Kaiden kept as still as she could under the ferns, badly shaken by the violence that she had sensed nearby. She had been told that they were after a pair of rampaging Werewolves, not a mother and child!

Rampaging my foot! She thought, What do they expect a mother to do? Roll over and take it? Let them kill her child? As if. I'd rampage too!

Kaiden silently wished the mother good luck and safe travels as a figure silently slid in beside her.

“You're awfully unusual for a hunter.” A male voice said quietly.

Kaiden felt the blood drain from her face as she looked over to find a large, muscular male of vaguely South-East Asian islander features laying belly-down beside her. He was the ever-notorious Jeremiah Fadhi, Duke of Morain. He had a reputation for appearing out of nowhere. Of, course his reputation also said that he turned into a Dragon made of fire with soot for a mane.

She had her doubts, but Kaiden did somehow feel like she had a Dragon right next to her and he did appear out of nowhere, so perhaps there was at least some validity to the rumours.

“Unusual how?” She asked just as quietly.

“Well... For a start, you didn't fight, or even tell the others when the Werewolves exited the motel.”

“Protecting a child is not rampaging. Besides... They killed a town a five thousand to get a single mother and her child child. That makes them mass-murders not vigilantes.”

“Is that what they've been touting themselves as?” He asked.

“Yes.” She answered simply.

“Do you agree with what they're doing?”

“No.”

“Then why are you helping them?” He asked.

“I'm not.” She pointed out.

He regarded her for a moment, then retreated back into the shadows, leaving the thirteen year old alone under the ferns. Kaiden was, again, reminded of a Dragon for some reason as the shadows swallowed him whole.

A strange thought as he left drifted through her mind; Not yet.

She didn't know what it meant.

As Tracey and her team did their sweep of the Motel Kaiden made her way to where the cars were, following the trail of broken branches that she had left to act as a path. She had gotten lost in a forest once when she was considerably younger for several days because she couldn't find her way back to where they had parked. They ended up having to bring out the Vampire to find her. The first thing he did upon finding her was treat her injury, then take out the cooking supplies he had in the backpack and make her some food.

Apparently, he had 'borrowed' the bag from one of the other Hunters.

He had almost managed to finally get away from the Hunters that time, but he had decided to prioritize her because her broken leg had the bone jutting out and the injury was starting to get infected.

To this day, Kaiden wished that he had just picked her up and gotten them both away. She was certain that even if she had died because of the injection it would have been a better outcome.

She rejoined her mother at the car to her mother's berating and silently got into the driver's seat; her mother's arm was broken, so she would have to drive.

Jacques was trying not to loose his cool as he drove, Gwen in the seat beside him, worn down and exhausted. He swore to the Higher Powers that Naran Humans were the most violently vile species on the entire planet. They were trying to kill a child and had no remorse for what they were doing. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. How could they look at a child and hate them just for being different? How could they want to kill them for it?

What they hell is even wrong with their entire race? And how the fuck did they even know where we were?

Kevin – a doctor – was in the backseat, helping Crystal sip some broth and eat a couple of saltine crackers. The medicine had done it's work, but it had to be light food for now, or her body wouldn't be able cope with it; she didn't have the resources to digest a large, or dense amount of nutrients and it would just result in a diminishing return. Kevin was also concerned that specifically her gut was too depleted of enzymes from the diarrhea to digest a large amount of food and that the food would just pass through her gut only partially digested.

If she doesn't get to rest and eat properly soon... Jacques thought, worry gnawing at him.

That was when a thought occurred to him.

There were someone that Jacques knew who didn't like him for some very good reasons (he kept picking fights with him), but he might help anyway for Crystal's sake. In fact, thinking on it, they'd probably Like Gwen and Crystal... He decided to take a chance and started looking for some place where he could pull over and make a phone call.

Fiach was a tall, lanky male who had retreated from the world when the self-styled Homo Sapien Sapiens had destroyed his happiness. Having been taken from his family when he was still a boy along with two others their kidnappers had decried them as 'demons', 'unnatural', 'wicked beings', 'evil creatures' and so on and beaten them regularly. They claimed that the beatings were to drive the evil out of them. Those beatings came after spending weeks torturing them until they saw all three's eyes deaden. He and Einion had been rescued, but the Naran Humans had insisted on risking their very lives to keep the youngest, whom they relentlessly insisted on calling Cain. The youngest... Who could pass for Human, if only just barely.

He'd just been a baby when they took him and only six years old when the Hunters nearly died to make certain that they kept him. Fiach had no what they'd had planned for Cain and still worried and wondered even centuries later what had become of him.

Blowing a sigh out of his nose Fiach closed the medical book he was trying to read and accepted that he wasn't going to be able to absorb anything from it for the moment; too many dark memories were resurfacing to haunt him. The toddler next to him glanced over, then copied him. It made Fiach smile so faintly that most people wouldn't have noticed it. He reached over and finger-combed the boy's hair as it changed colour again. He still couldn't quite believe that the toddler was even real, let alone present, but there he was. Cain had been about the same age when he had been kidnapped. Perhaps that was what was triggering the memories.

That or it was the news about that town of five thousand found dead and two missing due to a gas leak. Apparently the authorities had reason to believe that the mother-daughter pair were confused, delirious and disoriented as a side-effected of the gas inhalation. Something about it seemed off to Fiach, but there was nothing specifically that he could pin-point due to his lack of knowledge about the side-effects of breathing in gas fumes. It's why he had been trying to read a medical book. If he ran into them, he wanted to know what to do since he was nearby enough that they could make it to his area given that the report had said both were highly athletic.

“What's the matter? You can't read either?” He asked the boy.

“No...” The toddler said forlornly, “The atmosphere is all wrong.”

The answer bemused him, but before Fiach could say anything the phone in the hallway rang. Frowning he got up to answer it, the toddler sliding off of the couch to follow him, making certain to keep his book with him.

Fiach picked up the phone with a simple, “Hello?”

Jacques hung up and pulled out of the cramped phone booth before loping back to the car. They were at a gas station with a convenience store and pay phone booth. He had found the place purely by chance; there was a mostly obscured road that led to the little gas station and it was only because he looked at exactly the right moment that he had spotted it through the tree branches. Thankfully, the place had everything they needed, including more medication that Kevin was purchasing along with a cannister of gas.

“And?” Gwen asked as Jacques climbed back into the car, the vehicle depressing with his weight.

Okay, maybe I do need at least a slightly larger car. She thought, wondering if the suspension was okay.

Kevin came out of the gas station store with the medication in a paper bag and a can of fuel in the other hand, heading straight to them. Noticing him, Jacques popped the trunk open.

“We've got a place to go to.” Jacques told her as Kevin put the cannister in the trunk, “They heard about the town and everyone being killed and said that they'll have room for us. It's about three days of driving away though.”

Kevin opened the back door and checked the thermometer strip he had placed on her forehead before heading into the store.

“Sir... The princess' fever is returning.” Kevin said.

Gwen got the medication out of the glove compartment. As soon as Crystal had taken a dose and the cap was back on the bottle Jacques was starting the car. As they drove away the gas station returned to it's normal location. The store clerk was freaked out... Because thay were supposed to be right next to a road, near some farms on the other side of the country.