Chapter Two:
The Pup Below The Truck
Life gets faster every day,
No time to think, no time to play.
Hurry, chaos, lots of stress,
Tension leads to sleeplessness.
When will all this madness cease?
Where is free time? Where is peace?
I'm running, doing, till I drop.
Give me buttons: Pause, Mute, STOP!
Life's Madness by Joanna Fuchs
VI
Jeremy Danvers heard the truck coming up his driveway long before it was visible over Stonehaven's gate. Sitting at his easel in his study, he peered out the window to the gentle thundering outside of a four-drive engine on an asphalt path. Placing his paintbrush down in its little paint-stained pot, he regarded his latest work with a critical eye.
And found the whole thing sorely lacking.
The red hair wasn't quiet as fiery as it should have been, and the eye far less brighter than what he remembered. The result of inadequate memory with no real reference left to take.
Another one for the scrap pile, then.
Sighing deeply, Jeremy stood.
"I've got it."
He doesn't yell, barely raising his voice above polite conversation levels, as he began to make way for the study's door.
There's never any need to shout in a house full of Werewolves.
Somewhere from a back room he thought he heard Clay, his adopted son who was home from grading undergrad anthropology papers at the local University, grunt in affirmation. No doubt Nick Sorrentino was somewhere in the kitchen having a midday snack, along with his father, Antonio, Jeremy could smell a whiff of French mustard, both visiting for the week from their New York estate. Logan was back at his psychiatrist practice in Toronto, and Pete was out on the road with his band.
That left very few possibilities for who would be driving up their road, and with how remote and inaccessible Stonehaven was, anyone coming up that lane had to do so intentionally.
The locals, as few as there were in a faraway provincial, North American town like Bear Valley, knew they were a private family and often kept to themselves, and had long since Jeremy was a child given up on trying to invite them over for a Saturday night cook-out. Neither would it be grocery delivery, a house full of Werewolves needed a well-stocked pantry after all, for those came at six o'clock every Sunday not noon on a Wednesday.
A tight schedule was needed when one wished not to be accidentally stumbled across mid-change by a Mortal.
It could have been a passer-by, Jeremy supposed. Those who drove through Bear Valley to a bigger, fluorescent lit city often saw the woods comprising the Stonehaven land and would come toddling up to his door to ask if they could hike through his property. Jeremy always made sure to keep a polite smile on his face when he let them down gently. Generally an excuse of a blown sewage pipe was enough to steer them away from the grounds, but every now and again he had to resort to rumours of local wildlife attacks.
He hoped the former excuse would work for today. It drew less attention.
The front door eased open just as a large truck came stalling on the tarmac of his drive, the engine cutting of with a sputtering hum. It was a substantial truck, dark with a hooded cabby and an open back-
An open back that had a sizable metal crate stashed in its bed, fashioned from heavy sheet alloys. The kind without bars or windows but a thick door with several locks on its face.
The sort of enclosure used to carry large beasts that often proved unpredictable.
Jeremy made it down the stone steps of his veranda before the truck door flung open and the driver came out into the midday sun, and he halted a few feet away when he got a good peek at their visitor.
The man was large, at least seven foot and as broad as he was tall, big enough to give Clay, the largest wolf in their Pack, a good run for his money. His well-worn clothes that had seen better days doing nothing to hide his extraordinary edge. He had long hair, Jeremy noted, braided in places, left loose in others, waves of chestnut streaked with grey, a splattering of it weaving silver thread through his trimmed beard, and a vicious looking scowl hooding his amber eyes.
The man reminded Jeremy of what Mortals believed Werewolves were, the pictures in the story books of men lurking in woods hunting girls in red hoods. Big, brutish, and bloody.
This man fit the caricature well.
Jeremy sniffed inconspicuously, and had his suspicions confirmed immediately.
Oak, smoke, the heavy smell of rain about to fall, and-
Wolf.
Jeremy's polite smile fell from his face, just as a grin began spreading on the man's own as the gargantuan Werewolf slammed the cab door shut behind him, speaking across the distance.
"You Jeremy Danvers?"
