Maddy had no idea what had just happened, but she was going to find out, that she would make sure of. She climbed her way out of bed and pulled on her boots and a jacket that had been flung onto her floor some days earlier, whilst trying not to cry out in pain from doing all of these activities. If Maddy made so much as one of the floorboards squeak as she snuck out of the house, her parents would surely hear and stop her from going after Rhydian, which she knew that she had to do.
The night air had a bite to it. It was the beginning of October and the clouds blocked all traces of moonlight from lighting Maddy's way, but this made no difference to Maddy. She was a wolfblood. She once ran all night long through the woods, which she now entered alone, with Rhydian. The dark was like a second home to Maddy now, she definitely didn't fear it like a little cub. Contrary to this, she did fear things that went bump in the night, like the smashing of an empty beer bottle.
Maddy had left the forest when she heard this noise and was now in a familiar street, shouting Rhydian's name. 'Rhydian!' She had been calling out for what felt like hours, and still there was no sign of him, however she did attract somebody else's attention. Maddy looked across the street to find the source of the noise, that's when she saw them. Next to a bench which Maddy herself had spent many hours chatting to Shannon sitting on, stood four large men. Each of them had at least four beer bottles, cradled in their arms, and an extra one in each of their pockets. Another bottle broke on the ground – this was how they chose to get rid of their empties. The entire group of men were loudly slurring their words and sluggishly moving as though they were in slow motion. They were all staring at Maddy with eager looks on their aged faces. She noticed this, and decided that the best thing to do would be to carry on walking, hastily, but without showing that she was scared, with her head down and hood up. Power walking was causing Maddy to swing her arms, which made her injuries throb unbearably. She was close to crying, and had started to make small whimpering sounds with each movement, when they started to follow her.
'You alright darlin'? You in pain?' All of the other inebriated men were stood behind the scruffy speaker, smiling. 'We can help ya, here just have a drink with us.' Maddy could only just tell what the man was saying. All of his words seemed to form an endless slur in his thick, Geordie, accent. Where one word ended, another had already begun.
'No, thank you.' Maddy nervously replied. She continued to speed on in front of them, but they were catching up. Maddy would run, but she didn't know where to go. Her mind was frozen in fear.
This carried on for a few more minutes. Them, trying to convince her to go with them. Her, each time, simply replying, 'No, thankyou.' The men, although drunk, had managed to follow Maddy into a part of the village that, strangely, had never visited before. That's when she saw an alleyway which she thought that she could escape down. She took off running at her super human speeds, when the alley suddenly curved, revealing to her a dead end.
The men were approaching behind her, calling out. 'Hey, where'd you go pretty girl?' They were laughing. At the end of the alley she met a tall, concrete, wall which, under normal circumstances, she could easily scale and leap over to safety, but these weren't normal circumstances. Maddy's shoulders had been caught too, as well as her chest, when Ceri had clawed her. She was trapped and didn't know what else she could do. In her anguish, she had one thought stopping her from collapsing: Rhydian. He was still out there somewhere. She had to get away and find him before he did something stupid.
The men stumbled around the alley's bend after Maddy, in their drunken delight. All that Maddy could think to herself was, 'Rhydian, I'm scared.'