Covenant: Trapped
Undisclosed location:
Ohio:
Chained up and caged. I've given them what they wanted and I'm waiting for that big villain moment. You know the one where the big bad guy comes in and tells you the whole big sinister plot. The big sinister plot you've already made sure wont go through no matter how slowly they lower you into the pit of acid/wild pigs/sharks with laser beams take your pick.
But I'm ahead of myself like I always am these days. Its been twelve days since I found her literally "on my door step". "Sophie" good Jewish name for a good Jewish girl, the girl they tore to pieces, the girl they used as bait. I told Arabella to look in on her from time to time, told her to not get crazy with questions, asked her to help out and make sure she healed up while I was away looking into her case.
All the long speeches and all the pretty words, I knew they didn't mean shit, even as I told her pretty half truths and wilting lies I could see that she didn't believe a word of it. But she didn't say a word, just looked at me with those big wise owl eyes and let me babble on like the liar I made myself to be that night. For all I know she came at Sophie with a cattle prod for the good it will do her. She wont find me, not here.
It's damned unfair to her but I made the decision to settle my tab with these bastards. I made a bed and now I'm here to lay in it so to speak. But I'm ahead again...
I left the morning after I bandaged Sophie up, I left after Arabella and I had made love like desperate convicts in the prison shower. I left still breathing hard and applying alcohol to my neck where Arabella had scratched it. I didn't take anything I didn't need and that included the "permission" of my "Handlers".
If one of them comes calling in some all black unlicensed ford sedan hill just have to go ahead and ask "now why don't he write no more". I don't give a fuck, they don't even care about these bastards. They know and they say its none of their concern and they can't afford the resources to break up "such an organized and infiltrated society".
It means they own my handlers too, at least to some extent, maybe they went to bed with the agency at some point. Its funny how the agency so freely whores itself out in times of need, bedding this evil to kill that one, all but killing that evil and then getting it hard one more time to help destroy something new and even "more threatening to the American way of life".
I made inquiries after my "change" but I got red flagged and told in hushed tones about "sealed documents" and "an ancient and secret society that has its uses in times of need".
Times of need! Bunch of fucking drug/gun running biker scum pieces of shit who hold their own death matches between hapless Jewish victims. Bunch of antisemitic werewolves dancing around somehow making good with uncle Sam so they can stay under the radar.
I decided that night when I saw Sophie that there "place" in society no longer needed any protection that had to do with me. I decided that night that if I some how managed to bring it all crashing down and my only reward would be a quiet execution style murder in an abandoned field somewhere then that would be alright by me. So fuck my "handlers".
I drove until the old Jalopy nearly ran out of electrical charge and I found the first shitty motel room I could. I checked in with what I had on my back and I made two phone calls.
The first was a waste, I knew it would be but some pupating part of me made it anyway. I called David and told him all about it, told him I dropped off the radar, told him I was going after my own kind, maybe the whole eastern fucking sea board. The whole Werewolf clan of North America if I had enough bullets and enough time.
I didn't come right out and ask for help but he shut me down anyway, told me he was tracking down our old friend Paradox555. I made a joke about not being able to keep good men down, the line went dead on his end and he filled me in on what was really going on. I stopped being petty and blaming him for not being there to help me with all of my petty problems. After all, a clan of werewolves or the safety of the entire free fucking world in the clutches of a "techno god gone insane". Who could blame him...his hands where busy.
He didn't let me go empty handed though, he told me he'd call in his few remaining favors in the agency and make sure I wasn't tracked down and arrested...well not immediately anyway. He also sent a package by western union for me. Something I would later find very helpful indeed. But I'm ahead again aren't I.
So I made that second call. It was far more useful and somehow far less courteous. Flash sounded all fucked up inside, his voice had this hollow shattered echo but I had the feeling that it wouldn't sound any better if we where face to face. He didn't say hello, he didn't say goodbye, he just answered the cell by saying "Ohio".
