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David sat at the dining table, staring at the carvings of wolves and trees as he waited for breakfast. Colin was bickering with Jesse again over who got to work the kitchen. At least, he tried to. It had become a lot more one sided the past few days with Jesse ignoring him and going about cooking anyways. Especially as it became obvious that Jesse was a far better cook than Colin. Colin wasn’t a bad cook, but he wasn’t able to make danishes like Jesse was currently baking.
He rubbed his neck as he waited. It was sore from sleeping on the small couch in the library. It wasn’t as bad as when he first moved in with the others a week ago, especially as he started sleeping on the bed with others a few nights before and sneaking out in the early morning with the others none the wiser. He just wished the last couple of hours of sleep on the couch wasn’t so rough on his neck, or that the library wasn’t so cold.
Lucas and Tsu’mara were sitting at the dining table too and David eavesdropped on their conversation while he gazed at the carvings, tracing his fingers along them.
“The first cabin’s almost fully finished being renovated,” said Tsu’mara. “But it’s renovated enough for Jesse to stream there.”
Jesse and Tsu’mara had spent the entire day the day before renovating the closest of the cabins to the house. The three cabins technically occupied the adjacent property, but it was all owned by the Old Man so it was really just one property despite the four separate mail boxes. David had spied on some of Jesse’s and Tsu’mara’s work on the first cabin; he couldn’t help it. He wanted to know what they were doing, but he couldn’t just ask them.
The cabin closest to the house, the one that Jesse and Tsu’mara had worked on, was unfinished but largely restored. The interior walls were exposed. There was cabinetry, no appliances, wood floors laid and covered in protective plastic sheets. The cabin already had a large table set up with a table saw and a number of basic power tools and tool boxes already laid out. So it was just a simple job for them to finish a lot of the work. Though there was one part of the cabin that was left untouched.
“I think working on the bathroom is outside our skill set,” Jesse called out from the kitchen as he pulled out the danishes from the oven, while Colin moped as he poked at some sausages that were cooking on a pan.
David paid little mind to what Jesse said, still thinking about the other two cabins he looked at the other day after he finished looking in on Jesse’s and Tsu’mara’s work.
The second of the three was fully renovated and was the one the Old Man was living in. It had an old Ford pickup truck parked out front, as well as a much newer, larger SUV, that one marked as part of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s department parked on the street in front of the cabin. Morrison was still there, and he knew David was stalking around the cabins. A low warning growl came from inside the cabin which made David quickly flee to the third and final cabin.
They were talking around the dining table again, but David didn’t listen in on their conversation this time. Too caught up in remembering the cabins.
The third cabin’s door was ajar, no lock was even fitted to the door. Inside, the cabin was barely structurally stable. Rotted floors, no lighting or even wiring and a broken window at the back rounded out the otherwise empty hovel. It looked more like a crack house than the finished and half-finished cabin it sat next to. David knew, because he had stayed in a few abandoned ones when he looked for a place to sleep whenever he was living on the streets. He wondered if all three were as bad as that one was when Morrison started renovating them.
A tantalising smell dragged David out of his thoughts and he finally noticed a plate with two mouth watering looking danishes, and two slightly over-cooked sausages being held in front of his face.
“The Mundane to David,” said Colin, slowly waving the plate of food in front of David.
David gently took the plate and sheepishly dug in. He didn’t bother with a knife and fork and it wasn’t until he was halfway through the first sausage that he noticed he wasn’t even given any to begin with. No one was.
A knock at the front door caught their attention. It was the Old Man who had let himself into the house. Instead of the flannel and jeans he wore when the pack first met him, he wore a Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department uniform and a cowboy hat with the Sheriff’s Department logo on it.
He took his hat off and set it down on the kitchen counter. He helped himself to a plate of food that he set his hat down next to, and took it to the dining table.
“Where’s my food?” asked Colin from the kitchen when he went back in for his own food.
“So it’s clear that I’m not going to be rid of you lot any time soon,” said Morrison as he ate what was supposed to be Colin’s breakfast. “So I may as well get your help on a case for the Department.”
He pointed at Tsu’mara, “We’ll need the muscle a Rahu brings to the pack.”
“Two Ithaeur are gonna be annoying,” he said when he looked at Lucas and David. He shook his head, “Would’ve been better if one of you were an Elodoth.”
Then he looked at Jesse, who sat down at the table with his own plate of food. “At least the Irraka is small. Better for sneaking around. Even if he does need less conspicuous clothing.”
Jesse, who was wearing fishnet stockings and a frilly purple skirt simply poked his tongue out at the elder werewolf.
Lucas looked stunned seeing the Old Man sitting at the table with them and he stumbled over himself to properly introduce himself.
“I’m Lucas Vovk, Elder Morrison,” said Lucas
Morrison clicked his tongue in disgust and said, “None of that Elder shit. I don’t need to be reminded how old I am. Just call me Morrison or Howlmore.”
Colin slid into the free chair next to Morrison with a big smile on his face, but Morrison ignored him.
He looked at Tsu’mara who gave him a nod and said, “Tsu’mara Ironclaw, sir.”
He looked at Jesse, who, in contrast to what he was wearing, lounged back in the chair, flashed a hand sign and said, “Sup, I’m Jessie.”
