Interlude 2

~~The Year: 1986~~

~~Mason Harding~~

Being alone is horrible.

Lot of the people he knew — knew being a strong word — thought being alone was bad, and rough. But to them it was just a word. Being alone, well and truly alone, alone to the point you feel it in your bones, that it’s a part of you, that’s hell.

Something about sitting on a city bus really lets the mind wander, and Mason used it to write in his journal. Back angled to the window a bit so he could write without people looking over his shoulder, he jotted down notes about loneliness, about his past, in an effort to contextualize, conceptualize, and understand why his past affected him so. Over-analyzing? That was him, thinking was his favorite hobby. Thinking himself right into the grave.

Mother, dead. Father, in a ward. Siblings, one sister in prison for trafficking, and one brother dead. Friends? All the ones he’d made in high school had moved, and the ones that stuck around were in prison. Some for trafficking, some for fighting, breaking and entering. One for murder. All because they were stupid. They weren’t good friends.

Did he try and make new friends? Sort of. There weren’t many friends to make, working nights at a convenience store. Just him, alone, and the crazy sort of fucks you found drifting city streets at three in the morning. Not the drunk people getting taxi rides home; they were nice enough. It was the people dropping by the corner store, perfectly sober usually, with a dead look in their eyes that Mason knew were dead inside. Drugs and/or a shitty life had a habit of doing that to people.

Didn’t matter to him. Just a twenty-year-old dude trying to survive, making minimum wage and living in a shitty bachelor apartment that could fit into a closet. People showed up, went to the back corner, exchanged things in small bags, with chains dangling from their pants and wallets, and many with tattoos that read ‘bitch’ or ‘nigga’ and such. Posturing. Made him roll his eyes, but he kept his mouth shut. Stupid as it was, he didn’t need a knife in the gut or bullet in the chest to prove it.

He sighed at the memory, and looked out the window until the bus pulled up to his apartment building. A shit shit, shit shit shit end of town. No cops, no cameras, nothing but bars on the windows and leaking roofs. No friends here, no family, no one to turn to, nothing.

He kind of liked it, but mostly hated it.

The front door of his apartment creaked like a dying siren. He put his journal down, walked past his busted couch, and stood in front of his dirty mirror. He was an attractive man, he knew that, with blond hair buzzed short, blue eyes, and a tight jaw. Average height, but he took care of himself; nothing else to do with his free time. So he spent his days exercising using a metal bar hanging from his ceiling that probably wasn’t code, and anything he could do with his bodyweight. No money for equipment. But even if he did have money, he doubted he’d go to a gym.

All alone. Didn’t know any other way. Wouldn’t know where to begin to not be alone.

He sat down and grabbed a book. Long walk to the library, but at least the library was free. And he was enjoying this book. Journey Through the Rain. The passages about the man’s hatred for his family alone made the book worth reading.

He tried to focus on the book, he really did, but memories kept moving through his mind. They were recent memories, new memories, or at least, memories being filed away in a different light compared to usual.

Prey.

He shook his head out and ran his fingers over the buzzed texture of his hair. Everything smelled different these days, everything tasted different, everything felt different. He couldn’t look at someone anymore without wondering how fast they could run, if they could hit as hard as he could, if they could stop him if he wanted to rip their throat out.

As the people had come and gone from his store, each had warranted a far longer glance than was normal. Each had pulsed on a radar in his mind, until he managed to assess how much of a threat they were, and how easily he could kill them.

Was this what got all his friends and family into such trouble? Didn’t sound like them, and they told him nothing of any feelings like this. But considering the sorry state his parents were in, dead and psychotic, it wouldn’t surprise him if there was something wrong with him, genetically. Christ he hated them; fittingly, like the man in the book.

It didn’t really matter. He had bills to pay.

The next night at the convenience store wasn’t any better.

A man came in, covered in tattoos, shaved head, a white dude that screamed biker gang. Mason watched him come in, watched him get some cigarettes, watched him get some milk, watched him help an old lady reach some crackers on a high shelf, and watched him buy his stuff. Nice man. Dangerous man. Same could be said for three black men and one black woman, wearing hoodies with low, torn jeans, and each laughing and joking. He put each as large blips on his radar, but they were polite and patient.

