The Hunters

"How could they possibly know?" asked Logan, confused.

"Listen to me. Whatever happens, all of you have to carry out the plan. If they are expecting you, then they will set up barriers no matter if you attack it tomorrow or next month or next year. I must go now." And with that, Richard disappeared.

The situation at the MacFarlane compound became listless. There was an eerie silence; no one dared to say anything. Finally, Logan raised his voice.

"They may know that Kyros is here but they might not know why. But that doesn't mean that they won't have good guesses. They didn't buy our trick of passing the three of you as one of us. It is no longer safe to remain here too long. Aurora, Anya, we need to know the exact location of the Headquarters now. Once we know, Kyros and his Vampires will begin planning for an aerial attack while we attack from below. I need to know all the entrances and possible exit points. Please?"

"We have two main entrances- one from the main road of Oxley street and the other is the helicopter pad entrance on the 70th floor. To enter, you need a pass if you're a visitor. Otherwise, a thumbprint is required but only if you have been cleared for a due appointment. There are usually two guards on duty on the first floor. They are normal humans and act as a cover. Only when security is breeched will the Hunters be employed down," said Anya.

"As far as I know, the only exit is the same one you enter. There aren't many windows until you reach the top 5 levels of the Headquarters where the offices of the Elders are, so there's no way to jump out. As for the actual layout of the other levels, I think our father would know better. He'd know exactly what floor the laboratories are because I have never seen them personally," said Aurora.

"Tell us about the strength of the organization," said Kyros.

"Right at the top are the seven Elders- three Werewolves, three Vampires and one Hunter. Our father doesn't stay at the organization but I am not sure about the rest..."

"No, they have their own residences," said Kyros, cutting Anya short. "My Uncle, Caden lives in England as well. So I am assuming that they all have their own home but flit in and out of the organization at will."

"That might pose a little problem won't it? We may be able to rescue my father... but to take down the organization, we need to know exactly where all the Elders are," said Logan.

"Not to worry. I'll get in contact with my Uncle as soon as I can. In the meantime, we can hope that Richard makes it back..."

The group kept silent again.

"Alpha, if I may suggest- is there a way for us to have access to the switch and control room? That way, we will know the location of Alpha Leon as well as the locations of all other Hunters in the vicinity."

"As a matter of fact... I think we do. The room is controlled by normal security guards- humans of course. I do not know where exactly their room is located but I assume it must be on the ground floor or basement," said Aurora.

"We can't wait around for our father to come home or for Caden to give us information. It is decided then. Aurora and I will sneak into the building and recce the location. That way we will have better intelligence for this mission."

"No!" protested Logan. "We cannot alert them at all of this possible attack. A whiff of the plan and they might shift locations."

"They'll know you're coming, even before you step into the building. There are at least twenty Hunters; half of them are ranked the highest ten. You need specific entry points and a plan to enter unnoticed!" she retorted.

"No sister... he's right. We're supposed to be dead. If they catch us, they will suspect something's wrong and move the lab operations somewhere else. We cannot jeopardize that. I know what we can do," said Aurora. Turning around to look at everyone, "All of you will test your strengths against the two of us. That way, you will know how much manpower you will need to take down just one Hunter. From there we can plan accordingly."

With that, she got up and took her fighting stance.

***

"Richard... I am most disappointed in you..." said Connor in his low gloomy voice. Richard could not see his expression for his face was half covered in the shadows but he could tell that the Elder was angry.

"Your girls are traitorous mutts who are cahooting with my dear son. I suspect that they're planning something. I have been a fool!" he said with a spat. Richard could see that he was getting up. The other Elders turned to look at Connor.

He noted that Caden wasn't present.

"Noticed have you? I've disposed of him... permanently; that useless, spineless Vampire! How dare he lied to me! How could he have not pored into that boy's head and read the truth!" he roared.

Richard kept silent, watching Connor, not with fear but an intense dislike. Caden had not been lying. He believed his nephew out of love... but a man who cannot love will never understand that.

