Bad Moon Rising-4

Chapter 4

It’s all coming together. It’s all going to be worse than ever though. I’m sleeping or trying to as the motor home drives through the northern parts of the state as we head to the Canadian border.

Dom’s spooned into me running his fingers through my hair and occasionally just touching my skin. I relax into it trying to. I need to; I think if the stress keeps up the way it does I’ll explode or something.

……………..Athena talked to the Fed’s, turns out she got more than an “In” with the Fed’s head honcho. We drove away with the semi trucks like I was planning without the Feds kicking up a fuss once we replaced the tires. I let him keep the drivers and the kids. It’ll be good press for him and the bureau. I might need the friends, the news will get to the Templars soon enough and the trucks will get us close enough.

I close my eyes and feel the wolves getting closer and closer as we get to the border. I sent the pack over the border as soon as we went after the trucks. Passports and as tourists, at different places, small groups. Just coming over to Canada…The wolf-able members of the pack crossing over in the deeper woods carrying all our contraband stuff in bags and such things. Wolves don’t run guns…we fucking do.

The border crossing was pretty standard fare with a cursory check and My Folks and Grand-dad are useful too. It’s a family vacation. Just what we all wanted to do, take off to Canada head off to what’s suppose to be a beautiful part of their country and then wage a war.

I had my first cup of Tim Horton’s coffee disguised rocket fuel just passed the border crossing while coordinating with the others and getting a place for us to all meet and arm up. It’s still better than Starbucks but I’d rather have my Dunkin Doughnuts over either of them.

It was strange and odd and kind of nice to see Andrea and Miranda leaving together against their car sharing kisses as they have their coffee’s with the little black girl healer with them is looking disgusted from it being a PDA more than the whole lesbian thing and frustrated as she’s eating Timbits? And fighting with an I-phone with buds in her ears for music or something.

Seeing them reminds me of Katya…and of a chance she’d never have, that I’d never kiss her again.

Then I look over and see Dom over paying for the gas all caught up in this, in me and my crazy shit turning everything in his world inside out and upside down and I don’t really treat him nearly good enough. I feel guilty for thinking of Katya like that over Dom… but…she was that first person that I ever really truly loved. She loved me back when other people barely even seen me.

I feel so tired it hurts. I feel actually as old as my wolf years.

We don’t take too long and dad’s driving, he hates being part of this whole thing. He hated being part of a family that did majik and he left Maine to go all the way home to Chicago. I had the mage blood gift passed to me even before I received The Wolf Legacy.

I’m sitting at the bench/booth table thing in the motorhome/RV with Grand-dad who is a mage and I’m working on building a few spells to have at the ready. The longer that you can prepare something, the more you can invest mana into the separate acts of a spell.

I’m pulling mana from the pack. Yeah this is why they really frown on Weres especially Alpha’s being mage blooded too. I can’t pull of anyone’s essence but I can reach out to my pack subjects and draw on their mana. I’m building some pretty big spells here. I won’t be casting them or in this case releasing them. That’s going to be Grand-dad’s job, he’s at least with me on this and I think he really believes the dreams and the nightmares I’ve been having about this.

I’m reaping the benefits of a man whose done majik all his life. He’s never been a big time majik worker but he has been a really good teacher. We’re making the power focus components for the big spells I want and need and trying my damnedest to get everything prepped. I only feel like I need another hundred years of time to get ready.

Mom’s gone from completely losing her shit over everything to being scared of me, to being scared for me and she’s now gotten to her new spot that she’s still my mother alpha or not and she’s bound and determined to get me and our family through this. She actually has started to believe me too telling people that she knows that look on my face when I wake up freaked out. Any woman knows that kind of deep down gut feeling of intuition look on another woman’s face. She’s been schooling me in all these things about being a girl or rather a woman too, clothes, posture, but attitude as well. She’s starting to become a rock for me really.

The fact I’m doing spells with her father in law, and I’m a girl and a werewolf queen, dad’s pissed off at all of it because all he wanted was a normal life so bad he dumped all his denied powers into me and what is my mom doing?

She’s doing Sudoku, and talking to the other pack wives about the final camp stop before we head off to war. And…and she’s got a home made deep dish cooking in the oven here in the RV.

I look at her and can’t help but mouth to her Thank you and I love you to her. She smiles and mouths that she loves me too.

It really is the little things that keep you going.

***

We drive through most of the day and into the early afternoon before we stop at a farm owned by a far flung member of the pack. French Canadians they greet us very friendly like and the pack is massing here and we’re soon making a camp of tents and everything we have brought with us under the cover of the Doucette family reunion.

