Grey Wolf

     I sped down the road, the orange glow of the streetlights turning the night into a dream like world in a fluorescent haze. I was intent upon getting to my apartment as quick as I could because I was not in the mood to be around or talk to anyone after a hard day of work and girl troubles still bobbin around in my head.  I just needed to get home, take a bath, and lie down for a couple hours.  The buildings of the city went by in a blur past me as I focused on the thought of the sweet potato pie my mom had sent for Alex and me to enjoy.  Looks like we won’t be having the joy of eating it together now and I still didn’t have the strength to tell mom she’d dumped me.  I grunted with disgust, she had thought we made a great couple but I guess I wasn’t enough to keep Alex satisfied.  So many problems had popped up all at once without any time to take a break in between.  And really how was I supposed to know that there would be so many of them all at once anyway?  The job had gone rotten from the start; I guess sometimes you just have to go with what you’re given.
     Out of the corner of my eye I could see that I was being followed, but not by any vehicle on the road.  Their shadows were just reaching out of the alleyways that they were running through and they didn’t even know it.  Amateurs, why would they send grunts?  I spend up, attempting to lose them; making my bike engine groan and growl from the rapid acceleration as I slide around tight turns and flew down the road.
     “Crap!”
     It seems they were determined to catch up with me.  It didn’t matter anyway, I needed to confront them and stop this from becoming a problem and getting the public involved.  Couldn’t have everyone guessing my job at the Psych office was just a front. Being lazy would have to wait till later when I could just kick back and take the break I hadn’t had for months.  The majority of the world couldn’t be allowed to know about what was really lurking about when night set in and the glow of inhuman eyes haunted the darkness.
Jumping from the side of my blue/silver striped Kawasaki I immediately found myself surrounded with nowhere to go.  What a great situation to get myself into in the middle of the night with no one else around. BANG!  I heard the sound of my bike hitting the wall of a building nearby, thank God the tires hit first.
     “So, what now?”
     I looked from side to side wondering where the gruff voice had come from, seemingly from everywhere at once.  All I saw were the snarling faces of the Werecats of the Bast Pride, the largest of the werecat prides, all around me.  Their territory took up a lot of the mid-western US so what the hell were so many doing here on the east coast?  They varied in shape and size from the particular traits of certain big cats in their DNA like Werewolves and our own differing ancestry with our own ware archetypes.
      I had begun to transform as soon as I left my bike to enable myself to fight at my max since death would have been quick but painful otherwise.  The feeling of my bones extending and muscles growing was a welcome one. I would show these feline intruders what happens when you mess with the son of a Fenrir Clan Leader!
     “Why?”
     Again that voice echoed, but this time I realized it was coming from the inside of my head.  The werecats all around started to vigorously shake their own heads in a futile attempt to shake off the voice.  I knew it was no use, by attacking me they had brought on the wrath of my father and his unique abilities. But where was the old man.  Knowing him he would only act as an equalizer as always.  Him and his damn tricks again.
     “Father! Stop this and come out or let me handle this myself”
     Suddenly the voice stopped echoing and the Cats came back into their full awareness.
     “Old man you better hope I don’t find you after this, cause you’re next”
     “Now what would your mother have to say about that Torran?”
     A vicious smile broke across my now monstrous mouth, revealing fangs that made the Cats take a step back and another from the thunder of my howling yell.  My claws slid smoothly from the insides of my fingers as I prepared to wipe the floor with the fools.  It felt good to be in Werewolf form whether I was tired or not.
     I took the head off the nearest Were Cat causing blood to spray across the windshield of my bike.  Damn, now I gotta wash that thing again, that’s the second time today.   And it didn’t register to me if I killed a man or woman; they were all enemies and would be dealt with.  Now I was totally pissed because these same guys must have been trailing me all day since I killed their buddies from the assignment I had earlier that day and I didn’t even notice.  I recognized some of them and saw the scar I had left on one of the ones who must have managed to get away to gather his kin to take revenge. This was getting to be annoying, extremely annoying, these guys didn’t know when to quit.  Just a bunch of ruthless untrained killers was what they were.
“You must be slipping.”
     “If you want to do this yourself you’re more than welcome to it.”
     Somehow he was hidin himself and not even the heightened senses I got from my mother’s side could pick him up.  
