Chapter 2: The More Things Change

I mustn't have slept for more than ten minutes at a time that night. I kept waking up to stare at the blank canvas above me. Even with my night vision I couldn't make out a thing in the tent, the night was overcast, neither moon nor stars offered any light.

I'd woken so many times that it was no longer me holding Rebeca, but rather her holding me. Her thin arms reached out in the cold night air to clench me tight to her. I had to grin at that one, she barely had the strength to stand, but her grasp was tight enough to make me think that any escape would involve me losing large clumps of fur.

It was February, so it was well past ten by the time the sun had risen enough to let any light pool around us. We went through our morning absolutions before I helped her walk unsteadily towards the human camp.

She was due for her next check-up with the human doc and, in any event, I wanted to see if they were going to hold true on their promise to make me welcome.

Horseshoe Bay wasn't nearly as impressive as its name first suggests. While it had been a bit larger back in the fall, the snow and ice had caused everyone to huddle together in little more than a dozen buildings that they were at least able to keep above freezing.

The doc was a raven skinned lady with curly hair. She'd become used to us showing up every few weeks, even to the point where she hardly gave me a double glance. Hardly.

They went through the normal check up. All in all, things were going well. It looked like Rebeca would be up and moping the floor with me in short order.

"So, Mr. Taggert, I've heard that you've been involving yourself in our politics. May I inquire why?" Her tone hadn't changed, she hadn't even looked up from bandaging Rebeca's wounds.

"What? I helped some kids slaughter a doe." I wasn't ready to call that a hunt.

"Yes, so I've heard. You two have been almost invisible out in your little camp." She shot me a glance, "How many times do I need to tell you to come in for proper care?"

I snorted, looking around the moss covered room. If this was proper care, I didn't want to know what her opinion of substandard was. Bandages were about all she had here, and many of those had been washed and reused so many times that I was surprised they hadn't developed personalities of their own by now.

"I'm guessing that there's a little more to this than I was told, eh?"

She broke a grin for a moment. "Something like that, Mr. Taggert." She tightened the linen on Rebeca's arm and let her slide off the table. "It appears that you've landed yourselves into a fair bit of a firestorm. The elders would just as soon leave you where you are and take their chances weathering the winter alone, the folks you spoke to are not so adamant. Mostly younger people, they want to do what ever they can. Not so willing to accept our current predicament, those."

"So, what does this have to do with me?"

"Everything." She slid into a moth-eaten chair, behind the scraps of wood that I assumed she called a desk. "You accepted the offer of aiding them. Without you they wouldn't have a leg to stand on. You are the example they hold up of us being able to change, you and Rebeca."

"So, what, they want to go back to V-town and get their skins flayed? That won't get them far."

She shrugged, "If that's the way you want to look at it. Just be careful, Mr. Taggert." She sighed, slumping in her chair, "Tommy, you're a key part in this whole action, whatever it is. We have little enough as we are now, and stability is hardly something we can throw to the winds. I can't tell you what to do, but please, please, don't take away what little civility we have left."

Leaving the Doc's office, we wandered down the few streets that Horseshoe Bay still had left. The melting ice was slippery beneath us, I all but carried Rebeca aloft, much to her protests.

"Tommy, you can't keep doing this forever. I am going to have to fend for myself eventually."

"Sure, Babe," I held her close, "But can't you let me have a little fun for a while? It's not often I get to parade around a prize such as you. Having you all to myself isn't something I'm used to."

She giggled for a moment and looked down, puddles of melt water were already mixing to mud beneath us. I tromped through them, barefoot, without a second thought.

"I guess you could keep it up for a little while." She poked my nose. "At least until the snow melts. I never was much of one for winter, we didn't have these problems out off the coast."

Walking down the slush filled byway, I could see they had put up street names. It seemed kind of pointless to me as they only had what, half a dozen roads in total?

More telling were the names themselves, 'Valor' intersected 'Purity', and to my left were 'Freedom' and 'Vigilance'. Nowhere ran a 'Wolf' or 'Lion' street. For her part in the survival of the species I would have just as soon expected a 'Rebeca' avenue, but there was none to be seen.

What I could see, however, was the change that even the single kill from last night had brought to the town. The doe was hardly a meal for the whole populace, but they seemed happier and better fed than I could remember since winter first fell.

