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“What’s the point of you claiming that thing as part of our share if it never fucking helps?” David asked Lucas from the library’s couch, piles of books littering the ground by his feet.

He was referring to the carved marble statue of a barn owl that was roosting on a decorative perch on the desk with Lucas. The magic statue was supposed to help the user find whatever information they needed in a collection, but whenever David tried to get it to help it would always give him a snide comment. If it ever said anything at all.

“Have you tried not being such a prick to her?” asked Lucas as he gave the statue an affectionate pat on the head.

The pair were pouring through local records, investigating any possible sites in their territory that could be potential site Wounds that could be forced opened. The entire pack had spent two weeks trying to find one since a Wound was opened at the edge of their territory in Ely. They were fortunate that the actual location was deep underground and the only entrance to it had been sealed off by White Pine’s sheriff’s department.

But they knew they couldn’t rely on that being the case forever. They needed to track down the Balehound tearing open the Wounds.

It was starting to get late in the night when both of them noticed a strange uptick in temperature in the room.

David was the first to notice, looking up from his book, a journal from a grocery shop owner from when Pioche was first founded, and said, “The fuck? It’s usually cold in here.”

“Only when you’re in here. For some reason,” said Lucas before looking up from his own book. “But you’re right. It’s too warm right now.”

Suspicious, both of their eyes turned gold, peering into the Twilight, and saw a giant ball of flaming stone hovering in the middle of the small library.

“Fireball,” said Lucas, chastising their pack totem spirit, “You know you can’t be in here. You could catch the books on fire.”

The meteor spoke in the First Tongue in a voice like grinding stone and grating glass, “You two were particularly invested in finding a specific coyote spirit, were you not? Or are you no longer interested in catching them?”

David shot up from the couch, “You have a lead on the bastard?”

The flaming meteor wobbled in the air as it nodded, “The coyote spirits that Lucas recruited to find the spirits name and where they’re hiding. Coyote Liar-Heart, and they’re hiding in the White Rock Range North-East of here.”

David bolted out of the library, out of the house, and to Morrison’s cabin. He loudly pounded his fist on the door until the Old Man swung the door open, furious.

“You better have found the Balehound’s next target,” he growled.

“No,” answered David. “We found where to find the spirit that murdered Dane.”

“Tell me when you find the Balehound traitor,” said Morrison before closing the door in David’s face.

“But we know where it is,” said David as he pounded on the cabin door again. “We can’t let it run off again.”

“We can always just find it again,” shouted Morrison from inside the cabin. “It can’t hide forever.”

Fed up, David let himself into the cabin. “We have to track it down.”

Morrison snarled at the intrusion, “Finding the Balehound is more important than hunting a spirit that slighted you.”

Remembering the Old Man’s tribe, the Storm Lords, David snapped back, “But Liar-Heart Claimed someone. You can’t let it get away with this!”

A seething look of cold fury arose on Morrison’s face as his tribe’s favoured prey was used against him.

David saw the look, the final warning that it represented and knew what he would say next would be tantamount to suicide. But like seeing the train on the tracks, it was too late to stop himself from saying, “Let it make the entire pack look WEAK in front of all the spirits in our territory!”

Morrison was a blur as the elder launched himself across the cabin’s small and grabbed David by the throat, slamming the younger werewolf against the wall. His face contorted in a viscous snarl.

He didn’t make a noise at first. Not even a growl as he strangled his ward against the wall, their feet kicking as they were held off the ground.

He said in a flat, emotionless voice that was diametrically opposed to the fury that he showed, “Colin’s been rubbing off on you.”

He let David go, dropping the Bone Shadow to the floor who clutched their throat as they coughed and wheezed trying to regain their breath.

He told him, “Conduct the Bone Shadows Siskur-Dah.”

He bent over David, growling, “But *I* will be leading the Hunt.”

He didn’t let David catch his breath before grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and throwing him out of his cabin into the dirt outside. “You have an hour to get everything, and everyone else, ready.”

***

The pack was whipped up into a frenzy as David stormed back into the Den.

