“Abigail! What the hell have we just gone through?” Garrett asked.

Abigail finished drinking a glass of cold milk to help settle her stomach. Garrett thought she looked a little gaunt, and wasn’t surprised. They'd spent half the night running back and forth to the bathroom, and on some occasions, they'd been in there at the same time.

“Something poisoned us,” was all Abigail could respond with.

“No shit!”

Abigail chuckled. “I think that’s true, now. I seem to have dried up.”

“That makes two of us, I feel like crap, and it’s as if a dark cloud has moved from in front of my face,” he replied. He reached for his glass of milk.

“You know Garrett, I have a sense that something very strange has gone on here. I feel like I've been in a coma and I’ve now woken up,” Abigail said. She walked into the living room with her housecoat flowing at the side of her.

Garrett followed. His t-shirt hung loose, and his boxers hung under his belly. “I’m not sure… but was Noelle here, last night?” he asked.

“I think someone was. There’s a jar of tea in the kitchen with a note that says to give it to the rest of the family,” Abigail mentioned. “Do you think that’s what made us keep running to the bathroom?”

“It could be, but I’m thankful for whatever it was. I don’t know why, but I am.”

“Garrett, where are all the pictures of Noelle from the shelves?” Abigail asked.

Garrett turned and looked at the shelves that were half bare, apart from the thick layer of dust that had formed through a severe lack of cleaning. “Beats me. They were there last time I looked,” he replied as he ran his finger into the dust. “And from the look of this dust, I think we’ve been home for a few months and not done anything at all.”

“It’s bizarre, the last thing I remember is Edmund. What a nice guy he was. I do wonder what happened to him.” Abigail opened the doors to the large patio.

Garrett wiped his fingertips on his shorts and walked into the fresh air that blew over the garden. “I hope Noelle’s with him and not with that Declan character. You do remember he is an alpha, our sworn enemy,” Garrett said. “I absolutely hate werewolves, they are no good to man or beast.”

Abigail stood with her housecoat blowing in the wind behind her. Garrett looked at her body. She was knocking on a bit in years, yet she still took care of herself, and it showed. She looked as fit as a lot of women half her age did. It must’ve come from all the training they did as— “Hunters! Abigail, we are werewolf hunters. It’s all come back to me, we need to speak to the other family members immediately.”

“Ah! You’re right. Noelle was here last night. I see her now, she was with that Declan. We had a wolf in our house,” she replied. “What are we going to do?”

Garrett stormed around the patio and cast his gaze over the fields that laid away from the house. “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do, we are going to war. We’ll get our daughter back and wipe out every fucking last one of them.”

“What happens if we can’t get Noelle away from that Declan boy, dear?” Abigail asked. Her housecoat gently flowed in the breeze. “I never liked him.”

Garrett stormed back inside the house and walked directly to his study. His hands pushed firmly against the double, oak doors. They swung open and crashed into the chairs that sat behind them. Garrett heard the hard thud as he walked to the bookshelf that sat against the wall. He pulled two books from the shelf. Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities. Garrett’s hand vanished into the space where the books had rested and where the cloud of dust now fell from. His fingers fumbled for the switch. Garrett pushed and stepped back as the bookshelf swung forward into the office.

Garrett stood and looked into his armory. He saw all his guns were hung on the wall and the stacks of ammo sat in plastic trays. Garrett stepped inside and picked up one of the bullets. He wiped the tip against his shorts. The silver started to shine in the bright bulb that shone above his head, and the worktops glistened that ran around the walls of the room. He picked up a rifle. Dust covered his hands.

These will need a damn good clean before they are fit to use.

Abigail walked into the study and saw Garrett with his head held high as he examined the bullet. The silver tip sparkled, and a glint caught her eye. “I see you don’t want to take any prisoners this time?” she asked.

“Well, for all we know, there could now be hundreds of them around. We’ve been out of action for months, it seems, we need to strike, and we need to strike hard.”

“I think I’d better go and see Marjorie, and take her this tea. If the same thing has happened to the rest of them, they’ll have been like zombies for months.”

“Yeah, you better see them face to face. I get the feeling if you call, they are going to wonder who it is,” he replied. Garret put the bullet back in the plastic case and walked from the room. “I’m gonna be busy here later. I’ll make contact with the other hunters, and then I’m going to get these cleaned up and ready for action.”

Abigail nodded and left the study. Garrett heard her footsteps as she walked up the stairs. He sat in his sizeable, leather-backed chair and pulled the drawer open on his desk. His book of contacts laid on the top. Black leather covered it, with gold, embossed writing. CONTACTS. Garrett pulled the book from the drawer and placed it onto his desk. This was no ordinary contact book. It contained only the names and contact details of all the hunters in the country.

Garrett flicked through gold, edged pages. He stopped at the letter P and his finger scrolled down the page, until he hit Peter.

Peter Ricks was Garrett’s number two. If anything had happened, he’d know, and he would be able to bring Garrett up to speed. Peter was a good friend, but as with all the hunters, none of them knew where each of the others lived. It had been a safety precaution. If a wolf got ahold of a hunter, they could locate and wipe out anyone they wished.

“Hey, Peter! It’s been a while,” Garrett said.

“Holy Fuck! Garrett, is that you?” Peter replied.

“Yeah, I’ve been sort of indisposed for a while,” he replied. He pushed the speaker button and then rested his head against the back of his chair. “What’s been happening?”

“To be honest, we have been sort of quite for over the past half of the year. We had a good tussle, and we lost a few good men,” Peter explained. “We have been building up numbers and we’ve done some extensive training. We hit a pack the other day. We were lucky, it was supposed to be a dry run, but we bumped into a pack.”

“I hope you showed them what’s-what?” Garrett said, with a satisfied grin on his face.

