Strike Two

About the time Castor and Pollux were getting their asses handed to them by a pair of martial-arts rodents, Damien Hancock was prowling the halls of his stronghold once more. He couldn’t relax. He couldn’t be still. There was something on the wind tonight, a peril that teased at his senses but refused to reveal itself. He couldn’t put a finger on what disturbed him, and that made him both angry and afraid.

So he figuratively went to ground, to the Alpha suite. Nothing could reach him there. The door was reinforced steel, and the balcony was inaccessible except by air. The day he couldn’t deal with a stupid bird-shifter, or a bat, he’d—no. He’d never give up his position as Alpha. Some other wolf would have to take it, and no Hancock wolf had the guts. He’d made sure of that by ripping said guts out of any wolf who showed gumption. This was his pack, by Lupa, and he’d hold it in an iron grip until the day he died.

He climbed behind his desk and glared out the windows, wondering from which direction the next attack would come. There was always a next attack, when you were Alpha. You had to stay alert.

His gaze moved from the windows and scanned around the dimly-lit room. The couch where he brought lower-rank she-wolves when the mood struck him. The stone fireplace, currently cold, with a pile of dead ashes on its floor. Before it lay a tiger-skin rug. He’d bought the thing at an estate sale, not long after Ghan started bumping up against his borders. A private joke to himself, a promise to the tigers. His eyes swept beyond the rug to the walls, straight and smooth with no crannies to hide in, to the balcony door—

Which stood ajar.

Damien gripped the edge of the desk. He’d locked that door. He always locked the doors. Nothing could have climbed up the side of the Peak. Nothing could have broken in. The alarms would have gone off. Somebody would have smelled or heard an intruder. One of his own, looking to advance? Impossible. He had them all cowed.

He was about to get up when the rug before the fireplace turned its head toward him.

Damien grabbed at his desk drawer, for the gun he kept there. The drawer resisted. Locked. The key. Where had he hidden the key?

When he glanced up again, the cat had risen up on two legs. Scent and the dim light filtering through the windows told him it wasn’t a tiger. It wasn’t any American cat, either. They wouldn’t have the balls. Only one bastard could have sent him.

Damien rose up with a snarl. “Nice try, but no dice. You tell Ghan—”

The cat kept on coming, right up to the desk. “I will tell my employer,” he said, in a smooth, deep voice, “how easy it was to get in here. How easy it was to slip past your wolves and your security.” He stopped on the other side of the desk. He smirked at the alpha wolf. Suddenly he lashed out and slapped Damien hard across the face. “How easy it would have been to slash your throat. You’re the great alpha wolf who rules Talbot’s Peak? My employer has nothing to fear.”

Damien roared and leaped across the desk. It might have been an impressive attack, thirty years ago. The cat-shifter simply stepped aside. Damien’s own momentum slammed him to the floor. In the next second the cat caught Damien around the throat. His grip was powerful, merciless. Younger. Nevertheless Damien struggled until he was frothing at the mouth.

The cat merely held on. He didn’t even squeeze. He seemed perplexed. “Why don’t you shift?”

Damien continued to thrash, but there was desperation in it now. He had to take the cat out fast, kill him if he could. Before he guessed. Before he—

“You can’t,” the cat-man realized. “You’ve gotten old. Your body’s aged beyond its ability to shift.” He let go of Damien and stood. His voice was rife with scorn. “That’s why the old wolf hides away. That’s why you only allow meek followers. You can’t face a challenge. You’re no longer a threat.” He left Damien and strolled toward the balcony. “I’ll tell my employer he has nothing to fear. You won’t be around much longer. Once the pack finds out, your own wolves will tear you apart. We’ll make our arrangements with your successor.” He went out through the balcony door.

“Don’t you dare,” Damien tried to roar at him. It came out a wheeze. “Don’t you dare!”

Now he remembered. The key to the drawer was taped to the bottom of the desk. He struggled to his hands and knees and scrambled to the desk. His groping fingers found the key. He jammed it into the drawer's keyhole. After an eternity, the drawer slid open. Damien dug around inside and found his gun. No threat any more? We’ll just see!

Still wheezing, he lurched to the balcony and peered over the rail. Nothing. No sign of the cat. It was as if he’d simply vanished.

Vanished with his knowledge. Knowledge he would deliver to Zhere Ghan. Ghan would see that the world spread around. And then—

“No,” he whispered thickly. “I’m the Hancock Alpha, dammit. I rule the Peak!”

Hurrying back to his desk, he called his security team. Someone had gotten into his office, and where the hell were they? What happened to the alarm system? Heads would roll and guts would spill for this. After he chewed out his head of security he made another call, to his private medical lab. “I want it,” he said.

“We still need to test—”

“You’ve done enough testing. Give me what you’ve got and get it up here now!”

He slammed the receiver down. Better late than never. As long as he was Alpha, never would never arrive.

# # #

The wolves were trackers, chasers, killers. Not climbers. Yuri avoided them easily. In his youth he had scaled the Himalayas in both human and snow leopard form. To him, this baby American mountain was little more than a ladder.

So the old wolf had aged past the ability to shift. That could be a game changer. Stefanya must be told. Silent as a spirit, he crept down the face of the Peak.

Missed It By That Much

Morloxian had Maureen strapped down on the table and was reaching for his hypos when the sound of the first crash reached them. It was followed quickly by others, plus screams. The semi-werewolvan doctor shot a glare toward the door. “Not again,” he grumbled. “The mutants,” he explained to Maureen. “I can’t let them run loose like I could in Colorado. Too many civilians with cameras. So they attack the cafeteria.” He shuffled toward the door on bare, taloned paws. “Don’t go anywhere.”

The moment he left the lab Maureen attacked her bindings. On TV the heroine would grab a scalpel in her teeth and saw through the straps. Unfortunately, the Doctor hadn’t left any scalpels within reach. She had to settle with wriggling her scrawny body out from under her bonds. The buckets of sweat pouring off her helped immensely.

She had one arm loose and was working on the other when Morloxian returned, on the run. “Time to go,” he said. He ripped the straps loose himself. “Goddamn welcome wagon.”

He lifted Maureen off the table. Her feet touched the floor. She steadied herself and then rammed her knee into the Doctor’s groin. His lupine howl cracked on a warbling high note. Maureen was out the door before he finished collapsing.

One quick sprint into the hallway later, she saw what he was talking about. The hidden lab, so quiet and orderly when he’d dragged her off to his workroom, was now a chaotic arena peopled by silent men in black coats and monstrous eight-foot werewolves. The men were armed and the wolves had claws, so they were pretty evenly matched.

