The Old Ones by rachel hazeldine (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

“I just don't see why you feel the need to be all over protective all the time” Bethany yelled with frustration, “I’m old enough to go hunting now, I’ve had years of practise.”

“Practise is different to the real thing” her mother reminded her “there are things out there-dangerous and evil things, that would rip you to pieces without even thinking. having practiced with a dummy isn't going to help you when you have a blemmyes trying to eat you!”

“First of all” Bethany said, putting up one finger, “how am i ever going to face a real supernatural creature if most of the time you make me stay in the house, and only ever let me leave to go buy food when you have gone hunting for weeks on end. secondly-” she put up another finger “there are no blemmyes in England, I'm asking to be able to hunt over here, not in Africa!”

“Why do you even want to start hunting now?” her father asking, trying to keep calm but some of his anger seeped through his voice, making it seem more snappy than he probably wanted to sound “you’re only sixteen-you should be doing what most teenagers do at that age:watching pointless tv shows; planning for the future and maybe even making some friends-not trying to hunt down monsters!”

“This is how its always been” she shouted “I'm not like most people my age-they grew up wanting be be famous; rich and successful, while I dreamed of killing monsters and protecting people from bad things.”

It infuriated her that her parents wanted her to be like any normal girl her age, she wasn't normal-she knew things about the world that they thought were just in horror shows. plus, if her parents wanted her to have such a normal life, they shouldn't have bought her up telling her about the supernatural-let alone telling her how to kill them!

“It’s not as if I am asking you to let me go alone” she told them “I just want to go with you, I'm old enough to make my own decisions!”

“Not about this you're not” her mother said “your father didn't go hunting until he was told he was good enough to, and I certainly didn't, and as your mother and trainer, I am telling you that you are not ready!”

“You may as well just accept that we aren't going to let you go hunting” her father said, looking as if he was sick of arguing-which was probably true because they’d had the same argument every time her parents had started to prepare to leave to go hunting for the last three years.

“why should I accept it?” Bethany asked, “I know that I'm ready to go hunting, and having me around would increase your chance of saving innocent lives, I could help you kill monsters!”

“Enough is enough” her father suddenly snapped “I have had enough with you arguing with you, we are your parents and what we say goes! we’re protecting you from getting hurt, you may not see that not, but you will when your older.”

After staring at her parents for a few moments, Bethany let out a sigh of defeat, knowing that they were not going to change their minds.

“Have you ever just thought that maybe I don't need you to protect me anymore?” she said quietly, before turning around and quickly walking away before they could answer.

She hated that they treated her like some poor, innocent child that needed to be protected from the world.

She had spent all her life in the hunters sanctuary, a large house where the hunters went if they had nowhere else to go; needed a safe place to train or just a place to go when they wanted to socialize with or hunters, and after spending most of her time talking to hunters about their experiences and training with them, she thought that her parents would trust her enough to be able to keep herself safe for at least one hunting trip-a trial run so to speak.

Not wanting to be around anyone at that time in case she ended up biting someones head of, speaking in a figure of speech, of course, she ended up heading towards the small pond at the back of her house that no one ever visited except for her because they were always too busy.

It was a peaceful place to be, with all of the hecticness going inside the house, it was an escape for her, a place to go when she wanted to clear her head.

Looking down into the water, she tried to look at her sad looking reflection, and concentrated on the fish that swam beneath it.

Bethany had always been short for her age, which always confused her because both her parents were moderately tall people. just like her parents though, she had icey blue eyes that helped her when she wanted to give someone a cold, dead stare. Her fair complexion showed just how much she had spent inside and out of the sun, mostly because she was alway busy training indoors. While her long, flowing hair was nearly as white as paper, making her look like an ice princess.

After only a few minutes, the silence stopped helping her calm down, and instead aided her anger. She knew that she couldn't take it anymore, she had tolerated her parents over protective ways for far too long. She knew she could hunt, she had trained for far too long to be told she couldn't, and she deserved to be able to have a try at protecting people. She wouldn't stand around and let her parents tell her what to do any longer, she wanted-needed to be able to do this, hunting was all that she ever wanted to do in her life, the one thing that she woke up for in the morning, and she would do it, if her parents allowed her to or not...

It had been years since Bethany had been away from the sanctuary, so as she packed her bag, she was unsure on how much she needed to bring with her.

She had never been one of those people who felt the need to have hundreds of pairs of shoes, or the same T-shirt in every single colour available, she would have coped fine with just enough to get her by, so she decided her main priority was making sure that she had enough weapons-which would be a hard thing to do been as there were many monsters out there, each with their own weakness, so there were many weapons she needed, but been as she needed to make a quick, inauspicious  get away she could only bring a bag with the basics on a silver knife; a wooden stake; holy water and salt.

Being in a short supply would make it difficult for her to be able to hunt different types of monsters, and added to the chance of her getting hurt, but she was sure there were hunters out there who would be willing to help her out with her supply problems-after all, they were all hunting for the sake of keeping people safe.

On the plus side of only having a short supply, she was able to narrow down what her first ever hunt would be down to monsters like werewolves; vampires; ghouls and maybe even a demon.

The excitement she felt at the possibility of being able to make her first hunt was unbearable, she felt like a little child on the night before christmas, desperate to unwrap her presents. She had never felt this strongly about anything in her life, she was born to hunt, it was apart of who she was, and her parents couldn't change that.

Just as she finished packing she sensed that something wasn't quite right, but she wasn't sure what it was.

Humming like she always did when she was trying to figure something out, she realised that the sound of her humming was the only thing she could hear, apart from that it was just complete and utter silence.

Leaving her bag on the bed incase she ran into one of the people in the sanctuary and they demanded an explanation to why she was carrying a backpack around her home for, she headed downstairs because that was where most people spent their time-most people usually went upstairs when they were going to sleep or wanted to shower.

It wasn't long until she heard noise again, but it was only a faint whisper.

Following the sound of voices she was led to a pair of double door-the doors to the meeting room where hunters discussed a case that they were going to have problems with.

Bethany was confused to why she hadn't been invited, her parents always refused to allow her to go on a hunt, but they always allowed her to help make their plan of action.

Stepping closer to the door, she placed the side of her head to it in hope of being able to hear what was being said better.

“This is going to be near enough impossible to do without being caught out by whatever is taking these teenagers” she heard a voice say with a small sigh “how are any of us supposed to be able to go into a secondary school and be thought of as a teenager-we are all too old! the closest we are going to get to be expected in a school is as a teacher, and even then we won't be able to get the information we need.”

“It’s not like we could act as a teacher and get close to the students enough for them to befriend us and tell us everything they know” a second voice said, this time a female voice.

“We could always get younger hunters to come here and help us” the first voice suggested.

“That would take too long” the third voice said, that Bethany recognised as Billy, a man that used to go hunting when he was younger but now is just in charge of the sanctuary and takes charge of whatever hunting goes on in the area and who actually does the hunting, “there are already around thirty teenagers that have gone missing in this area in the last month alone, if we are going to deal with this, it needs to be now, and it needs to be done fast, before anyone else gets hurt or maybe even worse...”

“There is a hunter not far away from here that is young enough to pull it off” she heard her mother say “but she charges for her service.”

“Shes just another fraud” the first voice said “no real hunter would ever charge, they know the dangers out there, they wouldn't risk their lives just for money!”

“Well we need to find someone!” her mother said “its not like we can just do nothing!”

A small thrill bubbled in Bethanys stomach as she realized this could be her one and only chance to be able to go hunting with her parents permission.

Being only sixteen she would be the right age for the job, and with no one else