Morrison frowned then finally turned to David, “What about you, Quiet One? What’s your name?”
David slowly chewed his food and looked at The Old Man. He didn’t answer the Elder. The Old Man didn’t want David, and growled at him when he was sniffing around the Cabins the day before, so why was he trying to get to know him now?
After a moment of waiting and getting no reply, Morrison pointed at David with a thumb and asked the others, “How long has it been since School Shooter here had his First Change?”
David glowered and returned his attention to his breakfast.
“Round three weeks,” answered Lucas.
Morrison scoffed, “That explains the PTSD stare.”
He then sighed before turning to finally acknowledge Colin. Who had been slowly shuffling closer to the Elder werewolf as he asked the others their names. He asked, “What about you, Council Pet? ”
“Colin Campbell,” Colin said with excitement. He extended a hand for Morrison to shake.
Morrison looked at Colin’s hand. He finished eating, licked the plate, and then handed Colin the empty plate.
“Meet me by my truck,” he told the others while getting up from the dining table. “I’ll give you a way to get around town and tell you what I need done for the case.”
Everyone quickly finished their food and followed Morrison out of the house. As he was leaving with the rest, David noticed Colin heading to the kitchen.
“You’re not coming?” asked David.
“It’s my duty as a wolf-blood to tend to the den,” Colin said as he looked sadly at the plate Morrison gave him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” asked David.
“Just go,” Colin said flatly.
David left reluctantly, looking back to see Colin collecting all the dishes from the table and taking them to the kitchen.
He met with the others outside of Morrison’s cabin, next to the old pickup. Morrison was telling them about the case he wanted help with.
“The County has recently seen a large uptick in the amount and quality of meth. The Sheriff’s Department hasn’t been able to track down where this meth has been coming from,” informed Morrison.
He pointed at the pack, “That’s where you lot come in. You’re able to get away with operating outside of the law. If you’re smart at least and don’t get caught.”
“We don’t know the first thing about finding a meth lab,” said Lucas.
“That’s where Ralph Baker comes into play,” said Morrison. “Ralph’s a known dealer but he always shuffles where he keeps his stock and he’s never caught possessing. So the Department hasn’t been able to pin him with anything.”
He then gave Tsu’mara Ralph’s address, tossed Lucas the keys for the old pickup and left for work.
The old pickup the keys were for was an old, beaten up blue Ford four seater.
“Shotgun!” called Jesse but David was already climbing into the front passenger seat. He poked his tongue out at David and climbed into one of the back seats with Tsu’mara. Lucas climbed into the driver’s seat, and after a couple attempts at turning the engine over, drove towards Ralph’s address in a bad part of Pioche.
He parked the car down the road from Ralph’s house but in a spot where they could see him. He was sitting on his porch smoking a joint. He was gaunt, and wore cheap, dishevelled clothes.
But David perceived more than just that. He could hear strange dissonant whispers that, when he looked at the others in the truck with him, the others couldn’t hear. He tilted his head to try and make out what they were saying but he couldn’t make out what they were saying over everyone in the truck.
“Shut up!” snapped David. “I’m trying to listen to the whispers.”
The others did what David said. They looked at each other to try and understand what David meant but they all shrugged at each other.
David tilted his head again to listen to the whispers. He couldn’t quite make them out until he looked at Ralph as he listened to them.
“He has addictions. Two of them,” said David. He kept his eyes trained on the drug dealer as he told the others in the car. “Meth from sampling his own stock, and alcohol. From what, I don’t know. Addicts tend to have more than one.”
“Okay then…” said Jesse, stunned at David talking to them longer in the past minute than he had for the entire week. “What are we suppo-”
David interrupted him as he kept talking, “His liver’s starting to fail from all the alcohol. Give it a month and it’ll progress to full on liver failure. He’s also paranoid from the meth use.”
The other three all leaned forward in the truck but they couldn’t see anything that could have told David that. Lucas’ blue eyes shifted to a shining gold as he looked past the Gauntlet into the Hisil. He saw two spirits standing by the drug dealer. One looked to be made of jagged, cloudy glass and stood hunched behind Ralph, whispering in his ear. It would occasionally stop its whispers to quickly look around panicked before returning to whisper even faster in his ear. The other looked more mundane, like a man but with a red nose and sickeningly yellow skin. It knelt by Ralph’s side, with its fingers stabbing into the drug dealer’s side. Directly into his liver.
Lucas looked at David and saw that David’s eyes were a Mundane brown. He wasn’t looking into the Hisil but was still able to know exactly what the spirits were doing to Ralph.
“Huh,” said Lucas.
He turned to the others, “Anyone got any ideas on how to get the info on the lab out of him?”
Jesse spoke up, “Tsu’mara could shift into Urhan and she could pretend to be a regular dog while I walk her. Get close enough so I can hack into his computer to see if he has any info there.”
Lucas shrugged, “It’s a start.”
Jesse and Tsu’mara got out of the truck, and after making sure no one was watching, Tsumara shifted into her African Wild Dog Urhan form. David saw Jesse put a collar on Tsu’mara. Seems it wasn’t the first time the two had performed that trick.
