THE BOY WITH THE BLADE

Run.

That was all he could think of doing. That was all he was focusing on. The two boys ran, faster and faster, as hard as they could through the tunnels.

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. The boy wondered if he should blame himself. Sure, J had been the one who was supposed to concentrate on the town, but the boy had been the one to actually bring them here. That was the problem with traveling through shadows. You had to be specific, and if you weren't…

Well, at least they had made it to Beacon Hills. The boy was just glad about that. Things could have turned really ugly.

Uglier than accidentally teleporting into the sewer system and running into what appeared to be an angry group of Hunters taking refuge down here.

Later, the boy would ask himself why the Hunters had been down here. He'd also ask himself why, when the Hunters had seen him and J, they had looked relieved, as if they were expecting something awful to come out and attack them instead.

"What are we going to do?" J asked, just a foot ahead of the boy. The boy couldn't help but feel slightly jealous at how J was still slightly faster than him.

"They're still following us!" the boy responded, looking back and seeing the shadows of their pursuers on the walls of the dank sewers. "We can't fight them in here. There's way too many, J."

That wasn't completely true. The boy was more worried about J. The boy could have done something, something he wouldn't have liked to end this, but not while J was couldn't risk letting him get in the way.

"Just because I'm from here doesn't mean I know the workings of the sewers, Leo. Hurry up, there has to be an exit through here somewhere," J replied, looking back at him. His tone sounded brusque and uncaring, but Leo could see clear enough that J was just as worried as him.

"We've been down here for awhile now, and have taken a lot of turns. Surely there has to be an exit somewhere close by."

The two continued running, making multiple turns here and there. Despite their supernatural abilities, the Hunters were still behind them, able to trail them. It was just of the small space that they couldn't lose them. Leo wished he could have teleported them out using the shadows, but he didn't have enough energy to do that again. He and J had already done so many jumps to get here. He knew he couldn't handle another.

Then, he saw it – he might have even missed it, if he hadn't been looking so hard.

"J!" Leo yelled, grasping the boy's muscular arm and dragging him to the side. The other boy seemed caught off guard by this, not resisting in the slightest. Leo was glad for that. "Shut up and follow me. No questions."

He could sense J already beginning to open his mouth, either to question him or say something snarky, but the boy stopped and listened to Leo.

As they were about to turn against one of the different tunnel passages, Leo dragged J into a small crevice, a hole you'd have to crawl into to fit. The shadows of the sewers had made it almost hidden – almost. He pushed Jackson in first, then got in next. Luckily, it was wide enough for both boys to huddle together side by side.

"Darkness," Leo muttered, waving his hand around the entrance to their hide away, and suddenly a ripple seemed to engulf the opening, and then it was clear and they could see through again.

J looked at Leo like he was insane, but Leo put a finger over his mouth. They still couldn't talk yet.

It was then that a group of feet appeared by the entrance, halting immediately by one of the tunnel passageways.

"Where did they go? We were keeping stride with them, and now suddenly they are gone? Ow is that?" a masculine voice asked.

"You saw the model-looking boy. His eyes, the way they had glowed when they fought us off – he's probably a werewolf," a feminine voice replied.

"What about the other boy with him? The Latino looking fellow?" a third voice asked.

"I don't know," the feminine voice replied back. "He didn't seem to have any outward qualities like the werewolf boy, but I can tell there is something different about him."

"Why were they even down here?" a fourth voice asked.

"Probably some sort of hunting party for the she-wolf," a fifth voice said.

J looked at Leo then, a quizzical expression on his face as he mouthed the words back. Leo was at as much of a loss of thought as J. Who the hell was this 'she-wolf'?

"I have heard the stories of the she-wolf," the feminine voice replied. "I have seen the bodies she leaves behind. She would not send two children like that to do our dirty work – not when it seems she enjoys what she does."

"Then why are we chasing them? Especially since it looks like we lost them," the masculine voice asked.

"We're Hunters," a sixth voice chimed in. "Do we need a reason to hunt down creatures like those? For all we know, they very well may have killed some poor innocent soul before running into us and came down here to hide."

Leo rolled his eyes. He could feel J stiffen besides him. Leo hated Hunters – at least, most of the ones he had met. They always seemed to have a shot-first attitude regarding anything that wasn't completely human, and viewed anything that wasn't completely human as impure and volatile. There seemed to really only be a handful of good Hunters in the world. Unfortunately, they hadn't run into them.

"Oh, enough talking! I wanna shoot something!" a seventh voice responded.

"Yeah!" a bunch of other voices responded together. Leo was glad they hadn't tried to fight. It did sound like there was too many. And Leo didn't want to do anything he didn't have to… he didn't feel like having more blood on his blade.

"Shut up, all of you," the feminine voice replied, and they all went silent. Clearly, this person was in charge. "If we split up, we should able to do find them. Jared, Clemens, and Judy, you're with me. Cisco, you lead with the others and head back the way we came. We're going to follow the paths."

"But… what if the she-wolf is down here? Shouldn't we all stay together?" an unfamiliar voice chimed in.

"Say something like that again, Johnson," the feminine voice replied, a sweet tone to it, "and I'll slit your throat myself."

The group was silent then.

"Now, my group, with me," the voice replied. "Everybody else, follow Cisco."

"You heard your leader. Move!" the masculine voice replied, and suddenly, the group split into two and ran in different directions.

A few minutes passed by, and when Leo felt that it was finally safe, he sighed and began to move out of the hole. J followed suit.

"How did they not see us?" J asked.

"I used some of the shadows to cloak us. I may not be able to teleport us out, but I still have a little bit of energy in me left," Leo replied. "What about you, Jackson? How are you feeling?"

"Confused, and like we just walked into something we really aren't supposed to be apart of. We're here on a mission to track down The Mute Man, and yet Angela didn't mention anything about some renegade group of Hunters or she-wolves to us?"

"We need to report in, once we get out of here, that is," Leo replied. "I don't think things are quite as simple as we had hoped they would be."

"Yeah well, this mission isn't so simple being where we are anyway," J replied, sounding upset. "I didn't want to come back here. Not like this. What if we run into the others?"

"I don't have anything to worry about on that front," Leo replied, but his words felt hollow. He hated being in this town, too. He didn't want to come back here anymore than J did. "But I'll make sure that we try to stay out of the limelight. Hopefully, we'll be in and out before your friends even know that we were here."

It wasn't until then that Leo saw another figure out of the corner of his eye, but he moved quickly, tackling Jackson to the ground just as an arrow zoomed past them.

Leo knew who it was. The team of Hunters who were supposed to double back had found them.