Quake

ASTRAY

Twelve months elapse before the “unusually large fox” is spotted in Black Reef City again. An old woman living on the outskirts near the slopes of the Knuckle Mountains calls the police, reporting that this fox ate one of her chickens and made off with clean laundry from her clothesline clenched in its jaws. The police have had reports of aliens, wolfmen, and other nonsense cryptid activity from this granny before, and send a squad car only to humour her. The officer issued pretends to take a report, but instead she sketches nude women on her note pad while the old lady speaks.

On the other side of the city, near the harbour, a scrawny young man walks into a bar. He wears a floral blouse, three sizes too large for him, and grey sweatpants, also too big. Under the colossal shirt, he has the sweatpants pulled up to his waist. He has the ankles cuffed to keep them from dragging on the floor, cinched only by the knotted drawstring. The clothing is clean, but his sunburnt face and shoulder length hair are dirty like he spent the day working in the garden, maybe even the entire week. He wears no shoes and the undersides of his feet are black.

The barkeeper has half a mind to turn him away, but it’s a Tuesday so business is slow, and he produces money from his deep pocket. He smiles, and it changes his demeanor from wandering bum to dirty surfer kid.

“Good evening,” his voice has a pleasant throaty growl to it, “Can I get a draft beer please?”

The barkeeper takes his money.

“Only beer we got on tap is a larger,” she says, working with her tongue to loosen some stuck morsel from between her teeth.

His smile is unwavering, “I’ll have that then.”

She turns away to retrieve and fill a glass. Tucker lowers his gaze and heaves a sigh. That is the first time he has spoken to anyone in a year. He feels he did okay, maybe laying it on a bit thick with the smile. The barkeeper reappears with the drink sooner than expected, slamming it and his change down on the counter and giving Tucker a jolt. His blood runs hot for that moment, and he feels his aura redden. He calms it immediately, and gives her a diluted version of the former smile.

“Thanks,” he says, taking his drink, leaving a tip.

She slides the money into her apron pocket.

“We close in an hour,” she replies.

Tucker nods, then heads for a table in the corner. As he turns to leave, the barkeeper catches a whiff of a confusing smell. A kind of simultaneously peppery and tingly minty scent. She frowns at the back of his head, then moves to the back room to make a phone call.

Tucker sits heavily at the table and stares down into the froth of his beer. He hasn’t drank in over a year either. The glass is chilling to the touch, and his dirty fingers leave muddy prints in the condensation. He lifts it to his lips and takes a sip, and then another. He downs half the pint in three gulps. He catches himself on the brink of emptying the thing, and lowers it to the table. He burps quietly and stares out the dirty widow beside him at the fog rolling in off the ocean. He needs to find a place to sleep tonight, the air smells of rain. He only has enough money to get drunk, and he does not want to pickpocket anyone else. He will have to settle for an abandoned building tonight. Tomorrow he will return to the pack and face Yvonne, and then money won’t be an issue for him anymore. One way or another.

It feels so strange to be back. Back in this place he grew up in, this place he fell in love in, this place where grief tore his mind in two. It feels different. The buildings seem smaller, the streets narrower. It even smells unfamiliar, there is something musky in the air. A scent that tells him this city has rulers and no room for strays. He knows that the reality is probably that he is the one who has changed. Cities stay the same. A year in the mountains will alter anyone’s perspective, human or wolfkind. Tucker has returned because he is weak. He accepts that now. He never stood a chance in the mountains. The feral wolves there smelled him coming from miles away. He managed to survive only by using what Yvonne had taught him. The shadows and caves became his highways. He sustained himself off of the scraps that his betters left behind. Slowly he came to realise that living as Yvonne does is no kind of life at all. Hide or be found. Kill or be killed. Hackles up, nose down. There is no joy in that, no books, no houseplants, no craft beer, no beauty. And he wants to tell Yvonne that. And he does not care if she kills him. Tucker already died a year ago.

He downs the rest of his beer, then notices the muddy marks his hands leave on the glass. He laughs quietly, the bubbles already going to his head. His alcohol tolerance has dropped in his year of abstinence. He gets up and goes to the bathroom, leaving his empty glass on the bar along his way. The barkeeper is still in the back.