The pair set off towards the house, Tsu’mara trotting next to Jesse with her tongue out in a canine smile as she played the part of a pet on a walk. They walked along until they walked in front of Ralph’s house. Jesse looked away from Tsu’mara as if he was taking in the sights, which was the signal for Tsu’mara to break away and head towards Ralph on his porch.
Ralph saw her coming and was immediately on alert, his hand going to his waistband before Jesse called out.
“Tsu’mara, no! Bad girl!”
He ran up to the porch and grabbed Tsu’mara by the collar. He pretended not to notice Ralph’s hand jittering near his waist.
“Sorry about that, sir,” Jesse said, holding Tsu’mara by the collar as the Wild Dog sniffed at Ralph’s clothes. “She’s really friendly. I promise.”
Tsu’mara pulled away when she found the distinct smell of burnt plastic mixed with chemicals. She pulled away from the drug dealer and Jesse took that as a cue to leave.
“Really sorry about that,” he said, as he made a show of dragging Tsu’mara away.
Tsu’mara followed her nose, tracking the smell of meth she found on the dealer. She followed the trail to the car parked in the driveway in front of the house. The boot of the car to be precise. She jerked her head towards it.
Jesse took note and discreetly scratched a mark on the boot as he passed it by. Ralph not noticing him do so as he watched the feminine man leave.
“So there’s meth somewhere in the trunk,” Lucas said to David as the pair watched Jesse mark the car from inside the pickup.
Once out of sight of the drug dealer, Jesse pulled out his phone and got to work hacking into the house’s IP. He couldn’t do much on his phone, but what little he could find wasn’t incriminating.
He returned to the pickup, taking the long way around so he wouldn’t be seen by Ralph to avoid stoking the paranoia David had warned him about.
“Well the hacking was a bust,” said Jesse as he and Tsu’mara, back in human form, climbed back into the pickup.
“But you two found the location of his stash at least,” said Lucas. “Perhaps we could steal the meth from the trunk and follow him to find the lab he gets it from.”
He frowned, “Though we don’t have a way of stealing it without getting caught. We don’t know where exactly it is in the trunk. Morrison said they could never find any on him.”
Tsu’mara spoke up, “Not to mention that the town knows what we look like now being Morrison’s ‘grandkids’”
She did air quotes when he said ‘grandkids’.
Jesse shrugged, “If only we had a gloomy recluse that spent the entire week in the house since we moved in that no one in town knows what they look like yet.”
The three then all looked at David expectantly.
“Not. Happening.” growled David.
***
He hated how right they were, he was the only one who could pull it off. He was the only one that could play the part of a meth head. Tsu’mara was too large and fit, Lucas too self-assured, and Jesse was already seen by the drug dealer and also didn’t look the part. If Ralph was an ecstasy dealer he would have been able. And they had all started to become known by the town as Morrison’s grandkids. David was the only one who could do it. He was unhealthily thin, his disturbed appearance sold the lie that he was paranoid from meth use, and he was unknown by the town. More importantly, his time on the streets and asylums around addicts meant that he knew how they acted and picked up the cant they speak.
He walked up to Ralph. David’s eyes twitched around, looking at random spots for invisible threats. He scratched himself in different places. His arms, neck, and face, and told the dealer with a shaking voice, “I hear you’re the guy to get some new glass for my house.”
Unlike with Jesse, Ralph’s hand didn’t twitch to his waistband. He bought David’s meth head act hook, line, and sinker. The disturbed look in David’s eyes also distracted Ralph from noticing the fact that David didn’t have any sores or finger and lip burns, or that he had all his teeth and that none of them were rotted.
“Yeah, man,” said Ralph in the familiar drawl of a man high on pot, “Got a friend at a warehouse that gets me a good price.”
“Where you from, dude?” asked Ralph.
“St. George,” answered David. He looked behind him down both sides of the road to keep up the paranoid act. He didn’t lie, not exactly. He spent more time in St. George than he did in Vegas where he grew up.
“Utah, huh? I have some friends from there,” said Ralph. He nodded, “I can get the glass your house needs for like one-fifty.”
“I have to make sure you have the right size I need,” said David.
Ralph got up from his chair and said, “Fair enough. Come on then.”
He took David to his car. Which was an old sedan. A very old one. One that Ralph had to open the boot with a key. He pulled up the cover hiding the spare tire, removed the tire, then in a hidden hollow under where the spare was placed pulled out a large ziplock bag full of small baggies of meth.
“You won’t find purer glass than this in all of Nevada,” said Ralph before taking out one of the baggies.
David suddenly felt very cold as he realised what he was doing. He was in the middle of a drug deal. What would his brother Michael think of him now? He’d be furious with him. He shivered, he could feel that phantom fury now, distracting him from the task at hand.
“You got the green or not?” snapped Ralph, goosebumps raised all along the drug dealer’s skin. He started getting twitchy. He looked quickly around, his paranoia starting to take control.
David started to fall over himself, trying to keep a lid on his growing panic. “I don’t have it on me right now. Can’t risk the cops finding all that money on me. You know how it is.”
Ralph sneered and pulled up the hem of his shirt, showing a beaten up glock shoved into the waistband of his pants. “I’m not giving handouts. Get lost and don’t come back unless you got the green.”
