Author's Note: Mr. Butcher likes to work some of his religious beliefs into his work. Even as someone who does not have the same religious beliefs, the skill and underlying honesty of how he writes about them make sense to me and I find it entertaining.

I've tried not to shove my religious beliefs down anyone's throat in this story, but I think you'll see them if you look hard. Enjoy.

Warlock of Omaha Squared

Chapter 1: Wayward Son

I was floating in my river. I was so safe and secure. Nothing could harm me here. I had been in this river so long I had forgotten my own name, an artifact of having what I wanted most, beautiful solitude. The water lilies and vines caressed my body as I relaxed in a deep eddy. I was just starting to feel a bit of hunger. What should I eat? The river was full of tasty fish and succulent eel. A swift movement in the dark could give me a variety of tasty land dwelling animals, a savory bird, a fat rabbit. But I already knew what I would eat, my favorite meal, the nearly hairless monkey, particularly a young female, always the most tender and flavorful.

I snapped awake. The dream again. I had been having that dream every so often ever since the fight. I knew from my moment with Ha that I was dreaming bits of his life. The dreams were disturbing on many levels. Not least because the feeling of perfect safety and security felt so good. It played right into my own dreams and the feelings of constant stress and insecurity. Feeling the desire to eat human flesh was disturbing for all the reasons a sane person would imagine and worse for being so seductive.

I looked across my bed and saw Brenda sleeping peacefully and the clock slipping from 4:59 to 5 and knowing I wouldn't get any more sleep so I went for some gear head therapy.

In took myself down to my garage and clicked on the remote start and heard the low rumbling thrum of hemi goodness. I really loved my new pickup. In comparison, those Fords were kind of squeaky and the GM products sounded and pulled like an old sheep with a three pack-a-day habit.

Most pickups are supposed to be a workman's friend, simple, cheap to own and operate, durable and reliable. Frankly though, far more pickups are purchased by residents of the suburbs as family sedans on tall wheels with a bed. The natural high performance truck would be some sort of off road monster. Then there are those that modify trucks for drag racing and other silly pursuits. Mine was one of the silly ones.

I had considered, as we looked at the unfinished body panels that Dodge had supplied, chroming everything. It would have cost crazy money and slowed down the build, but the idea of driving around in such a shiny, distinctive vehicle was intoxicating. Then good sense kicked in and I realized I had driven away from a number of serious crime scenes in the last year. The last thing I needed was to have the most distinctive vehicle in the Midwest. Like the Three Gun match, winning and the attention it drew was not useful, but I still wanted the trophy. So the new truck got the same paint in most areas I had used for the old truck, Dark Green Metallic. Essentially black paint with a heavy layer of varnish. Imbedded in the varnish were bits of forest green metallic flake. Was my truck black, green or something else? Confused witnesses would likely be my allies.

I had considered putting a Ford bed on the truck. Ford's use of aluminum body panels would save weight and be even more confusing, but I loved my Ramboxes so I stuck with Dodge. It would have been easy to go down the rabbit hole for performance, custom made body panels, home made frame, electric motors up front, but that's what the Juke is all about so I held back.

I do have carbon fiber ceramic six pot breaks all around. Really big carbon fiber ceramic six pot breaks. There were also air suspension components more normally associated with race vehicles, which I normally left low, but which could be raised for off-roading. The most fuel tank Dodge will sell you is thirty-two gallons all on one side, I had two mil-spec high-performance forty gallon tanks, one for each side, self-healing for a much lower chance of going pop. Also the balanced weight and baffles helped handling and fast acceleration. There had been several times in the last year I hadn't wanted to stop for gas, having eighty gallons on board seemed like a good idea.

My truck has all the safety precautions I had described earlier, chro-molly frame and roll cage, reinforced glass, armored panels, safety seats, etc. She did have some features appropriate for off-road that had been sacrificed on the previous truck in the quest for a sleeker look but which I now wanted, like bull bars front and rear, custom made stainless steel bumpers, frame mounted step rails, light package, among others. Those hard outside bits had been treated with black bed-liner material to make them extra durable.

Mostly though, my truck was meant for the streets. It had a set of 26 inch, low profile rims and performance tires. The rear wheels were dualies. Dualies are not unusual on trucks. A dualie is simply a truck with double rear wheels. Dualies are common on larger, "One-Ton" trucks, all but unheard of on a smaller trucks like my half-ton. Normally, the extra pair of wheels helps the truck carry more weight on the bed and tow more. However, the typical dualie arrangement was to have the extra pair of wheels outboard, or outside, the normal pair of wheels. This made the truck even wider. A truck is already one of the largest vehicles still commonly sold to private consumers. The large size is part of the appeal and is certainly appealing to me. A big vehicle worked well in Omaha with her wide streets, large parking lots and big parking spaces. I had traveled to the coasts where everything is older and narrower, where land, at a high premium, encourages, narrow lanes, small parking lots and tiny spots. A pickup wouldn't work as well in such places. Even in Omaha, a conventional dualie is a handful.