I said "Yes".
That hollow shattered voice gave a tired sigh and said "I'll be there with bells on as soon as I finish what I'm on right now, give me ten days".
I knew Flash was invested in this, not as much as I was, but I knew he wanted them dead. Now I was wondering if he knew more about it than I gave him credit for.
"They sent bait...sixteen maybe seventeen, all cut up and..." he cuts me off without giving me a chance to say anything else.
"Don't have time James, busy right now, be there in ten days don't make me come bail your ass out again this time....Flash out".
I tried finishing my end of the conversation and got another half a sentence in before I realized he'd hung up in my ear. It gave me pause to think of the sorts of things that would make a guy like flash that tired and world weary. I decided I'd rather not know in the long run. The only important part was that I knew that call meant back up whether I needed it or not, and even then ripe, ready, unbloodied, and cock sure I was still positive that I'd need all the help I could get.
The next part was easy, back on the road and doing the detective work I was born to do. Finding where their little trap was and finding the best way to turn it against them. I read my Sun Tzu during the day, I found a few small fish on my way to the "Buckeye state".
On the out skirts of Pennsylvania I ran across a "freshie". He'd been busy "using" the services of some underage hooker, he'd certainly had plans of killing and maybe even eating her after he'd finished using her services and although she'd never thank me for the rude I kept her alive for another loose opportunity to die at the hands of some deranged stranger.
You see werewolves call them "freshies" its short for fresh meat, people who know about the werewolves, people who aid them and keep them in food and clothes with the promise of a new and stronger self at some later date. I'd learned in my time since my "change" that most "freshies" end up in jail or killed for sport or food for their trouble. This asshole didn't seem the type to be preached too though so I figured warning him about his likely end scenarios seemed wasteful.
After I knocked him out and searched his truck I found his keepsakes and his mementos. He'd been supplying his "clan" with runaways and kidnap victims for years now. So I wasted no time, after I drug him off and changed in front of him I told him who and what I was and what I'd come to do. I knew it could only end one of two ways with him. Either way he left in a body bag. He chose the slow ugly way and I vowed that when I finally found his masters I'd be sure to compliment them on either their superb choice in candidates or their excellent brain washing techniques.
At the time it didn't matter, I'd robbed a drug store the night before and I'd gotten what I needed. I'd be lying if I said the torture was necessary, it was a catalyst for the drugs to work his tongue loose but I kept going long after the pain was doing anyone any good. With the passing months I've often wondered if I was becoming "one of them".
The week I spent killing those seventeen men from the TRIAD I let the angry parts of me win the argument and I quietly resigned myself to the acceptance that my "humanity" was nothing but a transitory thing, something that had little sway over the creature I was becoming, something that would lose that sway in ever increasing intervals with the passage of time.
The night I broke that "freshie", the night I confronted every dark part of me on that evil man's open skin, that was the night I realized I hadn't lost a thing. Every time I wrenched some new confession out of that evil man I saw Sophie, I saw Archer. I realized it wasn't as black and white as I'd made it all out to be.
It just came down to a matter of levels, at what level do you finally fight fire with fire, at what level do you stop taking the higher road, at what point do you stop turning the other cheek? I'd found it, it was that truck load of dead underage girls. It was right here and now claws deep in a truly evil man who'd done unspeakable things for nothing more than the posterity of evil itself.
I stopped questioning my "humanity" that night. I stopped the on going internal argument of my "sanity" and my ability to keep the "creature at bay". The creature is/was/will be me and the strength, the speed, the hair and the claws and the fangs are just awesome costuming...scenic window dressing to what I am and what I allow myself to be.
As I wrenched the mandible from his still screaming body and mindlessly beat the last vestiges of life from him using his own jaw as a club I let go of the "Human" parts of me, with the first real freedom to do so, because I'd found a way to find those parts and put them back on again later when I wanted to. I'd found my "other" skin. If I made it out of this whole mess on the other side I'd be able to put my self back together and I'd go back to catching bank robbers and kiddie porn producers with my lovely Raveness.
