FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It was well past midnight at the Historic Silver Cafe by the time the mages finally met up with the pack.

Poe was the first of the mages to sit at the table that pack was at and sighed, exhausted, “Not certain what the next step will be. This was unexpected.”

He turned his attention to David, who was sipping an iced coffee, “Thank you for giving us that vision to give us context as to what to search for. Though we will need to split up and find out more about what the couple was doing here in Pioche.”

Poe said to the other mages, “I think I’ll go back to Keeper of Boots and see if I can get more information from it.”

David froze mid-sip of his iced coffee and shot the senior mage a glare. The last thing David wanted was the mage messing with Keeper again. He growled into his cup, “Unless you have another celebrity’s shoes, I doubt that.”

“Well, since you’re your pack’s main spirit werewolf, perhaps you can join me to help smooth things over with him.”

David set his coffee down, leaned over the table and gave the mage a savage grin, “Is that a price you’re willing to pay?”

Poe paled and shrunk in his chair at the not so thinly veiled threat.

Lucas cleared his throat, wanting to stop his packmate from antagonising the mage. “Alice and I will go to the library to go through the special collections of the town’s historical archives.”

Morrison pointed at Kaiden with a snap of his fingers and then pointed with thumb towards Lucas, “You go with them to keep the love birds on task.”

He looked to Tsu’mara and Jesse, “You two are gonna help me look through our library to see if our records have anything that might help.”

“Research?” Jesse asked, disappointed.

“Don’t let them draw dicks in the margins,” said Lucas.

“Don’t worry,” said Morrison, getting up from his chair, “I won’t let them mess up the library.”

***

Morrison strode into the pack’s library, followed by Jesse and Tsu’mara. He told them, “You have to be serious about this. The quicker we get this done, the sooner we get the mages out of our fur.”

Jesse pulled out a laptop and started researching local historical websites on the library’s couch. Tsu’mara started browsing through the books, which amounted to just pulling random books from the shelves and flicking through the pages.

“That is the rite section, Tsu’mara,” grumbled Morrison as he pulled out an old battered journal from a shelf on the other side of the room.

The Old Man grumbled to himself as he flicked through it and found it was dated to the year 1900. “This is from the right place and time, but it doesn’t tell us anything since the Cannon’s used an alias. This only mentions first names and we don’t know if it’s talking about them or not.”

“I think I can help with that,” said Jesse, turning the laptop around to show Morrison. “I found an old census from the time. Doesn’t have their real names either but we might be able to find out their aliases if we can cross reference it with the journal.”

Morrison made his way over to Jesse and started cross referencing the census with the journal.

He pointed at a name on the screen, “There. A Liam is mentioned in the journal living on the ridge Madhouse mentioned.”

Jesse turned the laptop around and looked through the census. “There’s only one Liam here and it says that he was married to an Olivia.”

Morrison nodded. “Good. Good. Give Lucas a call. This should help him and Kaiden narrow their search.”

***

“This would go faster if I could use Sift the Sands,” said Kaiden as he, Lucas, and Alice leafed through piles and piles strewn across the table they were sitting at of the local library’s town council records from 1870 all the way to 1908.

“No,” said Lucas firmly. “We’re not even supposed to be here right now. So the last thing we need is for you to make a complete mess of this section that will take hours to clean up.”

A ringing came from Lucas’ pocket and he quickly pulled out his phone and walked off to answer it.

Alice and Kaiden continued browsing through the records having, after a couple hours, only just recently broke into the records from 1881. Kaiden set down several leaves of old, yellowed paper and rubbed his face with a groan.

“We have no idea what names we’re looking for,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They used aliases and we don’t even know what those were. Sift the Sands would solve that.”

“Lucas is right though,” said Alice. Faint bags under her eyes had started to form as the late night was finally starting to get to her. “It’d cause too much of a mess. It’s late enough already. I don’t want to stick around and have to clean all that up. The grave your elder had me and the others rebury was bad enough.”

Lucas returned, “Narrow the search to the Eighteen-Nineties. Howlmore and Jesse may have found the Cannons’ aliases.”

They all returned the files and binders they had pulled to their appropriate places and started going through the notable smaller amount of records from the 1890s.

Alice was deep in thought as she passed a binder to Lucas, keeping an eye on the relatively bare shelf. She said, “In hindsight, the fact this shelf is so bare compared to the others should’ve tipped us off. Your elder did say a lot of the records from this time were destroyed from a pipe breaking. Which Poe said was likely caused by Fate Magic covering up Cannon’s presence here in town.”

Lucas sat down and started leafing through the binder he was given. “He also said Fate Magic was very subtle. So it wouldn’t surprise me if there was something about it that made us overlook its lack of content. Some misdirection spell or something. There’s Shadow Gifts that do something similar.”

“Guys?” said Kaiden, trying to get the two’s attention.

“I mean, it’s certainly possible. It is really subtle,” said Alice before tapping her chin with a finger. “How best to describe it?”

“Guys,” repeated Kaiden with more insistence.

Alice waved her hand around, ignoring or not noticing the attempt to get their attention. “You know how, in a dream, when you’re starting to suspect something isn’t right? That something’s off about the logic of the reality you’re in. Something would always seem to happen that would distract you from what’s alerting you?”

“Oh, for the love of...” groaned Kaiden.

“Yeah, yeah,” agreed Lucas. “Like how the time on a clock is wrong, or the clock itself is wrong, but then someone starts talking to you about something and when you turn back to the clock it’s back to ‘normal’.”

