INTERLUDE: SHE-WOLF

  THE PINES—OCTOBER 1st, 1992 | EARLY EVENING

  ?

  “Careful, Dad,” Tania said.

  Her dad’s old truck was loud. Louder than loud; obnoxious. Obnoxious and old. Once upon a time it was well-suited for winding mountain roads, but these days, not so much.

  They’d packed up their entire lives into the bed of that truck, and the more they swayed and swerved, the more she felt inclined to check the rear-view mirror just in case something happened to spill over. And every time she did, she only to see a face nearly identical to her mother’s. Dark-olive skin, amber eyes. Long, curly black hair, styled in the front with a set of bangs, half-dyed a maroonish red from the neck down. The only thing she’d inherited from her father was his distinctly Eurocentric nose, thick eyebrows, and broad shoulders. Few that had ever seen them together ever thought they were related.

  “There’s about ten straps holding all of that together, sweetheart, don’t you worry,” her father said knowingly, nodding along with a big smile.

  To Tania’s side was a man in a faded green jacket that he wore almost everywhere. A military jacket, he liked to say, and the one good thing that his time serving under the Canadian Army had yielded him. His skin was a pasty white, his hair a light brown, his face hopeful in spite of its scars. He’d been handsome once. It’s why her mother—totally out of his league—had fallen for him. Or so he liked to say.

  The truck screeched to a sudden halt, and Tania very nearly flew out of the front windshield.

  “Ah, verdammt! Pissing fog!”

  Every now and again, dredges of his upbringing came out. He’d never had an accent, but his father spoke German, in the same way that his mother never had an accent, but spoke Arabic. Tania couldn’t speak either of those things with any degree of fluency, but understood them both well enough. Mostly.

  They could hardly see ten feet in front of them. Headlights on, hazards on, it didn’t matter. The only certainty on the road to Brinehaven was the Pines, and the asphalt was far less welcoming than the trees that had been watching them for kilometeres on end; and the trees weren’t very welcoming to begin with. Had her father not stopped the car, they would’ve turned straight into a tree. Low visibility, cracking asphalt, one-way road. It was a miracle they hadn’t crashed into a tree yet.

  “Maybe slow down, Dad,” Tania said.

  “I’m going 50 damned kilometers-per-hour,” her father cursed. “Pardon my French.”

  Tania smiled. “Speed Racer over here.”

  “Look, this place, it’s dangerous,” her father noted. “My contact in the city have told me a great many things about this place. The Pines. It’s a hinterland! A verifiable monster’s nest, spread over something-something square kilometers. Dangerous, he says.”

  “Nah, come on,” Tania began, punching her father lightly in the shoulder. “We can handle ourselves, yeah? Better than most, even.”

  Her father exhaled. “If that were true, we wouldn’t be moving here. The city is worse than the Pines.”

  “Oh? Did your contact tell you that too? Sounds to me like you’ve got some conflicting information here, old man,” Tania joked. “Anyway. It’ll be better than Halifax, at least.”

  “If we behave, yes,” her father said gravely. “But like any other place, they have.. rules. Laws. Same as any other place, even if our kind is accepted, we cannot—and listen very closely, Tania—give the Commonwealth any reason to deny us entry, or, for that matter, kick us out once we are granted asylum.”

  “Asylum,” Tania scoffed. “A nice and pretty word to cover up what it really is. We’re running away, Dad.”

  Her father briefly glanced at her, face pulled into a serious frown. “I know you did not want to leave. But our options are limited, sweetheart, and after your—”

  “My what? My episode?” Tania said sourly.

  “You've inherited my curse, and like it or not, Tania, that means you must live with it. You’ve known since you awakened your abilities that there is a method. A means in which we reduce casualties, and you ignored it—”

  Tania lurched forward in her seat, a serious, calmed expression on her face. They’d been through this enough times already, and frankly, she was tired of hearing about it. In her twenty-five years of living, she’d never once slipped up. She stayed under the radar, hardly used her abilities, denied herself the beauty of transforming on a whim, and went as far as locking herself in a damned cage come the full moon. Until she didn’t. Until one evening, barely a month ago, she’d ignored her father’s time-tested methods to experience it. All of it. The roaming. The hunt. The rush of it all.

