ran in the direction they'd been heading before. All too soon, Bernie's café came into sight. They were confused at first because of the fact that neither of them could remember the door being painted red. They knew he'd always wanted a red door, but he'd never got round to it. That was when they realised the door wasn't painted. White patches still showed where the blood had run over time before drying and discolouring, the street light still making it look like the original red shade.
"What the hell are we looking at?" Shannon was struggling to take in the scene before her.
"I think it's Predator 2 Scene 2." Tom muttered. "I'm half expecting to see a body hung from the ceiling by their ankles."
"Wolves can't hang people, Tom." Shannon rolled her eyes.
"I know, but it's still pretty similar." Tom shrugged. Shannon was already looking over the ground for anything that might give them an idea as to what happened.
"Bingo!" she muttered.
"What have you found?" Tom asked. Shannon had been looking through the glass on the floor that was left when Bernie's head impacted with the door due to the wolf attacking him. She turned round and held up a bloodied tuft of red fur.
"You're saying that…"
"I'm sorry, Tom. It looks like it was Jana who killed Bernie." Shannon muttered. Just then, Tom heard a car coming. He grabbed Shannon's wrist and hauled her behind the corner of the building, rendering them invisible in the shadows. A beige pickup truck pulled to a stop and the driver got out. Tom and Shannon's blood turned to ice. As if on cue, someone got out from a following car with a camera and turned it on.
"Okay, the night vision is on and we are on in five, four, three, two…"
"Hello there, I'm Kyle Weathers and welcome to Beast Hunt. After our last hunt here was sabotaged by two youths, one of whom was delusional and belonged in a straight-jacket, I'm back here in Stoneybridge. It's just emerged on Google News' NHS page that a shop owner was killed here in front of his very own shop. We've come here to examine the scene. Be warned: this may get disturbing and it's very graphic."
"What's he doing here?" Shannon whispered.
"He's probably after the wolves again." Tom whispered back. "He might be hoping it was one of them that killed Bernie so that he has a reason to take them." Shannon's blood boiled at the thought. The nerve of him to make the straight-jacket comment…
"I'm not seeing any loose fur or anything incriminating…" Kyle mused as he patrolled around with an LED torch. As they watched, he drew ever closer to their position. Suddenly, his gaze snapped over to something leaving the crime scene. "There we go; I've found a blood trail." Kyle triumphantly pointed to a red set of paw prints leading away from the crime scene. "Steve, take my place in the driver's seat. Rick and I are going to follow this on foot and then you bring the car around when we call you, okay?" Steve nodded as he shuffled over into the driver's seat and got back to reading his Top Gear magazine.
"Kyle, are you sure about following these prints on foot?" Rick asked, scratching the back of his head and ruffling his jet black hair with worry.
"Trust me, this will kick-start your film career." Kyle told him as he went and grabbed his tranquilizer rifle from the back of the car.
"Fine, but I do want something to protect myself." Rick shrugged.
"You have something." Kyle said, reaching round and grabbing his torch from where he'd just hung it on his belt. "These things have a strobe function. If you time it right, that should immobilise it long enough for me to deal with it for you."
"That cold hearted…" Shannon couldn't believe it.
"He's insane." Tom muttered. "We need a plan. If he's got strobe torches, we can't take him head-on like last time."
"We've got to do something though." Shannon hissed as Kyle and Rick headed off in the direction of the paw prints. "If he finds Jana, he'll either sell her to a zoo or take her head and pelt as a trophy."
"You know we won't let that happen." Tom had a determined look on his face that told Shannon he meant it.
"And if it happens anyway?" she asked.
"When did you get so pessimistic?" Tom snapped. "Shan, we're going to save Jana. If we don't step up and protect one of our friends, what was the point of coming out here in the first place?"
"I know." Shannon nodded. "I'm sorry. I guess I'm just scared."
"What is there to be scared of?" Tom couldn't believe it. "It's Jana, Shan. She's just a big softie on the inside."
"But it's not Jana, is it?" Shannon reminded him. "The Wolfbloods aren't themselves tonight. They're literally just the feral animals that the world would mistake them for any other day. She's killed one person tonight and nearly killed me a couple of months ago even before that."
"Well you shouldn't have lied to them, should you?" Tom couldn't believe he was hearing this now. "I don't care what Rhydian and Maddy say. There has to be a bit of her that's still the Wolfblood we know on the inside. The same goes for Maddy and her family. It's still them inside. If it wasn't, they'd just become snarling animals forever."
"I get that, Tom." Shannon said. "I think what they were trying to say is that it's still them in there. They just don't have any control this time. For them, it would probably be like watching a video of themselves doing these things. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you one-hundred percent. We need to do something. The main question is what we do and how we go about it. One wrong move and we're dog food."