A pair of binders suddenly flew across the table and hit each of them in the head making them cry out in shock and pain.

“What the fuck?!” they yelled in unison at the culprit, Kaiden.

“While you two were debating the workings of magic something fell out of the binder Lucas was flipping through and slid under that shelf,” Kaiden said exasperated, pointing at the pair, before pointing at the shelf of records behind Lucas.

The pair turned to look where Kaiden was pointing before getting up from the table to investigate. They both reached under the shelf and blindly patted under it for whatever it was that Kaiden saw.

“Got it!” said Lucas.

He pulled it out and saw that it was an old, faded black and white photo. It was of a middle aged couple standing outside of an old Frontier style house.

Alice pointed at something written in the corner of the photo. “Look here. ‘C+A’. Perhaps Charlotte and Andrew?”

“Perhaps,” nodded Lucas. “We can take it to David. See if he recognises the people in the photo.”

“I hope he and Poe are getting along right now,” said Alice before shrugging. “At least Colin’s there to keep him in line.”

Both Lucas and Kaiden made a face, making Alice ask, “What?”

“Colin encourages him and really doesn’t like mages either,” sighed Lucas. “Hell. He’s the one that got David to dislike mages to begin with.”

“What?” asked Alice, surprised. “He told me he didn’t like our meetings together because he had to sit through long Awakened meetings when he worked as an assistant for one of your elders. It didn’t seem like he was lying.”

“Here’s the thing when it comes to Colin,” explained Kaiden. “Colin lies all the time and when he’s telling the truth is when he’s lying the most.”

Kaiden thought for a moment before adding, “For example, I’m sure Lucas told you about the role Wolf-Bloods play in Uratha society?”

When Alice gave a nod Kaiden continued, “Then you know that Wolf-Bloods are the ones that keep and maintain the den. Stuff like cleaning and cooking. They don’t normally go on Hunts with us like Colin does. He brought this up when we first moved into the den, this was before I joined the pack. He failed to mention the fact that his mother ignored this tradition after she had her First Change and continued to cook and clean for her pack. Because of this, Colin has absolutely no idea how to actually cook.”

“Is there anyone that he’s actually truthful with?” asked Alice.

“There’s David, I guess,” said Lucas. “But even then, he still kinda manipulates him, and tricked him into marrying him.”

“They’re married?” asked Alice. “They haven’t even known each other for a year.”

“Uratha tend to live rather short, dangerous lives,” explained Lucas. “So we don’t have the luxury of the usual drawn out courting humans have. So when we want to take someone as a mate we, uh, ‘Tie the Knot’.”

“Oh,” said Alice after she took a moment to realise what Lucas meant. “Is that why you haven’t done that?”

“Yeah, not yet,” said Lucas, shaking his head.

Alice leaned forward with a coy grin, “Yet?”

Lucas’ face burned bright red and he shot up from the table, stammering, “I’m calling David. Gonna make sure he hasn’t killed Poe.”

***

“You know, I can help,” offered Poe as he stood behind who David sat cross legged in front of the Boothill Cemetery locus crushing human metatarsal bones in a mortal and pestle.

“You’ve done enough, witch.” snapped David, punctuating the last word with a loud crunch of bone as it was crushed under the pestle.

Poe turned to Colin who was sitting on top of a gravestone and asked, “Can you-?”

Colin cut the mage off before they could finish their request with a glare, “No.”

Poe was taken aback by the harsh rebuke, “I know we never really interacted, but the community here made you out to be a lot more cheery and helpful than this.”

Colin simply scoffed and said nothing in reply.

“Would you shut up?!” snapped David, glaring over his shoulder at Poe.

Poe threw his hands up in defeat and Colin smirked.

David pulled out a knife and slit his palm and let the blood pool in his palm before letting it drip into the mortar. He put the knife away and grabbed his lighter. He lit the bloody mixture alight, but instead of the regular, mundane orange and yellow flame it was indigo.

The spectral flame wavered for several seconds before, along with the blood and bone, vanished without a trace.

A change in the air rippled outwards from the locus. A change only David felt. Death Essence exuded in waves from the locus, David quickly set aside the now empty mortar and back away as Keeper-of-Boots crossed the Gauntlet and appeared before the trio, with only David able to see the spirit.

David gave a respectful bow to the death spirit and couldn’t help but notice the unusual ease in which he summoned them. It should’ve taken far longer for the rite he conducted to complete with him likely having to add more essence to it in order for the spirit to accept his summons. The amount he added was a mere pittance just to get the rite started. For him to only add that amount with nothing more would have been considered an insult to any other spirit of equal standing and power as Keeper-of-Boots.

“He’s here?” asked Poe. He quickly patted down his clothes to appear more presentable.

He asked the spirit, “We are hoping to find more information on Andrew Cannon. We’re hoping to find the grave of someone who would have kept records. Like the town historian.”

The spirit ignored Poe and looked down at David expectantly.

David rolled his eyes. All that talk from the mage about how Cannon covered his tracks, so it was clear to David that going to the town historian wouldn’t work. They needed someone who was around everywhere but was so pathetic that he was always ignored and thus would always be privy to stuff that most people wouldn’t be.

In a kind, respectful tone, a tone that made Colin raise an eyebrow in surprise, David asked the spirit in the First Tongue, “I’m looking for the grave of the town drunk from the time Cannon lived here.”

The spirit nodded and drifted off to a grave on the far side of the cemetery.

The trio followed after the spirit with Poe looking flustered over being ignored.

David gestured to Colin to walk next to him and whispered to him about how unusually easy it was to summon Keeper.

