You know what one of the worst feelings ever is? Futility. The Fucked if you do, Fucked if you don't kinda shit. It haunts Kyle Crane, especially with how his favorite Earth got shafted beyond recognition despite his very best efforts to keep it safe. But c'mon. He's just one dude, slash, wolf. What did he expect?
And now? Now, three years into Earth's Fall, he's just tired. Tired and fed up. Until one day, Kyle finds himself taunted back into the grinding wheel named Destiny and set to challenge the fate of a child going by Aiden Caldwell, whose life (or death, or something in-between) might make slobbering zombies seem downright pleasant.
Sequel to The Lone Wolf of Harran
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You know what one of the worst feelings ever is? Worse than piss-warm apple juice, slow-ass WiFi that drops every half minute, and an itch between your toes while you're wanting to sleep?
Futility.
The Fucked if you do, Fucked if you don't kinda shit.
And Kyle had tried. Oh had he fucking tried, along with many a valiant soul, only for it all to be for nothing. A big zompocalypse nothing, driven by none other than Pestilence Himself, who'd decided to turn Kyle's favorite Earth into a private petri dish of His.
Greed had helped.
Not, like, capital G greed. For all Kyle knew that particular fucker hadn't had to lift a finger, what with the ordinary human variety of greed being perfectly capable all by itself. Capitalism, ya know? Gotta profit off this new shiny discovery, turn zombie shits into gold nuggets, and the death of hundreds of thousands into something you wrote off on last quarter's financial report.
It sucked. (The whole deal.)
And Kyle—ever the dude to hold selective grudges—remained mad at the whole thing; at how humanity had gotten tipped over like a flawlessly put together carpet of dominos. Sure. Most days he managed without snapping his cap, but more often than not he rubber-banded violently between wanting to sleep in (because what was the point) and crawling down Pestilence's throat to chew His heart out.
Not that Pestilence had a throat.
Or a heart.
Pestilence, for all intents and purposes, had no manifestation to speak of. He was a force of nature. Which, ultimately, meant the world of the less mundane (the supernatural, the fey, the Eldritch, whatever you want to call it) had left humanity to its own devices and watched on as it'd gotten shafted. Like, you know, one of those Discovery Channel documentaries (back when they'd still run those) where you got to witness a herd of cute animals get absolutely obliterated? And the camera crew just observes since anything else would be them getting in the way?
Yeah.
Like that.
It sucked (continuously).
Kyle grumbled. It was a throaty, growly sound, helped by how he'd donned his fur on his most recent tumble, slash, hike through the Austrian alps. He moved quicker that way, even if he probably looked ridiculous, being a tall, sexy-furred white wolf marbled with a bit of chocolate in his fur and a freaking backpack thumping against his flank. But. Yeah. He'd liked the air up there, and, sometimes, he'd even gotten to forget what was happening all around him.
It wasn't just the virus. The zombies.
Three years into their Fall, and humanity kept finding new lows in their descent.
He hated it.
Hated.
Hated.
Hated it.
Kyle trotted over a thickly padded forest floor. Whatever weight he might've had, the needle and moss cushioned ground masked it, making his forward momentum sound like hollow thumps. The peace here was almost as misleading as the peace he'd sometimes caught up in the alps— but there was always something.
Take the smell of detritus and needle-bearing tree sap, for one, underlined by just a hint of lightly soured druid-musk left by a druid that'd likely abandoned this forest hundreds of years ago already. That was all real neat. Except then Kyle caught a whiff of blood and rot. Human blood. People rotting (but not fully dying).
It was a scent he'd grown used to in Harran.
And now the whole world had followed suit.
He angled himself into the direction of the smell and picked up speed, his nose leading the way as he crossed through sunlight lancing in from overhead.
Mosquitos danced in the rays, their wings reflecting the light like they were made from flakes of silver or gold. Pretty. Except then they got into his mouth.
Pfeh.
He ambled on.
The sounds all around him were a mixed bag, too.
Bird song. Rustling branches. Squirrels fornicating. Woodsy-things scampering through the underbrush.
Virals screeching.
A gunshot.
Two screams.
They came from the same direction as the blood on the air.
Kyle's trot turned into a loping gait. His shoulders snapped whatever dry and low-hanging branches got in the way.
