Concerned about who might've carried out the unauthorized execution of the Wolves, Rick, Daryl, Michonne and Abe meet in secret to discuss the possibilities; while Carol works with Dr. Yang on analyzing the remains for clues and a surprising truth or two are revealed.

Note: A harpy is a mythological monster depicted as a sharp clawed bird of prey with a woman's face. They steal or befoul the food of their victims while they are eating and carry evildoers (especially those who have killed their family) to Tartarus, the place of punishment in the ancient Greek Underworld.

The Harpy

Wherefore, the wolf-pack having gorged upon the lamb, their prey,

With siren smile and serpent guile I make the wolf-pack pay -

With velvet paws and flensing claws, a tigress roused to slay.
-Robert William Service

''We have to consider her, you know that." Rick said, running a tired hand through his hair, looking over at his best friend with weary apology.

"Fuck you." Daryl growled. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"She's killed before." Rick said stubbornly.

The small subset of Team Family meeting here in the basement of the Armory included none of the original Alexandria residents. What they had to discuss included information unknown to Deanna and the others and they wanted to keep it that way for now.

It was just before lunch time, the day after the Wolves had been taken out. They'd given the excuse that they needed to check and made sure nothing in the weapon stores had been taken. Carol had gone with Dr. Yang to help process the samples and to keep an eye on her and Rick used the opportunity to add her to the list of suspects.

"We're all killers." Michonne said from her standing position across the room next to Abe, both of them leaning against the wall, her eyes sad, but mouth set in a determined line. "We've done what we had to—to stay alive."

"It's what we did ...back at the church..." Abe said from his place next to Michonne, his moustache drooping low in remembrance.

"For what they were, what they did to Bob—you didn't kill a helpless person in their sick bed." Rick murmured.

"This is bullshit." Daryl glared at him and shook his head. He thought they were all past this long ago. Tyreese had forgiven Carol for what had happened back at the prison; she had saved them at Terminus, why was Rick dragging it up again? Why had Maggie alluded to it in Council?

"You think she did it?" Michonne asked Rick bluntly.

"I think she's capable of doing it." Rick said, looking at Daryl, adding with weary understanding. "To protect us—protect the family."

"It wasn't Carol." Daryl said and then made a harsh dismissive noise, shifting back in his chair. His tense body language reflected that he grudgingly acknowledged the possibility of what Rick said, but also the belief that she was different now; that what had happened between them, the way they were with one another now meant that she wouldn't have done this without telling him.

"You got proof?" Abraham asked, "Or is that just your dick talkin'?"

Daryl's head swiveled to the ex-Army man, left eye twitching and right hand drifting to the keeper strap of his big knife, almost absently unsnapping it and re-snapping it as he spoke.

"Carol was in the same Council meeting as the rest of us all day." Daryl said, and they all knew that underneath his deceptively calm tone was tightly controlled anger. Next he looked over at Michonne, aiming his biting list of further evidence at her, "After the meetin' Carol was in bed with a migraine and then there with me until the Code Red."

He didn't tell them that they'd argued over the boy and she'd been about to move out.

Daryl looked at all of them one at a time, his eyes travelling the circuit of the room, daring them to contradict him.

"Never thought this was a one person operation." Abe shrugged, cocking his head to the side as he stared at Daryl. "Whoever did it had help—can't exactly see someone like Carol dragging my heavy ass n' Eugene's outa there by herself."

Daryl's hand closed over the hilt of his knife.

"Now wait a goddam minute! If you're saying Daryl had anything to do with—" Rick said angrily, jumping up and getting in Abe's face.

"Maybe that leg ain't as bad off as he's been makin' out..." Abe drawled, looking around Rick to focus on Daryl who bristled even further.

"What about Sasha?" Michonne asked, getting between the two and pushing Rick back, bringing up another suspect. "They murdered Father Gabriel right in front of her."

There was silence as they all considered that. Sasha had just started to find some peace, climbing her way out of her depression over her losses and a big part of that had been her friendship with the priest and the renewal of her faith. But was that enough to stop her from reacting to loss as she'd done before? All of them but Daryl had seen her bloody fury at the church, extracting her revenge for Bob.

"Does anyone know where she was that day?" Rick asked.

"Perimeter reconnaissance outside the wall all day...alone. No one remembers what time she came back in." Abe said. They didn't really keep track of the comings and goings of their own people through the gates.

"We'll have to question her...and the others who had motive." Rick said in a resigned tone.

"Who here doesn't have motive? After what they did? Attacking us? Knowing the other shit they've done?" Daryl scoffed and they all thought about what they had seen in Erin's testimony.

"What about Yang?" Abe asked. "That was some freaky shit she did to the bodies."