David bolted. He sprinted down the street until he was out of sight of Ralph’s house and he collapsed to his knees, hyperventilating. His brother would be furious with him for doing that and with the point of his life he was at now. He knew what he’d say.
“Davey, you stupid fucking pest!”
He snapped his head up, looking around anxiously. He couldn’t stay there. People would see him freaking out and have him committed again. He can’t go back there. He got back up and ran. He needed to get somewhere safe. He beelined straight to the pickup and jumped in.
He hugged his knees to his chest and flinched when Lucas spoke up.
“What the hell was that?” he asked. “You were supposed to grab the meth and run.”
“I couldn’t,” stammered David.
Lucas shook his head and sighed, “We can come back at night and steal it from the trunk. Where does he keep it?”
Through his stammering, David told him exactly where it was. He then asked Lucas, “Why can’t we just tip off the Sheriff’s Department? An exact location like that should be enough for them to get a warrant.”
Lucas shook his head, “A warrant will take too long. Morrison said he shuffles where he keeps it. Even if they did get him over it, it could take them too long to get the info on where it comes from that the producers might get spooked if he doesn’t check in and move location.”
Jesse spoke up, “We can still salvage it though. Break into the car and steal it. He’d just assume it was David coming back to steal it. He wouldn’t be wrong either.”
Lucas nodded, agreeing with Jesse. “We’ll have to come back at night though. He’d be too on edge and won’t be able to get close while he’s still out there.”
He checked the time on his phone. “We still have a few hours before nighttime. So we can just go to a bar to pass the time.”
He locked the passenger side door before he started the pickup, “And I’m driving. So you’re coming with us, David.”
David let out a small whine in response.
***
Lucas took the pack to a bar just around the corner from their den, The Nevada Club of Pioche. A brown brick building that had a covered wagon on the roof. Inside the bar had a strong Western theme with corrugated metal on the bottom half of the walls, with plain cream coloured wood on the top half. A dozen low back, brown fake leather stools lined the bar, and half the bar was dedicated to poker machines built into the bar itself. At the far end was a game area with a large pool table as the main feature of it. A large painted mural of native americans hunting buffalo took up the very far wall of the game room, and various stuffed deer heads, mounted antlers, and taxidermied birds decorated the spare areas of the game area. There was even a taxidermied black bear next to the pool cues.
David, Jesse, and Tsu’mara sat at a small, round table in the game area, the chairs made to look like barrels. Lucas was at the bar ordering drinks for everyone from the bartender, a middle aged blonde woman he called Blondie.
He returned with drinks, a large pitcher of beer for Tsu’mara, a soft drink for Jesse since he was only eighteen, and two screwdriver cocktails.
Jesse didn’t agree with being given a soft drink. “How come I can’t have alcohol? We can’t get drunk.”
“We need to keep up appearances,” said Lucas as he sat down in the spare barrel chair.
“But Daddy!” whined Jesse.
Tsu’mara snorted into her pitcher, and David fought back a smirk in order to keep up his grumpy appearance.
Lucas shuddered, “ Never call me that again.”
Lucas gave David one of the screwdrivers and clinked it with his own.
“Well,” said Lucas, “Here’s to dulling the whispers from the other side.”
Lucas took a large swig from the glass but David just looked at the one in his hand looking into the pale orange liquid. It was so pale an orange it looked almost yellow. He’d never had alcohol before, not because of a lack of access to it. It was surprisingly easy to get a hold of it as a homeless person, but because the spirits he saw constantly surrounding the other homeless people who drank themselves into a stupor terrified him.
He sniffed the glass, not noticing Lucas looking at him from the corner of his eye. But he wasn’t a scared homeless person anymore.
He sipped the orange cocktail, and Lucas smirked. David could still taste the slight undertone of vodka underneath the orange juice, but the juice covered up a majority of it.
He was Uratha. Spirits feared him.
He stole a glance at the half empty glass in his fellow Uratha’s hand and felt a strange competitiveness overtake him. He slammed down the rest of his drink.
“We’re doing that, huh?” said Lucas before slamming down the rest of his own.
The pair competed against each other slamming down several screwdrivers in rapid succession with Tsu’mara chugging from her pitcher along with them. During Lucas’ and David’s competition, Jesse had left to go outside, telling them that he was going to have a smoke. David assumed it was a euphemism and was surprised to see him actually pull out a cigarette and lighter.
“He’s going to keep watch,” Tsu’mara told David.
After their thirteenth screwdriver Lucas got up to get another pair of them when Blondie called out from the bar, “No! I have no idea how you two aren’t passed out yet but I’m cutting you off.”
She shook her head and muttered to herself, audible only to herself and the keen hearing of the pack, “Morrison’s must have livers of steel.”
It wasn’t long after being cut off did the pack leave, with Jesse smugly taking the keys from Lucas ‘to keep up appearances’.
They drove back to Ralph’s address and parked far enough away from the house to not be suspicious. He was still sitting on his porch and they waited for hours for him to go back inside his house. It was a boring stake out because they had to stay in darkness so they couldn’t look at their phones to pass the time. Not that David had a phone. David passed the time by immediately falling asleep due to still feeling drowsy from the lack of good sleep the past week. He wished he didn’t have to sneak out of the bedroom every morning.