But I had to become something else, something ugly and cruel, I had to understand my enemy to beat him at his own game. So I did just that. I burned down the shack I tortured the "freshie" in. I got my western union package and I took my new found knowledge and put it to use. They had another bait waiting for me at the state border. I side stepped it completely.
I know they hurt, changed, or even killed some poor young woman and I didn't come to her rescue. I slept for only a few short hours the following day as my subconscious came up with names and faces for someone who would die or worse, have their life interrupted and changed forever just in the hopes of my enemies killing me or worse...capturing and torturing me to death.
I kept Sophie's image in my head as I drove on to the first real activity I knew about. It was a tattoo parlor in Youngsville. It was the biggest money supply they had in the area. It was the first place to get noticed and the first way for me to let the "clan" know I was in town in a way that hurt them...their pocket books.
Here's where I'd like to dazzle you and fill your head with lies about how I walked in shotgun under the trench coat, I'd like to amaze you with my killing prowess as I knocked off one after another of the murdering pricks as I marched from room to room emptying silver twelve gauge slugs into their werewolf heads.
But I wont lie, I needed to make sure I got their attention and I needed to make sure I caught them at peek hours. I sent one of the packages David sent me from the western union right to them. I didn't even arrive in town until the day after they got their "flowers" and opened them. I'm sure there where innocent customers in there when the package went off.
By the time I arrived the local police where knee deep in trying to figure out why someone would have a flower arrangement wired to explode much less why someone would waste the time to make the shrapnel casing of the bomb out of pure silver. The Feds will get involved and from there the agency will get word of it. If David wasn't lying about those favors of his it will go from the agency right back into the loop and become one of those odd unsolved cases that goes into some file folder never to be seen again.
I didn't even stop in town to see my handiwork. I drove right to where I knew they'd be meeting to discuss the realities and possibilities. Old wolves holding star chambers asking questions like "which one of our enemies did it"? "What steps do we take to retaliate". I waited until dark, I waited until most of them would be loaded up or passed out on this or that. I waited for my enemies weaknesses to become apparent. I used the second of David's "care packages".
This time I get to look cool for the cameras. I was loaded for bear and I was only hunting wolf. They knew me by smell now, they didn't need to hand out mug shots to the new recruits. I had death hanging around my neck and I gave it out like Halloween candy that night. I unceremoniously walked right up to the front door of the saloon they where using for their little meeting and I planted a tactical shotgun full of hell right in the mouth of the first one I saw.
They died, they died like they had bought tickets to the big bang. Funny thing about a werewolf "clan", they don't come packing to kill their own. They stabbed and shot, threw incendiaries and the last batch I got to even managed to try and feed me a concussion grenade. They could have brought a tank, hell they should have because I'm fairly fucking certain even werewolves can't handle the damage from a HEAT round. But they didn't and they died for it.
On the downside I used up most of the rounds David sent me. I robbed a few pawn stores and a jewelry wholesaler on my way to Cincinnati. That's where I took a turn, I wasted time, I hunted down a few more groups and I put the hurt on where it counted some more, but I robbed places that let them know where I was and where I was going. I got lazy and I even worse I got callous. I let hubris and arrogance write checks I couldn't cash and in the end its how I ended up here. There I go again with getting ahead though.
Seven days had gone by, I'd left a line of death and mismanaged and ill informed eye witnesses on my trek through Ohio. I got a tip on where the "heads" of the whole clan where held up until I "blew over". The informant was true, of that his blood, suffering, and sodium pentothal can be sure but he was fed the lie. I didn't see it coming, I made the second mistake Sun Tzu speaks about. I underestimated my opponent I figured they were running scared I should have seen the wizened years they had before them. I should have seen their capabilities and I should have recognized their need to survive as a motivator.