Then several new people came in, college students by the looks of it. A delightful mix of ethnicities and arrogance, wearing fraternity shirts and varsity jackets, or whatever. And these fuckers sent his heart racing. These idiots, his age, were dangerous like a kid with explosives was dangerous.

“Hey man,” the woman said. She walked into the candy isle, grabbed a couple packs of candy, and slipped them into the jacket. While she made a small attempt to avoid the camera filming the store’s interior, it didn’t take much to avoid the one camera. And she didn’t give a shit that he could see her.

There were a few customers around, some older people easing their way through the isles to find bread and such. The college brats pushed past them, and not gently either. Mason grit his teeth, but said nothing. If someone wanted help, all they needed to do was ask, and no one asked. Not his place to impose.

Cowardly? Maybe. Not really. People needed to be able to look after themselves, or at least have the stomach to ask for help if they needed it.

Mason sighed and waited. Some of the jocks came up to the counter and paid for what they were getting, mostly cigarettes. But the beer was a problem, and Mason shook his head.

“Need some ID.” He could tell they were going to argue, and his could feel his muscles tense, the balls of his feet press down against the hard floor, and his heart rate increase again.

“What, we don’t look nineteen?” the woman said, standing in front of him, pockets filled with stolen goods. Whatever.

“Legal age to buy alcohol is twenty-one now.” He shrugged, and motioned to the small sign by the cash. The age to get alcohol was increasing across a lot of the US; it’d finally caught up on beer.

“Yeah, fuck that. That was what, last year? Come on,” one of the men said, complete with a little posturing of his chest. Might as well have been puffing up like a blowfish to Mason.

“Sorry. Need some ID.”

The stupid college brats glanced at each other. No doubt they were trying to figure out if it was worth it, to push him on this, which meant they weren’t twenty-one. Shoplifting some candy or other silly crap wasn’t a big deal, but taking alcohol while being underage was a bigger problem.

They glanced between each other a few times more. They weren’t sober. Three of them had been drinking, he could smell it on them, their breath. At least two of them were on some sort of drug, and it certainly wasn’t green. If it was weed, the worst Mason would have to be afraid of would be their extreme munchies. No, this was different, and he raised his lips in a small sneer as one of them, eyes twitching and blinking in quick succession, stared at him.

“Just let us buy the beer, man.”

He really should have just let them buy the beer. This part of town, it wasn’t exactly uncommon to let nineteen-year-olds buy beer. Hell, it was almost expected. But, these kids were his age, a year younger actually, young adults, and today, he just wasn’t feeling like being charitable to fucking kids.

He felt like sinking his teeth into something.

“No. ID.”

“Look man, you know who I am, you know who my dad is?”

Dad. Kid might have sounded slightly more intimidating if he’d said father. Slightly.

“That’s right!” The woman got in closer, and slammed her palms on the table. “Matt Terner is his dad! You know who that fuck is? Man owns half this city.”

Oh god, this was turning into a college drama. Who wrote this script?

They didn’t like his silence.

“Fuck you. We’re outta here.” College brat with the drinks in hand tried to walk away, but Mason moved his hand to rest it on the beer, and pinned it down to the counter.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the beer. Want a drink? Go cry to your daddy.”

He really, really wanted to sink his teeth into something. Or at least, piss off some twerps who deserved to be reminded they really were twerps. Fuckwads.

The bunch of them looked at him like he’d grown an extra head. They glanced at each other, at the woman, who glanced at them, and around at the others, and it went around like that for twenty seconds as, slowly but surely, their shock washed away. The girl gave the biggest guy a nod, and the guy came in closer to the counter.

A college brat may have been a fucking moron, incapable of using the mystical power of thinking past five minutes into the future, but a college brat could still throw a punch. Much as Mason liked to think he was strong and fast — and he was — he wasn’t in a position to dodge that punch as he was trying to hold onto the beer. Plus he really hadn’t expected it, despite the situation. Now he was the dumbass.