Morloxian’s human staff took no part in the melee. They were wisely running for the exits.

As Maureen watched, one of the men tossed his coat aside and shifted into a tiger. He and a mutant werewolf charged each other. Their roars were equally inhuman.

Yeah, the exits were looking really good right about now.

A flash of pastel color caught her eye. The ladies of the harem were taking advantage of the invasion to vacate the premises. Candi, leader of the group, spotted her and waved. “C’mon, hon. There’s a way out through Dracula’s castle.” She and the women ran on without waiting to see if Maureen followed.

Whatever “Dracula’s castle” meant. Maureen dashed after the women.

She almost made it. Right at the doorway a mutant werewolf suddenly appeared. Its dark fur had made it nearly invisible in the shadows. It clamped its furry paw over her mouth before she could scream. “Don’t be afrrraid,” it rasped, in a rough, labored growl of a voice with an odd trace of a foreign accent. “All will be well, Maurrrrrrreen.”

Her blood temp went down to absolute zero. She whispered against his paw, “Pete?”

“There you are. Good, you got her.” Morloxian ran at them in a painful shamble. He stopped well back from Maureen with his hand cupped over his crotch. “Goddamn tigers. Who let them in? Get out there and help clean up the mess. I’ll take it from here.”

He reached for Maureen’s arm. The mutant werewolf grabbed the Doctor’s arm instead. “You come with.”

“What? Wait, what are you doing, you stupid mutt! You do what I tell you. I created you!”

“Perrrrrhaps.” The creature formerly known to Maureen as Pete snarled into Morloxian’s face. “But I serrrve anotherrrrr.”

He slammed his fist against Morloxian’s head. The Doctor went limp. Werewolf Pete caught him and Maureen under his arms and changed direction, heading now toward a set of double doors at the end of a branching corridor.

Maybe she was delirious. Maybe she was panicking. But as she jounced beneath Pete’s arm, she thought she saw a familiar blond head at the end of the corridor. Desperately she screamed, “Ewan!”

# # #

The underground lab was a mess of flying, bloody bodies, some of them human, most of them not. Ewan figured the real humans had skedaddled already. If the monkeys had any real talent, it was a healthy sense of self-preservation.

Ewan wasn’t interested in them, or the monster werewolves, or the Tiger Yakuza, or even Morloxian. His nose sorted through the mess of scents for that one special perfume that wasn’t quite human or quite a she-wolf but already said home to him. He hugged the wall and dodged raging wolves and silent, lethal tigers and sniffed every door he came near. Deuce, no fool, followed his lead.

He caught a whiff of her scent at the head of a dim-lit corridor and risked a look inside. Something big and hairy had two bodies clutched under its burly arms. One of them shrieked his name.

“Maureen!” Ewan raced full out down the corridor. He had no idea how he was going to take on a giant mutant werewolf without any weapons. He’d figure something out when he got there.

The werewolf didn’t even look around. It jabbed its finger at a keypad in the wall. The doors slid open. The monster and its captives ducked inside just as Ewan reached him. Maureen strained her hands toward him.

Ewan lunged for the door. It slammed shut in his face.

He was pounding futilely on the metal when Deuce finally caught up. “How are you with electronics?” Ewan said, and pointed at the keypad. “Can you get this damn door open?”

Something inside made a noise that shook the walls. Both Deuce and Ewan froze. The echoes had not quite died away before they were overridden by a second noise, this one a heavy grinding. It seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

“You sure you want to go in there?” Deuce asked.

Ewan wracked his brain. He’d done more thinking on this case than he’d had to do in his lifetime. They weren’t going to get these doors open any time soon, that was certain. There must be another exit inside. A huge one, from the sound of it. “Where are we?” he asked Deuce. “What part of the course are we under?”

“I don’t think we’re under the course itself any more. If my sense of direction didn’t get screwed, I think we’re near the swimming pool. They filled that in years ago.” His eyes narrowed, and he said what Ewan was already thinking. “Or made a bolthole out of it.”

Ewan gave the unyielding door a final useless blow with his fist. He shoved Deuce ahead of him. “C’mon. Back outside. We’ll have to catch ‘em out there.” He thought of that first gargantuan noise. That hadn’t been any kind of engine he knew about. It had sounded—he swallowed—organic. Living. “Let’s hope whatever they’ve got in there can’t fly.”

In the Monster's Lair

Maureen never saw how she went from the truck to wherever she was now. Somebody pumped gas in the back of the truck and she and her fellow captives passed out. When she awoke she was alone in a bare room with drab walls. No sign of Pete or Atcheson.

The first person, and she used the term loosely, to visit her looked like a mashup of a monster movie scientist and his creation. Bald in some parts, covered in thick, ragged patches of brownish fur in others, he wore the standard mad scientist white lab coat and glasses thicker than her own. One of his forearms was normal; the other was a hairy, meaty slab of twisted muscle that ended in a humongous paw. Like Hellboy. Come to think of it, Hellboy was cuter.

His crooked smile was fully human. Somehow that made it worse.

The smile didn’t last long. “Eh,” he said at first sight of her. “I thought they said they brought in a woman. You won’t do at all. Nice outfit, though.”

Maureen clutched what was left of her battered harem costume more tightly against her nonexistent chest. “Where are my friends?”

“The two louts they caught with you? They’re undergoing processing even as we speak. Your friend with the glasses will be joining my wolf pack shortly. Your blond friend with the anger issues?” He cackled. “I have plans for him. BIG plans.”

This seemed to strike him as funny. He cackled some more.

“As for you … ” He looked her up and down, and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just watch you. Ever do girl on girl? But first … ”

All of a sudden he lunged at her and grabbed her arm. He jabbed a hypo into her before she could twist away.

The pain and the assault lasted only a moment. Maureen scuttled to a corner and set her back to the wall. She rubbed her arm and watched him warily. Mr. Monster seemed more elated by the blood he’d drawn than he’d been by the rest of her. “Can’t wait to see what’s in here,” he said. “You know what the problem is with women?”

“They don’t like you?”

“All right, besides that. It’s your chemical makeup. Something in you doesn’t play well with my werewolf serum. That’s why I can only make boys. Testosterone gets them over the hump. The ladies just die in agony. I’ve got to figure out a way around that. The boys are getting testy.” He grinned at her and winked.

Maureen wanted to barf.

He left her alone after that, thank God. Some time later two hirsute guards came in and hauled her off to another part of wherever this place was. Her new prison resembled the harem room back at the biker bar in terms of lace and cushions, just with shoddier curtains. And other occupants. Maureen joined a group of eight dull-eyed women in costumes that made her own look like long johns. All were older than she was, and definitely the worse for wear.