"The same fate awaits you, Richard. This next task that I am about to give you will test whether you deserve to be in this Order or not. I will not be failed again!"

Richard's eyes widened in shock even before the words came out of Connor's mouth.

"No!" he yelled, shocking the others in the room.

"No! I will not do it!"

"Very well then. Hedva, Aiden..." he said simply as he and the other Elders vanished from the board room.

Richard didn't have time to think; Connor had set the head Werewolf Elder and the last Vampire Elder on him. He knew they were strong. Hedva had engineered some sort of enzyme strain that enhanced the Elders' cognitive and physiological capabilities.

Aiden was moving so fast that he appeared only as flashes of light. Hedva in the meantime was circling the both of them, waiting for the perfect chance to strike. Richard noted that she had already shifted into her wolf form; she was huge. But that was an advantage to him. Somehow her enhancement only increased her size but her feet were unproportionately small to her body. He needed to use her own weight against her.

But before he could put his thoughts to action, he felt Aiden's energies directing towards a strike on his face. He barely managed to step aside when he heard Hedva take a sharp breath and leapt up to pin him down. This time, instead of stepping aside, he vanished and reappeared in the air above them.

"Please... Please stop this! You don't have to listen to him! What do you gain by taking me down?" he pleaded. "I do not want to fight you... you are not my enemy."

But the continued their assault, jumping high towards him, their claws and fangs ready to kill.

Richard managed to throw Hedva off balance and had sent Aiden crashing against the bookshelves. He wasn't even trying to fight but simply defend himself and evade their attacks. Then suddenly out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Aiden break off one of the pillars and was hurling it in his direction. This time, he felt the brick hit his jaw before he kicked it into dust.

"That is enough!" roared Richard as he raised his hands and clenched his fists. Immediately, his two adversaries were raised off the ground and hung limp in the air. He stared at them; his eyes turning into a colour of molten gold. He could smell their fear, their confusion... and what was that? Their pity...

He unclenched his fists and watched them slam onto the floor. Lowering himself down, he stopped glowing and returned to his usual state.

"Why do you feel sorry for me?" he asked instead.

Hedva looked at him, her body at the half state between woman and wolf. Aiden on the other hand was completely knocked out.

"I know how you must be feeling right now... but I have no choice but to attack or I'll be next." she said in a quiet voice, once she regained her human form. "Before we created you, we had many experiments. The first of the very many was tested on ourselves. Being the head scientist, I had volunteered to test the first experiment on myself... One of my other scientists managed to infuse my egg with a sperm from one of the Vampire Elders. It was a success."

Richard didn't say anything but continued looking at Hedva.

"Nine long months I carried the experiment around... and after the ninth month, it wasn't an experiment anymore to me... It was a part of me; my baby..." Hedva absent-mindedly rubbed her tummy. "It was a perfect baby boy... we checked all his vital stats and he grew up to be a fine young boy. But all was not to be. Connor was not too happy that the boy was not showing any signs of special powers and instead, became ill... I took time from my work to care for the boy... but Connor forbade me to. At last, he threatened to kill me if I did not terminate the boy's life. It was then that he decided that we kidnap other Vampires and Weres to be our experimental guinea pigs. He refused to have any of us harbor feelings for our prototypes... until you..." said Hedva in between sobs. "You were not supposed to have emotions. You were supposed to be a calculative, rational prototype that would raise the twins experiment and turn them into indestructible killing machines."

"But I didn't..." said Richard kindly as he knelt down beside the frail woman. "I think Hedva that we should not kill anymore innocent. It is time we stop this."

"Richard..." she whispered with her head bowed low. Then looking up, she said, "What shall we do with him?"

"Give me a moment." Richard knelt beside Aiden and placed both his hands beside Aiden's temples. "I'm really sorry... I'll take only the last 24hours from you."

A minute later, Richard stood up, grabbed Hedva's wrist and disappeared from the room.

***

"I'm going to make this easier for you. Anya and I will have our eyes blindfold. Don't worry about injuring us. We heal pretty quickly," Aurora said reassuringly; more at Kyros than anyone else. He had been looking at her most disapprovingly since she had decided to train them all. When both the girls had their eyes closed, they turned to stand back to back against each other. Then Anya spoke out.

