Quake

DINNER

Renani walks at an inconsiderately brisk pace through the hallways. Tucker limps at top speed after her, but she still has to wait for him to catch up at the bottoms of staircases and the end of the occasional corridor before turning a corner. Every step sends knives of pain through his ruined body, pushing testily at the weak seams of his fresh scars.

“I don’t believe you survived in the mountains,” Renani huffs, watching with folded arms as Tucker snails down the last three steps of the final staircase, “The wolves of the Knuckles would have had you in seconds flat.”

“Well, I wasn’t Frankenstein’s fucken monster when I was living on the Knuckles, was I?” Tucker snaps.

Renani purses her full lips, raising her eyebrows, digging her fingers into her forearms. In that moment, she wants nothing more than to rip his throat out with her immaculate red nails.

Tucker lowers his head as he descends the final step.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m in a lot of pain. My tongue got away from me. I appreciate your hospitality. I apologise, Waal Huntress.”

The show of genuine courtesy disarms Renani somewhat. She turns away and continues down the hallway.

“Just keep up. And see to it that your tongue doesn’t escape you again, else I’ll take it from you.”

“Yes, Huntress. I understand.”

Despite her harsh words, Tucker notices the gap she leads at is smaller. She is walking slower than before, just slightly. Finally, she comes to a stop before a pair of immense oak doors. The Quake Clan coat of arms, depicting the wolf, the skull, the snake and the moon, is carved in immaculate detail across them. She waits for Tucker to hobble to her side. She puts a hand to the head-sized brass loop handle, then pauses and turns back to Tucker. Alarmingly, she fixes the collar of his shirt, and combs her red nails through his auburn hair, neatening it.

“No matter what abuse comes your way, don’t mouth off like you did earlier. Not all of our hunters are as tolerant as I am. I don’t want to have to tape you back together again. Speak only to Damascus, and only when he speaks to you.”

Tucker nods. Renani turns back to the doors, a hand on each brass loop, and pulls them open. A long hall stretches out before them. Great stone pillars hold up the domed ceiling. Three long tables of polished cherry wood run the length of the room, laden with meat and wine. Hundreds of wolves sit in the many red leather upholstered chairs. They are salivating at the scent of the meat, near ravenous with hunger. They hold back, distracting themselves by drinking and talking loudly about f*****g and killing and fighting. A huge blue, black and white banner of the Quake crest hangs on the far wall. Beneath it, a smaller table lies perpendicular to the other three. There are only eleven seats at this table. On the far side, centered beneath the tapestry is a throne-like chair. Tucker assumes that this is where the Alpha sits, though at present Damascus is nowhere to be seen. Despite himself, Tucker wants to laugh. Damascus must truly consider himself a king to be eating dinner every night seated on something as ridiculous as that. Tucker supposes there is royalty in his bloodline, but there is no denying that the chair is pretentious.

Tucker follows Renani between the long tables. Enormous windows line the length of the room on either side, alternating with the pillars. To Tucker’s right they look out over the ocean, to his left, the woody forest and the mountains beyond. As they pass the tables, some of the pack catch a whiff of his unfamiliar scent. No one challenges him as he passes, but some snarl or nip at the air in his direction.

Renani snaps at them in Fenraal, and they mutter and growl back. Tucker expects Renani to seat him at one of the long tables beside a hostile pack member, but she does not stop walking. She leads him all the way to the front of the room.

The wolves seated at the smaller table have an air of authority to them. They sip at their wine, far better conducted than the pack members at the long tables. These are the elite, Tucker deduces, the best hunters of the smaller clans in service of Quake. They eye Tucker as Renani leads him past. Though refraining from snapping and snarling, their distain is still palpable. Renani yanks the chair out to the left of the throne.

“Sit,” she says, before taking her own place in the seat to the throne’s right.

Tucker obeys. Three large deer are laid out on the table, belly up, roasted golden, smelling of honey and rosemary. Damascus’s catches, Tucker assumes.