I failed in those qualities and I paid for them. I Got to Cincinnati and I bum rushed the "hide out". I raced in with ideas of grandeur, I drove my rental truck right through the front of the building with the righteous indignation of a preacher on the sermon mount. She caught me completely off guard. She was young...fourteen maybe even younger. She slowed me down and that was the biggest mistake of all. I shifted into daddy mode before I even bothered to notice her smell. Gooble gobble...one of us!
She leveled up the revolver before even my best instincts could fire back up. She planted the shot right where she wanted it to go with the patient timing of a seasoned pro. How young had they turned her? I had thoughts of seven year old werewolves and then I had a thought as my knees buckled that made me lose my lunch right there. What if we can...I mean of course we can...oh Jesus! Smoked herring Jesus in a can covered in brine what if we can breed?
That must have been two days ago, I woke with them sneering and jabbing at me. Caged up and chained in silver the still open wound in my shoulder festering away with its silver plated contents. They've kept me alive but why?
So here I am with my vanquishers wasting their time downing beers and hucking the empty containers in my general direction. They occasionally come over to stick their fingers in my wound, to hear my howl, the old languishing dance of the simian conquering worm. Never knowing when to leave well enough alone. I see two of them wincing and avoiding me when the rest take their turns heckling and hurting me.
Weaknesses I can exploit, I'm thinking like a man who has chances and choices even when I can smell the goose cooking. Then the room goes quiet. Not in absence but in respect. A general, a diplomat, maybe even a chapter president enters the room. An old gray wolf, in wolf form comes striding in, he's managed a graceful walk after all those years. The real age isn't in his fur though...its in his eyes and the voice that follows comes laced with the remembrance of every beating, every loss.
Its also a voice of malice and misdeeds. All of a sudden I'm Luke Skywalker and Its time for this doddering old Sith to spell out the harsh realities. Then it hits me, I'm back to that slow dipping mechanism and this is just another big bad guy telling me the master plan before my certain doom. I laugh and it warrants me a claw in my wound. When I'm done screaming he begins the tired old speech I was braced for before I even left New York.
He's kept me alive to teach me the ways of the "clan". He assures me I will learn the harshest lessons that will bring me into the fold, but not just out of the necessity of life; oh no, I'll get to learn the bonds of "our kind" by watching the complete loss of the bonds of my other life.
I cut him off in a way, I give him too much but I also give him just enough to get him and his kind ready for the end I may or may not be alive to see. I tell him about Arabella because I know that's where he's going. Lets here it for not being the kind of contrite hero who forgets that every love is a weakness.
I tell him she'll find out where I am given their clever clues or not, the thing I let them know is that she'll find me no matter how many times I've told her not to try. I let them sneer as I tell them how much she loves me and how hard she'll fight and die to try and save me.
What I don't tell those jeering/sneering faces is this. She wont be alone, even if she's dumb enough to try and find me by her self she wont be able to stop them from finding me. Ten days. It's the night of the ninth and Flash wont let me down. Even if he can't manage it all I had Niri stick a tracking device in my leg after the "change".
Back when I was afraid of becoming one of these monsters so I had him tracking me to make sure I didn't try and run "home". I also told him about Ohio. When I head for Ohio he heads for the phone tree, and he has me tracked to boot. Even if they find it and take one of those last silver slugs, load it into my shotgun and blow my fucking head off he'll know where I died.
These poor bastards are waiting for one Raven to return to the nest what they don't realize is she'll have friends. People they've never met, people they are about to meet and know for a very brief period of time. Who's the bait now?
I get another claw in my wound for my interruption and the old gray wolf continues babbling on with the monologue he's no doubt practiced in front of a mirror since my first mail bomb hit in Youngsville. Wait until he opens the paper tomorrow and finds a certain headquarters of a rather famous Midwestern bank based in Cincinnati has turned into paper confetti come tomorrow. Will I earn another claw in the wound? Will I earn that silver slug?
I get to wait...and so do you.
