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A smaller chapter, as everyone waits for The Old Man to actually start teaching them proper Colin is trying to tutor Colin about the wider world of the Las Vegas Protectorate, but David gets distracted by something he remembered being told during his initiation.

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“It just occurred to me," David said, looking away from the map of Lake Mead he was looking at and interrupting Colin who was trying to teach him about the Lady of Lake Mead, the spirit of Lake Mead, and the Damsman, the spirit of the Hoover Dam, as the pair sat on the library room's couch. A book on the Hoover Dam lay open on Colin's lap. “You told me of you being a direct descendent of one of Kamduis-Ur's original disciples. But what side was that? Your mother's or father's? But what about the other side that wasn't?"

“Oh, it was my father's side that's the Bone Shadow lineage. My mother didn't come from any prestigious bloodline. She was a second generation Wolf-Blood," answered Colin. “Didn't know about The Truth and saw spirits her entire life like you and Lucas did. Her father, my grandfather, was a sudden wolf-blood. Became one during Vietnam after his squad was slaughtered. He didn't know about the Truth either."

“Anyways, getting to The Lady's court is a bit tricky. Sinc-" Colin said, pointing to the area of the map where the crashed B-29 Bomber laid submerged in Lake Mead as he tried to get back on track with the lesson but groaned when David interrupted him again.

“If they both didn't know, how did she get in the know then? Your whole family was in the know. If both didn't know, how did they know he was a sudden wolf-blood?"

Colin pinched the bridge of his nose as David continued to pepper him with questions until he held up a hand to quieten the Uratha, “You're not gonna let me get back to the lesson unless I tell you. Aren't you?"

David shook his head.

“Ugh, fine," Colin sighed, defeated. “Why can't you be this talkative with the others?"

He closed the book in his lap and set it on the ground by his feet.“It's because of how my parents met. It's actually a rather romantic story. For the Uratha."

***

Iain watched the hedge witch as she locked her front door and left for work for the day. He had been watching her from a distance for the past week with her none the wiser. He was in his black and brown furred gray wolf Urhan form, watching her from the corner of her house. It was the closest he'd gotten to her since he started the hunt on her that the Protectorate's Elders tasked him and him alone with. It would have been so easy to take her out then and there. He licked his chops, he could run up behind her and pounce on her back. Drag her to the ground and snap her neck in his jaws.

But his lips peeled back in a silent snarl, he couldn't do that though. He had to do recon first. Gather information, know as much about her as he possibly could before going in for the kill. He had to know why the witch was breaking the Protectorate's law about keeping The Herd ignorant of The Truth. Even regular mages outside of the protectorate kept the same law due to The Herd, Sleepers as the Mages called them, interfering with their magic if seen by them. So he pulled back and waited for the sound of her car driving away before making his move. Soon though, the hunt was almost over. He couldn't help but shiver in excitement at the prospect.

Once her car was out of sight he darted to her back yard and shifted briefly to Hishu form. He needed his hands to break into the house unnoticed, and a man trying to break into her house from the front door would draw attention. Once he got the back door open, he shifted back to Urhan and trotted in.

He was struck immediately by a pleasant, comforting scent that suffused every part of the house. He put his strong nose to the ground and followed the scent. It was strongest in several areas of the house. Like in the living room that had a brown floral patterned three seater couch and matching armchair situated in front of a small box television. The scent was strongest on a single cushion of the couch that was more compressed than the others. She was a creature of routine, thought Iain. She only sat on one part of the couch despite having all of it to herself.

He sniffed the other two pillows and tested their springiness with a paw. He did the same with the armchair. No one had sat on them recently. No one had ever sat on them. Why have the couch to begin with if the rest of the space is wasted? Why bother having the armchair at all if it's never used?

He followed his nose to the kitchen. Another place in the house where her scent was strongest. There was a small round table surrounded by chairs, but again. Only one of them had her scent marking its regular use. He rested his head on the seat of the chair for a moment. To familiarise himself with the scent for the purpose of the hunt of course.

He walked into the kitchen proper, he jumped up onto his hind legs and put his forepaws on the kitchen bench to get a better look of the kitchen. It was a large kitchen. Unusually large for a woman living by herself and without regular houseguests.

