“Boxer does that so well,” The Mick pointed, getting to his feet. “Shall we?”

“Oh, by all means.” The Mick tossed down a twenty to cover the bill, but probably didn’t have to pay at all, given how they were treating him. He led the way out the door.

One of the werewolves growled when they saw him come out, and they all looked over at him. Their faces were only partially furry, they hadn’t fully transformed... probably because if they did, they were dead.

I had the Eyes of Heaven now, too. I couldn’t see quite as deeply as Master Fred yet, but the purple writhing over three of them, and stamped in hard on the fourth, was clearly apparent to me. Just the fading wisps from the smoking carcasses in the back of the truck were worse than that number four, too.

Yeah, Master Fred pretty much wanted to waste them all.

“You got that soul-piercing gaze going on you,” The Mick half-whispered, half-cheerfully announced to me.

“These arseholes probably don’t see Auras the way we do,” I replied to him in my best lofty accent and voice, which I did very well, thank you, and the weres heard me just fine. “There’s thinking evil thoughts, sinister plans, and wicked intentions... and then there’s actually doing stuff.” My eyes fixed on the darker-furred wolf opposite me. “That bastard there has done some wicked nasty stuff, the stuff that clings to your aura and hardens your soul like freezing ice.”

The Mick looked at me, back at the four werewolves who’d come here for him thoughtfully. “The wolves?” he asked, perhaps just a bit teasingly. The weres bridled for some reason.

“There are tipping points. They passed them. They were basically murder machines looking for blood. This guy has probably eaten someone and enjoyed it, and is planning on doing it again... and has been trying to convince his friends to join in, with some success, I think.”

All three weres looked at me, then back at the darker-furred one. I noticed The Mick had an oddly contemplative look on his face, glancing at me and Master Fred curiously.

“Ach, no, we can’t show them proper Detroit hospitality that way,” The Mick stepped up calmly as whatever he was thinking crystallized. “I think you were looking for me? Well, here I am.” He waved nonchalantly at the back of the truck. “Don’t worry about the dogs there, they weren’t interested in talking, anyways.”

All four growled again, but they subsided quickly as jet and silver Shards trailing a rainbow between them cycled up around my arm, looking like crystallized obsidian teardrops as they spun about my hand. Yeah, do that quick count; yep, that’s a bunch of them...

“You are The Mick!” the nearest were growled, stepping forwards and pointing a clawed hand.

Wiiiiist. There was an arc of scintillating ruby and grey going up and coming back suddenly, and the werewolf blinked as he noticed it was going through his neck.

That would be Bane/Monstrous Humanoids for the uninformed. One of the three different Banes you could make out of a werewolf’s skull. Shapechangers and Magical Beasts were the other two... although technically, you could make Bane/Human if you got their skull in a human form, but it was largely useless if they morphed. Shapechanger would key off The Mick himself, as he could also intrinsically go gaseous or become a swarm of bats or rats, or turn into a wolf himself, so he couldn’t use it.

Blooded with full racial abilities were extremely dangerous individuals...

The Mick politely reached out with the scabbard of his milk-and-scarlet Blade and pushed the werewolf over backwards. Jetting blood did the rest to his head, and a little agape, it tumbled free, forever frozen in half-transition to hybrid form.

“Whoops, sorry, been practicing that iajitsu draw at the advice of my senpai, and when rabid over-emotional furry puppy-headed rubes with mad complexes advance on me, me reflexes, they just go off,” The Mick shrugged very cheerfully indeed, even as a lot of shirts tore away as the other three werewolves went full hybrid in a half-panic. Clearly, they hadn’t expected a mere Blooded to be able to one-shot one of them.

Niiiice iajitsu One Strike. The weres hadn’t seen it coming...

“Ah, the talking’s done, and it’s time to die?” The Mick asked, tilting his head slightly in the direction of a very large gun burning with Wrath, now raised and pointed. This naturally drew attention away from me, but I could kill two of these guys easy-peezy, I’d just step behind The Mick just in case...

“Four members of our pack were last seen with you in Oto when the Owl Woman woke up! What happened to them, and what did you have to do with those who woke the Owl Woman? Where is her new Shaman? Where is the Golden Hag?” demanded the next one, his voice rather growly and broken, clearly fighting his rage and fear.

The Mick held up four fingers leisurely. “Oh, THAT matter back then. Let’s see... in reverse order... who the fuck is the Golden Hag? That’s not a subspecies of them I know. They don’t even have a proper iron or stone hag that I know of, and they suddenly have a golden one, now? Where the fuck did that come in?”

“You were seen at her shop! The Sword you wield comes from her!” the one in the back blurted out, eyes bulging red.

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“What, you mean Sama Rantha? The smith? You’re calling her the Golden Hag?” The Mick grinned widely, turned to look at me. “Aren’t these guys precious? I think she’d be so tickled!”

I could indeed picture her cackling with glee over the appellation.

“No, I hae no damn idea where Sama Rantha is. Why don’t you inbred curs go track down everyone else she made a Weapon fer? I’m sure someone will be able to give ye an answer, if ye’r reason that customers raptly follow makers around and are informed by them wherever they go somewhere makes fine sense. I’m sure ye tell all the people yer Pack sells information to where yar at all times, too.” Nope, no contempt for their intelligence in his voice at all, as his accent kept fighting to come back and mispronounce English... because these werewolves probably didn’t understand Human very well, no more than a Hag would without learning it like any other non-native language.

“Third question, I ken no idea where the Owl Woman’s ‘new’ Shaman be, but me nae thanks for telling me she be having one! Me bosses will be interested if she’s amenable to some special agreements, I’m be thinking.”

