For the first time in what seemed like months, we felt as though we were going to be alright. Were we safe? That remained to be seen, but at least we weren’t running for our lives. And that made us feel more relaxed; probably more relaxed than it should have considering the fact that the Hunters were still out there. But at least hopefully we didn’t leave a trail that was easy to follow and we would be safe at least for the time being.
Moonlight Falls for the most part, was idyllic and quiet. But we were the newcomers. And many were suspicious of us and rightly so. Many of these long-time residents of the Falls had tasted the sting of persecution for centuries not mere months like we had and they were keenly on their guard when it came to interacting with any new inhabitants. How many of them had lost loved ones to the Hunters? How many of them had been betrayed by those whom they considered friends? We were were but we were ferals. The green glint in our eyes gave us away. Ferals were the newly turned...who would turn savage in an instant, frightened of their newfound powers and were what the longtime weres considered exceedingly dangerous.
At least that was what I read in what I could get a hold of at the library. The fairy librarian’s hands practically shook as she handed the book to me; a quaver of fear in her voice as she told me that the book, “I’m sorry...sir...” couldn’t be taken out of the library as it was a reference and had to be read on site. I made copious notes as I read and insured that I could pass along the crucial information to my wife who was steadfastly putting hours of time into trying to understand alchemy. I also dropped into the elixir shop which was a new experience as I’d never had need of going into one before. When it came down to it; this place was quite handy.
Franz was finding gemstones, metals and other artifacts including gigantic meteors and Buffy was making the small creatures of this town terrified, managing to capture birds, turtles, rodents, snakes and other items that could potentially be sold to add to our coffers. I appreciated every bit of the efforts that the two of them were making to help us, with the prime exception of the Malayan kraits that Buffy managed to corral. Yeah, I wasn’t happy about those bipolar venomous snakes that she managed to capture. Wasn’t too sure which was worse: the prospect of the snakes being venomous or the fact that we could get bitten...and die. We sold those off quickly.
The insects that were uncommon or rare; we managed to donate for some monetary return at the science centre which helped our financial bottom line. In fact, Buffy had managed to provide me with a range of rare and uncommon insects that I had to drop off and thus my next stop on tonight’s journey was to the science centre located at the local Moonlight Falls hospital a monolithic older building that appeared to have been built in the 1800s. When I had dropped the insects off, they told me that they were exceedingly pleased to see the variety of insects that I had brought; that it would help with their research and that they would pay me a decent price for the offerings. If I had any more in the future that they would be happy to take them off my hands which was a good thing since Buffy seemed to be expert in catching insects.
However we were mostly relying on Franz’s ability to find gemstones that were high-priced when cut to raise our financial bottom-line. And he was particularly good at finding soulpeace which when cut in a spire-cut would yield over §100K. When we could afford to get a science station, it would come in very handy as the ability to be able to clone anything was possible and with that our financial bottom line would rise exponentially. Both pink diamond and soulpeace gemstones were exceedingly valuable and our morale seemed to rise every time Franz brought one home which was an occurrence that seemed to become more and more common as he gained experience which meant that most of the time we were pretty darned elated and I preferred to maximize the profit with the most expensive cut that I could do as a result of the gem-cutting machine.
In the morning after going out on a seed-hunting expedition, River headed over to the fairy arboretum and did some exploring. For such a small looking location one could spend hours wandering inside. Was this a case of transdimensional engineering where when one stepped inside an object, that one was transported into another dimension? Perhaps. If anything, one was teleported into a state where one could wander for hours on end without running into walls or barriers.
While that was happening; apparently Pappy Wolff had found himself the target of a lightning strike. River found that out because when she came out of the fairy arboretum, she could smell him a mile away. Needless to say the smell of singed dog was not a great smell. He was wandering around shell-shocked and wondering just what had hit him. It would have been quite amusing however he was elderly and electrical shocks such as those could potentially cause arrythmia and potentially be fatal for him at his age. After making sure that he was alright, River was able to reassure herself that nothing was going to happen to Papa Wolff and she was able to leave him there. After all, despite the fact that the Wolffs were a rival clan to us, we were still werewolves and thus lycanthropic solidarity. Pick on one of us...you picked on all of us and the backlash from an insult to any one of us weres would bring down the wrath of all.