“Hey,” their leader said when Maureen was flung into the room. “You must be the new lab rat. I can’t see him touching you. Hope you like girl on girl.”

“We have to get out of here.”

“No chance. We’ve tried. You don’t want to anyway. You don’t know what’s out there. He likes to let the werewolves roam. They’re not big on foreplay. We’re safer locked in here.” The woman grimly pursed her lips. “There used to be ten of us.”

Maureen found a cushion and curled up on it despondently. No way she was staying here. What would Velma do?

Find out all she could, for starters. The women didn’t know much, but they still knew more than she did. Maureen learned the man with the Hellboy hand was Dr. Morloxian. His job was to take captive humans and turn them into mutant monsters for a madman named Damien Hancock. They’d been at a lab some hours from here up until about a week ago. Then there’d been a massive bugout and now they were here. This new prison was smaller than the old one, but smelled a lot nicer and had prettier walls.

They also told her Morloxian was enormous, but in spite of that sucked in the sack. Maureen would have preferred not to know that.

Judging time was iffy in here. She spent it observing the guards’ routines, and studying the lock for pickability. It helped her not think about Ewan, and how badly she wished he would find her.

She was on day two or three when the monstrous scientist himself suddenly burst into the harem room. The women collectively groaned and fixed strained smiles to their faces while trying to jostle each other to the forefront.

“There you are,” Morloxian sang out gleefully. “You beauty. You absolute beauty.” He seized Maureen.

The relief from the others was palpable. A few of them even waved as he dragged Maureen out the door.

Maureen fought like mad, but he picked her up in his massive wolf arm. Given his muscles versus hers, it wasn’t much of a contest. “I’m not a beauty,” Maureen chattered. “Look. No boobs at all. Just throw me back. I’ll even do girl on girl.”

“You beauty, you beauty,” Morloxian crooned. “Oh, those beautiful genes.”

“And I’m a virgin, so it won’t be any fun for you, and I have this disease, and I—what?”

“You lovely little bitch,” Morloxian said. His ugly, half-wolf face was suffused with bliss. “Little werewolf bitch. All this time you were hiding them from me. Those lovely she-wolf genes.” He beamed a crooked smile at her. “Just enough that there’s a chance you’ll survive the process. You’d better. I’ve already told the boys. You should have heard them howl. You’re going to be the most popular lady in the state. And I won’t have to dig up subjects any more. I can breed my own.”

He started singing to himself. After a moment Maureen recognized the tune: “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

Maureen was not a screamer, or usually a thrasher. She prided herself on using her brains to get herself out of a jam.

Now she thrashed. And screamed.

... or not

“Bugger me,” Dugger swore.

Ewan would have gladly, had he thought it would do any good. Or knew what it meant. It wasn’t going to change things.

Here in what should have been the center of Damien Hancock’s hive they had found absolutely squat. Zero. Zilch. Nada and loose change. No guards, no scientists, no mutant monsters. A fat lot of nothing greeted Ewan and Dugger behind every door they tried. In one huge chamber they did find a set of eight-foot clear plastic cylinders lining the walls, but these were empty too. The offshoot rooms they explored were filled with even less of the same. They stank of exotic chemicals and wolf adrenaline, all of it at least a week old.

“Shit,” Ewan said.

“Thought I just said that.”

“American subtitles. Where is everybody?”

“Y’got me, mate. Looks like the whole place has gone walkabout. Must’ve happened right after Dante’s spy lit out. Hey! Where you going?”

“Back to the flying saucer.” She wasn’t here. She wasn’t going to be here. The van and the wolves who had taken her weren’t coming here. They were headed to wherever Damien Hancock had moved his pet scientist. That was where Ewan needed to be, not this empty nest.

“Hang on a mo. My sniffer’s got something.”

Ewan reluctantly retraced his steps. Now he caught it also, a fresher smell than the fading traces they’d encountered so far. Human, somewhat nervous, and close by.

Gun out, Dugger led the way. “You want to kick the door in? I hear it’s the American way.”

He’d pretty much lost heart by now. “Nah.”

“Suit yourself.” Dugger swung the door wide.

Two white-coated science types sat at a table long enough for a dozen, in what had probably been the lab’s cafeteria up until a week ago. They were drinking coffee and listlessly playing cards. Both leaped to their feet when Dugger and Ewan stepped in.

“Uh, hi?” said the skinny one in the thick glasses. “Are you the new owners?”

“Depends,” Dugger said. “What happened to the old owners?”

“No clue,” the skinny one’s stockier buddy said. “Dr. Morloxian called a meeting one morning, told us he was going into business for himself, packed up his experiments and split. We tried to get hold of Mr. Hancock, but he never talks to us. I hate this absentee owner crap.”

“He could’ve left his harem,” Glasses muttered. “We worked hard. We deserve something for that.”

“Where’d Morloxian go?” Ewan demanded.

“Search me,” Glasses said. “He just up and left. Maybe he got a better offer from somebody.” He eyed Dugger’s gun nervously. “Are you the FBI? Are we prisoners?”

“From what I hear, there were close to two hundred people here,” Dugger said. “They take off too?”

“Some,” Stocky said. “A few went with Morloxian, but most of us didn’t. He’s brilliant and all, but really chintzy. Try squeezing a paycheck out of him. The rest of us hung around, hoping to hear from Hancock, but so far he’s been unreachable. I’m signing up for unemployment tomorrow.” He too eyed Dugger’s gun. “I mean, if it’s okay.”

“No worries, mate. I know somebody wants to talk to you bright young lads. Probably offer you jobs. Interested?”

“Hell yeah,” Stocky said. “This place sucks. It smells like wet dog all the time.”

“You said he had a harem,” Ewan said.

Dugger slanted a look at him. “That’s your takeaway?”

“Morloxian did,” Glasses said morosely. “We weren’t allowed to touch them. He kept them locked up. Had to. There was only one other woman here, and she ran off the second she got the chance. The mutants,” he explained to their blank expressions. “All the mutants were male.”

“No she-wolves?” Dugger mused. “No wonder they’re so bloody vicious. Bet if she scented a sheila—”

He broke off and stared at Ewan with a growing horror nowhere near the size of Ewan’s own. Dugger didn’t know about Maureen’s wolf-shifter genes. Morloxian couldn’t either. The sexually-frustrated mutant werewolves would pick up on it in seconds. Once they did—

“Right, then,” Dugger said. He motioned with his gun. “Say g’bye to the nice lab, mates. We’re moving out.”