Unsane:
Body Bomb:
Ohio:
Chained up and caged. I've given them what they wanted and I'm waiting for that big villain moment. You know the one where the big bad guy comes in and tells you the whole big sinister plot. The big sinister plot you've already made sure wont go through no matter how slowly they lower you into the pit of acid/wild pigs/sharks with laser beams take your pick.
But I'm ahead of myself like I always am these days. Its been twelve days since I found her literally "on my door step". "Sophie" good Jewish name for a good Jewish girl, the girl they tore to pieces, the girl they used as bait. I told Arabella to look in on her from time to time, told her to not get crazy with questions, asked her to help out and make sure she healed up while I was away looking into her case.
All the long speeches and all the pretty words, I knew they didn't mean shit, even as I told her pretty half truths and wilting lies I could see that she didn't believe a word of it. But she didn't say a word, just looked at me with those big wise owl eyes and let me babble on like the liar I made myself to be that night. For all I know she came at Sophie with a cattle prod for the good it will do her. She wont find me, not here.
It's damned unfair to her but I made the decision to settle my tab with these bastards. I made a bed and now I'm here to lay in it so to speak. But I'm ahead again...
I left the morning after I bandaged Sophie up, I left after Arabella and I had made love like desperate convicts in the prison shower. I left still breathing hard and applying alcohol to my neck where Arabella had scratched it. I didn't take anything I didn't need and that included the "permission" of my "Handlers".
If one of them comes calling in some all black unlicensed ford sedan hill just have to go ahead and ask "now why don't he write no more". I don't give a fuck, they don't even care about these bastards. They know and they say its none of their concern and they can't afford the resources to break up "such an organized and infiltrated society".
It means they own my handlers too, at least to some extent, maybe they went to bed with the agency at some point. Its funny how the agency so freely whores itself out in times of need, bedding this evil to kill that one, all but killing that evil and then getting it hard one more time to help destroy something new and even "more threatening to the American way of life".
I made inquiries after my "change" but I got red flagged and told in hushed tones about "sealed documents" and "an ancient and secret society that has its uses in times of need".
Times of need! Bunch of fucking drug/gun running biker scum pieces of shit who hold their own death matches between hapless Jewish victims. Bunch of antisemitic werewolves dancing around somehow making good with uncle Sam so they can stay under the radar.
I decided that night when I saw Sophie that there "place" in society no longer needed any protection that had to do with me. I decided that night that if I some how managed to bring it all crashing down and my only reward would be a quiet execution style murder in an abandoned field somewhere then that would be alright by me. So fuck my "handlers".
I drove until the old Jalopy nearly ran out of electrical charge and I found the first shitty motel room I could. I checked in with what I had on my back and I made two phone calls.
The first was a waste, I knew it would be but some pupating part of me made it anyway. I called David and told him all about it, told him I dropped off the radar, told him I was going after my own kind, maybe the whole eastern fucking sea board. The whole Werewolf clan of North America if I had enough bullets and enough time.
I didn't come right out and ask for help but he shut me down anyway, told me he was tracking down our old friend Paradox555. I made a joke about not being able to keep good men down, the line went dead on his end and he filled me in on what was really going on. I stopped being petty and blaming him for not being there to help me with all of my petty problems. After all, a clan of werewolves or the safety of the entire free fucking world in the clutches of a "techno god gone insane". Who could blame him...his hands where busy.
He didn't let me go empty handed though, he told me he'd call in his few remaining favors in the agency and make sure I wasn't tracked down and arrested...well not immediately anyway. He also sent a package by western union for me. Something I would later find very helpful indeed. But I'm ahead again aren't I.
So I made that second call. It was far more useful and somehow far less courteous. Flash sounded all fucked up inside, his voice had this hollow shattered echo but I had the feeling that it wouldn't sound any better if we where face to face. He didn't say hello, he didn't say goodbye, he just answered the cell by saying "Ohio".
I said "Yes".