"Alright, alright step up... whatever formations you like. One... Two... Three..."

She could hear their breathings; labored and unsure. Some were so fearful that their blood pressure had increased, releasing copious amounts of their body scent. Aurora felt that they weren't even trying for she simply stepped aside every now and then when someone actually dared to land a strike.

"I'm going to attack them," she said to Anya in her head. She didn't need to see her sister nodding to know that she too was thinking the same. Anya had already disappeared into thin air by the time Aurora took her first step. She could sense her sister reappearing behind the group of Vampires; successfully knocking all of them off their feet. She heard five bodies thump on the ground; the vibrations reaching her feet.

The clearing was suddenly in a mass of murmurs and panic. They were starting to take the girls seriously now. Aurora had managed to evade at least half a dozen full strengthed Werewolves charging at her in various directions. She was concentrating so hard on picking up the vibrations of oncoming attackers on the ground that for a split second she forgot to sense the vibrations in the air around her. It took her attacker just that long to grab her from the back; his arm hooking around her throat.

"Mine," she heard him growl, almost too sexily. She didn't need to see him to recognize him. Ignoring the slight tingle in her tummy, she managed to hook her leg under his knee and flip him over, slamming him on the ground.

"Oww... that hurt!" he said, with an exaggerate pout.

It seemed that the others had saw what happened and were beginning to attack her from various off-ground locations. That was good, she thought. They were learning. The simultaneous vibrations in the air confused her a lot. This was good. This was a possible blind spot for them. In fact it took her twice as long to evade them and she even sustained a few slashes a deep cut on her forearm.

When she finally took off her blindfold, she saw that everyone was panting. Even Anya. It occurred to her that as Hunters, they were trained for single assassinations not a mass attack like this. It meant that numbers could tire them out too.

"Alright. We will now go on to explain the weaknesses in your attacks- First; you must try to control your breathing and heart rate. I know it is difficult... but Hunters get excited by the scent of fear and your accelerating heart beat becomes a point of focus for our attention. Not good. Secondly, you all are not coordinating your attacks. Simultaneous attacks will confuse the Hunter and give you a window of opportunity to take him or her down... as Kyros had tried to do so."

"That is easy for you to say... even blindfolded all of us could not take either of you down!" said Eliza with disgust. She had been very annoyed that Anya had knocked her down. She was a Pureblood!

"Like my sister said... you guys are attacking too randomly. I mean... the moment I vanished, all of you ought to have been on guard but neither of you were! I'd like to remind you that all Hunters in the Organization carry at least two guns and various other weapons like swords or daggers hidden in their clothing. Being knocked to the ground is only half your worries. One slice off your head and you're dead... am I right?" snapped Anya.

"Alright... that's enough. We need to take a rest. We will use this time to regroup and strategize," ordered Logan as he came to the middle of the group to disperse them.

"Have a break inside. When you come out, we'll attack... for real." He added a wink in Anya's direction as she rolled her eyes at him.

When the girls were gone, Logan motioned everyone close.

"There are forty Weres and five Vampires, excluding me and Kyros here. I will group you such that there's one Vampire to every eight Weres. I noticed that in the presence of more than three attackers on the ground, they get confused and lose their focus on their other senses, even if it is just for a while. That aerial attack that Kyros did just now was really good. I want all of you to emulate that."

"Also... you need to move at a speed faster than the speed of wind. In the case of the Organization... that's going to be hard because it is an enclosed space. But I think that might come to our advantage because our scent might be too overpowering for them to discern how many attackers."

"My Lord... why don't we impair their sense of smell as well? That would give us a better fighting chance," said Xander, one of the Vampires.

"No. That would impair our senses too!" exclaimed Logan. "Never mind that for now. Let's get into formation and see if we can at least inflict a bit more damage and take them down more efficiently and effectively."