His smell hits Tucker moments before a hush falls over the room. He turns in its direction, discovering a narrow door in the back leftmost corner of the room. Of course, Damascus has his own, private entrance. The door swings inwards and Damascus enters the room. He still wears the bloodstained shirt from their first encounter, but he has traded the jodhpurs and boots for tailored navy-blue trousers and black leather dress shoes. Tucker smells the whiskey on him, even from across the room, and sees it in his stride. Though not clumsy or openly drunk, his gait is looser. A few strands of hair fall across his brow, still far off from messy, but not as pristine as it was earlier in the night. He has the look of a high-profile attorney at the end of a long work day. Damascus makes his leisurely way to his ostentatious chair, he sits heavily, then looks up at his audience, as though noticing the five hundred wolves in the room for the first time.

“What are you waiting for?” he reaches for the roasted deer, tears a leg off with impossible ease, and takes a huge mouthful, he speaks through his teeth, “Eat.”

The pack launches into the food. The room is filled with sounds of tearing, chewing, crunching, some growling as packmates argue over choice cuts of meat. The elites seated around Tucker are not quite as hasty, they demurely section up the deer, compliment Damascus on his hunting prowess, calmly discuss who wants which piece. Damascus does not partake in the debate. He sits staring at the young man seated by his side. Tucker is unsure whether it is appropriate to meet his gaze or not. So he stares down at his empty plate.

“You cleaned up alright,” Damascus says, tearing another leg from the deer and dropping it onto Tucker’s plate, “How is your body feeling?”

“Still some pain, but everything moves. Thank you for hosting me.”

“I’m not hosting you. You aren’t a guest.”

“Well, if I’m a prisoner it’s a very comfy cage.”

“You aren’t a prisoner either. You’re more of a tool, or maybe a pet… Yes, a sniffer dog.”

“I see.”

Damascus laughs and ruffles his hair. Tucker feels the tops of his ears turn red at the contact.

“Eat,” he says.

Tucker obeys. Once he has had one bite, he realises how empty is stomach is. He tears through the leg. He cleans it down to the bone within minutes, and then he’s staring at the rest of the deer. He feels eyes on him and turns to find Damascus still watching.

“You’ve got an appetite. Go ahead, have more.”

Tucker nods, then looks to the deer. The other two have been picked clean, but it appears as though only Damascus, Renani and Tucker have eaten from the middle animal. Tucker lets his nails extend, crackling as they sharpen into claws. He uses them to cut a quarter rack of ribs free. He drops the cut onto his plate. But as he moves to resume eating, Damascus’s hand catches his left wrist. He holds Tucker’s fingers up to the light of the brass chandeliers, high overhead, inspecting his nails.

“Your claws are brittle,” he says, letting go of Tucker, “You need more calcium.”

“I didn’t have choice pick of the hunting grounds in the mountains,” Tucker replies, looking down at his hands.

Damascus laughs, “That I can believe. I’ve faced the wolves of the Knuckles in combat before. They try to sneak into my forest sometimes. Tricky bastards. Ferocious, they’ll fight down to their last fang and claw.”

Tucker nods in silent agreement, remembering the many rows between mountain wolves that he had spectated from the shadows. Every fight between them was to the death.

“I imagine you survived by staying hidden, stealing scraps?”

“I used what my sister… what Yvonne taught me. I kept my aura suppressed, so they couldn’t smell me, and I stuck to the caves and underbrush. I’m small, so I can fit through every gap and tunnel in the cave networks. I spent more time in the mountains than on them, to be honest.”

The elite table had fallen silent at some point during Tucker and the Alpha’s conversation, shamelessly eavesdropping. Someone snarled a comment in Fenraal, and then they all sneered a laugh. On the other side of Damascus, Tucker noticed that Renani did not look amused.