River, afterwards went over to the grocery store and took care of some of the harvestables that she had collected in return for being able to buy some meat which we were very short on. Weres; such as us, survived on meat and when we didn’t have any in our fridge, we were not happy. Unlike these so-called hipster...go-against-the-grain vegetarian vampires that gained popularity with that schlock hack-writer who wrote Twilight, there was no such thing as a vegetarian werewolf. What we ate was raw, blood-dripping meat; preferably freshly killed. And there was the grocery store if we could get our claws into a cow or a pig. Since meat-farming never really seemed to be much of a thing here, we had to rely on the grocery store to import fresh meat and thus every so often my beloved wife would make the trip to the grocery store and get some more meat for us. We needed to stock the fridge every time...and well...suffice it to say, it cost enough that on grocery run days; the consignment sales value was pretty much break-even. It was when we needed a big boost in our income that we consigned the soulpeace gem-cuts, otherwise we’d just store them in a storage container that hides their latent value from the tax-assessor.
After maxing out her alchemy skill, River headed over to the Vault of Antiquities to drop off some gemstones as the last stage in her mastery of Alchemy. With that complete she received a Philosopher’s Stone which was probably one of the most dangerous things there. However, we would only make use of it when necessary.
After she got back from the tasks that she had set out to do, I had to drop by the grocery store myself in order to do a few things that needed to get done. I almost thought that there may be a killing on the store grounds as I saw Ayden Van Gould and Linda Rodgers in the same area at the same time. I had heard rumors that Linda Rodgers was a Slayer (one who went after evil supernaturals), however I had no evidence and I wasn’t about to reveal myself unless she did something. But as it turns out. Ayden Van Gould had been cured of vampirism and he wasn’t a threat to anyone though I could see Linda Rodgers give him a good hard stare. Me; I just tried to keep my cool and remain undetected as a werewolf. I didn’t want any problems to manifest themselves and give us more headaches than we could handle at the moment.
But my concerns were unfounded as they went about their business and I went about mine...heading to the counter and paying for my groceries. It was a nice day to bike home. It was late in the afternoon and one had to alway keep in mind that on a full moon, if one was a werewolf; one’s lycanthropic nature came out in full force.
It was at about four in the afternoon by the time I got back from the grocery run...and I noticed that there were two individuals at our gate. They did look familiar, but what we’d gone through over the several months had enlightened us and hardened us to the fact that we couldn’t just trust anyone. We’d gone through too much to let our guard down. As I rode closer, I noticed that it was Phil, my old school buddy and Bebe; Gus and Dorie Hart’s kid. The question rose in my mind: what were they doing here? I kept a close eye on them to make sure that they weren’t carrying any weapons.
River was even more suspicious...as she’d had the experience of being betrayed by her mother, so she wasn’t as welcoming as I was to Phil and Bebe. “We’re in the same boat”, Bebe said. “A little after you left; there were tales of sightings of a large black wolf roaming the streets of Sunset Valley.” she explained. “We didn’t believe it at first. We thought they were just rumors to scare us. But...” she paused for a long moment. “Parker, Ethan, Phil and I were at Central Park...during the middle of the day and we saw it...”
River asked, “You saw the wolf?” wondering if Bebe was just making it up...to have us let our guard down.
Bebe nodded in response...then silenced both River and me, by rolling up her sleeve exposing her torn up arm just barely stitched together wrapped in bandages; and looked at the both of us a feral glint in her eye. “I saw it...” she affirmed showing her wounds to us. River and I looked at each other. This was more than just a case of a random werewolf attack.
Phil looked at us. “I had to step in to try to stop the attack...while Ethan and Parker ran; the cowards.” he spat venomously. He rolled up his own sleeve to show he’d been bitten as well. “For as much good as it did...” he growled. “Our only choice was to take her to the hospital because she was bleeding heavily from the wounds. It was just lucky that the wolf-attack missed veins or she wouldn’t be here.”
River and I looked at each other speechlessly. If both Phil and Bebe had been bitten...they were going to turn tonight. And they would end up being Ferals too. We had no choice. “So you’re seeking sanctuary?” River asked; she sounded reluctant. Phil gave her a hard look.
“Yeah...River... I guess we are...I thought...with the only people that we know here...” he said with some heat in his voice, bitterness dripping from every pore at the slight, “It’s not like we have any effing choice here now, do we?” He squared his shoulder and stared at her eye to eye. River matched him stance for stance. If there was one thing, River wasn’t about to back down and she’d had more experience being a were than he did. The last thing I wanted was my wife and my best friend going at each other in a werewolf fight because fights between werewolves were vicious and one didn’t walk away without wounds.
“OK...ok...” I said raising both hands, palms out in a universal calm-down gesture, “Look let’s let some cooler heads prevail here, OK?” I looked at River, “Sweetheart, I know that we’re a bit suspicious of anyone right now after all that we’ve gone through, but these are our friends, OK?” It was strange that I was the one who was trying to be level-headed after being betrayed by my mom so early in life, but well...maybe for River, the fresh betrayal of her mother was affecting her harder than one realized. After all it was only normal to be suspicious of others’ motives if the one person who was supposed to love you unconditionally was the one that hurt you. I turned to Phil, “So...Phil...what did you do when Bebe got bitten?” I knew he’d stopped the attack and gotten bitten himself, but I wanted to know where he’d taken her to get treatment to keep the wound from getting infected.