He was rudely woken up some time later from one of them shaking his shoulder. He tried to ignore the one trying to wake him up, he was sleeping so well. But the shaker wouldn’t have any of it, so they kept shaking him.
“Fuck off, Michael,” grumbled David, still half asleep.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Jesse said as he punched David in the shoulder.
David growled at Jesse and tried to get back to sleep.
All three punched him.
David snarled, “I’m awake, you fucking bastards. I’m awake.”
“Ralph went inside half an hour ago,” said Lucas. “Let’s go.”
The two piled out of the pickup and jogged up to Ralph’s car. David kept a look out as Lucas shifted to Dalu and, with his increased strength, popped the boot open. He rooted around trying to find the meth. Too long.
David growled before shoving Lucas aside, “I said it was in a hollow under the spare tire.”
He grabbed the meth from where it was hidden and slammed the boot lid closed. Lucas shoved his hand under the boot lid to keep it from slamming and bit back a snarl as it painfully hit his hand with a dull crunch.
“Idiot,” snarled Lucas as he pulled his hand away, pulling a dislocated finger back into place.
They quickly went back to the pickup and stashed the large ziplock bag of meth out of sight.
“Alright,” said Lucas climbing into the driver’s seat, after he kicked Jesse out of it, “Just gotta wait for Ralph to see it’s gone and follow him to his supplier.”
David heard none of that as he had already gone back to sleep.
***
David was still sleeping in the truck’s front passenger seat when Morning came and Ralph came outside of his house to see the boot of his car broken open and his stash of meth missing. David slept through most of the several hours Ralph had spent as a panicked mess, where he tore apart his car looking for the meth. Some crashing inside his house briefly roused David before he got used to it and fell back to sleep.
He was only awoken proper when the truck’s engine started and he noticed that Lucas had started following Ralph. The drug dealer had gotten into his car and drove off to the South West.
Lucas followed him to the south side of Mount Ely just outside of Pioche where Ralph stopped at the Caselton silver mine.
“I thought it was spelled ‘Castleton’. That’s what the County’s official map says.” Lucas muttered to himself as he looked at the sign when he pulled up near the entrance of the mine complex.
There Ralph talked to one of the workers, they couldn’t get any closer in the truck without trespassing and likely getting caught.
Jesse volunteered to tail the man Ralph was speaking to. David didn’t see how the cross dresser would be able to do so without being noticed. He went to say as much just to find that Jesse had already disappeared from the truck.
Jesse had already left the truck far behind, getting so close to Ralph that he could hear his conversation. The man he was speaking to was named Bill, and was his supplier, and it became clear as the conversation continued that Ralph didn’t actually know where the lab was. So Jesse decided to tail this Bill figure instead, relaying that to Lucas over a quick text.
He followed Bill throughout the mine, expertly avoiding security cameras and slipping out of sight whenever people looked in his general direction. It was a game to him, avoiding the other workers and sneaking around. He even deliberately let his presence be slightly noticed, a soft whistle here, a knock there, even an item stolen to make someone search for it just to put it back where he found it. All in order to mess the workers, to make them slightly paranoid.
As he tailed Bill, he noticed the man stealing random containers of chemicals, stashing them away, and only returning a few hours later to transfer them to his car. After Bill finished his shift at the mine, he returned to his car and drove off into the desert.
Jesse rapidly shifted to his maned wolf Urhan form and chased after him, keeping just far enough away to not be noticed. He followed Bill South to where the Caselton Mine dumped its tailings created from the processed ore. He followed Bill down an unmaintained dirt road towards an old ramshackle, prefab building that looked to be from the 50s. It had an old, rotting sign that titled it ‘Field Geology Lab’.
Bill parked his car alongside a modern RV and parked cars, and started unloading his ill-gotten goods and took them into the lab building, walking past a man in a camping chair. Bill was greeted by a man from the lab who helped him take the chemicals into the lab. The man in the chair had a rifle by his side, and was busy trying to start a campfire as the sun started to set.
Jesse stayed for a few moments longer, risking his hide to travel closer. He utilized the growing shadows of the sunset to silently dash between boulders and cars. He got a headcount of everyone in the ramshackle compound. There were no others in the lab, just Bill and the man who greeted him. The two were inside working lab equipment, cooking meth. The man outside finally got the fire going, and lounged back into his camping chair and pulled a beer out of a small cooler that was set into the armrest.
Jesse noted the distinctive burning plastic chemical smell of meth being smoked coming from the RV. Making doubly sure he wasn’t seen, he snuck around to the dark side of the RV and stood up on his hind legs. He leant his forepaws against the side of the RV and peeked in through one of the windows. He saw three men in ragged clothes smoking meth. Two of the men had shotguns, the other a rifle.
Seeing enough, Jesse jumped down and ran off into the desert, the meth heads and cooks none the wiser to his intrusion. Once he crossed a hill on the way back to the den, he shifted back to Hishu and texted Lucas to have the others meet him back at the den.
He got back to the Den before the others, despite being further away. When they returned, Jesse filled them in on what he had found while he made dinner. During Jesse’s report, Elder Morrison returned from work with the Sheriff’s department. He said nothing, and only watched as he ate dinner of raw meat and cooked potato bake.
