Mac and I have been friends since we were kids, I have known him for as long as I can remember. Our parents were friends, and we were neighbors, him just living across the stream in our back yard. We would always go there and talk, or just to sit in silence. We were close, inseparable, for nearly a decade, until when I was about 14, and Mac moved away. His family seemingly disappeared anonymously, without a goodbye or a reason.

I often wonder why, they had a lovely home in a wonderful small town. All their family lived here—_we _lived here.

It hurt a lot when they left, I lost my best friend without a chance to say goodbye, a chance to know why he left. It has been almost 4 years since the last time I saw him, and we haven’t spoken since.

I learned to forget about him, get over it, find new friends; my life is seemingly back to normal. But I can’t help but wonder _why _every now and than. Why _did _they leave?

This is the story of how I got my answer.

I walk down the street from the farmers market a few blocks down, heading home on cold morning in September, when I heard foot steps trailing behind me.

I glance back but see nothing, continuing on my way like nothing happened. We lived in a safe town where neighbors help neighbors and crime is very rare, so I don’t think much of it.

But suddenly a hand wraps painfully around my waist shoving me against the wall of a dark alleyway. A knife held dangerously close to my throat. I look forward, the man in front of me is wearing a mask that drapes from his nose down to his collarbone, and a hat that covers everything but his eyes, which are a solemn shade of blue. I can see a faint scar making its way down from his hat and disappearing under his mask.

I open my mouth letting out a scream for help but it quickly evaporates into the air when his knife skims my skin ever closer than before.

“Wh—who—who are you?” My voice whispers instead, sounding raw from not wanting my throat to move any closer to the knife.

He slowly pulls the mask down from his face and I nearly gasp at his appearance. He looks just like the boy I knew four years ago, the only difference is the scar and that now he looks less like a boy and more like a man.

“Mac!? Why are you—what are you—what happened?” A thousand questions run out of my mouth at once.

“Shhh.” He says, moving the knife and placing a finger to his lips to tell me to be quiet. “They are watching us.” He whispers.

“Who?”

He grabs my hand and drags me further into the alleyway. “Okay, Emma, you need to trust me on this.”

I don’t know how I am supposed to trust the man who just held a knife to my throat, but the familiar essence about him stops my head from working. I nod.

He croutches down in front of me, keeping his voice low. “The Hunters, they are after us—you, me, everyone in this town. They want us dead.” He gestures to the knife in his hand. “I had to make sure you wouldn’t be to loud.”

I gulp down the tears building up inside of me. “What hunters?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

He opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by a tremble in the earth and the sound of gun blasts echoing through the town. Screaming begins to fill my ears, as Mac pushes me flat up against the wall of the alleyway, trying to appear invisible to whoever—or whatever—was coming our way.

We leaned up against the wall, and I had no idea what was coming next.