Colin chuckled as he realised the reason. He whispered back, “Keeper’s doing it to spite Poe over desecrating its graveyard.”

The group stopped in front of a grave that Keeper was floating above. It said in a rough rasp in the First Tongue, “This one died in Nineteen O’ Five from alcohol poisoning.”

The grave Keeper was referring to, like all the graves in Boothill, was mislabeled. Having the gravestone of an eight year old girl.

Keeper offered a skeletal hand to David in expectation.

David knelt down and took off one of his boots, cut his hand with his knife and spread his blood across the shoe.

He offered the boot to Keeper-of-Boots but the spirit didn’t take the offering.

The spectral, indigo flames in Keeper’s sockets flickered in Poe’s direction. It said, “I want his blood too.”

Poe didn’t hear what the spirit said, but knew what was happening once David turned to him with a predatory glint in his eyes.

Poe paled and backed up nervously, stammering, “Wait, let’s not get hasty.”

He backed into something and turned to see Colin giving him an equally predatory smirk. Poe’s attention snapped back around when his wrist was roughly grabbed.

David held the mage’s wrist in a vice-like grip, stopping them from wrenching their hand away as he slowly dragged his knife across the man’s palm. He smeared the blood on the boot before letting the mage go, allowing them to cradle the injured hand.

“Ow, ow, ow,” whimpered the mage as he kept pressure on it to stem the bleeding.

“Quit your whining,” snapped David. “Consider yourself lucky he didn’t ask for your foot.”

David offered the bloody boot to Keeper-of-Boots who now accepted the offering, placing it inside its robe. The boot floating from David’s hand and vanishing into thin air from Poe’s and Colin’s perspective.

Keeper-of-Boots drifted away from the to allow the group access to the grave.

“Okay,” said Poe, some cheer starting to enter his voice. “If we all chip in, we should get the grave excavated in no time.”

Both Colin and David sat down on gravestones and looked at the mage expectantly.

Poe let out a defeated sigh and turned around to retrieve a single shovel from the truck to dig up the grave by himself.

It took half an hour for the mage to excavate the grave. He leant against the shovel, panting, “This would have been a lot easier and faster if I had help.”

“Yes,” agreed Colin without moving from the gravestone he was sitting on, “It would have.”

The mage sighed again and cracked the casket open, using the shovel as a crowbar. A skeleton covered with thin strips of rotted cloth that were all that remained of the corpse’s clothes.

Poe grabbed and removed the skull, placing it on the ground outside the grave before climbing out. He picked it back up, and put two fingers of one hand on his temple, and two fingers of the other hand on the skull's temple. The same way he did on Charlotte Cannon’s skull.

“This spell should work with this corpse,” muttered Poe.

The mage then recited a spell in the disconcerting, static sounding High Speech that made both David and Colin grimace as they heard it.

As the mage finished the incantation, a faint shimmer appeared by the excavated grave like the heat shimmer above a road in the middle of a hot, Summer day. The shimmer would alternate between the vague shape of a tall humanoid and a smaller one. It made a confused look pass over Poe’s face. “That’s weird. The spell worked but there appears to be some interference.”

He shrugged and then added, “Must have been from the other ghosts here. Spells like this sometimes act up a little with graveyards with lots of ghosts. Just give it a few minutes and the corpse’s ghost will appear.”

David and Colin shared a confused look, with Colin leaning over and whispering, “But there weren’t that many ghosts here when we crossed the Gauntlet to petition the Lunes.”

David nodded, “Yeah, there hasn’t been anyone new buried here in ages. Keeper ate most of the ones that were, and kept what remained as his subjects. So there’s nowhere near the amount Poe’s referring to.”

There was something more that felt wrong to David, but he didn’t say it aloud. At least at first. He looked to Keeper-of-Boots and saw an unnerving hunger in the spirit’s flaming eyes. Whoever the ghost was, it wasn’t a native to Boothill Cemetery.

Seeing the spirit’s hunger, he told Colin who looked at him in surprise.

“Are you sure?” asked Colin in a low, serious tone. “When we first moved here I noticed signs of a ghost, but haven’t seen any signs of it in a long while. So I assumed it was eaten by a spirit.”

“You think it might be the same one?” asked David.

Colin shrugged, “I don’t know. I’ll have to look into it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?” asked David.

“You were still settling in the Den, pack, and being Uratha,” answered Colin. “And, like I just said, I thought it got eaten.”

The ghost, eventually, came into focus. But it was unlike any ghost that David or Colin had seen. The ghosts they saw that inhabited the graveyard had, for lack of a better word, more life to their appearance. But the one that appeared before the trio was a rotted thing. Fitted in late 1800s, early 1900s, attire. Loose suspenders, unkempt pants. His jaw was sagging off his skull. He was missing an eye, ear, and a number of worms and maggots were coming out of his face. He looked solid. Like they could reach out and touch the putrid flesh. Completely unlike the ghosts that inhabited the graveyard, which had an ethereal, non-corporeal look to them.

Seeing the ghost unnerved David. It felt wrong to see them like that. The way it stood there, unmoving, looking to Poe as it awaited instruction. It felt like a desecration.

“Tell me about Andrew and Charlotte Cannon,” commanded Poe. “You would have known them by another name. They were Southerners. Came here from San Francisco. Would’ve kept to themselves.”

The ghost nodded in slow motion. As if distorted or not really paying attention to the command. It replied to a dry rasp, “Yeah, I knew them. Most people didn’t pay attention to them. They weren’t the friendliest of folk but everyone knew of them.”