Daryl had shared what Carol and he had seen after the postmortems on the Wolves; what particular part of their anatomy she had excised.

"She has more reason than most to want them dead." Michonne said. "The kinds of sexual sadism she says she saw...who knows what they did to her while she was with them... the mutilations? It could be a revenge thing. I get that."

"Or some killers take trophies..." Rick said uneasily. They really knew nothing about the woman except what she had told them. She seemed to have medical skills, but what better way to gain access to potential victims than under the guise of helping them?

"Carol said there might be some medical reason she did it—gonna ask her about it when she sees an opening today." Daryl said.

"Rick?" Glenn's voice came from the top of the stairs.

"Come on down." Rick called.

Glenn and Maggie quickly trooped down the stairs, anxious looks on both of their faces.

"We finished the door to doors." Maggie said, and then added reluctantly, "And there is someone missing." she looked at Glenn and then took his hand supportively.

"Glenn? Who is it?" Rick asked.

"Nicholas." Glenn said with a sad wincing frown.

They all knew that the two men had a troubled past from the time they'd met. As Aidan's right hand man, he and Glenn had come into conflict while out on a training run, when the two men's actions had endangered Tara. Then his cowardice had caused Noah's death, leading directly to the confrontation between him and Glenn outside the walls when Nicholas had wounded and tried to kill him.

After Glenn had shown him mercy, he was placed on a sort of probation, working for Tobin in the gardens and on lock-down in his supervisor's home at night. After Tobin's death in the Wolves' attack, things had gotten out of routine and work shifts disrupted.

"Tobin's sister said she hasn't seen him since yesterday morning." Maggie said. "He was supposed to be heading to the gardens to see how much damage was done there, but didn't come back. She was going to report it, but the fire happened..."

"So either he hopped the fence—" Michonne said.

"Or he's the eighteenth man." Daryl finished.

"But why kill Nicholas?" Maggie asked.

"Maybe he saw whoever did it and tried to stop them?"Glenn asked, hoping that the man he'd spared had gone out trying to do good.

The rest of the group looked at him skeptically. Bravery was not typically Nicholas' strong suit.

"Well, right now he's our only missing resident." Rick said, "So we proceed on the assumption that he ran afoul of whoever took out the rest." He looked around the room and then focused on Daryl, hoping for his sake that neither he nor Carol had anything to do with this whole incident. Whoever had taken out the Wolves had solved a big problem for the community, but in the process sowed mistrust in places they could ill afford it.

"At least we know how the drug was administered now." Carol said, shaking the jar and watching the liquid in it turn purple. They had tested the stomach contents of the dead Wolves and all but one showed the same reaction. The last meal they'd eaten had been laced with what had rendered them unconscious.

"It's a start." Erin allowed.

"Anything else we need to test?" Carol asked, raising an eyebrow. "The box of penises, perhaps?"

"Oh, you noticed them, did you?" Yang asked, seemingly untroubled by Carol's discovery of her unusual dissections.

"I did." Carol nodded. "What I don't know is why."

"Because I promised them I would." Erin said with cold forceful sincerity. "Every time they forced themselves on one of the captives, every time I had to use precious antibiotics on their syphilitic dicks instead of on the wounded, every time they rubbed up against me or exposed themselves when I was trying to do my work, I promised the bastards that I would cut them off."

"And you keep your promises..." Carol said, impressed with the other woman's vehemence.

"Fuckin' A." Yang replied, snapping off her vinyl gloves and pulling off her protective gown.

"But Davidson protected you." Carol said. "You said they never touched you; on his orders."

"If you're implying that would've given me reason to spare him—if I was the one who killed the rest of them—you couldn't be more wrong. There's no one who deserves mercy less than that animal." Yang went over to the small table in the kitchen space and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe sitting on the top.

Carol removed her gloves and gown as well, moving to join the doctor at the table.

"Can't believe you people still have coffee." Yang shook her head, "It's rarer than gold—no, platinum—out there. People are using it as currency and you blithely give it out as rations to anyone who asks."

"Almost out of chocolate though." Carol said, picking up and holding out the Tupperware container of cookies she'd brought with her this morning, offering one to Erin.

They'd actually been made by Sam and Daryl while they waited for word on the fire last night, a way to keep the both of them busy and not give in to the need to go check on Carol. Sam had tried to make them into 'cookie guys' but they came out as rather amorphous blobby turtle looking things.

"Well then, I suppose the motto of the day is carpe cookie!" Yang shook her head again as she took a cookie and bit into it with gusto.