His eyes take a while to adjust to the clinical white light. He washes his hands and arms in the sink, the water runs brown. He wets his face and neck then wipes them clean with a paper towel. His own movements catch his eye in the speckly little mirror. He freezes for a moment, staring himself down. Beyond glimpses of reflection in still pools of water, this is the first time he has laid eyes on himself in over a year. He’d almost entirely forgotten what his hairless form looked like. Though not technically entirely hairless, a light stubble dusts his jaw, as red as the hair of his head, which is longer than it’s been in years. He feels naked, even with the old lady clothes on. Upon gazing too long, he finds he does not see himself. He sees his sister, glaring at him from the other side of the glass. Two drunk men loudly enter the bathroom, breaking the trance. He dumps the paper towel and heads out into the low light of the bar.

He notices the barkeeper has reappeared. He orders two shots of tequila and another draft. She looks him up and down and asks, “Did you enjoy your shower?”

Tucker looks at her properly for the first time. She has a broad face, small suspicious eyes and a narrow mouth that is unfamiliar with smiling. Her hair is long and dull, scraped back into a messy bun. She probably hates her job, dreams of something else. Anything else. He smells lemon and vinegar off of her.

“It was delightful,” Tucker pushes his money meaningfully across the counter.

She sighs, but takes the note and gets to work pouring his drinks. He knocks back the shots, one after the other, barely flinching as the brutal liquid forges down his throat. The barkeeper raises her eyebrows at this. The first expression she has shown all shift. Tucker thanks her and takes the beer back to the table, leaving an overly generous tip.

He sits heavily and stares out the window again. The fog is moving quickly, enveloping the docks in its hazy shroud. Tucker is in for a long cold night. If he gets drunk enough it won’t matter. He sips on his beer and watches the ominous march of the fog.  He wonders what Yvonne is doing in this moment. Gradually, wonder leaves him, and he is staring thoughtlessly into the wall of cloud. It is almost upon the pub when movement draws his eyes back inside. A woman sits across the table from him. Her hair is shaved down to a one and her eyebrows are thick and angular, eyes sharp and pitch black beneath them. Her skin is dark, coffee without milk and her arms are toned and scarred. Her nails are long and well-shaped, painted red. Another woman– pale and narrow-eyed– and a huge man– wind chafed with knee length hair– stand beside the table, blocking any option of exit. Three distinct scents hit him. These are wolves, there is no mistaking it. But they don’t share the peppery, metallic odor of Yvonne’s pack. The musky scent that lies in a thin veil over the entire city is strong now, a stench.

“Are you lost, puppy?” the woman across the table asks.

She wears a tight vest. Her body is tense and muscled beneath it. Her thick lips are drawn into a sneer. She is looking for a fight, and she has come to Tucker to find one. He glances at her companions. They are equally muscled and hostile. The man has a gruesome scar, cutting his face vertically in half.

“No, just passing through,” Tucker replies quietly, not meeting her eyes.

“No random bitches are permitted to pass through our territory,” she replies, “You reek of the mountains. We don’t need feral dogs in our city causing a scene.”

“I’ve business with your Alpha, Yvonne,” he replies.

The three exchange glances and then burst out laughing.

“Let’s take this outside,” she says, once she’s through with her chuckle.

She stands to her full height, which is considerable.

“On your feet, b***h,” the man says, shoving the bench skew with his boot.

Tucker glances over to the bar and find its keeper staring coldly in his direction. He starts to how understand things unfolded this way. He remembers how the barkeeper smelled, and mentally kicks himself for not realising sooner. She smelled him too.

Tucker downs his beer, then shuffles off the bench. They herd him outside. He meekly co-operates. He senses that they’re going to beat the s**t out of him whether he resists or not. They jostle him around the building, to the vacant lot at the back.

A streetlamp cuts a melodramatic ring out of the fog that surrounds them, they stand in its golden pool. The three in a triangle around him speak among themselves in a guttural language Tucker cannot understand. In his drunken state, he slowly recognises a word here, a syllable there and it dawns on him.

“You know Fenraal? The old tongue?” he asks, in his amazement he forgets fear.

Tucker and Yvonne are only second-generation wolves, a very young bloodline. They had no access to the ancient knowledge of wolfkind. Those secrets belong to the older bloodlines, and they do not share.