     It’s hard having a conversation with your parents most of the time, but I did it as I was cleaving the Were Cat with the familiar scar from groin to sternum leavin him to hold his insides like a fool as I swiped my claws across his face; tearing most of it off.  Out of no where, a cat in my blind spot sliced across my shoulder blades, making me grunt from the pain and causing me to shift my full attention to him.  I quickly flipped backward and landed behind him, getting him out of my blind area.  He turned out to be a frighteningly big cat with black strips running down his fur but he wasn’t fast enough to respond to my training and I returned the favor; digging my claws into his back, the main difference being that I severed his spine leaving him on the ground moaning in pain himself before I brought my foot down on his skull.  As I slipped in and out of the guard put up by the rest of the Werecats I realized they were a little tougher than their friends from before.  The Cats must be feelin the pressure of the Fenrirs all out attack on them to send even these guys from the front lines to handle the killing of a couple of their grunts in a run down bar.  They were very unlike the brain trained, logical killers I was used to fighting though, merely higher trained grunts violating the territory of the Fenrir clan.  
     There was soon only a pile of remains that were slowly becoming human again left from the short but tiresome battle.   I talked to the surrounding buildings as I headed back in the direction of my bike.
     “Dad if you don’t get your tail out here I’m goin to tell mom you had me doing your dirty work for you… AGAIN!”
     “Hey, hey no need for getting me put in the dog house just because you are better at this than I am now.”
     “Being old isn’t an excuse and besides you’re not even old, you’re a werewolf for heavens sake.  Nice job letting your son drive into the middle of an almost random Werecat ambush.  ’”
     “You know for yourself that it wasn’t, so don’t say I did it for no reason.  They were probing our territory again, and that’s the 4th time this month.”
     “Yeah just like I knew you weren’t ordinary and it wasn’t just because you barely trusted your own family with your secrets.”
     “Don’t start that here; you know we have to get back to the house before your mom finds I’ve been out.  She’ll have me neutered for sure.”
     “But I was going to head back to my apartment and catch some Zzzz’s man, and Alex hasn’t answered any of my calls since she dropped me like a bad habit a month ago, why do you need me back at the house!?”
     My father got serious and quit all of a sudden,” We need you because there’s to be a clan meeting and all hunters are being drawn in since the Cats have decided to withdraw from the front.  They’ve merely been testing us this last time by trespassing on our territory.”
     “WHAT!!!”
     “As of noon yesterday they withdrew and are merely protecting their territory as we were before they started this war.”
     “Dad no one knows who started this war in the first place.  We all just know that neither the wolf faction nor the Cats are willing to back down, well until now that is.  I’m going to assume that there’s a reason for that?”
     “As soon as we get back to the house you’ll get to know all that you need to know but till then just keep your mouth shut, there’s no telling if they sent some better train Cats to get the job done.”
     My father must have been worried because usually nothing scared him, but maybe there was more to it than just the Werecats starting to become unpredictable and thus more dangerous.  We rode my bike to my apartment and then left it there to make the journey home.  We loped through the city seeing many creatures of the night other than ourselves and each ones’ scent passed through our noses and was catalogued.  Occasionally we would come across a scent that was as muddled as our own (wolf & human or a similar canine mix) but had the distinct smell of a Fenrir and not the treacherous Werecats.  
As we reached the house I re-extended my claws and prepared to enter by the door hidden in the brick of the back of the house.  I thrust the claws of my right hand into five holes that were indistinguishable from any other ones in the brick of the old house but these holes activated a switch that opened the door.  As we descended below the regular looking Middle class house above into the Fenrir clans under ground facility, or Den, my father continued to give me tidbits of info.
     “Your brother’s already home and is waiting with the council to be brought up to date, we just needed you to be there so we’d have all our most experienced hunters on hand to protect the house and be aware of the full situation.”
     “The bobo’s home huh, been wonderin if I’d ever see him again after he said he was doin social work in California all the way on the West coast, how is he anyway?”
     There was the sudden pressure of large hands on my shoulders that weren’t even were wolfish, jus big, and a laugh that could scare Mr. Hide Back into Dr. Jeckal.  
     “Hi Colin” I said, totally unimpressed since he’d been doin the same thing since I was little.
     My older brother’s deep voice carried down the hall ahead of us as we continued to walk, “Aw you can’t even cringe a lil anymore when I do that like in the old days”
     My father just glared at him until he sighed and said, “Yes I know I’m goofin off, but I was sent to guard the door and wait for your return O Mighty Fenrir Clan Leader.”  And Colin gave a mock solute as he said it, knowing that if anyone else even thought about bein that disrespectful to my father other than his family or those he considered family they’d probably be dead or chained to wall to be flayed until they apologized.