“There was a place that Charlotte liked going to. A ridge,” said David. “Where is it? The exact location.”

The ghost didn’t answer. Not until Poe repeated David’s question. The ghost answered, pointing to a ridge in the West. “I don’t know, if it was anywhere it was probably near their house over yonder those hills. Had their house near a well near Old Man Clawson’s ranch.”

David looked to where the ghost pointed and realised the problem. The exact area of the ridge the ghost was referring to was covered in new developments. Brand new McMansions that would have replaced all the old, historical buildings.

Keeper-of-Boots watched the entire proceedings silently. After the ghost pointed out the ridge looking over the town, it floated over to David and said, “I’m surprised you haven’t asked about the visitor that A Cannon got for several decades.”

After David asked the ghost about Charlotte’s grave’s visitor, Poe whirled around, surprised. “When did you find that out? Your vision? Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I found out just now,” answered David. He pointed behind him where Keeper-of-Boots was floating. “Keeper-of-Boots told me.”

“What visitor did the grave get?” Poe asked incredulously.

Keeper did not answer, not that Poe could have heard it, until David repeated the question.

Keeper told David, “This is entertaining watching the mageling struggle but I’d like to see him out of my cemetery sooner rather than later.”

David nodded his head in a slight bow and told the spirit respectfully, “I’ll get him out of your graveyard as soon as possible. You have my word.”

Keeper nodded, and told David, “A man would visit the grave and leave flowers on the grave each day of the deceased’s birth. He stopped in the Nineteen-Fifties.”

David realised that if flowers were left at the grave, since all the graves were shuffled in the 1930’s, whoever it was knew which grave it was. They didn’t just read the gravestones and didn’t mind that they were shuffled.

After David reiterated what Keeper said, Poe nodded. “So he was active until the Nineteen-Fifties. I wonder why he stopped.”

“If he was dead, wouldn’t that spell that zapped you have faded?” asked David.

Poe shrugged, “Not if he made it permanent. It would have been a lot of effort to do. He wouldn’t have needed to. But it was his wife, so it makes sense but without being able to break the ward I couldn’t know. If he stopped leaving flowers here, perhaps he has a different place to leave them that isn’t a public graveyard. By the Nineteen-Fifties, it would have been odd for someone to be leaving flowers that long. Perhaps that ridge she said was her favorite is where he’s leaving them if he’s still alive.”

“What kind of flowers?” David asked Keeper.

“Always white roses,” answered Keeper. “Colored red with blood.”

“It’s definitely Cannon,” said David. He knew from art that roses always meant some sort of love, and the blood dying them would definitely have to be some sort of rite.

He shared conspiratorial smirk with Colin who came to the same conclusion David had. The information Keeper-of-Boots just shared was not part of the deal and was shared simply to mess with, and annoy, Poe. Just like how it was unusually easy to summon them to begin with.

He gave the mage an unbearably smug smile and said, “The wonders of paying spirits their due respect.”

Poe shook his head and turned away. “So we know where their house was. That should give us another clue.”

David’s phone rang and he answered.

“Who is it?” asked Poe.

“No, I haven’t fucking killed him!” snapped David to his phone.

“Lucas,” answered Colin.

***

They all met up at the western edge of Pioche where it was determined where the ridge Charlotte Cannon liked to visit. The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon.

Alice, Lucas, and Kaiden had retrieved the mage apprentice, Roger, to join the pack in investigating the Ridge.

Upon seeing the state of Poe’s hand Alice dashed to his side, fussing all over it and cast a healing spell on it. Once she learned how it happened, she shot David an almost lethal glare who replied with a middle finger.

Colin pretended that he didn’t see David do it.

Lucas gave Colin a disapproving look and slapped David’s hand away. “I will snap your finger off if you do that again.”

David mockingly repeated a part of what Lucas said before being cut off with a punch to the gut.

Lucas impatiently waited for David to stop wheezing on the ground before showing him the photo that he found. “Is this the woman from your vision?”

David nodded, still wheezing and unable to answer. He didn’t see her face in the vision, as it was from her perspective, but he still recognised her face as someone would recognise their own face. The man in the photo, a white man in his forties, clean shaven and dressed in a quality pair of slacks and shirt that would have been considered stylish back at the turn of the century. His most defining feature was his stare, his eyes looked at the camera that took his photo as if it looked through it and at it at the same time. A subtle scowl of disappointment marred his face, he wasn’t impressed with whatever he saw. It was definitely Andrew Cannon.

He picked himself up from the ground, dusted himself off while glaring at Lucas, and told everyone, “Keep a look out for bloodstained roses.”

Both Poe’s and Alice’s eyes start glowing and they take a step back in surprise.

“Wow,” said Alice, mouth agape, “Look at all these wards.”

David’s and Lucas’ eyes shifted to gaze into the Hisil. But after seeing nothing they shrugged at the rest of the pack, equally as confused as they were.

“Look,” said Poe, pointing at the cliff as if everyone else could see what he and Alice were seeing as plain as day, “It’s blocking the same arcana as the grave. The entire cliffside is covered in them.”

The Old Man’s comparison of the mage they’re hunting to an Idigam suddenly returned to David. He turned to Colin, pointed at the truck and told them, “Go wait at the truck.”

“What? Why?” asked Colin, shocked and angered. “It’s just a mage.”

“It’s too dangerous to fight Cannon as a Wolf-Blood,” answered David. He pointed more harshly at the truck, “Now go!”

Colin initially refused to move until Morrison grabbed him and shoved him towards the truck, growling, “Consider yourself lucky the others let you join hunts to begin with.”

