The building was a labyrinth of abandoned machinery and hangers on a tubular track that snaked its way through the main room. The flotsam and jetsam had been shoved against the walls to clear the center of the room where ten or so people and a couple lycans in their wolf form milled around a bank of flood lights.
Alex crouched behind a pile of equipment and Jamie settled in beside him. "Do you think the moon is up yet?"
Laughter, punctuated with curses, drifted over to their hiding spot from the group of people. Alex shook his head. "No. They're werebeasts. They have no choice but to change when the moon rises."
The crowd shifted and Alex could see Mike in the center of the group. A chain cut into his neck, tethering him to a heavy piece of rusted metal. Duct tape had been wound around his muzzle and legs. Next to him sat a wire kennel with the two wolf pups locked inside. The pups cowered at the back, their heads low and tails tucked.
"What now?" Jamie asked.
Alex shrugged, hoping Jamie could see the gesture in the dim light. They needed to do something before the moon rose. The lycans were going to be enough trouble on their own without a pack of unruly werewolves to deal with as well. Trouble was, he wasn't sure exactly what to do. He wanted to sneak out a side door, jump in the truck, and hightail it out of there, but he couldn't leave Mike behind. One of the lycans snapped at Mike and Alex could see his partner's eyes widen with fear as Mike struggled against the tape that bound him. Alex automatically reached for his hip where his gun should have been. This was going to be harder than he thought. "I'm open to suggestions," Alex said.
The sound of breaking glass was unmistakable in the silence. Alex froze in place as the pack turned as one towards the front of the building. He held his breath, not even daring such a small movement least one of the group spot them hidden among the debris. A burly man separated himself out from the rest of the group, barking orders to the others, and then the pack was in motion.
Shouts and gunshots rang out from the front of the building, but Alex ignored them, rushing to Mike's side and slicing through the duct tape with Jamie's knife. His fingers fumbled with the chain as he tried to loosen it from around Mike's neck. Mike twisted and turned, alternately helping and hindering the process.
"That's quite enough," a familiar husky voice said. Alex turned to see the owner of the voice from the dark for the first time. He was short and stocky, a thin shirt stretched to its limits over the man's rippling muscles. Piercing yellow eyes seemed to glow at them in the dim light of the room. The man held a gun in his hand, the barrel of the weapon pointed directly at the three of them. "Sit," the man said. His voice had lost the nostalgic poetic quality of before and now was hard and cold, all business.
A low growl rumbled in Mike's throat, but he sat down at the man's command.
"All of you," the man said.
Alex glared at him but sat down, Jamie doing the same. There was no point in arguing. He had little doubt that the man was the pack's Alpha and used to being obeyed, even without a gun in his hand.
"Good." The man worked his way over to the kennel holding the pups. "Now, stay. You all would have been a lovely bonus, but I didn’t come for you. Consider yourselves lucky...that is, if you manage to escape the other wolves." The Alpha picked up the kennel as if it weighed no more than a feather and slowly backed out of the room.
When he was gone, Alex went back to digging through Mike's fur and found the quick link that held the chain together around his partner's neck. Free, Mike shook and then bounded off the way the man had gone. Jamie started after him.
"Wait," Alex said, grabbing her arm.
"But Mike...," she started.
"...won't go far," Alex finished for her. "Truck first."
Alex paused at a door along the side wall of the room, pressing his ear up against the metal. Nothing. If they hurried, they should be able to avoid most of the confrontation. A lavender twilight met them on the other side, thick fluffy flakes like miniature clouds falling from the sky and obscuring their view. Ducking his head to keep the snow out of his eyes, Alex pressed his back up against the building and inched his way towards the street.
Several unmarked black cars were parked along the curb on either side of his truck. One of the occult enforcement teams. He looked back at Jamie suspiciously.
"Don't look at me, I didn't call them," she said.
Alex weaved his way between the cars to the driver's side door of his truck. He grabbed a lock box out from under the front seat and opened it to reveal a spare gun safely nestled in foam.
"Handy. Do you always plan on needing two guns? I thought animal control was supposed to use tranqs."
"Tranquilizer darts aren't instantaneous. A werewolf or lycan would rip your throat out in the time it took the drugs to drop them. Besides...." Alex grabbed the extra clip from the box and removed one of the bullets, showing it Jamie. The metal casing caught the fading light, glowing dully.
"Silver?"
Alex nodded, loading the bullet back into the magazine and shoving the entire thing into his back pocket. "Only way to guarantee a single bullet will drop a Shifter."
