by Dave Ferraro
***
Shanna felt her hand shaking as she leaned into Rachel, trying to make herself as small as possible. The werewolves could be heard getting closer, howling and growling in turn. The hunters had realized that outrunning them wouldn’t be possible, and so had devised a plan.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Rachel whispered.
Shanna nodded tightly, trying not to breathe.
They had trekked deep into the tunnels and had backtracked to where they’d seen an air duct off to the side. After covering themselves in sewer water (and Shanna was trying desperately not to think about what some of the other matter that clung to their skin was), they had taken off the vent, and had crammed into the air duct, which ended up only being large enough to fit two people inside.
“It’s okay,” Quinn said, looking over the air duct carefully. “I have another idea for me and Brett. You two stay as quiet as possible.”
And without heeding their protests in the least, Quinn had screwed the vent back into place and left them.
“What do you think they’re doing?” Rachel asked in a hushed voice.
Shanna bit her lip. “I don’t know. I hope something really smart.”
“I hope they’re covered in fecal matter and whatever the hell else this is too,” Rachel sniffed. “If I get pink eye, I am killing someone.”
Wrinkling her nose, Shanna looked back at her, and broke out into a grin when she saw the amused smile on Rachel’s face. Rachel put up a good front with her complaining, but she really was a tough girl who wasn’t afraid to get her hands (and the rest of her, apparently) dirty.
Rachel hesitated for a moment, then nudged Shanna. “Say, do you…recall what happened in the car, by chance?”
Shanna looked startled. “The…you mean floating above our bodies?”
Rachel nodded.
“I thought I was dreaming!” Shanna said. “I thought I’d blacked out for a second and the dream just sort of kept going with the car crash thing.”
“Hmm,” Rachel tapped her lower lip. “So, it was real. I wonder how we got loose from our bodies like that. Could the accident be the reason?”
“It’s happened to me before,” Shanna confessed. “I fell asleep after the party. There was this man over me, just like in the car.”
“He was cutting through the threads that kept you grounded to your body,” Rachel nodded.
“Is…is that what he was doing?” Shanna’s eyes were wide with alarm.
Rachel considered for a moment. “We’ll have to talk with Hunter when we get back.”
Shanna shivered. “Did you…see what the guy looked like? It was so-” She suddenly stiffened, and looked at Rachel with alarm.
There was panting coming from outside of the vent.
They looked at one another for a moment, realizing that the werewolves were just outside of their hiding spot. They hadn’t made much noise as they’d crept up to the air duct. Shanna could only hope that they hadn’t heard the hunters whispering.
Rachel turned her head a fraction of an inch to see out through the vent, and Shanna followed suit, relieved that she didn’t see a wolf staring in at her. Maybe they were safe.
But then why weren’t they moving along? They had went up the tunnels quite a ways from here to continue their scent trail. Were their noses sensitive enough to detect them through the sewage?
Shanna curled her hand around the cross dagger on her thigh sheath, thinking about how the end was made of silver. At least she could fight the thing, if it came to that. Although with how vicious she’d been led to believe werewolves were, it didn’t sound like she would last long against one hand-to-hand, let alone three of them.
All at once, a claw raked the vent and the vent was torn from the air duct like tissue paper, exposing them.
Shanna stared out at three werewolves in terror. They were big, and very intimidating, with yellow eyes that seemed to burn into them. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and yanked her cross dagger free from its sheath, holding it out before her bravely, and trying to look menacing despite the tremors that ran through her arms.
The werewolf directly in front of them, boasting midnight black fur, sniffed the air for a moment, and seemed as if to study them, savoring their fear before moving in for the kill.
Its body was massive, and Shanna had only a little weapon to fend it off with. Would it be enough? Would she even get an opening to drive her blade into the creature? She eyed its sharp black talons nervously.
But then it simply turned away, the others following its lead.
Shanna and Rachel watched them go with mouths hanging open in disbelief. And continued to stare as they lowered themselves onto their four legs and charged up the tunnel, quickly out of sight. Their howls echoed down the halls in their wake, and the two hunters stepped out of the air duct, dazed by the encounter.
“What…was that?” Rachel asked. She shook her head. “Did that really just happen?”
“It did,” Shanna confirmed numbly. “And we’re still alive. I think.”
Rachel wrinkled her nose. “Although, you can hardly blame them. I wouldn’t touch me looking like this either.”
Shanna giggled, then couldn’t help but burst out laughing after a moment.
Rachel chuckled as well, shaking her head. “This is crazy. It’s like they got one good look at us and…” Her smile faded. “Something’s wrong with us.”
Shanna heaved in a few deep breaths that dissolved the remainder of her laughter. “What? What do you mean, wrong with us?”
“The creature from our dreams,” Rachel frowned. “I wonder if…what it was doing to us made the werewolves not interested in us. It’s obviously doing something to us. And as far as I know, that is not typical werewolf behavior.”
“Why else would they just turn and leave, without doing a thing to us?” Shanna considered, and started when a loud splashing noise from the sewer canal broke through the silence.
There was a small bridge made from grates that ran across the canal at intervals, and just beneath one such bridge, a figure splashed heavily, gasping.
“Brett?” Rachel asked in disbelief.
Brett sputtered and thrashed over to the side of the canal as Quinn also surfaced. Together, Rachel and Shanna helped the boys out of the water, dripping wet and pungent with the smell of sewage.
“That was your brilliant plan?” Shanna demanded of Quinn, as she peeled off her light jacket to wipe the water from his face and hair.
“Didn’t have much choice,” he grinned at her lazily. “Plus, I doubt if I’d gone into detail, you would have let us go through with it.”
“If you’d surfaced any sooner, they would have detected you,” Rachel scolded. “That was ridiculous.”
“We thought they would just pass right by you,” Brett shrugged, pulling his soaked shirt up and over his head, and swiping at his arms and face with it like a towel. “We didn’t expect to have to hold our breaths for so long.”
“We didn’t expect them either,” Rachel admitted, sharing a look with Shanna.
Quinn watched them for a moment. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” Shanna shrugged. “They just…left.”
“After finding you?”
“Yeah.”
Quinn frowned. “Was it like a…game to them? Because they seemed pretty serious before about ripping us limb from limb.”
“We’re not sure,” Rachel said. “But once we get back to the mansion, we’re hoping to get some answers.”
“Either way, they’re still looking to hunt you two down, it seems,” Shanna said to the boys as a howl erupted from deep in the tunnels. “We need to disappear. Quick.”
Quinn nodded, and led them along some side tunnels until they chanced upon a ladder that led up to a manhole cover. He volunteered to go first, and when it was safe, ushered the others out into the night air once more, near the area where they’d
gone shopping earlier.
“Thank god,” Rachel said, spying a nearby pay phone. “I’m calling for a ride to get us the hell out of here.”
“What a night,” Quinn said, flopping down on a bench along the sidewalk. “Is this the sort of thing you do often?”
Shanna smirked as she sat down beside him. “Hardly. It’s usually way scarier than that.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. Usually it’s pretty routine. This was…obviously a staged attack.”
Quinn nodded. “It’s dangerous to be a hunter.”
“It is,” Shanna agreed, then looked at him sideways. “Too dangerous?”
He didn’t answer her for a moment, but stared up at the full moon instead, the light glistening in his damp hair. It was then that Shanna remembered Cameron, and hoped that he was alright too.
“I could get used to it,” Quinn finally said, turning to her with a smile. “As long as I’m making a difference.”