He noticed a small bookshelf full of books on the wall over the food prepping area by the oven, and tilted his head to more easily read the titles. Recipe books. Family ones. Rarely used too, judging by the lack of wear on their spines.

A different smell caught his attention from the other side of the kitchen, coming from the fridge. A smell that made his stomach grumble. He jumped down from the bench and trotted over to the fridge to investigate. He nudged it open and immediately saw it. A plate of half eaten pecan pie. He licked his chops. He loved pecan pie. He wanted it, but knew he couldn't have it. He couldn't let the witch know that he was there. So he reluctantly closed the fridge and left the kitchen.

He made his way down the hallway past two untouched guest bedrooms, he didn't even need to check for scents in them because they were covered in a thin layer of undisturbed dust. By the time he entered her bedroom, he no longer felt like he was hunting anymore, but that he was just roaming around a packmate's home.

The wolf stopped as he realised. No. She couldn't be. Was she a Wolf-Blood instead of a witch? He jumped up on her bed and sniffed the sheets where her scent was strongest in all of the house. There was no denying it. It was the scent of a wolf-blood. That changed the hunt entirely. The Protectorate needed to know why she was breaking the Oath of the Moon and attracting The Herd's attention, if she had a pack, if she was a spy for the Pure. If she wasn't a spy, they could force her to work for them. She could prove a useful font of information if she complied. She could still die, but it was no longer a guarantee.

He jumped down the bed and searched the house with his nose. Double-checking for scents of her possible packmates. But all he could smell was her pleasant, comforting smell. He quickly backed out of the laundry room after he spent a bit too long searching through her laundry hamper. He got back on track. Just because he couldn't find any traces of possible pack members in the house, that doesn't mean she didn't have any at all. She had to have one. He couldn't help but let out a sympathetic whine. A wolf without a pack was too lonely an existence for him to consider as a possibility.

He would have to meet with her and get the information out of her himself. See what she knew. He left the house, and made sure he didn't leave any trace of his presence in the house.

He sat in Hishu form on a bus stop's covered bench as he flicked through a phone book he had stolen from some random person's car. He decided it was best to pose as a prospective customer to ferret out information out of her with her being none the wiser. If she was a Pure spy, he'd kill her then and there. But not before forcing the information of her pack out of her first.

So he tried to find the wolf-blood's store. But he couldn't find it, he'd spent the past hour combing through page after page. He had no clue what to look for, the Council never gave him the name of the store or even a location. Just the general area she had been operating under.

He growled and tossed the book at the ground. He should be following and tracking the prey in person, not looking at books. Banal research like that was the duty of a wolf-blood, not an Uratha.

The wind kicked up, blowing the pages of the discarded phone book on the ground before the wind settled down again. He looked down at the book. He felt compelled to pick the book up again, and so he did. He looked at the random page of the 'S' section the wind blew the book open to, his eyes zeroed in immediately to the name of one of the businesses, Spirit and Flesh.

A shiver went up his spine. That was the store, it had to be. He'd always got into arguments with Cahaliths over the nature of fate, over what parts were set in stone, what could be averted. What side was purely allegorical, what side could be taken at face value. But this was something that they'd both agree on.

He got up and made his way to a nearby payphone. He pricked his thumb with his pocketknife and wiped the blood over the coin slot to bribe the payphone's spirit with Essence before he picked up the phone to dial the Wolf-blood's business. There was no dial tone.

A deep, wolfish growl rumbled in his chest as he scowled at the payphone. Still no dial tone.

“Fucking insolent spirit," Iain snarled before pricking his thumb again and gave the payphone more of his essence.

There was finally a dial tone. He dialed the wolf-blood's business number and, to his surprise, was answered almost immediately.

“Spirit and Flesh. I'm Rachel, how can the spirits guide you?" answered a woman in an Eastern European accent. Her accent was fine enough to fool a regular person. But anyone from Europe, or familiar with accents, would be able to tell it was fake.

“I was told that you were a skilled medium. So I want to book a reading sometime tomorrow," Iain said in a strong tone. He had initially planned to pretend to be a nervous customer, slightly paranoid as he had seen some people who believed in spirits act. They were right to be so, defenceless as they were. But it felt wrong for him to act so on this occasion for some reason.