Colin spoke up next to David as everyone ate at the dinner table, “So with the lab found, and the amount of people there known. The only thing now, I assume, is to invoke the Siskur-Dah .”
The Siskur-Dah, the sacred hunt. The Bone Shadows’ Elders taught David about that but he failed to see how being able to touch ephemeral beings with their teeth and claws would help in this hunt. They were dealing with Mundane meth cooks and meth heads, they could already touch them.
He didn’t mention his concerns, but he noticed Colin was looking at him. He could tell that the redhead knew what he was thinking. He pointed with his head to Lucas. David was confused, how would Lucas change anything?
Colin rolled his eyes and quickly whispered to David, “The Iron Masters Siskur-Dah lets you choose what kind of Lunacy you inflict on your prey. You can make them attack in a lunatic rage, flee in terror, or make them more susceptible to spirit magic.”
“That last one is something YOU- ” he jabbed David in the arm with a finger, “-as an Ithaeur would benefit from.”
“He’s right, you know,” Lucas said from the other side of the table, evidently eavesdropping on the pair's whispered conversation with his supernaturally keen hearing.
David started to growl at Lucas but flinched when Colin elbowed him.
Colin turned his attention to Lucas, “You’re an Iron Master Ithaeur, Lucas. So it’s only right that you should lead the rite.”
David grumbled to himself and jabbed at his food.
Colin glared at David before asking Lucas, “So how are you gonna conduct the rite? As far as I know, this is gonna be your first time leading the Siskur-Dah .”
Lucas thought for a moment, tapping his fingers against the table. “I guess it would be just regular chants to Sagrim-Ur— ”
Colin whispered the translation to David, “Red Wolf.”
Lucas continued, “—to bless the hunt, as well burn incense. Since we’re hunting meth dealers and cooks I’ll probably add the meth David stole to the incense.”
That made David choke on his dinner, “ What?! ”
Tsu’mara waved away his concerns, “Relax, just like how we can’t get drunk, the meth won’t get you high or addicted.”
She leaned over the table to whisper to Lucas, “You won’t be using too much will you?”
Lucas shook his head, “Not even a full baggy. Probably just a pinch. So I’ll get the meth out of the truck after dinner and start the rite.”
Jesse reached under the table, pulled out the large ziplock bag of meth and put it on the table.
“How the hell did you even do that?” asked Lucas. “You haven’t been in the truck since the mine and it was still there when you left.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” asked Jesse, poking his tongue out.
“Yes,” said Lucas, annoyed. “That’s why I asked.”
Jesse refused to elaborate and the pack finished their dinner. Lucas took out a small baggy of meth and left to gather different incense from the library closet. He ground them all together in a mortar and pestle. He poured it into a small silver bowl with some pine tar to stick it all together.
He returned to the dining room and gathered David, Jesse, and Tsu’mara to stand around him. Colin tried to join them but Morrison grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away. With the three others standing around him, and burrowing a lighter from Jesse, lit the incense concoction and let it smoke. He chanted in the First Tongue as he did so, prayers to Sagrim-Ur to bless their hunt. As he chanted, the smoke trailing from the burning incense started to coil in on itself, flowing around one of Lucas’ arms.
He blew the wisps of smoke towards Jesse, it coiled around the effeminate man before shooting up his nose. Goosebumps grew all over Jesse’s skin and his eyes dilated. Lucas did the same to Tsu’mara to the same effect.
Seeing the effect on the other two, David became nervous. When Lucas turned to him, a lump formed in his throat. He dodged the smoke blown his way, but the smoke chased after him. It coiled around his neck, before rearing back like a snake and struck. It speared itself up his nostrils, and the rush, the elation, he felt was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Goosebumps rose on his skin as invigorating adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, and his eyes dilated as his already keen senses went into overdrive. They even flickered gold before returning to their Mundane brown. The feeling of it all, the overwhelming feeling. He loved it. That scared him.
A strong, artificial fruity smell drifted up behind him, he snapped around to face it and saw Colin, his hand raised about to tap David on the shoulder. He heard the redhead’s heart rate spike with a tinge of fear, he could smell it staining his pleasantly fruity scent. Why was he afraid? He didn’t like that.
“It’s not the meth,” Colin said softly. It was just a whisper, but it sounded like he was bordering on yelling to David’s overly heightened senses. “Your body would’ve purged it from your system already.”
“It isn’t? Then what is it?” asked David.
“It’s the effects of the Siskur-Dah ,” Colin said, still in a whisper and gave him a pat on the shoulder. His hand lingered for just a tad longer than necessary. “You’re Uratha now, so you’re half spirit. And the spirit half of your soul is a Spirit of the Hunt. Like I told you last week during my first lesson, there are all kinds of hunts that will sustain you. Like how different kinds of love will sustain a love spirit but the strongest, most intense forms of love would sustain them the most. So performing the Siskur-Dah , the greatest and most sacred of hunts, will sustain you the most.”
Comforted that he wasn’t high on meth, David started to enjoy the effects without any panic or guilt. He told Colin, “You have to try this.”
A look passed over Colin’s face for just a fraction of a second. If it wasn’t for David’s overly heightened senses, he probably would have missed it. It was a look of both great longing, and a terrible pain.