Colin started slowly making his way to the truck, looking back halfway to it to silently beg them to let him join just to see them already leaving to track down the roses.

The pack made their way up to the top of the ridge, following a faint smell of dried blood and roses, to the side of an unsold, cheaply built two-story house. A house that would be sold for far more than it was actually worth.

The roses they found were completely desiccated, wrapped in a cloth wrapping and weighed down by a rock. What little remained of the white petals were stained a rusted brown.

Alice, upon seeing the flowers, excitedly went to grab the flowers but was stopped by David stepping in front of her.

“You want to get electrocuted?” asked David.

“The roses aren’t warded,” answered Alice.

“I guess he expected them to decay before they became a problem,” said Poe.

David knelt down, grumbling to himself. Cannon couldn’t have been in Pioche for so long without being discovered by assuming a crucial part of his arcane rituals wouldn’t be a problem. He picked up the roses to investigate them himself. He looked them over, smelling them, even ate one of the dried blood covered petals. They were an anchor for some sort of rite, that much was clear. But he was struggling to find anything that told him anything he didn’t already know.

“Having your own blood on the rose would have a strong connection to the wards he placed.” said David, more to himself than to the mage’s benefit. “Definitely a good way to bind and power the wards. The blood was probably less of an ingredient and more of a way to track the wards’ status. To see when they were starting to weaken.”

He took a deep breath, and with great difficulty, handed the roses to Alice. He wanted to throw them at her, but he felt Lucas’ razor sharp gaze drilling into the back of his head.

The moment Alice touched the roses, they shimmered.

“Oh shit. We triggered an alarm,” said Alice, snatching the roses and started casting spells, “If he has an alarm, then we can track them.”

Once she finished her spells, the flowers bloomed back to life in her hands and the smell of fresh blood wafted strongly into the pack’s noses, making their mouths water.

She started nodding, saying to the roses, “Uhuh, uhuh, okay. What else?”

“You talking to the roses’ spirit?” asked Lucas.

“No, the roses,” answered Alice.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said David.

“Oh yeah, cause the stuff you people do makes so much more sense,” said Alice.

She returned her attention to what the roses were telling her. She told everyone, “They’re very annoyed to be grown in a dark place and last time they were fed it was with metallic tasting water. Plants don’t have eyes, so they can’t really give a lot of details. But they were grown somewhere dark, and underground. But, by restoring the flowers the blood is more potent. Which means…”

She twirled her fingers around the rose, and the blood was pulled away from the petals and floated in Alice’s hand in a small, spinning disc.

“With this we can open a portal directly to where Cannon’s at,” finished Alice.

David, along with the rest of the pack bar Lucas, stepped back, wary that she’ll get struck by lightning like Poe.

.

Morrison told everyone as Alice worked on the portal spell, “If he knows we’re coming, we better do this now so he doesn’t have time to set up more defences or run.”

He looked to David, “Looks like we’re gonna do your first raid to serve an arrest warrant.”

Poe joined Alice in creating the portal, and just as the portal opened, mentioned, “Back during the Eighteen-sixties he was a second degree master. Meaning he mastered two schools of magic, Now, he’s at least a third or fourth degree master. He’ll be very dangerous. So be on your guard, everyone.”

***

Poe, Alice, and Roger came out the other side of the portal first. They entered a well appointed New York Brownstone style manor. A grand piano was in a corner, bookshelves and cabinets lined every wall, velvet curtains covered what didn’t have shelves. Satin upholstery was laid on the furniture. There were no windows, however. All the drapes that covered where windows would be showed that they just covered up more bookshelves tucked in the empty window frames. The manor only had one door and it was a thick slab of dark oak held together with heavy wrought iron bracing and fixtures.

The furniture was all also a dark wood, mahogany in color but not like the natural wood. The wood stove burned but the heat was far too low, it barely warmed the corner of the room it occupied, not the entire house like it should.

Sitting on a sofa in the very middle of the manor, legs crossed and flanked by two suits of thorned armour, was Andrew Cannon. He looked almost unchanged from the old photo, all that was different was that his hair at the temples had gained a faint tinge of salt and pepper and wrinkles had started to form at the creases of his eyes.

“I say,” he said in a thick, plantation accent, “I wasn’t expecting company. I assume you’re here for the vault.”

The pack then came through the portal, with David the last through. They were all in Hishu except for David. David came though in Gauru, having to duck his head down to fit through the portal. His face was contorted in a savage snarl, a deep, menacing growl rolled from his chest. His golden eyes and his ivory teeth were the only colour that showed in his umbral form. His eyes narrowed on the rogue mage, the Uratha looking the very embodiment of Death.

Andrew sighed and stood up, straightening his slacks. “So the Mysterium brought along some pet theriomorphs to try and intimidate me. Alas, several decades in this realm is a great way to inure yourself to horrors such as that slavering werewolf you have with you.”

The pack felt what he was referring to the moment they went through the portal. There was a distinct lack of connection to the spirit in the vault. Nor could they feel the connection to Fireball, their pack’s totem. The whole vault, despite its lavish appearance, felt like a tomb. The rooms had an unnatural chill, and there was a dullness to the candlelights. An aura of death permeated the entire structure. Normally, death would feel welcoming to Uratha but they couldn’t shake the feeling of being unwelcome in the place. Like entering a room uninvited.

Lucas paled as he felt it and looked to David. David, as well as Kaiden, felt it too. But unlike the rest of the pack, they didn’t show their unease. But only David and Lucas realised where exactly they were.