Ewan bit down on his mounting panic. “Double time,” he agreed.

To the Rescue!

Ewan had never considered himself a praying man. Right now, cooped up in a tiny flying saucer zipping toward Colorado miles above the ground, he was seriously rethinking that decision. He muttered a few syllables to Chaos on the off chance it would help. After an ill-considered glance out the hatch at the blur of earth far below, he added a second prayer consisting of much stronger words.

“Yer lookin’ a little green there, mate,” Dugger said from behind the controls. “These skimmers take getting used to. Y’might want to steer clear of the windows.”

Too little too late there, Ewan thought, while just managing to keep last night’s dinner in his gut where it belonged. “Where the hell’d Dante get this E.T. mobile anyway?”

“Dante knows people.”

“He never told me he knew Luke Skywalker.” Dugger was right; the flight went far better if he didn’t try to look at the scenery. “I don’t suppose he’s got a couple lightsabers stashed in the glove compartment?”

“It’s not that kind of a run, mate. We’re just supposed to buzz the place, find out if your sheila’s there, then give Dante the lowdown and let him make the tough decisions. That’s why he gets the big bucks ‘stead of us.”

Ewan growled to himself. He found he could keep his meal down better if he thought about Maureen instead of how far below the nearest terra firma lay. Trouble was, he could only think about Maureen in the hands of Damien Hancock’s twisted Doctor. His hackles had been stiff for a good hour now and showed no sign of settling. He wanted her in his arms again, with his mouth firmly latched onto her tits and her wolf-human scent in his nostrils. If he didn’t get her back he was going to rip somebody’s throat out.

Chaos bite it! Was this how wolves lived all the time, with their stupid macho alpha genes sending them charging blindly after their mates? No wonder they had no sense of humor.

“Scat on that,” he said. “We find the place, park this thing, slip inside and get her out, and then we call in Dante. If we can blow something up along the way, so much the better.”

Dugger bared his teeth in a grin as wide as the Outback. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

# # #

Dante’s intel was spot on the money. Once on the ground they found the hidden access door with very little trouble. Dugger went to work on the seals while Ewan kept watch.

Ewan felt uneasy, and not because of the heavily-armed troops who might or might not be waiting for them on the other side of the door. He’d managed to wrestle his stomach into compliance so he could scan the roads from above during their flight to Colorado. He hadn’t spotted anything that looked like a delivery truck. Maureen and her fellow captives should be well on their way to this installation by now. Damien Hancock didn’t hire henchwolves who stopped for beer and a burger. And shouldn’t a place so painstakingly hidden have surveillance out the wazoo? Shouldn’t alarms be going off?

“Call me a scat-faced optimist,” Ewan said, “but does all this strike you as just a hair too easy?”

“Never look a gift roo up the bunghole, I always say,” Dugger replied. “There! That’s got it.”

The hatch swung open easily, with no betraying creaks. Dugger led the way inside. Ewan followed him into a narrow corridor lined by raw rock walls. He smelled metal and machine oil up ahead, and heard a few drips and clinks, but no noises from living beings.

“Easy peasy,” Dugger whispered. “Wonder where they are?”

“On break, maybe?” Ewan said. His mind kept conjuring images of foxes, henhouses, and farmers with shotguns.

“According to the blueprints,” Dugger said, “prisoners are usually kept—”

“Dante had blueprints?”

“More like a map. Dante—”

“Knows people. Gotcha.”

That was it for talk. Dugger conveyed through body language that they were coming up on a possible inhabited area. He pulled a handgun out of his waistband. Ewan would play it by ear.

They crept up to the corner and peered around it. And saw—

TO BE CONTINUED (ain’t I a stinker?)

Cue the Ominous Music

Barry peered out the car window, his voice high and jittery. “Oh Jesus. They’ve spotted us.”

“No shit.” Atcheson cursed under his breath. Of course every eye of every shifter in Talbot’s Peak was now trained directly on them. These were shifters, monsters, inhumans. Naturally they’d be suspicious if a cop car cruised into town and parked in the center square. They’d be doubly wary of anyone who got out of it, especially if those passengers were human. Any element of surprise they’d been hoping for had just vanished like a puff of smoke from one of Barry’s joints.

No way Atcheson was taking the blame for this. They’d lost both the van and Cochrane's Chevy. The cop car, probably the least inconspicuous vehicle ever devised, had been the only thing available. What were they supposed to do?

Roll with the punches, his daddy always said. If possible, throw the first punch yourself.

Atcheson got out from behind the wheel for a look around. Barry and Lowenstein piled out like clowns from a circus car. Atcheson found the analogy depressingly apt. Ted grunted and groaned and finally squeezed himself loose with an assist from Lowenstein. “What now?” he panted. “We gonna eat or what?”

The townsfolk gave them the hairy eyeball—talk about your apt—but no one approached them or challenged them. All in all, life in the square seemed remarkably calm. “Cochrane’s not here yet,” Atcheson deduced. “We couldn’t have passed him. He must have gone straight to the bar.”

“So we hit the bar?” Lowenstein asked.

“Yeah. Set a trap. Catch him when he gets there.” Atcheson turned around to address his team, just like a real leader should. “Remember, he’s a werewolf now. A monster. He’d want us to off him. If he could, I’ll bet he’d—oh Jesus Christ!”

“Mphf?” Ted said. After some effort he’d freed a squished Snickers bar from his back pocket. He’d already peeled back the wrapper and was munching on it right in front of Atcheson, so close Atcheson could smell the toxic combo of caramel, peanut and chocolate.

Dear God, was he insane? Or out to kill the team’s new, untried leader?

Atcheson smacked the candy bar out of Ted’s blubbery hand. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“M’hungry, man,” Ted mumbled. He looked hurt.

Now Barry and Lowenstein were looking at him funny. Get a grip, Atcheson ordered himself. He couldn’t afford to lose their support, not yet. “Okay, then. You stay here. Keep an eye out for Cochrane. If you spot him, call us. We’re going on to the bar.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, mister.” Atcheson clambered back into the cop car. Was his hand burning? Were those hives? No, couldn’t be. Must be his imagination.

# # #

Ted had no time to wedge himself back into the car. Atcheson barely gave Barry and Lowenstein a chance to get in before he peeled out of the square. Within seconds the cop car was a cloud of dust with flashing blue lights. Belatedly, Ted shot it the finger.

He looked around for his Snickers, but a crow had already flown off with it. So much for breakfast.

