Chapter 4 Hearts taste delicious

Although John never was a big fan of hunting, the idea of fresh meat, almost made him drool all over himself. “alright lets go hunting” John stated. Luna swiftly turned into her werewolf form, which made her drastically less beautiful, she now looked like a leaner, shorter version of John, except she still had her white and electric blue pelt color. As they race of into the forest, “how do we find something to hunt” John pondered. Except to his surprise he got a response. “Alpha, how are you talking into my head?” Luna's question filled his head. “You heard that!?” John responded befuddled. Luna simply nodded. After a thinking over John concluded that this must be because of the spiritual connection they share. “it appears we can communicate telepathically” John stated gleefully. “that is very convenient, wolves do something similar, except with body language” Luna added “it allows us to hunt in silence”. “well let's take full advantage of this great boon we have been given” John responded. With this new found ability in mind, they raced of into the woods, looking for prey.

At breakneck speed john is a lot faster than Luna, however, he of course slowed down so that they both could run at a comfortable speed, and still be able to look for something to eat. “We still don’t know how to find prey though” John stated. Earlier they had been so swept up in the ability to talk telepathically that they had completely forgotten to think about how to find something to eat. “Wolves have very good hearing, try to listen for something” Luna answered. “Ahh of course, I should have thought of that” John lamented, while Luna made a sweet laughing sound.

They both stop on the ground, since running around like headless chickens is quite pointless. John focuses his hearing trying to listen to something. *THUMP* when he suddenly hears a massive thumping sound, like someone just smacked him on the head with a rotten log. John looks around for what made the sound, when he suddenly notices something that almost scared him silly. When looking at Luna, he can see right through her chest and rib cage, and clear as day as if he had x-ray vision, John can see her beating heart inside her chest. “Luna, I can see your heart” he somewhat stutters out, Luna only tilts her head like a puppy and makes a confused face. When looking at the rest of her body, everything else is normal, however for John, its as if someone installed a window in her chest, showing her heart. *THUMP* again the thumping sound is produced, however, this time John can tell that it is coming from Lunas heart as he sees it beating in sync with the thumping. He can not only see her heart, but also hear her heartbeat as if her heart was inside his head. That’s when he notices that hers is not the only one, John looks around and spots multiple heartbeats. He can even see some of the hearts through the forest, like a lantern far away in darkness. “hahahaha, this is almost like cheating” John utters almost manically “I can see and hear all heartbeats of the animals around us, Luna, hunting now will be like picking flowers”. Luna looks happily at John “then that’s good”.

“We should stop hanging around here” John states gleefully before they both race of towards the closest heartbeat John can see. As they close in John can tell that their first prey of the day is a medium sized deer, eating some grass, as deer tend to do. Both stop a few hundred feet away, yet, even at this distance both of them can see the deer as if they were 10 feet away. “Luna, wait here, I will kill it quickly” John states, Luna simply nods in support. John tenses up his muscles and gets ready to go full speed forward. John barely makes any sound as he shoots of at almost 100 mph.

The deer seemingly oblivious to its own death, coming towards it at breakneck speed, just eats grass as always. When John is already within 20 feet of it, it notices something and is about to rise its head, but at that point its already to late. John raises one hand and decisively swipes downwards towards the deer’s neck. John's claws easily cuts half the deer’s neck off, and the force of the swipe smashes the deer’s head into the ground with a loud *thud*. The deer dies on the spot and gurgles a bit from its own blood.

Luna shows up behind John after a few seconds. John looks at her emotionless face and is somewhat startled. However, he realizes that while he himself is not apathetic to the deer’s death, he feels quite the opposite, he feels an almost animalistic joy over the animal’ death, which scares and unsettles him. However, his hunger takes over and John lifts the deer into the air with an arm and slices its stomach from start to end, watching as half the guts spill out. John remembers seeing this and puking as a child, however now, the scent and sight is almost appetizing. He’s not sure if it’s his overwhelming hunger or the animal in him that’s causing this. John reaches into the chest of the deer and pulls out the lunges, which exposes the still warm heart.

Reaching in, John yanks the heart out and throws away the rest of the body. Werewolves love hearts, right? I have a feeling eating anything else than the heart would be pointless. Besides something or someone else will eat the rest anyway. John concludes. Feeling the squishy, warm heart in his hand, John almost goes mad from hunger and immediately takes a hearty bite. John almost starts crying from the taste, which is better than anything he’s ever had before. If there was a restaurant that served only this, Michelin would have to add another two stars to their ranking just to justify the quality. If 3 stars is “Worth its own trip” then the heart John was eating would be “worth to go to war for”. John couldn’t keep his hands and ate the rest in one bite, savoring the taste as much as he could. After eating the heart John could tell that he was rejuvenated and full of strength. If he had had any fatigue, then that would have been gone as well. Although John didn’t notice, his strength had actually risen by a tiny amount.

“how was it?” Luna wondered, “like the most delicious thing in the entire world”. “That’s good” Luna responded with a smile, at least John thought she was smiling, it was hard to tell with the wolf face. “Let’s go, I want more” John stated. He was starting to feel like a drug addict, however the taste of hearts was not only delicious but also good for him, so why wouldn’t he eat lots of them? John and Luna rushed of into the forest looking for more prey. After a while they had both eaten several tens of hearts each, and were starting to feel the rise of their strength. Even though they both had traveled several miles, they still unknowingly stayed mostly in the inner edges of the outer reaches. Of course, as with all things repetition makes it less good, as the hearts they both eat progressively got less and less tasty. After gorging themselves on hearts, they took a break and allowed their bodies to process all the food.

