They had him in a moderately sized, empty room, with only a table, the chair he sat on and a chair opposite himself. The guards had sat him down facing the room's one door before exiting, but not before one of them, the shorter one, made certain to inform him they would be just outside the door, and their ammunition was silver-tipped bullets. David had to bite back his reply of sardonic reply of "Love you, too."

The lonely little clock on the otherwise empty wall ticked away the seconds mournfully: depressingly reminding David of each additional moment of his life that he was wasting behind bars. Eventually though, the door opened and a most unwelcome face entered the room. Whittaker came in, two cups of coffee – Starbucks – in hand. "Coffee?"

David wanted to rebuff his offering like a pouty little child, but he'd gone too long without caffeine and his head was screaming at him angrily, because of it. He had to grip the cup with two hands as he lifted it to his lips; it was easier that way with his wrists chained together.

"Was it really that hard to pick up a phone and give me a call? Now look at the shit you've dug yourself in." David didn't respond; he hoped his glare said all that he thought about what Whittaker had to say. "You know...I knew it the moment I first saw you. I've been watching you – monitoring you – for years, just waiting for you to confirm my suspicions. I was starting to think I'd gone insane, that I'd lost my gift for 'sniffing out' unhumans. I was right, though. I don't know how you and your father were able to keep it quiet for so long – werewolves often go insane and do something ridiculously stupid, like commit suicide – but you and your dad were able to keep the entire thing hush-hush. Perhaps someday when you're not too busy trying to get my head to explode via telepathy, you'd care to tell me just how you and your father were able to deal with this all on your own. I'd especially like to know how a ten-year-old was able to cover up a murder so well that we don't even know who the hell you killed or where. Did your dad help you cover it up?"

"Fuck you, you leave my dad out of this."

"So that's a 'yes'?"

"My dad is innocent. I killed the man. I covered it up. My dad had nothing to do with any of this."

Whittaker picked up his coffee and sipped it, calm as though he were out to Sunday lunch with an old friend or colleague. "Perhaps not – though I doubt it – but he did know about it and kept quiet about it. That's accessory after the fact. He'll go to jail too, probably."

David could hear the unspoken word at the end of Whittaker's sentence, and supplied it himself, "Unless?"

Licking his lips and putting his cup back down, Whittaker responded, "You help me. You play along, nicely, like you were doing before I got here. I get that you don't like me, David. I failed to get the guy who did this to you…the guy who killed your mother. But I feel partially responsible for what happened. I knew you were a werewolf, but I wanted some kind of proof before I voiced my beliefs. Perhaps if I had said something to someone, we would have been able to stop you before anything even happened. Who knows? Anyway, this is my case now. You are my responsibility."

David had turned himself in. He wanted to do the right thing. Being stubborn with Whittaker just because he disliked – and feared – the man, wouldn't make anything better. He'd have to play by Whittaker's rules if he wanted to survive this. "What do you want me to do?"

xoxoxo

Whittaker had grilled him for hours about everything he could remember that night, everything he'd seen, heard, smelled, felt, tasted until Whittaker was pretty certain they'd be able to find the approximate location of the crime. David was chained up in the back of an armored truck, seated on a bench that ran along one side of the truck. Two Federal Slayers drove the truck, both of them decked out in their combat fatigues and armed to the tooth. Two more guards – his regular guards, Burt and Ernie – accompanied him in the back wearing their state issued combat gear. Whittaker sat across from David, wearing his crisp, clean suit. The ride was quiet, though occasionally one of the guards' walkie-talkies would crackle to life with speech. Mostly it was ten-minute check-ups to make sure David hadn't Wolfed-out and eaten anyone, but occasionally there was other radio-chatter: enough, that David could tell that their truck was being accompanied by several others.

It was the first day of the full moon. Whittaker had narrowed down the scene of the crime pretty drastically, but they'd still need Wolf to lead them to the exact site. David prayed Wolf cooperated with them. He had no doubt that Wolf would freak out initially, but Whittaker had promised David that Wolf would only be taken down as an absolute last resort.

