Vallon: The First Hunt
I was barely thirteen when I killed my first shapeshifter. I had a rifle strapped to my back, while my essence mark burned the palms of my hands. It zapped a hunger under my skin and glowed blood red the closer I got to my prey.
I remembered my heart pounding in my chest. Not from excitement, but from a raging hunger. That was the first time my need for shapeshifter blood begged for satisfaction. I was growing weaker the longer I waited.
My mentor, Sun, would share a few drops of blood from the vial around his neck. It hid behind his faded band t-shirt, but not satisfying enough to quench my thirst.
“When your mark comes, Vallon, then I will take you hunting,” he stated.
On the night of my thirteenth birthday, however, right at midnight, my mark clawed along my palms, lining up with the wrinkles and lines in my skin.
I remembered gasping for air in my tiny bed, fumbling for my lamp. But the hot red glow in my hands painted streaks of light across my walls. I cried for help, yelling “Mommy” at one point, but Sun bolted through my bedroom door.
The pain was unmissable, turning my cries into shrieks and then into a gargling scream mixed with spit. It was as if shards of glass scraped under my skin, begging to be let free.
“I'm here, Vallon.” Sun grabbed my shoulders, pulled me into an embrace and swayed with me until the agonizing torture subsided into a dull ache in my fingers. “It's time. Once the sun reaches the top of the evergreens, we'll go deep into the forest and hunt your first prey,” he said in a shaky voice.
I remembered nothing after that night. A few other witches in the camp stopped by my room to check on me or to give congratulations. But I had lain motionless in my bed with my hands bundled between my knees, afraid the pain would return.
Dawn broke through my tiny window, warming my face and growing a light across my bedroom.
As a new and very young witch in the South Clan, you get the tiny rooms with a twin-size bed, a side table, and a lamp. Maybe a wardrobe if you were lucky.
My parents dropped me off at the clan's doorstep and never looked back. Sun was there the moment my cries muffled behind the door. Even since then, he claimed me as his own son.
But it wasn't the abandonment or the pain of my essence marks leaving behind a dull ache that haunted me. It was killing my first shapeshifter.
Before, as I grew up around other witches, we were told a unique blood keeps us alive. There was no other source that could build our strength or hone our essence abilities. We were told to hunt certain animals that radiated a type of magnetic pull, and it's different for every witch. Mine pulled in my chest, and Sun felt it in his hands.
So on the morning of my first hunt, my chest tightened as if a burning rope pulled around my heart. It tugged to the left, a little to the right, until it squeezed my chest so tight that I buckled over.
Sun held tight to my arm. “Stand up, son. He's right in front of you,” he whispered.
We had nestled into a thick bush, tall shadows from trees hiding us even more. A rustling pattern grew louder until a grizzly bear, the size of a truck, lumbered through the thicket. Wisps of gray peppered his snout, and a limp in his front right paw broke up his perfect gait.
I remembered his eyes. Spheres of ice blue, with specks of gray around the irises. A shade I had never seen before on a bear.
“Now, Vallon, when he passes that tree, aim for his heart.” Sun braced behind me, his hands holding tight to my shoulders.
I had leaned against a tree, trying to ignore the rifle shaking in my hands. For once, a moment of regret clawed its way up my spine, but once the bear had centered my scope, the hunger for his blood coursed through my veins and I pulled the trigger.
He went down quickly, and without a fight. There was no anger in his fall, no jumps or cries. Just acceptance.
Despite the satisfaction of killing my first bear, hell, my first animal in general, a gnawing suspicion remained the closer we go to the body.
“Good work, child. This will supply the camp for a month, at least.” Sun reached for the rifle, and balanced the strap over his shoulder.
My hands ached the closer we got. The essence in my palms rapidly pulsed.
“Sun?”
Sun readied a hunting knife from his backpack. “Yes, Vallon?”
I leaned down, hugging my knees as I studied the bear. “Did you see his eyes?”
Sun tugged on a patch of fur, readying a spot for his knife to slice through. “I try not to notice, son. I suggest from now on not to focus on unique traits in the prey.”
My hands still shook, ready to indulge in the bear's warm blood. A desire I was still getting used to. “How come?”
“Because,” Sun paused. “It makes it more difficult to accomplish our tasks.”
I cocked my head, not understanding. “But he’s-”
Before my words could leave my mouth, Sun pierced the bear's neck, slicing down, creating a fold of skin to expose the slick meat. A waft of acrid blood filled the air and my chest burned with desire. My hands grew hot with sharp pain behind the red glow.
Blood oozed through the bear's fur, his muscles ripping apart under Sun's knife. “He is a shapeshifter, child. If you let your heart get in the way, you won't survive. We won't survive.”
Bile rose in my throat. “A…shapeshifter?”
Another slice into the bear's veins. “Congratulations, Vallon.” Sun brought his stare back to mine, a ring of red encasing his chocolate brown eyes. “You are a Blood Hunter now."