Dumbass with a split lip and the world spinning around him as he spun around and collided with the floor.

“Yeah Joe, get him! A few more!” The woman, evidently, did not think a single punch was enough punishment.

A man jumped over the counter, and Mason managed to get his bearings long enough to see the sneaker coming his way. He tried to turn around to block it, but the man was already on him, and it crashed halfway across his forearm and his chest. And then again, into his shoulder, and then again, into his chest. And then, into the stomach.

All concept of breathing left his body, as if the dick’s shoe was possessed by a spirit of asphyxiation. Diaphragm ceased functioning as a shoe toe replaced it, forced the air out of him, and left him choking on his lungs. Pain put everything in his body on pause, and forced his eyes to stare along the floor as the man kicked his arm and chest another time, and another, and another.

A minute went by. An eternity. Someone else jumped behind the counter to kick him a couple times more in the back, adding to what was turning into an array of bruises and dents in his body, each a bomb of agony that forced his muscles to convulse. If they’d been wearing proper shoes instead of sneakers, they’d have broken his bones.

“Come on, let’s go!” the woman said. “Mr. Terner got us covered, right?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. I’ll make up some bullshit and this all disappears. Dad’s got the cops under his thumb. They won’t piss him off for a fucking clerk.”

They laughed, chuckled, laughed some more, and left.

It’d been a long time since he was beaten like this. Pain like this didn’t go away quickly, kept the muscles from moving, kept the mind in shock until at least it stopped flooding the brain with panic signals. Having been beaten like this before didn’t help him get over it any faster, but at least he didn’t piss himself this time.

Other people had been in the store. They were gone now. The camera filming the floor didn’t get audio, and it was blurry at best. And Matt Terner was a name he knew, typical corrupt politician and business man.

Really, who wrote this fucking script?

He forced himself onto his hands and knees, and then onto his feet, with hands braced against the counter and the coffee machine behind him. Last time this happened, it took a month for the bruises to heal, and a few months after that for the bones to stop aching. His cheek was damaged and split as well, so there was no hiding all the bruises.

He leaned his weight against the counter, and looked out across the isles. Empty. He looked outside through the glass doors, and winced as he saw some pedestrians, people passing by. Some of them must have seen what just happened. They winced, like he did, and walked on. Of course they did.

He looked down at the counter, and wiped his hand across his face. Blood from the cheek bone, blood from his lip, now all over his wrist and palm, now all over his shirt. Blood inside his pants, and trickling down his ankles, getting into his shoes. Blood in his mouth, coating his teeth and tongue, the taste of life.

Funny how much life tasted like metal.

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He looked across the counter where it now showed a couple bloody hand prints. Blood hand prints, what a poetic way of showing the futility and fruitlessness of his job, his life, his predicament.

A really shit script.

His whole life was a really, really shit script. And every single god damn mother fucking cell in his body was screaming at him to go do something about those people, those punks, those pieces of trash. Those threats.

He walked out the door. The smell. He knew their smell.

The brats were driving out to Makeout Hill, far outside the city. Mason had never been there, but he knew of it, a place where teenagers and young adults went to make out, kiss, maybe secretly fuck under the light of the moon.

It never occurred to Mason to stop himself, never crossed his mind to put an end to this insanity, and just go back to the store he was supposed to be watching. He hadn’t called in the theft, or his assault. He locked up the store but hadn’t closed it down. Cash still in the cash register. Just didn’t fucking care anymore. He was on the hunt.

Running a few miles was hard, or it should have been. Felt good tonight. Felt right. He put a few miles under his feet in record time, and by the end of it, didn’t have his usual exhaustion. Breathing deep, but fine. Felt good to be outside and putting asphalt behind him, until eventually he was outside the city and out into the woods.

The cliff overlooked a lake, and at the top of the cliff where it crested outward over the lake, there was grass, soft, and inviting. A few of the punk idiots were lying on the grass on blankets, kissing, fondling, and a few more were in parked cars, living out their greatest cliche fantasies. These idiots had seen Grease too many times.

