I didn’t get a good look at the corpse as they brought him in but what I saw made it look like he had been through hell and back before they were done with him. Multiple cuts and burns scored his entire body from head to toe. He also was covered in chains, most likely silver… all in all it was a bad business.

“Who found him?” Stanton directed the chaos well but he obviously had never seen this violent a response coming. “Where was he?”

“I found him, sir.” Another of the guards that had helped bring the body in stepped forward. “They chained him to the front gate during the shift change. He couldn’t have been there long.”

“Hunter you need to see this,” Holly spoke in my ear over the confusion. “They uploaded the entire thing onto the Internet for the world to see. It’s…how could they do this to another living being? How can someone hate this much?”

“Thorn, we need to get to a computer.”

“Right, terrific, my home is under attack and you want to check TicTok?” I could see it in his eyes, people he was in charge of had gotten hurt and he wanted to pay them back in kind. The animal so close to the surface was on the verge of taking over. If what Holly was saying was true it was likely only to make things worse, but at least his chance of losing it would be in a more private setting.

“Look, you may not like me, you’re majesty, but for right now trust me. Maybe we can find out who did this to the boy.” Stanton stared at me for a long moment, I thought he was going to lose it right there and try to take his frustrations out on me but finally, eyes cleared. Just like that, his anger was replaced with a cold, calculating demeanor. I remembered what Holly had his service in the war and could see the telltale signs that sustained combat left on a person. He nodded curtly and led me back to his office. Mara and Fenris followed close on our heels. The office had one of those fancy screens as long as I was tall in a recessed alcove, I would have to get one like it after this was all over. I punched in the URL Holly read off to me and retreated to the far end of the room.

The site loaded up a pic of the devastation left on the street after the warehouse incident as a wallpaper with a variety of banners proclaiming vengeance and slurs against the wolves. I took note of one or two I hadn’t even heard before a video file loaded in the center of the screen. It showed a clearing in the woods but no other real identifying marks. A young boy, maybe fifteen at most, walked into the frame. He looked right and left as he walked as if he was looking for someone.

“Ronny? I got your note but everything has going crazy back at the house.”

The boy was dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed he looked more like he would fit in better in a surfer magazine than the middle of a forest.

“Veronica… she was his girlfriend,” Mara explained at my glance. “He was always sneaking out at night to meet her.” Her face had a pale shade to it, this was more than some random kid, this was one of her strays.

Several men stepped from the forest in front of Quint. He looked from face to face with confusion taking over his features. He was outnumbered too badly for his were-side to help him all that much but when you’re that age you feel immortal. No one should ever have that feeling proven wrong as forcibly as he had.

“Ronny, who are these guys? I thought we were meet-”

They were on him before he could finish, wrestling him to the ground. He fought, snarling and spitting at them but they had already slapped chains around him. He kept resisting with all he had, parts of him trying to shift but coming in contact with the silver and reverting. Smoke rose off Quint’s body as he thrashed on the ground as six full-grown men worked together to keep him down. More people came out of the woods, men and women alike, holding metal objects in their hands.

A middle-aged woman stepped forward showing what she carried to be a gleaming silver letter opener. Her hands shook as she leaned over Quint. The boy was still fighting, had to give him credit for that. He swore in pain as the woman jabbed the blade into his shoulder, smoke rising from the wound as his flesh around the wound burned.

The other people gathered seemed to muster their courage from her actions and one by one stepped up, each getting their turn. They must have gone through all their belongings to find what silver they could and each was plunged into the boy’s writhing body. Brooches, forks, unidentifiable spare parts, even a picture frame laid on his stomach. After a long he finally stopped struggling, I seriously hoped the pain had allowed him to black out for his own sake. A girl stepped in front of the camera and held up a sign that simply said ‘Take back our world’.

“It is obvious by this that the humans want a war, I say we give it to them.” Fenris snarled, his hands clenching into fists.

“NO!” Thorn shouted, drawing our attention to him. He was red with fury as he stared at the screen, claw marks scored the top of his desk in front of him.

“The last time we openly went against humans ended with the trials in Estonia, I won’t bring that sort of devastation on our people again.”

“I will make the arrangements for Quint to be buried,” Fenris became solemn at the thought of the dead boy. “He was to be a warrior among us and the least we can do is honor him properly. Though to leave this act unanswered brought such raw shame to his spirit I could hardly stand to meet his eyes. I will leave you to decide upon the best course of action.” The old Indian left the room, his eyes haunted as he began making preparations to send another gone too soon on his journey.

“First things first, we need to get that video taken down.” Thorne was still breathing hard but I could tell planning a course of action was at least helping him regain some of his composure. “The longer it’s up the more this ‘Take back our world’ thing will spread and if they gain momentum who knows what they will be emboldened to do. Who do we have that can take care of that?”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Holly?” I spoke aloud, drawing the attention of everyone in the room to me.

“Working on it as we speak, boss man, but there have already been millions of views. Can’t exactly put that genie back in the bottle.”

“Good.” I nodded unconsciously, forgetting again she wasn’t really in the room. “It’s taken care of.’

“Good?” Exploded Mara. “There’s nothing about this that’s good. I’m going to find Veronica and make sure what happened to Quint is a breeze on a spring day by comparison, or have you decided you’re going to save some more innocent souls out there from the monsters in here? Picked the wrong side needing killing if you ask me.” She was gone before I could respond.

“Hunter you have to stop her.” Holly interrupted again. “ARC has already moved units into position around the compound. They are waiting for the weres to try something so they have an excuse to go in with the heavy weapons.”

