The Hunt for Greyback

[m4moony]

Date: Friday, 17 August, 2001
Time: Early Afternoon
Location: Spinner's End to Sherwood Forest and back again
Rating: Potentially up to R for violence
Characters Involved: Remus Lupin, June Connors, Glamis, Zak Rollins, Bill Weasley, Severus Snape, Harry Potter (?)

Comments

[fi_admin]

Fenrir was not an idiot, no matter that wizards held him in disdain. So what if his magic wasn't powerful enough to do a bloody Killing Curse? He much preferred to taste the blood of his victims, anyway. There was so much more satisfaction to be gained when one could drink in the heady scent of terror along with the coppery bloom of blood's rich flavour across his palate.

Delicious.

So he disdained the wizards as much as they did him. This did not mean he never used magic - when travelling alone it was foolish not to have some basic proximity alarms and the like. He was stronger than any normal human, it was true - but he still had to sleep, sometime.

The wilds were his home, though. No one knew better than he how to blend with the surrounding brush, conceal his tracks, mask his scent, guard his identity and his safety. Even the Dark Lord might not have been able to find and manipulate him - if not for the sodding snakes.

Alone was how he preferred to be, hunting and killing, honing his reflexes and his strength. Well into his sixties he was, now, yet he retained the vitality of his gift.

Yes, gift! Not curse! Lycanthropy was a blessing, setting him above paltry 'normal' humans, even above Wizards.

Take away their expensive stick and they were just as scrumptious, sweet and helpless as any Muggle.

It wasn't wise to stay in one location long. Besides, he liked the variety he could obtain by sampling the local flavour. Chuckling to himself at his own humour, he began the slow, deliberate process of cleaning the camp to erase all evidence of his brief residence here.

Something was off. A proximity ward had been tripped. Silent as the grave, invisible as wind, he began to slip through the thick woods toward the intruder. Soon, he caught its scent - even so near the new moon, his gleeful embrace of his gift enabled him to call upon heightened senses - and smiled toothily in the twilight darkness of the thick forest.

Soon, he could see his quarry. Last time hadn't been much of a challenge - he'd managed to sneak up on the whelp without difficulty. Disappointing, really. This time, he decided to play.

"Looking for something, cub?" he asked, his hoarse voice hissing out of the shadows to fall among the trees like gloaming mist. "Didn't you learn your lesson last time?"

He stepped out of his concealment to bare his teeth at the younger man. Inhaling deeply, his eyes widened as he taunted Lupin.

"Still wearing Snape's scent like a cloak, are you? Has he promised you my skin?"

He stepped closer, eyes glued upon the werewolf in front of him, slipping between trees cautiously, keeping barriers between them as he attempted to find the weakness in the calm facade.

"Has he told you of his gift for harvesting werewolf-skin rugs? Told you how many of MINE he killed for his Master's pleasure? You think you're safe, do you, hiding in his filthy Muggle-hole? Maybe I'll send him your skin and see how he likes it?"

[sightlesswolf]

It was working.

As anxious as they all were for this confrontation, as much as they could feel the opportunity slipping away from them, none of the four hunters were fools. Gryffindors, yes, but there was still some difference. At least half an hour had been (reluctantly) spent formulating a plan, forcing themselves to come up with potential obstacles and means for dealing with them.

One: They had to prevent the Ministry's trackers picking up on four lycanthropes Apparating together to a remote edge of Sherwood Forest; such a thing would be too suspicious to be ignored. Solution: Each of them had left a few minutes apart, going in opposite directions, and had taken several seemingly aimless jumps before eventually reconvening in Sherwood. That had meant spending more time, which none of them liked, but it wasn't wasted if it saved them all from imprisonment or worse. Trading all of their lives for Greyback's was not the plan.

Two: They had to get close enough to their quarry to strike before he noticed them coming. They had to assume that he, in spite of his contempt for wizards, would have set proximity wards and other magical defenses on top of his experience and heightened senses. After all, he wasn't a fool either. They'd arranged to arrive a good half a mile from where Greyback had gone to ground, and Glamis, who had the most woods experience of any of them, led them in a cautious approach, making sure they stayed downwind and didn't make unnecessary noise in their haste.