  “I know,” Tania said. “Deers. Elk. Moose. Not people. And I committed the one taboo, and I’m sorry.”

  “Look. I was young once too, and God knows I’ve got more skeletons in my closets. It’s.. look. What you did, it was going to happen eventually, and I'd be a fool to tell you otherwise. And I know you’re sorry. And I know you did not mean for things to happen the way they did, but it does not change the fact that someone is dead, and that puts a target on your back. On my back. Things will be.. better here, anyways. We will not be the only ones. There is a community, as my contact has pointed out.”

  “Friend,” Tania corrected. “All this code-speak is getting to be ridiculous, Dad. Randy is your friend.”

  “A brother, really,” her father said with a smile. “And we’re lucky he’s letting us stay with him. Contact makes it sound a lot more riveting though, doesn’t it?”

  Brother was being generous, but then again, Tania had never met the guy. She smiled. “It sure does, Dad.”

  ?

  The fog cleared up, albeit only slightly, as they continued, and they finally came into view of a greater winding path, only to realize it led to a checkpoint when her father shifted the truck into park. It was some sort of booth, with a trailer attached to it, and a few vehicles parked in place. There was no gate, no bar, just a handful of men and women with weapons. That alone was a strong enough deterrent. Two stood with semi-automatic rifles, donned in flannels, jeans, and kevlar vests. Tania squinted, and glanced towards her father.

  “What the hell is this?” she asked.

  “The Argent Group,” her father answered. “Randy told me to expect them. Let me handle this. Just be quiet, alright, sweetheart?”

  “But—”

  “Tania.”

  She raised both hands into the air. “Alright, alright. Have it your way. Go smooth talk them, or whatever it is you plan to do.”

  One of the men approached the car, and her father slid his window down with a bright smile. “Afternoon.”

  The man eyed him, jaw set, face drawn into half a scowl. He nodded to his partner, who circled the truck. “Going to Brinehaven?”

  “That’s right. All the way from Halifax,” her father said. “I have a friend in the city who told me how to get here. Well, more or less, hah! Can’t quite prepare for roads like that, now, can you?”

  “Need to know what brings you here,” he stated.

  Her father cleared her throat. “I was told that this is a sanctuary city for the—”

  “Occult and arcane, yes. Question is, which are you?”

  An urge erupted in Tania. That man’s tone was grating, condescending, sure, but there was a weight to it too, and depending on how her father answered, she imagined that his next words would be heavier than the last.

  “Neither,” her father stated plainly. “Fiends. We’re lycans.”

  “Dad.” Tania didn’t know why she said it. Or why she was surprised he said what he said.

  Her father glanced over to her, eyeing her with a sense of urgency before turning back to the man with the semi-auto rifle. “Look. You’re with the Argent Group, yes? You deal with escorts, or so I’ve heard. We need passage to Brinehaven.”

  The man stared at her father for a while longer. Tania noticed a tightness to his features. He looked rigid. Stiff, even if through the facade of his nonchalance. Her father’s request sounded more like a plea, and if it hurt her pride, she knew for a fact it hurt his. A quick glance towards his lap confirmed it. He clenched his fist the way that he usually did, all subtle like, but she knew that he was pressing his nails into the inside of his palm. Hard. Harder than hard. Sharply. He’d draw blood if he kept it up.

  With a whistle, the Argent Group crony called his partner back. “We’ll need to make a stop at Silver Falls. We’ll be in that Jeep up ahead. Stay close, but don’t ride our ass.”

  Her father nodded. “Fingers crossed they have a gas station, eh? Don’t know about you, but my tank is running a little bit on the low end.”

  Without anything further, the man departed, briefly stopping by the roofed toll booth-thing and sharing a few words with a lady sitting behind a desk in front of a janky computer. It was hard to make out exactly what she was doing, with the fog and all, but Tania’s gut wretched at the sight of it. “I don’t like this.”

  “Well, me neither,” her father admitted. “But small talk and good smiles get you far, Tania. Remember that.”

  “Small talk and smiles didn’t save your marriage,” Tania scoffed.

  Her father laughed. “Well, shit.”

  Tania smiled awkardly. “Sorry. Uncalled for.”