That hollow shattered voice gave a tired sigh and said "I'll be there with bells on as soon as I finish what I'm on right now, give me ten days".
I knew Flash was invested in this, not as much as I was, but I knew he wanted them dead. Now I was wondering if he knew more about it than I gave him credit for.
"They sent bait...sixteen maybe seventeen, all cut up and..." he cuts me off without giving me a chance to say anything else.
"Don't have time James, busy right now, be there in ten days don't make me come bail your ass out again this time....Flash out".
I tried finishing my end of the conversation and got another half a sentence in before I realized he'd hung up in my ear. It gave me pause to think of the sorts of things that would make a guy like flash that tired and world weary. I decided I'd rather not know in the long run. The only important part was that I knew that call meant back up whether I needed it or not, and even then ripe, ready, unbloodied, and cock sure I was still positive that I'd need all the help I could get.
The next part was easy, back on the road and doing the detective work I was born to do. Finding where their little trap was and finding the best way to turn it against them. I read my Sun Tzu during the day, I found a few small fish on my way to the "Buckeye state".
On the out skirts of Pennsylvania I ran across a "freshie". He'd been busy "using" the services of some underage hooker, he'd certainly had plans of killing and maybe even eating her after he'd finished using her services and although she'd never thank me for the rude I kept her alive for another loose opportunity to die at the hands of some deranged stranger.
You see werewolves call them "freshies" its short for fresh meat, people who know about the werewolves, people who aid them and keep them in food and clothes with the promise of a new and stronger self at some later date. I'd learned in my time since my "change" that most "freshies" end up in jail or killed for sport or food for their trouble. This asshole didn't seem the type to be preached too though so I figured warning him about his likely end scenarios seemed wasteful.
After I knocked him out and searched his truck I found his keepsakes and his mementos. He'd been supplying his "clan" with runaways and kidnap victims for years now. So I wasted no time, after I drug him off and changed in front of him I told him who and what I was and what I'd come to do. I knew it could only end one of two ways with him. Either way he left in a body bag. He chose the slow ugly way and I vowed that when I finally found his masters I'd be sure to compliment them on either their superb choice in candidates or their excellent brain washing techniques.
At the time it didn't matter, I'd robbed a drug store the night before and I'd gotten what I needed. I'd be lying if I said the torture was necessary, it was a catalyst for the drugs to work his tongue loose but I kept going long after the pain was doing anyone any good. With the passing months I've often wondered if I was becoming "one of them".
The week I spent killing those seventeen men from the TRIAD I let the angry parts of me win the argument and I quietly resigned myself to the acceptance that my "humanity" was nothing but a transitory thing, something that had little sway over the creature I was becoming, something that would lose that sway in ever increasing intervals with the passage of time.
The night I broke that "freshie", the night I confronted every dark part of me on that evil man's open skin, that was the night I realized I hadn't lost a thing. Every time I wrenched some new confession out of that evil man I saw Sophie, I saw Archer. I realized it wasn't as black and white as I'd made it all out to be.
It just came down to a matter of levels, at what level do you finally fight fire with fire, at what level do you stop taking the higher road, at what point do you stop turning the other cheek? I'd found it, it was that truck load of dead underage girls. It was right here and now claws deep in a truly evil man who'd done unspeakable things for nothing more than the posterity of evil itself.
I stopped questioning my "humanity" that night. I stopped the on going internal argument of my "sanity" and my ability to keep the "creature at bay". The creature is/was/will be me and the strength, the speed, the hair and the claws and the fangs are just awesome costuming...scenic window dressing to what I am and what I allow myself to be.
As I wrenched the mandible from his still screaming body and mindlessly beat the last vestiges of life from him using his own jaw as a club I let go of the "Human" parts of me, with the first real freedom to do so, because I'd found a way to find those parts and put them back on again later when I wanted to. I'd found my "other" skin. If I made it out of this whole mess on the other side I'd be able to put my self back together and I'd go back to catching bank robbers and kiddie porn producers with my lovely Raveness.
