Author's comment: This story is the sequel of The fine art of werewolfing, and it's probably best if you read that one first. That's just a suggestion, mind.
The events in this story occur simultaneously with the finale in a storytelling chronicle I ran, and the ending is directly influenced by the events of that chronicle. It is not, therefore, a Deux es Machina thing. It just looks a lot like one. Honest. ;;
---
Every now and then, people ask me what I'm always so angry about.
Now, I approve of questions. I do. I've believed in and subsequently given up on a great many things in my life, but one thing I've never doubted is the sanctity of truth, and the nobility of seeking for it. People who ask me what I'm so angry about is certainly preferable to people who just assume I'm suffering from PMS.
It's just that there's no good answer for it, see? The world is filled with six billion morons who just mill around without single coherent thought between them, famine, war, pestilence and death are prominent, and despite what reason and consideration clearly suggests, it's still illegal to gag noisy children.
The big question isn't why I'm so angry all the time. The big question is, why aren't you angry?
Mind you, I suppose I'm genetically inclined to be pissed off. I mean, I'm a werewolf. Oh, and anyone who is even thinking about making some pun revolving around the word 'bitch,' let me just say, don't. And let me further add, you're a moron.
But I am a werewolf. I've always known that I might be. See, my mother was one. I can vouch for her being inclined towards being pissed off. It's not easy, growing up with a werewolf mommy.
Oh, I'm not going to say it was all bad. My dad was a sweet-natured guy. Praised my every drawing, kissed my every bruise, played soccer with me for hours on end even though he despised sports. Most of the time, it was just me and him, my mom being off on whatever damn save-the-world quest she'd gone on this week. That was kind of okay.
But every so often, mommy dearest would come home. Had to give him a chance to knock her up again, I guess, in case the God-almighty werewolf gene didn't take in me. And when she was home, you had better be on your best behaviour. If you spoke out of turn, that was a smack on the head. If you talked back, that was a punch on the nose. If, God forbid, you showed any sign whatsoever of not hating every single aspect of civilisation, then you'd be limping for a week.
And once she had punished me, she'd do worse to my dad, for doing such a bad job at bringing me up to be a good little child of Gaia.
Did someone laugh? Think the idea of a man being beaten up by his wife is funny? Bit of payback for all those centuries of domestic violence? Well, let me tell you something, asshole. The world isn't divided into men and women. It's divided into stupid bullies who think they got a right to kick the shit out of anyone who so much as looks at them funny, and the luckless losers who they like to pound on. And when you're a kid and some hairy monster is messing up your daddy because you forgot to say 'please,' well, the funny aspect is just a bit hard to see, get me?
And she went one hell of a lot easier on me than on him. I might be a werewolf some day, after all. And even if I didn't turn out to be one, it'd be a lot easier to marrying me off if I wasn't mutilated. But all he was good for was raising me, and he could do that even if she put one of his eyes out.
And no, that was not a hypothetical example. I was thirteen. He had bought me a Frisbee which was apparently made of some more-than-usual un-environmental-friendly plastic. My mom came home and found out about it. I…
Actually, I don't think I want to talk about it.
Eventually, I left home. Went to college. Got a degree in journalism. Figured I had seen the last of old Mom. I was free from her now, right?
Wrong. See, that's the problem with parents. You've got part of them in you. Just because you hate them it doesn't mean that you haven't. You can run to the end of the world, and one day you'll look into the mirror and see them looking back at you. It's hell, but there you go.
In my case, what I discovered was that newspaper editors and similar bigwigs don't like tantrum-throwing underlings. I'd write something – they'd criticize – I'd blow my top – they'd get annoyed and, after a dozen or so repetitions of the sequence, they'd fire me. And even worse, I'd know, right before going off on some outburst, just what a terrible idea it was – and I'd still not be able to keep the words back.
Goddamn.
So farewell to any sort of meaningful journalism career that might give me a bit of respect. The only job I've managed to land in the last two years is reporter for the Watcher, which is the worst tabloid rag in known existence. They don't criticize my articles, because anyone dumb enough to buy their magazine is going to read anything.
And then I turned into a werewolf. Not a bad thing in and of itself, mind you – I'm not going to sneeze at the ability to turn into a savage monster. We all take what advantages we can get in this uncertain world. But somehow my mother found out about me becoming a werewolf, and came running to be maternal. She grabbed me and took me to some kind of half-assed training camp in the mountains. They were going to turn me into a champion of Gaia, they said.
Fuck that!