Ahead, I could make out the scratchy, adolescent voice of Blondy, just out of sight. I stopped before rounding the corner, lurking there to listen to the boy boast.

It was by no means unexpected to hear the kid talk of his kill. Your first... hunt is always an experience that stays with you, becomes part of who you are. How he described it, framed it, however, made my blood run cold.

My own part in the tale was almost ignored, only mentioned in the most round about way. With how he described it you would hardly know I was even in the same country, likely the one orchestrating the whole day. Then it hit me. He began talking about the counsel of elders, how they had forbid the plan, how they'd refused to eat the meat that had been brought in. The kid laughed, jeering the men and woman who had helped keep the community from collapsing under its own weight over the last few months.

"We are human! We will survive! We'll drive the beasts from the city that is rightfully ours!"

Oh smeg. The rally around the corner was starting to get ugly. By the set of Rebeca's lips, I could tell she was a single heartbeat from walking into the midst of it and speaking her mind in no too few words.

People were cheering and jeering as I backed away, Rebeca clutched tightly in my arms. There must be the better part of fifty people in that mob, and I didn't want to find out if they were spitting anything more than rhetoric.

I found an alley choked with rubble and used it to scramble away, climbing the snow covered rocks with one hand while holding Rebeca aloft with the other. We had only just made it out of sight in time, seconds later the mob streamed past us, chanting.

"Hu-man! Hu-man! Hu-man!" They punctuated each word with a stomp to the ground, every so often stopping to cheer themselves on while everyone else stood out of their way, trying to avoid eye contact. I'd seen this before, back in V-town. The faces may be different, but the hatred - not always directed truly outwards - never changed.

Behind me a door creaked open. I jumped.

An old woman stood there, aged and bent, a bun of wisping gray hair pulled up tight atop her head.

She looked us up and down, peering about the alleyway before motioning with a crooked finger. "Come," was all she said.

The room within was black as any starless night, I couldn't so much as see my nose before my face. It was amazing the woman didn't fall and shatter a hip, I must have run into at least three walls during our short journey.

I heard a scratch, and light burst to life between us. She quickly lit a trio of thick wax candles before the flame reached her frail fingers.

"You've returned, Tommy." I knew that voice, but I didn't recognize the face. The flickering orange light of the candles set her in an even poorer view than the sun had. Her body was wrinkled and shrunken, looking like nothing so much as a corpse, eyes to big for the face that held them. The only thing I renumbered was the bun of hair.

"I know you." I was whispering, I don't know why. "You're one of the elders. You saw us off."

She nodded. I almost thought her bones would snap with that simple motion.

"I still am. For all the difference it makes." Her voice was like rice paper tearing. "Why are you back, Tommy?"

I shrugged, "To see the Doc."

"That's not what I meant. Why are you back among us?"

"I was asked to. You were starving."

"We were, and many of us still are."

"I know that doe wasn't much..."

"That is not the problem, Tommy. The Front, that's what they call themselves, are the ones you've trained, the only ones who can hunt. The only ones who have food."

"That's not a problem." I thought back to the youths and shuttered. "I can teach more. I can..." I paused for a moment and sighed, "I can hunt for you." I said it and a weight seemed to lift from my chest, in much the same way another one settled upon it. "I don't know how much I can do, a single person, but I can hunt for you."

"No, Tommy." Her eyes flashed in the candle light, an emerald green that caused me to pull back involuntarily. "We can't ask you to do that, we won't ask it of you. You have already done too much. We would already be dead if it were not for you. We must handle this amongst ourselves. We cannot rely upon you for this, you have already done too much. For you to provide anymore would do nothing but fan the flames of indignation further, and they have already been set well alight."

"So, what would you have me do? Sit back and watch while the few humans who remain rip themselves apart from within? Finishing the job that the government started?" I lowered my head to my chest, "I saved everyone from the government, from Storm Front. Things are supposed to be better now."

"They will be, Tommy. Eventually." It wasn't the gray hair that spoke now, it was Rebeca. "Are you sure there is nothing we can do? Nothing at all?" Her voice was calm and smooth, as though she had been expecting this. For a moment I wondered what she'd been doing back at camp while I was away.

"Nothing, my dear. Nothing but watch." She closed her eyes, "Watch, and pray."

