Their Fragile Strength

A Whiff of Fate

The man walks around the couch.

His movements are graceful and his feet are light. He makes no sound as he walks around the living room. He turns and examines the woman sleeping on the couch. She looks like her dreams trouble her.

He walks slowly back to her while keeping his guard up. As he approaches, he catches a wiff of something quite peculiar. He lifts one of her hands gingerly and sniffs it.

He shudders. She smells of mysteries better to be left hidden. She smelled of something light and sun-filled, maybe flowers or honey. She also smelled of blood and something darker.

The man backs up and now purposely follows a scent. He follows it up the stairs to some bedrooms he had not yet visited and back down to the kitchen and garage. He followed it to the basement and back to the woman. Puzzled and frustrated he stands staring at her some more. He leans in and sniffs at the nape of her neck. He inhales deeply.. He'll know her scent anywhere now.

He opens her window up a little to let the air in and empties the glass on the coffee table of its contents. He rinses the wine remnants out of the sink and tidied up a bit. After a few more minutes he silently glides out of the room.

Down the street he walks, blending into the crowd with his dark suit and collar up blocking his face. It is now late evening and many places are closed or closing.. He enters a little all day breakfast cafe not too far from the house where the woman lives and sits down to wait.

A woman walks up to him and introduces herself. "Hi, I'm Katie," she says cheerily. "I'll be your waitress today."She smiles and leans her palm on the table. "Dravyn," he says. He orders a dark roast coffee, cream only. After bringing him his coffee Katie's tries to make small talk but Dravyn tunes her out and soon she leaves.

Dravyn had been following the scent of those scumbag agents for months, years even. He knew they were responsible for many of his people missing. He followed them to a world famous scientific research building known for many medical marvels and such. He was surprised when they went inside.

He watched them flash their badges at the man at the security desk and watched as they split up. He tuned out all the sounds of car traffic and foot traffic and listened to the red headed leaders sounds only. He followed him to the back where they smuggled a sixth person in.

Hours passed before the men came out. He wanted to follow them but something kept him there. He was waiting for someone, he wasn't sure who.

As he waited this woman walked out of the building in a hurry. He was pretty sure by now she was the last person to exit the building. He followed her at a distance. When she got in her car and drove away he continued following her; making sure to duck out of site and stay in the trees as he did so.

When she went into her house he lithely climbed a tree in her yard and used that to jump the 6 yards across onto her balcony. It didn't take much effort to open the locked balcony door. Much to his surprise she didn't come upstairs for a long while. In that time he rifled through notebooks, calendars and her closet. He found a yearbook. It seems she had her fair share of friends. One wrote Have a great summer Effee! The hand writing was pretty and the writer of the note signed it as Barbera. A Kevin sloppily wrote Effervescent, U rock ;) with a winky face.

There was a birthday card on her nightstand. Dravyn moved it to find a small notebook and a young adult novel called The Truth About Forever.

He wondered for a brief moment if she did in fact have a younger person living there. But there was no other signs of a second person living with her.

Dravyn got startled by a loud thud from downstairs. In a blink of an eye he was out of the room and at the bottom of the stairs trying to control his animal side. It screamed danger and his eyes took on the qualities of one not used to living within four walls but rather able to see for miles at nighttime. As he struggles to dim down the glow from his eyes he misses the movement at the woman's feet. When he looks around he sees no intruders and no threat. He silently retreats before she sees him but he watches her as she laughs and cries. She has the look of a woman who has seen too much and doesn't know how to unsee it.

As she curls up crying she tries to put a wine glass still half full on the coffee table in front of her. He sees it tremble and before the movement can be discerned he's at the table securing the glass.

Dravyn comes out of his retrospection when Katie returns with a pot of coffee in her hand and asks if he'd like a refill. He nods his head. As she pours he catches a scent very familiar but totally unwelcome. He stands, throwing the chair back. He makes sure he moves at a speed that doesn't arouse too much suspicion while booking it to catch up to the scent.

As he rounds a corner into a less populated more dingy part of town he slowed. He went further into the alley trying to pinpoint the scent. As he nears the end of the alley he see the bald shaven agent stuffing a man into a van. The sound that comes out of Dravyn is more animal than man.

Two more agents were in the vehicle subduing the stranger Dravyn did not recognize.

"Let him go." Each word that Dravyn spit out was low and guttural.

As the bald agent turns he further exposes the man who was bound at both hands and feet. The most remarkable thing to note however was the ripples of fur that kept protruding in and out of his skin. He was trying to keep from the shift.

It seemed he didn't know these men already knew who he was and that was the very reason he was in his present situation. Dravyn ducked and he feels the bullets penetrate the air where he had just been. Both the bald agent and the ones from the van were aiming at him. The bald agent scurried into the van and just avoids getting gutted by a wolf's paw.

"Go! Go!" The agents are all screaming at the driver. "Go! Now!"

All three men try to wrestle the van door shut as the vehicle starts moving and Dravyn burries his left hand in the bendable metal frame. Now the man on the van floor starts to stretch and get bigger. As he grows his clothes fall to tattered bits on the ground and lean muscles get covered with a coat of creamy white fur dusted with light and dark grey.

The bald agent realizes too late his fellow agents had left him. He stops fighting to shut the door.

Dravyn goes towards the front of the vehicle to where the driver is and effortlessly climbs atop the van. He drops down and sees the seat is empty and he has to catch himself from falling off the windshield. As he rolls off he sees three men helping another up and then they bleed into the shadows of the buildings.

The agent left in the back watches wide eyed as the wolf occupying the space with him finishes its transformation. He takes a deep breath and readies to meet his fate. He puts something in his mouth and moments later a wolf jumps out of the van; his tail catches fire as the van explodes.