  Up ahead, the roar of a Jeep’s engine filled the air, and the two men who’d stopped them entered the vehicle, which flashed its hazard lights a few times over. Tania’s father drove after them, and they were off. More fog, more shitty road, more stupid quips with her old man. Halifax was a bust, but it was home, and they were a long way from there.

  “What do you know about these guys? The Argent Group, I mean,” Tania asked.

  “Randy said they are a security company. There’s workers here, out in the Pines, who need transport to and from some of the factories out in the woods, and they’re the ones who make sure they get there safely.”

  “Ah-huh. And they also have a checkpoint, not related to the transport of workers, but incoming ex-pats. Immigrants, Dad. Who is paying them to protect people like us?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably the Commonwealth.”

  She let his answer sit in her stomach to stew. A part of her wanted to accept that for a fact, but it didn’t make sense to do that. The city had to have some sort of military, or police force. Something tax-funded, something that wasn’t outsourced. Her father’s contact wasn’t exactly as forthcoming as he should’ve been. Randy, Randy, Randy. She’d have a word with him once they were there, whoever he was.

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  ?

  A massive steel bridge was in view, albeit, only the very tip of it. They were getting closer to Brinehaven, it seemed, and closer still to this Silver Falls place. She could even see the coastline, where the stony crags promised a fall to a swift death if they veered off the road. Silhouettes pierced through the fog in the distance. Skyscrapers and high-rises, made murky by the distance and the cold air. Within the hour, they’d make it to their new home and whatever that entailed.

  “Why are we stopping?” Tania asked. She leaned forward in her seat.

  “I don’t know,” her father asked. “Just.. hell. Alright, hold on a second. Stay in the car.”

  Her father put the car into park and stepped out of the vehicle. Naturally, Tania did the same, slamming it shut. She circled round to the front of the trunk.

  “Tania.”

  “Gerard.”

  Her father opened and closed his mouth, exhaled, and pointed a cautionary finger. “You let me handle this. Alright? Same as I did in the car. Nod twice so I know what I’m saying isn’t going in one ear and out the other.”

  “You conceived me twenty-five-years ago. I think I’m well past the point of whatever this is.” Her tone was sharp, but not argumentative. Simple, direct.

  “Tania—”

  Tania mimed a zipper over her lips and nodded not twice—not even once—but towards the Jeep parked up ahead. Lycan blood ran hot, but she’d be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t cold. A white tank top and jean-capris didn’t do her any favors, and she tried to force down the shudders and chittering as she stepped after her father, who came to a stop with a grimace.

  No sign of the two armed guards. Worse, there was another car up ahead: truck, not unlike theirs, but different. It had some sort of cage on it, built into where the bed of the truck used to be. Tania’s heart skipped a bit. Everything hit her all at once; her father telling them they were lycans, the woman in the Argent Group’s checkpoint, the question of who exactly was paying the Argent Group to handle immigrant transport.

  Blood splashed onto Tania’s face before the sound of the gunshot reached her ears.

  Her father was forced backward and onto the ground.

  A woman approached from behind the car furthest from them, but she wasn’t the one who fired.

  She had an eyepatch on, black hair set into a singular braid, and wore a washed out beige work jacket with blue jeans. Lightweight metal armor covered her torso and parts of her arms, and she had some sort of shotgun over her shoulder. She was flanked by the two guards from the Argent Group, and the one to fire the first shot was the man from before. The one her father had spoken to. He’d only fired a single shot.

  The man went to fire again, and she held her hand on the end of his gun’s barrel.

  “Your lead won’t do anything. Continue on to Silver Falls, speak to Harold. He’ll handle your finder’s fee,” the woman said.

  With a groan, her father stood. The bullet that had pierced him was forcefully ejected out from his skin, which began to repair itself. His clothes began to spread and rip, and his skin shifted from a pasty white to a grayish-black tint. His hair turned a similar color, grew rapidly and down to his back, and his eyes took on a distinct yellow hue. His nails shifted to claws: sharp, jagged, lethal. Her father wasn’t in his full form, but what lycans liked to call half-stepping. Not a full step into the animal side, but a half step.