"Okay, so what did you have in mind?" Tom asked.
"I think we need to raid Kyle's supplies and see if we can find some form of protection." Shannon replied. "We need something tough to protect our limbs and throats."
"Do you really think he'll have just left something like that lying around in there?" Tom asked, very much doubting Kyle would be careless enough.
"It's a longshot, but it's hopefully enough." Shannon shrugged. "We just need to knock out Steve for a long period of time though."
"Do you think he'll have a spare tranquiliser rifle or darts?" Tom suggested. "If we can get a dart, we can stab him in the arm with it and that level of sedative can easily put him down and keep him there."
"That's risky." Shannon replied. "The last thing we want is to dose him with too much and end up killing him. We don't want a dead body on our hands."
"Yeah, especially not one that size." Tom muttered. "Where would we hide him?"
"All we really need to do is stop him falling out from his seat." Shannon summarised. "That way, we can just make it look like he fell asleep instead of being knocked out. But the one thing we can't do is kill him. I know we've broken laws before, but there are things I know Maddy and Rhydian would never forgive us for when it comes to protecting them."
"The question is, how are we going to search Kyle's weapons stash without Steve noticing?" Tom looked over the line of cars. "I'm seeing Kyle's pickup truck that Steve's driving with all the spare equipment and that second car that the camera guy was in. Rick's car should be mostly empty, but the one we need to search is the one that has someone in it."
"Okay, but I can see him listening to music." Shannon observed. "We need to give the cars a wide berth and get a look at the other side to see if he has earphones in both ears or just the one."
"Okay, then we should cut around the back so there's less risk of getting spotted." Tom pointed to a thick patch of bushes. "We can sneak around using that as a starting point."
"Okay, that's good." Shannon muttered. "Since you're faster, you should sneak around. Flash me thumbs up or down as to whether or not we're okay to go."
"Hang on, why do I have to get put in the firing line?" Tom protested.
"Tom, it's not like he's got a gun." Shannon rolled her eyes. "You're wearing more dark clothes. It'll make you harder to see. Just keep a decent distance away from him but close enough that you can see."
"I'll play rock paper scissors for it." Tom said.
"You're terrible at that." Shannon reminded him.
"How can you be terrible at it?" Tom asked.
"You always pick paper." Shannon replied.
"Oh, do I?" Tom said indignantly, holding out his fist. Shannon rolled her eyes again, holding out her fist too. Instantly, Tom's hand flattened out into paper as Shannon's two fingers extended into scissors. "Do you want to go for two out of three?" Tom asked.
"Get going." Shannon said simply, pushing him slightly in the direction of the bushes. Muttering four-letter words under his breath, Tom circled round slowly and made it to the other side without getting spotted. He flashed Shannon the thumbs up and she joined him at the back of the truck. Using their hands to brace against the bottom of the rear flap and shield the noise of the hinges, they lowered it and started to rummage through, being very careful not to be seen in the rear view mirror or put any weight on the back to shake the truck.
"This stuff is a jackpot!" Tom whispered. "There are no tranquilisers in here, but what's this thing?" He held up a canister and Shannon cast her torch beam across it.
"It's an upgraded form of his bait." Shannon noted. "It has all the attractive properties of the old version but with a powerful anaesthetic to knock out anything that comes near it. It can be used on any animal since the animal's system will only accept enough of it to put them under for a set three hours."
"How do you know this from just looking at the tin?" Tom asked.
"I'm reading it from the label on the back." Shannon replied. "Apparently, it's literally like a gas grenade. Just pull the pin and throw."
"Then I think that's Steve out for the count." Tom grinned before crawling round to where Steve left the side window open. Steve barely had time to react as the grenade went off. As he took a deep breath in to hold his breath, the gas that made it into his lungs put him under. Tom raced back to Shannon and high-fived her.
"That was brilliant!" Shannon said, hugging him briefly. "The only question is; how do we get the canister out now so that it looks like he just fell asleep?" Tom grabbed a spare scarf from the back of the truck and wrapped it around his face. The stench of sweat on it made him want to retch, but it allowed him to reach in and grab the canister without breathing the gas in.
"What do we do with this?" he asked as he ripped the scarf off and flung it away. Shannon took it from him and stuffed it under Rick's car before turning to face Tom again.
"They never think to look under the car next to their own."
"Okay, we're all sorted then." Shannon muttered, pulling her coat tighter around her to keep the cold out. "Now let's go and find Jana before she hurts anyone else." With that, she grabbed two of Kyle's spare torches and a pair of his night vision binoculars. She also decided to put a gas grenade in her pocket too. If push came to shove, they could knock Jana out for long enough to get her trapped somewhere for the night.