“We passed the sign for the campsite nearly an hour ago!” the teacher said in frustration. The bus driver did not look very pleased.

“I told you we were supposed to take a left at the split,” he said in a calm, but very annoyed tone.

“But the sign said that it was on the next right!”

The bus driver simply replied, “Yeah,” then quickly followed up with, “but it also had an arrow that pointed left.”

“This would be so much easier if Betty was driving.” The teacher mumbled.

“What was that?!” The bus driver yelled in rage.

I was sitting in the far back of the bus, listening deeply to the argument. The bus driver was, in fact, wrong. The correct direction, as the teacher guessed, was to the right. The campsite that we were heading for was actually about five miles away. Neither the bus driver nor the teacher however, had noticed the second sign that had said the approximate arrival time, which was two hours. Now it was probably about two minutes away. I probably should’ve mentioned this to them earlier, but I hadn’t noticed them arguing until recently, and I don’t like interrupting adult arguments. It’s the only thing that makes me truly uncomfortable. Well, that, and that weird banana that sings that annoying “peanut butter jelly time” song.

I raised my hand in order to gain the teachers attention, but the bus driver caught it first.

“What ya want kid?”

“”Can I get a snack from my bag sir?” I said.

He answered with a quick “sure,” before returning to the yelling contest.

I pulled my big duffle bag down from the overhead cubby and unzipped it. Inside was pretty much everything you would expect a normal teenager to bring on an overnight trip: extra clothes, jacket, a video game system, so on. I showed no interest in these items. I instead decided to open a side pocket on the inside of the bag. Inside the pocket was a sword. It was a meter long katana inside a black sheath with intricate gold markings covering it. The handle was wrapped in white fabric.

Next to the sword was a similarly colored pistol with a revolving six cylinder cartridge. Next to that was a belt with the gun’s holster attached to it. There was also a strap for the sword, so that a person could wear it on their back.

Looking at these weapons calmed down my carsickness for a bit. But I could not get rid of that weird anticipation I had for the upcoming ordeals I was about to face. I zipped up the pocket and the bag, and then threw it back up into the cubby. I suddenly realized something. This next mission I was going on, it might require some backup.

We finally arrived at the campsite after about a minute more of travel. I was the first one off the bus even though I had been close to the back. I then proceeded to continue acting out my role as a kid with ADHD. This is a lot more boring than it sounds. The only cover up role I’ve played that was worse was when I was supposed to be a student that was highly interested in politics. I’ll never do that again.

I started running to a good looking tent area and cried out, “This one’s mine!” only to be ignored by most of the other students getting off the bus.

I then called out to my tent partner, “Hey Felix is this area good enough for you?”

Felix Wood was an average size guy, kind of pale, and still had yet to get through puberty. He was calm though, a no-nonsense person to the core. A perfect match for a future nightslayer.

“I think over by the path is better. Not as much mud when you walk out of the tent then.”

I agreed and we set up our tent there. We had a dinner of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches before hunkering down for the night. Then everyone fell into the deep void of sleep. And by “we” I mean everyone except for me.

As I laid there waiting for the sleeping drug that I had slipped into the soup earlier to take effect, I thought about how my mission will play out tonight. First thing, I need to get to the castle without being noticed. Check. Then make sure the beasts are there in the first place. Check. After that things could get messy. Either negotiations will work in which case I just stroll out of there with a smile as wide as Texas, or I fail and all the preset plans will come in handy. No problem.

I was still waiting for some snoring to start up, so I went over the history of the location in my head. The Gartensburg castle was an English castle known for the legend of its downfall; many actual historical facts could be applied to the legend, but none known to the public. As it is, many legends tend to be simple altered versions of the truth, but much of the important information is kept secret from people it does not concern, and sometimes even from those it does. The legend of Gartensburg castle is one of those.

When the castle was first constructed for a knight back in medieval times, it was a magnificent building with eight turrets, almost four hundred and fifty rooms, a stone wall with three gates facing North, South, and East, and to top it all off, a 15 foot moat surrounding the entire thing. The castle’s lord however, only lived in it for three days. On the night of that month’s full moon, it is said that a pack of gigantic wolves invaded the castle, the soldiers could not hold them back, and the castle was overrun. The lord was killed and everyone else either got mauled to death or ran to the closest city, hence the story.

Many people have tried thinking of explanations for the event, such as barbarians wearing wolf skins being the actual invaders, but no one knows for sure. At least, no ordinary person knows for sure. But I am far from ordinary.

About half an hour had past and several people were snoring. Using the noise to my advantage, I opened up the side pocket of my bag and pulled out my katana and the strap. I wrapped it around my back so the handle of the sword could be grabbed by my right hand. I strapped on the gun to my waist via belt, but that was on my right side meant to be grabbed by my left hand. I then closed the bag and strapped it on my back as well, hiding the sword from view.

