Chapter 40 – Two months later – part 1

Aniya was standing in front of the Hunters’ building on the opposite sidewalk. Dressed in tight dark leggings, a white t-shirt and sneakers, she was frowning, lost in deep thoughts. The day arrived, and she was nervous.

Next to her, Nick was dressed in a dark blue tracksuit and dark sneakers. He glanced at her and said, “It seems everyone is ready. What do you think?”

Aniya took a hairband from her wrist and tied her hair in a high ponytail. She looked left and right and saw the street cut off by one firefighter car and one police car on each side. In front of the building, two big police vans were parked, and over twenty well-trained police officers and firefighters exited from them and entered the building. Aniya looked back at her pack and made a slight smile. Nearly two hundred smiles reached her, all of them also dressed in tracksuits, eager to hear her.
Near Aniya, the core team. Nick, Davis, Lisa, Jack, Anna, Meredith, Robert. Like the rest of the members of their pack, they were all looking at her and waiting for her words.

Aniya started to shine, and her voice reached everyone. “You all know the plan! Groups of four Werewolves and one Human! Five groups per floor! Check every room, every bathroom, and every storage locker! Kill anyone that pulls a gun or grabs a sword or a dagger, and knockout everyone that doesn’t lay on the floor in silence! Remember, some people just work there, and not everyone is a Hunter, but if a Hunter tries to kill you or attack you, I want their heads! You all know how to move to avoid bullets! You all trained to use your speed and strength in a fight! For years, they terrorised you and your families! Today is the day of payback! Are you with me, my pack?”

A choir of voices said a simple, “Yes, my Luna!”, and Aniya faced Nick. “They are all yours to lead, Nick. Take care. I will go straight to the top to meet the High Council.”

Nick kissed Aniya’s forehead and turned to face the team that was going with her. “She is now your responsibility. Don’t fail me!”

A quick “Yes, my Alpha!” answered him, and Nick raised his open fist, and the moment he ran to the building, the pack followed him.
When they all entered the main lobby, most of them took out their tracksuits and sneakers and gave those to the ones that would remain as Humans. They changed into Werewolves in seconds, leaving on the ground pools of blood and piles of flesh, and the Humans placed the clothes over the reception counter, with the receptionist and the security man there facing the barrel of a gun of a police officer.
Nick, in his Werewolf form, growled, and they began the swipe of the floors, using the stairs to climb to the next one, and leaving five groups of Werewolves and Humans on each floor, together with a police officer.
Outside, Aniya took one slow, deep breath when she saw the last member of her pack entering the building and faced her escorts. They all nodded at her with a serious expression, and Aniya ran to the building with her team right on her heels.
Inside, Aniya skilfully avoided the piles of flesh and pools of blood and went straight to the elevators. The moment the doors opened, they followed her inside. Aniya opened the big sports bag she was carrying and put inside the tracksuit and the sneakers of her team and waited for them to change into Werewolves.
As the elevator went up, Aniya kept thinking about her plan and what she was going to say to the High Council members. She was informed they were there by a well-positioned spy, her mother. She let it slip during another of her altercations with Meredith Sellas. That was why that day was chosen for the attack. They were in the building that week, unaware of what was about to happen.
When the elevator doors opened, Meredith Sellas and Robert Isles ran along the corridor, straight at the two security men that were standing on either side of the door that led to the big meeting room the High Council used. Before they even had time to pull their guns out, they were killed.
Anna Kent, Jack Holland, Davis, and Lisa McCarty checked every room as fast as they could. A few shots were heard, followed by loud dying screams, and then absolute silence.
Aniya walked along the corridor straight to the meeting room while her team took care of cleaning the floor and getting rid of every Hunter there.
She waited near the door for their return, and the moment they were all next to her, she nodded at Robert. He pierced the thick wooden door with his sharp claws and pulled the door out, together with half the frame.
The three Council members were waiting for them with their guns blazing, and that was the cue for Lisa. Surprisingly, during all the training sessions of the past two months, she was considered by everyone as the fastest when she was in her Werewolf form, making her the obvious choice to run inside a room with three men shooting silver bullets.
With a powerful jump, she went from the entrance to under the table and flipped it, squashing the three men against the wall behind them, making them unable to keep on firing or even move a muscle.
Aniya calmly entered and waited for Lisa to put down the table while Davis quickly disarmed the Council members.

She faced the three scared men and spoke. “Hello again. As you can very well see, I am still alive, despite that cowardly attempt to kill me two months ago. So, who ordered that? I am betting on the older guy, Blake Garvin, considering his threat when we met last time at Violet’s house. Am I wrong?”