Hold on. His gaze hit a place across the square. The sign said Bighorn Diner. Now that looked promising. He lumbered over and was welcomed by the seductive aromas of fried eggs and maple syrup. A sign in the window promised Flapjack Special -- All You Can Eat $4.99. All of a sudden the day appeared much brighter.

Screw the team. Screw Cochrane. Screw hunting shapeshifters. What had shapeshifters ever done to anybody anyway? Ted opened the diner door and went inside.

He was the lucky one.

# # #

Among those handing out the stink eyes to Atcheson and his team was a knot of young men on a bench by the town’s dog dish fountain. They were, in fact, wolves. They wore leather jackets and tight jeans and motorcycle boots and dark expressions. Since the Twilight movies came out, they had started dressing in shirtless Ts, or going shirtless entirely.

To be specific, they were Hancock wolves, sworn to Damien Hancock. Their orders were simple: keep an eye out for strangers, humans, and any other beings who wouldn’t be missed. Morloxian was constantly running short of subjects for his ghastly experiments. If he couldn’t get humans he might start using shifters. This tended to spike motivation.

They spoke among themselves in growls and body language, indecipherable to ignorant humans. Monkeys, one said. The others nodded agreement. Hunters, said another. More nods.

The leader of the little pack grinned. Twofer. He jerked his chin at the wolf beside him. The low-rank leaped up to get the truck.

They let the fat one lurch across the square and enter the Bighorn Diner. His heart was probably three beats away from imploding. He’d never survive the trip to the lab, let alone the mutation process. The low-rank returned with their vehicle, a former bread truck that now said Full Moon Deliveries on the side.

The leader got behind the wheel. By now they’d lost sight of the cop car, but that was okay. The apes had been chattering loud enough to be heard clear back to the exit. The big blond ape had said, “the bar,” and there was only one bar at the end of that particular road. Hell, the mutts out there would give them a medal for saving their business from hunters. He trundled the bread truck out of the square.

Werewolf and Witch By Lineage

Mad March howls and yowls, shapeshifter lovers.

In last week's flash scene, our villain Damien Hancock was about to sniff out the infiltrator inside his mutant-landia lab. Well... here's the ongoing story.
~~~~~~

Werewolf and Witch By Lineage

Werewolf and witch by lineage, Sulandra, used her psi-power, listening to her grandsire, Damien Hancock, interrogate and shmooze Morloxian -- the humpy-bumpy, butt sniffer. Scat, so far she'd been able to fend off his grab-ass, clumsy advances whenever she did her own conversational interrogation of him. After all, even mad scientists had to be fed, and she'd signed on to be his personal cook.

Mammoth mutant werewolf! That got Sulandra's rabid attention. Escaping, her goal the compound's delivery tunnel, she paused in her stealthy stride.

The very instant the mafioso-like pack leader entered the underground lab's main corridor, Sulandra had  realized it was time to get the effing hell out of Dodge, or in this case Colorado.

Damien's on-the-hunt scent for the infiltrator, her, hit Sulandra's nostrils like acid. She'd grabbed her backpack, then slowly wended her way through the black-as-tar labyrinth.

With her superior senses, she'd memorized the path despite being blindfolded, then allowed sight only once inside the delivery area -- larger than any warehouse Sulandra had ever seen. Suddenly low, hideous warning snarls blasted down her human witchy spine.

Yep, the hellhound-werewolf combo was on guard. "Hey, Yorgo, you're going to let me pass without a big nasty battle... aren't you?" Sulandra snatched the large ball of raw beef out of her pocket. "Here ya go," she soothingly coaxed.

Yorgo's thunder-engine growl ceased. He sniffed noisily, his blood-red nostrils like strangely moving orbs in the blackness. Sulandra hadn't been stupid enough to try infusing the meat with any drug, potion, or spell. Yorgo would have immediately known, wanting to chomp her down as a snack instead.

Sulandra gave the beef ball a toss toward him. As his jaws snapped like a wildlife trap around the meat, she scooted against the wall past his giant bulk. Yorgo emanated a poisonous odor that reminded her of a cigarette smoke-saturated motel room. With difficulty, Sulandra held her breath and stifled her urge to cough her lungs out.

She ran. From the palm of her hand, Sulandra threw a lightball -- her own witchy version of 'gps' -- having prepared it for this day. Simultaneously, Yorgo's enraged roar shook the steel and concrete tunnel. His heavy footsteps raced after her, thunder meeting an earthquake.

With adrenaline flooding her bloodstream, Sulandra sprinted faster. A champion marathoner in werewolf circles, she gained a bit of distance, even as licks of fire roasted her human butt.

No! she ordered when her wolf ferociously growled, demanding to be let loose. Sulandra still needed her human fingers to open the delivery door. That is, if the code hadn't been changed or automatically switched off.

Ouch-scat! hellfire lashed her back... but, irony of ironies, she'd been living in the lab-boiling pits of hell, alright. Charging into the short tunnel leading to the delivery entrance, Sulandra threw her force at the lightball. Instantly, it sizzled brightly, then reversed direction, flying past her.

Yorgo screamed in agony. Sulandra slowed and whipped around. Direct hit! Right between his four, monstrously big, blazing crimson eyes.

Unable to see, Yorgo crashed about searching for her by scent. Resuming her running stride, Sulandra sprinted for the control panel before...

Blinding light filled the entire warehouse-like area. Sulandra stopped in her tracks. Momentarily. Keeping her eyelids clenched so her retinas wouldn't burn, she opened her psi eyes.

"Surrender, bitch." As if he snarled through a thousand megaphones, Damien Hancock's voice pulsed around her.

"Yeah, yeah, granddad," Sulandra muttered under her breath, while rapidly touching in the code.

She hoped to Goddess moon, she didn't have to waste her supernatural powers on tripping the circuitry. Escaping Damien Hancock's formidable reach, would take far more than freeing herself from his massive crypto-monster lab.

Just as Sulandra heard the frequency hum meant to paralyze her, then jellify her whole, the thirty foot steel doors began to buzz and slide open. Whirling, Sulandra sped the short distance, then shoved through the crack.

Wintery air slapped her face. As Sulandra opened her eyes, the bright afternoon sunlight caused her to blink rapidly. She shifted to wolf 'asap', ripping her minimal clothing apart -- all while hearing humongous paws crunch over the thick layer of snow.

The mutant werewolves guarding the lab were on her trail. And no, they wouldn't be satisfied with a piece of her tail, either. The crazed beasts would shred her into unrecognizable pieces, if her plan failed. 

Sulandra swiftly bounded over the ice-blanketed snow toward the cave system she'd remote viewed, but had never actually been inside. Behind her, the pack of mutant werewolves gained ground, their long running strides nearly silent now.

A cold calm replaced the fear starting to fester inside her. All she had to do was find the brush-covered entrance, then wiggle through... shots rang out!

Sulandra leaped in reaction, startled. This wasn't ordinary rifle ammo being fired. More like the sound of military style tracers combined with M-80 firecrackers.

Keeping her spy cool, Sulandra focused on the surroundings she'd memorized via remote viewing. Howls-eureka! Sliding to a halt before the outcropping of rock, she dug with frenzied paws, spraying the snow behind her. 

Then, like the fiend some considered her to be -- fools they -- Sulandra yanked away the brush overgrowth with her fangs. About to clear the entrance, she heard, "I've dispatched them, my lovely. Care to go for a ride on my copter?"
~~~~~~

 
Wishing you love and passion on the wild side...  

