Bad Things
[a closed RP]
By the time Stiles arrived at the edge of the wood, the moon hung full and heavy in the sky above him, the cloudy night giving it a silvery halo like the kind you read about in poetry. Beautiful and deadly--not in itself, but in the context that it provided. As Chris had once told Stiles while they waited outside on a night much like this, the only things out on a full moon were the hunters and the hunted. Not predators and prey, because what they were out here for was beyond such natural boundaries, no, out here there was only hunters and hunted. It was then that Stiles had wondered aloud why the werewolves didn't just revert to their human form and hide among the trees, pretending to be hunters whenever they were encountered.
"It doesn't work like that, Stiles." Chris had said, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady his shiver in the autumn chill. "They're not human, and this is the one night a month where they can't hide that. The light of the full moon is the strongest reflection we get, and has the greatest pull on blood. It is so pure that it will reveal what a person is on the inside, even if they want to hide it away."
Three years later, Stiles crafted his first silver bullet.
Je chasse ceux qui me chasser.
Now the air was warmer than it had been then, fragrant with the scent of the woods in springtime. Last year's leaves were being ground to the soil underfoot, and among them sprouted new shoots. Daffodils with their heads drooping, the trees producing a low whisper in the occasional breeze, rain from the afternoon trickling down in rivulets against the bark. Stiles hoisted his M24 a little higher against his chest, fingers tapping it automatically to make sure everything was in place. Turning around a tree, he felt a chill run through him at the first sign of his prey. Claw marks in a tree, five of them in pattern, too high and deep for any true animal. They had sliced through the flesh of the tree, opening up the yellow-white inside and causing sap to ooze from the wound in a sticky trail. He resisted the urge to touch it, knowing that getting his scent here tonight would be a mistake. It wasn't just some loose beast he was after, as much as any bestiary would insist otherwise. He was stalking something with intellect, something that did know how to hide itself from his meager eyes, something that knew how to hunt in return and he would not make the mistake of becoming its prey.
It must have been half a mile before he found a good place to lie in wait; the small knoll just barely rising out of the ground and surrounded on either side by a heavy blind of trees. Zipping up his jacket, Stiles circled to the back in a long loop, avoiding the other side of the mound, and situated himself in between the trees with his gun balanced on the high part of the knoll. The moon had just risen but he was confident he'd have time to lie there and allow the scent of the forest to cover him, his body chilling as it rested and his heart slowing away from it's telltale rhythm. Light shone off the leaves on the ground and the bark of the lighter trees, but even the matte sight on his rifle was kept purposely in shadow. There would only be a half a minute's worth of chance, but that was all he needed. Line up the shot, take a breath, pull the trigger. Only one shot, and Beacon Hills would be safe another night. All he had to do was be patient enough to wait for the hunted to come crashing by.
So Stiles waited.