We stole from the house, out into the daylight, being careful to remain unseen. From the sounds of it the town was almost evenly divided, and I had no idea who the 'our people' were vs. the 'their people'. Now that I thought about it, I don't think I had a 'my people'. Even those who weren't part of the 'let's kill 'em all' camp still didn't seem to like me much.

Some days I wish I still had my desk job back in V-town.

Rebeca still scooped under my arm, we made our way towards the edge of town. My paws fell silently on the ground beneath us. I froze every time one of my claws scraped on the cobblestones, it would be so much easier to hide in the woods.

We broke to the trees with little fuss, and I was happy to put the buildings behind us, but I didn't slow down. Quite the opposite, feeling the frozen soil gave me an extra boost that sent us speeding through the branches, never looking back.

It wasn't until I'd been running for ten minutes that I realized that we were headed in the wrong direction. I'd been in such a rush to escape the shadows of Horseshoe Bay that I hadn't even bothered to notice where we were going.

I slowed to a stop. Panting, I rested a hand on the bare bark of a nearby tree. I lowered Rebeca to the ground next to me, she stood, hardly swaying at all. The ride must have been a bumpy one for her, with me sprinting across the countryside, but she hadn't complained.

"Where are we, Wolfy?" She surveyed the forests about us, not a single sign of civilization. I found it refreshing.

"Don't know." I shrugged and sat on a nearby fallen tree. I'm sure the log must have been cold beneath me, but I didn't feel it through my fur coat. Rebeca walked over and made herself at home in my lap, she didn't have the benefit of my insulation.

"So, what do we do now?" She was staring out into the trees around us. "English is still AWOL, and now it doesn't look like there's much of future for us here." She shuttered for a moment, I doubt it had anything to do with the cold. "You could leave, you know. You could leave me here, I'm well enough now to look out for myself."

I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her closer, "No." I didn't need to say more.

"Forget I mentioned it." She smiled up at me, her breath fogging in the air.

"Not a chance, Babe. We're in this together, for better or for worse. Or did you forget that I'm canine?"

"What?" Her face screwed up.

"The whole mate for life thing..." My voice trailed off, didn't she know about this?

Thankfully, I didn't have to finish that thought. Off in the woods to our left I heard a familiar cry. It sounded like someone was trying to stage a theater production - and it wasn't going well. A scream broke the still winter's air. It wasn't from a doe.

"What's going on?" Rebeca shouted after me as I set her down in the snow and ran off into the trees. I didn't bother to answer her.

It didn't take long to find them, they were making enough noise to be heard for miles, and that was a good thing this time. It was the boys again, and Blondy was still leading them.

Things were not going well. This time the Wild Bunch had managed to track down a bull moose and, unlike the doe of yesterday, he was not willing to go meekly into the night.

Under normal circumstances the dozen of them, even humans, shouldn't have had a problem bringing the moose down, but they'd played the same trick as before. Not satisfied to simply bring the beast to rest, they had shredded his sides with an almost clinical efficiency, rending his hide while at the time same time avoiding anything vital. The problem was that the quarry was healthier and stronger than the scraggly doe, inciting its ire had caused the moose to fight rather than flee.

He'd run at least two of the humans up trees, more were hiding in the bushes, refusing to come out into the open to save their downed comrade. One final form was laying on the ground, bleeding, his arm bent at an angle that should never be.

Blondy was there, hiding in a tree, shouting orders to the others that they promptly ignored. An edge of panic was growing in his voice as the bull closed on the prone human. So far nothing but good luck and fast reflexes had saved the boy from having his skull crushed under-hoof. It was obvious that neither could hold out for much longer.

I stood there for a moment, hearing Blondy's words echo in my ears. Every one of these boys had been among the crowd that had cheered the murder of my kind, screamed for their blood.

It didn't take long, though. The bull moose had one lucky stomp, hoof coming down to pulverize the already injured arm of the boy on the ground. I could hear him scream as the bull shattered what remained of his arm into little more than paste. The boy cried as the moose raised his foot for another, final, blow. For just a moment I could hear him whisper out for his mother.

I was airborne before I even knew what I was doing, landing upon the bull's bucking back before I even realized I had made the decision.