And that was how Kyle's cross-country trips decided for him where he went. First, he picked a direction, one about as aimless as the rest of him these days. And then he let the disasters guide him; like he was the protagonist in some open-world Ubisoft game chasing question marks on the map.
(He missed video games, okay?)
Because he couldn't not help. Even if, for some gods-forsaken reason (like a curse, ya know?) he nearly always—
Kyle exited the forest, a blur of white peeling from the shrubbery and landing on a paved mountain road. Two vehicles stood on the road's shoulder. One (a small, red KIA-something) had the hood thrown up, with a sweet smell wafting off it. Coolant leak, probably. The other vehicle, a white Volvo, was parked just behind it.
The Volvo's passenger door was open.
That one was where all the action was going down.
Two virals were competing at getting into the Volvo's cabin, while a third was busy tearing pieces out of a man lying by the vehicle's hood. Blood had sprouted up the grill, freckling the white paint.
The man had carried a gun.
He'd fired it (the gunshot, with the air still smelling of the discharge).
Then dropped it.
Kyle went for the virals wanting to get into the car, first. Did he think there was still someone alive in there? No. There'd been no more screaming and (most) people had a tendency to do just that whenever something was trying to eat them alive.
Did he hope anyway?
Yeah.
He always did, except these days that hope liked to stick out its middle finger and fuck off to leave him disappointed. Because he was always just a second too late.
Kyle got the first viral by the meaty thigh and slung it behind him with a quick jerk. It went flying. The second one he tore out by the back, severing its backbone with one quick snap of his jaws. Which might've meant it went quicker than the kid (couldn't have been older than fifteen) who'd not managed to get out the other door.
Not that Kyle looked into the cabin for very long. One quick glance at what was left to hunch over the steering wheel was enough before he growled up a thunderstorm worth of his frustration and turned around to bite off a pair of heads.
Yep. That was how his days went. And his nights. Try and help. Be late. And then wallow in guilt as he shuffled his ass onward.
Today, further shuffling took him another hour east from where he'd failed to Be In Time, before Kyle grew thirsty enough to stop at a cold brook bubbling along the mountain road he'd been following. He wormed out of his backpack's oversized strap to leave the pack by a tree trunk, drank like a champ, and then thumped onto his side, right into a bed of wet earth, moss, and flowering grasses.
Okay, that bit was nice.
The bit where he could run much as he wanted. Wear his fur a lot more recklessly, not having to worry about who might see him roll in the dirt, ya know? And roll he did—for a bit, anyway—before he chased his wolf away and was quickly reduced to a whimpering mess of tremors and rending pain.
By the time the change was done, the ground around Kyle had been torn up plenty and he'd been left buck naked.
Brrr.
Getting mud on his skin, Kyle half crawled, half staggered over to the tree where he'd left the pack. It was a lovely, wide oak. With thick roots, some low branches, and a full canopy of leaves. Kyle opted to ignore getting dressed for now. He leaned against the oak instead, thumped the back of his head against it, and went back to closing his eyes.
Without his fur, the forest's scents were less prominent, the world quieter.
But nowhere near a quiet as what he experienced as he'd allowed himself a moment of doing nothing, while the taste of human, slash, viral still stuck to the back of his mouth. Water wasn't all that effective at washing that shit away.
And we all know you weren't supposed to taste people and feel just a little hungry 'cause of it.
No.
Bad dog. (He'd changed back for a reason, okay?)
Anyway.
Suddenly there was silence. The forest grew very, very still, and not the peaceful kind of still. Like what you got when something startled the birds.
No. For one confused heartbeat, the forest held its breath. Birds shut their little beaks. Trees quit rubbing their needles and leaves together. And even the brook stopped bubbling.
A sensation not unlike a considerable voltage being applied to his spine jumped through Kyle and his eyes snapped open.
He glanced left, then right, but the forest had resumed its normal creaking and rustling and chirping. And he was still alone.
Well.
Except for the thing dangling above him.
Kyle turned his head back and stared at the meticulously folded smokey grey paper crane suspended from a string. The string had been wrapped around a low hanging branch.
His stomach folded up. That— that had not been here a second before, had it?
Nope.
Swallowing thickly—and with his hands moving down to cup over his oh so delicates—Kyle glanced around again.
"What the fuuuck—" he whispered for his own benefit alone, eyes darting every-fucking way, finding nothing. "Hello?"