There is a lot of music and there is a lot of food and beer and all the things that you’d expect from a family reunion and in the tents with other family members/pack members running interference just in case we’re arming up. Pistols, rifles, assault weapons we got from taking out some of the various biker Templar interests. Dynamite and explosives even some dangerous military hardware is all being put back together gone over two or three times and we start briefing ourselves on the attack plans.

Athena is helpful in a lot of the strategy session; she’s seen a lot of battles. I’m relying her more for the heavy support of there’s mystical badasses or something there. But we’ve got lots of other resources. The pack is old for a North American pack. Only bested by some of the Native American ones. But when you include the members who can’t wolf shift…we’ve got cops and a few feds plus a lot of guys from the military that’ve fought in one war or another. I’ve got three old guys tough as nails that did sniper duty in Vietnam and they’ve kept their skills up…experiences over there having taught them a lot of harsh lessons.

***

The semi trucks are rolling ahead and soon they get to the first check point. Our vehicles are following behind then slowly, lights off. We’re using night vision and other optics since we’re well away from any light sources heading out into the countryside. They realize the drivers are their guys and by the time they try and radio in, we’re on them.

It takes a few minutes to stop them from struggling and I use essence in a hypnosis trance on them to get them to call us in as okay, no trick words, no messages. And I know it’s not honorable or some crap like that but once we’ve cleared the check point its three silenced shots to each one of them, I don’t ask any one of my pack to do anything I’m not willing to do myself. My hand is one of the hands pulling a trigger. The looks that I get from Dom and Andrea and Grand-dad make me feel dirty, dirty and hurt and lonely. I get back to business stuff ing it away for later and we leave our own guys in their places as a rear guard for us and move onto the next stop doing the same thing twice more before we get to the valley where the Templars have made their secret compound.

* Shadira’s part…

The radiance of Allah’s messenger shines on my face as Adam Harcourt Justifier of the Holy Templars and agent of The American Office of Homeland security again looses his composure when I start to recite my evening prayers.
“Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up you freak!” He says as he steps out of the way of the bucket of feces and urine the demon tainted guards throw on me. He reaches out and touches me once more with the jumper cables he’s got hooked to the generator.

I scream. You would too, we’re only human.

But the pain hits a point where it hits the light and it just isn’t anymore. It’s vexing The Justifier very much. Once I’m done spasming I look up at my angelic friend and know that Allah has not forsaken me. I know that Allah is stronger that them for he does not see my heavenly friend, he doesn’t see the sunshine on my face.

I push him a little harder. “Why have you picked me out of the crowd agent? How am I a threat to you? I’m a simple Muslima girl, even when I didn’t know who I was and was younger you’ve had it out for me.”

“You’re the child of a baby murdering terrorist. You think that you rag heads have the exclusive rights to communing with god? I was shown the abomination that you are by a messenger of god almighty.”

My Malak, my Angel looks at me and lowers his head…her head.

~What he says has some truth to it. He is the scion of one of my kind. Of one who was my kind. A child of the traitor that is Shai-tan. ~

I look at him. “Adam, you’ve been fooled. The one who speaks to all of you is no true messenger of god. Allah would not ask of you to do this to your fellow man these things that you do.”

“You’re a liar, Steven; you’re a liar in your faith as much as you’re a liar about what I have seen first hand and felt singing in my soul. You are a liar that pretends at not being a monster just like you pretend at being a real woman.”

“Please Adam; you can leave the path that you are on. Putting your immortal soul in the hands of some unholy thing will only lead you to destruction. Let go of the darkness in you. You were a good man once; you were raised to be a good man. Do the right thing and help me get these innocents out of here and Allah will be merciful to you.”

He gestures and the demon touched ones lash out with fists and plastic piping and beat me. I’m not sure how long they beat me for but he’s talking, ranting as they are.

“We were chosen out of a long, long line of crusaders. We were chosen to defend humanity and god and the church against the evil that things like you bring to the world. I’ve seen the green eyed Angel! He talks to me in my dreams; I’ve seen the great serpent of god! The wise one that showed us all that Eve was a failure, that women cannot be trusted! You dare talk to me about things being holy; about you’re demon master Allah! You’re kind are worse than Eve! You know her failure, her treachery and you sought to become one of those things! I’ve seen these so called children you speak of cavort with things unclean and use the darkest of powers without restraint. We have the Wisdom of Solomon with us and we use the powers of god almighty to fight back the darkness!”