The moment my weight landed on the beast's back the child underfoot was forgotten. I wrenched my body to one side, trying and pull him around so the flailing hooves wouldn't accomplish in accident what they had failed to do in malice.

The beast bucked and kicked beneath me, seeming more of a bronco than a moose. My claws dug into his flesh as I tried to keep a grip and avoid being thrown to the ground, deepening the superficial cuts that the humans had already made.

Slowly I inched my way forward, finally within striking distance of his neck. Wrapping my arms about him, in an embrace that threatened far more than affection, I at last had the leverage to clench my jaws around his spine.

It wasn't the right grip, my father would have cuffed my ears for using it. I should be further down, my jaws didn't have nearly enough strength to snap a moose's back bone. I should be going at the throat.

It did, however, work. Ripping and rendering, I ruptured enough arteries that the titan's moments slowed until finally collapsing on the ground, me atop him. The bull's breathing was ragged, but he still lived.

I could hear the sounds of Blondy and his gang behind me. I wasn't sure if they were cheers or screams. Turns out they were both.

The screams still came from the kid on the ground. One ran to his aid, the rest just ignored him. All but those two kids came scrambling towards the moose's still trembling body, knives held high. Blondy stood watching.

I loosed a growl at the children who streamed towards me, a single wordless threat that stopped them in their tracks.

"You. Blondy. Whatever your name is." I pointed at him. "Here. Now."

He glared at me for a moment, before crossing his arms in front of him and standing his ground. "I don't take orders from beasts."

"You take orders from me, whelp." I stared back.

He held his composure until I leashed another growl at him and bared my teeth. "Last chance. I took down the beast that none of you could. What makes you think you can stand before me?"

He came to me, head down but eyes flashing. I grabbed his wrist, the one with the knife.

"This is your kill, you led it. The wounded are your responsibility, but so is the prey. End this."

He looked up at me, "We're not done. The beast doesn't yet deserve death."

"You're right. You're not done yet." I pulled a single one of my claws down his forearm, rising a cut that bled as he pulled away with a yelp. "The hunt ends when the prey is dead. Hesitate again and I will show you what he feels. He isn't human, neither am I. We still feel pain. End this or you will feel his pain."

I let go of the kid and shoved him roughly towards the moose who lay, still gasping, on the ground. For a moment I watched the child's eyes, they were large and unblinking as he hovered his knife over the unprotected neck. The boy had never done this before. He had tortured bugs, and now prey, but never truly killed.

I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering my own battle, when I had first killed. "Do it," I whispered.

He thrust the knife down.

I left them alone to try and figure out how to get the carcase back to town. That was their problem, not to mention their wounded. I'd taken lumps of my own while riding the bucking moose, but the regeneration I'd been born with made short work of that. One of the benefits of being a wolf, we had a one in a hundred chance of being born with that little edge.

The light was dying as Rebeca and I made it back to camp, I could almost see the simple canvas tent poking through the trees. Then I smelt smoke, the flicker of a flame wandered through the branches.

Setting Rebeca down, I started forward. Too late, I realized that she was following a step behind me. "This is my home too, Wolfy." She whispered it so softly I could barely make it out, even as her lips pressed to my ear.

We rounded the last bramble to the campsite, it was still hidden in shadow. The wind shifted, bringing the sharp tang of an unforgettable musk to me.

"English!"

The massive lump that sat in front of the fire turned, whacking me right between the eyes with a snowball.

"Mate, where've you been? I've nearly frozen out here waiting for you!" The familiar twang of his overstressed fake British accent couldn't help but make me smile. "Oh, and you'll need more matches. I went through a couple of books trying to get the fire going."

"That was all we had! How many did you use?"

He just shrugged and grinned, "How many did you have?"

I helped Rebeca sit on the log we had pulled by the fire, the three of us gathered around it. English had brought his own tent back with him, it was set up sloppily a few paces away.

"What's the word from the city, English?" I looked up at him over the flames. He tossed me a package wrapped in wax paper, I caught it singlehandedly.

It was fast food, he must have brought it back with him. It was cold now, but that didn't slow me down. He tossed another to Rebeca.

"Not good." His voice rumbled over the crackling of the flames, I could even hear it over the sounds of my own eating. "The positive news is that the humans don't have much to worry about right now, the bad news is that everyone else does."

