Ill Met By Moonlight

It all starts where it ended

Feeling the moon pull at his soul. Adam resisted with all his strength to restrain himself. Now was not the time to let go and unleash his rage. The clouds parted, illuminating the world below with a soft glow feeding Adams. Murphy pressed the barrel of the gun harder against Saria’s temple, “tell your dog to heel” he barked, seeing the wild look in Adam’s eye.

 Adam watched Saria struggle for freedom. Feeling the rage burn brighter than ever. “just stop this” Saria pleaded “we were friends once” pressing harder murphy commands again “call off your dog or so help me ill do it” the pain of the gun pressed against Saria’s head forcing her to let out a whimper of pain, at this the damn of emotion Adam was holding broke, His rage set free.

5 years earlier.

Adam sits hovering over his cup of coffee at an empty diner bar while a snowstorm carries on outside. The waitress leans lifelessly on the end of the counter looking up at the TV as a meteorologist explains the storm is expected to continue into the next day. Adam looks at the clock on his phone its reads 1:30 am.  a few minutes pass and the doorbell to the diner chimes as a dark figure dressed in a long trench coat walks in and sets down next to Adam. “Hey chief” Adam says, picking up his cup of coffee taking a long pull from it before setting it back down. “You got the money?” the dark figure asks pulling a manila folder from within his long coat. “Sure sure” Adam says as he pulls out an envelope. They exchange the envelope for the folder and the dark figure stands up, waiving off the waitress as she approaches. Straightening out his coat and tucking the envelope away in one of the coat's interior compartments. “You need to let this go” the strange man says, Adam grunts in acknowledgement. “Whatever kid” the man says as he disappears back through the door into the storm.

Adam signs to the waitress for his bill as he tucks away the folder and walks toward the door, he adjusts his coat, pulls on his hat and scans through the drifting snow out into the darkness. He squints to sharpen the gaze from his deep yellow eyes, being able to see in the dark one of the many gifts he was left with after his turning. Seeing nothing but a snow-covered lifeless world, he pulls his coat tight around him and steps out into the storm. The cold bites at his exposed flesh as he makes his way down the street to his office/apartment situated just above Murphy’s curious exotics and antiques. He scans the street in both directions one more time seeing nothing. He brandishes his keys but can’t shake the uneasy feeling that he’s being followed. Adam unlocks the door and goes up the stairs. He takes the folder from inside his coat before hanging it up on the rack beside the door. He walks past Lucy’s desk and into his office, shutting the door behind him. He sits his hat on his desk lamp before falling into his desk chair and opening the folder.

Inside the folder are several pictures of younger people of varying s*x, each one accompanied by a small news article about them and the circumstances in which they went missing, along with a map showing last known locations relevant to each other with Fairview pharmaceuticals testing and research marked in the center, followed by a layout of the Fairview compound and building schematics.

Adam had been working as a private investigator since he moved to the city, one of the many methods of employment, he had chosen in the hundred years since his turning finding that his talents for sight, scent and sound made him extremely well adapted for investigation. Not quite immortal but very long lived, his aging slowed since he was attacked by the creature he would come to know as a werewolf and left for dead in an Ozark Mountain Forest while on a late-night coon hunt. Emerging from the forest three days later, his deep wounds having rapidly healed.

 At first, his transformations were violent and uncontrolled, leaving him naked and unaware of his actions the previous night. Living alone in the hills of the Ozarks after the passing of his wife.

He made a living as a moonshiner, as most of the occupants of the hills did in those days, his new gifts making him very adept at avoiding revenue agents searching for stills in the mountains.

One summer evening about dusk, as Adam was sitting on the front porch of his log cabin sipping on a jug, a man came up the path to his home. “Excuse me feller” a long-bearded and grey-haired man shouted as he approached. “Mind if I sit a spell and rest my old bones” he said as he let his foot come to rest on the bottom step. Adam could immediately sense something strange about this man, something wild in his eyes, something primal and lingering in the draw of his southern speech. There was something about this man's scent he could recognize but not make out how. Adam leaned forward holding out his jug toward the man. “Would ya like a pull mister?” Adam asked slowly, looking the man over, trying desperately to spot what made him feel uneasy, almost a self-preservation instinct.