Jeremy's chin tilted high, feet squared, confident but at ease. The message was clear.
An Alpha knows another Alpha when they see one.
This only made the man grin wider as he nodded to himself.
"We need to talk, me and you."
VII
The man who called himself Fenrir Greyback, a nod to his distinctly Nordic features, appeared almost comically large sitting on the couch of Jeremy's living room in Stonehaven surrounded by the Pack. Kicked out as he was, wide arms flung over the back to spread wide like wings, feet and legs apart but planted on the rosewood flooring, he looked at rest despite being under the heavy scrutiny of Jeremy, Clay, Nick, and Antonio dotted strategically around the room.
"You know, if I came here spoiling for a fight I wouldn't have bloody come driving up to your door now, would I?"
Jeremy regarded this bruiser of a man from the other end of the room. Clay, instinctually, pressing forward, guarding the Alpha.
"You said you wished to speak? Whatever you wish to talk about can be spoken with my Pack present."
Fenrir grinned over to Jeremy, a flash of a long fang between his lips and whiskers, and Clay tensed at his side. Jeremy mindlessly reached over, laying a calming hand over Clay's taut shoulder.
Calm.
The joint eased beneath his hold.
"Can it? You sure about that?"
Jeremy cocked a quizzical brow high at the unseen tease in the Werewolves voice. A hint of something burnt and bitter, but the Werewolf in question merely shook his head, the wood of the sofa creaking underneath the shudder of his weight.
"Your dad called Malcolm Danvers, by any chance?"
Jeremy hesitated in replying, but, seemingly, that was all the answer the Werewolf needed to know.
"Thought so. One thing you American Wolves do right is keep track of the Legacies. Get your hands on one of your scrolls, and you can find out who's been fuckin' who for centuries, and what little pups have been sprouted out from the beast with two backs. Makes tracking you bastards down real easy."
Jeremy cut in sharply, hand flexing on Clay's shoulder when he felt the body beneath his grip begin to move forward, holding him back, holding him relaxed.
The only way this, by his accent, British Werewolf could have gotten his claws on a Legacy, a record detailing a Pack's lineage, would be if he took one, and taking one from a Pack would be no easy feat to do without heavy casualties on the opposing side.
This Werewolf didn't have a scratch on him.
Everybody in the room knew what that could mean.
"If you have any issue with my father, I'm afraid you are too late. He is dead. He's been dead for eight months now."
Fenrir scanned Jeremy up and down swiftly, looking for the lie. Yet, evidently, when there was no falsehood to find skulking in the steppes of Jeremy's face or the laces of his shoes, the man cursed underneath his breath before shrugging his massive shoulders.
"Shame. This would have been easier with him here but I supposed you'll do."
Clay, plainly, had had enough of the back and forth and no real answers to why this Werewolf was sitting on their couch, and snarled over to the man.
"If that's a threat you need to watch-"
Fenrir laughed loudly, a blustery sound that reminded Jeremy of thunder clashing in a dark and dead sky.
"Threat? Nah, pup. If I was going to threaten you, you'd know about it. Now be quiet and let the Alpha's speak in peace."
Clay, headstrong, capricious, volatile Clay, who had never really done well with social interaction, bristled underneath Jeremy's tentative hold, body lurching forward at the clear dismissal from the other Werewolf. Jeremy held him back, tugging him behind, stepping in front before a fight could truly break out, cutting through whatever insult Clay was about to hurl towards the other Werewolf, raising his voice over the growl reverberating in the room.
"Then what is this about? I've never met you in my life, I've never heard your name before, and by your accent, you're far from home."
Fenrir considered him deliberately, head cocked to the side, pupils alert, and nodded. He had the same eagle-eyed attention one had when taking a headshot.
"But I bet you've heard the name Lily Evans, aye?"
Bang.
VIII
"How do you know about Lily?"
Fenrir circumvented the question sharply, flinging one long leg over the other, ankle resting on bent knee, as his gaze drifted over to the nearest window, eyeing the sweeping lands beyond to something only he could see.
