Rain lashes the moors as the stagecoach carries Baxter and Master Gideon Payne toward Heatherdale. Baxter grips the case of silver stakes and holy water; Gideon reads by lantern light, skull-cane at his side. A black wolf with red eyes prowls the hills - too clever, too solitary to be natural. Sheep are slaughtered. A hunter pinned beneath its claws. Villages pool silver to hire the man who hunts the impossible. At the Golden Hind Inn, firelight glows on timber beams. The mayor pleads. Gideon nods: at dawn they track it. Tomorrow the apprentice will strike the killing blow. The hour of the wolf is near. It hungers.