“So we’re gonna kill it?” Tsu’mara asked David as they pilfered the Library’s closet for materials for the Bone Shadows’ Siskur-Dah.

“No,” answered David, shoving some black feathers in the pouch of a backpack.

“Then what are we gonna do to it?” asked Tsu’mara.

“We’re going to find it, and bind it,” answered David. He grabbed a few sticks of chalk from a drawer on one of the closet’s shelves and put them in a separate pouch from the feathers. “A couple weeks ago, when Lucas got the other coyote spirits on our side to rat their friend out, I tracked down a spider spirit and paid it way too much Essence to teach me how to Shadowbind.”

Lucas piped up, asking, “How are you going to bind it? It’s a trickster and chaos spirit. They’re slippery bastards and Shadowbinding rites are unique to each spirit they’re used on.”

“I’m going to bind it in a circle, with numbers in the First Tongue drawn around it like a clock,” said David, his back to his packmates as he dug around in the corner of the cupboard that he had stored all the materials and tools used for fetish crafting. “Then, with the circle complete, it’ll give me time to force it into this.”

He pulled out a small, wall mountable grandfather clock. “Pure clockwork. Nothing represents Order more. Bring Order to its Chaos.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, David,” said Lucas in disbelief. “Binding it in a circle like that, and then putting it in a clockwork clock? That’s just pure torture.”

“That’s the point,” said David as he shoved the clock into the main compartment of the backpack and slung it onto back, grunting from the unwieldy weight.

“I like it,” said Jesse.

“Of course you fucking do,” said Lucas before saying to David. “It’d be more merciful to just kill it.”

“It doesn’t deserve mercy!” snarled David. “It murdered Dane, possessed a human, possessed and Claimed another human, slaughtered an entire pack that broke no laws, tainted a locus, and tore open a Wound!”

He stormed up to Lucas and got up into their face and snarled, “Each and every single one of those is deserving of death. But you can only die once, so it deserves something far worse than death.”

Lucas was silent as he realised exactly what David had planned for Coyote Liar-Heart. He asked, concerned, “Just how long do you plan on keeping it in that clock?”

“Centuries,” answered David before turning around and leaving the Den to meet with Morrison.

***

Ghosts milled around the pack as they stood in Boothill Cemetery’s reflection in the Spirit World. David was kneeling on the ground in the faint light of the crescent moon, he wrapped up incense and raven feathers into a bundle. Wolves and ravens, in the Mundane world, would often work together in the wild to hunt down and kill coyotes. Ravens also symbolised a great many things, core among them was Death. It was the perfect symbolism for the tribal Siskur-dah of Kamduis-Ur, Death Wolf.

He lit a small fire on the ground in front of him and had the pack gather around it. He lit the bundle of incense and feathers, and with a spare raven feather, smudged it, guiding the smoke to each pack member. Each one inhaled the smoke when it was their turn, their eyes dilating and their blood rushing as the ecstacy of the Sacred Hunt enveloped them.

After his own turn, taking it last, he cast the bundle into the fire and a dark, roiling pillar of smoke erupted up into the sky. It speared upwards until suddenly spreading out into dark, smokey wings forming the shape of a vast raven. A raven visible from all the way in White Rock Range.

Coyote Liar-Heart saw the raven in the sky. It saw and it understood. It was found, and it was being hunted.

Morrison howled before shifting into Urhan. The rest of the pack joined in on the howl before shifting as well. Kaiden joined Morrison in Urhan, and the rest shifted to Urshal.

They bounded off North into the desert towards White Rock Range where their quarry was hiding. Spirits ran from the sight of them, terrified of getting between Uratha and their Sacred Hunt. The only spirits that didn’t were a pack of coyotes, the same coyotes that helped find Coyote Liar-Heart.

They raced across the desert, over the mountains of the ridge, following the coyotes as they guided them to Liar-Heart’s foxhole.

“Traitors!” howled Liar-Heart in the First Tongue as it saw the pack and their own fellow coyote spirits cross over the ridge. It ran, with the pack and coyote spirits in hot pursuit.