"Before this, where my group was before, where we tried to make a life behind fences, there was a man who called himself the Governor." Carol said, sitting down at the table and pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"They always do that, don't they? The lunatics. Call themselves the great Grand Wizard or Der Fuhrer or the Master or some such self stroking title."

"We thought we defeated him—chased him off; he killed most of his own people before he took off. We took in the few survivors." Carol explained.

"That's...that's awful." Erin said sincerely. "But you did what you could..."

"We had chances, early on, to take him out, one on one, but the people, the individuals who had the chances couldn't carry through." Carol said, her voice tight with suppressed fury. "They let him live thinking we could work things out to make him back off."

"But he didn't." Erin said, setting down her cup with a soft clunk on the surface of the table.

"A little less than a year later he came back and destroyed our home and killed most of us as well." Carol said, the steadiness in her voice wavering as she thought of everyone they'd lost.

"Shit." Erin said.

"I told Andrea, one of us who got lost for awhile and ended up with him, that she should give him the best night of his life and then when he was asleep, end him." Carol remembered, sighing deeply, lost in the memory of preparing Andrea's battered bloody corpse for burial.

"Carol?" Yang prompted after a minute of silence.

"He tortured her and let a walker tear her apart." Carol said in a clipped voice, taking a long drink of her coffee and then picking up a cookie. "I don't believe in mercy any more either, Dr. Yang." she added coldly and then dunked the cookie head first, took it out, bit its head off and chewed the bite slowly.

"I wish I had killed them, the Wolves, but I didn't." Yang said, looking at Carol with careful new found admiration and perhaps speculation.

"Neither did I." Carol tilted her head and then nodded, silently drinking down the rest of her coffee and finishing her cookie.

"Then I suppose we should get back to work to see if we can figure out who did." the doctor said, finishing her cup as well.

"We had to. He was going to let them out!" the hushed female voice said.

"I know, but he was one of us." the second voice, male, argued in an angry whisper. "We should've let him live so the Council could—"

"So they could do what?" a first voice, asked sarcastically, her voice rising. "He shot Glenn—Noah's dead because of him too and all they did was make him a gardener!"

"And what do you think they'll do to us if they find out what we did?" the second voice asked, sounding worried.

"They should throw us a fucking party is what they should do." the first voice said. "We solved their problem while they sat around talking in circles."

"They never should've listened to Morgan in the first place—capturing your enemies only makes them more dangerous." a third voice, male, said with resignation. "He used to know that..."

"We need to finish it." the first voice said. "The leader has to go down."

"They'll have him under even tighter security now." the third voice disagreed.

"My first plan worked, right?" the first voice said. "Trust me; we can do this."

A knock on the door stopped any response the others were going to make.

"What?" the second voice asked in loud impatience, pulling open the door.

"Aren't you done with that stupid RPG yet? I want to play something—I'm bored!" Sam said, looking into the bedroom where Enid and Carl sat on front of the flat screen TV hooked up to a game console, images from World of Warcraft on the screen.

"I thought you were reading to Judith." Ron, who had opened the door, said with forced patience, putting his hand on Sam's thin shoulder to keep him out of the room.

"She went asleep in her pen." Sam pouted, "Babies are boring when they're asleep."

"You can't leave her alone down there, Sam!" Enid said urgently. "It's your job to watch over her—protect her from any of the bad things that could happen."

Sam started to look worried and looked over to Carl for confirmation of what Enid was saying.

"You're kind of her big brother now too, Samwise." Carl told him. "Better get back down there now."

Sam looked longingly at the game console, wavering, desire fighting with responsibility.

"Think how proud Miss Carol will be when she comes home and sees you taking such good care of Judy." Enid said persuasively.

Sam's eyes got rounder as he considered this.

"Okay..." he finally said, putting his hands on his hips,"...but after she gets home it's my turn to play. You guys shouldn't be the only ones to get to kill the bad guys!"

After he had left the room and was safely down the stairs Enid stood up and walked over to stand in front of Ron, pushing the door closed before she spoke.

"The Lupus Dei is the leader of the monsters whose responsible for the death of your and Sam's mom, Ron." Enid said. "He needs to die. Are you in?"

Ron looked over at Carl questioningly.

"They tried to kill us." Carl said. "You do what you have to do to make the people who hurt you pay." he remembered saying almost the same words to Father Gabriel, another person they'd lost to the Wolves.

"This is how we protect everyone else, Ron." Enid said, reiterating what Carl had said.

"All right... I'm in." Ron said.

Enid nodded, smiling a siren smile.

So our Miss Enid is the Harpy.

Trivia: In the video game "World of Warcraft" there are, in fact, harpies. Harpy

In the comics, what Erin did to the Wolves is what Michonne did to the Governor, except he was still alive at the time.