They were in the Underworld.

Cannon gestured to the suits of armour on either side of the couch, “Thanks for giving me that warning. Gave me just enough time to finish activating my defences.”

He then flicked his hand at the mages. Poe’s face hardened in sudden concentration, and Alice’s and Roger’s eyes widened before the two younger mages suddenly disappeared.

The suit of armour to Cannon’s right leaned forward before charging at David, ramming straight into the large werewolf, impaling him with the spikes over the golem’s body and making David howl with pain.

Kaiden shifted instantly to Gauru and leapt for the other golem before it could attack any of the others. He leapt upon the golem, avoiding its spikes, slashing gouges through the metal with an unpleasant screeching of his claws.

But the golem, feeling no pain, grabbed the Cahalith by the scruff and slammed their head into the ground.

Poe slammed a fist into the ground, making the entire vault tremble before a spear of earth erupted from the floor, rocketing towards Cannon.

Cannon’s entire form blurred and then he was suddenly just to the side of the earthen spear, his coat jacket getting torn as it narrowly missed him.

Jesse darted forward, kicked off the wall and shifted to Gauru as he leapt off the wall. He collided with the golem holding Kaiden down, the momentum tearing it off his packmate.

David snarled and struggled to throw the golem off him. It was suddenly wrenched off him by Morrison in Gauru. Now free, David dashed for a nearby armchair, his wounds healing as he did. Mages always overthought things, trying to use their magic for everything and thinking it’s the be all and end all. Cannon already failed to take Uratha magic into account for his wards. David grabbed the armchair. So surely something so mundane as a regular physical object would be unaccounted for too.

Cannon stepped out of the way of the thrown armchair.

He looked at David with disappointment. The kind of disappointment that someone shows when they’re asked a ludicrously stupid question.

He then grabbed his shoulder as a gunshot rang out through the chamber.

“Thanks for the distraction,” snarled Lucas, in Dalu and pointing his revolver at Cannon.

The mage sneered at the gunwielding werewolf before muttering a quick spell to heal the gunshot.

“You slavering dogs,” sneered Cannon. He pointed a finger at Lucas and that harsh bite of static filled the air, and with a deafening crack of thunder Lucas was thrown into a cabinet by a bolt of lightning, shattering its wood and glass doors and spilling its books over him.

“I was here long before any of you mutts set your mange ridden hides in Nevada,” spat Cannon, his face red with rage and electricity arcing along his outstretched arm. “And I will be here LONG after you rabid mongrels are finally gone from this world!”

A shadow fell over him from behind as a tall, slender maned wolf reared up behind noiselessly, a paw raised ready to come down with razor sharp claws.

Cannon spun around and grabbed Jesse by the throat, whose eyes widened in shock and panic, and clawed at the hand gripping his throat with an unnatural strength.

“That will not work a second time,” sneered Cannon as he started to squeeze his hand, crushing the Irraka’s throat.

Jesse struggled in the mage’s grip for a moment before dropping the pretense. He smirked, choking out, “But what about a third?”

Cannon’s face fell as he realised his mistake.

A monstrously large blur of painted fur tore him away from Jesse in the blink of an eye. With a crash of wood and glass Tsu’mara had him pinned to the bottom of one of the vault’s many cabinets with a clawed foot.

He struggled against the Rahu’s strength, strangled High Speech spilling from his lips as he tried to utter a spell. Static rose in the air before it, and the unnerving sound of High Speech, were suddenly cut off with a wet crunch as Tsu’mara’s foot caved in Cannon’s chest.

Blood spat up from Cannon’s mouth and he weakly grasped his eviscerated chest, desperately trying to breath. He slumped to the side as Tsu’mara pulled her foot away, his chest nothing but a ruined cavern of bloody bone and viscera.

The golems, occupied by Kaiden and Morrison, crumbled to the ground with a clattering of metal as the magic powering them was severed. Alice and Roger also reappeared as if they were never gone to begin with.

“Damn banning spell,” Alice shouted to whoever would listen as she reappeared. “Stuck us in a pocket dimension.”

Her eyes widened in shock, and instinctual fear, as she saw six Uratha in Gauru snap their heads towards her. Their eyes narrowed on her, the bloodlust of the War Form telling them that there were non-packmates among them. They licked their chops. Non-packmates were prey.

Lucas caught himself, his ears pinning back in shame, before shifting down to Hishu. The rest of the pack followed, though without the shame.

Lucas rushed over to comfort Alice while everyone else started searching the vault over. Kaiden started looking Cannon’s body over while David watched.

He shook his head, chastising himself. This was how dangerous mages could get? The other mages made him seem like he was equivalent to an Idigam, but he had died so quickly, and so easily, that David thought that he could have let Colin join the final part of the hunt after all.

Kaiden made a surprised sound as he pulled a disturbing, skull shaped amulet from around Cannon’s neck.

A look of recognition came to Poe’s face. “That’s the control amulet we’ve been after.”

He then pointed around the room, “This is the sanctum. That pendant allows someone to teleport from the Mundane world into this mansion in the Underworld.”

Kaiden nodded and tossed the amulet to Morrison, who pocketed it.

“Wait,” said David, looking around the small manor they were in. “This is the vault that has an entire city’s magical relics? I expected something like at the end of National Treasure.”

“Oh god no,” said Alice. “Something of that size would be more like an entire country’s. Probably more.”

Lucas scoffed, “When’s the last time you’ve watched that? It said at the very start of the movie that the Freemason Treasure was from a millenia’s and multiple country’s worth of treasure.”