I feel my angel descend unto me and I feel the power there filling me up, healing my hurts and washing me clean of the filth just like I was baptized in The River Jordan. The ones beating me pull back and away from me with a hiss as the get burned by my touch. Adam Harcourt shies away shielding his eyes from me. His demon tainted friends beat a hasty retreat out of the room and some of his misguided mortal brethren zealots come in.

Adam’s yelling and pulls his pistol and I feel the shots rattling my body. Angel or Malak there is just so much that she/he/ they are allowed to do. I can taste blood and there’s a nasty taste of bile in my mouth.

Her voice…no…THE VOICE is in my head again and I start to chant out as the words come to my mind. I’m still chanting them as I feel the visions coming true…as I feel them running this way…

………………………..They thrown me into the cell to leave me for dead and yet shot seven times death is coming slowly…I feel him though, he’s going to be busier with other things soon enough….

Justin’s there beside me suddenly or maybe not so suddenly and he kisses me gently, his fingers run through my hair and his eyes are so beautiful. I would be more than happy if this was my end. I my end was with the first and only man that I had ever loved…the one person besides my god that has ever truly loved me.

*Adam Harcourt….

He glared at where the took the girl, no the thing that she-male succubus demon thing that tempted him with that dark hair…those long lashes and those haunting eyes. She was a majik user, she had to be. Beguiling him, witching him like she had.

She was gone now, out of his life forever and she should have died like the others given up as gods rightful sacrifice like was done in Egypt to the heathen creatures then.

He turned to Moses Jameson who had a confused look on his face. He spoke sand nigger better than Adam did and he had the look ever since she had started babbling.

“Moses; what the hell was the witch babbling on about.”

“She was chanting a song in really old Arabic. I don’t get why though….”

He stops looking scared a very shaken as there this static sound that goes through the PA system and all of the radios around them…it actually is coming out of anything that’s getting a signal…jamming everything completely as it takes over….
“That…she was chanting that Adam!”

………………………….it was music, it was good old fashioned rock and roll and the song started soft but every second it was gaining in volume.

“I see the Bad Moon arising.”
“I see trouble on the way.”
“I see earthquakes and lightnin”
“I see bad times today.”

“Don’t go around tonight.”
“Well, it’s bound to take your life.”
“There’s a Bad Moon on the rise.”

“I hear hurricanes a blowin”
“I know the end is coming soon.”
“I fear the rivers overflowing.”
“I hear the voice of rage and ruin.”

“Don’t go out tonight.”
“Well, it’s bound to take your life.”
“There’s a Bad Moon on the rise.”

“Hope you got your things together.”
“Hope you are quite prepared to die.”
“Looks like we’re in for nasty weather.”
“One eye is taken for an eye!”

“Don’t go out tonight.”
“Well, it’s bound to take your life.”
“There’s a Bad Moon on the rise.”

“Don’t go out tonight.”
“Well, it’s bound to take your life.”
“There’s a Bad Moon on the rise……….”

He wasn’t sure why he moved, why he went to the window cover in cheap plastic blinds but looking through on a night that wasn’t suppose to have a moon at all showing the moon was huge, huge and full and filling the night sky of the valley and it wasn’t just that…it was changing color…turning red like it was getting stained in blood.

There was a line of something burning, two of them actually burning and leaving a trail behind then like…rocket? The main gates blew inward at the force of a double hit from two rocket propelled grenades…the alarms never sounded? The sentries never said there was trouble? There were armed men pouring in from outside into the complex and the place was filling with gunfire and explosions and…and…howling?
Werewolves, dozens of them pouring in from the outside, tearing out of the trailers of the trucks that brought God’s tributes.

“To arms! To arms! Satan’s at our door!”

He ran to the armory. She must not be dead…she couldn’t be dead because she did this! Shadira….she fucking did this! He’d make sure the whore was dead then he’d take care of the rest of the hell spawn.

*Andrea’s part…………

I’ve seen a lot of things.

I’ve seen a lot of battles and wars and I’ve seen people do some very hard things. Stevie Parker is one of the hardest women I’ve ever met. Still a teenager and yet she’ll never be that ever again.

I left my daughter now with the others back at the farmstead and me and Miranda joined the mission to go and take out this Branch of the Templars. I saw her kill their sentries after using powerful majik to trace them into letting us pass unmolested. It rankles at my sense of honor and fair play. She left them tranced out when she put two in the head and one in the heart.

She ran this like some kind of military op but one if you had majik and werewolves and military rated weapons.