"Around twenty-odd years ago, when she was around sixteen, seventeen, you got paid a visit by an English lass named Lily Evans, right? Turns out this lass was your half-sister by your father's… indiscretion while he was over the sea on Pack business. Came as a bit of a shock, I'm sure. Not only did she manage to track you down, but she was a Witch too. I'm guessing you didn't know about Witches beforehand, and her magical blood is what saved you from having to carry out Pack law that states Mortals need to be killed if they discover proof of our existence. I do wonder if-"
Nick, guarding the door in and out of the living room, laughed incredulously, cutting the older Werewolf off.
"Witches? Witches? Is this some kind of prank-"
But Jeremy was not smiling. Jeremy was not laughing. Jeremy wasn't refuting any of the mad-wolf's outlandish claims.
He merely looked Fenrir dead on, eye to eye, and spoke with voice as flat and smooth as polished granite.
"You're a Wizard, aren't you?"
Fenrir smirked, the whiskers of his beard riffling in obvious amusement.
"In the flesh and fang. A Werewolf too if you couldn't scent it already. I'm guessing the reason you lot turn fully into wolves and not mutate on change, or are bound by the full moon, is because your Muggle Werewolves. Must be something in the Mortal blood that stabilizes the Lycanthrope gene, lets it do its thing properly instead of twisting it up inside, making it easier for you bloody bastards to shift."
Anew, Nick spluttered.
"Easy? You think our shifts are easy? What the hell is-"
Jeremy intervened severely.
"Why are you here? Is Lily-"
Fenrir folded his arms over his chest, foot falling off knee to thunk on the floor, smirk gone, face empty. Jeremy's stomach plummeted.
"Lily's dead."
And then Fenrir sighed deeply, shoulder's drooping just an inch.
"She's been dead for eighteen years."
The room was wordless as Jeremy stood still, silent, static. For the last time, for the last chance he had, Jeremy didn't refute anything Fenrir had spoken.
"When she stopped visiting, I just thought she…"
"Got sick of the Werewolf brother?"
Fenrir supplied with a dark glint in his eye.
"Nah. She was in hiding. Truth is, she was likely trying to protect you. If news had broken back home that she had family outside of Dumbledore's reach, you would have been one big, juicy target. If I had been after the chit, and I knew you were alive and out there, I would have gunned for you too."
Fenrir shook his head, running his hand through his hair, flinging it back from his face in a great chestnut swell that tinkled the beads he had braided in the depths.
"Look, let me make this real short for you seen as I don't know how much your dear, dead sister told you and we're running out of time. Magic is real. Witches and Wizards have just gotten out of a rather nasty civil war. Brother killing brother sort of shit. Lily stood up against the next aspiring Dark Lord who wanted Muggles-… Mortals subjugated and under heel, and she ended up paying the price for it… But not before she settled down and married, popped out a kid."
Jeremy frowned, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips, the echoes of some lost memory that brought some warmth to the pallid hue of his face.
"James? She married James?"
Fenrir slanted a thick brow high. It felt good to shock the man who'd surprised him back.
"You know a bit about it then?"
Jeremy finally stepped away from Clay, nodding to his Pack who, slowly, unsurely, backed off from the lounging Werewolf.
"I met him once. He was a nice man. Sirius and Remus too. They were… good people."
Fenrir sneered, scoffing deep in his throat.
"Yeah, well, being nice didn't spare James's life now, did it? Neither did it help your sister much in the end. Being good doesn't mean you get to live. You should know that by now if you're any sort of respectable Alpha."
IX
"No one knows what really happened the night your sister died. In the closing months of the war paranoia was rampant. Fuckin' biblically so. No one was speaking to anyone; fathers were smothering their daughters in their bed because rumours came out they'd been seen with Death Eaters. Mothers were kicking their sons out thinking they'd taken the Dark Mark and were planning on killing them when their back was turned. Brothers were skinning their brothers to get into Voldemort's good graces, and aunts were training sisters on how to Imperio their siblings into service for the Dark Lord-… But we do know Voldemort, the Dark Lord, got a right bee in his bonnet about a prophecy close to the end. I mean he really got pissed off. Something about a kid born on the seventh month and yarda, yarda, yarda was destined to kill him, and he chose to target Lily and James when news leaked she was pregnant and due to give birth in July."