"Eh?"

"You remember how the anti-human protesters were going off the deep end when they finally got what they wanted? Started going after anyone else they thought was foreign?"

I nodded. Last time we'd stole into the city one of my best friends, Max, had just about gotten rolled for the fact he was Japanese.

"We're seeing more of the same, only worse." His eyes fell to the flames between us, "The lines are redrawn so often it's hard to keep track. Canines vs felines, local vs foreign." He sighed, "For all I know they could be fighting over what color a person's fur is by now."

"Is the city going to fall?"

One of the lion's lips twitched. "It might. But not without a fight. Some people still seem to have something more on their shoulders than a pair of fangs. Say what you will about the police force, but I'm almost starting to like them again. Almost." The words came hard won from his lips, as though he were forcing them out, reading a script. It made sense I suppose, English had suffered as much at their hands as I had. "They're still striving to keep things as civil as they can, if not for them the city would be a pyre by now. All the critical services are still running. I've heard that your uncle Gowan had to knock a few heads to keep his folks in line, but the hunters are still filling the city's belly, and staying out of the melee for all I know. Though I'd give my last coin to see Gown wade into the mass for just five minutes, he'd end arguments by ripping folk's windpipes out."

"Gowan doesn't play it that way. He likes to 'keep the balance', as he says. He's one of those to never get involved. I shutter to think what would happen to the city if the meat stopped flowing in. Hang the freedom and liberty, if the food ran out we'd see real bloodshed." I tossed the empty wrapper of my fast food to the flames after I finished speaking.

"In any event, mate, I do have a story to tell." Once again his words were halting and mechanical.

"Oh?"

"Aye. I ran into a pair of water sprites, fresh off a ship from across the Pacific. They hadn't so much as stepped off the deck by the time they'd got a good V-town welcome, courtesy of some bears who figured that they shouldn't have come." He paused for a moment. "Not quite the same welcome I got. Then again, who knows where I'd be now if I hadn't run across Smith while I was dragging my rucksack up the pier. Anyway, yours truly decided to step in and see if I could render a bit of assistance to a couple of travelers in need."

"Were they hurt?" Rebeca had finished her meal and was tugging our blankets closer about herself.

"A couple of bloody noses on the sprites, but it was naut as compared to what I gave the beer guts." A sickening smile split the lion's lips, I'd almost forgotten what a brawler he was. I'd learned the craft of hunting prey in the wilderness, moose, elk, deer and the like, but English had chosen a different type of prey. He hunted that which walked on two legs.

"So, what happened?"

"Other than some bears who'll be spending a few nights at the hospital? I heard an interesting story from the recently arrived travelers. Apparently, they were dispatched from Tokyo, by the Emperor himself no less. It looks like they've put their heads together, and every last computer on the island, to track down some facts about the Cataclysm."

Now the lion had my full attention. I'd been one of the few people in all of V-town who had studied history, and, no matter how you cut it, the Cataclysm was a major part of that.

"It seems, mate, that they've waved their fingers in the air, and came up with what direction the wind blows. Some form of 'shock wave' or such they called it, came from this direction. Or, to be more precise, to the north-east of us, about a thousand kilometers or so."

"Are you saying they think they know what caused the cataclysm?"

"Not quite, mate. They haven't the foggiest of what, only where. Somewhere inland, to the north-east of V-town."

I couldn't help it, my heart quickened. I'd always wanted to understand my world, find something to make my mark, discover something no one else could claim. "Where are they now?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, mate. They promptly turned on heel and climbed right back aboard their steamer. Said something about this place being to violent for them." He grinned again, softer this time. "Like we're beasts or something. I couldn't imagine what might have given them that impression."

"Did you get anything more out of them, English, or are you just here to taunt me with this?"

"Oh, I don't know, mate. How would a map do ya?"

"What?"

"Well, not quite a map, as such, mate. More of a vague pointer in the right direction."

He spread a sheet of rice paper canvas on a snow free patch of ground between us, careful not to get it too close to the burning embers of the fire. It was small, not more than two feet square, and drawn impeccably.

A work of art, it depicted V-town, or something like it, and the Rocky Mountains. Through the craggy cliffs snaked a number of routs across to the plains. In the center of the featureless expanse of grass on the other side of the mountains sat two dots, one emblazoned with a 'C', the other with an 'E'.

