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Less than an hour later, Katana was packing her bag for a trip to Scotland.
“Isn’t this exciting, Jacques? It’s not quite the European adventure I was hoping for but still, I have my first official case.”
“Oui, madame,” Jacques replied, not even bothering to take his attention from the TV.
“Maybe we’ll get to go abroad on the next case. Maybe I’ll finally get to leave England and travel.”
“Oui, madame.”
Katana sighed at her friend’s dismissal of their conversation. There were times when he shut down and refused to engage for no obvious reason. This was one of them.
Looking down into her suitcase, Katana sighed at the bleak colours of the clothes staring back at her.
Having to blend into forests and surrounding foliage left little to the imagination in terms of suitable clothes.
For the sake of comfort, ease of flexibility, and of course the fact most of her time was spent on horseback, Katana’s suitcase was filled with dark coloured jodhpurs, dark coloured cotton shirts, and knee-high black riding boots.
For the briefest of moments, she debated what the suitcase of any other twenty-two-year-old girl would look like if they were going away for several days to some place new, like a mini holiday. Colourful dresses, high heels, and make-up would be dominating their bags for fun times and memory making moments.
To lessen the dismal colours saturating her eyes, Katana looked at her red riding cape and her high-neck frilled collar white shirts. They were the official uniform of a Kempe; of a Red Riding Hood.
Up until two hundred years ago, it had been mandatory for all hunters to wear the uniform and hunt with a horse and a dog (now a wolf) in remembrance of Henry.
With werewolf attacks becoming more urban as the population expanded, and also the increase of pesky items like cameras, the uniform law had slackened and was now only required if the hunter had to present before the Preternatural Council.
Riding a horse through woodland and forests wasn’t out of the ordinary, and the use of wolves was neither here nor there with civilians more commonly mistaking them for husky breeds or wolf-dogs.
“It’s a young girl,” Katana said, her voice shaking. “She was eight, Jacques.”
Jacques, who was watching a shark attack programme on National Geographic, didn’t dignify his partner with an answer until the adverts came on.
“It must have been a new-turn—” he scratched the back of his neck with a back leg “—that couldn’t control his blood-lust. No biggie.”
Katana raised an eyebrow. “No biggie? Jacques, this goes against everything we were taught about werewolves. The youngest they kill is eighteen.”
Quirking up a furry eyebrow, Jacques simply replied, “Obviously not.”
“I wonder if Dad is expecting me to stumble across something big with this. Do you think that’s why he gave it to me? He’s wanting to help me prove myself?” Katana fumbled around in her pocket for her phone, wanting to call her father. “Why hasn’t he made more of a big deal about it though?”
Jacques snorted. “I think that’s being a little optimistic. Your father never does anything unless it benefits him in some way.”
“True,” she said, pursing her lips. “But think about it—there was only aunt Marion hunting until she died. Females out in the field is almost unheard of. Now the big boss has his own daughter wanting to hunt, he’s going to want me to be the flagship example for all future Kempe women to follow in this life.”
“You have an excellent imagination, K,” he said, daintily crossing one front paw over the other. “Have you considered that maybe this young girl isn’t the first of her age group?”
Katana frowned. “Are you saying Dad’s been keeping secrets from us?”
“No. I’m asking if you’ve considered that other young children have been mutilated.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No, Katana, it isn’t.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Katana scowled at Jacques. “No, I haven’t considered it because I don’t need to. If other children had been attacked, then all the hunters would know.”
Jacques stared back at her with a poker face. “You’re cute.”
“Excuse me?”
Jacques was saved from answering as the adverts finished, signifying the switch of his attention back to his shark programme. He raised his nose in the air, pointedly ignoring Katana.
If it wasn’t for the fact she enjoyed intellectual conversations, she would have chosen one of the regular brutes to be her hunting companion, but that was something she’d never admit to her dad.
Something about Jacques’ implication wouldn’t leave her alone. She found herself pondering the question that if this was the first child attack, why wasn’t more of a fuss being made?
Irritation sparked inside her when she thought about her dad’s reluctance to send her out in the field. What if he was setting her up to fail so he could shelve her from hunting and marry her off to start breeding the next generation of hunters? That is what he’d always tried to steer her towards, after all.
Sighing in exasperation, she pulled her phone out and decided to call Erica, her best friend since childhood. Erica was a witch from the Amethyst Coven that associated with her family.
“Erica Mayweather speaking. How may I help you?”
“Very funny,” Katana said. “I’m guessing Bryn is your latest infatuation then?”
Erica giggled down the phone. “Actually, we are going out on a date this evening so there.” She stuck her tongue out for extra effect, even though she knew her friend couldn’t see it.
“Seriously? You bagged a date with Bryn Mayweather?” Katana couldn’t ignore the fact she felt slightly envious because if she ever happened to be interested in the male species, Bryn Mayweather would have been high up on her ‘ideal’ partner hitlist. Although, if her father had anything to do with it, she’d be married off to Tobias Bembridge, one of the Preternatural Council members pretentious sons.
“Yep. Want to ask me how I got it?”
Katana raised her eyebrows. “Do I dare ask?”
“He had some car trouble. I fixed it. He was so impressed he asked me out to dinner.”
“Oh my god,” Katana replied, giggling. “Are you kidding me? You’re supposed to be the damsel in distress, Erica, not him.”
“Hey, it’s Bryn Mayweather. I couldn’t have cared less if he was wearing bright yellow Speedo’s and pink nail varnish.”
Katana laughed. Bryn looked like your typical alpha guy in that he had the six-foot height, the broad muscled shoulders, the stern look to intimidate anyone within staring distance, but it was well known he was just a giant teddy bear and a sensitive kind of guy. He worked in childcare for a living, not following his mother’s footsteps into being a Council member.
“So what you gotta tell me then?” Erica said.
“Well, I’m off to Scotland on a case.”
A gasp echoed down the phone. “No way. He finally let you out on a case? Does that mean he’s given up trying to marry you off?”
“Well, I don’t know about that. The case is a little...it’s got issues. I thought maybe he was trying to help me prove myself, but then Jacques pointed out it’s Dad, and well, you know—he never does anything unless it benefits him.”
“What’s the issues? Anything I can help with?” Erica loved playing with computers and ‘accessing’ systems she wouldn’t normally have permission to access.
“No, not really. It’s a little girl that’s been killed—she was only eight.”
“But werewolves don’t kill that young?”
“I know. Jacques kinda implied it’s happened before whereas I thought maybe Dad was wanting me to prove myself but now I’m not so sure. Just this morning he had me going through the old ‘red riding hood’ routine again. I mean come on, I mastered that when I was six.”
“Something sounds a little fishy to me. I wouldn’t trust that this case is legit, K. Just keep your wits about you, please? And if you want me to, you know, have a look on your dad’s computer, just say and I’ll be in there like a paedo in a playground.”
Katana laughed and shook her head. “You better watch your bad humour around Mr Mayweather this evening or you might be staying Miss Atwood for a while longer.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—best behaviour and all that. What time are you leaving?”
“Altair’s already on his way up there so I’d better get a move on myself.”
“Let me know if you meet any dashing Scottish men.”
“Bye, Erica.”
As Katana ended the call, the narrator from Jacques shark programme sounded across the room, “According to recent studies conducted by various universities across the world, sharks are now considered to be more of a social creature than previously understood. Pack hunting has been observed on a number of occasions in many different circumstances.”
A cog turned in Katana’s head. What if werewolves were no longer hunting alone?