So then I got kicked out, and instead I joined up with those two bozos, Hank and Steve. About the best thing I can say about them is that the other werewolves don't like them either, so they can't be all bad. Having that said, they are a short, chatty idiot and a tall, mopey idiot, respectively. But hey, you take what you can get, and at least I figured that there was nothing dumb enough to try to order three werewolves around.
Then one day, four other werewolves knocked on our door and started ordering us around.
Why am I always so angry? Why? Because it's the only sane response to this son-of-a-bitch world I live in!
---
I share a house with Hank and Steve. A witch used to live here, but we kicked her out a few months back, and since then, we've been in residence. The house is located in the forest outside of town, which means an hour's drive to work ever morning, and I can't say I enjoy living together with Hank and Steve, but there are two major advantages. The first is that I don't have to pay rent, because the witch still owns it and she knows what will happen if we cause any trouble. The second is that the house is built on a caern, a holy site where werewolves can recharge their powers.
Not that any of us have that much power yet, but I'm fully intending to get some. After all, there are still idiots who're too big for me to tackle, and tackling idiots is one of the great pleasures in life of which one should not deprive oneself.
This particular night, the three of us were sitting in the living room couch, arguing about what program to watch. I wanted CNN, Hank wanted, oh, one horrible sitcom or another, and Steve, for some reason that eludes me, wanted a documentary about seashells. I don't have a problem against seashells, but I refuse to believe that there is enough to say about them that it can keep you occupied for two minutes, let alone an hour.
"You are both boring!" Hank announced theatrically. "No sense of fun! No sense of humour! No sense of the finer things in life!"
"I want to see the documentary…" Steve said in a tone that suggested that the world was cruelly denying him his seashells, and he fully intended to mope about it for the rest of the evening.
"No sense of excitement! No sense of entertainment!"
"I like documentaries…"
"Okay, enough!" I yelled. I resisted an urge to moan and clutch my head. It's a hard burden, being the pack's token sane person. Instead, I glared first at Hank, then at Steve, then another time at Hank because he's twice as annoying as Steve. "Steve, why don't you watch one of the other two TVs in the house?"
That's one of the benefits with having moved in with two other people. You always have at least three of everything. And Nicole the wicked witch left a lot of stuff behind, too, but mostly we try not to touch it. Just in case.
"But those are much smaller," Steve said glumly. "I'd miss all the details…"
I took a deep breath to say what I thought about that comment, which was quite a great deal and nothing very pleasant, but at the last second, I decided against it. I mean, what would the point be? Instead, I turned to my other side and attacked Hank instead.
"And you don't have to watch that moronic show in the first place," I pointed out to him, "because it's just a rerun from last week!"
"That's the best kind," Hank said in his best innocent, surely-you-understand-this-yourself voice. "It means I don't have to worry about keeping up with the plot."
There was only one way to respond to that, so I did it. I flicked him on the forehead.
To my surprise – and, judging from how howl, his own – Hank dropped out of the couch and landed on the floor.
"Hey! Ow!" he complained. "Quit that!"
"Hank, regardless of the fact that you're a tiny person," I said, "I didn't flick you hard enough to make you fall over."
"Well, I guess you made me lose my balance or something," he grumbled as he scrambled back onto the couch. "I'll forgive you if we can watch Betty now."
"Screw this." I got up. "You two morons settle it. I'll go watch one of the smaller TVs. Oh, and I hate you both."
Hank and Steve didn't seem overly concerned with that, the bastards. They went back to bickering about sitcoms versus documentaries. I, for my part, walked out of the living room, taking a long detour around the hole in the floor with the monsters in it, and…
Uhm. Yeah. I missed that part, didn't I?
Well, remember how we took this house from a witch? She's got a cave beneath the house, with all sorts of freaky mutants in it, and she tricked us into Changing – turning into monsters – while standing on more or less the same spot in the fragile, wooden floor above that cavern. The result was that we dropped through the floor and ended up down there. We had to fight our way through a shitload of mutants to get out. Since then, most of the remaining mutants had been killed and eaten by each other, Nicole not having been around to feed them anymore, but there was still three or four left, and I didn't feel like ending up on their dinner table tonight.
I suppose we could have fed them ourselves, but we weren't exactly sure what mutants liked to eat, other than people. Besides, last time we had been down there, those mutants had tried very hard to kill us all. That's not something that tends to make a person feel charitable. The only reason I could think of to do anything other than let them die as soon as possible was that they might wander out of the cave and go looking for food elsewhere, but for some reason they hadn't done that. Steve had offered the suggestion that there might be some kind of spell binding them to the cave.
