When Arthur had been young, the only blood relative he’d kept close was his grandfather. He was an ailing man, but smart, good with his hands. To Arthur, it seemed like he could fix anything. They had spent endless hours digging around in the electro-mechanical guts of trucks and cars and even boats. When his grandfather died, he’d left Arthur his car. It was beautiful. They’d spent an entire spring fixing it, tarping over it when it rained, getting cuts and bruises and grease all over their exposed skin. They’d put an entirely new engine in the thing, redone all the seats, rewired half of the damned thing...

But Arthur had known his grandfather was ill and, when he died, Arthur had already had time to grieve, and to accept the loss of that tie back to his family. What Arthur felt more profoundly, and some might call it callous of him, was all the knowledge that the man had taken with him. There had been so many things that he had not had time to teach Arthur.

Working on his grandfather’s car, night after night, polishing and shining and dusting and adjusting, sometimes he swore he could feel his grandfather walking him through the steps over and over again.

If a place could have a soul, surely a car could too.

The engine compartment of the Mustang had caught fire now, but Levi paid the dancing flames no mind. The light of the licking tendrils had become the only source of illumination in this tree-shrouded place.

Pale blue eyes burned out from the visage of a wolf. Feral and cruel, the canine face had pulled back into a slavering, menacing mask of teeth and hatred. Reinhart was taller, now that he’d shifted, by a few inches. His fur was the same dirty blond his hair normally was, with a brown undercoat. The way the firelight danced off the pale fur made him seem to glow and flicker in and out of existence. Reinhart stepped down from the frame of the Tahoe. His eyes were fixed on Levi as he made his way through the water, footsteps giving splashes as he waded to the shore.

Levi kneeled, paralyzed, between Rosa and Derrick.

Reinhart snarled.

Levi ran.

Levi did not get far. Reinhart was on him in moments, and he slammed face-down into the dirt and pine needles. Levi thrashed, trying to spin, trying to battle the wolf off of his back. Sharp claws dug into his side and he gasped in burning agony as he scrabbled out from under the man just long enough to flip onto his back. He kicked out, and his foot connected with the approaching wolf’s muzzle with enough force to snap Reinhart’s head back for a moment. But Reinhart was fast, and his hand, a giant malformed mitt, half paw and half human hand, grabbed onto his ankle and dragged him back.

Levi wedged his knee between them and brought his arms up to protect his face and his neck.

“You took him from me!” Reinhart raved. His voice was a hysterical snarl and his pale eyes seemed to fester with madness as he lashed his claws at Levi’s chest and face, leaving long gashes across his forearms. “You took him from me, and now I will take everything from you! I will tear you apart, tear you apart, tear you apart!”

“I’m sorry!” came a cry, and Levi wasn’t sure if it was his voice or Arthur’s. “I’m sorry Rich!”

Something in Levi’s voice made Reinhart pause for just a moment, and Levi used that opportunity to throw his hips to the side, freeing his legs and then kicking both limbs into Reinhart’s side. The Lycan tumbled over, then came back up on all fours, his claws digging into the soil.

Levi backed away, eyes locked with Reinhart’s. He couldn’t look away.

The consequences of his actions made manifest. A living, breathing weapon of vengeance, circling him and slavering to taste his blood. Even now, crimson droplets were sliding down Levi’s forearms and soaking into the ground. He could see Reinhart’s nose twitching at the scent and imagined it must have been overpowering for the man turned savage.

Maybe... maybe this was for the best.

Levi had, time and time, fallen short. He’d missed the mark, squandered his potential, failed the ones he loved, refused to accept responsibility for his actions... and finally, finally, he had created a problem so big that he could not run away from it. He could not forestall change any longer.

Levi thought of the Tarot card, the Tower. Change through chaos, through destruction.

“You smell like him,” Reinhart burbled. His voice was a fragile, broken thing, like the grating of crushed glass on stone.

He thought about the shotgun in Rosa’s duffle bag. The way his hand had felt drawn to it. It would be so easy to stop fighting. To let himself die here, by the hand of a man who, by all accounts, deserved to kill him...