“I can’t,” he said flatly.
Colin then gave him a gentle shove. “Go on then. It’s time to hunt.”
***
The guard sat by himself by the campfire on his camping chair. He wasn’t doing a good job, drunk from drinking beer after beer and spent most of his time just gazing into the campfire, not the area of the small compound he was supposed to be guarding. A lethal mistake.
He was taken by surprise, torn from his chair by a true Goliath of a monstrous, musclebound African Wild Dog standing on two legs. At ten feet tall, the guard dangled several feet in the air by his throat in the Wild Dog’s clawed hand.
Tsu’mara, with barely any effort, threw the man straight at the old Field Geology Lab that the meth dealers were using as a meth lab. He sailed through the air, crashed through the window and landed right in front of Bill and the meth cook. He landed on the lab equipment they were using to cook the meth, shattering glass, and impaling himself on thin metal.
The two meth cooks spun around to see Tsu’mara climbing through the window. Their pupils constricted in fear as they suffered Lunacy from the sight of the unnatural monster. Bill grabbed a rifle and sprayed it everywhere in fear, hitting both Tsu’mara and the other cook as he tried to flee.
As he burst out the door, a slender, pitch black hellhound, beautiful in the terror he inspired lunged at his throat. Jesse’s jaw latched onto Bill’s neck, and with a wrench of his head, tore out his larynx.
Back inside the lab, Tsu’mara returned her attention to the guard she initially threw into the lab. She plunged her claws into his chest, making him gurgle out a scream of pain through the blood he spat up. She tore his arm from its socket with a wet crack, shredding the flesh of his torso. With it in her hand, she clubbed the remaining cook to death with it, caving in his skull from constant, repeated strikes.
She crashed out of the lab after Bill to see that Jesse in Urshal form had caught him already. With a shake of his head, he put Bill out of misery. Tsu’mara looked up and saw David in his own, bull sized, Urshal form charging the RV.
David crashed into the side of the RV, making it rock and shudder from the impact. With his paws, an amalgam of paw and hand, he dug his claws into the side door. With a screech of aluminium and shattering of glass he tore the door from the RV. He snarled at its exposed interior, eager to get to his prey inside.
The blast of a shotgun rang out and David yelped out in pain as white hot pain exploded in his chest. Then another shot, this one from a rifle, struck him in the shoulder. He dropped to the ground and snarled at them. They shot him. His chest burned from the shotgun wound, but also from rage. It burned most over his heart, where the fire and rage spirit plunged its fist into his chest. It burned brighter in the presence of the campfire behind him, burned brighter in the presence of Lunacy suffering meth heads.
He held onto that rage, tried to use it against the ones that shot him. But then the fire inside him sputtered as he suddenly let out a crackling cough, coughing up blood. He looked at the meth head with the shotgun, saw him rack another shell into the chamber. David snarled at him, he couldn’t die like this.
Then, with a loud bang from behind him, the shotgun wielding meth head’s face bloomed open like a gruesome, bloody flower. He dropped to the ground in a heap like a puppet with its strings cut. Another bang and the meth head with the rifle dropped to the ground, blood flooding from a shot over his heart. His hands feebly pawed at the gunshot wound as he rapidly bled out.
David looked behind him and saw, to his surprise, Lucas in his Dalu form protectively standing over him holding a smoking, antique revolver.
There was just one person left, revealed hiding behind the two other meth heads that Lucas dispatched. He cowered, backing up further into the RV. He stumbled past one of the windows. The window shattered inwards, the shards cutting him all over. A large, musclebound arm, covered in fur of patchwork colours, grabbed him by the throat. He was then yanked through the window.
Tsu’mara held the man in the air, who was covered in blood. The shards of glass that weren’t shattered out of its settings in the RV cut him all the more when Tsu’mara pulled him through it. Tsu’mara brought the man close to her face, her snout contorted in a snarl.
The man shrieked in fear at the sight of her, he thrashed and kicked in her grip.
Tsu’mara growled and tightened her grip, cutting off his screams and turning them into strangled gurgles. She hurled him away from her, and he sailed through the air.
He landed in a bloodied heap right next to the campfire. He stirred, weakly trying to drag himself away to escape.
David growled at that. The burning rage returned, but it didn’t sputter out this time. He had already started to heal, so he could breathe easier. He wanted the man to burn.
The campfire responded to David’s wish. With a roar, it swelled outwards, engulfing the last remaining meth head. He shrieked in agony as the fire overtook him, clinging to him. He rolled around on the ground to put it out, but it refused to go out as it obeyed David’s command to burn the man. The man quickly stopped screaming and thrashing as he succumbed to the fire and the shock it caused.
The fire only went out when David started coughing again. This time the large hellhound didn’t cough up blood. He coughed up small, lead balls. Buck shot. He groaned as he picked himself up. He felt his shoulder grind in its socket from where he was shot by the rifle. He gasped as it suddenly started moving smoothly and something popped out of his skin. He looked down and saw in the tailings polluted dirt a rifle bullet. Its tip deformed and flowered outwards.
He looked up when he heard footsteps of someone approaching and saw Morrison approaching, dressed in his deputy uniform.