But I had to become something else, something ugly and cruel, I had to understand my enemy to beat him at his own game. So I did just that. I burned down the shack I tortured the "freshie" in. I got my western union package and I took my new found knowledge and put it to use. They had another bait waiting for me at the state border. I side stepped it completely.
I know they hurt, changed, or even killed some poor young woman and I didn't come to her rescue. I slept for only a few short hours the following day as my subconscious came up with names and faces for someone who would die or worse, have their life interrupted and changed forever just in the hopes of my enemies killing me or worse...capturing and torturing me to death.
I kept Sophie's image in my head as I drove on to the first real activity I knew about. It was a tattoo parlor in Youngsville. It was the biggest money supply they had in the area. It was the first place to get noticed and the first way for me to let the "clan" know I was in town in a way that hurt them...their pocket books.
Here's where I'd like to dazzle you and fill your head with lies about how I walked in shotgun under the trench coat, I'd like to amaze you with my killing prowess as I knocked off one after another of the murdering pricks as I marched from room to room emptying silver twelve gauge slugs into their werewolf heads.
But I wont lie, I needed to make sure I got their attention and I needed to make sure I caught them at peek hours. I sent one of the packages David sent me from the western union right to them. I didn't even arrive in town until the day after they got their "flowers" and opened them. I'm sure there where innocent customers in there when the package went off.
By the time I arrived the local police where knee deep in trying to figure out why someone would have a flower arrangement wired to explode much less why someone would waste the time to make the shrapnel casing of the bomb out of pure silver. The Feds will get involved and from there the agency will get word of it. If David wasn't lying about those favors of his it will go from the agency right back into the loop and become one of those odd unsolved cases that goes into some file folder never to be seen again.
I didn't even stop in town to see my handiwork. I drove right to where I knew they'd be meeting to discuss the realities and possibilities. Old wolves holding star chambers asking questions like "which one of our enemies did it"? "What steps do we take to retaliate". I waited until dark, I waited until most of them would be loaded up or passed out on this or that. I waited for my enemies weaknesses to become apparent. I used the second of David's "care packages".
This time I get to look cool for the cameras. I was loaded for bear and I was only hunting wolf. They knew me by smell now, they didn't need to hand out mug shots to the new recruits. I had death hanging around my neck and I gave it out like Halloween candy that night. I unceremoniously walked right up to the front door of the saloon they where using for their little meeting and I planted a tactical shotgun full of hell right in the mouth of the first one I saw.
They died, they died like they had bought tickets to the big bang. Funny thing about a werewolf "clan", they don't come packing to kill their own. They stabbed and shot, threw incendiaries and the last batch I got to even managed to try and feed me a concussion grenade. They could have brought a tank, hell they should have because I'm fairly fucking certain even werewolves can't handle the damage from a HEAT round. But they didn't and they died for it.
On the downside I used up most of the rounds David sent me. I robbed a few pawn stores and a jewelry wholesaler on my way to Cincinnati. That's where I took a turn, I wasted time, I hunted down a few more groups and I put the hurt on where it counted some more, but I robbed places that let them know where I was and where I was going. I got lazy and I even worse I got callous. I let hubris and arrogance write checks I couldn't cash and in the end its how I ended up here. There I go again with getting ahead though.
Seven days had gone by, I'd left a line of death and mismanaged and ill informed eye witnesses on my trek through Ohio. I got a tip on where the "heads" of the whole clan where held up until I "blew over". The informant was true, of that his blood, suffering, and sodium pentothal can be sure but he was fed the lie. I didn't see it coming, I made the second mistake Sun Tzu speaks about. I underestimated my opponent I figured they were running scared I should have seen the wizened years they had before them. I should have seen their capabilities and I should have recognized their need to survive as a motivator.
