Of Hunters and Shadows

Chapter Five



My arrival home, I was worn out and more then slightly agitated. Fen had been waiting nervously for me in the livingroom, having apparently received a mysterious and uninformative call telling him something had gone wrong. I am afraid I was extremely rude to him and short tempered under his assault of questions, more so then I had ever been in our three years of acquaintance. Between giving him a run down of events, not sparing any gory details and embellishing the idiotic behaviour of Soldier Boy, and feeding I am fairly certain I probably freaked the kid out. I didn\'t care at the time, retiring to the basement as soon as I had gotten what I needed out of him and looking forward to the ability to shut down for the day.



Hunters don\'t dream, nor do any of the rest of my species as far as I have ever been informed. We do not even have the void of discontented sleep to great us in slumber. One moment I am awake, laying in bed waiting for dawn, the next I am sitting stock up in bed and it\'s a few seconds past dusk. It is a lot like blinking, with the world speeding by in-between leaving behind a sense of rejuvenation and time lost. Hunters have no way around passing out, without utilizing timezones in an attempt to outrun dawn though the other breeds have varying degrees of control on it. Another aspect of Groudlings that \'vampire\' mythos got mostly right.



It both simplifies and complicates things. Putting a heighten focus on time when travelling, or in daily activities-I can\'t do anything that takes more then a single night to complete or paused in-between sleep cycles, but it does illuminate insomnia and nightmares.



This is not to say that, if emergencies arose in the day, I\'d be completely defenceless and incapable of being woken. So long as I am out of direct sunlight, and if in enough pain or surrounded by enough noise, I would wake up. I\'d be disoriented and weak, but awake. Hence my windowless basement and the alarm clock I have at my bedside, usually set ten minutes before dusk. I\'ve been trying to condition myself for the past five years to be more functional if woken early, a precaution in case something happens to Fen and the house goes up in flames or something.



So I went to bed knowing I would wake up and everything would at least feel a bit better, the stress washed away in the blink of an eye. I\'d told Fen not to bother checking in on me since I wanted to stay asleep until sundown for once and planned on hiding out in the basement as long as I could. With everything that happened the previous night I couldn\'t be blamed for wanting to ignore the world and finish my novel.



Except, when night fell once more and I was up, nothing seemed inclined to go along with my plan. The red light of my reading lanterns and the general darkness of my rooms was oddly disconcerting, and I couldn\'t focus on the book at all. The epic climax I had been interrupted in reading no longer held the same appeal and I read the same page a handful of times without retaining anything.



All that kept coming into my mind was flashes of the creature from the attack, and how it was still out there. Would likely not be caught, since nobody seemed to want to look for it, convinced it was a Garue as if I was a delirious child or something. Then again, the Authorities were experts even if they were off on the wrong foot. It was possible they\'d get their heads out of their collective asses and catch the right killer. It was hardly my place to get involved, I had a job and life to get on with, I should let everyone else get on with theirs. It wasn\'t as if I hadn\'t know Guards or Hunters killed in and out of the line of \'duty\'. I\'d never cared about their deaths.



I hadn\'t even liked Darryl. I don\'t even know his full name. Even if he had always called me by my last name, he\'d known my first one. He\'d likely told me his names when we first met, but it was over five years ago and he\'d always been \'Darryl\' or \'Asshole\' in my mind.



So much for being rested or clear headed.



I left the novel in my reading chair, deciding to try again at a later date, and headed upstairs. Fen would likely be up and about, and could be useful in distracting myself. Sure enough, he was stretched out on the sofa playing with one of \'our\' game systems and eating something that smelled liked chicken but looked like coleslaw. Another of his customary food experiments I would usually comment on, but choose not to for the moment. I had taken a not so small amount of his blood that morning, and if he wanted to indulge in questionable food I could let him.



“Didn\'t think I would see you till closer to midnight, Boss.” Fen commented, not taking his eyes off the T.V screen as he shifted on the sofa to allow room for me. Apparently he wasn\'t as bothered as I was about everything. Then again, he had not been chased by a nightmare dog from hell.



“Bored.” I said simply, shrugging one shoulder and squinting at the dim glare of the television. Fen was playing a first person shooter, something with a large amount of zombies and bad sound effects. Doom 3, I think, but I wasn\'t paying all that much attention.



“Just bored?” Fen paused the game to give me an incredulous look. “You just sat down and you\'ve been twitching none stop. Your foots doing that tapping thing it does when you\'re frustrated.”



I glanced down at my feet, the left stalling mid movement. Fen might be weird but he can be quite the observant person at times. At the very least, he was smart enough to pick things up after 3 years. “I\'m...Edgy, I suppose.”



“Understandable. The neighbours dog scared the shit out o me earlier when I was checking the mail.” Fen said, taking a bite out of his mystery chicken and returning to his game. “You\'ll feel better in a couple of days, I bet. Maybe call and check on that Borin dude.”



I doubted Borin would be awake or up to talking on the phone. Or that talking to him would make me feel any better anyways. I was beginning to think the only way to get my head on straight, was to get some answers.



Getting up off the couch I headed back towards the stairs, ignoring a questioning look from Fen. I had little to no experience playing sleuth, but sitting on my ass was only driving me up the wall. If I actually actively tried to do something about the nerves and curiosity it would probably all fade away and I could think of something simple that might do it.



Walking down into my rooms I stripped off my indoor \'causal\' clothes and headed for my dresser for my hunting clothes. When I finished changing I snatched my cellphone out of its charger on the top of the dresser, dialling the number for a local taxi company. I was probably acting crazy, or at the very least stupid, but I could mark it down as a mid life crisis and headed upstairs once more to wait for the taxi.