Ballsy, as bold as brass she had those trucks full of her and what Weres she could fit in there. She and her mate of course going in with the troops. Me as stupid as it is I’m right there in there with her and waiting for the signal to move.

I look at her in the dark of the truck’s container. “I get three of your wolves right? They come with me and we get the kids out.”

She nods. “I told you yes. Look ‘Thena I’m not some crazy psycho bitch. I’m not out to butcher every living thing in this place. I want the innocents out just as much as you do and I’ll do my damnedest to see that your get your shot of getting them out and to safety.”

“Good, like I said Stevie, it’s about the children for me.”

“I respect that…” she stops talking and closes her eyes but smiles and she grows as she starts to touch the Were. I hear the first spell go off, cast by her grand-dad. I hear majik being used to take over every transmitter and receiver for at least five miles as CCR’s Bad Moon Rising begins to play and get louder and louder taking things over and we can hear it from the trucks radio and it’s cb system, the PA system for the old mining complex turned Templar compound. It lyrics winding her and the other Weres up as the song plays…over and over it’ll play and she’ll make life and death imitate art…
Then I can feel the truly mind messing giant light spell designed to look like the moon was full. I know Stevie…knew, she knew there’d be no moon tonight and she had planned for this.

She was counting off with a watch… “Three. Two, one…there’s the tower and wall sentries gone.”

She was matter of fact about it. She could be. With her breaking the rules of the pack she had gained a huge tactical advantage over her enemies she had twenty some snipers spanning three different wars and nearly five decades, not counting cops, ATF, a few fellow feds and state troopers and others.

I hear this feral almost merry tone in her voice. “And cue the RPG’s” as she lowers her finger there’s a BOOM! That shake’s the trailers and she rears her head back and cut loose with this long loud howl.

They tear out of the trailers like they were tinfoil jumping the Templars who were running out to engage with the invading humans and Weres coming in through the gate.

I’m running with my vest on and a lot of cammo face paint to keep myself disguised and I’m using the Beretta RS-200 shot gun from my trunk to bash and shoot my way through then tide of what looks to me like ex-cons recruited like the skinheads and the Klan does from prisons, there’s merc or ex-military looking types and others of a similar military or police bent.

Through the adrenaline and the rush and horror of combat I can feel evil here. I feel this dark well here….I haven’t felt demons and man create a well of evil like this since I was a nurse in WW2 and we got to the Nazi death camps…. I can’t help it as I fight… “No, no, no…not the babies…not the little one’s…not again.”

It’s where something in me snaps but not something breaking but snapping back into place as it were. I’m very much in Parker’s wheel house right now. Take an old goddess of justice and wisdom and all that stuff I was supposed to stand for and then mix it up with a very pissed of forty year old Christian girl from Jersey…The first green eyes demon boosted human thug I run across I take his head off using the barrel of my shotgun as a quick improvised handle and I hit him with the stock end…demon…yeah I’m a DiMaggio, I swing for the fences…

There’s a mist….

I flip the shotgun end over end catching it one handed I’m more than mortal right now and I spin at the hips and the barrel catches his friend on the other side of me in the face and I pull the trigger.

There’s a mist…

* Dorian Grey’s part…..

I had been here a long time and on this earth even longer. There are times when hope has just left me. It’d have killed me normally; we of the fae do not do well confined against our will.

The curse that has been my life here has also kept me alive for far too long. I was an eager traveler in my youth, leaved the five fold realm and the eight kingdoms for the world of mortals where there was danger and excitement where there were things no fae had ever dreamed of like being with lives the span of fireflies.

I had come and gone for ages of man’s history. I would watch and learn and seldom but in truth I had meddled and interfered with mankind on a few occasions.

It was a fateful night during the renaissance in France where I sat drinking Absinthe and reading some book of new poetry that I can scarcely remember when there was a young maiden, a slip of a human lass with great power in her, in her brush as well.

Aye the story about me and the painting is true but not as well. This young sorceress had painted me unawares by my self and so enamored of painting one of the fae she painted me in my true image and bound it to the painting with her essence.

Unfortunately by the time I found out and realized what had happened it was decades later when I couldn’t leave this Earth for my home. The artist had been killed, burned at the stake by the Templars and my portrait had done me no good. I was such bound it’s destruction would kill me. And I could not have its powers undone for the majik was made by a sorceress of an ancient and thought long dead bloodline.

I am stuck unless I find her line once more. My situation saw me shunned by the fae and I’d been left to languish here rarely to be seen or contacted by my kith and kin.