“It finished with about six of them being carried away. I reckon half were hit with silver and the other half might’ve been lucky, we started to run out. It’s been hard to find silver that’s almost pure. These imports have made it damn awkward.”

“I hear what you say. I have a good load of ammo here and a stash of silver. I was working on a new bullet before I went off the radar,” Garrett explained. “It’s lined in silver and not silver all the way through. It will pierce better, yet there’s enough punch in it to do some damage.”

“That’s great news. So, where have you been, anyway?” Peter asked, in curiosity. “We thought you might’ve shuffled off your mortal coil?”

“No time to die, there’s too much to do,” he called into the speaker. “One of the priorities is to get Noelle back from the clutches of an alpha.”

“You know where they are holed up? Then we can hit them first, when you’re up to speed?” Peter replied.

“Yeah, I know exactly where they are,” he said. “Clifton Towers.”

* * *

Maria sat with her finger under the cold water that flowed from the faucet in Declan's apartment. He'd got her a chair, so she didn’t have to stand. She'd been sitting there for a good ten minutes. Declan said a regular burn was fifteen minutes under cold water, yet a silver burn on a werewolf had a slight difference. Twenty to thirty minutes he’d said, just to make sure. It might not get rid of the blackness that formed on the tip of her finger, yet it would take the pain away.

“It hurt like a motherfucker, sorry but it hurt so I’m using foul language,” Maria said.

“Now you can start bombarding yourself with these supplements you found,” Declan said. He stirred the coffee he'd just made. Maria picked up her cup and took a sip.

“I’ll start as soon as I get back to my apartment. I’m gonna double the dose for a couple of days,” Maria replied as she watched the water flood over the tip of her black finger. “We should see this clear up quicker, and next time I touch the silver, we will. God, I hope see a different reaction.”

“I don’t doubt that’s exactly what’s gonna happen.” Declan sat on the couch close to Noelle. “Are you going to be okay to take the first team up for training?”

Maria turned her head from the sink. She thought what a good couple Declan and Noelle actually made. She felt a little jealous as she looked at them sitting with their fingers locked together.

“I’m fine. I’ll take the first group and then the second batch will be ready for tomorrow. I’ll take Kelvin up with me each time, and Noelle can come tomorrow,” Maria said. “Are you going to come up?”

“I will tomorrow, but not with you. I’m going with Dustin. We want to make sure no hunters come from above us. I don’t think they will, but you can’t be too sure,” Declan replied. “We might be there before you get there, we need to walk from the road and then back to the house.”

“It sounds good to me, and it’ll do Dustin good to get some real fresh air back into his lungs. If he can change into his inner wolf he might get fitter a bit quicker,” Maria said. “We will need all the help we can get when it comes to fighting.”

Maria pulled her finger from the water and turned the lever on the faucet. She looked at her finger and saw it had started to fade to a dark grey that looked like dusk, rather than midnight.

“Forty-five minutes and the pain has gone. By the time I head off, it might have cleared, altogether.”

“Keep a check on the time, we need to know the reaction times,” Declan commented as he stood up from the couch. He twisted on the door handle and opened the door for Maria. She held her finger in front of his face as he blew a pretend kiss at her finger.

“I saw that,” Noelle said, plainly.

“It was only at her finger. Relax will ya,” Declan pressed as he closed the door behind Maria. “Now we are alone, there’s a couple of things we need to discuss.”

“Oh, now you want to include me in your conversations,” she said, in an ambitious, cocky tone.

“I needed advice earlier, and I couldn’t have this conversation with you until I heard what they had to say,” Declan explained. “We need to talk about us. And we need to talk about your parents.”

“I know. They are going to be a real pain in our asses. Dad’s gonna come gunning for you. He will try and get me away from you,” Noelle added. “He’s GONNA try and kill you.”

“Trying isn’t enough. I’m not going to give you up that easily, and you know that. I've already mentioned this to Dustin and Maria, when we fight, they are to be spared.”

“It’s their choice. It’s a shame they can’t see both sides. I would have thought Dad might hold a different opinion, but I don’t think he'd remember his brief span of being a wolf.”

“Same here. He could’ve ended all the fighting. Now though, he’s going to bring it on harder than ever. He has a few months of pent-up hate built up in him, even if he can’t remember,” Declan said. “This leads me to the other thing.”

“Now you’re going to talk about us?”

Declan grinned. “I am. We can both see where we are headed, but the pack is going to be split with what I have to say to them,” he said. “You need to watch your back.”

“Declan, don’t forget, I’m a huntress. That's what I was raised to do,” she replied. “This time though, I’m not going to kill anyone.”

“That's what I was hoping you were going to say,” he replied. “That would only throw more fuel onto the fire.”

“What about Gabriel? Where will he fit into all of this?” Noelle asked, with a more-than-puzzled look on her face. Declan looked back at her and shook his head as he curled his bottom lip.

“From what I can tell, he doesn’t. He has lost his chance of being my beta. As good as we were as friends, he tried to fill my position before he was ready. It’s not easy to be a real alpha.”

“And that’s what you’re trying to tell me, it’s not easy to be an alpha's mate, especially if you’re human?” Declan grinned as he pulled his t-shirt from over his head.

“Exactly, that’s definitely what I’m saying.”

“Why have you taken your shirt off, Declan? And why are you pulling at your belt buckle?” Noelle asked, now with a sultry glint in her eyes.

“An alpha has a large appetite. And an alpha’s mate is there to help him feed,” he replied.

“Ah! A whore in the bedroom and a slave in the forest?” Noelle said with a loud laugh.

Declan's pants dropped to the floor. Noelle stared at the bulge in his shorts. She smiled and licked her lips. “Alpha mate or not, I’m feeling extremely hungry, myself.”

“This is my rifle, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun.”