Now the werewolves were getting madder at their own idiocy. The last thing they wanted was the Clans of the Tomb talking with Nature Spirits!

“Two, I arrived in that little armpit of a town and dinnae even ha’ time to go in an’ get a proper pint when someone with helicopters, mortars, automatic weapons, and a FINE sense o’ theatrics be starting all the excitement out in the distance. I dinnae own a goddamn attack helicopter or mortars.” He rolled his eyes theatrically. “Pardon me cussing.”

He said it so piously I almost burst out guffawing.

“As for yer kin, mangy pups that they were, one o’ them died when they decided a wee bit tardy t’ be about fleeing proper-like from a bunch of angry trees. I watched ‘em running like whipped dogs, tails all tucked in like proper curs, an’ then...”

I could feel what was coming, and knew that he’d made a decision to get all of these wolves killed, since Master Fred and I wouldn’t pull the trigger to get the party started... but we’d certainly fire in support of him!

“Then,” he continued in a low, quiet voice, “the filthy cowards decided that since they couldn’t fight a tree, they’d be about attacking me, an’ I butchered the lot of them an’ hung them from the grill of me car all proper-like to salute the lack o’ brains bred into the rot-blooded cannibals in a way they’d understand.” He lifted the hilt of his Sword for emphasis, as all three werewolves began to swell in size, taking on their advanced forms. “See here! Once ye get rid of the fat between their ears, werewolves can actually be useful!”

They all leapt for him, howling in outrage, each of them the size of an ogre, weighing at least five hundred pounds.

The Shards around my arm vanished, but the next set was up in flicker-time to catch the nearest one to me in mid-leap, and blow his entire mid-section apart in flaming ash. His head bounced off the Mick’s chest, the lower abdomen didn’t quite make it to him.

A combination of Wrath, Grit round, and my Shards smashed into the senior Werewolf, and he didn’t take it well at all, blown crashing into the front of his pickup and putting a dent into it, as if he had been smashed sideways by an incoming car. There was a major hole in his chest, but he still wasn’t dead... but the second burning shot blew his darkly-furred head off his shoulders, and stopped that nonsense.

The third one was a bit too angry to realize that throwing yourself onto the point of a superhuman swordmaster in a certain three-point Stance, his Blade arcing to go up under your jaw and into your brain, was no way to win a fight.

The mass of his heavy body crashed into The Mick, whose heavyfoot conceded a foot of space backwards across the asphalt of the lot, grinding a shallow furrow. The massive claws ended up sliding down The Mick’s elbows and wrapping around his back before falling limply down, and the massive head stopped about a foot in front of his face, the lights going out of the reddened eyes as banefire did its thing to the fool’s brain.

“Well, this’ll get us all in good with the Night Prowlers and Elder Fangs!” I noted brightly.

“Can I have the heads?” The Mick asked shamelessly.

“You know Master Fred gets to loot what he kills... and I happen to need a decent set of Baneskulls too, you know.” I let it hang for a moment as Sleipner rolled down a Ward-track and came to a precise stop next to the slaughter.

He rolled his eyes. “Fine. How many do ye need?”

“Well, none of them died quite human, so I can’t use any for that. Shapechanger and Monstrous Humanoid... two.” And Heavenbound Hall could always use more Baneskulls, of course...

“Got a Magical Beast already?” he noticed.

“Raksasha-blooded Tiger in Philadelphia. Looked like a little kitten all the time.” I flicked up a holo of it for him, and he studied the replay with professional interest.

“Dangerous...” he mused.

“And only found in the Orient normally.”

He wasn’t slow. “Like those gaki.”

“Probably from the same source.”

“You want me to put out word to be wary of Chinese cultivators and their intentions?” he asked, his eyes flashing red for a second, glancing at Master Fred, who had walked down from midair and was standing there listening. The silent Heavenbound nodded.

“The ultimate goal of Daoist Cultivators is to take over the world... at the least. Undead and the Tombclans are impediments to that goal, just like Powered are... as are all the non-human races that can’t birth their kind.”

His dark eyebrows rose, then followed my eyes down to where a bunch of werewolf blood and saliva had splattered on his white suit. “Filthy things,” he sighed, snapping his fingers, and his suit began to clean itself and restore itself to prime condition instantly. “That got a wee bit off-track.”

“No, they were off-track.” I glanced at the dead werewolves. Master Fred had long notified the Hall, and specialists were being dispatched to cart them away and clean up the mess. I noticed the Gluttons inside the café were back to work as if nothing had happened.

I could use the Baneskulls. Allowed me to have two Banes on one spell, and the bonus to hit and damage was always appreciated...

“Not too much. We might have a Bane/Human wandering around in the armory for dealing with pesky Paladins and sanctimonious Heavenbound, that nobody wants to use for some reason.” Most of the younger Tomb Clansfolk were still subject to being ‘Human’ for Banes, so, no, they didn’t want to use one. The older ones advanced to Monstrous Humanoid, or in the case of the Blooded, Shapechangers. Humanbane was nominally a Weapon for their undead Ancestors. “Swap it for a completed Magical Beast or Monstrous Humanoid?” He didn’t need a Bane/Shapechangers drifting around out there, either.

“Sure.” We shook hands on it, while Master Fred just shook his head. “The reason we’re not off-topic is that you’re going to be involved with Chinese cultivators if you start trying to buy up sources of low-quality gemstones...” Many sources of rubies were in the Orient, after all.

“That’s true. I’ll be careful,” he promised, and patted the vest pocket where he’d put a certain hairy-footed short guy’s card. “He’ll be getting a call soon.”

“He has a considerable sum of money to invest,” I agreed...