That had annoyed me, actually. How come he had come up with a possible answer, primitive though it was? I'm the paranormal journalist here. I should know the supernatural world like the back of my hand. It's just that the Watcher isn't all that interested in real supernatural stuff. They're interested in things that sound supernatural, in an interesting yet non-threatening way. If I wrote an article about the Nation – about how there is a species of killer monsters, capable of disguising themselves as human and walking the streets undetected, who wants nothing more than to bring down civilisation – their comment would be 'very creative, but tone it down a little, would you? We don't want to scare our readers.'
This is not to say I haven't seen some freaky shit in my work. For instance, while my article on alligators in the sewers was completely fictional, there's some other things living down there that probably eats alive any alligator who dares to show his snout. But mostly, being a paranormal journalist is of about as much use as being a fantasy writer. And for some reason, Steve is good at thinking in terms of voodoo mumbojumbo.
When I was going up the stairs to find one of the other television sets, there was a heavy knock on the door. I considered the possibility of one of the household's lazy males leaving the couch to get it, found it to be infinitely small, and went to get the door myself.
Outside, four big, hairy men in homespun clothes glared at me.
"Move aside," the biggest and hairiest one growled. "In the name of the Nation, we're commandeering this caern."
---
Now, I'm not very good at taking orders. It's not that I always have to do things my own way, though. It's really not. I just think that if someone wants me to do something for him, the way to express that is through a polite request. That's not too much to ask, is it?
The word 'commandeer,' therefore, put me on edge quite considerably.
"Screw you," I said eloquently. "We're not with the Nation."
"Yeah, well, we are," the biggest and hairiest of the big and hairy men said. Apparently he was the spokesman around here. "And we need to use this caern for a while, so start cooperating or we'll rend you limb from limb."
If there is something that infuriates me, it's a bully. And if there is something that infuriates me even more, it's a bully who I can't beat up. Not that I wouldn't have tested my luck against this bozo, but he had three big, hairy friends backing him up, and while I'm a decent slugger, I'm not that good.
"Hank!" I yelled. "Steve!"
It's a bit humiliating for an independent woman like myself to call on the men in the house for protection. But what the hell, we were supposed to be a pack, and that meant looking out for each other in tight spots. Besides, if this guy wanted to intimidate me with his big, hairy companions, I should be allowed to respond in turn. And while Steve isn't very hairy, he's very big.
"These Nation shitheads want to 'commandeer' our caern," I said when the guys hurried up behind me. "Are we going to let them do that?"
"Uh…" Steve said.
"Er, Val," Hank said. "They're kind of rough-looking…"
"So?" I said.
"Really rough-looking, is what I'm saying…"
"So?" I said and gave him by best glare. That glare has been known to reduce three-hundred-pound guys to whimpering cowards. It's a good glare.
"Uhm," Hank said. He turned to the Nation werewolves and smiled widely at them. "Friends! Gentlemen! I'm sure we can work this out like civilised adults?"
That was the wrong thing to say, of course. The wrong thing is what Hank says most of the time. All four werewolves scowled.
"We don't like things that are civilised," one of them grumbled.
"Civilisation is a festering boil on the otherwise great ass of Gaia," another one said, but even his three friends looked weirdly at him when hearing that one, and he sank into sulking silence.
"But civilisation is a great invention!" Hank insisted. "It means, for instance, just to take an example completely at random you understand, that one does not simply commandeer something that belongs to someone else, just because one is a lot bigger and stronger and, uhm… scarier… deadlier… more lethal…"
"Yeah, that's what we hate," the leader werewolf said matter-of-factly. "People who are stronger (that's us, by the way) should have anything they want from people who are weaker (that's you, by the way). It's only fair."
"Uhm… what sort of definition of 'fair' is that?" Hank said dubiously.
"The correct one," the leader werewolf said. "Oh, would you stop bitching and whining already? The Nation's way benefits you too, you know, even though you're not with us. We're stronger than you, but you are still stronger than most everyone you'll ever meet. Just let us do our work in peace, and before you know it we'll have a world where you've got supreme power over ninety-nine percent of the population. How is that not a good offer?"
It was a good offer, in a way. But I hate bullies. I don't want to suffer them, and I don't want to be one. I just want to be able to do my thing, when I figure out just what the hell that is, in peace.
