He stood in the shadows, watching three men playing poker at the only furnishing in the large, open chamber of the warehouse; an old, scuffed folding table. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for the battle he would have to fight, not one of weapons, save for his ability to persuade. The men, Hunters like himself, were his friends, had been for nearly thirty years. He took another deep breath and walked to the table and into the bright glow of the single ceiling lamp, the men looking up and relaxing at seeing him.
"Hey, Eric, glad you made it." The man on Eric's left, Mike, said.
Eric inclined his head and sat. The three looked at him oddly, perhaps sensing that he wasn't there to play poker.
"Well...what's been going on with you, Eric?" Mike asked.
"A lot." Eric replied, "Some of which I'm here to relate to you."
Mike nodded. "All right."
"Where to start...I guess with motivation." Eric said. "You all know why I became a Hunter...?"
They nodded, puzzled as to where this was going.
"Revenge is not a good motivation for hunting, neither is fear." Eric said softly. "I didn't realize this until recently."
"What happened to bring you to this realization?" Victor, the man across from him, asked.
"I'll get to that." Eric replied. He turned to Mike. "Do you recall that hunt I went on about ten years ago?"
Mike inclined his head. "Yes...your referring to that one that didn't respond to normal capture routines."
"That's the one." Eric agreed.
Victor leaned forward, "Wait...I haven't heard of this."
"Neither have I." The man on Eric's right, Yoshi, said.
"All right, I'll start with that." Eric said. "It was ten years ago, just after I had put down that one in Afghanistan. I came back to America, reported in and was on my way home."
*****
It was late at night. I stopped at a mini-mart, stepped out of my car and a furtive movement caught my eye. When I looked, nothing was there, but I felt it...that feeling that something wasn't right.
The movement had been in the alley next to the mini-mart, so I stepped into the shadows, feeling for a flash-grenade in my pocket. The moon was a pale sliver in the sky, but enough light penetrated the darkness for me to see the shimmering luminescence of mist hovering a few feet above the ground. The mist began to contract and coalesced into the dark form of a woman, crouched as though she were looking for something she had dropped. She stood, seeming to unfold from herself as she did, and stretched, all as though she were oblivious to my presence-or ignoring it. I heard her sigh just before her voice, low and sweet, came to me:
"Well, Hunter, I suppose this is where you attack me, unprovoked, of course."
I didn't respond, instead I curled my fingers around the slight cylinder of the flash-grenade.
She turned to me, dark eyes flashing in the moonlight. I was surprised at how...ordinary...she appeared. Not the pale, aristocratic beauty usually worn by her elk. None the less, I found her strangely appealing, a feeling I never felt for one of them before.
"For a Hunter, you are slow..."She said, completely unafraid of me. Indeed, a twist of genuine humor was in her voice, on her shadowed face.
"How do you know I'm a Hunter?" I asked. A stupid question, I know.
Instead of mocking me, or dismissing me entirely, she smiled, "Why, you showed no fear of me upon seeing me solidify."
In an instant my mind cleared and I drew the grenade from my pocket, shielded my eyes and threw it to the ground. It exploded in a brilliant flash of light and UV rays, but when I looked, she was gone. I ran down the alley, but saw no sign of her. Then her voice came to me from above:
"Hunter...I do not know you and yet you attack me...as all Hunters do...following, blindly, a motive as impure and unforgiving as you make me out to be."
Then I saw her above me, standing on the roof of the mini-mart. I clenched my fists at my sides till they ached.
"You call me, and others of my...kind, 'perversions,' a blight to be wiped out...without knowing anything about us, where we came from, who we are. You fear us, hate us and through blind belief in old legends, you kill us. Indiscriminately." She said, sorrow pulling her voice into a husky whisper.
Loud voices came from the mouth of the alley. I looked to see men coming towards me. When I looked back, she was gone, but her voice carried to me:
"I leave you with this: Which of us is the real monster, Hunter?"
That was when the men reached me, wanting to know what that flash had been. I ignored them and walked to my car. One grabbed my arm as I was getting in, demanding to know "What the hell was going on?"
I gave him a cold look and he let go, taking an involuntary step back, "Nothing that concerns you, so forget about it."
*****
Victor shook his head, "So? She got away...we've all had that happen."
"After using a flash-grenade at point blank range?" Eric retorted.
"Besides, Eric tracked her for almost two months after that." Mike said.
"I nearly had her several times too...but she kept getting away." Eric added, "I followed her to the California coast, where she took a jet to Australia."
"Australia? Why there?" Yoshi asked.
Eric shrugged, "Why not?"
"So, when you say she 'didn't respond to normal capture routines' what do you mean exactly?" Victor asked.
"She wasn't affected by the flash-grenades, she could cross running water and...she wasn't affected much by a wooden crossbow bolt through the chest." Eric answered.
"Nonsense!" Victor shouted. "All the bloody beasts are killed with 'wooden stakes' and flash-grenades...you can't expect me to believe this?"
"Oh, shut up, Victor." Yoshi said, "You always were pompous and melodramatic."
"Stop it." Mike warned the others. "Go on, Eric."
Eric sighed, then continued, "Well, there..."
*****
Were no records of her, at least not in the current files. I did, however, find her in the archives. A file last updated over a hundred years ago. Her name at that time was Alana Bisch. Her record goes as far back as the Hunters, nearly four hundred years of tracking, then it stops.
So where was she? Still in Australia? Somehow I doubted it. It had been three months since I lost her. I don't know why, but I felt she wouldn't stay away that long. Since I had no clues to where she might be, I put her file away and took on other cases, but she was never far from my thoughts.
Then, a few weeks ago, I saw her again. She was standing in a department store I happened to enter. She stopped what she was doing and lowered her head. She never looked at me.
"I was sure our paths would cross again, Hunter." She said to me.
I was caught off guard and just stood there. She let out a small sigh, "Have you thought about the words I left you with?"
"Yes...I have." And I had, for ten years those words had been with me, just under the surface.
