Hunter: Untitled – A Deleted Scene

So, if you’ve following along, you know there’s a Hunter book in development. I’m writing – well, I have written – a chapter, and it’s about using Prometheans as antagonists. They got a little treatment in the Hunter: The Vigil core, but this goes into a bit more depth and offers up some new Endowments and suchlike (I especially like the bit of Thaumatech I wrote, but that’s for later).

Anyway, I wrote a fiction bit for the opening of the chapter, but it turns out Monica Valentinelli is going to write a fiction piece that runs through the book, which is pretty cool. I hate fiction to go to waste, though, so here’s the bit I wrote. Enjoy!

One guy actually had a pitchfork. My hand to God. I have no idea where he got it, but we’d gone through a bunch of people’s houses and garages already, so he probably just snagged it when I wasn’t looking. Still, the image was nice — must have been twenty or thirty of us, charging down the street, holding bats and axes and torches and a goddamn pitchfork, all chasing this guy.

The guy. I started to feel sorry for him, as we closed in. He looked about 30, but the fear in his eyes reminded me of my son during a thunderstorm. He looked at us and raised up his hands, trying to protect himself. Like it was going to do any good.

I almost stopped it. I really thought about it. I had a moment of clarity — what are we doing, about to murder a guy out in the street? And then a flash of lightning, and I saw him. I saw him for what he really was.

I saw the wires stitching hand to wrist and neck to body. I saw the skin tones change, marking where different people began and ended. I saw those big eyes, scared and helpless, but one was brown and one was blue. And the worst thing, for some reason, on his left elbow, half a spiderweb tattoo. The top half was there, and then it just stopped, because whoever had stitched this thing together had used a different body to complete that arm.

The pitchfork slammed through that half-tattoo and pinned the creature to the ground. Must have been thirty of us, and most people just stood around and screamed, because there wasn’t room to get in next to it. But I was right there, standing over the creature, and I saw Bob Wiley cracked its skull open with his daughter’s softball bat.

That thing’s brain was stitched together with copper wire. No part of it wasn’t stolen.

When we were done, nothing was left except pulp and a few lengths of wire, and the rain washed those away. Everyone else started heading for home.

Me, I stood there in the rain, thinking, “Who made that thing?” Because that’s the fucker we need to find.