It used every trick available to it to evade them. Illusions that had them chasing phantoms, running into ditches, and into rock faces. It threw explosive blasts of essence to hurt and disorient the pack. More illusions to cover its tracks.

For three whole hours it would slip out from between their snapping jaws. It slipped away over White Rock Ridge, and across Parsnip peak. It was only through Morrison’s experience and the allied coyote’s help that they were able to keep on Liar-Heart’s tail.

They followed into Pioche where the coyotes broke off from the pack to try and cut Liar-Heart off in case it managed to elude them again.

In Pioche, it bolted through houses, under houses, slipped through gutters into storm drains. It eluded everyone.

As Liar-Heart poked its snout from underneath the dry-rotted door of an abandoned mechanic’s garage, it thought it was in the clear. It dragged itself out from the ruined remains of the permanently closed down shop’s spiritual reflection and started slinking down Main Street, looking to and fro for the pack it had eluded once again.

As it passed by the half restored, half ruined reflection of the Gem Theater a shadow shifted on top of the Gem Theater’s marquee. It noiselessly leapt from the halfruined cover and set upon the skulking spirit.

Liar-Heart shrieked in shock and surprise as Jesse landed on and savaged the spirit.

Jesse threw the coyote into the boarded up doorway of the Gem Theater.

The rest of the pack caught up, and David thundered ahead of them and rammed into Liar-Heart. The two crashed through the plywood and into the under construction screening room.

The coyote spirit thrashed and snapped as it and the raging Urshal destroyed the inside of the theatre.

David grabbed the coyote by its throat with his maw, and reared up onto his hindlegs. He then grabbed the spirit with his handpaws and slammed them down onto the ground, forcing a screaming howl of agony from the lesser canine.

He dragged the coyote along the ground before throwing it towards the pack as they piled into the theatre.

Tsu’mara shifted to Dalu and caught the coyote in a choke hold, then pinned it to the ground.

The rest of the pack shifted to Dalu as well and surrounded Tsu’mara.

“Don’t let it go!” snapped David, pulling out a stick of chalk from the backpack and drawing a circle around his packmate.

As David started the Shadowbinding rite, drawing the numbers of a clock in the First Tongue, Liar-Heart let out a strangled howl of agony as Order started to be forcibly imposed on it, starting to bind its Chaotic nature.

It wrenched a paw free and coalesced a roiling ball of essence. David saw it form and dropped prone on the ground to narrowly dodge the blast thrown at him. It sailed over him and struck Lucas, and exploded, sending the Ithaeur flying into a pile of unassembled cinema seats.

“Lucas!” yelled David, getting up to run to his packmate.

“No!” yelled Lucas as he crawled out of the chairs, clutching his side in pain. The wound slow to heal because of it being a spiritual attack. “Finish the rite!”

Reluctant, David returned to the rite, to continue writing the numbers.

But before he could restart, Liar-Heart launched another blast of essence which missed its target, David, and struck Lucas, sending the Ithaeur back into the seats.

Tsu’mara struggled to keep the coyote under control as David continued the binding. David was so focused on getting the rite finished that he didn’t notice Liar-Heart line up another shot of explosive essence.

He was torn out of the way by Jesse who took the blast for him.

Morrison caught Jesse, arresting their momentum and preventing him from getting injured by the blast. He snarled to David, “Hurry up!”

“I’m almost done!” said David, scrambling back to the circle.

Inside the circle, Tsu’mara grabbed a hold of the paw that was flinging blasts and twisted it until it gave a loud snap as the leg broke under her strength. Liar-heart shrieked from the pain.

David quickly scribbled the rest of the numbers, stopping at the final one, twelve.

“Tsu’mara!” he shouted, the only warning he gave before writing the number.

Tsu’mara dropped the chokehold on Liar-Heart and rolled out of the circle, just as David gave the final stroke with the chalk.

Free from the chokehold, Liar-Heart lunged for Tsu-mara’s throat but collided with an invisible wall that tolled like the bell of a clocktower. It fell into a writhing heap on the ground, in agony as the bell toll echoed in the screening room.