My dualie wheels were like Batman's Scrambler, inboard. That keeps my truck relatively narrow, but compromises the bed. Since I rarely used the bed, I didn't care. Mostly, the extra wheels meant that since I had more tire on the road when I put down the gas pedal, she would accelerate that much faster away. My truck wasn't built for drag racing, but it's nice to be respectable, not to mention tactically sound.

Of course, all that goes out the window when I find myself here in Chicago! I had Travis and Jake with me in the truck. We were trying to go to McAnally's Pub. Mac's place has no parking except street parking and is not located in a place with a lot of that, making finding a parking spot an exercise in superhuman patience. Perhaps some sort of test? All the streets are one way, narrow, at odd angles and cross major, busy roads, frequently, with no help from a streetlight. Further, my truck can't slip into some Fiat space, I need a good sized space to drop this huge honk of machine into.

In an effort to control my hunger driven grumpiness, we were to eat at Mac's but it was late and I don't do my best when hungry and frustrated, I thought about what brought us here.

Travis, Jake and I had been running drills. One of the basic lessons we had learned in the final fight against Ha was that we would be better off working together. Yes we had won, and more importantly survived, but running like a group of lemmings to make sure our efforts were as weak as possible was clearly not good.

White Man was still out there. He knew where we were and probably had a good sense of what we were. He wanted to put us all in mud or worse. We knew nothing about him. Our safety would come from White Man, or anyone else who might decide to cross us, realizing we were now a team and exponentially stronger as a group than as individuals. It would therefore behoove us to actually BE a team. Hence drills where we figured out ways to improve our performance by working together.

After one such drill, Jake came over and said, "I feel like I'm letting the team down."

I replied, feeling very honest, "That's not the case. No, you don't shoot, but for Travis and I to shoot effectively, we need to know our backs and flanks are safe. You're extra eyes and bat are huge. We need that."

Of course, I also felt like it would be great if he could learn to shoot or something more than keep his eyes open and hit things real hard with a bat, but I was too diplomatic to say so.

"I appreciate you saying that, but I've been doing some research on the net." Jake continued, "There're some werewolves in Chicago. They seem to be pretty badass. I've never had someone who already was a wolf show me the ropes. Maybe I could learn something from them?"

"You know, I went to Chicago a few years ago and wanted to talk to them. I could never set up a meeting. It might be hard to contact them, and having contacted them, gain their trust to get help and training from them." I said, thinking I was the wise old man.

"Actually, I've contacted a werewolf named Georgia. She's invited me to come for a visit." He answered sheepishly.

"Well," I said, feeling silly, "I guess we should go."

When I told Tamar about it she said, "He's a werewolf? I always suspected as much. Werewolves are the natural enemies of our people."

"Our people?" I responded, sensing there was a very important world of information I had managed to overlook up to that moment.

"Yes. Didn't you know that Werewolves have always been the enemies of the Fox People." She answered, opening a world of questions just as she headed off to an appointment so I couldn't follow up. So typically Tamar.

Then I got another surprise when I talked to Travis.

I had explained the basic idea of the trip, to which I had added the idea of a bachelor weekend out to Travis wanting him to come because it made good tactical sense for us to stay together as a group and, also, because Travis is cool. I got to the end of my pitch and asked, "So are you coming?"

"So Jake's a werewolf?" He said in the form of a question but more as a statement. Then he continued, "Werewolves are the natural enemies of my kind."

"Natural enemy?" I asked.

"How many fairy tales end with a showdown between the hunter and the wolf? Hunters were humanity's natural defense against the depredations of the wolves." He answered.

That kind of worried me.

"You're still cool with Jake though, right?" I asked a little nervously.

Travis laughed, "Don't worry, every Hunter," and you could hear the capital "H" when he said it, "needs a good hound."

That sounded positive.

"So are we good for Chicago?" I asked.

"Yeah, but I have to check with Miranda." He answered.

"Whutpish." I made the whip sound while he smiled and shook his head ruefully.