Savanna

Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance

The Mutant-landia of Damien Hancock

Pic from: ~mammoththunderpower.files.wordpress.com~

Tuesday howls and yowls, shapeshifter lovers.

Now that Damien Hancock's secret 'doctor' is out of the closet but not out of his monster-cloning lab... well... read on.

~~~~~~

The Mutant-landia of Damien Hancock

Damien Hancock, the werewolf pack leader who had first seized Talbot's Peak, growled orders to the four betas following in his wake. "Useless curs," he muttered, as they entered his hidden underground lab located near Pike's Peak.

An unnatural silence enveloped him once the ten-foot thick steel door closed, sealing them inside. His terror campaign to rid Talbot's Peak of humans and cat shapeshifters was yet to be fulfilled, to his everlasting rage.

But Damien was a werewolf man with a devious plan. Several diabolical plans to be scat exact. 

He'd be damned before showing his throat, or bowing to the genius maneuvering of his second son, Dante.  A reluctant respect gripped his innards, and Damien barked a harsh growl at himself.

The cat-licking, human-loving renegade cub -- who favored his dam and had been corrupted by her soft paw -- countered his every move like a master chessboard player but with deadly-attack strategies when required. Dante could fang-rip out the jugular with the best of them.

He'd learned that much from his sire.

Damien smirked, then reminded himself he owned the last fang-ruthless move. Toothy grinning, he sauntered slowly, studying Morloxian's latest army of demon-eyed killer beasts.

Behind a specialized, black-ops grade of plexiglass, on both sides of the ten foot corridor, mutant werewolves occupied huge cubicles. Frozen in a state of stasis, the  hideously formed beasts could be activated, loosed on an unsuspecting enemy -- or any population -- at a moment's notice.

In anticipation, Damien grinned, his lips thinning over his protuding fangs. As he understood the mad scientist's explanation, originally Dire wolf variants had been infected with a dinosaur-ravaging virus discovered in the depths of the Amazon jungle. Of course, Morloxian constantly added his own evil-genius refinements to the gene-bubbling brew.

Recently he'd included the murderous instincts and superior agility of Jackals and Hyenas. Morloxian's gleeful recitation of the process still echoed inside Damien's head, the memory like a B horror movie but without the humorous silliness he enjoyed on occasion. 

As he watched the steel door slide open, Damien girded his loins, preparing himself for the offal stench of the mad-dog scientist. Morloxian remained in a perpetual state of half shift, and no matter his attempt to cleanse himself, the odor stuck to him like fresh tomcat scat.

"Sir." Morloxian glided forward in his strange gait, offering his deformed paw-hand, the one with the unusually long and dextrous fingers.

Random patches and tufts of werewolf fur covered his 'bright as a billiard ball' bald head -- and his body as Damien had been a witness to once. Pained howls to hell, once was enough, as the inane saying went.

To his credit, Morloxian always wore an immaculately clean white lab coat. Damien resisted the urge to howl a laugh as he briefly embraced the lumpy monstrosity within his semi-morphed hand. Whiskers sprouted haphazardly on the scientist's Boris Karloff like features, giving him a cartoon-comical appearance.

"Impressive," Damien growled, referring to the stasis army of mutant werewolves he'd just viewed.

"You ain't seen nothing yet," Morloxian joked in his cracking-odd voice. He waggled his mismatched brows, bushy brows that should only have belonged on a grizzled old mountain man.

"Show me. Are the funds in order?" Damien thought to ask. A happy mad scientist was exceptionally, insanely creative, as he'd learned. 

"More than sufficient, sir. My team has made good progress on those samples you sent of the horse-altered mutants. Although, magick is always a tricky beast to define, and incorporate into the genetic matrix. However," Morloxian stretched his thick, semi-twisted mouth into a smile. "I assure you it can be accomplished."

"I have every faith in your ability. That brings me to one reason for this meeting. I have word from a trusted source... one of your team is an infiltrator." Damien let the rest of his thought hang and blow in the mighty wind of his alpha power, while keenly observing Morloxian's reaction.

"Could you be more specific, sir?" Nothing but respect shone in Morloxian's very human eyes. "You vetted, and have the dossiers on every one of my assistants."

"Yes. So, I do," Damien widened his lips into a smile of acceptance, given the emotional fragility of the werewolf-bitten human. "Why don't you take me on the grand tour? The nose knows. Sniffing out the scat vermin could be quite entertaining for all of us. And," Damien enticed, "give you more useful genetics to play with... perhaps, even a cure."

Morloxian frowned, only enough to demonstrate his point, not as a challenge. "I no longer care about a cure for my... ah... condition, sir. I've come to enjoy my franken-wolf state." He smiled like a jester fool atop a king's hill. "Some females seem to enjoy my 'extra' prowess."

"Yes, I can imagine." Damien clapped his 'ace' against Dante on the shoulder in an intentional human gesture of affection. Such bonding created loyalty, as he'd learned over his lengthy life. "How is your harem?"

A red stain spread over Morloxian's face, then the bald areas of his head.

"No need for words," Damien growled in a friendly manner. "Show me your latest project. Then, we'll sniff out the infiltrator, and have our fun."

"Mammoth genes," Morloxian burst out. "They're all over the black market now. I was able to secure a viable set. You should see the prototype I've created."

Damien wickedly glittered inside with the possibilities of such a formidable creature. "A mammoth mutant werewolf?"

"With tusks that can take out any military tank," Morloxian enthused.

"That does take priority..." Damien envisioned the 'out of the bowels of hell' damage he could wreak on Talbot's Peak proper... on Dante's fortress, the Pleasure Club.
~~~~~~