Because Reinhart was right. Levi had killed Arthur. Levi had stolen Reinhart’s son away from him, all in an attempt to prevent change, to cling to normalcy, to stay the same.

He didn’t want to let go... but maybe it was time.

“You took from me,” Reinhart whispered, the words like a prayer, a mantra on his blood-coated tongue. “I will take everything from you.”

The wolf pounced at him, and his body reacted on instinct-

Arthur sunk his claws into his father’s back-

Levi ran along the railroad tracks-

The Beast howled for more blood-

The stars blinked out, one by one, as the universe died a cold, cold death-

“Levi,” Arthur said quietly. They walked along the river. Arthur was a wolf, covered in messy brown fur, so long it was curly in places. He stepped down the riverbed and every now and then Arthur would kneel to pick up a stone he found particularly pleasing to look at.

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“Yes?” Levi asked, looking up at the stars.

“What do you think happens after we die?”

“That’s a big question.”

“That’s the biggest question,” Arthur teased.

“It’s definitely up there,” Levi agreed, a grin playing at his lips. “But, you know, I don’t have an answer for it. For a long time, I was convinced that we all just burned. Forever. That none of us were ever good enough, and we all went directly to Hell.”

“Bleak,” Arthur noted.

“It was. It was incredibly bleak. But my alternative was that we just... blink away, like we were never there. So, I picked torment, because then at least some part of us was still there.”

“And what do you think now?”

“Now... I guess I think we live on. Not really, not in heaven or something. I think we live on in the people we knew, in the places we loved. I think some part of me will always be in a supermarket, and some part of me will be in you, and some part, fuck knows why, will be in my father, some part of me will be in my gym. Scattered, little bits of ourselves across the lives we lived. Like seeds in a field.”

Arthur was quiet for a few moments.

“That’s very mature of you,” he said. “You’ve thought about that question before.”

“I have,” Levi agreed.

Arthur was scattered across the rail yard in little bloody pieces, scattered, like seeds in a field. Levi crawled on the ground, trying to put his friend back together, babbling to himself that he’d heal, that Arthur would heal, that Arthur always got better-

Levi accepted death. He accepted that it came to everyone in the end. He accepted that even the infinite universe, in its unending complexity and beauty, would someday fade into a sameness that was akin to death.

But then what would Rosa do? Rosa, who had stuck by him through everything, who had shaken but never broken.

Who would save Derrick? Derrick, a man who had fought so, so hard to keep him safe as a favor to the friend they shared.

Who would call Julia and Mark, and tell them mean things that made them laugh?

Who would ask Martha about her flowers when the springtime came?

Levi snarled, his teeth feeling too big in his mouth, as he met the feral Lycan. Pound for pound, Reinhart was bigger, stronger, and more experienced than he was. This was it; this was the end. Death had come for him, because he’d made one mistake too many, and everything had spiraled out of control. But he would fight, not for himself, not for the life that he had once had, but for the people and the places that bore his mark, his touch.

Reinhart ran across the ground on all fours and then, at the end, leapt at Levi from the dirt, claws flashing. Levi managed to grab one of the man’s wrists, but the other hand slashed across his face, sending his scarlet blood splashing across the grass, sparkling in the firelight. Reinhart’s legs latched onto him, trying to wrap around him, but Levi kicked his knee up to dislodge one, then spun through and yanked on the wrist he held.

Reinhart’s back slammed into the dirt and Levi threw himself at the wolf, trying to get on top, trying to go for the throat. Reinhart managed to kick himself around and bring his arms and his leg up to get in Levi’s way.

Suddenly, there was a pop. Levi looked down in disbelief. He took a stumbling step backwards, and his leg gave out under him. Reinhart’s leg had shot out, slammed into his shin... and broken the bone.

Levi let out a cry of rage and frustration, snarling at the canopy of trees overhead as the firelight played against their needles.

