The wolves ran. They ran through the trees, through the underbrush, through the wind. Their howls were carried with them and through the mountains, they echoed. Something was happening. They didn’t know what, but something.

William crashed through the underbrush, urged on by the howls. They were so similar to his pack in his forest. There was a sense of urgency, some terrible need for alacrity and something more. He couldn’t run fast enough. There wasn’t enough time.

The Lunar Mother was in her place in the night sky, he hadn’t gotten used to being in his werewolf form when the moon was but a sliver of her natural full beauty, and yet here he was, running with Nicolas and the Elder, Ansuya. Where were they going? He only had a vague notion that he was going to see someone that might shed some light on who this vampire Kenneth was. The vampire that knew his name; the Vampire that had hunted him not so long ago. Wolves led the hunt; in his forest they were the apex predators. Being hunted had never occurred to him and maybe that had made him vulnerable. This man had changed everything.

Kenneth…

The man who had sought his capture or death, he still wasn’t sure exactly what Kenneth had wanted from him. He had learned so much about himself and where he belonged from the wolves under the Mountain but this was still a total unknown. It was not just for him, the Mountain was also, by extension, being exploited, so the Elders had decided to act. This was the first step, or maybe just one more step in a long line of initiatives that he had no idea about. The Mountain was so different from his forest, there were shadows and shadows of shadows and the world had become so much more complex in a very short period of time.

Ansuya had stopped short in a clearing and William and Nicolas followed suit. The elder didn’t change to her human form. Instead she stood perfectly still and the three of them were drawn into the misty emptiness of the White Plain.

The mists swirled and licked up their legs as they walked. They didn’t dare move much faster than a trot. Even with their heightened senses their sight could not penetrate the white mists that always blanketed this place.

There was a deep chill here that pushed through his fur. He wanted out of here and yet he knew that this was going to be the place for future battles. The war would have to be won here if his kind hoped to win against Kenneth and his kind. The Elders had made allusions to this, but there had been, at least not that he could see, no serious effort to reconquer this place. He started to wonder if this place could be conquered.

They passed through the mist and vapor and the cold. The buzzing in his head never got more troublesome than a gnat’s wings. And after a long trek Ansuya pulled them out of the mist and whiteness of the Plain and back into the natural world.

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He inhaled deeply the warm air of the outside. It was always good to be outside after the mind-numbing sameness of the Whyte Plain. They were inside a copse of trees and they were well hidden from possible random passer byes. From the dull roar of traffic and the sounds of the city, the trees were a very thin line between them and the city that now surrounded them. Ansuya had already changed and Nicolas was back in his clothes as well. A moment later, he too was back to his normal self, his brown hair hung loose around his head threatening to reach his shoulders. He looked toward the Elder. She was already walking off in a northerly direction. William and Nicolas followed.

They emerged from the trees onto a street. The street was heavy with traffic and the sound of brakes, the occasional honking horn, and the sound of the city itself was uncomfortable at best. There was a ringing in William’s ears that wouldn’t go away. After the silence of the White Plain the symphony of Los Angeles was painful.

Ansuya walked calmly, in total control of herself. She didn’t hurry, nor did she take her time, she was…determined. It was something in her walk, the way she carried herself, her scent spoke of a person who had to do a job and she was going to do it, irrespective of her feelings on the matter.

The people of the city ignored them for the most part. William couldn’t help but notice the way some small groups of men looked at the Elder Shape Shifter. Their scent was predatory and the hairs on the back of his neck never settled. He wasn’t in his forest anymore and he hated the closeness of humanity that the city brought.

The stink of mankind was everywhere. The cooling sweat on the bodies of the people who walked past him was stale and rancid. The stench of rotting flesh and refuse was ripe in the sewer grates and dumpsters. The sickly-sweet stink of fruit gum on the breath of a woman who passed by them was enough to make him gag. He tried to ignore the hot, clinging, wet feeling of passing through a street steam vent. The steam was light, but the smell was there, enough to stain his clothes and body. He needed a shower and to get away from this place; Colorado might have been far enough, maybe Missouri now that he thought about it.

They walked up a long street block and wound their way around to the front of a very plain looking concrete building. Ansuya didn’t hesitate to pull open the door and disappear inside, he and Nicolas followed.

The lobby was floored in marble and the room was comfortable. The wooden walls gave way at waist height to large windows that allowed the eyes to roam the whole of the interior. What was strange was the lack of humanity in this building. There didn’t seem to be a single living person anywhere on the first floor. The desks had been used, covered in small mountains of paper; bulwarks of wooden in and out boxes, but the people were absent.

William followed as he was led around the windows to a rather wide and ornate stair case that disappeared around the wall into a dark alcove. William climbed the winding stars to be let out of the darkness into a well-lit, warm second floor foyer.

There was a small man getting out of his chair, rather awkwardly when Ansuya entered. “Ahh, Hello Miss Das, I just got your message a few hours ago.”

He had a deep voice that was off pitch somehow, as if he was affecting an accent for some reason.