Wishing you romance on the wild side… 

Savanna

Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~

~~~~~~

Doctor? Who?

Dante’s enemies—and the guardian of Talbot’s Peak had quite a few—often wondered if the seemingly-omniscient wolf ever slept. For instance, he was still awake and dressed at three in the morning when the van pulled up to the bar. Ewan, naked as a jaybird and just as chatty, got out, with a human she in tow. He pounded on the bar’s locked door and demanded to see Dante. “Hate to bust in like this,” he said when finally ushered into Dante’s presence, “but we got a hunter out at the Rocky Top looking to blast all comers. Oh, this is Maureen. One of us kidnapped the other one. We’re still working out who’s who.”

“Are you the Doctor?” the woman asked.

For a long time Dante just stood there, his narrow glare bouncing back and forth between the shifter male and human female. Finally he took Maureen by the hand. “My office,” he ordered Ewan.

Ewan shrugged and left Maureen to Dante. He wouldn’t hurt her, even though she was human and a hunter of sorts. She was probably safer with Dante than she was with her erstwhile partners.

Once in Dante’s office he shifted and curled up on the floor for a wolfnap. This had been one nonstop Saturday night, and only looked to get more interesting as the hours wore on. Best to grab rest when he could.

Sure enough, way too soon Dante woke him with a nudge of his foot. Ewan got up and switched back to human, and accepted the Levis and shirt Dante handed him. “How’s Maureen?” he asked while he pulled on the pants.

“Fine, for the time being. You?”

“Just a might ticked. I mean, getting a bag thrown over your head and dragged into a van can be fun, but only if you plan for it.” He buttoned up the shirt. “Same for being tied to a bed. It’s just not the same when hunters do it. Oh, and that dingo dog just happened to show up at the Rocky Top. Funny how that worked out.”

“Hoover warned me about that bunch as soon as they checked in. I was fishing for information. I needed bait. Dugger rode along in case matters got out of hand. I have confidence in your ability to preserve your own hide.”

“A little warning would have been nice.” So would an apology, but Ewan knew better. As an alpha, Dante had to be ruthless sometimes. Ewan shrugged it off with a coyote’s what-the-hell attitude. He’d chucked a human into Dante’s lap, so he figured they were even. “The Loony Toon Brigade is after those mutts of your dad’s. They think we’re building werewolves out of innocent humans. Cochrane wants Vernon McMahon and Lance Lincoln’s heads on a skewer. Any other shifter dies along the way, he’ll be happy.”

“Why did you bring that woman here?”

“It wasn’t exactly my idea. Anyway, they already know you’re involved, or at least the bar is. They came here hunting a werewolf victim, didn’t they? This bunch has done their homework. Cochrane’s a pro, and the rest of them are just stupid enough to be dangerous.”

“Especially now that they know about the Doctor. That was foolish.”

“What? I dropped a little chum in the water to see if the sharks would bite. It’s not like … scat.” Ewan breathed out a growl. “Don’t tell me there really is a Doctor.”

“My sire’s been secretly working with select humans for longer than he wants anybody to know. I thought the ‘Doctor,’ whatever his real name is, was only a rumor too. Then the mutants appeared. We had a chance to examine them when Marissa’s spell turned that one band into horses. Their wolf and human DNA had been knit together with Hancock shifter. My sire is using his pack to make monsters. He has to be stopped.”

But not killed. Ewan slid away from that topic with practiced finesse. “The Monster Squad will hit here first. They found one wolf here, they’ll figure they might find more.”

“Not for some time. My sources tell me most of them are currently incarcerated. I’ll see what I can do to keep them there. Cochrane’s on the loose. He worries me more. I’m guessing he’ll head for town. He can do the most damage there.”

“Yeah. He wants to kill shifters, all he has to do is stand in the square and start shooting.” Ewan sighed. “I’m up at bat again, aren’t I?”

“You’re on standby. We have others in town watching out for Cochrane. You … ” Dante grinned viciously. “You have a prisoner to guard.”

# # #

Dante had put Maureen in one of his special rooms. This one had been tricked out to look like a harem room, minus all the semi-naked girls. She was awake and curled up on a pile of cushions. She stared at Ewan warily when he came in. Ewan just plain stared.

Wellnow. Hell-oooo, Daphne.

Somebody had got her out of her baggy duds and into a little wraparound thingie that showed off a lot of scrawny arm and leg. He still couldn’t see any boobage, but he had a better idea now of where it might be. That same somebody had applied cosmetics with a master’s hand. Her eyes now dominated her face instead of those clunky glasses, and her lips appeared larger and infinitely kissable. The blush, he figured, was probably natural.

He shut the door and plopped down on a nearby cushion. Not too nearby, because she still looked a might skittish. However, she appeared happy to see him, which he took as encouragement. “They treating you okay?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “Who was that other guy? The mastermind?”

“Nah, just the bar owner. He’s a little ticked you guys picked his business as ground zero for an invasion. Things like that cut into profits. I see he helped you clean up, though.”

“That wasn’t him.” Yep, that blush was the real deal. “This—this chorus girl saw me, and shrieked, and dragged me into the ladies’ room and said I needed a makeover. She did my face and gave me this dress and then she left me here.” She plucked at the hem of the dress. “It doesn’t really fit me. I figured I could use it for a nightie.”

“Chorus girl? A redhead?”

“No, she had pink hair. Tall, with a deep voice.” Suspicion leaped into her mascara’d eyes. “Y’know, I think she might have been a guy.”

“Ah. That’s Lamar. He’s harmless. Just don’t let him hug you. He hates to let go.”

“They’ll come straight here, you know,” she said, switching tracks. “We’ve been studying this place. We ID’d over a dozen werecreatures, not just wolves.”

“We?” Ewan said. “Or you?”

She scooted a little bit away from him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” Finally he got his finger on why her scent hit him as so homey. “You’re pretty good at spotting wolves, aren’t you? I figure that comes natural to you. Just how much wolf you got in you?”

Saving People, Hunting Things

Even though he couldn’t see squat with the bag over his head, Ewan had a pretty good idea where this monkey bunch was taking him. The increasing sound of traffic and the neon lights that flashed in through the windshield confirmed it: they were headed for the commercial strip out by the exit. With a dab of good luck they’d be holed up in the Rocky Top Motel. Dante had a wolf named Hoover, he of the miraculous nose, stationed at the front desk there. If Ewan could get word to him, Hoover could tell Dante what these yutzes were up to. That’d put a crimp in their plans.

If his luck ran sour, they’d drive their van up the exit and onto the interstate and off to parts unknown. Then he’d be well and truly up the fabled Scat Creek, with no outboard.