Just as a precaution, John kept his “heartbeat sense” as he calls it, on at all times, just to be sure they don’t miss something delicious sneaking by. Because John had been using his heartbeat sense for almost two hours, he was getting quite proficient with it and could not only phase out some hearts but also focus in on other hearts. However, while they were taking a break, that’s when John noticed something weird in the distance. He noticed another heartbeat, however this one was not like the others, it was distorted, like something was wrong with it. “Luna, there is a weird heartbeat in the distance, I wanna go check it out” John said. Luna simply nodded approvingly, truly a girl of few words. John felt that no matter what he said, Luna would do it. Unwavering loyalty feels nice john thought.

Both of them ran of, unknowingly deeper into the forest, leaving the “safer” outer reaches. John noticed while they were running, that they had to get much closer to this weird heartbeat before he could see the heart, compared to the other animals he had meet today. However, when he finally saw he heartbeat, he got very creeped out, because that heart was deep purple in color. “Wait, Luna, something is wrong with this animal” John sent telepathically. “yes” Luna answered swiftly. John starts leaping of trees to try and get to a good vantage point. When they are just a few tens of feet away, John stops on a thick, sturdy tree branch that looks to be able to support.

When John spots the animal, he gets a large surprise. the animal with the purple heart, looks to be an oversized moose. However, its different. It’s mutated or infected, its veins are protruding and pulsating with a purple hue. Instead of antlers it has a single long thin horn on each side that goes forward, similar to a bulls’ horns, but instead of regular white or brown horns, they are instead made of two purple crystals that pulsates with energy. Although John is severely surprised and somewhat disgusted by this creature, he still intends to kill it and eat its heart, hoping that it won’t infect him with some strange disease. His instinct tells him this creature is dangerous and he should be careful around it.

John leans forwards and shoots down at the creature at breakneck speeds, with claws ready to strike as soon as he is within range. When John is just a few feet away almost with in striking distance, the creature suddenly jerks its head up at a speed way beyond what a moose should be capable off. John catches a glance into the creature’s eyes, and sees the ferociousness and madness in its eyes as one of its horns stab into his right shoulder, and goes straight through, coming out of his back. John feels anger welling up inside him, as some of his animalistic reflexes take over, although he lost his sneak attack, he is now in a good position to strike.

John readjust a little and quickly stab the claws on his left hand into the side of the creature’s neck and the claws on his right hand into the throat. He fiercely pulls both arms towards himself, effectively turning the creature’s neck into string cheese. After that, the creature’s eyes quickly dim and lose their life, as the creature dies. “Alpha! Are you ok?” Luna says, with quite a lot of unease in her voice, as she runs over. John feels a bit of warmth in his heart and somewhat forgets he’s got a purple horn the size of sword sticking through his body. “Yeah, I think so” John quickly respond after coming back to reality. Although John is not one to beg for love, it has been quite a few years since he felt someone actually cared about his well being, and that lingering warm feeling woke up some old memories.

After coming back to reality, John pushes the creature’s head away from himself, freeing him from the purple sword horn. The pain was excruciating, the worst he has ever felt. Blood slowly oozes out of the wound, but quickly stops and the wound was already starting to heal on the edges. John felt quite lucky that werewolves have incredible self healing. John does the same thing he has done with the other animals, and promptly retrieves the heart from the creature’s carcass, which has a disgusting black, white and purple color with purple smoke like symbols snaking over the white.

“Alpha are going to eat that?” Luna asked worryingly, “Yeah, I don’t think it’s dangerous” he reaffirms. John chomps down on the heart, eating half in one bite. Unbelievably enough, this heart was even more delicious then the previous ones, a lot more so. John was ecstatic over how good it tasted. John felt just like before that his vigor and stamina was back at top, even the wound in his chest healed at an astounding rate. However, contrary to the previous times, this time he could actually feel that his strength was rising. Altogether John was completely fine after eating it, actually he was better than fine.

John looked at the horns on the creature and decided that they were worth taking. So with more effort than he expected to have to put into it, he cut of both horns at the root, and held them in his hand. Even though the creature was dead, he could still feel a slight pulsation coming from the horns. Just as he wanted to go find more delicious hearts, *THUMP* he heard a massive heartbeat, louder than any other heartbeat he had heard ever before. Followed by a massive “WAAAAUUUGGHHHHH” coming from the forest. John could feel the raw power that was in this bellow, he felt so small and insignificant, like a small candle in a hurricane, ready to be extinguished at any moment. As he continued to stare into the forest he saw something he would never forget, he could just barely see the outline of a heart far, far away deep into the forest. However, this was not just any normal heart it was pitch black and the size of a car.

John grabbed Luna and started running with all his might, even after running for a good while he could still feel that massive power pressing down on him from behind. After arriving back at the wolfs cave, John could no longer feel that massive power pressing on him and hoped they had gotten away. “Fuck this, I was wrong, the forest is much scarier than the town, I want to get out of here now” John told Luna shaking in left over fear. Luna who had also felt this massive power, had no qualms about getting away from here.