3. Baldric

I watched as my peers filed onto the large, rusted, buses. On one I watched as the new girl, Callign, and the blonde haired friend she had cultivated, climbed on, closely followed by Ezekiel, the young wolf leader watched her closely, as though she belonged to him. Richard was last on the bus, his car must be in the shop, I thought, not unusual for he liked to run the little beauty into the ground. I noticed that, he too, was looking after the girl with the same possession as the wolf, although he preferred to stay aloof and wait for her to come to him. Most would but she didn’t seem the least bit interested. In fact when I had seen her and wolf at lunch this afternoon she seemed annoyed with his presence for the most part.

It sickened me to think of what they might have planned for her, but it was against the Peace Pact to stop them from casing their prey. Only after they had harmed her could I step in, by then it was usually too late. I glanced through the windows, watching as she pulled a book from her bag. She seemed to notice the stares of her hungry predators for her brow soon furrowed in anger. There was something that set her apart from the other humans, something that caused “others’ to take notice of her. She seemed pretty enough, the first time I had seen her I thought that Richard’s coven had contracted another member, but she didn’t seem to realize what I was. The leeches and mongrels could always sense a Hunter and they would have one of two reactions, either a.) they would run in fear or b.) they would stand and wish to fight. This girl however stared, not in fear or anger, but curiosity, and what seemed like interest.

After all of the children and their predators were packed onto their buses I walked out into the parking lot to my rusty, reliable, old, truck, ready to go home and rest. The truck had belonged to my father before he passed, it surprised me that my uncle kept it long enough for me to have it, but I was thankful he did, it was one of the fondest memories I had of my father, driving in this truck.

Home was the small mansion outside of town, perfect for training and not raising the concern of humans. Walking through the halls was like walking back in time, while still staying in the present. The walls were home to many old, yellowed, and crinkled maps, innocent looking to the untrained eye, but I knew that the small red and green lines marked the borders of several Vampire covens and Werewolf dens all across the globe. If you peeked in on any of the rooms, there would be displays of silver swords and similar weapons, alongside those of guns, carrying silver bullets. My five-year-old twin cousins, Joshua and Joseph, were training in the large ballroom, on the main floor, with their father, Franco, watching over them.

“No, no, no!” Their father boomed as one of them messed on a move, skewing the entire rhythm of the sequence and placing his brother in a twisted maneuver to fend off the deadly mistake. I tried to move on quickly but Franco’s keen eyes spotted me before I could make it to the other side of the door. He was restless ready for a fight he knew he could not get. Though he had created the Peace Pact, he was still a Hunter and had trained hard as a child to kill the Vampires and Werewolves that plagued the night, and so the urge to fight them was ingrained into every fiber of his being. It was his cowardice that that prevented him from truly destroying his anger, causing him to then turn that anger on his sons and myself.

“Baldric, my boy, why don’t you and I show these trainees how it’s done?” He called with a dark smile on his face. He thought to show me up in front of my cousin, assert his strength and power. However through the years he had grown round with food and drink and his reflexes were no longer fast.

“Sure uncle.” I answered with false enthusiasm. He shooed the boys to the other side of the room and they handed us our weapons, short double-edged silver swords. My uncle and I proceeded in a wide circle, sizing each other up like dueling lions. The tips of our swords touched sending an overload of sensory information, as though my sword were a part of me. I felt the strength in my uncle’s arms and the frustration he had built up within him from training my cousins.

To me this meant that he would be quick to move and get this over with. I was right, he was the initiator, and his movements were fast paced and thrown with much force. After a bout of matching his pace, I began to breathe heavily, but I could tell that my uncle was fairing worse. Sweat broke out over his brow and his face turned a deep shade of red as he panted in effort to keep up with his initial blows.

I let him work out his anger and then I began to get serious. My training kicked in and I fought back against his anger until he realized his rage was directed at the wrong person, his movements slowed and began to relax, we finished the heavily practiced moves fluidly and in the end, I had won.

The victory was not enthusiastic, as it may have been when I was younger, I knew my uncle to be a great hunter but after my father and mother died in a raid on a powerful coven of Vampires, he had lost his tenacity. He had become soft and spineless; making a pact with the leeches and mongrels in the area claiming all he wished for was rest. However, I knew what he really wanted was to die the way he had lived, a coward. His weakness was so evident that It had become a foul stench to me and other Hunters as well. What was worse was that living in his care I was also labeled a coward, disgracing my fathers name. I left the ballroom on the verge of disgust.

My room was small, mostly because I had such a large collection of books that I was given three large bookcases, which took up all the empty wall space in my room. I shrugged my coat and backpack off of my shoulders leaving it in the corner by the door. I pulled a book from one of the shelves. I didn’t really pay too much attention to the title nor the actual book, it was a cover really I wanted to think over the events of today and I always thought best when I had a book in my hands, as though the words of the author sank into my blood stream and inspired me. In my hands now I held Frankenstein, an odd coincidence considering the events that had taken place today.

Something was happening I could feel it. I knew that whatever was coming was going to change not only my life but the entire town of Opheim would be changed. I knew it was coming, could feel it’s power and significance vibrating deep within my bones. I just couldn‘t tell, yet, what that was and how it would happen.

Whatever it was Callign was involved. Whether she knew it or not her appearance started this whole snowball and when it got towards it’s end it would be bigger then all of us. The young girl had walked into a real life horror story staring the largest and scariest monsters in the human imagination.