That found us in Chicago, getting ready for a meet and greet with the local werewolves, the Alphas. I'd heard good things and bad about them. I heard they hunted down supernatural threats and protected people. I also heard they were tight with DiAngelo's boss. In turn, they didn't know us from Adam. So it made sense for us to meet on Accorded Neutral Ground. We would meet, break bread, drink drinks and feel each other out and decide where to go from there. Of course, that assumed I ever found a parking place.

Travis, who was riding shotgun, after making a variety of snarky cowboy remarks like, "Why don't you conjure a spot oh mighty wizard," and "Perhaps you can use your great skills to beat a spot from steel in the forge," finally rolled down his window, put two fingers outside, brought them back to his nose, licked them, them put them back outside.

Then after a bit of consideration he said, "Turn left at the next intersection."

I followed his directions and in less than five minutes we had a great spot next to a big residential driveway under a tree. We got out and headed back to the bar. I checked my boots, they were a new pair. I was experimenting with a strip of Type 1 over the instep. I had also made these out of blue suede. I needed to see how they worked not only for weight and maneuverability, but simple fit and finish as well.

We were on the sidewalk on the east side of the street, the same side as the entrance to Mac's, walking south about half a block from the entrance. Coming from the south on the same side of the street were a loosely clothed group of young people. They had almost reached the bar. Then all hell broke loose.

Jumping down and across the road from a three story building on the west side of the street was a group of textbook Fomor. They were wearing the whole Steve Jobs look and were mostly the size of NFL players.

The five young people, badly outnumbered, immediately shifted into wolf forms and began to fight.

Travis asked, "What's our play?"

"Kill every mother's son of the bastards." I replied.

Our normal move was for Travis and I to draw. I would stand in front with my better armor and meager shielding ability, Travis would stand behind me to the right and we would select targets based on apparent size and armor. With my harder punching 10mm, I got the easy targets and Travis with his more voluminous fire and accuracy got the small. Jake would watch our backs and flanks and give us extra ears and eyes.

For about five seconds, it was a nasty situation. I shot one Fomor and Travis got two. Some of the Fomor were armed but had not yet managed to hit anything. With our support, the werewolves were holding their own.

Then Todd and Betty wandered up a side street right into the middle of the situation and I knew whoever had set this up had just overplayed their hand.

Todd and Betty had been in the RV with Ha. They were the two with talent. In the hospital, as they rehabbed, they had met, courted and when they came out, got married. I watched from a great distance.

They had a very nice ceremony with many of their friends and family, and because I could follow their accounts, I knew it was about all they could afford plus some. So I paid the bill and I also bought them a nice trip to the Caribbean for a honeymoon.

Betty came home from the honeymoon pregnant. Hey neither of them was a spring chicken anymore and if they were to have a family, they'd have to get moving. They shopped for a house since they now had some money after the wedding. They picked out a nice four bedroom/three bath place in a nice quiet suburb with good schools. After they finished picking it out, purchasing it, using their savings as a down payment and got a mortgage, they moved in. A week later, I paid off the mortgage.

I sent them a card which said, "I know some bad things happened to you recently. I know they were not your fault. I was not the one who did them to you. I do want to balance the scales a bit so that something good happens too."

I don't know why I did those things for them. I had no obligation. Admittedly, it wasn't a big deal for me. Maybe I still felt guilty for the two I had killed. I had to kill them, but their families would never have closure. I knew that must be terrible for them and I thought about it every day. Also, Todd and Betty would give birth to the next generation of humans with magical talents, a group that has been getting pressured from a lot of angles lately. By encouraging their family I was fighting the same fight I had in Omaha, just on a different battlefield. Beyond that, it just seemed like a chance to help some decent and deserving people. It's very satisfying to help people, I suggest it to everyone. It need not be big chunks of money. Volunteering at a local school or homeless shelter can be done by anyone.

That said, the situation on the street could have gone down in all sorts of ways. We hadn't coordinated our meeting with the werewolves in a specific way, we might have taken five minutes less or ten minutes more to find a spot and walk up. Presumably, the Fomor had sprung their trap upon seeing our arrival. They clearly wanted a response from us. We might have responded in all sorts of ways, but clearly, they wanted us to stay and fight. The Fomor must have engineered it so that Todd and Betty showed up right now knowing it would piss me off, to try and force my hand. Unfortunately for the Fomor, I had played chess once upon a time. Todd and Betty were a coincidence too far.

The standard play for us would be to execute a fighting retreat to the truck where we would have more weapons and a greater chance to flee if necessary.

I scanned the buildings and yelled, "Travis take cover. Jake stay with him."