"Fuck off," I said flatly.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait," Hank said, waving his hands frantically. "What do you mean when you say 'before you know it'? See, the way you said it made it sound kind of like…"
The leader grinned mirthlessly.
"How does tomorrow sound?" he said.
---
It's not every day that you're told that the world is going to end tomorrow.
Well… obviously not.
Mind you, at least for me it's not that unfamiliar a concept. I was raised to be a good werewolf, remember? And werewolves are big on the end of the world. It's going to happen soon, they say. Within our generation. There'll be a last great battle between the servants of Gaia and the spawn of the Wyrm, and the Wyrm is going to win and finally succeed at destroying the world, which has been its foremost hobby for the last few infinities. For the longest time, the werewolves stood a chance at winning the last battle, but then humans got this strange notion that they were entitled to think, and a universe that contains such sinful concepts is of course doomed already. Oh, if only the humans hadn't abandoned the wonderful, natural way of Gaia and embraced the evil of the Wyrm. Oh, if only the beautiful, perfect werewolf species was not forced to go down in flames along with the fully deserving humans.
And blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, self-pity, self-pity, self-pity. The point is, the werewolves fully believes that the Apocalypse is coming to visit, and soon. I guess they might be right, too. While they're idiots in a lot of ways, they do know the spirit-world like their own pocket, and they've got mad omen-interpreting skills. I can't say I care very much, to be honest. Everyone has to die sooner or later, and if I die in the Apocalypse, at least I'll be going out with a bang. As for the survival of the species, having children was never part of my plans.
Of course, this end of the world wasn't the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse was the victory of the Wyrm. What they were talking about here was the victory of the Nation.
As far as I was concerned, that was damn well worse.
"You're bluffing," Hank said, but he didn't sound all too certain. "If you could take down civilisation just like that, wouldn't you have done it long before now? I mean, forgive me for saying this, but you lot aren't really the most patient people there is."
"We couldn't before today," the leader said. "And we couldn't after tonight. This is the time. This is the hour. The stars have aligned. Tonight, the Earth King rises, and the world of men ends."
"Typical," Steve sighed.
"What do you mean, the world of men ends?" Hank said. "No more central heating? No more penicillin? No more air planes? No more eating popcorn while watching sitcoms?"
"There might be popcorn," the leader allowed. "It's just roasted corn, after all. Very low-tech. But none of all that other stuff."
"But… but… but that's no life!" Hank whimpered. "We'll all die of boredom! Well, okay, we'll probably die of pneumonia and starvation and stuff before that, but if we manage to escape that, we'll die of boredom!"
"We won't," the leader said. "And you won't either, if you just practice being a wolf for a while. Wolves can live extremely well in a world without technology. Also, have you considered that for women struggling to get by in a world that suddenly doesn't pamper humans, a man who can bring home fresh meat every day will be very attractive? In fact, I daresay that you can get as many as you can manage to support."
Hank's eyes went wide.
"Great," I growled. "Congratulations, asshole. I don't know how you did it, but you managed to find this idiot's weak spot in one try."
"I'm a Shadow Lord," the leader said smugly. "It's what I do."
"Hank," I snapped, "I will neuter you if you don't snap out of it this very second!"
Hank whimpered.
"I've got a right to dream…" he said miserably. Then he pulled himself up, or at least as far up as Hank ever manages to go, which is about five foot three. "No! No, I say! I renounce your pitiful attempt to bribe me with all the willing, sexy, adoring, big-breasted women I can handle." His voice choked up somewhat. "It is wrong!" he whined desperately. "Wrong!"
"Well, the alternative is us killing the three of you," the leader said menacingly. "Either way, we have a ritual to perform, and it has to be performed here."
"Why, exactly?" I said. "There's plenty of caerns. Hell, there's a dozen just within the city limits."
"Yes, and the ritual have to be performed at each of them," the leader said. "There is tremendous power in this land. The time for the Rite of the Earth King is now, and the place is the city of Dougal. Together, the caerns form a pattern of energy that, through the rituals performed simultaneously at each one, will transform our beloved leader, Rolf Smythe, into the Earth King. He will then commence to wreak havoc all over civilisation, thereby reshaping the world into something that can resist the onslaught of the Wyrm. Questions?"
"Rolf Smythe…" Steve mumbled. "Nicole mentioned him, too…"
"He's the supreme chieftain of the mighty Nation," the leader said. "He's going to save the world, restore us to our rightful place, and generally clean up this mess we're in."
"Not on my watch he's not!" I growled. "I'm hereby saving the world from being saved by him! You three bastards aren't going to get your ritual done! And that sort of breaks up your neat little pattern, doesn't it?"
