Harlowe, you are a werewolf first, last, and always. 

The cat's dead eyes flashed as it limped through the seam of darkness and entered the home. A hand—pale, human, impossible to hazard a gender at this distance—wrapped around the doorknob and shut out the night. The house was dark, the yard tidy, the several times bloodsoaked lawn trim and green. A leaf skipped down the driveway and caught in the reedy corpses of summer-spent irises. It clung there through the breeze, flicking back and forth like a rotted cat's ear. 

Indecision was not a trait that often bothered the sheriff, but he hesitated this evening, looking from the unempty house to the lively driveway at his right. 

"You are a werewolf, first, last, and always," came the under breath murmur of the wolf in human skin. He touched for a second his shirt sleeve, where the serpentine ink twined 'round his forearm. Marcy was not a werewolf. Marcy was not ever going to be a werewolf. Whatever was in that house wasn't a werewolf. It probably wasn't even her. The demon wouldn't be so stupid as to drag his prized possession out where she could get stolen.

He had to tend to Talon Pack's MIA alpha before chasing ghosts. 

In the past, he'd used some truly serpentine logic to wind his way to the conclusion that Marcy came first, but he knew she couldn't always, and didn't tonight. 

He dragged the freshly-sprouted fang over his the edge of his lip and considered going in anyway.

When the subject of werewolves arose, several theories reared their ugly heads. Is it the moon? Like some rocky satellite filled with partially molten iron had the power to make his teeth grow and fall out. Leave the moon to rule its tides, he'd tell folks, and in the same soft tone that drew them in or pushed them away, added that moonlight made it, "All the better to see you, my dear."

"Lobo de la Parca!"

He turned. Evita only cared to call him by his proper title when she was cross.

And oh was she, with her alpha's crime scene several rooms away and the primary investigator halfway up the street before he'd realized where his feet had led him.

"Hey!" she hissed with all the malice of acid rain. "Where do you think you are going?"

His spinal column cracked and realigned into human obligation. "Something's up there."

Evita trotted through the streetlight. Her eyes reflected the greenish yellow promise of wolfshape.

"She's not there," she said, reaching his side. "Cal installed security cams. An alert would come right here to my phone." She lofted the device and flashed him the date and time and otherwise empty screen.

"Someone's inside," he said.

"She is not," Evita said. He could see her eyes skip over the quiet house as if it didn't exist. 

His toes twitched painfully as she took him by the hand and led him to Ms. Finn's. It was always a feet-first transformation for him; it was as good a place as any to start; tucked away in boots or sneakers, where in tense situations no one could quite tell how many links were left on his chain. No one could see the spasmic clench as sinew tore and bones unhinged like jaws set to swallow his humanity. 

One of the others growing up—big bloke with a mean mind and the bulk to survive the frenzy of the fighting pits—had shown the first signs of transformation in his fingers. A werewolf was his or her most vulnerable in the midst of transformation. This fella had twitchy fingers and no self-restraint. Couldn't shoot, but wasn't fully switched into beast mode. It was only a few seconds. Wouldn't matter once the grey evil was unleashed, but when the cage doors opened and the big fella lingered in his cell to buy back the time he'd lose, Caelan had stepped right up and shot him through the eye. 

"Wouldn't do that," he'd warned the third opening cage, where the boy was a slobbering mess, hunched on the ground, his forearms pricked with coarse fur, ears turned up as he approached the sheriff-to-be on all fours. Menancing displays were always worth extra points, at least if you lived long enough to earn them.

"Lobo!" Evita said, dragging Caelan up the stairs and toward the curious eyes peeping through several blinds. "She sure put you under some kinda spell, didn't she? Boy, if I had me some of that . . ."

"Stay out of the woods." He swallowed. His tongue was thick, his mouth watering at the prospect of—

"Shit, trouble's inside that house. What's with the woods now?"

"Keep the pack leashed," he said. 

Frowning, Evita opened the door. "We were all downstairs," she began at once, ushering him inside as a a large, dark-skinned man approached. Caelan had seen him fixing bikes at Steph's shop on several occasions. Relatively friendly, mechanically inclined but not much else.   

He, apparently, spoke for everyone else, which was to say, no one made a sound. There'd been a steady yammering when Evita waltzed through, but when he set foot in the hall a pin would've rang louder than a gunshot in the crowded living room. 

Werewolves, by and large, were an expressive bunch. They had a particular talent for conveying emotion through facial expression. Naturally, they excelled at good, hard stares. Their shoulders seemed to develop just an extra bit of hunch, their chins settled into a lower position and blinking seemed to be more or less an afterthought. 

There were about forty pack members jammed into the room tonight and there was something vigilant, and wolfish, in the way their heads swung quietly toward the sheriff. 

Normally, he'd do a bit of poking around, squeezing some small talk out of those stony faces, figure out who knew what and who to lean on to get the info out. But as Evita shut the door, all he could think about was who shut Marcy's. So he squared his shoulders, met the gazes of the assembled pack and spoke. 

"Evening, folks," he said with a courteous smile and a lift of his hand. Not the hand at his belt near the hoslter, of course. He preferred that finger near the trigger. The image of the dead cat clawed the back of his skull. "Everyone accounted for at the time she went missing?"

"Attacked," came a hissed breath toward the back. 

He carried on unperturbed. "Miss Finn have any cameras about the place?"

Evita made a sound as if to agree, then changed her mind. "No," she said. "We are family here. And there are definitely no cameras in the bathroom!" 

He could already hear a couple of sniggering comments. 

He pulled on a pair of gloves and kindly requested Evita, Mrs. Vilkas, to escort him to the crime scene. 