“Of course we do, you mixbreed welp,” the short haired woman snarls, “All true wolves speak it.”

Tucker lowers his gaze again, excitement simmered out. He still does not feel fear, only hollow acceptance as his situation dawns on him.

“You aren’t of Yvonne’s pack, then.”

“i***t, is your nose broken?” the narrow-eyed woman pipes up hotly, “Do you think Yvonne is capable of emitting her pathetic stench over such an enormous radius?”

The short haired woman raises a hand, wordlessly ordering her companion to calm herself.

“Can you not smell our Alpha?” she asks, a note of genuine curiosity diluting the hostility in her voice, “Does his aura not cover the expanse of this tiny city?”

Tucker takes a deep breath. The musky scent is stronger than ever.

“My time in the mountains has worn down my senses,” he admits, “I know his scent now.”

The short haired woman barks a humorless laugh, “You know it? Stray, if you knew his scent you won’t have set foot in Black Reef.”

“Who is your Alpha?”

The narrow-eyed woman snarls something in Fenraal, and the scarred man nods his head in agreement. Their leader raises her hand, silencing them again.

“The fact that you don’t know is insult in itself,” she keeps her tone even, but she obviously shares the annoyed disgust of her packmates, “You stand in the territory of Damascus Quake, you whimpering half-wit.”

Fear finally arrives, sending a cold wave down Tucker’s spine.

“Oh,” he whispers, “I see.”

“He took this city, his ancestral birthright, ten months ago to the day. Yvonne,” she pauses here to meaningfully spit on the ground after saying the name, as though needing to cleanse her palette, “and her mix breeds slink in the shadows like rats, hiding in sewers and subways. We are culling them off. By this time next year, there won’t be so much as a hair left of your mongrel brood.”

“Yvonne’s still alive?” Tucker is not sure what emotion he feels on hearing this news.

The scarred man and narrow-eyed woman start to growl, they cannot keep their disgust at bay. Their teeth protrude from their mouths, now fangs. Their leader does not raise her hand this time. She no longer intends to hold them back.

“Not for long,” she says simply.

She reaches into her back pocket and produces a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. She perches one between her full lips and lights it.

“My name is Renani,” she says, “I am a hunter, of the Waal clan, in service of Quake. State your name.”

Tucker’s throat is dry. He swallows and it clicks.

“I’m Tucker. Just Tucker. There’s no rank or clan to accompany my name.”

Renani holds the box out to Tucker in offering.

“No, thank you,” Tucker quit smoking a year ago.

Renani takes a long drag of her smoke. And then she says a word in Fenraal, one of the few words that Tucker recognises. She says kill.

The two surge forward. There is no time for him to move, to even cry out. Teeth sink into Tucker’s shoulder, tear his arm clean off in seconds. He is met with a terrible realisation as the second set of jaws clamp shut on his leg, snapping it off at the knee. He is not ready to die, not yet, not like this, not here.

“WAIT!” he cries, “I CAN FIND YVONNE! I’M HER BROTHER I–!”

Teeth shut off his windpipe, tear his vocal chords from his throat. He lies on the tar, voicelessly gasping, eyes filled with blood, staring red at the heavens. The clouds shield the stars from his dying gaze. He would have liked to see them, one last time, even muted as they are by the city’s light pollution.  His gut unzips as easily as a gym bag, stuffed with meat. They are eating him. What he feels transcends pain and becomes an almost rapturous trance. This is what Klaus felt. This is how he died, staring at the white ceiling of his apartment. Tucker feels close to him, the closest he has felt since he lapped at the blood on the bedroom floor. He accepts his death, feels it approaching from all sides, closing in through the fog. There is no fear, no pain, only relief.

I love you Klaus, I’m coming, are his final thoughts before his consciousness drops into the blackness, like a stone plummeting into the icy waters of a bottomless pool.

Renani orders her wolves off of the dying pup. There is a brief, angry exchange between the three in Fenraal, after which the scarred man picks up the gutted body, and the narrow-eyed woman gathers his scattered limbs. Renani leads the way to a black van, parked in the far corner of the lot. They load the pieces of Tucker into the back, then climb in. Renani takes the wheel, the other two are in the back with their victim. The van starts up, purring to life. Renani drives at a crawling pace in the direction of the ocean.