Jeremy sighed as he, too, now began peering out the window.
"About two years around the time Lily stopped visiting me. They-"
He hesitated, voice hard, rough, full of something thick and grainy that grated in his throat like coarse sand. Tasted like it too. Briny like tears.
"This man, this Wizard-… This Voldemort, he killed them?"
Fenrir bent over at the hips, balancing his elbows on his crooked knees, voice plummeting as his gaze hardened, edging closer to Jeremy to land him with a clear, fast look.
A look that left Jeremy no room to distance himself from the answer, to slip into comfy denial.
"Yes. James, Lily, they didn't survive the assault. Their kid was around fifteen months old at the time of the attack. Everyone thought the entire family had died in the raid… But so did Voldemort die. Whatever went on in that nursery eighteen years ago... it took out the most feared Wizard my kind has seen in centuries. Perhaps ever. Left him littered around the room in bite size chunks. So came the end of the Wizarding War."
Silence drifted in the room, most of the Pack trying to digest the words themselves, stories of Witches and Wizards and Magic and Dark Lords, stories that were peppered with incredulous belief and a world three times bigger than anyone of them thought was real just that morning.
Jeremy, however, went straight for the jugular.
"Then why are you here? To tell me, twenty years too late, that my sister and her family is dead?"
Fenrir regarded him intensely again, long-sighted, the kind of look that seemed to peer through a man and into his tendencies, the good and the bad. Whatever Fenrir Greyback saw concentrated within Jeremy; grief, anger, loneliness, it was enough to finally bring the Wolf to the crux of the matter.
"I'm here because I want to know what makes your Legacy different. What it is in your blood that has managed to do the impossible. I want the truth, and I will get it."
Jeremy scowled.
"Excuse me?"
And Fenrir grinned right back with a crack-shot stare of his.
"I said they thought the entire family was dead. I never said they were."
X
"The child… the child survived?"
It was the only reason Jeremy could think of that would lead to this Werewolf sitting in his living room on a Wednesday afternoon, and not someone else. If Lily was alive, she would have kept visiting, there would have been no midnight phone call so long along, filled with harsh, painful words Jeremy now knew were used as knives to get him to back off, to leave her be, to be safe. If James were alive, he would have come to Jeremy to explain what had happened, where his sister was, to at least take him to the grave, so that only left-
It only left too many unanswered questions.
Fenrir stood from the couch, and the Pack around him tensed only for the taller Werewolf to begin pacing along the edge of the coffee table, his footfalls the thunking of a steady heartbeat.
Or gunshots.
Perhaps both.
"I think the kid shifted when Voldemort attacked the house. Might have torn the ol' bastards throat out themselves for all I know. The bodies at Godric's Hollow were… Quickly buried or disposed. No one but a select few got a good look at 'em, and those few have never said a single word about what they've seen apart from one thing; Voldemort was in tatters. Might have been purposeful. Can't keep popular opinion against Werewolves if their saviour was one, could they? Might make the Wizards start to look at us a little differently, and that wouldn't be part of the Ministry's grand plan-"
Undoubtedly lost in conspiracies no one else but himself could understand, not even Jeremy with his, albeit limited knowledge, could hope to untangle, Fenrir brushed the lot off with a flap of his hand.
"Doesn't matter in the end, though. I stumbled across the kid around six months ago living in the local woods just outside Godric Hollow's back garden. It's definitely he-… Them. It can't be anyone else. It took me a long while to get close and longer yet to track you down. So here I am."
Nick, perhaps the most laidback wolf amongst them, spoke up for the first time that early afternoon, no joke or comfort to be found in his voice.
"Shifted… You're saying this kid shifted… When they were fifteen months old? And… and what? He's been living in the woods since he was a toddler? No help, no Pack, nothing but his own fangs? I mean… Is that even possible? Wouldn't they be dead by now? Out there, alone, in the middle of winter is a death sentence."