I’ve wandered the world of mankind ever since condemned to live in a strange sort of fictional shadow, a nowhere man. The legend of me was due to my big mouth whilst drinking away my sorrows at a pub I can barely remember in the south of Wales.

Yes, I know that my story isn’t this story that humanity has known but that’s the difference between truth and fiction. In truth I don’t exist, I’m an elf.

But enough…

The Templars, these humans that have caught me have tortured me, done things to me all trying to define why I don’t die. They have had me a long time here…Darkness and depression had settled over me and I was in this horrible dark place until they brought Shadira into my cell block.

Shadira…so strange, her story so full of pain and hurt and yet this tiny slip of a mortal changeling has so much faith, and soul. Even when she admits she doesn’t know what to really believe…she still believes.

Twenty plus years in this pit and they deliver a person that’s like the Sun to me. I haven’t seen the Sun in that long and she shines so brightly…

We talked about her life and about the world outside of here and she saved my soul…she won my heart.

Then I see them bring her back and throw her into her cell limp and bleeding, shot several times…bleeding out. I can feel her dying…They leave and I’m gripping the bars not caring as the wrought iron bars burning my hands.

I can’t let her die. I can’t. I love her…I…thought this was true and what might be true…but when you see that person…your one dying in front of you…you just know.

I have been weakened by my being lost from home for so long, Fae do not do well unhardened, dark or light we need a spark of passion to keep going. For us depression can kill.

Anger becomes my spark.

They were very, foolish to discount me. To hurt her and hurt her and hurt her then now they’re trying to take her from me! Anger is something wise beings do not want to see come to the fae.

I’ve never been this angry.

Seventy three hundred years and change and I’ve never been this angry.

Never.

I barely remember how much, how many times I threw myself into the wrought iron, I don’t remember how I ripped her cell open after smashing through mine.

I remember kissing her…I remember Kissing her and holding her and her staring at me and calling me Justin, her eyes lost in this fog of pain and death…I know of who she was looking for, of who she was seeking out in her heart…that good man, her true love.

“Justin…” She calls barely breathing. I touch her face, her lips…she blinks over and over as her eyes go wide…dying wide, seeing something…wide…Then she’s gone. I’m crying, I haven’t cried much in centuries…seven or eight times. I’m crying and bent over her body holding her as tight as I’ve always wanted to, needed to.

I see this light over my shoulder, her Angel, Her Malak…as she calls it, him…her…not just her but Shadira…she’s the angel…her Hijab pulled back but still worn around her neck, white linen clothes, desert fare…sandals, a scarf wrapped around her neck but far too long golden writing on it. A satchel of scrolls in one hand and her sword in the other a Christian’s cross on a chain around her sword bearing wrist and she’s staring at me…I see her give me this sad sweetest of smiles and she starts to ascend called by her one God…By The Creator. I Lower my head and do what I’ve never done in my life…

I pray…I pray and thank him/them.

I pray…take her home, keep her safe, let her be loved…it’s all I want.

*Shadira continued…

I…I was/am one.

It’s so.

Then I’m Asked, I Mean ASKED.

Would I return once more to try and walk the mortal world again, would I put away my wings again.

Again?
I wasn’t human in my beginning. I was Malak…an Angel, My Angel in my mortal life was me? I remember just a flash, just a flash showing me in battle, in battle as our brother Lucifer turned on us and broke the unity of heaven and tried to destroy all of everything.

I was nearly obliterated…forever gone.

Then I was given this gift…this gift beyond all gifts. Mortal life.

Now one of the fae, one of those not of the mortal coil is knelt holding who I was, what I was and is praying for me even as he grieves. Faith, light, hope…Love…I am shown he really loves me…and I see, I’m shown…He, they…need me.

~YES.~

*Dorian Grey continued….

The light gets brighter and forces me or I force myself to look up, to see her off. Instead she’s right in front of me and sinking into herself feet first…her bullets wounds are flaring as she sinks, returns to herself and her angelic soul reaches out and wipes the tears on my face away with this smile that’s just like when god made flowers and she sinks all the way in with a flare of golden light.

I’m crying differently, I’m crying because I just… I jump startled when she arches up taking a deep breath…. Her very first words…word… “Dorian…”

I’m holding her, like I said crying. I’ve never in my life seen a real miracle before. She’s clinging to me coughing all the blood and fluids that had pooled in her lungs out and you know what?

I kiss her anyway.

“Ain’t that fucking disgusting.”

