Chapter 2-54: Who is the Prey? (1/2)
She listened to the birds going quiet at the presence of a hunter, circling back to watch the driver they’d left behind, obviously bait in one form or another.
They probably weren’t actually expecting anyone to be left behind, and were just doing it in hopes... whatever, they were still going with proper partners.
So was she. They should have stayed a foursome, and they might have had a chance.
They were walking, not jogging, wary of an ambush, and certainly hadn’t wolf-shifted. Catching up to and getting ahead of them really wasn’t all that hard.
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She stayed around the back of the camper as they arrived, instantly saw the bloodstain, deduced what it was, and saw the pack of food and stuff laying around. Naturally one of them had to enter the camper to see what was in there, while the other grabbed some meat on the ground, and unwrapped it for a snack.
The Waveskating Steps were the Joe Average of Lightfoot styles. Their greatest strength was basically being able to ignore rough or uneven terrain, sort of flowing around obstacles easily. That flowing stuff was because you were sliding on your ki field over the ground, alternately gripping or slipping as you liked, which meant some odd movement styles were possible.
Like, oh, sliding under a camper as if the ground was greased, and coming up to bury your glowing sword in the groin of a very astonished werewolf with his mouth full of bloody human flesh.
Then extending it a foot further into his heart.
He stared at her, eyes starting to go yellow, then fading away. She grabbed the front of his shirt, lowered him down, even crinkling the plastic wrap as she lowered him, and turned toward the door, flattening against the side of the trailer and letting her Tremblesense place the other Were within the camper.
The smell of death and blood permeated fast. The startled Were inside the camper growled and lunged for the door-
And as his throat cleared it, he ran right into the starsilver edge of the soulsword waiting for him.
3-15+6, +10 Anathema, x2, +4d6 Sneak Attack damage. These weren’t elites, just average werewolves in human form, Health-centered twats who relied on people not knowing they had DR 10/Silver to get the time to wolf up and then tear them apart.
Their blood bubbled and hissed as it swept over Tremble, flesh curling away from it. Anathema was a Forsaken Feat, and a terribly dangerous one to lycanthropes. Satisfy their Damage Reduction to silver twice over, and it became Damage Vulnerability, the difference between smacking Superman with red sunlight and smacking him with kryptonite.
Ki Strike Mastery/2 was choice of silver or cold iron. Sama had taken silver, naturally. /1 was magic, of course.
They didn’t get a chance to fight back before they were dead, and she removed their heads to stop them from animating come midnight.
Vivic would come in so useful at times like this...
Just to push the point home, she got out two vials of fleshfire, and poured them over the corpses, which promptly ignited.
It was an expensive way to make sure the corpses were useless even if they became undead, but now it was time for her to head back the way she’d come...
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Both werewolves smelled the death before they saw anything. The guy by the car had his pistol in hand, doubtless loaded with silver. The one in hiding was moving stealthily through the greenery, closing in on the source of the scent.
The one in the open shifted to hybrid form, kicking out of his shoes as his feet elongated and he put on at least another hundred pounds of furry mass. His nails were gleaming like knives, and his lupine features were distorted and mutated – uneven eyes, a turned-up nose, and serrated ears.
Clearly a sign of corruption that wasn’t visible in human form.
He turned the corner, and looked at the two severed heads of the Weres who’d gone to investigate the girl. Both of the skulls looked mightily surprised, and the one even had a cut of human flesh still clutched in his teeth.
He looked at the ground for a sign of the being that had dropped them, inhaling deeply, looking for a scent. There was no swirl of supernatural presence... an assassin or skilled stalker, certainly, that –
A great growl and yelp sounded in the woods not thirty yards away. Instantly the guard was bounding for it, as there was a great thrashing, and then sudden silence.
He came upon the stalker, laying in wait there if anyone was hanging around to attack him... and now he, the bait, was the only one alive! It looked like his packmate had walked right into a long blade that had opened up his throat and underjaw completely, nearly splitting his head in two. The edges of the wound were still sizzling from whatever had done it.
He smelled nothing, saw nothing as he spun around, heard nothing.
There was a flutter of wings as a startled bird took wing above him. He jerked his head up automatically at the sound... and three feet of plunging, glowing sword went right down his throat.
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She didn’t have to haul their three-hundred-pound-plus bodies, just their heads, happily. She brought them down to the jeep, lined up all four heads on the hood of the Jeep there, and brought out the Compass.