Something intense and grim glimmered in Fenrir's eye, like the twinkle one got when they knew the punchline of a joke before everyone else.
"The pup's smart… And they're completely fuckin' feral, mind you. Doesn't speak, won't step foot inside anything remotely enclosed, can't walk on two legs from what I've seen, keeps parts of he-… themselves shifted for use, paws, hips, feet, for ease of movement and purpose. They're a mean little thing too. Won't let you near enough to touch 'em without threat of losing your fingers or toes or worse."
As if to hammer his point home, Fenrir lifted his hand to flash at the brunette, wiggling the last two fingers on his hand that had healed slightly wonkily, displaying the obvious bite scar spread across the back of his palm. He seemed almost proud of the scar he would bare for the rest of his life.
"Went to pat 'em once, and I won't make that mistake again."
"And the town, Godric's Hollow?"
Jeremy asked plainly, and Fenrir understood what he was really asking immediately.
Is any clean-up needed?
"As I said, the pup's smart. Eighteen years out in the woods shifting back and forth, and none of the townsfolk reported a single sighting of a loose dog let alone a wolf or something strange in their back yards. The pup's clever and quick, and they know how to hide."
Jeremy's chair scrapped along the hardwood.
"The crate you have in the back of your truck."
Fenrir shrugged.
"Had to keep them sedated while I cleaned them up as best as I could. Got some clothes on 'em, didn't need to be pulled over and questioned why I had a naked wo-… And chopped their hair off. Even magic couldn't save that mess. I had to keep them out cold while we travelled, but I ran out of Muggle sedative a few hours ago. It was the only thing that would keep them down and out. You know that elephant tranquilizer shite? Two doses of it just for an hours peace. We really are running low on time right now, so you need to listen to me-"
Jeremy, with little else needed to be said, needed to be known, made for the door swiftly.
"My nephew is here now. We can speak more on this later-"
Fenrir beat him to the door, snapping his arm out to block the entrance, earning himself a fierce snarl in response from the other Alpha.
He didn't back down.
"Not so fast. There's something you need to understand. They've been living as a wolf for the last eighteen years, and, well, when you say nephew, you should be saying-"
The sound of metal ripping and tearing rang fervently in the air. A lurching, nails-on-chalk-board sound that was hard to miss even without the heightened Werewolf senses those present had. Fenrir cursed and huffed, head snapping behind him to the hallway towards the front door.
"Fuck sake, pup. Couldn't hold out a little longer?"
He dashed for the door like fire was lit beneath his feet, and the Pack wasn't far behind him.
XI
By the time Jeremy got outside, followed by the rest of the Pack, the damage to the car was already done. The side of the metal animal crate was blown wide open, looking as if it had been exploded from the inside out. The side of the truck was scratched up, clawed against and bashed against, scuffed and dented, and-
And Fenrir Greyback was crouched down low in the grass and the pebbles, cheek nearly pressing flat against the asphalt as he peered underneath the darkness of the truck bed between the thick off-road tires.
"Careful now, pup. I know you didn't like the box-"
Fenrir tried to crawl an inch closer, slither just a little bit further, but a cruel, guttural growl came out from below the truck at his approachment, and forced the Werewolf to freeze where he ducked.
"Alright, alright. No closer. I get it. You're mad at me, and I would be too in your claws, but you need to calm down pup."
Fenrir's pin-pricked gaze snatched towards Jeremy, a flash of attention before darting back to underneath the truck bed to keep an eye on the very awake, very irritated, very cornered Werewolf hiding below.
"She's still got the sedative in her blood. She can't shift right now, not for another few hours, but trust me, she's one fast fucker even in her human form. Get around back. She's gonna run for the woods, and once she gets in there we're not getting her out."
Jeremy went to follow instantly, slinking around the back of the truck, between the bed and the woods, while Nick and Clay fanned to the sides and Antonio blocked off the front, and-
And then Fenrir's words caught up to him.
I'm here because I want to know what makes your Legacy different. What it is in your blood that has managed to do the impossible. I want the truth, and I will get it.
