Young Writers Society

Ari, who mostly avoided the door, leaps forward with the goal of disarming the hunter.

There's a bang as Tasha fires her pistol at the same time Ari slams her, the gun getting knocked sideways as she's thrown to the ground. The bullet hits the wall behind Amy and James.

James ducked.

"I doubt the owner of the inn would approve of you putting holes in the walls," he muttered as he returned to the protection of Amy, who'd crouched down.

"I'm sure I'll be forgiven when he learns there's a werewolf under his roof," she retorts, rolling to her feet and pivoting to face Ari.

"HEY," Amy spouted, offense clear in her voice.

James cocked his gun, aiming it at her carefully.

"She has a name. Amy stays here. And you leave," he said evenly.

She aimed her gun at Ari as James turned his gun on her. "You shoot, I shoot, cowboy."

"Perfect," James replied flatly. "A waiting game. I'm in."

"Great." She distributes her weight evenly and gazes coolly back at him, gun trained on Ari, who is unsure of how to handle the situation and is looking to James for guidance, but when he realizes that nothing is really going to happen for a while he takes the opportunity to try to convince Tasha to not kill Amy.

"Ya realize that what yer doin' is wrong, right?" he says. "Yer gonna kill an innocent girl just 'cause she is what she is, which ain't even her fault! She ain't hurtin' anyone, 'n if you kill her for nothin', then yer worse than any monster ya've killed!"

"The real monsters are the people who hunt people just because they're wolves too," Amy added, her voice tense and nervous.

"Shut up," Tasha snaps at the were. "You, too, fish-boy, I'm here to do a job, not to discuss ethics with you."

"It ain't like we got somethin' better t' be doin'! Look, I dunno why yer killin' like this, but Amy ain't done nothin'! Maybe some wolves deserve it but killing someone fer what they are that's out of their control is like killing someone because they're big or small or a man or a woman 'r anythin' else."

James was busy calculating the best place on her arm to aim to do the least damage with the most effectiveness while Ari was lecturing Tasha. He considered taking the shot right there and then, but with them at a standstill, with guns at each other's backs, Ari had her ear. And if she was determined to violence under any other circumstance, this could be her chance at changing her mind.

Whether or not she really would was a slim chance at best, since most people in her position were set in their ways, but he decided to appeal to her humanity, and her heart, if she had one.

"Just because a person doesn't appear in the shape of a human doesn't make them any less a person. The only reason werewolves have been categorized by humans as other than and as monsters is because we fear what we do not understand, and we fear what we cannot control. To think - that there are people out there with just as much intelligence and humanity and personhood as our own but expressed with significant difference in ways that we do not understand because we do not try to, because somewhere along the line, we let differences divide us."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "We cannot assume that things are true to the labels we assign them, if we do not first seek to actually know and understand them first. Amy is no monster. So therefore your service here in this town is not needed."

"They are all monsters!" she spits. "That's why they're hunted, James. They are dangerous, and they kill, and even if she hasn't yet she will because it's what wolves do."

James's upper lip curled when she said his name. She knew who he was. She might not have been interested, but her knowing his identity meant they couldn't stay there in the inn. If she knew, that meant others knew. Rita, on top of everything else, made him a very wanted man.

But he ignored it. Even if she wanted to take the opportunity to claim his bounty while she was trying to kill Amy, it was Amy he was most worried about. And Ari, who still had a gun pinned on him.

"Just like not all humans are murderers, not all werewolves are," James spat back. "That's a disgustingly low view to assume. Amy is just as much a person in her human form or her wolf form. You cannot strip her of her personhood because she takes the form of what you understand to only be an animal."

"A werewolf is a creature, that, by default, is a predator to humans," she retorts. "A cougar eats a deer and a werewolf eats a human, that's the way of the woods! You cannot change the nature of a beast!"

James looked at her with a dead gaze. Clearly, the conversation wasn't productive, and it wouldn't be anytime soon.

He took the shot, hitting her in the upper arm. Amy, who had been watching his finger, leapt out and chopped into Tasha's arm with her hand and grabbed the gun, trying to wrangle it out of Tasha's hand.

Normally, she was pretty quick at evading attacks, but due to the bullet that was suddenly in her upper arm she had no such luck. She uttered a yelp of surprise and pain and dropped the gun when Amy grabbed her before she was knocked to the ground a second time thanks to Ari, her sword clattering across the wood as she hit the floor. She grabbed for her dagger in her boot but found this to be difficult due to the bulk of a seven foot tall man on top of her.