“My hunters don’t believe you’re capable of that kind of aura control,” Damascus explains, taking another large bite of deer meat.

Tucker shrugs, “My aura is small to begin with. It doesn’t take much to suppress it completely. For wolves with auras as far reaching as yours and your hunters’ I can imagine it would sound impossible.”

Damascus turned away from his meal to raise his eyebrows at Tucker, “Was that a boast?”

Tucker fumbled with his words, “N–no! I only meant your scents are more powerful than mine…”

“Show us, then,” Damascus wipes his greasy hands clean on a napkin and leans back in his chair, “This magical disappearing trick of yours.”

Tucker closes his eyes. He focuses inwards, on the tiny flickering light at the center of his being. Like a feeble candle flame in the wind. He realises that he is already doing it. After a year of his survival being dependent on constant repression, it is now second nature. He opens his eyes, looking straight into Damascus’s whirlpool stare.

“It’s done,” Tucker says.

There is a moment of silence as everyone at the table sniffs the air. Damascus shakes his head, turning back to his meal.

“Lavender soap, I smell it all over you,” Damascus says, audibly disappointed, “I smell the starched fabric of your clothes, the conditioner in your hair–”

“Yes, those scents are on me, but can you smell me, Alpha?”

Damascus pauses. He sniffs the air. And then he turns to Tucker and leans forward. Tucker feels the urge to flinch away, but stays in place. After three deep breaths, he leans back again, frowning.

“Well, s**t. Renani? You know this pup’s scent; it’s like pepper and mint. Come see if you can smell it.”

Renani stands and moves around the back of her Alpha’s chair. She stoops low, sniffs deeply at the nape of Tucker’s neck, then leans back again, returns to her seat.

“Nothing. Just soap and the fabric of his clothes.”

Damascus tilts his head in thought, looking back to Tucker.

“Fascinating,” he murmurs, rubbing his chin, “Yvonne taught you this trick?”

Tucker nods wordlessly. Damascus keeps him pinned with his stare for a time. He has questions, but he is not letting himself ask them, for whatever reason. He finally he turns back to his meal.

“Drink,” he says, “You haven’t touched your wine.”

Tucker gratefully gulps down the sour red liquid. There is silence at the table for a good while following that. None of the elite hunters will admit it, but they are pulling at the air, trying to detect the pup seated amidst them. Tucker knows they cannot, his aura slips between them, spinelessly as a slug.

Damascus instigates a conversation in Fenraal with the stocky wolf sat across the table from him. The elites all join in, saying their piece on the matter. Tucker does not need to understand the language to know he is being spoken about. He keeps his head down, works on the rack of ribs, but he finds he has lost his appetite. Gradually, the lower ranking pack members finish their meals and drift from the hall. The elites all remain seated, talking in their low, growling tones. Tucker sips at his wine, watching the pack members on clean up duty, darting between the tables, clearing empty and dirty dishes. Damascus refills Tucker’s wine glass when he notices that it is near empty. Tucker continues to sip as the unfathomable conversation around him gets more heated. A blonde-haired wolf sitting diagonally across the table from Tucker is now pointing directly at him, speaking passionately to Damascus. Quake shakes his head and replies to this wolf in a chastising tone. Renani and the blonde wolf get into a snarling argument. Damascus rolls his eyes, refills his own glass, then reaches across and tops up Tucker’s too. Tucker suspects Damascus is trying to get him drunk. Tucker does not mind being drunk. In the motion of leaning back into his own seat, Damascus pauses with his mouth beside Tucker’s ear.

“Come,” he whispers, “Conversation’s run dry. Let’s get out of here.”

Damascus gets to his feet, wineglass in hand. Tucker follows his lead, taking his glass from the table. Damascus says something curt and final in Fenraal, then turns and heads in the direction of the inconspicuous door in the far corner. 

Tucker follows as fast as his aching legs can manage, shrinking under the hostile glares of the elites.