The best thing that came out of the Halloween festival was that Lola and her posse had finally left Dave alone. The worst thing was that the relationship between the little group of girls and Sofia had taken a turn for the worse, although it wasn't as if she particularly cared. It was actually understandable, considering that she had struck a chord. Everyone knew that Lola longed for a normal relationship, but she tried so hard to attract boys that in the end she only got the attention of jerks who took advantage of her. If Sofia had been any other kind of person she would have felt sorry for her, but she herself had seen the love of her life die in front of her. Lola was not her problem, especially not after the way she and her little group of henchmen treated her.
That early November day physics was first period, but Rosa, their tutor, had gone to their class to warn them that the teacher would not be able to make it in time. During the night there had been a heavy snowfall in the town where he lived and he couldn't take the car out of his own house, let alone drive through snow covered streets. Rosa suggested that they review their subjects with view to the university entrance exam they would be facing at the end of the course, and then she went off to give class to another group, leaving them alone.
Sofia thoughtfully looked out the window. The sky was gray, but not that rainy gray, but a uniform pale shade more typical of winter snowfall than rain. Biting her lip, she said to herself that she was not going to take the university entrance exam. She would have liked to study a degree to get a taste of university life, but she couldn't. Her priority was getting out of her mother's house, preferably before she succumbed to the nature she had inherited from her father. That's why she couldn't afford living there for another five years.
“Dave... would you mind if we talked for a moment?” she heard a voice ask a short distance away.
Sofia looked away from the window and discreetly glanced at where her partner sat. Lola, dressed to the nines as usual, was standing in front of Dave, who was looking at her both confused and a little tense. A slight rage began to boil in her belly. After what had happened she wasn't about to trust Lola. It was unlikely that she had any good intention, but Sofia wasn't about to make a scene and become the talk of the class. She had done an excellent job getting most of her classmates to ignore her and didn't want to ruin it all by acting like a possessive girlfriend.
“Yeah, sure,” he replied.
“Do you mind if we go out to the hallway?” Lola proposed, looking in the direction of Sofia's desk.
As if in response, Sofia twisted her lips into a cynical sneer to let her know that she was able to hear everything she said. Dave was not oblivious to the exchange of glances either, and it seemed to cast a slight shadow over his mood. Shoulders slightly tense, again displaying that silent body language that made it clear he didn't want conflict, but wouldn't flinch at provocation either, he stood up and gave the other girl a curt nod. The two went out into the hallway to chat about whatever it was that Lola wanted to discuss. Sofia wouldn’t deny that she was curious, but they were too far away, and there was too much noise inside the classroom, to be able to hear anything, even with her fine weredog hearing.
Anyways, she had a whole hour to spare, and neither Lola nor Dave were her problem. She didn't mind defending the boy, especially after the fact that he had been one of the first people in a long time to treat her like a human being. However he had to learn to fight his battles. Sofia had her own to fight. From inside her backpack she took out a folder containing the necessary study material for the public examination she was preparing for. That was the reason why she was not going to take the university entrance exam. She had other plans.
“My father's is a Savage 110 Apex Hunter XP,” she heard one of her classmates comment to the boy sitting next to him.
That was the bad thing about being in a classroom with thirty other teenagers her age, there was always someone chatting with a friend. It didn't help that the conversation was about something that had the potential to catch her attention. That was a bolt-action rifle widely used for hunting. She knew that because part of her training as a huntress involved using firearms, and she had used one just like that one while practicing her aim against deer and mouflon. The problem with using such weapons against cinanthropes was that it was bulky, and there was a tendency to go close range. Yes, it had a brutal push, but you had to hit first, and that was a hunting rifle, not a sword. For a point-blank shot, a pistol was much more effective.
“The Savage is fine, but I think the Remington 700 is more accurate,” said his desk partner, a boy named Rodrigo. “By the way, my father went out hunting on Sunday and shot a deer with a wound in its hock. He told me he had never seen anything like it, that it was as if a huge wolf had bitten it, but there have been no wolves in Madrid for decades.”
Sofia couldn't help it. All her attention was focused on her classmates’ conversation. Forgotten were her notes for the public examination. All she could think about at that moment was that the deer had survived. The cinanthrope never returned to try to claim his prey, perhaps because he didn't have time, or perhaps because he felt it wasn't worth risking his life against such a beast. With any luck he had left the area, though she doubted it. Normally they used to settle in a territory for years, and except for necessity they did not usually leave.
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“A huge wolf? Maybe it's the vermin that stole a lamb from my father. He caught him red-handed, but couldn't stop him from killing it. A huge beast, white as snow,” said Miguel, a boy who sat just in front of the other two.
White? Sofia immediately thought of the cinanthrope she had crashed into weeks ago, the same one she later saw by the stream. Yes, it had to be the same one, and that must have been the attack her mother warned her about. That he hadn't attacked cattle again was a good sign. Perhaps he did it on impulse, or perhaps hunger drove him to it, but he wasn’t able to claim his prey before he had to flee after being caught red-handed. The reasons why he had killed a lamb could be many.
“A white wolf?” said Rodrigo, the second of the three, lowering his voice slightly before continuing. “My father told me that a friend of his who hunts further south, near La Pedriza, told him about a white wolf. It roamed the area for years, but it never wandered into the fields. The ranchers were wary, and told the hunters to shoot it down if they came across it, but the damned creature was intelligent and got away every time. No sign of it has been seen for weeks, but they think it may still be in the area, only more hidden. Do you think it could be the same one?”
“It seems too far for a wolf to make that journey in just a few weeks. In any case, there are no white wolves in Spain, let alone huge ones. It's probably a dog, a feral mastiff or something like that,” said Luis.
“Mastiff or not, we'll see how clever he is when he finds the little surprise my father is preparing for him. He's really pissed off about the lamb.”
Sofia's blood froze. A cinanthrope was not a simple dog, he would not fall into a crude trap, but that did not mean that he was invulnerable to trickery. Their intelligence was human, and like any human a well-laid trap could catch them, or worse. Biting her lip, she returned her attention to the papers in front of her. The truth was that she had not made much effort to find him in the last few days, so perhaps she was going to have to get down to work. That didn't solve the main problem, how could she approach him without scaring him off again?
So immersed was she in her thoughts that she didn't even notice the moment Dave returned to the classroom and went back to his desk. There was a brief commotion as Lola returned to her friends. The girls quickly stood up, wanting to ask her what had happened, and in doing so they moved the chairs, causing a ruckus. A ruckus that in other circumstances would not have affected Sofia at all, but being distracted by her ruminations as she was, it sounded like a powerful thunder to her sensitive ears. A thunderclap that snapped her out of it and caused her to jump so hard that some of her papers fell from her desk and flew to the young man's feet. Dave bent down, picked them up and as he went to hand them to Sofia he raised both eyebrows.
“Is this for the Civil Guard exam?” he asked, looking at her in surprise.
Sofia frowned, a little annoyed by his attitude.
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“None.”
From his backpack Dave pulled out some papers and showed them to her. The slight irritation Sofia felt evaporated when she saw that it was the same set of subjects for the same exam.