“Hmm," said Rachel in thought, pausing for a moment before answering. “I know it's short notice, but, for you, I can squeeze you in today at six in the evening?"

“I'll be there," Iain said with a nod and hung up before he could get a reply from the wolf-blood.

He checked how high the sun was in the sky, if he left now he'd get to her store with a bit of time to spare. He double checked the address in the phone book before he set off for the store. He tossed the phone book in a bin. The person he stole it from could get another one easily enough.

The store was a small thing, squashed between two other buildings and would've been easily missed were it not for the small brass sign on the door. A picture of a crystal ball with 'Spirit and Flesh' written in a cursive script. It still could have been missed by people not looking for it, so she must be a skilled seeress to be able to run such a successful store in such a disadvantageous location. She did make the Protectorate think she was a witch after all.

He entered the store, a bell rang above his head as he opened the door. It was dark and moody in the store with a doorway at the far end of the room that was covered in a veil of beads instead of a door. The room was lit with fake, and some real, candles. His sensitive nose stung from the overpowering stench of incense smoke that hung in the air, forming a slight haze in the air that made the already dark store darker still. The only part of the store properly lit was a small round table with two wooden chairs in the centre of the store. A navy blue table cloth embroidered with moon imagery was laid over it and in the very centre was a round object covered with a silk cloth. A crystal ball, presumably. Occult imagery and objects lined the walls, but not true occult Iain realised. He was confused at that, surely a wolf-blood posing as a medium would use genuine occult imagery. To help sell the lie to customers, and also protect themselves from being Urged and ultimately Claimed by spirits.

She must have a pack protecting her, but the Protectorate didn't have any packs that utilised a medium in this area in their networks, and they would've been alerted to a pack trespassing into their territories. They couldn't risk the spirit's feeding ground being disturbed and thrown out of balance.

He focused his senses, to smell beyond the overuse of incense. It was a rookie trick, to try and disguise the scent of packmates in the store with so much incense. It would hinder her packmates more than it would aid, as the smoke would stick to them and make them so much easier to track. As he separated the smoke from the rest of the scents in the room, he could smell nothing else of note. Only the incense, and that now familiar pleasant scent of the wolf-blood. There's no way her packmate's scents wouldn't permeate the room. Not when they weren't at her house. So how were they protecting their packmate? From spirits and the Protectorate. Was she someone who ran away from her pack? Why didn't she have a pack?

He noticed her then, her eyes at least, from the other side of the bead-veiled door. Two shining specks hung in the dark on the other side of the hanging beads. She parted the beads and entered the room. She was a young white woman, barely in her twenties, dressed as a stereotypical gypsy fortune teller, her fiery red hair kept out of her face by a blue bandana. Her eyes, an unnatural fiery amber, bored into Iain.

Piercing Eyes realised Iain. So that's how the wolf-blood was so successful as a medium. Using the spirits she could see at all times to tell her about her customers. A risky thing to do without the protection of a pack. A stupidly risky thing to do.

“I have been waiting for your arrival," Said the wolf-blood, in that fake Eastern European accent. She walked up to Iain with a practiced, confident air. Their height difference became apparent to him, with the redhead barely coming up to his shoulder.

Why was she keeping up the act of a medium? Thought Iain, surely a wolf-blood who ran away from her pack and pretending to be a medium would be able to tell if an unknown Uratha was in her store pretending to be a customer. What if he was tied to the old pack she ran away from? What if he was an Uratha investigating an intruder to his territory? Which he was.

She circled him, her amber eyes roamed over him, appraising him like he was a cut of prime steak. He wasn't sure what to think of that, it reminded him a bit too much of the other female wolf-bloods the Elders constantly tried to set him up with. He brushed them off every time. His duty as an Uratha was too important and pressing to settle down and have pups. But this time a small part of him liked the attention.

“I haven't met a person like you before," she said, intrigued, as she continued to circle around Iain. Her accent faltered as she added excitedly, “Oh, how the spirits trembled and fled after your call and before you arrived."