  The second of the Argent group men nodded towards Tania and her father. “How much do they—”

  Her father lept. Another bullet was fired towards him. It plunged into his chest and he advanced without so much as a groan. Her father landed on top of the man who’d dared to make him a target, forcing him onto the ground. With a sudden plunge, he drove his clawed hand straight into the man’s chest, bellowing in a discordant cry of primal anger.

  The woman lowered her shotgun with a deftness that mirrored her father’s speed.

  “How much? Good question. A fair price, I’d hope, for their lives and your friend’s. Now go," the woman said, her voice even and level.

  She lowered her shotgun from her shoulder with a deftness that mirrored her father's speed, aimed, and fired. The slug-shot sent her father skidding across the ground. The man she’d addressed hurried over towards the Jeep, hit the ignition, and drove off speedily and without hesitation, leaving the body of his partner without so much as a second guess.

  “Dad!” Tania’s face contorted, her nostrils flaring.

  Silver had a smell to it, and the sizzling steam that rose from her father’s wounds was grating, heavy, and pungent with a metallic scent that she could practically taste. This woman was prepared. Silver shotgun slugs were one thing, wolfsbane was another, and holy water was the worst of them, and Tania could tell just by looking at this woman that she likely carried all three with her. What made hunters—any hunter—scary wasn’t that they could ever hope to physically overpower or outmaneuver a lycan, but their capacity to arrive prepared with the only things that could kill a lycan. And the red cross tattoo on the woman's neck told Tania she wasn't just any hunter. She was something else, something that Tania didn't have a name for.

  Anger poured through Tania’s features and her amber eyes brightened to a distinct yellow. She lowered herself to all fours and submitted herself tot he beast within, beckoning it to take hold of her.

  Her father’s voice boomed. “Tani—..ackH.. Tania, no, you need to—run.. run, go, get to the city, find Randy—”

  A gunshot echoed outward.

  Tania’s elbows and knees buckled, and she fell forward onto the ground, choking on an utter absence of words. No groan, no bellow, no roar. Gray had begun to spread across her body—the first step of her metamorphosis—only to stop, only to fade.

  “.. Dad?” she asked weakly.

  No answer. The woman approached her father and planted a foot on his chest. She aimed her shotgun at his head.

  “Dad? Dad, get up,” she muttered.

  Tania crawled.

  It wasn’t over. She could see his half-lidded gaze, the tremble in his clawed fingers, the spark of a roar that wasn’t yet muted. Tears flowed steadily from her face. Her lips quivered. Snot and saliva gushed out of her face. Time seemed to slow, and Tania’s amber eyes shifted back and forth between the hunter and her father. She was already grieving, but it wasn’t over.

  Not yet.

  She reached deeper, and forced her fright and her dread to take a new form. A full form of such potent physicality that it would force that woman to regret ever having met Tania. There was no full moon, and it wasn’t evening, but she’d try nonetheless. She’d force it. She had to. It was dangerous, incredibly so, but not impossible. She’d never done it before, never had a reason to, but now she did, and now she had to try.

  Gray exploded out from Tania’s features, covering her skin, and her cry of anguish forced the woman to redirect her awareness towards Tania. Black fur with a subtle reddish-maroon undertone erupted along her features, covering her shoulders, her arms, her back, her legs. She still had the shape of a human, but was more wolfish than woman. Claws along her hands, jagged teeth, heightened senses. Bones cracked and tendons tore and stretched. Power leaked from her body to the tune of shifting and crunching.

  The woman re-aligned her sights, and pointed her shotgun towards Tania.

  A shot was fired, but she missed. Something—rather, someone, redirected the shot.

  Even amidst the final dredges of her transformation, she could see it. Her father. He’d grabbed her by the leg, calling upon whatever remained of his strength to tug her. The woman was forced off center line, and the silvered slug slammed into a nearby rock.

  “... No, run.. y-you have to—.. ru—”

  She pumped the base of her shotgun, and re-centered her sights, pointed, and fired. This time she didn’t miss. Tania wasn’t her target. It was a cold shot. Permanent. It only took one well placed silver slug to the chest to made an example of her father. His body went limp.

  Tears flowed from the eyes of a beast.

  Tania’s body was reborn; reshaped into that of a full-stepped lycan. She was more wolf than woman, twice as large, with wiry and densely packed musculature, a large tail, and in the absence of skin were tufts of black-maroon fur that stood up along her body like spikes. Her advance was faster than fast. It was a blur of motion, but the unstoppable force slammed straight into an immovable object.

