CHAPTER ONE: The Quiet Before the Storm

Theresa woke up in the silence of her room, dark green eyes cataloguing the twists and turns of the tree mural painted on the wall in front of her; the green leaves were oddly bright in the darkness as they hung off black branches. Logan painted her room as a home warming present, figuring if he made the room pretty enough she'd stay and live with him. Theresa smiled faintly and sat up slowly, running her hands over her head to smooth her dark brown hair. She'd cut it short before leaving home, much to her mother's dismay, as if to prove what was already known – her hair was hers and no one else's. All she needed to do now was get a tattoo, solidifying her independence and pissing off her mother, again.

Kicking the sheets off her legs, Theresa slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom where she stared blearily into the mirror. She pulled her bangs out of her face and frowned, ruffling it before stripping off her nightclothes and stepping into the shower. The cold water shook the sleep out of her body and she quickly washed her hair, leaning down to touch her legs and making a note to shave in the next couple of days.

She didn't turn the lights on in her bedroom, instead blindly leafing through her drawers for clothes. Once dressed, she opened the door and peered down the hallway, noticing the door of her brother's room was still closed but she heard someone moving downstairs. Stepping down carefully, Theresa tiptoed into the living room where, almost immediately, a fluffy brown blur barreled into her legs.

"Morning Taiga, you been fed yet?" she asked the husky, playing with his ears as she looked into the kitchen. Hideki, her brother's husband, raised a hand in greeting before turning back to his bowl of cereal, leaning against the counter as he did so. Hideki was a tall, willowy man with dark blue eyes, and his long black hair hung over his shoulder in a loose braid.

"You're going out today?" He asked softly.

"Yeah, I'd feel weird if I didn't. Is Wolverine still sleeping?" Theresa asked and opened the fridge, pushing past a few containers before she grabbed a plate of mashed potatoes and steak from the night before. She lifted it into the microwave and walked over into the living room to wait, planting herself in the corner of the couch where she could lean her back against the arm.

"No. He's already at work." Hideki said with a yawn, stirring the contents of his breakfast around, a funny look on his face.

"Something up?"

"It's the pictures you've been collecting for him. We've been sending copies to the government for a while now and no one has gotten back to us about them." Hideki sighed and drank the milk, dumping the soggy cereal in the garbage.

He continued. "There are so many pictures…And he's been painting them all."

Both turned and stared at the small doorway tucked in between the wall and the stairs. Logan was an aspiring painter and photographer, often recreating the photos he took in various mediums; a change in colour here, added animals there, that sort of thing. Ever since Theresa came up to spend time with her brother, he had been ensnared by an entirely different project.

For about two years, Hideki and Logan had been dealing with numerous animal corpses turning up all around their cabin. Not the result of overhunting or even predators, these bodies appeared mark-less and untouched, the scavengers were drawn to the scent but were oddly uninterested in the meat. Theresa had spent a year at the cabin so far and Logan sent her on morning walks to survey as much of the land as possible, taking pictures of any bodies she encountered. What made these deaths more unsettling was the fact all the animals were found with blood coming out of the eyes, mouth, nose and ears. Theresa understood Hideki's concern completely and it wasn't as if they gotten to see these new paintings either.

"I'm sure someone will come, maybe this is happening in other places and they haven't had time yet."

"And your brother?" Hideki raised an eyebrow curiously.

"I'll have words with him later. Where's the camera?"


Theresa and Taiga spent more than a couple of hours touring the landscape, visiting areas where the deaths appeared most frequent. Theresa usually relied on the scavengers' finding new bodies but today was proving fruitless, and only a few small animals had turned up: weasels, mice and a few birds.

She decided to investigate a small copse of trees, immediately spotting a body lying on the other side as if it had just come out of the treeline and collapsed. Taiga started forward, circling the body from a distance before slowly closing in on it. The husky nudged the side of the animal and then huffed, sitting down and waiting for Theresa.

She released a quiet sigh and went to kneel on the other side of the body, ghosting her hand over its prone form. Still warm with legs stretched out as if it had been running, it was a grey wolf about Taiga's size, and it may have just recently struck out on its own to build its own pack because it was fairly well fed. Theresa shook her head and dug out her camera, snapping a couple of photos before she stood up and walked behind the wolf.

There was no wind to blow the scent of decay away from the body, the hum of the city nine hours away was non-existent. The woman found herself focusing on her own footsteps, snapping branches and crackling leaves that hissed beneath her boots. Her hand unconsciously slipped around the hilt of her hunting knife, eyes flickering between the path ahead and the ground. Taiga had his nose to ground before he took off and sat down some twenty feet away, out of the small forest and into the tall grass. Theresa ran to catch up with him and then looked at what had caught his attention: two boot prints.

To her knowledge, no one else lived this far north and Logan would've mentioned if they had any neighbours. She straightened up and looked around, drawing the knife slowly and listening to it screech against the holster. She had basic self-defence training and Hideki taught her some knife work but wondered if it would help her considering how the wolf had fared. The boot prints were too wide for a woman's, when she bent down to study the tread, bits of blood were smeared along the grass.

Theresa tried to remember if she had seen boot prints at any of the other sites but kept being distracted by someone breathing. She looked away and into Taiga's face, his hot breathe breezing over her face and he leaned forward and licked her face. Ruffling his fur, she moved to stand beside the prints and found she had a clear view of the body, but there were no footprints beyond this point so…

"Why would it run if the person never moved?" she looked at Taiga expectantly. "Smell anything funky?"

Taiga bent his nose and sniffed the prints, interested in the blood but not reacting to anything else.

"There are no wounds, so it wasn't shot…then why was it running?" She turned around and cocked her head to one side. A large circular area of grass had been flattened, she bent to feel it and found it was still warm.

"Too small for a plane, maybe a helicopter?" she mumbled and looked up. Something black was disappearing into the graying clouds.

"Let's go back, we got what we came for."


He pressed his back against a tree trunk, carefully sinking to the ground and catching his breath. He counted four broken ribs on his right side with numerous bruises battering his body. His suit had been sliced through multiple times, and the cuts stung as blood rushed down his arms. He felt the slash driven across his chest with cold fingers, the sky darkened as a crack of thunder ushered in the lightning and pouring rain.

"Do you honestly believe you can catch me, old friend? What with that storm brewing and your injuries?"

He huffed and forced himself to stand, stabbing one sword into the ground and shoving the other into the sheath on his back.

"You had to have known I survived our battle and yet you remained silent."

He took a careful step forward, controlling his breathing and trying to remain calm through the haze of emotions coursing through him.

"You nearly killed me that day, so it would be fair that I at least bring you to the brink of death myself."

A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky and he saw his opponent with something like pity in his dark eyes.

"After this, you will stop hunting me down. What use is there chasing after the dead?"