Idiots. Prey. The words started to blend in his mind, or at least, the word prey was slowly replacing it for the tag he used to describe these people in front of him. He watched on from the shadows where the hill and the forest met, and licked his bloody lips and teeth. Someone was going to die tonight.

He squeezed the bark next to him, until his fingernails tore bits of it away from the trunk. Get a hold of yourself, calm down, breathe, let it go; none of those words of wisdom came to him, even though he knew they should, that normally they would. Not tonight. As he watched the idiot sacks of meat, he sank low to the bushes and let the adrenaline fill him until his fingertips and toes started to tingle.

“Bobby, there are people around!” a woman said, the woman who’d more or less instigated his beating.

“Come on babe, no one cares.” Her friend, the macho jerk sort, was lying on his side facing the woman, the two of them on a blanket, beer beside them. Far as Mason could see, Bobby had a hand on her side, and was slipping his hand up underneath her shirt.

“Bobby, you’re so bad.” All pretense of trying to dissuade the man’s sexual aggression tossed out the window immediately, she leaned in and resumed kissing her friend, while several men and women hooted or hollered from their cars, cheering on the increasingly erotic scene.

Maybe this would be like one of those scenes in those ridiculous slasher horror films, where every person running from the killer was suddenly struck with a terminal case of insanely-fucking-inept-itis. Perhaps they’d try to run, and trip over every possible twig or slippery bit of grass. He licked his lips as he remembered the film Friday the 13th. Maybe it’d go like that?

What would go like that? The killing spree. What killing spree? The one he was about to unleash. Why? Why would you do that? Because every muscle, every fiber, every instinct he had was telling him to get rid of these fucks, that they deserved to die for attacking him, that his territory would be better off with them gone.

The world would be better off with them gone.

He started walking forward, out into the open. Some of them noticed him, some of them didn’t; he was still far away and buried in the darkness of night. It didn’t matter, they weren’t getting away.

He knew what to do, somehow, just knew to let it out. Something in him snapped, and a part of him thought that it should have been a more explosive, more violent, more loud experience, this string snapping in his mind. But it didn’t. No, it was more like a thin silk rope that someone cut with a pair of scissors, and the rope fell away, no longer blocking this thing that had been building inside him for weeks. Longer than weeks, months, even years, a shit life on top of a shit day on a shitty fucking job with shitty fucking people and these shit fucking kids.

His clothes were starting to fade away. A weird brown fur was replacing it. He seemed taller. He seemed faster. He seemed stronger. The distance between him and the parked cars was shrinking far faster than it should have. He wasn’t walking on the ground anymore, he was tearing into it with the claws of his feet. Each step sent him ten feet, easy, despite the monstrous weight he felt sink into each bounding leap.

There was screaming. People running. One of the metal boxes two of them sat in started making noise, mechanical whirs that sounded more like roars. But Mason jumped through the air, landed upon the metal box’s front half, and with one swipe, ripped out its guts. Black liquid squirted outward, and the noisy lifeless thing went quiet.

“What the fuck is that!?”

“No, no! Oh god oh god oh god, run! Run!”

Words. The meat was saying words. Meat wasn’t supposed to speak, meat was supposed to die.

He marched over the length of the metal box, and swung his two gargantuan arms forward, with them both hanging at his side. They caught the meat at an upward angle against their chest and jaws, and his claws ripped through their skin-covering fabrics, chests, breasts, throat, and up through their screaming mouths. Blood was everywhere, and he roared satisfaction. Two less pests defiling his territory.

The other two in another metal box got out, and ran. He jumped after them. First the woman, he sank his claws in through more of the colorful, alien material that covered her skin, and deep into her body. His claws were long, and his hands titanic. She screamed, gargled blood as he punctured her lungs, and died seconds later as her insides were shredded. He tossed her meat aside, and leapt thirty feet to land upon the female’s mate. Mason’s new weight was enough to crush many of this trespasser’s bones, and as the male cried out in agony, Mason reached down, and ripped his head off; no more difficult than plucking a dandelion.

The two who had been on the grass on a blanket were much further. They’d left their pack to die. Typical of pests. He roared his fury to the moon, to Luna, and bounded after the two.