Never met? Iain didn't detect any lie in that. She seemed genuinely intrigued that the spirits were afraid of him. But surely she would've known the effect an Uratha's presence had on spirits. Did she not know what he was? What she was? He felt worry start to gnaw at his heart. Not for himself, but for her.

Once she finished her circuit around Iain, she walked over to the table in the centre of the room and sat in the furthest chair. She gestured to the remaining free chair, and said with her accent back, “Please, take a seat and I'll give you your reading."

Iain took the offered chair, if she truly didn't know, he needed to bring her into the fold. Preferably willingly. To protect her from the Pure, from being Urged and Claimed by spirits, and anything else that could pose a threat to her.

The wolf-blood pulled the silk cloth off the crystal ball with a flourish, “The spirits' flight from you will make you a tricky reading, but there are still some that haven't fled."

She gazed into the ball, making nonsense hand gestures around the ball. What she was trying to make it look like she was doing was beyond Iain, and he fought back a laugh. She truly didn't know what she was. But she was skilled, he gave her that. To be able to run such a successful business as a medium showed quite the understanding of spirits. Even if she never had the First Change, she'd prove a valuable packmate. A very valuable packmate.

“I see them now," said the wolf-blood as her hands stopped their waving, her fingers pointing towards the crystal ball. Iain noticed he eyes would flick up from the ball to seemingly random spaces around him. Clever, he thought. Realising what she was doing with her hands. Using her hands to draw her customer's eyes toward the ball and away from her eyes. To keep clueless customers unaware of what she was doing and avoid unnerving them with her eyes' unnatural looks.

“You're a hunter, a hunter of hunters," droned the wolf-blood, changing the tone of her voice to make it seem like she was in a trance. Iain fought the urge to roll his eyes and continued to play along, staring into the crystal ball. The wolf-blood continued, “You stalk the depths of the stygian dark, unnoticed by your prey even as you stand right in front of them. You revel in that fact. It's one of your life's greatest pleasures."

He puffed out his chest. She was right about that. He prided himself in being able to take his prey without them seeing him coming.

“You're on a hunt now, your prey both aware and unaware of your presence. But you came across a snag in your hunt. Your prey wasn't what you first thought. You had to change your intentions. The part of you that desired blood is disappointed, it feels cheated out of what it feels is the proper climax of the hunt."

“But another…" she trailed off. Iain heard her heart rate suddenly spike, and she blushed as her eyes followed something that was bouncing between her and Iain. She continued, her accent gone, and what she said, as much as he hated to admit it, made Iain blush too, “But another part of you is excited. Very excited about this change of plans and it grows stronger by the moment. It's excited that you'll finally fulfil the duty your superiors want you to fulfil."

***

“That's it?" asked David, “What happened after that?"

“They never told me," answered Colin, before slapping David on the arm, “But you're a grown man. You can put two and two together."

David looked at the shorter redhead confused.

Colin rolled his eyes, “I'll give you a hint. This happened around thirty-nine years ago, and my sister would've been thirty-nine this year."

David's face flushed, turning a brighter and brighter shade of red, almost matching the shade of Colin's hair as he realised.

“Now you get it," Colin laughed. He clapped his hands together once, “Back to The Lady and The Damsman."

“But what about your grandfather?" asked David, making Colin groan again. “How did they find out he was a sudden wolf-blood like I was?"

“The Elders looked through his service history and found the report of his squad's slaughter and how afterwards there were constant wolf sightings around him. Even though Vietnam doesn't have wolves. A clear case of the Phantom Pack Tell," Colin explained impatiently. “Can I get back to the lesson?"

“You said it was a romantic story," said David, ignoring Colin's question and his subsequent glare. “But he was planning to kill her."

Colin threw his head back and groaned before he answered. “An Uratha hunting someone then deciding to take them as a mate instead is a textbook fairytale romance. Trust me, almost every Cahalith I met wouldn't shut up about it.

“Can I get back to the lesson now?" Colin asked again.

David opened his mouth to ask another question but Colin grabbed the book on the Hoover Dam. Clearly planning on hitting David over the head with it if he said anything that wasn't a 'yes'.

David closed his mouth and meekly said, “Yes."