“Why thankee kindly” the man said as he took the jug and hoisted it over his shoulder and pulled down to drink from it.

 “Say mister, I can’t shake this feeling we’ve met before?” Adam asked, taking the jug back from the bearded man. “Why yes we have” the man replied with a menacing grin. “To be honest, I thought you dead boy, but I decided to come see for sure and do what I could to set things right” he continued. Adam set the jug down beside the hewn wooden stump he had been using as a stool and slowly began to stand up. The bearded man who had been holding the suspenders of his overalls reached forward with his right hand “names Nathaniel Berringer” he said, letting his smile sag.

 Adam took a step back upon hearing this. “You!” he growled, feeling the hair stand-up all-over body, the searing burn that comes over his skin as the change begins the twisting wrenching burning of his bones breaking and reshaping for what felt like an eternity, as his body was covered with a deep brown fur a reflection of his natural hair color transformed into something otherworldly.

A raging fire burning in his eyes as he began to speak in a low guttural growl “you did this to me” “indeed I did” said Nathaniel, standing as calm as if he were discussing the weather, looking in the face of the hulking beast now standing where Adam had only moments before grasping the beams holding the roof above his porch. “Now I know your plenty angry and rightly so” Nathaniel said spitting a long a wad of tobacco off to the side before continuing “now you and me can fight ifn ya like or you can hear me out.”  “Then speak” growled Adam. “Very good then, there’s a lot more to this than just howling at the moon and hunting rabbits. I can teach you how to sharpen your wits focus your new senses move unseen with your new strength and speed, I can teach you how to control your transformations, to resist the moon and your temper. Possibly most importantly” Nathaniel paused and tossed his hat in the air, his voice shifting from human to the low guttural growl of the wolf. “I can teach You this” the hat landing at the transformed grey fur-covered foot of a now equally menacing wolf standing to match Adam.

Several weeks passed Nathaniel and Adam would work the still in the day and spend their evenings in instruction on the ways of the wolf. Throughout this time Adam learned that Nathaniel was attacked while on patrol during the civil war. He was greying even then before time was slowed by the wolf. Nathaniel spoke of other wolves like them and how they often live in packs in remote locations, and how he had been chasing rumors of one such pack is what had led him deep into the Ozark mountains where he came upon Adam. He explained how he didn’t attack Adam out of anger or hunger but fear. For there are those that hunt their kind and he had spent the last week eluding one he referred to as a particularly slippery bastard. Realizing his mistake, he did not take the decisive killing blow, instead fleeing until such a time as he knew he had lost his pursuer and then returning in hopes of making amends in what way he could, if at all, for his wrongdoing.

Nathaniel was a good and decent man who had traveled for a number of years with another of his kind they saw much of timberlands and hunted freely among the north. One day they come to rest among what they thought were fur trappers, as were common in these parts at the time. Nathaniel bed down for the night to be awakened in the early morning hours to the muffled gurgles of his friend and traveling companion being beheaded by the group of men. Nathaniel leapt to his feet and dashed into the darkness beyond the fire light. “Damnit he must be one too” shouted a man after him as Nathaniel disappeared into the night.

Six long months, Nathaniel tracked the men, picking them off one by one at each opportune moment until he had taken the full measure of his revenge.

Finishing his bloody trail he realized he had chased the men all the way back to the Dakotas from there deciding to press on south looking for others like himself chasing one wild rumor after the next until finally meeting with up with pack in the Tennessee hills.

It didn’t take long however for Nathaniel to realize he didn’t fit in with the folks who not only sought humans for prey, they relished what they called the sport of it dragging it out for days. Sometimes, after having tortured the poor soul nearly catatonic, did they finally feast on them with little to no ceremony, all members of the pack held under the dark rule of a very evil Alpha. Nathaniel took his things and left out at the first possible opportunity traveling on his own from town learning of other dark being he had once thought to only exist in nightmares and only narrowly escaping with his life on more than one occasion.

Eventually finding himself here with Adam and, in slight truth he told himself it was an accident, but just maybe Adams' transformation was less accident than he was willing to admit.

Present day.

Now on the trail of a missing girl, all roads fearfully pointing him towards a conclusion he desperately hopes is wrong.