But before he could get the girls, he sensed someone walking towards them. For the fact that he could sense and smell this person meant that it wasn't a Hunter. Turning around, he spotted Richard walking towards them with an elderly woman. On close examination, he realized that she wasn't old. It was only her hair that was a shade of grey. He was willing to bet that when she shifted, that same shade would be the colour of her fur.

"Logan, this is Hedva... one of the Elders. She has come to help," said Richard when he saw the calculative look in Logan's eyes. He knew that the Alpha needed time to talk to this woman.

"Kyros, I need to speak to you in private. Logan, perhaps you could welcome our guest?" Richard said kindly but with enough force to make it sound like an order. But Logan only continued looking at Hedva with an intense dislike.

Richard quickly pulled Kyros away before Logan could protest.

"I need you to look at me now and tell me what it is you're not telling me. I can break into your consciousness and read your mind easily but I refuse to do that out of courtesy."

"I... I don't understand, Richard..."

"Caden... your Uncle... he is dead. Do you know why?"

Kyros face immediately turned into shock.

"What? No! How? Why? I don't understand... What do you want me to tell you Richard?"

"You know who killed him don't you..."

Kyros didn't speak for awhile and looked down.

"I knew it was coming... that is why I told him the lie... about your daughters. I knew my father would spare him when he saw that Uncle knew nothing."

"When did you know about your father, Kyros?"

"I was told since young that my father left us when we were very young. For most of my life, it was my mother who raised us. Then Uncle Caden took over when she died. However, A few days ago... Uncle told me the truth when we met at my mother's grave... My mother had died trying to protect me and my sisters. Father wanted to use us as the first test subjects for his mad science project but my mother refused to let him. In the end, she had to challenge him to a duel. You may not know much about Pureblood lore, Richard, but if you duel with a wager and the duel will be witnessed be another Pureblood. In my mother's case, she wagered her life for ours and my Uncle was the witness. He told me that she never even put up a fight. She died solely for us... and that is why my father is adamant on trying to kill me for he can't do it himself. He's sent about a dozen Hunters after me."

"This makes so much sense... I'm so sorry Kyros..." said Richard after a while. "But why does he want to kill you so much?"

"He's getting old and he acknowledges it that someday he might be challenged and die. He hoped that by capturing me he could mould me into someone like him. Of course back then I didn't know of all this. I only knew that my father wanted to meet me... I was twenty-five and I hadn't seen him for almost a decade. I hated him and I told him so. I suppose he bore a grudge and decided to kill me after that because he has only targeted me so far. My sisters are safe."

"Your father has a knack for wanting the next generation dead. He has ordered me to take out the twins."

Kyros didn't say anything. He needn't. Now he understood why Richard had brought the Werewolf woman back to the compound.

Richard looked at Kyros and smiled. Suddenly, the sound of fighting caught their attention.

Logan was attacking Hedva. She too was putting up a fight. It was an impressive but frightening sight to watch as two huge wolves tried to rip each others' throat out. They were circling now, growling angrily at each other; each waiting for the right moment to strike. Richard could sense Logan's feet aiming to leap up. He was definitely faster and stronger than Hedva. He had to do something to stop this fight or Hedva would die.

As he was about to run towards the two wolves, he saw a flash of white coming straight at them and a second later, both Hedva and Logan were thrown off a few feet from each other; Anya was in between them, her teeth bared angrily as sunlight reflected off her shiny white coat.

Logan leapt up to his feet very quickly and was advancing towards Hedva who was now sprawled on the floor; she was in her Werewolf form, shifting back to human. Somehow the force of Anya's attack had injured her. But Anya's eyes were only focused on Logan's for now, daring him to make the first move. She was relatively smaller than him but she stood her ground, growling fiercely to stop him from advancing anymore towards Hedva.

Finally, he eased back and went off to a shed behind his house before returning a while later with breeches on and a robe. He strode towards Hedva and threw the robe on the ground beside her.

"Cover her!" he ordered. "She reeks." With that, he dismissed his wolves and strode angrily into his house. Anya remained in her place, still in her wolf form as Richard, Aurora and Kyros approached them.