The leader shrugged.
"Maybe, maybe not, but that's all academic, since there's nothing you can do to stop us. Get them, boys."
Two of the big, hairy men stepped forward, and Changed. Which is to put in one word a very grotesque and overwhelming transformation, beginning at 'ordinary human' and ending up at 'horrible, nine-foot-tall, furry killing machine.' My mom used to do that, a lot. There's no point with being able to transform into a shape custom-made to hurt people if you're going to beat up your husband and daughter in your normal, everyday shape, I guess. I used to burst into tears from fear the moment she Changed, without her having to lay a finger on me.
But that was then, and this was now, and I'm a werewolf myself now. So I flicked whatever screwed-up little switch there is inside of me that lets me Change, and I went through that moment of utter agony when your muscles swell up and your nerves are stretched, and I came out of it nine feet tall, drooling and snarling with jaws that could rip the legs off of a rhino.
Steve and Hank had Changed when I did. I guess they figured a fight was inevitable now. As far as I was concerned, a fight had been inevitable the moment these Nation jerks decided to mess with me. I guess we just have different outlooks.
The two Nation werewolves forced their way through the door, growling. It wasn't until then that I noticed their claws. Now, my claws are pretty impressive, when I'm in my monster-form, but these guys didn't have any kind of normal claws. One of them had some kind of twisted, bony spikes, dripping with some thick, black liquid, probably very unhealthy to get in your wounds, and the other one… his claws gleaming silvery in the light of Nicole's tasteful lamps.
Silver. Silver is bad for werewolves. Even touching it burns. And if we get injured by it, the injuries never heal up properly. The silver claws were probably more dangerous to someone like me than the oozing ones.
Any werewolf's most important power is the Change, and we all have that. But as we get better at the whole werewolfing deal, we learn some additional little tricks, which aren't as powerful as the Change, but still give us a nice little edge. Or so I had it explained to me, at the werewolf boot camp. From the looks of it, it was true.
Well, crap.
I aimed a slash of my own, non-special paws at Silver Claws as he came through the door, but he ducked and counter-attacked. I had to retreat, halfway out of balance, and he and Poison Claws stepped into the house.
"Up the stairs!" I growled. The words came out muffled through my werewolf snout, but Hank's and Steve's werewolf ears understood them perfectly. Don't ask me how that works, it just does.
The guys didn't need any encouragement to run like cowards, chickens that they are. They were on the top floor in no time, while I retreated backwards up the stairs, trying to get them the time to regroup – which, surely, it wasn't too much to ask that they would think to do on their own? Silver Claws followed me, and it was all I could do to dodge those talons of his. The only bright spot was that Poison Claws couldn't attack me at the same time; the stairway was too narrow for that.
Then I got in a hit. Just a small one, no more than a scratch on Silver Claws' wrist – and just like that, he fell, tumbling down the stairs and bringing Poison Claws with him in the fall. I suppose I should have pounced while I had the advantage, but there were four werewolves down there, and all of them had more combat know-how than I. I fled up the stairs while I had the chance.
I dived into Nicole's ex-bedroom, where the guys were already waiting. I growled an order, and wonder beyond wonder, they actually didn't argue for once. Instead, they helped me push a big, heavy cabinet in front of the door.
I could hear the Nation boys arriving outside the door – you have excellent hearing, in werewolf form – and I expected them to try, and probably succeed, to break through the makeshift barricade. They didn't, though. I guess they figured that they had us out of the way, so it was pointless to go through any more trouble. They had the damn caern to themselves now, didn't they? There was nothing standing in the way of their damn Rite of the bleeding Earth King…
"Well, this kind of sucks," Hank said, echoing my opinion exactly. "They're out there destroying civilisation, and we're in here, with no way to stop them." He paused. "Though I suppose that means I might get those willing, sexy…"
I glared at him. Men! Okay, I realised that it wasn't just horniness. Hank really loves women. He loves everything about us, up to and including the tendency towards shopping sprees. But he just doesn't have any luck with the ladies. Being short and homely might have something to do with that; being an insufferable smartass might have a great deal more to do with it. I guess that that must bum him out. A world where he was terrific boyfriend material must be very appealing to him.