I failed in those qualities and I paid for them. I Got to Cincinnati and I bum rushed the "hide out". I raced in with ideas of grandeur, I drove my rental truck right through the front of the building with the righteous indignation of a preacher on the sermon mount. She caught me completely off guard. She was young...fourteen maybe even younger. She slowed me down and that was the biggest mistake of all. I shifted into daddy mode before I even bothered to notice her smell. Gooble gobble...one of us!
She leveled up the revolver before even my best instincts could fire back up. She planted the shot right where she wanted it to go with the patient timing of a seasoned pro. How young had they turned her? I had thoughts of seven year old werewolves and then I had a thought as my knees buckled that made me lose my lunch right there. What if we can...I mean of course we can...oh Jesus! Smoked herring Jesus in a can covered in brine what if we can breed?
That must have been two days ago, I woke with them sneering and jabbing at me. Caged up and chained in silver the still open wound in my shoulder festering away with its silver plated contents. They've kept me alive but why?
So here I am with my vanquishers wasting their time downing beers and hucking the empty containers in my general direction. They occasionally come over to stick their fingers in my wound, to hear my howl, the old languishing dance of the simian conquering worm. Never knowing when to leave well enough alone. I see two of them wincing and avoiding me when the rest take their turns heckling and hurting me.
Weaknesses I can exploit, I'm thinking like a man who has chances and choices even when I can smell the goose cooking. Then the room goes quiet. Not in absence but in respect. A general, a diplomat, maybe even a chapter president enters the room. An old gray wolf, in wolf form comes striding in, he's managed a graceful walk after all those years. The real age isn't in his fur though...its in his eyes and the voice that follows comes laced with the remembrance of every beating, every loss.
Its also a voice of malice and misdeeds. All of a sudden I'm Luke Skywalker and Its time for this doddering old Sith to spell out the harsh realities. Then it hits me, I'm back to that slow dipping mechanism and this is just another big bad guy telling me the master plan before my certain doom. I laugh and it warrants me a claw in my wound. When I'm done screaming he begins the tired old speech I was braced for before I even left New York.
He's kept me alive to teach me the ways of the "clan". He assures me I will learn the harshest lessons that will bring me into the fold, but not just out of the necessity of life; oh no, I'll get to learn the bonds of "our kind" by watching the complete loss of the bonds of my other life.
I cut him off in a way, I give him too much but I also give him just enough to get him and his kind ready for the end I may or may not be alive to see. I tell him about Arabella because I know that's where he's going. Lets here it for not being the kind of contrite hero who forgets that every love is a weakness.
I tell him she'll find out where I am given their clever clues or not, the thing I let them know is that she'll find me no matter how many times I've told her not to try. I let them sneer as I tell them how much she loves me and how hard she'll fight and die to try and save me.
What I don't tell those jeering/sneering faces is this. She wont be alone, even if she's dumb enough to try and find me by her self she wont be able to stop them from finding me. Ten days. It's the night of the ninth and Flash wont let me down. Even if he can't manage it all I had Niri stick a tracking device in my leg after the "change".
Back when I was afraid of becoming one of these monsters so I had him tracking me to make sure I didn't try and run "home". I also told him about Ohio. When I head for Ohio he heads for the phone tree, and he has me tracked to boot. Even if they find it and take one of those last silver slugs, load it into my shotgun and blow my fucking head off he'll know where I died.
These poor bastards are waiting for one Raven to return to the nest what they don't realize is she'll have friends. People they've never met, people they are about to meet and know for a very brief period of time. Who's the bait now?
I get another claw in my wound for my interruption and the old gray wolf continues babbling on with the monologue he's no doubt practiced in front of a mirror since my first mail bomb hit in Youngsville. Wait until he opens the paper tomorrow and finds a certain headquarters of a rather famous Midwestern bank based in Cincinnati has turned into paper confetti come tomorrow. Will I earn another claw in the wound? Will I earn that silver slug?
I get to wait...and so do you.
Unsane:
Body Bomb:
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