Bubble, the brook went.
Rustle, said the leaves.
Birds sung him an indifferent ditty.
And, still naked, Kyle felt anger heat him from the inside out. Which was saying a lot since he was, at his basic modus operandi, an impressively hot guy.
"Oh that's rich," he said, his voice flat. "You fuck off for, what, six years? And then you finally swing by, you decided to pull a little Peeping Death stunt and fuck right off again?"
The last bit he'd put a solid helping of emotion into, along with momentum. Enough to get him off his ass, anyway. Grunting his bones vertical, Kyle snatched for his pack. He dressed. Angrily. Quickly. Haphazardly, too, with nothing tucked in right.
The last time Kyle had seen Death had been in Harran. They'd come asking for his help, not long after the night in which Kadir "Rais" Suleiman had died and Harran had regained a semblance of hope. Hope which hadn't lasted altogether long and which'd been sucked out of the entire damn planet soon after, but that was beside the point.
Kyle, ever the good puppy and smitten to boot, had helped.
And then?
Radio silence.
Not a fucking word since.
Not even a glimpse.
And to think he still carried that damn gift they'd given him around; a gift identical to the one currently suspended above his head. Yeah. Why'd he keep it, you ask?
(Yeah, you're asking.)
Why keep it, even as Death had stood him up ever since? And no, we're not keeping score of who stood who up more often, okay? Just because he was too ornery to die didn't mean he'd earned himself the cold shoulder.
Irritated (read: butt hurt), Kyle reached up, grabbed the string holding the paper crane up, and tore it off. He flicked it into the brook.
He didn't know why, alright?
If you figure it out, give him a call.
He'd gotten back onto the mountain road. Half an hour of fuming and kicking the road's shoulder, and the world chocked on its own breath again. A second paper crane appeared, this time dangling from STOP sign as the road split into a T.
He flicked it as he walked by it, sending it spinning.
Except then the damn thing just stopped. Rather than rotate merrily, it froze, having returned to the same position in which he'd first found it. Its beak pointed left.
Kyle frowned. He gave it another tap.
It spun another two rounds before coming to a stop in the same direction.
"No," he said. "Nuh-fucking-huh. I'm not doing this again."
Stomping off into the opposite direction, Kyle left the paper crane where it was.
Night eventually came. Kyle spent it napping on the roof of an abandoned tour bus, one parked at a scenic spot, giving him a nice look down into a near perfectly dark valley. There really weren't a lot of lights left these days. (Light pollution having gone was probably one of the only positives that'd shaken out of this unspeakable disaster.)
When he woke, he did so to a noseful of ash and feathers, chased by fate. Kyle sneeze-coughed himself onto his elbows, the roof of the bus creaking under him, and rubbed at his fiercely tickling nose.
"Heck?"
Yet another paper crane had appeared. This time right in front of his sniffer while he'd slept.
"Heck," he repeated, scowling at the fucking thing. Except then he took another whiff, consciously this time, and drew more of that familiar scent into his lungs.
The ash, the feathers, ground up and bearing the seeds of unborn galaxies woven into their makeup, they made him feel shit. Shit he couldn't just kick aside with another grumble.
And then there was the fate. The thing he'd been able to sniff out ever since he'd had himself twisted into something no longer human; had his soul bound up tight in a knot with a honey-eyed she-wolf who delighted in her choice.
He didn't know whose fate it was, not without first having met whoever it belonged to; but he did know it was… grim. Very, very, grim.
More so than your ordinary human's these days (death, suffering, loss, entrapment of one's soul in a never-dying body), like it'd been hand-picked to—
—he jolted back. There was something acrid lurking underneath; a tainted destiny by an otherworldly touch. It was the sort of shit werewolves were purpose-built to track: a ne'er-do-well, an invader, a piece of supernatural flotsam.
Except not exactly that but also not not and by the end Kyle sat up properly, he was thoroughly confused.
And maybe a bit intrigued.
Kyle Crane was, after all, a curious kinda fellow.
He glanced at the origami bird's beak and tracked its angle out across the valley. It pointed at cluster of light near the far end, where the mountains opened up to a lake twinkling under the night sky.
"I'm going to regret this, aren't I?" he asked the sickle moon pinned among the stars, grabbed his pack, and bounced his ass off the bus to take a nice long walk in the lovely dark.
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