"As far as I can tell, mate, they figure the whole Cataclysm originated from more northernly of these two places, then spread outwards in waves."

"How'd they come up with that?"

"Who knows? They muttered something about measuring the direction of the greatest trans-formative force, or something like that. The question, mate, is what are you going to do about it?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, mate. It sure as all gods come to brunch isn't going to be me walking those roads alone. I'd make it all of about two days before I start seeing my ribs and turn back looking for a good cup of tea and pork roast."

"That I could see," Rebeca piped up from beside me, even she knew what a disgrace of a hunter English was.

"So, mate, it's up to you. Do you feel up for an adventure?" He said it with a wink, just daring me to mock him.

I let the fire crackle between us for a moment, staring at the map, wondering what I might find on the other side of the Rockies. Horseshoe Bay was the furthest I'd ever been from V-town, until I came out here I'd never been more than an hour's walk from where I'd been born.

I was just about to answer English when I saw his ears jump. It didn't take long for me to hear what had startled him.

They came crunching through the snow without even the pretense of subtlety. There must have been at least a dozen of them, humans. I could see their torches held high, flickering through the trees.

"Wolf! We've come for you. You killed my son!" I couldn't make out their faces in the dancing light, but I could smell the scent of stale alcohol on the cold breeze.

"Who are you? What do you want?" I turned towards them, puting the fire to my back.

"You killed my son today. Now I've come for your pelt, you beast!" One of them, shorter and surprisingly well fed, pushed his way to the front.

"I have done no such thing." None of the three of us had moved.

He kicked his way towards us, spraying white snow and black ashes before him. His face was a mask of fury, screaming of loss with no escape.

"My son!" His face was only inches from mine now, even with him standing we were nose to nose. "They had it all under control, they were the best and brightest we had..." His voice choked for a moment, "And you prowled up and killed him."

I let my eyes fall, his son must have been the kid who had got his arm stomped. I guess there was only so much the doc could do.

"I'm sorry to hear that. But it was the prey. They were not experienced enough to take down a moose, and they should have known that. Without me your son would not have survived even as long as he did."

"Then why didn't you help them! You're the great wolf, we hired you to make sure this would never happen."

My eyes snapped up. His teeth were barred, he spat in my face.

"And what would you have of me? You hand me nothing more than a pack of testosterone fueled pups who haven't the slightest clue of what they're getting into, haven't the vaguest idea of what life and death really means, and you expect them to become hunters in a single day?" I wiped his drool from my face. "And you," I looked over the crowd, "What have you done? Where were you? You send your precious children off to stock your larders, and you don't even have the backbone to leave your little fortress. You send your children off to do what you can't, or won't, then become enraged when nature takes its course. Hunting is killing. How can you expect that it wouldn't happen in return?"

"He... was... my son!" His fist came towards me, slow and drunken. He swung it to the side, like he was trying to knock a bottle of the shelf.

I caught it in my hand. Flexing my fingers, my claws dug imperceptibly into his flesh, small streams of blood formed, dripping downwards towards the gray snow beneath us.

"I didn't kill your son. You did." I tried to whisper it, but my voice came out as more of a horse yell.

Around us, the other humans arrayed, slowly moving inwards, pulling knives and lengths of rebar from under their clothes. English growled beside me, seeming the shake the very earth beneath us. So deep was the sound that it was felt more than heard. A promise of bloodshed rippling through the air. If I didn't know the lion better I would have thought he was begging for the opportunity to skin them alive.

I glanced at Rebeca from the corner of my eye. She hadn't moved, hadn't even bothered to look up.

"Gentlemen, go home." Her voice was quiet, but it carried through the heat of the moment like a chill wind. "If you're looking for atonement or absolution, you won't find it here. Go home, before something worse happens. Your families need you."

That was all it took. I still held the man's arm in one of my hands, but his other came towards me, holding a knife that glinted in the flickering light of the flames around us.

I felt it hit, felt its cool surface bite deep into the flesh on the side of my head. For just a moment my vision jumped back to a place far away. Back in V-town, deep underground in police HQ. I'd been under the knife then, too. A police dog, or at least I thought it was a police dog, had all but dismantled me there, looking for the location of the human camp. They'd never gotten it from me, even though I had been hanging to sanity by my claws alone at the end.