I could sympathise, kind of, since I've got some trouble of my own in that department – men get intimidated by me, the pussies – but the end of the world wouldn't really do me any good. Sure, I'd get all the men I wanted, probably, but without birth control, I would have to choose between pregnancy and celibacy. Not much of a choice, that, as far as I'm concerned. The best argument I can think of against the Nation's theory that there is an all-powerful female principle ruling the universe is that no female principle worth her tits would institute a world order where men were the only ones who could enjoy a healthy sex life without swelling up like balloons.
"Focus on the sitcoms," I said. "There'll be no more of those. Ever."
"Sitcoms, sitcoms," Hank sighed obediently.
"There has to be something we can do!" I growled – and when you growl in battle-form, it's a big growl. Irritably, I swatted one of the posters on Nicole's bed, breaking it off hardly without noticing it. "There's just two of them outside of here! There's three of us!"
"Yeah, but they're much better at this than we," Steve said gloomily. "If we try anything, they'll kill us, easy."
"What if it was two against one?" I said. "Or three against one, if you can just keep one of them busy until I can finish up with the one I'm taking on?"
"Val, sweetie," Hank said, "I think you should sit down for a while, you know? Because from where I'm standing, it sounds an awful lot like you're saying you could take on one of the Nation's finest on your own. And despite the fact that you're kind of bossy and mean-spirited and you have this tendency to leave your toenail clippings all over the bathroom floor, I really don't want to see you ripped to pieces. Now then I have to watch, anyway. I've got a sensitive stomach."
"Shut up, idiot," I said. "Here's my plan…"
---
Nicole, being one of those bitches who spend an hour every morning getting her makeup just right, had a big mirror in her bedroom. That was good for us; mirrors mean more for werewolves than just a chance to admire yourself. Now, the three of us were standing in front of it, staring intently at our reflections and concentrating.
"I don't think it's working," Steve said.
"Shut up," I said.
"I think she must have warded the mirror against werewolves or something," Steve said.
"Shut up," I said.
"Why are we doing this again?" Hank said.
"Because if we just burst out of the door," I said, as patiently as I could, "they'll be able to pen us in. I need space to move around, so we'll have to turn up behind them. All right?"
"We're all going to die," Steve said with a certain amount of gloomy satisfaction.
"Shut up!" Hank and I said together.
I stared into the mirror. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the shaggiest monster of all… Lewis Carroll would have been surprised, I suppose, to find out that he had been right about one thing. Mirrors – all reflective surfaces – are about more than just light bouncing back. The world of the reflection is as real as this one. More real, perhaps. On the other side of the mirror, there's the Umbra, the shadowland, the dreamtime, a place with a thousand names and a thousand facets, and the second home to all werewolves.
Being shape-shifting monsters is just one half of what we're all about, you see. We're also shamans – intermediaries between humans and spirits. Or that's what my mother told me, and what the Nation told me again at that boot camp place. I think it seems a lot like the Nation has declared war against humanity on behalf of the spirits, so I guess they've given up on the whole diplomatic seeing-both-sides-of-the-issue thing, but that's beside the point. The point is that when we need to, we can look into the eyes of our reflections, and, after a while, find that we are those reflections and we're looking out of the mirror and into the material world.
Sounds easy. Isn't. At least, it's never been for me. And Hank is about as bad at it as I am. Steve, for all his moaning and groaning, is actually pretty good at it. What did I tell you about him and mumbojumbo voodoo stuff?
When the shift came, it was so sudden that it startled me. From one second to the other, I went from standing in Nicole's bedroom looking at my reflection in the mirror, to standing in something that only resembled Nicole's bedroom and looking at a mirror that had nothing in it.
It wasn't the nicest place in the world. The overall features were the same; bed, mirror, cabinet in front of the door. But this had been a witch's home, and the Umbra is nothing if not impressionable. Big, black spiders scuttled over the walls, slimy fluid was leaking out of the corners, swirling and pulsing like it had a life of its own, and the air smelled of open graves and festering wounds.
"Oh, man." Hank clutched his snout. "Gross."
"Oh, get over it, you big baby," I said. "Help me lift the cabinet out of the way."
He did, and I opened the door.
Poison Claws stood outside, arms crossed and smirking nastily.
"We do this for a living, you know," he said. "Grant us the rudimentary intelligence of remembering that you can move in two worlds."
"What do you want, a pat on the back?" I stepped forward, claws extended. "Here's something to try your rudimentary intelligence on. How do you think you'll do against all three of us at once? Get him!"
I pounced, biting and clawing. Somehow, he managed to get his bulk out of the way in time, and before I could catch my balance, those venom-dripping claws went out and burrowed themselves into my side. I gave off a howl of pain and struck his arm aside, but the wound burned like he had dripped acid into it.