Now they approached the point where magical defenses were likely to be laid. Such defenses would be tripped by their presence. The only thing to do was to arrange that he only saw one of them, one whose job it would be to keep him occupied while the other three moved in to ambush him. And the logical decoy, as both the least experienced fighter and the only one likely to seek out Fenrir Greyback on his own, was Remus.

The alpha moved off until he was approaching at a wide angle. The other three let him get ahead, then crept on, keeping slow and silent as - well, as wolves stalking their prey. And it was working. Well before they reached the pair, June could hear them talking, and there was nothing in Greyback's voice to suggest he suspected that Remus was anything but alone.

Time to enlighten him.

Leaving Glamis and Bill, she used the same concealment their enemy had just abandoned, her trainers silent in the grass, her fury controlled now but still burning. His taunting words about Severus slipped by without notice; she already knew from Severus's own mouth his history with werewolves. If anything, she wouldn't mind watching a demonstration, provided it was Greyback's skin being harvested. But that would mean keeping him alive until the next Full, and she wanted this game over now.

Any closer and he would sense her. She exchanged a quick glance and a nod with Glamis, then she burst out of cover, ducking around a tree and crossing the short distance between them in a rush. Before Greyback could more than turn, she slammed her foot into his side with all her force, seizing his wrist in both her hands and trying to throw him to the ground while he was off-balance from the blow.

[fi_admin]

So focused was he on Lupin - the brave little Gryffindor whelp who screamed louder when his pups were hurt than when he was - that Fenrir didn't consider he might have company, this time. Indeed, the very idea that Lupin would allow any of 'his' pack to be in danger was almost unfathomable after the bloody lesson Fenrir had sent Lupin in that regard.

He still occasionally smacked his lips in memory of the rare, exotic flavour of eye-fluids mingled with blood as he'd made a damn good job of ripping off her face - though this memory was admittedly almost entirely fabrication. He didn't use the Wolfsbane potion if he could avoid it which meant his recollection of his successful attacks was distorted and murky at best.

The point was, his guard was down, or at least as 'down' as he ever permitted it to become. More accurate might be to say that it was fully focused on the werewolf in front of him, and therefore he scarcely had any time to take a quarter-step turn to his flank when he heard the rush of running footfalls.

He crouched low at the last possible moment, which brought his ribcage full into the force of the flying heel. This probably saved him a kidney and certainly helped him keep his feet, but he could hear the crack of bones as ribs snapped like so much brittle tinder.

Howling in agony, he danced about as the slight female tried to over-balance him the rest of the way. Twisting his wrist - painfully because any movement of that arm caused bone-fragments to audibly grind together in his side - he pulled toward himself, still pretending to stumble. Rather than try to escape her grasp, he merely wanted to get her closer.

When he could scent her sweet breath on his face, he leered down at her.

"Ah, Lupin, you've brought me a present," he said, licking his lips obscenely. "I didn't get enough of this one, wouldn't mind another bite or two."

The arm not painfully grappled by her hands snaked out and attempted to wrap around her waist, with the intent of pulling her against him.

"Little pretty wants to play. Pretty little eyes again. I wonder if they will taste as sweet as the last?"

[sightlesswolf]

The twin sounds of bones breaking and the accompanying howl of pain were possibly among the sweetest June had ever heard. Her blood was up, and even finding herself practically nose to nose with him and his gruesome leer couldn't faze her, not right then.

"You won't be finding out," she snarled. "But maybe we'll find out how yours taste!" Her lesser size and weight might have made it impossible for her to knock him down, but they had some advantages too. Tightening her grip on his wrist, she ducked away from his grasping hand and under the arm she held, twisting it savagely at the shoulder. Then she slammed her shoulder, with her entire weight behind it, into his injured side.