Tonight Chaos favored him. The van slowed, made a careful turn and rattled its way through what Ewan guessed was a parking lot before it came to a stop. Game time. If this was their lair, he could work on getting some answers. If it was just a gas stop, he’d have to make a break for it. Either way, he intended to toy with these apes before he hightailed it for home. The wolf in him might want to attack, but the coyote in him overruled it. No coyote worth the name ever turned down a chance to punk a human.

The male pinning his right arm abruptly ripped the canvas bag off his head. Ewan gulped what passed for fresh air on a busy strip of highway. His eyes adjusted and showed him the back end of a long, two-story motel. Enough willing ladies had smuggled him into their rooms for him to recognize the Rocky Top.

“You listen good, monster,” the man snarled. “You’re gonna walk up those steps and into that room and not give us any trouble. You so much as say boo and I got a silver knife with your name on it.”

“You got me a gift? Damn sweet of you. Hope you spelled my name right. Can I have it wrapped to go?”

The goon stared blankly at him. The woman on his other arm tittered. Ewan swung his head thataway for a look at his possible ally.

About what he’d expected, given the company she kept. Battered sneakers, baggy jeans and a T-shirt with a whale on it, all hanging off a body that’d make a skeleton look pudgy. She had a soft face behind round, owlish glasses. Her hair was chopped short, its color hard to tell under parking lot lights but probably in the brown family. If she had any tits under that shirt, he couldn’t find them. She did have a nice, tight caboose though, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The others piled out of the van and circled him like hyenas. They linked arms and caged him in their middle. In this manner they walked him down the narrow inside hallway, while his new lady friend scooted ahead to open the door. Anybody wandering past would take them for a pack of frat boys staggering home from a bar crawl. In a group they lurched into the room.

And what a room it was, exactly what Ewan expected. His new buddies had added their own special touches to the room’s décor, with maps, newspaper clippings, website printouts and grainy black-and-white video stills Scotch-taped over every square inch, including the paintings bolted to the walls and the mirror on the closet door. The subject matter all related to the alien, the paranormal, the weird. All it needed was an I Want to Believe poster tacked up over the bed.

Three laptops were crowded onto a circular vinyl table, one with a Bigfoot screensaver, another with a sticker of a big-eyed, big-headed alien giving the Vulcan salute. And, of course, the empty pizza boxes. Ewan would have been sorely disappointed if he hadn’t seen at least one.

His surly buddy from the van shoved him onto the bed, where two of his partners swooped in to bind Ewan’s wrists to the headboard. “Kinky,” Ewan said. “Who wants me first?”

“Stuff it, Rover.” Ewan recognized that voice as the van driver’s. He was a big, Aryan blond in a pullover sweater who obviously considered himself this mob’s alpha dog. Ewan named him Freddie. “Save your breath for talking. You’re going to tell us every last detail about your ‘Doctor’s’ operation.” He pulled out a wicked-looking silver dagger. “I guarantee it.”

“Uh huh. You’re gonna spill my guts and I’m gonna empty my bowels on your only bed.” He watched that realization sink in and the consternated looks flash around the room, to finally settle on Freddie. Freddie got red in the face. “You really didn’t think this whole hostage deal through, did you?”

“Don’t mess with us,” Mr. Surly said. Ewan dubbed him Agent Mulder. “We’re professionals.”

“Of course you are.” Ewan jabbed his chin at the active screensaver. “You do know Bigfoot hangs out in Colorado, right? You’re looking in the wrong state.”

“We’ll get back to Bigfoot later,” Agent Mulder said. “Right now you’re our freak of the week. You’re going to talk, or else.”

“Then you’ll be washing sheets till Judgment Day. Tell you what: you let Velma here work her feminine wiles on me and we’ll see how much I spill. That work for you, darlin’?” He winked at the woman.

Her eyes—a warm summer brown, he saw now—flashed with unexpected fire. “My name’s Maureen.”

“Ewan. I’d shake your hand, but … ” He tugged his wrists against the ropes and offered up a shrug.

The woman bit her lip. Poor gal, she probably thought these sorry apes were the best she could do. That wasn’t true, and under different circumstances he wouldn’t mind telling, and showing, her so. If she put on a few pounds and padded those bones, wore a tighter set of jeans, grew her hair out a couple of inches—and washed it more often—she could hop off the Velma shelf and into Daphne territory. He’d bet his tail she’d never been touched by any of these clueless mooks.

She had a brain behind those eyes; he could see it working. He’d always liked Velma better than Daphne anyway. Velma’d always had more smarts than the rest of the gang put together. Coyotes set high store on smarts. In the coyote worldview, anyone without a brain might as well have a target on their back.

Ewan smiled easily and sorted through the targets in the room. Besides Agent Mulder and Freddie, there was a redheaded kid in a “Free Weed” T-shirt, a stocky, dark-skinned guy in glasses who had yet to say a word, and a wide load in a ponytail who reminded Ewan of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. They all gave off that earnest vibe of folks who know they’re right, the kind one little jab can jostle into fanaticism, with a side of violence attached.

Except for Velma. She wasn’t wearing perfume, and her natural scent was earth-toned and homey. He wouldn’t mind a good howl at the moon with her, if he could get her and himself away from the Spooky Brigade.

“So, which of you is Nick Fury?” he asked. “See? We watch TV just like you guys.”

“Go get Mr. C,” Freddie ordered. The guy in the glasses left, still without a word. “Don’t dick with us,” Freddie said to Ewan. “We know all your weaknesses. We’re all armed with silver. It’s new moon. You won’t be changing any time soon.”

Velma opened her mouth, then shut it again. She looked at Ewan doubtfully. He could figure what was going through her mind. Werewolf lore and shifter reality didn’t always match up. Shifters didn’t need a full moon to go canine. She knew this; she’d seen Twilight. Yet she wasn’t in any hurry to share with her brothers in slayage. Interesting.

“Okay, you got me,” Ewan said. “What do you want to know?”

Agent Mulder snatched a photo off the table and thrust it at Ewan’s face. “What’s this?”

He crossed his eyes at the picture in front of his nose, and his gut tumbled. Scat in a hat.

The pic was standard cryptozoologist quality, blurry and off-center and clearly taken from a long, safe distance away. It showed three giant creatures that could not be mistaken for bears or wolves or Tiger Yakuza, even with the bad focus helping. Nothing about the beasts said “normal” in any way, shape or form.

Somehow these hoots had snapped a pic of Damien Hancock’s mutant werewolves.

Chaos bite my balls, he thought. Why did luck always fall into the hands of little cubs and the monumentally stupid?