As the evening approached, he could start to feel the tension building up inside, as though Wolf were trying to scratch his way out of David's body. He had felt the faint shadow of Wolf lately, more than usual. Wolf probably knew that David was caged; occasionally their emotions leaked through, one to the other. Wolf wouldn't be pleased to find out he was going to spend a good long time caged up.

The day was slowly dying into night; the prison guards got visibly tenser as the sun began to set. Despite being slayers, David doubted either of them had ever encountered a werewolf before. Werewolves were native to central Europe and very few had been able to survive World War Two. The Holocaust had not been kind to unhumans, but werewolves had faired the worst. The bulk of their population had been located in Germany, Poland, Austria, western Russia, Czechoslovakia, and France, making them easy pickings. Not only that, but most subspecies were fairly passive and peaceful, making it easier for regular humans sympathize with them and try to protect them, much as the Danes had done with Jews. Vampires had "charming" abilities, making it easier for them manipulate humans into letting them survive. Werewolves were just scary. And on top of their frightful reputation and appearance, they were prone to severe psychological disorders given the stress the phases of the moon put on their minds and bodies. Whittaker hadn't been exaggerating when he said werewolves often committed suicide.

Whittaker knew werewolves. He'd even worked with a few over the years. Perhaps that was part of the reason he appeared so calm even as David started to panic.

xoxoxo

Whittaker could tell the change was coming. David had gone stiff and was fighting it. How cute; the boy thought he could stop the change by willing it away. Whittaker had worked with unhumans long enough to know David could only control the wolf and the change if he not only accepted it, but embraced it.

The guards lent to him by the prison exited the back of the truck; in a close quarter confrontation, they stood no chance against an angry werewolf. Their only hope was if they had enough distance between themselves and the werewolf that they could fire off a round or two before the werewolf got to them. Assuming, that is, that the werewolf was a threat at all.

Whittaker sat patiently and waited for the change to complete. It looked painful; Whittaker was glad he wasn't a werewolf.

When David had been replaced by two hundred and fifty pounds of fur, Whittaker looked over at the two state slayers and held his hand up, silently telling them to hold their fire. He didn't particularly trust state slayers; they were usually more trigger-happy than prudent, and he wasn't entirely sure he could rely on the dozen Feds that now flanked the truck to stop the two yokels from doing something stupid.

The werewolf uncurled from the fetal position and slowly surveyed his surroundings. He was no doubt shocked and confused. His eyes had slowly swept over the inside of the truck, but began flicking erratically over everything as panic began to set in. "Wolf…that's what you call yourself, correct? My name is Agent Whittaker." Wolf's fur was bristled and his ears flicked about as swiftly as his pupils. "David turned himself in for the murder he committed some years ago. I'm hoping you can help us find the body."

Wolf had spotted the fourteen agents and officers with their guns and rifles trained on him. He tensed and froze, before slowly backing into the rear corner of the truck. Whittaker got down on the floor, kneeling in front of Wolf so that he was between him and the mini-cavalry his superiors had insisted he bring along. "It's ok. I've promised David and now I'm promising you: no one is going to hurt you if you cooperate. All I'm asking of you is that you show us where you killed that man." Wolf darted his eyes between Whittaker and the men behind Whittaker several times, before fixing his gaze on Whittaker and slowly nodding.

xoxoxo

In hindsight, though he loved the image his regular uniform conveyed, a full suit might not have been the best idea when it could easily have been predicted that he'd be spending half the night hiking.

The wolf went just slow enough for the slayers that none felt inclined to raise their weapons. Wolf became calm and collected once he was certain none of the men were going to shoot him. He was quite possibly calmer than his human counterpart.

He didn't seem the type to kill, which was confusing Whittaker.

Once he had made the judgment that David was a werewolf, Whittaker made certain to keep an eye on the boy. He knew what grades David had received each semester, he knew David's SAT scores, he knew David's ASVAB score, he knew within a day when David had been expelled and he had seen every incident that warranted a spot on his permanent record. David was active in school organizations and bordered on being a genius, yet he had an anti-social tendency and negative attitude that was very apparent based on his permanent record. That type of person Whittaker could see as potentially being a murderer, but the teenager he had spent the better part of the week talking to and this werewolf…neither of them seemed like murderers.