     After entering an elevator and going down some levels we entered the council chamber, my brother and I still laughing at my father’s inability to stay serious and objective around his family.  I nodded to my friend Michael sitting beside his father and alpha Semmurus.  Mike just didn’t look the same without his trade mark afro, but I didn’t mess with him about it.  The other Alphas and their own assorted collection of hunters from their packs that made up the Fenrir clan bowed their heads in recognition of our entrance into the chamber.  Not all the Alphas had been able to make it on such short notice, but there were enough to ensure the things spoken of at the meeting would become known by the majority.  A Werewolf the same size as my father’s 5’8”, but a dark brown that contrasted with my family’s black and grey stood and spoke at our families spot at the table.
     “Clan Leader Othius, the negotiators of the werecats gave us the information we demanded of them and remained past the border except for the lead negotiator, the situation must be quite distressful for them to come to us this way.”
     “Yes indeed it must be Ishicawa and there must also be a great deal we have not been wise to for a while for their actions to be so sudden and surprising to us.”
As my father’s right hand man and Information gatherer I could see that this hit Ishikawa Extremely hard.  He kneeled in front of my father, speaking as he did so, “I apologize Clan Leader and offer my sword to you.”  This statement went back to Ishikawa’s heritage in feudal Japan where a disgraced officer gave his life to his lord or superior.
     “As long as I’ve known you, you know I couldn’t do that Ishi so put the sword away and let’s get down to the business at hand.”  No cultural boundaries, traditions or differences existed to my father, only the clan and getting the job done mattered.  That is why the brand of Clan Leader of the Fenrir clan (whose territory ranged down the whole East coast) had been handed down to my father at the end of his late mentor/father figures life who he had met in college as a engineering student.  “Ishi fill them in and do it quickly so that we may decide upon a course of action.”
     “Yes Clan Leader, as of noon yesterday the Werecats pulled back all their forces at the territorial border and the fighting subsided.”  
Shock was clearly written on every face other than my brother’s, Ishikawa’s, my father’s, and mine, but I could still barely believe it myself.
     “An envoy was sent to us by the cats begging for help in their territories five hours later along with a single negotiator.  We demanded more information if such help was really needed, not really believing what was happening and expecting no real cooperation, but we were wrong. Approximately one hour later more negotiators returned with a plethora of data that we’ve been poring over for the last day to confirm if the things it contained within could be true and they frighteningly enough are.”
     “Tell us and quite dancing around the subject!”  Michael looked down at the table slightly embarrassed, but was used to his father’s behavior. Semmerus had been a good ware, but after the death of his wife and mate two years ago he had become the hotheaded member of the council who was known for letting his emotions get the best of him.
     “Silence,” it was just one word, but it had the power of a shotgun going off in the middle of the room even though my father said it with almost no emotion and barley loud enough to hear.
     “Ahem, as I was saying, the information it contained seemed to be only the wild ramblings of an insane individual, but from the reports coming in of “weird creatures” violating our territory, there is a major storm on the horizon.   It seems that the Werecats, in an ironic bout of curiosity, were at a dig in Jerusalem and found what appeared to be the skeletal remains of a pig from many centuries ago.  They brought it to America for study but of course that’s when things went from interesting to a sudden tragedy because while moving the intact skeleton one of the cats cut themselves on the caring pallet and bled on the bones.  Somehow the blood brought the thing back to life, but it wasn’t a pig really, it grew until it was cat, pig and a number of other things.  It called itself Legion and was a chimera.  It proceeded to kill everyone in the research facility they had brought it to in the mountains of western Virginia and then made a place for itself in there.”
     Sigh…, “the cats have been fighting this thing for the last couple of decades it appears, but now it has absorbed many more predatory animals from its environment in the eastern Hemisphere and is spawning an army of freaks that the Werecats can’t seem to handle.  The only reason they held them off for so long is that they found that the monsters are controlled by more evolved spawnings of legion and that once these higher evolved beings are killed the rest under them become mindless and just stand where they are oblivious of everything, while quickly dieing.  The hierarchy seems to run down a chain like a general to colonel to a captain and then lieutenant right down to the grunts.”
     No one in the room said anything; every breath could be heard and then “Ridiculous!!   How could any of that be true, it must be a trick of the Werecats trying to get us to let our guard to them because it appears that they have to us!”  This is how Semmerus ranted for the next 3 minutes and told Ishikawa that his Intel network was worth its weight in garbage.  He had never slipped this badly and was told to hold his tongue by my father before it was removed.  Semmerus went red in the face and yelled across the table that if my father could entertain ideas this crazy he wasn’t deserving of the Brand given to the Clan Leader, then he and his crew of hunters stalked out of the room.  Michael got up to follow his father with a look of apology on his face and then slowly left, self-conscious of his alpha’s inability to hold himself together.