Suddenly he felt a large furred claw rest on his shoulder, “You did the right thing.”
William looked up to see Lethe looking down at him, his claw on his shoulder. “But when Ansuya was captured, I ran, when I knew that I should have stayed, if I had maybe she wouldn’t be where she is now.”
Lethe shook his head. “No, William you’d have been captured too, and then all of us would have been endangered. You may have been able to take down one maybe two or three of them, but in the end all three of you would have been captured. At best the three of you would have been killed. At worst, one of you would have been made to give all of the Mountains most guarded secrets away to our enemy. The Elder can take care of herself.” Lethe let his claw drop from William shoulder, “We have a mission and you two are going to help.”
Nicolas perked up. “Help with what? I’m not going to help kidnap someone else; you can go fuck yourself if that’s the case.”
The Shape shifters looked over collectively at Nicolas. Lethe spoke quietly, “If the Mountain requires you to aid in the retrieval of an unborn Shape shifter that is what you will do, young Scout. However, that is not our mission. We have received several reports of a vampire club and Farm in the outskirts of Los Angeles. We are going to destroy those establishments.”
“A Farm? In the middle of Los Angeles? I didn’t know vampires grew their own vegetables,” Nicolas said.
Billy spat in the sand. “vampires don’t eat vegetables, ya idiot. A Farm is where they keep humans for feeding and blood production. It’s usually an apartment complex or a set of condos, and the humans there are usually enthralled, but a lot of ‘em aint. Vamp’s seem to get more out of the blood when there’s strong emotions’ running through their victims, like fear.” Nicolas looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t.
Lethe turned back to William, “The Mountain Elders sent us here to find you and to destroy these places. You are going to help.”
William nodded. “Ok, I’m in. What do you need for us to do?”
Nicolas shot a glare at William and opened his mouth. He wanted to say something, his eyes darted between William and Lethe but he closed his mouth without a word.
“William you will follow Efraim, he will lead you in battle and tell you what to do and when. Nicolas you will follow Billy and do what he instructs you to do. We will enter into the Whyte Plain once the sun goes down. Then we’ll travel to where we need to go.”
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Lethe turned toward the group and motioned William to enter the circle they were making. William stepped up and stood quietly next to Lethe. The Alpha spoke, “There will almost certainly be guards at both locations. Efraim you will lead William, Pepromene, and Ryan to the club.” Efraim nodded. “I’ll take the rest of you to the farm.
“Efraim will hit the club first, with any luck the chaos of that strike will help to mask our incursion into the Farm. The club strike will be covert. The four of you will get into the club and once inside you will destroy the building with as little collateral damage as possible.”
“The Farm will be more difficult. Hopefully when the club starts to go up in flames the people will have sense enough to get out. The enthralled victims of the Farm won’t want to leave. Paregoros, it will be your job to sweep behind Billy and Nicolas and pick up any stragglers. The place will be heavily guarded. Look after yourselves. If it comes down to you or an enthralled victim, leave the victims. If the person is so far gone as to have no self-preservation instincts left, it might be better for that person to be dead anyway.” Lethe looked up at the setting sun and inhaled the desert air deeply. “Life without freedom isn’t life at all; remember that if you have to make the hard choice.”
Lethe looked at the group and addressed everyone, “Take care of yourselves tonight. We will rendezvous back here once the mission is complete. Now, get some rest we leave at sunset.” With those last few words Lethe shifted back into his wolf form and trotted off with the other two wolves into the shifting sands of the desert.
William looked over at Efraim, but the older man simply turned and walked off into the desert in another direction. Billy lay down and draped an arm over his eyes. The shorter man, Ryan, turned his back on them and knelt down in the sand, resting his hands on his knees with head bowed.
William glanced at Nicolas, who pointedly turned around and sat down on a nearby rock with his back to him. And he was alone. The weight of the situation and the gravity of the words of Lethe set a great weight on him. There was finality with those last few sentences and the reaction of everyone around him was like something out of a war movie. There was a dangerous mission, maybe even a suicide mission, and every member of the team has to go off and come to terms with that on their own. Except in the movies there was always the possibility of going home or sleeping with the girlfriend or wife one last time, he didn’t have either of those, and no possibility of going home either. So, he walked out into the desert, thinking of his forest and the distant shores of his true home.
As the sun set, William made his way back to where he had met Lethe and his pack. He found Nicolas still there, it didn’t look like he had moved at all from his rock. Billy still lay down in the sand, but his eyes were open and Ryan had maintained his repose as well. There was no sign of Efraim or the three wolves. William sat down, cross legged and waited, but not for too long.
The three wolves were the first to return. The three stalked up to the group with their snouts to the wind, looking straight ahead. They sat down simultaneously facing west, watching the sun sink below the horizon.