Wolf came to an abrupt stop, his tail drooping, and looked over his shoulder at his followers before turning around. "Is this it?" Wolf stood and turned back around and slowly walked through the trees. The slayers all followed along, with Whittaker at the head. Pushing through the trees, Whittaker realized most of the brush wasn't real. It was a ground blind, built similarly to a ghillie suit. He tentatively moved past the camouflage and stepped into a decent sized clearing with more ground blind strung up in the treetops to prevent anyone flying overhead from seeing the open area. Corrugated aluminum sheets lay in disarray in the center of the clearing. It was obviously a tiny shed of some kind that had been destroyed long ago. Wolf was sniffing at it and pawing at one of the bent sheets, but Whittaker wasn't interested in that. Not right now anyway. "Holy…" Whittaker had lost his faith in god long ago; how could he believe in god or heaven or hell when he knew firsthand they didn't exist? Even still, he resisted the urge to drop to his knees and pray.

Instead, he pointed where he was standing, "Here." One of the Federal Slayers, a member of the Evidence Response Team Unit, came up and placed a yellow placard with the letter "A" on it. Whittaker began walking a loop around the perimeter of the clearing, stopping every few feet to tell the slayer to drop another placard. As Whittaker made consecutively smaller circles on each loop, he began to worry there wouldn't be enough placards.

xoxoxo

He was hungry and tired in the morning and he didn't know where he was. He wasn't back at the prison, as far as he could tell. The room he was in was very similar to the interrogation room at the other prison, but the walls were made of cheap concrete. David would have no issues busting out if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. There was a McDonald's deluxe breakfast sitting for him on the table. Whittaker came in halfway through his meal. He had a pancake wedged in his cheek like a chipmunk when the agent came and sat down. "Last night was quite a bit longer than I expected it to be. I figured Wolf and I would lead the slayers to the scene of the crime, I'd let them get started, I'd hang out for a bit, then I'd get to call it a night. Fat chance. We were too exhausted in the morning to bother taking you back to Ohio State. We're in a local jail in Van Buren; we've set up office, here." David was quiet. Where was Whittaker going with this? "You confessed to murder, David. A murder." David narrowed his eyes. He didn't like where Whittaker was going with this. "We've been exhuming bodies all night. They were on body number six when I left, though we found at least two dozen."

David let out a shuddering breath; his chest clenched up. He thought his heart was going to implode. What the fuck had that mangy mongrel been doing every full moon. "I…I-I-I swear to god I had no idea. I-I'm so sorry." David placed his head down on the table and allowed himself to cry. Whether he was crying over the fact that he was now certain to get the death penalty or if it was over all the lives he'd taken, even David couldn't say. It was just too overwhelming to put any kind of words to his feelings.

"Hear me out, David. Let me tell you what I think happened. Eight years ago, over the course of a half-year period, fifteen people went missing; presumably killed by a werewolf. One of the victims was not alone. The werewolf left a witness. Even worse, he made that witness powerful: turned them into a werewolf. He probably didn't even realize he had 'turned' the witness; after all, it was such a small bite. Come this new werewolf's first full moon, all of his animal instincts kicked into high gear. Without even realizing what he was doing, he tracked down the monster that was endangering everyone and everything in his own home territory and killed him. The other werewolf, the serial killer, probably didn't even know what hit him. You were lucky you took him by surprise."

David sniffled and raised his head up just enough to look at the FBI agent watching him. "But," He sniffled again, "It was the full moon. I ate a person…not a werewolf."

Whittaker shrugged and placed a lightly clenched fist on the table. "And it was a new moon when he bit you. This werewolf was a fairly powerful one. The phases of the moon meant nothing to him." Whittaker turned his fist so that it was finger-side up and slowly opened it. "The facts speak for themselves." In Whittaker's palm sat a small gold, diamond, and ruby ring: David's mother's engagement ring.