The shouts and random gunshots continued in the building as they retraced their steps through the snow. Alex wondered which side was currently winning, but pushed the thought from his mind as he saw Mike standing against the wall. The wolf stared out into a deserted lot. Alex looked down and saw a man's footprints pressed into the snow leading away from the building.
"Nice job, Mike," Alex said, veering off his original course to follow the footprints.
The noise of the ongoing battle in the building quickly fell away as they worked their way through the tall, dead grass and snow covered piles of concrete and rebar that formed a maze through the lot. Frozen grass crunched underfoot. A scream shattered the silence and Alex stopped, his blood crystalizing in his veins. The moon had risen.
Creeping forward, Alex peered around a pile of debris. The kennel sat no more than twenty feet in front of him. It rocked back and forth as the pups inside flung themselves against the bars in an attempt to escape. The man was on his knees in the snow, doubled over and clutching his stomach as if something was trying to claw its way out of his belly. Alex shivered as the man's form rippled in front of him.
Sharp pops and cracks reverberated between the piles of rubble and the man screamed again as his form bubbled, doubling its already massive bulk, his clothes ripping as they reached their capacity. His arms and legs lengthened, thick bundles of muscles and taught tendons becoming more defined as the skin stretched. The man's fingers gripped at the snow, twisting as long claws grew from their tips. This time the man howled, raising his elongated muzzle towards the sky.
Alex couldn't tear his eyes away from the monstrosity before him. No longer human, yet not fully wolf, the werewolf was a distortion of all that was natural. The werewolf turned, it's yellow glowing eyes focused on his hiding place, the pups apparently long forgotten. The creature sniffed the air, its nostrils flaring with each intake of breath, and let out an earsplitting howl. Alex knew he should run, but he couldn't take his eyes off the lumbering form of the monster as it loped towards them in a half crouch.
A streak of grey ducked past him, meeting the werewolf half way.
"Mike, no," Alex yelled, broken from his trance. He raised the gun but it was too late, there wasn't a clear shot without the risk of hitting his partner.
"What do we do?" Jamie asked, staring at the two wolves as they tumbled in a blur of grey and black, snarling and snapping.
"We don't get in the middle of a dog fight. Mike can hold his own." Alex tried to believe the words as he said them. "Get the pups."
One of the combatants yelped and Alex forced himself to turn away from the fight. Surely it hasn't been Mike. Mike knew what he was doing. He wouldn't have taken on the werewolf if he didn't have the upper hand. Except he knew that wasn't true. Mike had rushed the werewolf because he'd hesitated and if Mike hadn't taken action, he'd be on the ground with his entrails strewn about the snow.
Alex jiggled the latch on the kennel, opening the door. The pups continued to cower at the back of the kennel, their small bodies pressed as far into the corner as possible. "Come on, little ones," he said, trying to sound soothing. "We're here to help you." The pups didn't move. Alex reached in grab them and met snarls and bared teeth. Okay, so that wasn't going to work.
"Hey," Jamie said, crouching down next to him. "It's okay." The pup closest to the front of the cage perked its ears up at her voice.
Alex risked a glance over his shoulder. Mike and the werewolf were circling each other, growling. There was blood on the snow around them but he couldn't tell whose it was. Alex’s heart skipped a beat. What happened if Mike got bit again, this time by a werewolf instead of a lycan? Could the curse be broken free from its binding?
"That's a good pup," Jamie cooed.
Alex turned his attention back to the kennel. One of the pups had ventured out and was cuddled up against Jamie's leg. She was elbow deep in the kennel and nearly had the second one extracted as well.
"Good job," he said as she pulled out the wiggling pup. "Take them back to the truck and be careful."
Jamie nodded, scooping the fluff balls up in her arms and heading off in the direction of the truck.
Alex gripped the gun in his hand. He wasn't going to let Mike get killed by a werewolf. Turning around, he was surprised to see Mike standing behind him, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth in a lopsided doggy grin as he panted. Alex eyed the red drops in the snow where blood dripped from the hair along the ruff of Mike's neck.
"Yours or his?" Alex asked, uncertain that he really wanted to know the answer.
Mike jumped up and licked him on the cheek.
Alex laughed, pushing Mike down and wiping the mix of blood and saliva off his face. "Yuck."
He approached the werewolf cautiously. Snow was already starting to collect in the monster's sparse wiry coat. Blood bubbled up from puncture wounds in the werewolf's throat and its chest rose and fell with shallow, irregular breaths. Mike paced a wide circle around the creature, limping slightly on his left foreleg.
"Red blood on white snow," Alex said, raising his gun and firing once.