“Took her to the hospital...she was leaving a trail of blood from the park to the hospital and we had to have the doctors do something about what happened. I was fearing that the wolf was rabid, until the doctor told me that we should consider fleeing for sanctuary. He ran the tests, told us of a previous attack in Sunset that he’d treated and told us that two people had to leave for Moonlight Falls. We put two and two together that it was you and River because you two hadn’t been seen around Sunset Valley for several months.” Phil must have run into the same doctor that I had taken River to – the same one who worked in Moonlight Fall previous to transferring to the hospital at Sunset Valley. “After inspecting her bite, he told us that this wasn’t any ordinary wolf attack, that Bebe needed to go to sanctuary and since I’d gotten bitten too, trying to help her, that I’d have to go with her.” Phil had had his own dreams...of owning a comic book shop and well...becoming an entrepreneur and with this werewolf attack; those dreams just got shattered. There wasn’t much call for books about superheroes and villains in a place where the incredible was pretty much common-place. There was a marked tone of bitterness in his voice. “I was just about to head in to the bank the next day to see if I could get a business starter loan too...when this happened.” As insane as Phil thought he was, there was still a remarkable sense of the practical about him. Maybe he was more sane than he realized. He’d paid a high price for helping someone; for doing the right thing.
“Look...we’ll give you sanctuary...” I said finally looking at River. “There’s another wolf pack here, but I don’t know anything about them and what they’re about.” I paused for a long moment. “And I don’t want to join another wolf pack just because they’re there...right?” Phil nodded quietly. “I figure, let’s start our own pack...and wait it out...if they cross our turf, we go for the jugular.”
River looked over at Bebe, Phil and me, “So we’re starting our own wolf pack?”
I nodded. “It’s the only way that we’re assured that we’re all pulling in the same direction. I don’t know what Pappy Wolff’s goals are and I don’t know if his goals are the same as ours. If we’re going to get ahead we gotta do it ourselves.” In fact, I couldn’t place it, but I was suspicious of the Wolffs. There was an undercurrent of something hidden within that pack. I’d run into several members of the pack who were not family members, Argus Brown, Frank Renaldo, Earl Gomez and Alex Dennis. What I did find out from them was that what was family business was kept strictly between those with the last name of Wolff. The four of them were the outliers and not privy to what the intentions of the pack were. And that made me suspicious. If it came to it. There might be the possibility that the four could come to our pack, if the opportunity was right. But with the Wolff-Pack at six members plus the other four. We were still six members short of matching their strength in numbers.
A lone wolf cry rent the air as we headed inside...and the full moon crept up over the peaks of the trees. The change was upon us and River and I ended up in our feral werewolf forms. Bebe and Phil looked more human but still with green eyes and dripping fangs. It still meant that the full moon would make us even more savage than we were normally. Even in human form, a werewolf was still prone to violent urges. We were quicker to anger, more prone to use violence to achieve our end goals – our base desire to kill and maim prevalent in our dealings. And above all, we needed to hunt and that meant going after smaller prey. It was one of the reasons why it was said that one shouldn’t anger a werewolf. And that urge was difficult to contain. It was also one of the reasons why Argus Brown was considered the town thug as he was prone to lashing out at those who crossed him. Though in respects we, as newly turned werewolves were more unpredictable in our dealings as people weren’t aware of what we could or couldn’t do.
The full-moon was a time where we as weres didn’t let down our guard – it was a night where we would stay up and make sure that our perimeter was secure – that no one was trying to enter our property. Bebe headed downstairs to work on some things when River mentioned that we had a few items downstairs that could be utilized. I had just bought us a science station and an alchemy desk, not to mention I had a potion table and plumbot station. Bebe had this look in her eye that she wanted to work on herself at the brain-enhancement machine. Now most of us knew from going to high-school with her that Bebe was a technophobe...but I guess we figured that she knew the predicament that we were in and the more people who were able to utilize all the tools that we had at our disposal the better. And that was exactly what she did. By the time that she had finished sitting in the brain-enhancement machine and had it microwave her brain with certain waves that triggered her ability to remove her technophobe trait and replace it with genius, she headed over to the science machine and started working on her ability to master science – a far cry from the young woman who would get the heebie-jeebies going near a cellular phone or a desktop computer.
And evidently it also meant that she’d mastered her feral werewolf form as well.
I, on the other hand, went out to terrify the chickens and collect some eggs.
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