I felt blood and heard a scream, neither were my own. My vision cleared and I saw the human before me, his hand was still in mine. He'd fallen to his knees, fingers crushed and bloody in my grasp. I'd gripped him so tightly that my claws dug through him, all the way to meet the flesh of my own palm. He'd dropped his knife on the ground, it was surrounded by a puddle of red. Our blood, from both of our wounds, was mixing in the snow.

He looked up at me, eyes pleading, but no words came to his lips. I felt something run down the side of my face and across my lips. I tasted it, more of my own blood. I've seen so much of it lately that it didn't faze me at all.

English had yet to move, but his gaze alone held the others at bay.

Kneeling down, never letting go of the human's hand, I took a closer look at him. Unkempt black hair and dull green eyes pasted on pale white skin. If it wasn't for the mishmash of clothing he wore, he might just as soon have faded into the background of the night.

Reaching out with my free hand, I pulled some rags from him, they came free with the rip of cheap cloth. He continued to stare at me, his lips were moving but no sound escaped.

A single yank and I wretched our hands apart. The moment I did, his began spurting blood. Quickly, I wrapped the cloth around him, inexpertly staunching the flow. Unlike me, his cuts would not heal in mere moments.

"Go home. Unlike your son, you have a chance to recover from your wounds." I turned away, leaving my unprotected back open to him and the knife that lay on the ground. "Go see the doc. She can help you." I paused for a moment, "And tell her that Rebeca and I won't be back to see her." I tried to crack a smile, it didn't come. "I know when I'm not welcome."

They all just stood there for a moment, no one seeming to have heard me, no one moving.

"Didn't you hear, mongrels? Get!" English's voice boomed out in the night, sending them scampering.

I fell back onto my log as they disappeared into the darkness. I was sitting exactly where I'd been before this had all started, but it felt harder now, colder.

"Thank you, English." My words sounded muffled, the human had damaged my ear.

"Not a problem, mate." He was off to my side somewhere, I couldn't see him, a shadow had come up beside me.

"I'm sorry, Wolfy." Rebeca's voice was quiet, I could feel her tender hands already probing around the exposed flesh of my wound. I'd no idea how'd she done it, but ever since she could move again she'd become my caretaker as much as I'd hers.

Every time I came home from a hunt I had scratches and bruises, sometimes cuts and broken bones. She'd become my matron, setting flesh and bones alike to allow them to knit together again.

"For what?" I wasn't sure if she had heard me for a moment, she almost didn't respond.

"Everything, Tommy." Her warm fingers came away from my face, the bleeding had stopped. "We're no angels. I suppose we're just the same as those we ran from. What's to say that if positions were reversed it wouldn't be us humans doing the same to you. I really thought there was something that was right, that something of value would be lost if we were gone... but we're the same as anyone else. On the inside, we're just as virtuous and wicked as any dog or daemon."

I let one of my fingers, on the hand that wasn't trailing gore, trace of the side of her face. "It's not what you look like that matters, it's who you are. I'm sure there are humans who deserve to be ground into the dust, but there are just as many worth saving."

English cleared his throat behind us, knocking me out of the moment.

"Anyway, mates," He jacked a thumb back towards the general direction of the departing humans, "I doubt it a good idea for us to bunk here any longer. We may have frightened this lot off, but it won't stay that way for long. We've just painted a bulls eye on our backs for every scrap of misbegotten fortune that lands on the hairless monkeys over there." He spat on the ground, an action I'd never seen him do before, "Some thanks from them."

It took us only moments to break camp, there wasn't much. I'd always hunted our food, so there was none of that to pack, and Rebeca was the only one to bother with anything as silly as clothing. That left the tent, blankets, and miscellaneous such as English's tea pot - something that he guarded jealously.

In the process of pulling the poles from our tent, I stumbled upon my journal. Thankfully English was busy shoving his belongings into a deceptively small backpack - he needed to jump on it to get everything to fit. Rebeca was sitting beside me, her hand lay atop mine as I picked up the book.

"Someday, Wolfy. Someday you'll have to let me get to the rest of that."

I covered my face with a hand, blushing under my fur. "How much did you read?"