He shook his head as he walked off to start looking through the multiple shelves of books, saying to himself, “Fucking idiot.”

“JESUS!” shouted Kaiden, jumping away from Cannon’s corpse as it suddenly sat up before vanishing with a soft woosh of air.

Everyone snapped around to see it happen, and were silent for a long moment. Waiting on edge for something to happen.

“Huh,” said David, breaking the tense silence. “Probably should’ve ripped his head off.”

He, and the rest of the pack, cringed as rapid, panicked mutterings of radio static sounding High Speech started coming from Alice, Poe, and Roger. Rapidly typing in the air as if computers were in front of them. Headache inducing sigils blipping in and out of existence with each mimed keystroke.

“Damn,” said Poe as the group finished their spells, “He was definitely killed, but he had contingency spells to revive him and teleport him away.”

“He’s missing his soul at least,” said Alice, grabbing a sigil and looking at it intensely before letting it pop out of existence. “So he’s gonna be a lot less of a threat now. Can’t cast magic now without his soul.”

David leaned over to Kaiden and whispered, “How the fuck is he even alive if he doesn’t have a soul?”

Kaiden shrugged in response.

“Okay,” said David, deciding not to think about how being soulless worked, “Better loot the place before he comes back.”

“We took the control amulet,” pointed out Kaiden. “So he can’t get back.”

“We got here,” said David.

“Not if he has some of our own blood,” said Kaiden.

“I can sever the synaptic connections in case he has any of your fur or blood with him,” offered Poe. “It doesn’t hurt. Only feels like plucking a few hairs.”

Remembering Joseph Talbot’s attack of Tsu’mara in her dreams, David quickly agreed to the Mage’s offer, surprising Poe and the others.

After severing the connections, which felt more like a painful waxing to the Pack, they returned to searching through the vault. David snooped through various cabinets and shelves. Most of them were just full of boring looking books and trinkets.

One of them was a box, which contained two identical looking revolvers. They were old. Antiques with patinaed metal and stained wooden grips. Also in the box were various tools, and what seemed like ball bearings, that made no sense to David as to what they were for. One, a small bulbous container had the pungent smell similar to gunpowder but had a distinctly more woody smell of charcoal that gunpowder lacked.

He shrugged, closed the box, and tossed it to Lucas with barely a warning of it happening.

“Fucking hell, David.” snapped David when he saw what it was. “You can set off the caps by doing that.”

“You told me that revolvers don’t go off on their own,” said David.

“Cap and Ball revolvers can if you throw them!,” snapped back Lucas.

“Can I see that?” asked Poe.

Lucas carefully handed the mage the container, side eyeing David as he did.

Poe muttered a few spells before giving an impressed whistle at the two revolvers inside. He handed the container back to Lucas.

“This one’s been spiritually awakened,” said Poe, pointing at one of the revolvers. “It means it can harm beings in the Twilight. It also doesn’t require ammo either. It uses mana, or essence in your case. Don’t get too overzealous though, don’t want to completely drain yourself.”

“This one’s been magically modified to be able to fit regular modern .44 caliber cartridges,” said Poe pointing at the Awakened revolver’s twin.

Lucas listened intently to the mage’s explanation of the antique revolvers, and fawned over them.

“Get a fucking room,” muttered David with a roll of his eyes before going back to snooping around the vault.

“I hope we can find the book here,” said Alice as she walked around the room with awe, reverently brushing her fingers across the shelves and cabinets. “We have no idea what it looks like and it could take ages to file through everything here. If he didn’t hide it elsewhere, with it being the most valuable treasure here.”

“It’s that one,” said David, briefly looking over his shoulder before going back to his own searching. He remembered what the tome looked like from his vision earlier the night before. “The leatherbound book in the far corner. The bigger one with English and French on the side of it.”

“The spine,” corrected Lucas.

Alice darted to where David described and yanked the tome from the shelf. She held the tome with trembling hands. The tome was the size of a coffee table book and hand bound. She sat down on the couch that Cannon greeted them on and opened the large grimoire, using her knees to keep it steady.

“After all these years lost,” she said in awe, slowly turning each page what non-magical sections of the book took up were written in both English and French, each language taking up half of each page they were on. The non-magical sections had cutting edge medical procedures, for its time, dictating how to suture wounds and extract bad teeth. “There are so few of these copies left. Even fewer this well preserved.”

She turned another page and let out a gasp, “Poe, this is a copy with Vital Balance.”

Poe stopped what he was doing and quickly made his way over to Alice. She showed him the page, “San Francisco must’ve had strong suspicions, and New Orleans would’ve definitely known.”

Poe nodded, “It explains why their Consiliums were so insistent on claiming the vault for themselves. Body Mastery’s rare enough.”

“What did any of that mean?” asked Kaiden.

“Body Mastery and Vital Balance are spells,” explained Poe. “Body Mastery can lengthen a mage’s lifespan, speed up their healing, and enhance their health. You can only ever find it in obscure corners of the Mysterium’s Atheneums. Vital Balance on the other hand is down right legendary. I’m not aware of any Atheneum that has it.”

“What’s it do?” asked Kaiden.

Alice answered him, “It can allow a mage to stop aging entirely.”

Kaiden raised his eyebrows in surprise, “That’s amazing. Maybe we can make a copy of that book for our library.”

Alice and Poe shared an uncertain look and said, “Uhhh, we can discuss that later.”

David ignored the entire interaction, too busy with finding things that interested him that he could loot.