I opened the tent and stepped out. Making sure to be painfully obvious that I had left the tent, I started down the trail to the Gartensburg castle. As I reached the tree line I heard someone else get out of the tent. I smiled and kept on trudging along.

About half way down the trail, the tree covering parted to reveal a full moon, which illuminated everything in front of me. I stopped walking only to hear someone else stumble about ten feet behind me.

I sighed and turned around, “Okay Felix come on out.”

“How’d you know?” a voice said from behind a bush.

“I heard you follow me just know idiot. You rushed into that bush just as I stopped walking.”

“Okay, but what are you doing out here anyway?”

“I’m going to the castle.”

“What!?” he said in mock surprise. “But do you know how much trouble we could get in doing that? I mean, we could get suspended for this or worse.” he was cut short as a howl filled the air.

“What the hell?” Felix said in real surprise.

“It’s time.” I turned on my heel and headed for the castle again.

“Hey, Jed!" What are doing? Come on we can’t go in the castle!”

I ignored him and crossed the bridge over the moat.

“Jed!”

I looked at the lock on the recently built in door next to the gate, reached into my left pocket and pulled out a key which I used to unlock and open the door.

“Hey,” Felix said. “Where’d you get the key?”

Once again I ignored him as I walked into the castle.

“Hey wait for me!” Felix said rushing through the door even though just a minute ago he had been talking about how much trouble we could get in.

In the entry of the castle there was an empty void. Most castles of this caliber would have rugs and chandeliers and paintings, and the whole nine yards. This castle was a barren wasteland. The floor was stone, but that was it, a cold stone floor. The walls had holes in them that were any size from a mouse hole to holes that a person could drive a car through.

I rushed to a part of the room swathed in moonlight from a broken window. I reached into a pocket on my jacket sleeve and pulled out some sidewalk chalk. I then proceeded to draw a circle around me and Felix.

As I did so I spoke. “Felix.”

“Yeah?”

“In a few moments you might see some stuff that seems kind of freaky. I can’t have you panicking, got it?”

“Me? It kind of looks like your panicking right now actually.”

I looked up from what I was doing and looked directly at him. “I’m serious. Do not freak out. Got it?”

“Okay. Okay. I got it.”

I finished drawing the circle and proceeded to draw four symbols at 90 degree intervals on the circle.

“Hey what’s this?” Felix asked

“It’s a runic protection circle.” I said. “It will protect us from the danger we might face tonight.”

“Uh, danger? What do you mean?”

I didn’t answer.

“Hey, Jed?”

Then he saw it to. On the east wall, to the right of the south entrance we came in, was a seven foot tall creature sitting on the ledge of one of the holes. It then jumped all 25 feet from the ledge to the ground and landed on all fours. It walked into the moonlight where we could see it clearly, and stood up on its hind legs.

“What the hell?” Felix said, staring at the beast. His legs were trembling.

“Felix.” I said without taking my own eyes of the beast. “Don’t freak out.”

The monster in front of us had dark brown fur all over its body; its legs were jointed like a dog’s or cat’s, but on a much larger scale. Its head was like that of a canine, like a wolf. It had an elongated snout and jaws and pointy ears on top of its head. Almost everything about the creature could be described as a wolf from the furry tail to the large claws. The arms however were slightly larger than normal and seemed to strangely be made both for running with and for manipulating objects. The hands were remarkably close to that of a human's, except it had claws. The feet were also longer and shaped more like human feet in order to support the creature’s weight on two legs.

The monster stared at us with intense yellow eyes. The jaws slightly parted to reveal huge sharp teeth, then it somehow visibly sneered.

“So you really did come,” it said in a raspy, but deep voice. “, young nightslayer.”

Felix leaned over to me and whispered into my ear, “Jed, what is that thing?”

I smiled and answered, “That is a werewolf.”
 

“A werewolf? How? What?” Felix stumbled all over himself.

“Sorry Felix,” I said, “but you’re being too loud.” I karate chopped on a pressure point between his neck and shoulder. He immediately fell to the ground, unconscious.

The werewolf looked surprised. “Is that a new recruit?” it asked slightly confused. “I didn’t know you nightslayers were so wimpy when first recruited.”

I let out a laugh that visibly relieved the tension between me and the wolf. “I guess most of us are!”

“And you weren’t?”

“Not really. Well, maybe a little. Anyway, when is the rest of the pack getting here?”

“Soon. They had to go around a bunch of traffic that’s on the highway.”

I snorted, the fact that werewolves had to avoid humans was not really all that humorous to me, but it showed me how much they feared the nightslayers. The wolf’s ears perked up, which alerting me that the other wolves had come.

They came in everywhere. And I’m not exaggerating, wherever there was a hole large enough, or a window that was open, they jumped into the building. By the time the last of them made it through, there were about forty in the room. Many looked at me with a questioning look, but a few had actual killing intent.