It took seven breaths to reach them. He could hear their pants, their cries, the strange, hard things on their feet striking the grass. He could hear their heartbeats, loud as they were, almost as fast a hummingbird’s.

First the male. He pounced this one, landed upon his back and legs with all of his weight, with his four sets of claws, and broke the man in many places. Bones snapping, cartilage tearing, his prey went down and screamed. Pitiful sounds. Mason stepped on the prey’s head, and crushed his skull and brain like stepping on a cockroach. Pop.

The girl he would deal with last, the one who had instigated the attack on him. She cried out, begged for mercy, but they were just words, words he barely understood anymore. Something about ‘help’ and ‘please don’t’ or some such. Just words. Nothing, meaningless compared to weight, muscle, meat, blood, tooth and claw. The hunt, and the kill.

He ran her down, and bit down onto her skull. It shattered. Hair, brain matter, blood, it filled his mouth. He spit it out, tore off the strange fabric from some of her limbs, and sank his teeth into—

He woke up with a snap, a crack of lightning, a slap of white against his eyes, and dampness on his body.

Grass. He was outside. The sun was up. What the fuck.

He sat up, and regretted it. Pain danced up on his back and arms, a burning sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time, since the last time he’d been to a gym. He’d had a good workout yesterday then. The fuck did he do—

Blood. He could smell blood. How did he know what blood smelled like? He fucking knew, knew it down to his bones, knew it like it was a part of himself to know, knew it like he knew the smell of eggs and rice he’d been eating for the past ten years straight. Blood and the other things, the sinew, the bone, organs, those smells were in the air and in his mouth.

He looked down, and froze. Blood, everywhere, on him, soaking him. Blood and bits of flesh. Oh shit, oh shit oh shit. He grit his teeth down as the memories started to rise from their graves, each pulling him down into a hazy mess of blood-soaked carnage and mayhem. Something was stuck in his teeth, and when he reached into his mouth to pull it out, he begged it wasn’t something he didn’t want to see.

It was a piece of clothing.

He tossed it away, turned, and vomited into the grass. Oh god, oh fucking god. More of the memories came back, blurry things, mixed together like a bunch of shit thrown into a blender. There’d been people, right? People, and ... he’d eaten them, or at least bitten into them, tore them apart, ripped them open and shredded them.

His vomit didn’t show any of the horrible things he was remembering, but as the memories came back, he was sure he could taste them. And hear the screams of the humans as he bit through them. Humans? Right, because, he wasn’t human, not then at least, not when he was killing these people.

He looked at his hands. There had been claws. Fur. He could remember having a snout. He could remember being tall.

And he could feel it now, inside him, something that was hiding underneath the skin before, but now it was out there, in his eyes, on his fingers, between his lips and on his tongue. He could feel the wolf there, almost hear it barking and howling. A wolf, a fucking wolf, no denying it, no escaping it, he just knew it.

He got up, and looked around some more. The mess wasn’t as bad as the memories told him it should be. Where were the bodies? He must have moved on from the site where he’d killed them.

He almost vomited again. Killed. He’d killed them. Shit, they were just kids. Kids who’d beaten him to shit and—his wounds were healed. No pain, other than sore muscles, and no bruises either. The beating they’d given him was gone, and in return, they were dead.

He stumbled around, and pressed his hand against a nearby tree. Right, he was maybe a mile out from Makeout Hill, and had run that mile as his ... other ... form ... in minutes. He hadn’t had clothes then, just fur, but now he had clothes again. How the hell did that work?

Shit. Shit shit shit shit what was he supposed to do now? Go back? People saw what happened to him, saw him walk out of the store, after those fucking kids beat him to shit, and now they’d be reported as missing. By tomorrow, they’d be on the news, dead, killed by some wild animal. Police would come to him, interview him, find evidence, lock him up.

Mason shook his head. No, don’t go back to the city, you don’t need to. No friends, no family, no nothing. Just, stay out here, in the woods, and do what wolves do.

What the fuck did wolves do? They hunted. But he wasn’t a wolf. Yes, he was, he fucking was. With a little digging, he found a piece of that wolf in himself.