  With a calmness to her one-eyed face, the woman held up a single forearm, as if bracing, and her body erupted in an outline of pure white energy that leaked from her silhouette like a mist of power. Something invisible and solid stood between Tania and her revenge: a solid wall of force that gripped all around her body like an omnidirectional clamp.

  Tanis tried to writhe and claw her way out of it, and the more resistance she offered, the more the woman in front of her re-centered her focus. She planted her back foot and narrowed her gaze, but was far from the point of straining herself.

  “And now I see you. The real you,” the woman declared.

  Tania snarled. As much as she tried to resist, she knew, fundamentally, that her efforts were in vain.

  “I feel sorry for you. For your ilk. For those among you who had no choice in the matter, for those among you who were born as living blasphemies. Fate can be cruel in that way, and God crueler still, and the world cruelest of all. But I have seen what happens when you—when fiends—are treated with the same dignities and freedoms as innocent and uncursed.” Her tone swelled with zeal, and her voice steeped in ceremony.

  The woman shifted her arm, and rather than holding up to brace, clenched the air and swiped her arm down. Tania was pressed firmly into the road, suffocated by an invisible weight that she could not deny or resist. If she had the capacity to speak, she didn’t even know what she’d say to the woman.

  Emotion flooded through her body like a torrent. A maelstrom of grief and anger and dread—all fused into a singular and helpless whimper that left her wolfish maw.

  Heavy steps proceeded towards her, and the woman crouched by Tania’s side, shushing her in a motherly tone. “I am bound by duty, you see, to protect people from the inevitability of the tainted violence you might bring to the Commonwealth. Because of what you are, I cannot allow you to enter. I will not. But—..”

  The woman exhaled, and her voice, for the briefest of moments, trembled and stirred, as if a memory had woken in her, and crawled through the passion and self-righteousness of her so-called duty to reveal something fragile.

  “... I will not kill you. Not today. Perhaps not ever, if you do what you are told. I am going to release you. You are going to stand. And you are going to turn back. You are going to return to where you came from, and you will forget about the Commonwealth, and the false promise that it peddles to wayward souls like you and your father. You were promised a sanctuary city, and all you have to show for your journey is the memory of what has happened here today. Live away from people. Away from the places where you might hurt people, and perhaps God might yet allow you into his kingdom in spite of your sinful existence.”

  Slowly, Tania felt the invisible weight leave her, and as she rose, she turned to stare at the woman, fighting every animalistic urge to maul her where she stood. Whatever human part of her existed in spite of her wolfish form compelled her not to do so.

  She knew full well that if she tried it, that this woman's twisted mercy would be wasted, and she'd rob herself of the change to avenge her father—to right the wrong that had been committed by this woman’s mission statement. By a creed that Tania couldn’t bring herself to dignify with an acknowledgement.

  So she carved the woman into memory.

  Her eye patch. Her black hair, set into a singular braid. The claw-marked scar on her face. The tattoo on her neck: a red cross shaped like a sword.

  Eye patch. Braid. Claw mark. Red cross.

  This would be Tania’s mantra; her words of comfort, and her fuel.

  Slowly, she trekked towards her father’s body, and the woman did not stop her. She merely glanced over her shoulder, following Tania’s wolf-form, her hand rested at her side. She didn’t even bother to aim her shotgun.

  Tears flowed along the length of her black-maroon fur, spilling out from her yellow eyes.

  Tania lowered her wolfish head and picked up her father’s body, securing him between her maw, and made for the forest. She glanced towards the bridge that led to Brinehaven, and then further along the road, past the parked cars, past the bodies of the men who’d damned her father to death, and towards the silhouette of Silver Falls, nestled in mist and pine trees that would long outlive any of them. It would take a pack to defeat this woman. And it was there her pack awaited.

  Every straggler, every unsuspecting drunk, every curious soul who decided to wander into the woods. One by one, she would build an army.

  And one day, that woman would realize that her mercy was a mistake.

  TANIA ACKERMAN

  MR. ACKERMAN

  CHAPTerMASTEr ALLEN

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