[fi_admin]

Again he followed her movement to some extent as she twisted at his shoulder, threatening to rip it from its socket. He'd been in worse brawls than this and knew how to minimise his own injuries when possible by denying his opponent the advantage of momentum or his weight.

It was impossible to block his wounded side properly with her still clinging like a limpet to his now-weakened arm. Once again he roared with pain, but this time she'd been careless, her youth showing if nothing else. By throwing her shoulder against his wounded side, she put herself directly under his weakened arm.

"You little bitch!" he snarled at her.

Weakened, for a werewolf, did not at all imply 'weak' as humans considered the term. He was now a wounded, feral animal, and she'd just gotten within his threat range.

Still groaning in pain, adrenaline enabled him to ignore it as he tightened his arm around her rapidly moving form, trying to prevent her slipping away from him. Using his free hand to grab for one of her arms, he began to twist up and back, digging into the skin he'd managed to grasp with jagged, almost clawed fingernails.

"Little bitch wants to play rough," he panted in her ear, keeping his body as close to hers as he could manage - using her as a shield against Lupin as much as possible. "That's okay, lovey. I like it rough."

So saying, he tugged harder, wrenching the arm in his grip.

[sightlesswolf]

Before she could redirect her own momentum and get out of the way, he had her. His injured arm still had far too much strength in it; she had a sudden insane urge to cry 'unfair!' Before she could, though, it was superseded by a cry of pain as his nails ripped into her arm, their jagged edges tearing into the skin.

"Ah- AH!" Now the arm was being dragged up at an angle that would have been painful even without the claws, and she was going to be nursing a dislocated shoulder in about a second if she didn't think fast. Being firmly pinned against Greyback's broad chest narrowed her options quite a bit. With him in heavy combat boots, her weight probably wouldn't be enough to hurt him no matter how hard she stomped on his foot, and she was at a bad angle for trying to kick him in the knee. Whatever she did had to have a lot of force behind it. And then she got an awful idea.

"Let's play rough, then," she grated through clenched teeth. "Just remember you wanted it." He had her upper arm pinned in almost the perfect position. Before he could see what she had in mind, she bent her arm sharply at the elbow, clenched her fist, and slammed it into his groin as hard as she could.

[fi_admin]

The sound he emitted now was not remotely human, but a shrill loud keen of agony. This time, he did double up in his agony, but this was not an improvement for June, whom he still held-fast before him forcing her to bear his weight as he struggled to stay on his feet.

It was an improvement, though, that he no longer had any interest in keeping her in this degree of proximity! Their scant seconds of scuffling had required his concentration, but now he was aware of other rapidly approaching feet.

An ambush, then.

"Not so stupid then, boy," he said, glancing about, unable to see the enemies he could hear approaching. "Got more kiddies to do your fighting for you?"

He licked his tongue along a bare patch of skin near the junction of the girl's neck and shoulder, where he still held her tight against him, back to front. Slurping as he did so, he was grotesque in his exaggeration as he made obscene sounds of pleasure.

"Delicious. I'll have my piece of you for afters, precious," he murmured almost lovingly against her skin, before standing briskly and shoving her with all his strength toward a large tree only about a metre away.

He couldn't fight all of them at once. He'd rather she only crack her head and be unconscious - more fun, later - but if she died from the impact . . . well, he wasn't that picky.

[sightlesswolf]

June could scarcely take pleasure in his reaction to her blow; she'd banked on his being shocked into loosening his grip, but instead she found his entire weight suddenly bearing down on her. Thankfully that only lasted a moment. Not so thankfully, he still hadn't released her. She couldn't help shuddering in revulsion as his rough, hot tongue scraped over her bare skin. Oh GODS let GO of me!

Not so thankfully, he decided to grant her wish.

He was far too strong and that tree far too close. June didn't even have time to bring her arms around to stop herself - the one, bloodied and on fire with pain, didn't even want to respond - before she slammed full-on into the unforgiving trunk.

PAIN.

Bright lights exploded behind her eyes- she was sprawled on the ground with no memory of how she'd gotten there, and her breath- she couldn't breathe-

Then everything faded.