Then I made my own move. I jumped across the street and landed on a ledge half-way up the second story of the three story building. Another pump and I was on the roof. There was a really big Fomor there lying face down on the roof just to my left. He was pointing a big sniper rifle and operating video gear. I think I caught him by surprise. He started whipping around the rifle toward me, but it was a sniper rifle, long, heavy and awkward. I just had to aim my pistol. I won the quick draw and the fight by, maybe, a tenth of a second. My shot caught him in the side of the neck just below where it met the side of the face and traveled diagonally through his head blowing his jaw through his skull and into the roof. He dropped like a pole-axed steer. I went to the video gear, picked up the mic and said into it, "I'm coming for you."

Then I threw down the mic, took a step back and let my magic pulse through the gear. There were many pops, cracks and some smoke. Using a bit of magic to burn out electronics is something even my meager skills can manage. I'd done it many times, more by accident than on purpose, but it was now pretty basic, second nature. Which was why I was surprised to see the power in the building across the street go out with the electronics.

I had a good view of the street and the remaining Fomor were breaking and running. I took a last shot at one as he ran down an alley, missing. I then jumped back down to the street.

I jogged across the street back to Travis and Jake. Travis was semi-kneeling behind a fold in the wall and Jake was hunkered near him with his bat.

"Let's get back to the truck." I said and began to ever so bravely lead the scampering away with the tails between the legs.

We got back to the truck, one could already hear sirens in the distance as city services responded swiftly to a major gunfight in the middle of the city. We gave the truck a once over, got in and ran. We had just parked, it would be quite a feat for someone to have messed with our truck in that time, but not impossible. We found a quiet spot a few miles away. Checked the truck again and grabbed more ammo and reloaded. I'd gone through a mag and half. Travis had nearly emptied all three of his.

I was still hungry.

I pulled out my smart phone and went to work finding someplace else for us to meet. Jake started texting to see if we could salvage the meeting. We ended up at a place called Prime America, apparently a well regarded steak place in a town of well regarded steak places. The werewolves agreed to join us as my guests. It was a bit of an effort and a c note to the Maitre D' but we were seated at a nice booth. We exchanged greetings and introductions, apparently Will, a short, solid fireplug of a guy and his tall wife Georgia were the leaders of the Chicago werewolves. They ate well, but not as heavily as Jake or I. There were five of them. Will and Georgia, a top heavy red head, a smaller mousey brown haired one and a taller, rangy guy. They all seemed very fit and solid, but none of them had Jake's mass.

Travis had his usual T-Bone, I had a huge piece of prime rib, Jake had several selections from the menu. I ended up getting another and Jake did a second round too.

The werewolves turned out to be cool young people. They were a bit guarded, but you'd have to expect that. Some beer, good meat and the cool down of adrenalin from a successful fight where we were both clearly on the same side helped.

"I know about several ways for lycanthropy to work, what you describe isn't any of them." Said Will, the apparent leader for the group after Jake had explained his version of the syndrome.

"Do you still think that what you know will help me then?" Jake asked, kind of nervous, like he had high hopes that might be getting dashed.

"You could stick around for a bit and we could show you some basics?" Will offered.

Jake turned to me and asked, "What do you think?"

I had been letting Jake take the lead in the conversation. This was his deal and his life. However, he asked so I said, "Sounds good to me. Busses, trains and airplanes go back and forth from Chicago to Omaha all the time. You could come home with us and ride your bike back to Chicago so you have your own wheels? Up to you."

I saw this situation as a kind of diplomacy. There were obvious goals on the table. If Jake could learn how to control his gift better, it would be good for him and good for us. These five Chicago werewolves had held their own and then some. It would be great if Jake could do that in a fight. At the same time, while there was some question as to the Chicago werewolves' bonafides, they clearly had a rep as some serious players. Never know when you might need help. Having a good relationship could be very useful.

"I like the idea of going home for my bike. That would give me some time to explain it to Kelly and Mike." Jake said and then turning back to Will and Georgia he asked, "Is there a place here for me to stay or do I need to find my own thing?"

Will looked at Georgia who nodded subtly, then turned to Jake and said, "Our place isn't huge, but you could use our sofa. We know some others you could use too depending on how long you stay? Of course, some babysitting would be expected."

"Babysitting!?" Jake said incredulously, then added with a tone of mock long suffering. "That must be my fate."

I knew Jake liked being Mike's big brother/dad, but he liked complaining about it too.

After that we got some basic logistics worked out. Jake would leave his travel bag here with Will and Georgia, come home on the truck and then ride back on his bike.

We broke up late and went back to the Palmer House. The guys went back to their rooms. I picked up my corporate attorney who was just finishing work in the bar.

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