“Shit! How the hell did they get here so fast?” I leaped out of the chair and chased after Mara, if she went anywhere now she would just get herself killed. Quint’s snuff film was like putting kerosene on a brush fire, everyone on both sides was tensing up waiting to snap.

“Orders came from high up… last night, that’s before the time code on the video! This is some kind of set-up!” That was all the confirmation I needed… someone in ARC was playing puppeteer to rile people up into a frenzy, but why?

“Mara!” I called after her as she was pulling her jacket on at the front door. “Whoever is doing this wants this to happen. They’re trying to make you the enemies of the public… and doing it right in front of everyone on the news.”

“So what? You think we’re monsters, they think we’re monsters… I’m going to show them just how close their nightmares were to the truth!” Her head sunk and her shoulders slumped. I couldn’t see her face but I could imagine the look she wore at that moment. “I knew Quint for almost ten years. His parents were killed in the same attack that changed him. For Gaia’s sake, he was the most well-adjusted kid you could hope for with that kind of background. If anyone deserves vengeance it’s him.”

“You go out there and all you’ll do is become a smear on the pavement in time for the 9 o’clock news.”

“But I’ll take some of those sons of bitches with me at least.”

“Enough Detective. We have too much to do for you to act out your own little suicide fantasies.” Stanton had come out of the office while we were talking, he obviously had returned to the man I met the other day, burying his own call for blood deep down inside him, doling it out sparingly until the time was right. “We have to act quickly before others let their tempers do their thinking for them.”

“Fine!” Mara threw her hands up in the air. “I’ll be upstairs when you figure out how to get your heads out of your asses and do something… sir.” She left up the stairs in a huff and I couldn’t help but remember my daughter the last time we had a fight. Mind you after that I found she had snuck out and did what she had wanted anyway. I looked at Thorn but he was already giving out orders. He was smart, if they wanted a fight in the media I was sure he could give just as good as he could get, with even a dozen wolves they could bring the death toll to triple digits without trying and I had seen ten times that many in the last days.

Thankfully he didn’t seem interested in steering things in that direction. So it fell to me to try to convince Mara not to do something stupid. I shook my head, laughing to myself, when I was needed to be the voice of reason these certainly were strange days.

~ * ~

I knocked on Mara’s door sometime later. Getting directions three times and managing to get lost twice hadn’t helped my pace. Whoever drew the floor plan for the mansion had to have been a mad genius, or maybe just mad. I knocked on the door I truly hoped was the right one and got no answer at all. At the risk of breaking one of Thorn’s ‘rules,’ I opened the door and saw Mara pulling guns out of what looked like a miniature arsenal in her closet.

“If you’re looking for something nice to go with that jacket you should try the TT-33, or I hear the CZ 75b does wonders for accuracy.” She spun on me and I found myself staring down the barrel of her gun. “Of you could just use something that you’re more comfortable with.”

“I’m really not in the mood for another talk, Hunter so if it’s all the same to you I’ve got places to be.”

“I thought you were a cop, not some vigilante. Don’t you folks believe in justice over vengeance and all that fun stuff?” The pistol pointed at my nose didn’t waver.

“You think cops aren’t interested in payback? Why do you think there are so many accidents or shooting incidents taking cop killers into custody?” She finally lowered the gun and I had to let out a small sigh of relief. “We take care of our own, the same goes for here.”

“Fine, I can get behind the thought that some bastards simply deserve to die but the guys out there are just following orders. Even if you manage to take them out then the media will go crazy with the memorial services, showing the families without their fathers coming home.” I stepped fully into the room, it was very Spartan with only the bed as any kind of furniture. I got the feeling Mara didn’t exactly spend a lot of time here. “We need to find who is giving those orders and then we can have a nice chat with them.”

“Now you sound like Stanton, I hate it when he makes sense too.”

“What is the deal with you two anyway? I get the feeling that you would fight me on something so simple as where we should have lunch but two words from him and it’s all ‘yes, sir.’”

“Pack dynamic, someone higher up in the pack can influence any under them to a certain extent. Stanton being Alpha pretty much puts him up above all of us. Not that there is much I can say about it in any case, women don’t get a position of their own. We can only trade on the rank of our mate, and since I’m alone, not even a family name…well, you get the point.”

“What, Stanton missed the phone call about Women’s Lib?” I crossed the room to the window and looked out over the grounds. People were already swarming this way and that doing whatever Thorn had up his sleeve. “I could make him watch Lifetime movies until he gets the point.”

“It’s not him, it’s just the way it’s always been.” She shrugged holstering the last few weapons she had set out. “I’m lucky, he’s always had a kind of blind spot for me so I get a longer leash but others…”

“That explains why Claudia was so silent during his presentation.”

“Yeah, she’s a piece of work. Silent as a statue in public not wanting to compromise Stanton’s authority.” She chuckled. “Shame of it is, she’s strong enough to be an Alpha in her own right, the only thing holding her back is the fact she’s a woman. Now, where do we start looking for this shadowy man in charge?”

“I’ve been thinking about that since I woke up. The paperwork we found was obviously a false trail. I doubt many of the companies they listed were even real but some of the memos were on official-looking stationary.

“Ronald Everts, probably some kind of lawyer they employ, maybe even the one keeping things looking semi-legal. It’s a long shot but maybe he can at least point us in the right direction of the major players” Mara looked calmer, having a course of action to take seemed to do wonders, giving her an outlet to channel her emotions into. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you dodging the question about why I’m the only one you’re willing to mouth off to.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” She said walking over to me. “You’re outside the pack pecking order so I get to be myself around you, no limitations.” She popped up on her tip-toes and dropped a kiss on my cheek before spinning on her heel and leaving, a bounce in her step.

“Lucky me…”