Nevertheless, it was Clay's bewildered voice that vocalized what they must have all been thinking.
"Did you just say she? That's not possible-"
And that gave all the distraction the pup below the truck needed. In a blur of movement, a fleeting flash of something red, white, and green, a lump flew out from underneath the truck, and suddenly Clay was flying backwards, feet knocked out from underneath himself, something squirming and snarling barrelling into his chest.
They both ended up rolling into the grass from the force of the take-out, but the little thing was faster, getting up first, perched over Clay's chest on all fours like she was going to go for his throat, and, still slightly dazed from what he had been told and what he was seeing, Jeremy got his first good look at the pup.
She was young, somewhere in her late teens or early twenties Jeremy suspected, merely dressed in a five-sizes-to-big t-shirt and nothing else, tiny, barely five-foot-inconsequential if she was standing upright. Her hair was shorn short, lopsided in places, as if it had been chopped off in a rush, copper tresses coiling around her ears in snug ringlets and bobbing across a scarred forehead.
And she had plenty of scars.
Jeremy could see them gleaming silver in the sunlight, others still puckered and pink, making her freckles look like constellation maps. Small, spider-web thin ones, other jagged shreds, scars that spoke of a life spent fighting for survival.
Yet, it was the eyes that did it.
Green, sunny, too bright, too full of life, too full of everything.
She had Lily's eyes.
"Fuck!"
Fenrir cursed, diving, and it was the pin in the balloon.
The pup bolted, bouncing off Clay's chest, whizzing for the woods. Fenrir jumped for her again, but landed too far right missing the girl entirely when she feigned a turn. Jeremy tried to reach out too, but she ducked at the last possible second, and with a roll and a weave, she made it to the trees.
And then she was gone.
Jeremy went to give chase, but already up and moving Fenrir was beside him in and blink and holding him back by his arm, face steadfast but disillusioned.
"Don't. It's a lost cause. The pup knows how to disappear, and you'll only drive her further into the woods in her panic. She'll come out... eventually."
The hand fell, and Fenrir, with a sigh, nodded back to the Stonehaven house.
"Don't suppose you got any mead stashed away while we wait?"
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Nick made his movements gentle and purposeful as he came to the water's edge.
She looks a mess, standing in the centre of the pond as she was, murky waters from waist down, tattered shirt sticking to skin and water glistening on goosepimpled flesh and sodden curl.
She looked more at home in the mud and the muck here than she did out in the open of Jeremy's drive.
Yeah, she looked a disaster, tangled up in brambles and river reeds, drenched from head to toe from her dawn swim, and a flopping fish clasped in her hands.
"You going to come in and cook that in the kitchen or-"
But Nick asked too late, or asked pointlessly, because the girl, still staring dead ahead at him from the heart of the pond, had the fishes head off between her sharp-transformed teeth with a sickening chomp and pop, chewing enthusiastically around the plentiful bite, bone and eye and all, before he could finish.
"… Or not."
There's no new-romantic or poetic description to be made here. She was fucked up real bad. Nick can see it in her face. Whatever humanity this thing before him had, she either lost it long ago or it was stomped down so far in her head it mattered even less.
She reminds him of something ripped from a fairy tale book. Not the brightly coloured nymphs from Disney films or children's illustrations, but those archaic atrocities an older relative used to tell you about in hushed tones. The ones that left you quaking in your bed at night as a child, clasping nails you thought might be iron in your hand, hoping the Fae wouldn't come and steal you away for your teeth.
He watches as the bite travels down her throat with a bob, the trail of red sullied across her chin, her hands, the unwavering, unblinking green eyes.
The headless fish lands at his leather boots with a bounce at the edge of the pond.
Nick cocked a curious brow.
Perhaps whatever humanity she had left wasn't so far down as he first thought.
"Uh… no thank you. I don't much like sushi."
A.N: Thank you all so much for waiting for this chapter. It's been so long since I updated this fic, and I know how frustrating/annoying that can be. So if you're still here, if you're still reading this, thank you and I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. The fun really starts now.