Chapter Fifteen: The Werewolf Underground
"Do you have all your stuff?" Marit's parents called to her, though she could barely hear them through the din of the airport. "Yes!" She yelled back to them, answering that same question for the sixth time in several minutes. She hurried through the airport terminal and into the plane. She quickly found her seat, and waited to arrive in Canada, and from there quickly travel to the Werewolf Underground.
Her parents could easily afford to send her on trips like this. Her dad worked for the ministry in a high-paying job, and could have bought a yacht out of pocket money. Marit snickered as she thought of that particular phrase Emily had coined. Then she remembered that she would never hear Emily's voice again.
She sighed. Marit still blamed herself somewhat for her friends' deaths. They had been trying to get out of the castle, and had died for it. If only she hadn't been bitten, she could enjoy a normal life. That brought to mind some things a famous werewolf had told her during one of her stays at the werewolf underground.
'Don't think back to the bite. There's nothing you can do about it, so it's best to just forget it.' Had been one. Another, not directly concerning her bite, was also brought to mind. 'It's rare to find friends who will accept you for who you are, and not just dismiss you as a werewolf. If you ever find friends like this, hold onto them, because they don't come along often.'
She hadn't done a good job at holding on to these friends. A flash of anger welled up in her at Seth, but quickly dissipated. It wasn't his fault, after all, but this reborn witch. Hope had told her that the witches' rebirth had instigated the vampire's coming. Marit vowed to do anything she could to defeat this witch.
'That's good,' Hope told her, 'Madison could use the help.' Marit was a bit startled. This was the first time Hope had talked with her in a while. 'I can sense strong surges of emotion concerning me,' Hope told her. Marit asked, 'Can you read my mind?' Hope seemed to chuckle. 'Only surface thoughts,' Hope told her.
'Could you explain the bit about Madison needing help?' Marit asked. 'Certainly,' Hope replied. 'He has decided to become as powerful a wizard as he can, and that he will destroy as much of this cult as he can.' Marit raised an eyebrow at this. 'Why not the whole thing?'
Hope chuckled at this as well. 'Besides having a large dose of realism, he has a Seer for a sister.' Marit paused, as if expecting Hope to continue, but finally got impatient. 'Please continue.' Hope sounded a bit startled. 'Of course.'
'Just recently a prophecy was made, now stored in the ministry, by Madison's sister, actually, saying that Madison would not kill the leader of this group, but would die by the leaders' hand in exactly twenty years.' Marit's mouth dropped open. This sent a whirling of thoughts through her head.
The first thing that came was a tad bit humorous, though Marit felt a bit ashamed of finding it so. The thought that Angelique would be a bit upset was quite a large understatement. She would be devastated, and other than that Marit would not want to guess at what the distressed witch would do. Marit hoped she would be loyal to Madison. It sounded like the young wizard would be needing some emotional support over the last twenty years of his life. If he still had emotions.
'AHHHH!' Hope yelled in her mind, obviously in some kind of pain. 'Hope? Are you okay?' Marit asked, a bit worried that Hope was pulling a joke on her. Hope was, after all, Seth's spirit, and not at all above such things. 'I'm getting tugged somewhere…' Hope gave another grunt of pain. 'I can't resist anymore… If I don't come back, tell Chanteau that I love her…' Marit nodded, a tear falling down her check.
Hope said nothing for the remainder of the trip, and Marit assumed that he was gone for good. It took most of the trip to compose herself, what with Hope getting torn away and finding out that Madison would only live to be thirty-three. This brought her to thoughts of her own survival.
Would she survive the upcoming war? Would she be able to pull through when Madison, a far more powerful and determined mage than her, could not? The voice of the wolf in the back of her mind said, 'Werewolves always pull through.' Marit smiled at this, but the smile faded when the implications of this came to her.
True, she might survive to see the end of the war, but did she want to? What if no one else she knew survived the war? Would she want to keep living? She didn't know the answers to all these questions, and resolved to ask these questions to herself daily. Maybe she would find the answers.
