'What a fruitful night this has been,' Rose said to herself, as she walked the seedy alleyways and dark corners once again. It had been hours since she went on the chase and her cart was now full of bottles of lone werewolf blood, each one jangling under the linen to the tune of her labored and shuffling steps. 

And what of the bodies from which the gore had been pilfered? The body of the police officer? The creepy stalker hiding in the bushes? The carriage driver? The harlot? The servant on her way back home? Well, they were where they belonged. Hidden. Ready. 

'My love. My army,' Rose continued, a cool breeze scattering her words and the fog all around. 'Now let's hope Daegol will be as productive with the new supply.' 

Rose had known Daegol for years, first meeting the man after her love had been bitten, after all of her other options had dwindled, vanished. She had sought him out for the same reason she kept going to him to this day. To find a cure. Though quite devious and sly, Rose had seen the marvels that had come from him grinding away in his laboratory. For now, he was her only hope. Everything was in his hands. 

Still looking like a crippled old hag, Rose lumbered on, toiling down a narrow lane and then another until she came to an establishment catering to the people most enslaved by their addictions. She peered inside the decrepit den, through a crusty window, and saw many men and women slumped over tables, convulsing on the floor, and wailing and muttering as if possessed by some evil from the underworld. 

Rose gave no mind to the sight as she had seen it countless times before. She then proceeded around to the back of the premise, where she knocked on a door wrought with iron and locks. 

Immediately, a sharp voice from within shouted in response, 'Fuck Off! How many times do I have to tell you lot? This is not the entrance. No drugs. No drugs.' 

Rose knocked again and said, 'I bear gifts.' 

It was Rose's usual remark at the door but her changed voice failed the seamstress. 

'I said, fuck off!' the voice rasped this time. 'If you don't, I will come out there and make sure the last high you experienced will be your final.' 

'I'll find another who wants to find me a cure and take my money then,' Rose huffed before hearing scurrying footsteps. The door shortly crashed open, revealing a man with bloodshot eyes and skin covered in sores and scabs. 'Daegol.' 

'As always, nice to see you,' the man squeaked with giddiness, though he was glaring right past Rose, her new and unfamiliar appearance, and at the cart parked behind.

'I brought you more volume this time as you asked,' Rose said. 

Daegol eagerly rubbed his hands together as if he was staring at a mound of gold. 'Excellent. Now let's quickly get it all inside. We don't want some tramp to come by and destroy your work.' 

Before long, Rose was standing in the man's laboratory, her back cracked again to make her stand straight. The room was brimming with alchemist equipment. There were burners erupting with flame, beakers of boiling liquid, glass tubes dripping with steam or dazzling with colorful gas. And there was a scent, a particular and peculiar scent amongst the numerous, that would burn many a nose. 

'What's that stink? Rose asked with a scowl, her mind becoming woozy. The smell was as offensive as a werewolf's stench. 

Staring into one of the bottles of blood with a glimmer in his eyes, Daegol replied nearby, 'I'm experimenting, trying to produce a drug more potent than what I sell now. More potent, more addictive, equals more money.' 

Like other evils, Rose thought drugs a scourge on society, but she had only a handful of cares in the world that she didn't want adding to. If her future turned out to be what she desired, however, maybe her attitude would change. 

'Speaking of money . . . .' Rose pulled out a stack of notes from her dress, each one the largest of the city's denominations. The amount would make anyone beyond content with Mr Fry surely being able to afford his own addiction for his lifetime and many more. 

Daegol snapped his gaze away from the bottle and down at the money, instantly taking it and salivating, giggling with delirium. 'Excellent.' But then he glared at Rose and said, 'Being that there's more supply, more time of mine to spend, time sweating and exerting, I hope there's extra.' 

Rose nodded. 'There is.'

Still with his glare but now with a hint of suspicion, Daegol replied, 'Mind if I check?' 

'Not at all.' 

Trust between the two was there, Rose believed, but it was frail as if it would crumble with just a touch, a prick of a wand, an utterance of a spell. 

With his grubby fingers, licking them after each pass of note, Daegol counted the stack of money not once but twice, finally saying, 'Looks to be in order.' He then thrust his takings into his trousers, patting it several times after. 

As love and revenge guided Rose, money drove Daegol. 

'When will you be able to start with the batch?' Rose asked, gesturing to the bottles resting on a workbench. 

'Once my experimenting is finished,' Daegol replied. 'Once I make the most commanding drug this city has ever seen.' 

'Which will be?' 

'A week or two. Maybe three.' 

Rose did not want to hear that but what could she do. 'Let's hope for success.' 

'Hmmm,' Daegol replied back, nodding and as his attention went back to the bottle of blood he was staring at before. 'The odds would be better, much improved, if the blood was more potent as I've said many times previously.' 

'And as I've always replied to that, just one killing of a werewolf belonging to a pack would bring too much attention. I could lose everything, including my life.' 

'The blood of an alpha werewolf has the potency of all these bottles a hundredfold. Maybe you need to take that gamble. I'm only thinking of you and your loved one.' 

Hah, Rose wanted to burst out. Daegol's thinking of himself as always, for he would surely ask for a fortune to quell the risk he would be taking by handling stronger werewolf blood. And even if there was no risk, he'd surely make up an excuse, warranted or not. 

'I appreciate your sincerity,' Rose muttered coldly. 'But let's see what you can do with this supply first.' 

'Hmmm,' Daegol replied again before disappearing into the clutter of his laboratory. 

With nothing else for her to say or do there, Rose called out, her voice following after the man, 'I'll lock the door on my way out.' 

And not long after, as she was heading back home now with an empty cart and hoping it would never carry a single drop of werewolf blood again, she heard a familiar whistle, yet it was faint. 

Emma was still out, still trying her luck at making something of herself. 

Hearing the joyous twitter made Rose smile and it made the night much more comfortable. However, the warmth soon vanished, blew away, for a foul odor ruffled the seamstress' long, white nose hairs. 

Stopping the cart in panic, spells ready to eject from her lips if need be, Rose lifted her head to take in as much of the scent as she could, thinking her senses may have become corrupted by Daegol's experimenting. But they hadn't. Her nose was as honest as always. 

It was a beta werewolf, unchanged, untransformed, the beastly man's stench smelling of anger, bitterness and of being on the hunt themselves. And he was close. Very close. 

Rose bit her stare up between the walls of the alleyway where she had stopped and to their roofs. And for a split second, she thought she saw a shadow darting across the corner of her eye, jumping over the gap, but all she saw was a flittering bare clothesline waiting for the heat of summer. The nasty fetor on the air then disappeared. 

How strange, Rose thought, for she was just talking to Daegol about werewolves with more potent, stronger blood. 

'And interesting,' she then muttered. 'I wonder what such a beast was doing, hunting around here? Was he searching for an easy victim to sink his teeth in?' 

Though she had come across them, it was rare for Rose to find a werewolf belonging to a pack in the squalid parts of the city. Their strength bred riches and power, which made them keep to the splendor not squalor. 

'Yes, interesting,' Rose repeated before carefully and with wariness carrying on back towards home, to Hulda Street and to her love. She had much to tell him, including the usual hopes of Daegol finding a cure.