"Not much, Wolfy," She smiled mischievously. "Only up to the part where you had your first crush in school. Molly, as it?" She tapped a fingernail against her teeth. "She sounded nice, but I never knew you went for someone like that." That grin again. "I'll never know how I beat out a person who never looked that good."

Quickly, I pulled the book away as she made a lunge for it. "No dice, Babe. A guy needs to keep some secrets, doesn't he? How will I look so wild and brave to you if you know my innermost thoughts? I'd never want you to know what a scared little pup I am." I turned and made a point of hitting her in the face with my tail as I pulled the rest of the tent down around us. Cheeky monkey she was, she tugged on it as she scampered away to keep from getting caught in the folds of falling canvas.

I quickly surveyed the camp as English stirred the last dying embers of the fire into the snow. There wasn't much left to show that we'd just spent the last several months of our lives here, just a few depressions in the snow and some blood stains. Nothing that wouldn't be covered over in the next snowfall. For a moment it hit me, just what would I leave behind when I was gone, gone for good? A failed plan to try and save the humans of V-town, people who didn't even want saving?

I heard a scrape in the snow, off in the shadows before me. I froze. Behind me, I could feel English and Rebeca doing the same, in the dark we had to be all but invisible.

A child scampered into view, hopping the snow drifts. Behind him, a single figure followed. I recognized the crooked shape of the old woman we had spoken to.

She only just made it into the camp before settling slowly to my old log with the creak and pop of aged joints wrestling with the cold.

Her voice was even more horse and weathered than it had been yesterday, sounding as it was all but coming from beyond the grave. The child hadn't yet said a word.

"You're leaving us. Again. Why?"

I sighed and sat down beside her in the darkness. We'd had a conversation much like this once before, the first time the three of us had left Horseshoe Bay. That time we'd been heading back into V-town to try and postpone the onslaught that would have spelt an end to the settlement.

"You can't tell me that the news isn't the talk of the town." She didn't say anything as I waved my hands in front of us. "Protector of the town goes feral and kills a child! No one can be trusted, they're nothing but beasts." I began to speak faster, my voice falling to little more than a snarl as I imagined what was being said about me.

"You know that no matter what the story, not all of us will believe it. Despite how fantastical or false it may be."

"And you can't tell me that some of your number won't take it in whole heartedly."

She nodded, a slow motion with the pain of her years evident in every breath.

"You haven't answered my question, young wolf."

"Yes I have. We're no longer welcome here, we never were. We were living on borrowed time, and payment is due. I, for one, do not plan to be here when the villagers come back with torches and pitchforks. I spent long enough trying to keep you alive, I'd just as soon prefer to not have to kill a couple of your number off."

"What would you have us do now that you're gone?"

"What would I have you do?" I threw my head back, one hand coming to rub my temples, "Why is it what I would have you do? You lot seem to be good enough at making decisions without me, why do you care what I think?"

She shrugged, a subtle motion in the darkness. "You may not accept it, neither may most others, but you are part of our community." She laid a single weathered hand on my arm. "You'll go and do what you must, but you are tied far closer to us than you think. You all are."

"Why not you, why don't you lead them? They already trust you, and you seem to know a snatch more than I do about what's going on!"

She smiled, a thin lipped grin that didn't expose a single tooth. "I've seen more than my own fair share of winters, Tommy." There was a pause before she said my name, almost imperceptible, but there. "I won't see another one. Life is nothing more than a theater, my son used to say that, and I'm soon to see my last act."

"But... isn't there someone else? Surly there must be someone better than I for this?"

"There are, many. But you are the only one who isn't human. No human could ever do the just that must be done, few would even dare. You are the one who stood up for us when no one else would, you chose this for yourself. No one forced it upon you, and you can't leave the job half done. Together, we've cleaved ourselves from the world around us, now, alone, you must make a single whole again."

"No." I brushed her hand from my lap, moving to stand up. "Right now, I'm leaving." Her hand returned to my shoulder, its wan weight somehow keeping me from moving.

"Yes you are, Tommy. But you'll return when you're done. You're not finished here."

She pushed down on my shoulder, levering herself to her feet. She and her grandson disappeared into the shadows of the forest.

I hadn't moved, English trotted to my side and gave me a shove. "Come on, mate. We don't want to be where when the monster hunters arrive."