Blake spoke in a trembling voice, “I s-should have killed you last time we met. W-what is the meaning of this? You are a friend of the Werewolves now?”

“Oh, no, far from it. I am also a Werewolf and the Luna of our pack. I am the leader, together with my partner, who is the Alpha. I was told you three can contact the World High Council. Do you mind connecting me to them?”

Blake spat his words, “We will not do that, you monster!”

“I believe you will. As we speak, my pack is wiping out all the Hunters in this building, along with anyone foolish enough to grab a weapon. The same thing is happening at every Hunter Headquarters around the World. While you were peacefully seated here during the last two months, I was travelling with the excuse that I was contacting business partners, when in fact, I was contacting Werewolves’ packs. I took an enormous risk, but I taught hundreds upon hundreds of people how to change when they wanted and to be in control of their beast’s side. Even if you don’t make a call, I believe we will get nine in a few moments.”

Aniya leisurely checked the watch on the wall on her left and smiled. “And it will be right about now. Let’s see…”

The big screen on the wall to Aniya’s right turned on with a buzzing sound. She looked at the letters on the screen and read them aloud. “World Council. It seems we are being contacted. Any of you mind answering that?”

Blake Garvin reached for his jacket pocket with a growling Werewolf standing at his side, watching his every move. He slowly took his phone out and pressed an icon on the screen. The image of a scared old man appeared, with the furry waist of a Werewolf standing next to him in the image. “H-hello. I-I am Yannik Spanner from the Germany Headquarters. A… a group of conscious Werewolves attacked us... They ordered me to make a global call.”

The screen split into several small screens as calls kept on coming, and Aniya signalled with her eyes for Blake Garvin to answer. One by one, unfamiliar faces appeared, and they all introduced themselves and said where they were from.

Aniya faced the three members in front of her and asked, “What do I need to do for them to see and hear me?”

Seeing that Blake Garvin remained silent and there was nothing they could do to stop Aniya and her plan, Anthony Nolan pointed to a spot on the floor, three metres ahead of the big screen. “If you go there, there is a camera on the top right corner of the wall, and they will all see you and hear you. How do you know that the High Council is a group of ten members in several countries?”

As Aniya was getting up, she explained. “I found out that my real father’s family is quite important in Norway, and they have some spies inside the Hunters. They told me everything I needed to know, and they helped me with my plan.”

When Aniya was in the designated spot, the men on the screen gulped. They weren’t expecting a woman to address them, let alone one as young as Aniya looked. “Hello, Hunters World High Council. I am Aniya Rossi, the Luna of my pack of Werewolves. As you might have noticed, you suffered a coordinated attack that killed more than half of your Hunters. They chose me to be the one that would address you and present our demands. I want the names and locations of every survival Hunter on active duty, together with their administratives. They are to be killed immediately. If you refuse to give me those names, I will order the Werewolves near you to torture everyone in your building until some names appear, and then, not only the Hunters, but their entire families will be killed. You may consider this karma for your ‘normal procedure’, as my mother called it, every time you find a Werewolf community.”

One man on the screen frowned and almost shouted, “We won’t do such a thing! Hunters don’t bend to monsters!”

“Kill him.”

With that simple order, the Werewolf next to that frowning man used his claws and pierced the man’s head from one side to the other. Then, he carried the dead body away from the image, and another man sat on the same chair with a pale look.

Aniya looked at the several faces on the screens and explained. “I wasn’t joking. The Werewolves will keep on killing people until you spit out the names of the Hunters on active duty. For over two thousand years, Hunters have been killing Werewolves, and sometimes their families. You kept on killing innocent people who had no fault in being born as Werewolves, hiding your psychopathic behaviour behind a code. Now, it’s payback time. Hunters will cease to exist, and Werewolves and their families will live their lives in peace.”

One bald man on the screen far right spoke in a calm voice. “Even if you kill all Hunters, their spouses and their sons and daughters will never forgive the Werewolves.”

“Tough luck. The families of the Werewolves that your group killed could never find out what happened to the family members you took. Not to mention the evil sins the Hunters committed several times, by killing pregnant women and their unborn children still in their wombs, babies sleeping peacefully in their cribs, or old people who did no harm. All of this, as a ‘prevention measure’ like you normally call it, in a futile attempt to prevent the Werewolf natural evolution from happening.”

The same bald man spoke with a grimace of hate rolling on his lips. “Natural evolution? Humans turning into mindless beasts every full moon? What kind of evolution is that?”