It's okay, I told myself. It's okay. I'm a young, healthy werewolf. My body can process the poison. It can! Forget it and get on with the task at hand.
Hank and Steve were attacking Poison Claws now, and for all that he was more powerful than either one of them, he was having trouble dodging two snapping jaws and four sets of slashing claws. I made full use of his distraction by jumping him again, and this time he didn't manage to escape. I pinned him down beneath me, biting and clawing. Steve took a mouthful of leg and started tearing, and Hank dug his claws into Poison Claws' side.
Poison Claws did the only sensible thing; he flicked back to the material world. I followed, riding his spiritual slipstream. I could sense more than see the guys right next to me, and I felt a bit of weary relief that they weren't that big a pair of morons.
We arrived in the material version of the corridor on top of the stairs, with a surprised Silver Claws staring down on the heap of our bodies. He reacted fast. I, who had known what to expect, reacted faster. I threw myself up and at him, striking his paws aside and tried to bite at his throat.
But Silver Claws really was a much better fighter than me, and he met my attack by slamming his head forward, slamming me over the forehead so I saw stars. As I staggered back he followed up with a whirlwind of slashing claws. I retreated, disappearing down the stairs in a series of backwards leaps. My side ached like hell, and my head was spinning. But this was the plan.
Silver Claws lagged a bit as I came down into the foyer, taking each step slowly and deliberately, watching me intently.
"The wolf is stronger in you than in the other two," he said. "Much stronger. Tell me, are you an…" He said a word I didn't recognise, sounding like a howl.
"What the fuck's that?" I said, backing away towards the living room. I could hear drumbeats and a chanting voice.
"Were you born beneath a full moon?"
My father had given me a gold locket, once, with the time and date of my birth engraved on it, along with a nearly-full moon. Some kind of momentum to my first-ever achievement, I suppose.
"A few days from it," he said, inching my way through the living room door. "What do you care?"
"Close enough." He grinned. "Not just a werewolf, then. A werewolf warrior. No wonder you fight better than your packmates. You could reach great heights within the Nation, I think."
"Yeah, as long as I let you tell me when and how to reach them," I growled. "Screw that."
"Is that really so bad?" He advanced, slowly, carefully. Maybe I really had impressed him enough to make him wary. "We're the ultimate meritocracy. Fight well, fight bravely – as I have already seen that you can do – and you will rise through the ranks quickly enough. One day, you will be the one giving the orders."
"As long as I don't give any orders that contradict that goddamn idiotic philosophy of yours," I said. "As long as I still do all the moronic stuff that your fucking Litany says I have to do. I can do anything I want, as long as I don't want anything that didn't exist ten thousand years ago!"
We were inside the living room now. The leader werewolf and his remaining flunky were sitting on the floor over at one end, inside a circle of weird-looking talismans they had laid out. The flunky was pounding rhythmically on a drum, while the leader chanted in the werewolf language, which sounds mostly like a series of howls and growls.
"You're resisting," Silver Claws said. "Putting up a fight. That's good. That's in your nature. But you can't fight the whole world. You'd be surprised how good it feels to give in to something. To accept who you are and what you're here to do, and to embrace the purpose and the companionship that comes from being one with your own kind."
I backed a few more steps. There; I had him standing right next to the hole in the floor. Now for trying my theory. If it failed, the only thing I could think of was to throw myself at the two werewolves who were doing the ritual, and try to do as much damage to their ritual gadgets as I could before Silver Claws killed me. Maybe that would work. Maybe.
"I'll give in," I snarled. "I'll give in to the first thing I see that I actually like. But your precious Nation isn't it. That much I'm damn sure of."
I struck out with my paw. Silver Claws parried, knocking my wrist away.
There was a faint shiver of pain up my arm, like electricity – and then Silver Claws fell to the floor, his legs folding beneath him. I shoved out with both hands, palms flat, pushing him just a little bit to the left.
Making him fall down the hole. His claws scrambled wildly for support, but the boards he managed to catch crumbled under his weight, and he fell.
"You bitch!" he roared from down in the cave. "Just wait until I… What? What're those things? Keep away from me! AAAAAAARRRGGGHHH!"
There was a series of yells and screams from the hole, some of them from Silver Claws, others from the hungry mutants down there. When the screams ebbed out, I looked down the hole, my werewolf eyes seeing perfectly in the gloom. From the looks of it, our three or four mutants had in the space of less than a minute become a single mutant… but that was a very full and happy mutant indeed.
