There had to be something he could do. The blood he had drunk earlier was all but gone. If he tried to Dominate another wolf, he would be swallowed by the animal’s memories and he would be lost. That was unacceptable. What had he learned? There was always something to be learned, even in the face of failures.
There were images from that wolf that he could still recall, more vividly than he ever could with that other wolf, Dutch. There were beaches, forests, the green forests of spring, the deep snow drifts of winter, the hunt for moose and a snow fox. Deep snow drifts that he had plowed through on all four legs, the steep slope of a mountain.
That solitary rocky mountain that jutted up from the surrounding forests. The majestic snowcapped mountain painted red against the sunset standing alone in the landscape. That image had repeated itself various times throughout the onslaught. Why had he never caught it before?
It was possible that the extra blood he had drunk had fortified his mind and body so that he could hold on to that which he was being attacked with. The image of a mountain had to be significant in some way. He would have to look into this mountain, find it, and find out why it was so important. Maybe he hadn’t failed at all. Maybe this was the piece of the puzzle that he had been missing the whole time.
He quickly went into the office and woke up the computer that was in sleep mode. He did a Google search for ‘solitary snowcapped mountain’. He quickly scrolled down the screen. There was nothing there that matched what he had seen in the wolf’s memories.
He tried searching for images of ‘solitary mountain.’ Again, there was nothing that matched the memory images from the wolf. There had to be something. Stupid humans and their retardation, if he wanted to look at morons with ridiculous smiles in front of a sign, he would have searched for that in the first place.
He sat there looking at the screen. What else could it be? It wasn’t Mt. Fuji and it wasn’t any of these other mountains either. Mt. Fuji was not just a mountain it was a volcano. Unfortunately, ‘solitary volcano’ only pulled up more of Mt. Fuji and some book written by Ezra Pound, whoever that was.
Here too, ‘volcano’ only gave him a bunch of fantasy pics and diagrams of an erupting volcano. He didn’t need to know the science behind how a volcano works, he wasn’t stupid, nor did he need to see some kind of lava tiger growl at him with a lava flow behind it, although as far as pictures go it was pretty cool.
He got fed up and did a search for ‘volcanoes in North America.’ He looked at Mount St. Helens, no… Mount Hood, no…Mount Rainier, no…Mount Shasta, he stopped.
He clicked on the header and opened a page of nothing but Mount Shasta photos. The towering rocky peak jutting up into the crisp clean blue of the summer sky was a perfect match to the memories of the wolf. The memories of running up those slopes chasing prey were so vivid and an exact match to what he was looking at on the computer screen. There was no question in his mind; he had found the mountain from the wolf’s memories.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Of course, now that he knew what mountain it was it could mean anything. There was no reason to believe that anything he had gotten from the wolf meant anything at all to him or his search. He stared at the screen wondering why this mountain was repeated so many times in the wolf’s memory. It must have some significance, whether that significance would mean anything to him at all would remain to be seen.
He pushed back into the office chair and rested his head against it. Should he call Mark again and yell at him. He had a lead and he wanted to know what made this mountain so special. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. The phone rang twice.
“Hello,” said a very groggy male voice.
“Mark? How are you? Did you sleep?” Kenneth replied easily with a smile.
“Kenneth, no I thought you’d be… unavailable this time of day, as usual.” There was a rustling sound from the other end of the phone and muffled thud as something hit something else with a solid plop. “No,” continued Mark, “I haven’t slept since you woke me up this morning having me working on your little project.”
“Well, Mark I may be able to make your job a little easier. I have come across a lead that I want you to check out. I want you to look into Mount Shasta, Mark. It is significant in some way. I need to know why.” Kenneth stated flatly.
“Wait a minute, let me get this straight?” Mark began, “You want me, to stop what I’m doing, forget about the three leads I have on my desk in front of me, you want me to drop all that to look into a dormant volcano way up in bum fuck Northern California?” Mark said in a high-pitched sarcastic voice.
“Mark?” Kenneth asked dangerously, “When have I ever asked you for anything that was unimportant? Do you think that I would send you on some wild goose chase just to for the hell of it? Is my time so abundant that I can afford to waste it by sending you on unimportant time-wasting errands?”
There was a brief pause, “No,” came the clipped reply.
“Good. Mark, be thorough. I can’t stress this enough. I need you to do your due diligence in this search. This is the best lead I have ever had. Use it wisely but discreetly. I want to know why this mountain is so important. Do you understand?”
“What am I even looking for? You haven’t been very clear on that. It’s a dead volcano! What could possibly be so special about it?” Mark protested.
Kenneth pursed his lips, “Mark, you and I both know that Mount Shasta may be dead, or it could just be dormant, nobody knows. You know what we are looking for, what you should have been looking for these last four years. I don’t care what it takes, helicopter searches, satellite photos, men on foot crawling over every inch of that damn mountain. I want to know why it’s so special.”
“Do you think those monsters might really live somewhere near there?” Mark replied. “Wouldn’t there have been reports of sighting of bigfoot or something if they were?” Mark said with a short laugh.
“Oh, you’re in a playful type mood?” Kenneth asked. “Good, being happy makes you work better and faster. Get to work Mark. I’ll be expecting an update from you by nightfall. Good bye Mark.” Kenneth dropped the phone receiver back into the cradle and leaned back in his chair.
Sleeping was going to rough today. He let the influence of the sun outside start to shut down his body, to revert his living corpse back to death. His eyes closed and his skin cooled. He had once again returned to the ever-waiting embrace of death.