The fuck was he doing? The fuck was he going to do? Why the fuck was any of this happening? Did he really want to do this? Did he really know how this was going to go, how it’d work, anything? Just up, and go? Leave?

The animal half of him, brand new but a part of him, brand new but as familiar to him as breathing, knew what to do. How? No fucking clue, no fucking clue at all. And either he could stand here, with the blood of a bunch of college kids he’d murdered on his hands and clothes, or he could leave this shit life.

Changing was easy enough. A bit painful, and he growled and groaned as the feel of muscles pullings and bones grinding filled him. His clothes vanished into his body, fading away like shadow, and he fell to his hands, almost signifying the lost of his human self. Hands became paws. Mouth became snout. Naked skin became fur.

Painful, but easy. Too easy. Should it have been harder? Did others of his kind do it like this? And there had to be others. He was a werewolf, a fucking werewolf, and he’d never been bitten by an animal his whole life. Whatever changed him could have changed others, must have.

Holy shit. Did he just accept abandoning his old, shitty life, accept that he’d killed a bunch of shitty college kids, accept that he was a werewolf, that other werewolves must exist, and did he decide to go on a mission to find some?

He looked at himself. A wolf. A normal, natural, normal wolf. Not the titan he was last night, but a normal wolf who could sneak and hide and leave, eat deer, and leave everything behind.

So he did. Being alone is horrible, and he had no intentions of staying a lone wolf. Maybe he could find a pack, other werewolves, if they existed.

God, how come this came so easily to him?

~~The Year: 1991~~

Being alone is horrible.

He knew that, knew all along. What he didn’t know was how different it’d be to actually have a family, and friends, to have people who watch your back, people who care about you and will put their life on the line for yours. Irritating to be around people so much, sure, but now he could sleep at night and not have to look over his shoulder. Sleep, actual real sleep.

Sleep under the stars.

Their pack was small, for now. Avery was certain they’d find more, and that their totem would grow along with the pack. Not like Mason was in any position to complain. Woman had saved him from wandering the woods as a literal lone wolf. Now he had a purpose, something he could sink his teeth into and pursue, something that clicked and made sense.

He was a werewolf, and he had a duty to hunt. Except, not hunt mindlessly, but hunt with a purpose, like keeping a population in check. His new job was to guard the barrier between the physical and spirit realms, and manage the spirits and humans in both, the way a wolf knew best. Hunting.

He looked to his right. Avery, leader of the pack, a tiny woman who was a bit older than him. Blue eyes with a hint of silver, light tan skin, and a black ponytail that went down all the way to her hip. Lot of scars. The fuck kind of wounds she’d suffered to get those kinds of scars, especially as an Uratha, he had no idea, but she had them, a lot of them.

The pack sat by the fire, and waited. To his left were Erica and Stephanie. Erica was an adult, like him, but Stephanie had just turned eighteen, with a chip on her shoulder the size of a mountain. The change had come upon her a year ago, damn young, and it’d ruined her life. So now, she was a bitch. He could understand that, a little, but it didn’t justify how much she liked to take out that aggression on him and the rest of the pack. She’d been a part of their group for a month, and the only person she treated with decency was Erica, and Avery by necessity.

Carter sat on the other side of the fire, closer to Avery. He was older than her, but the man followed her lead. Such was the way of Irraka, hunting from the sidelines, quiet, unseen, necessary. Brianna sat on the other side of her, a strong woman, tall, the Rahu and muscle of their small pack. Erica and those two had been with Avery when they found Mason, and before him, each of them had been a recruit to Avery’s new pack. Avery rarely spoke of her old pack, other than to say it was gone, destroyed, dead, and she was building it anew.

They were journeying south. Their pack was of the Meninna, Hunters in Darkness, and they did not like to travel. They wanted a home, a place where they could guard the territory, manage it, keep it balanced. Avery knew there were problems, major problems in the Hisil in Tijuana, and problems on this side of the Gauntlet as well, vampires wreaking havoc there. Seemed as good of an idea as any. And maybe they could find more for their pack there.