# HNTBL 72: Don’t Blow Your Cover

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

How Not To Become Lunch: 72 - Don’t Blow Your Cover

“Please tell me you have some good news?” Harry asked nervously as Fiona rejoined them. He’d been watching somewhat fixedly as the werewolf and the panda chatted across the latter’s freshly squirming stomach, only looking away when said panda had turned in his direction.

“Well, her name is Petal,” Fiona said. “She’s in the year above me at school. Seems nice enough, I guess; maybe a little… boring. She’s pretty chill.”

“And, um… did she say anything about me?” Harry probed.

“Funny thing, before I asked her about you, I don’t think she even noticed you were here,” the werewolf recounted innocently. “She remembered you after she saw you, though; called you her ‘second course’ and said something about how she hates when she lets an easy meal get away. Which, yeah, I totally get.”

“So… let me get this straight… If I hadn’t asked you to talk to her, I might have gotten through this entire party without her even realizing I was here? And now she knows I’m here, said she hates that I got away, and called me her second course?”

“Um… yeah.” Fiona frowned. It did sound pretty bad when she heard it back like that.

The color drained out of Harry’s face as his expression contorted into something more likely seen in an exaggerated painting. Jack reached out and put both hands on his new friend’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he attempted to soothe. “It’s just one predator. Just keep your cool, keep your wand on you, keep close to us, and you’ll be fine.” He’d been hunted before, he knew what it felt like, and he knew the thing that helped him more than anything was knowing someone was there to watch his back: Fiona, Ozzy… Zach…

“Yeah,” Harry replied shakily. “Yeah, you’re right, thanks.”

That’s when Mr. Belv walked up to them, turned directly to the spectacled boy and said:

“I believe it’s your turn.”

Harry made a quiet sound somewhere between the squeal of an injured puppy, and the squeal of said puppy’s deflated squeaky toy. He glanced between his two new friends, terror in his eyes, the recent spectacle of Petal’s meal replaying in his mind.

“Don’t worry too much,” Fiona said encouragingly. “She just ate, and I doubt she’s going to make the same mistake twice.”

Yeah, this time she’ll make sure I stay down, Harry thought morbidly.

“Hey!” Jack said firmly, shaking him lightly for good measure. “You can make it through this. We’ll be looking out for you.”

Harry looked the other boy in the eyes and managed a weak nod.

“Come now.” The butler instructed, before he turned and walked off.

Jack let Harry go, and off he went.

“Hey, um,” the marked kid whispered to Fiona, “I appreciate the effort, but we might need to talk about your choice of words.”

Meanwhile, Harry followed Mr. Belv into the center of the arc of spectating guests. He could see the glasses on his nose twitching faster as his pulse quickened. He kept his gaze dead ahead; he was acutely aware of the area of the crowd that panda girl- Petal- had disappeared into, and he was too terrified to even glance in that direction. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he looked and saw her there, watching him.

The vampire family’s mage-butler handed the shivering boy his blindfold. He glanced down at the black band, and then out toward the target again. For all he knew, this might be his last glimpse of the world, the last thing he’d see outside the darkness of his blindfold, and the darkness of Petal’s churning gut. Why had he come to this stupid party? Why hadn’t he turned and run when he had the chance? He had answers to those questions, but they all seemed inadequate now. Inadequate and irrelevant; he had come, and he had stayed. And now he could feel Mr. Belv was waiting on him, the whole crowd was. Maybe he could at least go out with some promptness and dignity?

In a series of events that was uncomfortably, almost prophetically familiar, Harry removed his glasses, tied the dark fabric over his eyes, and then put his now useless specs back in place on his nose.

He felt the fake teeth handed to him; freshly cleaned, but he couldn’t shake the knowledge that they had quite recently been inside that panda bear’s belly, just like he had been, just like they both might return to being.

He felt a strange, circular shove, almost an aberration of gravity itself, and found himself spinning round and round, caught in a magic spell.

And then he felt himself come still, and he heard the first shouts. The game had begun.

“Right!”
“Right!”
“Left!”
“Up!”
“Down!”

Harry felt like a leaf in a whirlwind. He reached out his arm and tried to listen to hints, but he couldn’t make any sense of them, he had no idea which ones he should believe. He took a shaky, random step forward. For all he knew, he wasn’t even headed toward the wall. He might be headed straight for the crowd, straight in Petal’s direction, waiting there with her gaping jaws and squirming gut.

“Right!”
“Right!”
“Right!”

He turned.

*step*

“Left!”
“Right!”
“Right!”
“Up!”

He turned. He raised his arm. Petal was a bit taller than him, wasn’t she? Wouldn’t he need to aim a bit higher to sink his hand properly into her gullet?

“Right!”
“Left!”
“Left!”

The calls continued, twisting him around like a tornado, tossing him around like a churning sea, or a churning stomach. And after second upon second of blind groping, he could feel himself growing more and more tense with every step. He knew he was going somewhere, this wouldn’t last forever, one of these steps would be his last, the one that finally took him to his end. He could see it in his mind. She was waiting there, just like with that last girl, standing right next to the target, mouth hanging open, edges curled up in a hungry smile as she watched him deliver himself to her.

*step*

He could hear the sound, somewhere underneath the calls of the crowd, the rumbles, the gurgles, the squelches and groans, the sound of a hungry, gluttonous gut already at work, preparing itself for him.

*step*

Was he feeling warm? Was it just the pressure?

*step*

No, no, he was sure he could feel it on his arm! Hot breath, wafting across his skin, like the phantom grip of her steamy insides reaching out to touch him, to tease him. He could feel her body heat radiating onto him, practically cooking him before he was even inside her. She was right in front of him, wasn’t she? Just one step away. Just one, final-

*step*

“Ahh!” Harry felt a pressure against his hand and screamed.

“Yeaaah!” came a collective cheer.

Hyperventilating, but very much un-grabbed and un-eaten, Harry shakily removed his blindfold. His face met that of another frightened human, the 2D one posted up on the wall, looking back in frozen flight. Harry had managed to mark his target right on the shoulder. He stood there for another few seconds, panting.

“I’m… alive?” he muttered aloud. The realization was followed a moment later by a wave of relief, palpable and heavy. Before he realized it, his legs had given out and he was falling backwards. “Ooof!” Something caught him before he could catch himself, and it wasn’t the floor. It was something… furry? With claws!? A predator!? “Ah!” he yelled again and jumped back to his feet. He whirled around.

It was a predator alright. A fairly deadly one. But lucky for him, it was Fiona. She’d walked up with Jack when they’d noticed him just standing there, staring at the wall in a daze. Now she was grinning at him with amusement, holding back a giggle. It was kinda funny to see the way humans reacted when she caught them and didn’t immediately swallow their heads; she saw a different flavor of it with each human flavor she sampled at the party, and it hadn’t gotten old yet.

“You did it,” Jack congratulated.

“I… I did…” Harry muttered. “…Petal, she…”

“Never even got up,” Jack answered, pointing. Through the crowd, a glimpse of the panda could just be seen reclining on a nearby chair, big, bulging gut still wriggling on wide display.

“It… it was all in my head.”

“Yeah. And hey, with luck like that-” he gestured to the game target “-maybe you won’t run into her at all the entire night?”

Originally Published: 30-Aug-2023