Reinhart fell upon him with relentless ferocity. Levi tried to bat the man away, but the wolf had dug his knee into the broken leg, sending agony shearing up his spine and preventing the bone from healing itself. Reinhart tore away at him, ripping away the flesh, and the muscle, and breaking bone, trying to get to Levi’s throat.

Levi threw his forearm up. His body felt like it was in ribbons. Reinhart’s claws had torn such a deep gash in his arm that he could see the bone. But still, his body fought for survival. He threw his forearm up, just as Reinhart shot forward for his neck. The wolf’s giant jaws closed on the arm and crunched down, shattering the bone. Levi wailed. Everything was blood. Everything was blood. It was all he could smell, all he could taste, all he could feel sliding across his skin, warm and slick and horrible and hot and heady and wonderful.

The Beast pushed him on, urged him to keep going. It said to fight, and fight, and fight, to make Reinhart suffer.

Levi couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Foggily, he knew his body was in shock. He knew he would die before he had a chance to really feel any of it.

There was a loud crack, and Reinhart thumped to the ground next to him. The wolf struggled to its feet, only to have a leg thrown out from under it by another crack of lightning. The air filled with a scent other than blood, like the Fourth of July.

Gunpowder.

Levi’s head fell to the side.

Rosa stood by the side of the creek. In her teeth, little paper rolls were fizzling away, burning off, like cigarettes. Rosa had wedged the old shotgun against her body using her broken arm. She shoved two more shells into the thing with her good hand, then aimed it up and let loose again. Two distinct cracks, one right after the next. She grimaced, and another booster burned off in her mouth. She spat the smoldering stub of it onto the ground.

Derrick was propped up against a rock, his jacket under him. A shaking hand was working away on a piece of flash paper. Every now and then, he touched his fingers to the blood seeping from his chest, like dipping a quill into ink. His deep eyes seemed to burn in the light of the flames coming off the Mustang.

For the second time that evening, Levi got to watch Reinhart get shot in the head. It was a strangely gratifying thing, after what had been done to his aching body. He could feel himself slowly stitching together. His leg mended itself, though it flared to life with pain as soon as the bone knitted back together. His arm would take longer, Reinhart’s saliva disrupting the regeneration of the limb.

Rosa burned another booster as she unleashed two more shells into the snarling, screaming Lycan. Buckshot was tearing the creature apart, ripping chunks off of him and throwing them to the forest floor. Another booster flared away. Blood covered Rosa’s face, and the orange of the fire gave her a brilliant hue, as if her face had been cast from molten gold. Her beautiful eyes were bloodshot, and the bleeding of her nose added to the blood from her temple, but still she reloaded the shotgun, walking towards Reinhart with each set of plastic shells that ejected from the shotgun’s breach.

Rosa’s hand slipped.

Really, it was a miracle it hadn’t happened sooner, given her unfamiliarity with the firearm and the blood coating her hands.

A shell fell from her fingers, just the tiniest mistake... But Reinhart was on her immediately.

Rosa did not scream as Reinhart’s teeth and claws dug into her.

“Take everything!” Reinhart babbled manically. “Everything, everything, everything, I will rip apart everything you love!” He sunk teeth and claws into her, into every part of her, pummeling her with his size and slicing her skin to pretty little ribbons as he worked.

The shotgun fired one last time, shearing off the better part of Reinhart’s twisted face. Then it clattered, limp, to the dirt.

Levi screamed, a broken, hoarse sound as his half-flayed body seized in the dirt.

He climbed to his feet, and had the peculiar sensation of being an observer, of watching things unfold, rather than participating in them. His body seemed to move of its own volition.

Levi felt numb.

No. He didn’t feel numb, he felt cold. So, so bitterly cold, like the blood running down his body had turned to ice and his heart had stopped pumping in his chest. Reinhart was laughing. He was laughing and crying at the same time as he took stumbling steps away from Rosa’s body, lying in the dirt. Her innocent blood seeped into the soil, and the Earth drank her soul with the hungry intensity of a starving animal. Arthur screamed inside of his head like a damned man, thrashing impotently in the bonds of Levi’s psyche.

The Beast held out a single, bloody hand and, for the first time, Levi took it.