The last werewolf to jump to the ground was considerably older than the rest, shown by the gray in his fur. Besides that though, he was just as big and ferocious as the others. I also knew that this was the packs secondary leader, and since the first one was not here yet, I assumed he would fill that responsibility.

I was not let down; he split off from the rest and approached me slowly, then stopped and stood about two feet outside my circle.

I started speaking, “Graypelt! I have come to …”

“We refuse.” Graypelt interrupted.

I looked at him, confused. “What?”

The old wolf met my gaze and said, “You were going to talk of forming a peace treaty, an alliance, between the nightslayers and us. Well we refuse.”

I looked at him questioningly, “Where did you get that information?” I asked coldly.

“We have our sources, and we made our decisions ahead of time.”

I thought quickly. How did this wolf know of my mission? Do the rest of them know? I came up with a plan on the spot.

“Well Graypelt, or should I call you by your human name, Gary Kennings?

At the mention of his other name Graypelt growled, “I don’t go by that name while in my true form. Don’t you dare call me by it!”

“Or what?” I said, interrupting him as he did me. “You’ll kill me? You’ll rip out my throat and eat it? I don’t think so. You’re smart enough to know you can’t take me on.” Graypelt shuffled his feet and stared at me with hate, probably wanting to do exactly what I had predicted. But he knew that my last words were the truth.

I spoke up so that all the other wolves could hear me. “I would like to speak to the pack leader, Darkwing.”

Graypelt stared at me with such intensity I would have sworn he was trying to shoot laser out of his eyes. (Which he can’t do by the way)

Another voice rose up from the crowd of creatures behind Graypelt. “Why are we sitting here simply talking to this human?”

A smaller wolf, probably a recent addition to the pack, ran out from among the mass. “This human has already been told that we are not interested! But instead of leaving, he insults Graypelt and boasts about being stronger than us! Why have we not responded with his death?” The kid was probably about my age, fifteen or sixteen. He had a heavy British accent, and he obviously did not understand who I was. “If no one else is going to bite this guy’s head off, then I will!”

He started running at me, but before he had taken one step I had dropped my bag and started pulling my sword out of its sheath. He was nine feet away. I held the sword out in front me. 7 feet. I twisted the sword in my hand so that the blade faced downward and grasped the handle with both hands. 4 feet. I rammed the sword into the ground, directly in the middle of my circle. The symbols I had drawn lit up like flashlights, and a wave of golden light skyrocketed to the ceiling, generated from the line of the circle itself. The young werewolf rammed head-first into the wall of light, and with an electrifying sound that sounded like thunder in the huge expanse of the castle; he got thrown backwards several feet away. When he got up, I noticed that most of the fur on his head was burned.

Everything had happened in few seconds, but I was able to see every detail of every moment. I was trained that way. The werewolf however, was not. He probably hadn’t even noticed the sword in his rush to get me.

“Take this as a lesson.” I said calmly. I let go of the sword, leaving it in the ground, and walked to the very inside edge of the circle. “Never attack a nightslayer without examining everything about him first. Most of them would have killed you instantly just now. Lucky for you, I’m not part of that majority; I’m one of the nice ones.” I finished with as much ice in my voice as possible while staring directly into his eyes. Though the light from the circle was distorting my vision, I was quite sure that the kid was shivering nervously.

Graypelt signaled the kid to go back to the rest of the pack with a twitch of his head. Then he looked back at me. “Darkwing will…”

“I will what?” a heavy voice called out above us. Graypelt and I looked up, only to glimpse a shadowy figure fall down from the ceiling and land gracefully on the floor. When the figure stepped into view, the first thing I noticed was his size. He was at least two feet taller than most of the other werewolves, but besides that he was basically the same as all the others. Although, he did have pitch-black fur. And there was the fact that he had shadows coming off his back like a cape, and I’m not joking. He literally had shadows draped over his back, the only way to tell they weren’t a cape, was that each shadow was mildly moving around, creating an effect that looked like a black cape moving in a slight breeze, but there was no actual wind. The only other difference Darkwing had from the werewolves were his eyes. While the others had colors varying from yellow to blue to green, he was the only one with bright red eyes.

“Hello Darkwing.” I said in a cheery voice. “Drink enough blood today?”

Now no matter what you may have heard, werewolves do not drink blood to survive. That’s a vampire characteristic. Darkwing however was not a werewolf, or at least, not completely. Darkwing was a werepyre. A hybrid, half werewolf, half vampire, and while they are rare since it requires both the bites of a werewolf and a vampire at the same time, they do exist, and they are usually immensely powerful.

Darkwing looked down at me and frowned. “So you did come. My sources told me you would, but I was hoping differently.”

“Why is that?” I kept on smiling through everything I said.

“Because now I have to make the nightslayers my enemy.” He made it sound so simple that I almost thought he was joking. Almost, until he destroyed the only thing between me and him.