I turn and see this man, this Adam Harcourt her chief tormentor there with a gun and hard plated vest and a blade in his hand that looks like a blade from the crusades. He sneers and aims the gun at her. “It’s you’re fucking fault, it’s you’re fault! You did all of this! I’ll make sure you rot in fucking hell for this you fucking whore!”

He shoots and I stand in the way of the round and the next and the next and all the others in the clip. I can’t die, the bullets just fall out as I get to him. “You made one huge mistake Agent Harcourt.”

“What’s that.” He asks swinging the sword in a nasty arc. I duck it and turn out of the way. Tap his wrist with a light chop and catch the blade as it leaves his hand. I finish the spin and take off his head. “You brought a sword.”

She’s staring at me and I limp over and reach down and pull her up to her feet and in my arms. I was going to be the one to do something more but she’s the one who reaches out and kisses me.

“We need to go Dorian…They’re going to kill the children.”

*Stevie continued….

I move through the place and we’re fighting literally bullet, for bullet, tooth and claws knives and axes and I’m in control of myself right up until I see the same group, the same kind of cammo BDU’s and bullet proof vests and…..

I lose it.

They killed her, they killed her!

They Took Katya away from me!

It takes a whole lot of bullets, and buckshot to slow me down…surrounded by guys with this fiberglass riot like armor but more form fitting, more like something out of Starship Troopers or Aliens or something and they’re using silver buckshot in them.

The pain is unfucking real…I’m burning inside and out…silver…Oh sweet Jesus it hurts, it hurts. It makes my wounds burn blue white and not in a good way. Oh fuck, oh fuck Katya…if this is what your felt when you died.

There’s this snarl, this huge loud scream of feral wolf like rage. And Dom leaps off the compound wall where he was fighting and lands on them. I hear the crunch twist of a neck being broken. I fight to open my eyes. Dom rips a shotgun off of one of the men and swings it in a backhanded way and crumples another’s helmet with it. Another fires at him and he ducks under it and does this up swinging claw right in that space behind the guys protective cup not just ripping his balls and cock off but those claws breaking his pelvis too. One turns to run and the one that Dom’s landed on he reaches down to grab both shoulders and breaks his back, folding him backwards in the wrong way.

Shotguns are wonderful things…big enough to be used with claws…I smile through the blood as Dom turns the gun end for end and starts to shoot over and over and over until he’s downed and with a nasty heavy hard stomp severs the guys head with blunt force trauma.

Everything starts to turn red and I can’t get the taste of something so, so, metallic in my mouth. The pain doesn’t stop, it gets worse, every second it get’s worse as the silver runs through my body…the red keeps getter deeper and deeper red until it begins to become blackness.

I wake in a rush as I feel a hand on my chest and Andrea’s sending energy into me and healing me…I can see her with the powers running through me…She’s bigger without being bigger but other than being able to tell she’s something else she’s exactly who she appears to be.

I see Katya…staring at me from across the courtyard. She’s still covered in her own blood and in a white dress and white fur trimmed cloak and she looks at me so intensely. She points to one of the buildings.

I get up with a painful cry as she yanks me up, and I point with a claw. “There!, there’s something there!”

Then even as I say it the walls blow out from the sides of the large building some kind of explosives and several Humvees start racing towards the gate. They start firing with military machine guns from the top and from the sides of them and more people dying on either side as the heavy arms start chewing up everyone in their way, friend or foe.

They break through the wall and the gates and I shift. I feel it in my gut, Tarmac, they’re heading to the tarmac…I let out a hunting howl and run after them. Many of my wolves heading with me taking off after them and Dom’s with me as we build speed and dodge machinegun fire weaving in and out of each other as we try and keep going after them.

Fast move right then left as grenades are being thrown and we’re trying to catch the three cars. I see someone in the middle humvee and he’s older, white haired and dressed in a lab coat. He has lots of guards with him.

** Pontiff Hiram Sunder…………

Completely unexpected. Things were going so well, the great work of the holy crusade was becoming a thing of beauty. The great plague of the unclean were going to be wiped clean and the great lord, the one true messiah would remake all of reality…

Only Asmodeus, was the true lord, son of heaven and the very first man. He was half human and only he would even care, love them so much that he…

The Messiah’s acts still made him weep. But as with everything good true men had ever fought, bled and died over there comes a time when the forces of evil would come a test a man’s true resolve.

It didn’t come from anything they had expected. Personally he had expected the leeches because they were losing those souls they stole from humanity. He thought the alien fae beings who weren’t at all human or ever were might be the ones to wage war on the Templars.