"It is quite literally a blood bath," Evita said outside the bathroom. She wiped at her eyes. 

The mechanic, Vytal he said his name was, which Caelan didn't buy for one second, scrunched up his face. "Well, it didn't start that way. Water ain't blood."

"Blood got in though," she said swiftly. "And I doubt you will ever see something so close to the expression ever again, Tally," 

From his sobering expression, Vytal had likely witnessed the scene prior. From the ruddy tracks down the carpeted hall upstairs and back towards the living room, so had everyone else. 

"You really shouldn't disturb scenes," Caelan said, frowning at the dried smears. 

"How goes the words about crowds?" Evita asked. "To find the intelligence, take the square root?"

"Something like that," Caelan muttered, but his attention was on the bathroom. Beautiful tub, expensive finishes, plush silks and bathrobes hanging unsullied near a linen closet. Vanity fit for a queen. Fit for a world-renowned art thief, he reminded himself, attention drifting to a nail above the tub. The lack of blood gave it away; a conspicuous emptiness directly over the smooth white porcelain while the rest of the bathroom looked and smelled as if a whale had spontaneously combusted. 

"You reckon a minute, two, ticked past before you first accessed the room?" he asked. 

"No more than that," Evita said. "Tally got in first. Busted the door, fell right into the thick of things." She nodded at a long smear flecked with fresher prints. 

"You see anything?"

Vytal scratched his neck. "Maybe a splash? But I was hurtling for the floor so fast I didn't see much, yanno? Something pink, I think. Pink splash, yeah."

"Her son was abducted near water as well?"

Evita's full lips compressed into a tight frown. "I wouldn't call this water...And poor little Kee, didn't even make a sound!"

"He's a child, Evie. Could've easily been surprised. On a field trip in the woods like that, real easy to single a kid out and—"

There was a loud bang and a scream from somewhere downstairs. The trio stiffened, exchanged looks, and then Vytal and Evita were racing down the stairs. Caelan lingered a moment, bent by the tub to pick off a rubbery strip of pink flesh resting on a fresh, unused bar of soap. Then he set it down, peeled off the gloves, and headed after them. 

They hadn't gotten halfway down the stairs when the acrid sent of triggered instincts hit them. Five humans had dropped to their knees in the kitchen, eyes wild with a full moon's pupils, tearing off clothes and skin, stretching into monsters that pushed their human pack against cabinets and onto countertops, and, for many unlucky souls, against the tinted glass slider. Every few seconds those pressed against the glass would cringe and shriek and try and struggle past the furry, gore-soaked limbs of their transforming family. 

As Caelan's boots hit the marbled tile a sharp heavy bang shot through the room. Cracks jagged up the glass, a fine seam of bottled lightning. The pack against the glass screamed and trampled a young woman caught in the late stages of the shift. Her paws had slipped out from underneath her as she'd tried to sprint away. Her chin banged hard against the marble. She kicked, caught an unsuspecting packmate in the thigh and smashed them into a set of barstools. The skin shucked clean off the side of the packmate's head. A wolf's ear popped through the scalped flesh. 

Something dark, and large, and fast, rammed the slider. The sound this time was grinding, the bulge against the panel flexing with the strength of crystallized plastic. 

As wolves and humans tumbled over each other in a throe of snarling terror, Caelan walked past them. Even in their fear, as they rushed Evita as if she could save them all, they left a wide berth around the sheriff, would rather run over each other than run into him. 

And it would've been nice if the gun at his hip was small and sleek. It would've been nice if he didn't need a weapon that could stop a charging grizzly. But Caelan didn't fight for ties. He drew the weapon, held it with a firm grip and hated the fact that he couldn't fling it aside and rip someone open. Tonight, with his instincts screaming for something to sink his fangs into, he felt the delicious vibrations in his body, the tightening of muscle as pressure built and pressed against the surface. His vision was shifting, the colors dulling, the contrast heightening, the darkness outside not nearly as forboding as it was. 

The thing stood behind and to the right of the grill, the hairs of its tail flipping through a breeze. 

Caelan was expecting a monster, something hideous and twisted and dead.

There was indeed a monster: two long, black horns rising between its ears, one glassy brown eye expressionless, its neck broken so that the lowered head slanted at an awkward angle. Desiccated seams split and flapped along its joints as its hooves sparked across the patio. 

He just hadn't been expecting a monster straight out of a big game hunter's parlor. 

On legs that had no earthly right to move, the gemsbok hit the glass at a sprint. The panel crunched to pieces. Caelan fired. 

Burnt plastic and fur singed the air. Half its head and one antler missing, the animal kept running. 

Momentum carried the thing through the kitchen, through half a dozen pack members then into the hall, narrowly missing the swell of wolves around a frantic Evita. 

The next shot tore a hind leg out from under the animal. It crashed as the bullet scraped along the floor and buried itself in the wall. The gemsbok scrambled uselessly along the floor. As he approached, Caelan thought he saw a flash of green in its remaining glass eye, and then the thing dropped dead like a puppet cut from its strings. 

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Evita gasped, hopping the living room couch to get to him. Caelan was already near the front door, lifting a side of the blinds. She spat on the broken animal in passing and trotted beside him. Members of the pack hesitated, then split into two groups; one to tend the wounded while the rest followed Evita several steps behind. "What in Dante's nine hells is that?"

She was yelling at a pair of teenagers to stop kicking the taxidermied beast when Caelan turned to regard her. 

"A distraction," he said grimly, and moved aside for her to peek outside.

Lobo de la Parca-- wolf of the grim reaper

Caroline · Colter Wall · Belle Plaine