When she stepped out of the airport, she saw something she didn't expect. A wizard, she knew, disguised in muggle clothing, was hustling a small child into a run-down looking car. Marit barked out a short message in the sub-sonic language of the werewolves. The boy didn't reply, but by the way his ears perked up and momentarily stopped struggling, Marit knew he was a werewolf.
She pulled out her cell phone, and pressed the quickdial button for the lone phone in the Underground. Luckily her call was answered by the supervisor of the Underground rescue forces, Caleb Simmers. "Hello?" He asked dazedly.
"This is Marit, I'm at the airport. Somebody's got a kid werewolf, and they're trying to take him in." Caleb's voice lost its sleepy tone. "Ok, we're coming. Just stall him as long as you can. Get away with the kid if you can." "Yes sir," Marit said, hearing Caleb sigh at her calling him sir. He didn't like it.
As the car sped away, Marit broke into an all out run. This was one thing she was good at. She (and others who had seen her run) would bet that she was the fastest runner her age in America, and maybe a wider spread area than that. She was able to keep up with the car in the parking lot, and quickly pulled the caltrop she kept in her satchel for this exact reason, and threw it, aiming in front of the front tire.
She thanked god she had aimed right, and quickly dove into some bushes so that the emerging wizard would not see her. She smiled to herself. All she had to do now was wait for the Underground rescue force to get there… And then it dawned on her.
In this man's prejudice against the werewolf kind, he would probably kill the child, then apparate out of there. Marit discovered she was right when she jumped out from behind the bushes. The wizard was taking out a muggle rifle from the trunk of his car, presumably loaded with silver bullets. Marit ran that way, as fast and as silently as she could, and tackled the man just as he had pointed the barrel of the gun into the car window.
Now, this man was easily twice her weight, and probably trained in hand-to-hand combat. Marit, however, was an enraged werewolf, one of the most feared things of the wizarding world, even when not in wolf form. What really brought home her win was that she had the advantage of surprise. Not long before they hit the ground, she had him unconscious.
She opened the door of the car, and groaned when she saw that the boy had already been shot once, and, like the wizard lying on the ground just to the side of the car, was unconscious. Marit pulled the boy out of the car, and hoisted him over her shoulder, and ran off towards the clump of trees just outside the airport parking lot.
When she got there, she set the kid down, and tore a strip of cloth from a shirt she had in her satchel. She quickly wrapped it around the boy's bleeding arm. It was the best she could do.
After a few long moments, she heard someone calling to her in the subsonic language of the werewolves. One of the bad things about the language was that one could never tell what direction it was coming from. So she howled. In a few short moments, the rescue force, two people, one of them Caleb, arrived.
"Good job," he complemented. Marit smiled and turned her head to the side, not making eye contact. "It's no more than you did for me," she muttered. The other member of the rescue team had bent down to make sure the young werewolf boy would be able to make it to the Werewolf Underground.
Marit remembered that day well, when she had been rescued by Caleb. What he had been doing so far south Marit didn't know. That night had been the night of a transformation, and she had been hunted all through the night. She had gained some ground, and had made her transformation back to human. She had been seconds away from being captured, having been shot twice already, when Caleb found her and used a portkey to take them back to the underground.
"How are we getting back?" She asked. Caleb looked down at the young boy and sighed. "I don't want to risk a portkey being caught, but I'll risk it if he can't make it in the truck.
The ride, other than the fact that there was a dying boy in the car with her, was pleasant. It had been a while since she had come up here, and the Canadian wilderness was interesting, if a bit cold.
When they drove through the hastily opened gates of the place, Marit wasn't looking at the town, but was concentrating on the boy. She helped carry him into the doctor's office (the werewolves were extremely glad they had one) and stayed there until the doctor said, "He'll be all right. It's your first saved werewolf." Marit blushed and went outside, thankful that she had been able to save the life of one of her kin.
She looked around at the gravel roads of the town, of the dirty and small buildings. Most of it looked like it hadn't been cleaned since it had been made. Everyone looked as if they had traveled for several months, and hadn't had a wash in twice that long. It looked like home.