A sound as from a minor avalanche heralded Hank and Steve coming down the stairs.
"We got him!" Hank gasped. "He put up one heck of a fight, but we got him! Mua haha! In your face, Nation! Try to deprive me of my sitcoms, would you?"
"I think I'm poisoned…" Steve said glumly.
I was feeling my own venom-infested wound, but there was no time for that now. Two bad guys down. Two more to go – but those two were the spell-casters, and the other two had been the real muscle. I liked those odds. In fact, despite the agony of my injured side, I was feeling remarkably good.
This is what I was born to do. Old Silver Claws was right, I guess. I'm a warrior. I'm just not their warrior.
I took a step towards the ritual circle. Then, all of a sudden, the leader's chant rose to a crescendo, ending in a triumphant howl. The drumbeat climaxed… and stopped.
"Too late, traitors!" the leader screamed jubilantly. "Too late! The ritual is finished! The Earth King treads the world!"
---
"So that's it?" I said. I couldn't believe it. After all this fighting, after we had tried so hard, the world had still ended. It just hadn't realised it yet. "This is the end? No more electricity? No more phones? No more hospitals? Just wilderness and campfires and superstition, for ever and ever?"
"Yes!" the leader cheered. "Oh, yes! I can feel him in my head! He fills me with song!"
"You pathetic, inbred, redneck piece of shit!" I snarled. I was close to tears from impotent rage, I don't mind telling you. "You'll pay for this! You'll all pay! I'll stalk around your camps and eat your children when they wander off too far!"
"Of course you will," the leader said, smirking. "And we'll track you down and kill you. Killing evil freaks is what we do, after all. You'll just be a bit of cleanup work, that's all."
"This kind of sucks…" Hank said.
I gave him an annoyed glance.
"What are you moping about? You'll probably get those big-breasted women now, you know."
"Yeah… maybe…" He looked so miserable that I actually felt a little sorry for him. "But they still won't like me, will they? In fact, they'll like me even less than before, because I'll be one of those scary, hairy things that destroyed their society. They'll just pretend they like me, so they can stay on the good side of the scary, hairy, society-destroying thing."
"I guess so," I said. He nodded silently.
"Can we go get my daughter?" Steve said humbly. "I think there's going to be a lot of dead people tonight. I don't want her to be one of them."
I sighed and nodded.
"Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Come on. Let's make use of the combustible engine before the Nation passes a world-wide law against them."
We headed for the door. Behind us, the leader werewolf broke out in a mocking, triumphant laugh.
And then, suddenly, stopped.
"No," he said. "No. No, no, no, no. Noooooooo!" He sank to his knees, big tears rolling down his furry face. "Oh, please, Gaia, no…"
"What?" I said. "Feeling remorse for ending the world? Bit late for that now."
The leader didn't answer. He just sobbed and pounded his head against the floor. It's a strange and unusual sight to see a half- ton monster sobbing and pounding its head against the floor.
"The Earth King," the flunky said. "He's… he's dead! I felt him die!"
There was a moment of silence after that. Even Hank, the master of the annoying babble, needed a moment to shift gears after a revelation like that. In fact, it was I who managed to break the silence first.
"What do you mean, dead?" I said. "Just like that? Wasn't he supposed to be some kind of hyped-up super-bastard? Trampling the cities of the world beneath his clawed paws, that sort of thing?"
"Yes," the flunky said. He stared wildly at me. "But someone killed him. That's not possible, he's supposed to be unkillable, but…"
I tightened my fists.
"Listen, if this is some kind of sick joke…"
"Do you think we'd joke about something like this?" the flunky yelped. "The Earth King is dead! The world is doomed! Doomed!"
"The world is saved! Saved!" Hank cheered. He jumped up in the air and punched the ceiling. It cracked; Hank is a tiny person in human form, but in werewolf form he's a tiny monster, and that's still pretty damn big. "Boom chakalakalaka boom chakalakalaka up your ass!"
I gave him a flat stare.
"Are you done?"
"Ma'am, yes ma'am!" he said, saluting.
"You don't understand," the flunky whimpered. "He was our saviour! He was going to save us all from the Wyrm! The world is going to end…"
"If the world needs shitheads like you to defend it, it deserves to end," I said. I look at Hank and Steve. "How about this? The one who kills the cry-baby gets to make the TV calls for a week."
We charged. The Nation werewolves were so demoralized that they barely put up a fight. That took a bit of the fun out of it. But just a little bit.