Warnings: A response to the October Halloween Challenge 2012 given at Lancer Writers. This is an odd one.
Lineage
Murdoch, born and bred a realist, was quite aware the impact Pardee had on Lancer. After all, it was part of the reason he sent for Scott and Johnny in the first place. The second part, however, was more compelling: they shared blood, Lancer was their birthright.
Wind and form combined, shifted. A gray shape moved against the outline of a tree. Pardee. Murdoch put one hand on his chest, felt his heart hammering away. It took a long time for it to slow, but he waited, ignoring the grunts and growls around him.
A little surreal, Murdoch thought. Mostly because the humming along his veins wasn't allayed in the least by the little jolt of tonic taken beforehand, and he recognized what was coming. Behind it was worry for his sons, but he couldn't—wouldn't—give in, because Murdoch knew worry like that turned into terror, would take over everything.
The grey solidified and Pardee parted his lips to show his teeth, growing longer and sharper, starburst-white in the moonlight. But Scott and John were waiting.
Clutching the stake's hilt with both hands, Scott brought it down tip-first, shoving the silver with force right into the soft spot between Pardee's ribs. Pardee gasped, his arms and legs suddenly in spasm.
A terrible howl started but died into a feeble groan as Johnny sunk his own stake, the second—and final—cut into the wolf's heart.
Murdoch watched with satisfaction as Pardee shifted out of animal form and his compañeros fled. Other distant howls ripped the night: their leader was dead.
Scott was pale and ghost-like in the starlight; Johnny's face a bloodless white. Their line of hunters stretched and twisted back to the time when the first Picti drove the Roman hordes back to Hadrian's Wall. Murdoch was more than pleased: his sons would do.
He faced the bloodied pair, expanding his lungs to take in the heavy scent of copper. Smelling the wild and the old, he closed his eyes for a moment, flicking his tongue around a needlelike incisor.
Johnny's fangs snicked back into his gums under a thin smile. "He was a fool for tryin' to take on the nest."
And Murdoch already knew that.
The End
10/12