Chapter 69 - Prey

They were hungry...but they had already ate a feast of flesh.

The beasts sat in the shadows....their thoughts not far from the darkness that surrounded them. The sharp cutting smell of pine and rotted mulch offended and agitated them as much as the healthy, willowy canopy all around them seemed to irritate them. Branches and thin sticks that trembled in the soft cool wind.

The slight almost musical twinkle of the pine needles tumbling to the forest floor, seemed to disturb the hidden hunters making them even more jumpy and angry then they were normally.

As though they were unfamiliar with such a thing as falling leaves or healthy air, their bodies twitched and saliva gathered at the edges of their mouths as they became more hot and bothered by the passing hour.

But though clearly angered by their surroundings the beasts sat as still as sentinels in the night. Poised on the balls of their clawed feet.