Honestly, he didn’t think the animals had it in them. But when the attack came as a fast and hard hitting military strike it was a real surprise. He didn’t understand when that damned rock song started playing out of everything. It didn’t bode well. He had dreams, dreams sent to him by the Messiah. All his life guiding him to this, to his military service, universities and his research.

He had to dump and meltdown the computers and he pulled the releases on the pens for the beasts and the leeches. The fighting men would have to do the rest. He moved from that to the sealed bio-cooler and removed the samples and took the latest batch and gave it to the re-deemed one. The elf stared a moment before bowing eyes green like springtime lushness from his link to the Messiah. He took the thick vial of silvery tinted watery substance, slid it into this vest filled with plastic explosives and pulled his sword bowed and headed out running.

He left as fast as he could his entourage of Justifiers sweeping in to guide him as fast and as safely as possible and get him away.

He was now watching the animals in the rear view camera’s chasing them down. Angry, so determined and focused. The white and cream bitch just kept coming, she was their leader. He tapped the screen. “Her, her kill her, I want that Alpha whore dead. Use the flamethrowers.” He yanked his finger back when here eyes seemed to glow silver.

He saw the rush of flames as the gunners blasted at the animals from the rooftop placement. He smiled, as some of the animals burned. Then the trucks started taking gunfire and the gunner’s body twitched with getting hit hard by weapons fire. He cursed then saw the silver eyed bitch run right through the flames shimmering silver and then the big black animal with the bitch picked up speed and slammed into the humvee behind them rocking it, other wolves hit it from the other side and he watched closing his eyes when it was rolled by another hit by the big black wolf.

He looked the monitor and she was gone. The bitch was gone. There was the scream of metal being rent apart and the door came flying off and with it the guard beside him snapping off the seatbelt and she was there, in only three quarters human likeness and staring at him eyes silver and full of hate. He pulled a gun and she did a hand gesture heating it until his hand burned and the gun was pulled out by some kind of unholy majik. It flew to her hand and she shot the holy knight on the other side of him and the three men up front including the driver in an unnatural act of speed.

There was a bump as they went from the gravel to the paved tarmac. He stared into those cold silver eyes. “I’d have never thought that some animal would be the one to start the crusade…the war.”
She was very calm, almost sad as a few tears fell from her eyes and were whipped away by the speed they were still going. “I didn’t start this, you did. You killed Katya, You killed half of my soul.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I killed them, I killed them and started hunting you down. I know what you’re doing. I know that you’ve been making the virus.”

“Made actually.”

She looks at the case I’m carrying. “The cure?”

“The virus is the cure. The first vaccine.”

“It won’t matter either way then.”

She kicked him hard and fast in the head and he felt the shoulder strap get ripped away from him and for a second his head swam. He saw her gone but rolling with the fall and coming up again the other animals stopping beside her. Then he felt the pain in his hand. He saw a knife through his hand pinning him to the seat. The bitch must have done it as she kicked him and he was only feeling it now. He looked and stared ahead as the humvee kept going and passed the helicopter and headed to the fuel pumps.

He looked back to the bitch and saw her molding a invisible ball with her hands and red energy began to build and swirl as she made something that looked like a dark red swirling sun on her hands and the heat waves moved her hair and clothes and he felt the impact as the front of the humvee hit the tanks and she unleashed her fireball.

He closed his eyes and his hand around his emerald pendant and prayed before the fire ball mixed with the blowing tanks and with the fuel from the flamethrowers and the explosives.
His soul screamed as it was pulled into a place of green flames and the truth of the lies of Asmodeus realized far too late…

* Stevie continued….

I watch the Humvee go up into flames literally blowing itself into the air as I sent the Templar Doctor to hell. It crashes down and I slip to my knees and watch it burn and for a second I swear the flames reach all the way up to the bloody moon I made with Grand-dad.

For a second there I see this almost shape, a hint of a body shape in the flow of the fire and smoke, almost greenish with the smoke…It moves, lasting only a moment as if to look at us.
Dom’s taking care of the Chopper crew, The others that came with us are taking care of the men in the other two Hummers. It starts to rain and I look up at the sky letting it start to wash me clean.

I look at the moon and I see Katya there in front of me and she leans forward and runs her clawed nails through my hair and kisses me. She’s crying and I’m crying and there’s this sad, sad look in her eyes as she breaks the kiss and fades away… “I’m Sorry….I love you…” Is all she say’s before leaving me again, breaking my heart…I fall back on my heels shifting to half form and raise my muzzle and Howl.

* Dorian Grey continued….