“Alright,” said the Old Man, looking over the pack’s slaughter and nodding. “You lot did pretty well.”
“Now we need to do clean up and look over their shit,” He said as he walked over to and entered the lab.
The pack peaked their heads inside the doorway to watch the Old Man, Tsu’mara had shifted to Dalu form. They watched him as he dug around Tsu’mara’s destruction. He found cash. A lot of it.
He whistled as he quickly counted it, “Gotta be around fifteen thousand here.”
He tossed it back to where he found it, which made Jesse, still in Urshal, ask in the First Tongue, “ We’re not keeping it? ”
“It’d be suspicious if there wasn’t any cash here,” answered Morrison.
He found a small black book full of names and locations. A ledger. He pocketed it.
He raised his eyebrows when he saw a rifle on the ground of the lab. He picked it up and headed out of the lab. He found another rifle by the turned over camping chair which he picked up as well.
“These are nice. Much nicer than what meth heads typically have,” He said approvingly and slung them over his shoulder. “Gonna go ahead and keep these.”
“Alright,” he said, getting the pack’s attention. “Get these two bodies— ”
He kicked the burnt corpse and pointed a thumb at Bill’s throatless corpse.
“—back in the RV and prepare for, uh, ‘ efficient’ crime scene disposal.”
David walked to the corpse of the man he had burnt. He tried to grab and drag the body away with his Urshal form’s hand and paw hybrid. But walking on three legs and dragging a body behind him proved overly cumbersome. So, instead, he grabbed the corpse by its charred leg with his mouth and, with his increased strength, threw it back into the RV.
Or at least he tried to.
He missed several times, throwing the corpse against the side of the RV instead of the window the man was pulled through or the door David had torn open. Snickering caught his attention.
“You can ask for help, you know,” said Tsu’mara, suppressing a smile. She easily tossed Bill’s corpse through the meth lab’s window. Jesse and Lucas were snickering to themselves.
David growled at the trio and grabbed the burnt corpse again with his mouth and tossed it again at the RV. This time it hit the window, partially falling through. Its torso hung out of it, the arms dangling.
He huffed. Good enough. He tried to walk away with his head held high, but with how bad his slouch was in Urshal, he could barely get it shoulder level.
A loud “Ah ha!” caught their attention that came from behind the lab. Morrison came from there rolling out several tanks of propane.
“I found out who was responsible for the stolen propane case. I fucking told them it was about meth,” said Morrison.
He rolled them up to the campfire and said, “This will make it look like the campfire was unattended and blew up the lab in a chain reaction. All the damage to their bodies will be assumed to be from the blast and the ammo shells from the ammo cooking off in the fire. They’re just meth heads, so no one will care to look too far into it.”
- “Now remember this lesson here kids: if you can make your crime scene look like someone else’s crime scene, do it. It’s even better though if you can make your crime scene look like an accident. Then that way no one is even looking for a criminal in the first place. The BEST crime scenes are the ones that never get found, the prey that gets ambushed and just disappears from the Herd without a peep. This place, this place will make a hell of a peep. Let’s get clear.”
With that he shifted to his Urhan form, a gray wolf with common mottled grey, brown and white fur with silver fur around the muzzle showing his age, and ran off North-East into the night. Jesse, Tsu’mara, and Lucas shifted into Urhan and followed closely. David tried to follow but his Urshal form was far slower than the others’ Urhan forms.
Lucas noticed and broke off from the others and turned around. He belted across the desert, yelling out in the First Tongue, “ Change forms! ”
David didn’t want to, it still hurt so much, but he worried he wouldn’t make it out in time if he didn’t. Still running as fast as he could, he licked his still wet blood on his shoulder to consume Essence to instantly change forms. The white-hot blast of soul rending pain sent him off his feet and tumbled to the ground, blacking out.
He was brought to with Lucas, still in Urhan, shoving him with his head yelling in the First Tongue, “ Get up! ”
It was difficult to get up, he ached all over physically, and all within his soul. He struggled to get up, but Lucas assisted him. The sleeker black wolf wormed underneath the shaggier black wolf to stand him up. Once he was stood up, he was ushered into a run. It was a slow run, but was still far faster than he was going in Urshal.
They got a mile away from the meth lab, rejoining the others, who were waiting for them there was a loud, booming thunderclap that made all except Morrison and Tsu’mara yelp out in shock and pain from its volume.
They looked back to see a large fireball rolling upwards into the night sky. Lights in the nearby Pioche started turning on, from people being shocked awake by the explosion. Seeing the lights turning on in turn, he ran off again. The rest followed close behind, with David recovered enough from his shifting to be able to keep up with them.
They got back to the den soon after, and filed through the sliding door’s dog door one by one. David was last through and saw Morrison back in Hishu.
David looked around the den but didn’t see Colin anywhere until he checked the bedroom and saw him in Urhan curled up asleep in the centre of the bed.
“Now I have to head off, play the part of the surprised deputy,” said Morrison as he left for the front door.
Before he left he told the others, “I have a fun Friday planned for you lot.”
David wondered, regular fun or what was considered fun for werewolves? The others filed into the bedroom to go to bed, and David went to the library. He only joined the others after he was sure they were asleep and wouldn’t notice him joining.