He walked past a large shelf almost overflowing with books, only giving it a cursory glance, before pausing and stepping back to the shelf when he registered what else was on the shelf. In the dead centre of the bookshelf was a carved marble bust of a barn owl. It was a masterfully crafted statue, and clearly magical as the faint fluttering of wings could be heard when he leaned closer to it.

He admired the statue, and reached for it. Its look alone would be a perfect decoration for the library.

Before he could even touch one of the carved feathers, the statue let out an ear piercing screech. It flew off the shelf, pecked and scratched at David’s face and flew off.

It landed Lucas’ shoulder, who froze unsure if it was going to attack him as well. He gave a surprised start when it started preening his hair.

Alice let out an excited squeal when she saw the owl on Lucas’ shoulder. “Oh my god, it’s a Scholar’s Assistant."

The owl paused its preening of Lucas’ hair and fluttered its wings. In a wizened, female voice it said, “Yes, and it’s good to know there’s at least one of these moon loving lunatics that are sufficiently erudite.”

“The fuck is erudite?” asked David, making both Alice and Lucas snicker, and the owl loudly tsk.

David walked off with a huff, “Ugly fucking statue.”

He went back to finding things to loot and came across a locked cabinet. That intrigued him, nothing else in the vault was locked. He rattled it to try and force it open.

Roger noticed the racket, “Oh, I’m sure there’s a key to unlock that around here somewhere.”

A loud crack of wood came from the cabinet where David tore the cabinet doors clean off their hinges.

Roger sighed in defeat, “Or you can just do that.”

Inside the cabinet were ingots of several metals. Silver, gold, and iron. Or steel, he couldn’t tell. The iron, or steel, whatever it was, looked normal to David. But the gold and silver looked strange. The gold was far richer in lustre than any gold he had ever seen. So rich that it almost seemed as if it had red waves throughout the precious metal.

The silver caught his attention the most. It had a bluish shimmer to the metal and was oddly reflective. He grabbed one of the small ingots and noticed that it was unusually warm, as if it were held by someone and only just put down, not locked in a cabinet for who knows how long in the deathly cold Underworld.

Something about the reflections in the silver were off. When he went to bring it closer to inspect them Roger came up beside him.

“Ohh, that’s lunargent,” he said, going to take the small ingot from David but quickly pulled his hand back when David glared at him.

“Looks like silver to me,” said David.

“That’s cause it is,” said Roger. “Perfected silver to be precise.”

“And the difference is?” asked David.

“Perfected metals are the term of seven metals, gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, mercury, and iron-”

“The Seven Metals of Antiquity,” interrupted David.

“Y-yes, exactly,” stammered Roger, surprised that David knew what those were. “They’re metals that have taken some measure of supernal power.”

He pointed at the silver, the lunargent, in David’s hand, “It’s sturdier than normal silver and can be made into weapons that don’t easily lose their edge. It can also make it easier to cast spells to see other places, across the Gauntlet, and even times. It also reflects things in the Twilight.”

David looked at the ingot in his hand again, and then to the ingots in the cabinet. Thoughts and ideas came quickly to his mind. Thoughts of wells, truth, and shame. Perfected Metal was an apt name. The metals would be perfect materials for fetishes.

He pocketed the lunargent which made Roger shuffle on his feet uncomfortably.

“I’m not sure about letting this place be looted like this,” said Roger, looking as the others in the pack were going around, looking for things to claim for themselves as well. “There’s over two hundred years of history and priceless magic here. It’s not just something to be divvied up.”

“Whose territory did you find this vault in again?” asked David.

“We’re in the Underworld,” said Roger. “Not your territory.”

A book slammed shut with the finality of mausoleum door closing that made everyone in the room stop and look at the source on edge.

“I told the Protectorate that the punishment for breaking our rules wasn’t excessive enough,” said Morrison, roughly putting the book he slammed shut back on its shelf.

He stalked over to Roger, who was rooted in place and his face pale in utter terror, and grabbed the mage’s chin. His hand shifted, growing claws that threatened to pierce their skin. “I told them it was too fast. That they needed to be slower with it. Dismember them bit by bit. Make sure they are alive for as long as possible.”

The Old Man’s claws slowly scratched along the mage’s chin, leaving trails of red welts behind as the claws were just a millimetre from fully breaking the skin. “A couple rulebreakers made an example of like that would keep you lot in line.”

Alice stammered, having set aside the grimoire she was pouring through, and ran to Roger’s side, “It’s been a really long night. We’re all tired and exhausted. We ALL understand that as long as we work and live in Las Vegas that we live by the Protectorate’s rules. Which means they get a cut. Even if they didn’t, we would be dead if it wasn’t for them, so that alone makes them deserving of a cut. Isn’t that right, Roger?”

Roger risked a short, quick nod of his head.

Morrison gripped the mage’s chin harder to stop the nod, his claws digging in and drawing small drops of blood. Roger inhaled sharply from the pain.

The mage’s eyes darted to his cabal members. Alice had drawn back, her eyes clenched shut. Poe had his back turned to him, his arms outstretched holding his weight against the piano to keep them from trembling.

He clenched his eyes shut, and his breathing hitched, bordering on sobs, as Morrison drew his face closer to his. The older werewolf gave a low menacing growl before letting the mage go.

Roger dropped to his knees with an unrestrained sob, with Alice dropping down with him to comfort him.

Morrison loomed over the both of them and growled, “You’re lucky one of your cabal members is fucking one of my packmates.”

He leaned down over Roger, who flinched away, as the Old Man told him, “That was your first, and only warning.”

He turned his attention to the rest of the pack, “Grab what you want for our share and let’s move out.”