Shadira doesn’t stick close to me she drags me along by the hand our fingers interlocked as we run, as hurt as we both are we run or try to through the tunnels of this place that used to be an old mining complex.

There’s an alarm going off and I can here the cell doors opening. Maniacs, Weres so tortured they’re rabid and other prisoners are all released, including the vampires. Starved, and tortured they are on a killing spree.

We join up with two women with shotguns and three Weres at the elevator cages. I move with them to this bunker area where there’s nothing but cages. Cages and Kids…even most of the dark fae have a different code when it comes to kids.

I’ve never seen Werewolves whine like that or gag from a scent before.

Shadira closed her eyes and flicked her wrist and the angel’s, her shamshir is in her hair and she’s chopping off locks as the other women are smashing them open with the butts of their shotguns. One of the women I know, I think I know her, I’ve seen her before over the ages…oh…her.

It’s very strange to see her crossing herself, but not so strange to see her just ripping off the doors of the cages. I here her friend. “It’s like those puppy mills but with children…”

You ever see a dog with a really sick or hurt child? That’s these Weres with these children. Never have I seen them being that kind, noble and…gentle.

I feel something…this shaking down here, and this smell hits. Death, foulness, carrion past undeath. It’s what they’ve been doing with the bodies, I smell Ghouls….

Shadira looks at me and walks over sword in hand and kisses me again on her tip toes. She looks back to Athena. “Dorian and I’ll hold them off, you get those children out of here.” I can feel that other part of her stirred up, I look at her and she’s still her but there’s just something…you can “Feel” her wings.
She nods and starts to hurry up and we both leave, we have to get ahead of the cage elevators in the hallway so they can get clear and up. Anything in the halls becomes tossed into the fastest pile of junk I’ve ever made and It just happens in a blur.

One minute it’s quiet and the next they’re there. Violet bruise colored skin smelling of decomp if you could concentrate it…bald, and thin, thin like you can see their ribs thin and with red eyes dull like fading coals and sharp fangs and two inch long claws. It’s been long since I’ve faced them. I forgot they climbed like spiders.

Then the wolves are with us fighting tooth and claw as we make a wall keeping these things from the children as Athena and the other person blast whatever get’s past us with their shotguns and sending the children to the surface as many in a load as they can get in the elevators. It still takes two trips, we must have fought there for nearly an hour…

We can’t let these things get passed and we stay, we stay until no more come. I reach over to Shadira and pull her from were she’s leaning on some rubble, she’s crying, and gasping having thrown up even with next to nothing in her system…I limp with her and just stare out into the darkness.

“There’s nothing left down here Dorian, I can feel it…They killed everything else eating their way here as they went.”

“Good…good, I’m not sure if there’s any fight left in me Shadira.” I actually find myself leaning on her as much as she’s on me and we get into the elevator when it comes down. The other woman Miranda has this stricken pale look on her face. I can see tears running down her face as we ride to the surface.

** Seth……..

He ran, he ran from the lab and offices smiling. He cared very little for these human’s he care very little for anything but his revenge. Long, long ago he burned his bow, he cut his hair and walked from the courts.

Asmodeus had offered him power, he offered him immortality passed the fae-ken and soon, soon his hated faeness would be burned away.

He ran out into the battle and fought, once light they said he savored the blood letting too much. The foes were too good, too many and they had too much fire power. He smiled and used his fae voice to sing in infernal as they soldiers of the wolf came to see his end.

He let go of the deadman’s switch.

*Stevie…

It seemed like an hour or more getting back to the compound through the rain but as I get closer and closer the feeling in the pit of my stomach, in my heart get’s worse and worse and I see Athena outside the compound with the three wolves I sent with her, Miranda and an elf? And an Arab girl plus close to a hundred children. I get stopped by her from going inside.

“What…what’s wrong/ I have to get in there, to make sure everything’s done. They can’t get away, I’ve…”

She pushes me back being tired as I am and what she is I’m moved back. I can’t help but to feel the whine building in me. Athena looks at me and somehow isn’t her but Andrea again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry Stevie but you were right…”

I scream and push past her only to have people hold me back, to have Dom pull me back but through the darkness and the rain I see bodies, no one inside moving at all. Everyone who stayed and fought, furred or not lying there dead. I did this…I led them to this.

Howling out my loss isn’t enough, it’s not enough for any of us but it’s all we have. It’s still not enough for me as what we lost crashes inside with the things I did to get us here and I lose control…until things just…

Fade to Black…

(Bad Moon’s Arc is concluded…Stevie is not.)