As the tolling subsided, it picked itself up from the ground and paced around the inside of the binding circle. It hopped on its broken leg, hackles raised, and growling in fury.

“How dare you trap me like this?!” snapped Liar-Heart in the First Tongue, frothing at the mouth with anger. “Release me at once!”

David stood up, sneering down at the suffering coyote, and told them the terms for dispelling the binding circle, “Not until the twenty-fifth hour of the day and the pack Luna’s Pride forgives you for what you’ve done.”

Liar-Heart snarled, “That’s impossible!”

“Exactly,” said David.

He swung the backpack off his back and pulled out the small grandfather clock. “It’s time you face the consequences for your crimes.”

Liar-Heart snarled when it saw the clock, realising what was happening. It turned to Morrison and growled, “He’s no Elodoth. He has no right to bring down judgement.”

Morrison crossed his arms and replied, “In the absence of an Elodoth, an Ithaeur’s ruling takes precedence in these matters.”

It looked to Lucas, the only other Ithaeur present who was limping back from the ruined piles of chairs he was repeatedly blasted into by the offending spirit. He snarled, clutching his side, “I’m in agreement with my fellow Ithaeur’s ruling.”

“For your crimes against the Uratha and our laws you will be imprisoned for one century for every death sentence level crime you have committed.” said David as he knelt down and started winding the clock.

Liar-Heart stumbled as its chaotic essence started getting excruciatingly bound up with the clock’s ordered essence. It snapped, “When I escape that accursed clock, I am going to slaughter your entire bloodline. Destroy everything you’ve created!”

David’s claws slipped off the winding key from the coyote’s barbed words. He snapped back, “You won’t survive long enough to even try!”

He brandished the clock at the snarling spirit, “After centuries in this, after centuries of being forced to consume the essence of order. You’d be forced to gain aspects of an order spirit. To be both a spirit of chaos and order, two fundamentally opposed aspects, that’d make you a Magath. An abomination.”

Liar-Heart stepped back in its binding circle in terror and it whined.

David continued, “Once these bindings decay and break, you’ll have every Uratha in Nevada, even Utah, on your ass. Every moment of what little time you’ll have left will be spent hiding in fear.”

He twisted the clock’s winding key and Liar-Heart dropped to the ground, screaming in agony.

“You moon loving monsters!” screamed Liar-Heart as it writhed on the floor, contorting itself as transcendent pain shot through its body, screaming more insults all the while.

Its insults stopped as David twisted the key again, its screaming insults quickly changed to begs, “I’m sorry! Please, don’t do this! I’ll do anything!”

David twisted the key again, slowly, drawing out a tortured howl from the bound spirit.

“Please!” gasped Liar-Heart between its screams. “Your master wouldn’t want you to do this!”

David stopped, glaring at the coyote.

Liar-Heart nodded, saying, desperately, “Yes. Yes, your master would always use willing spirits for fetishes. He wouldn’t approve of this.”

“You’re right,” said David, making Liar-Heart’s ears perk up in hope.

Just to have that brief hope dashed by what David said next, “But he’s not here anymore.”

He twisted the key one last time, and Coyote Liar-Heart let out a single, drawn out shrieking howl of agony. A howl that echoed out of the Gem Theater, across Pioche, Panaca, and Ely. All across the Pack’s territory its howl was heard. Heard by all spirits in their territory. They heard, and they understood it for what it was.

A warning.

A warning and an example of what happens to those who upset the great balance and break the Uratha’s laws.

Liar-Heart screamed as all its fur was torn from its body and sucked into the clock. It screamed as its flesh was shredded from its bones and sucked into the clock. Its screams only stopped when its bones too were shattered and sucked into the clock.

A deafening silence hung in the theatre as David and the rest of the pack beheld the completed fetish.

“So it’s in there?” asked Kaiden. “It’s trapped?”

David brought his ear up to the clock, and instead of the regular, ordered ticking of a clock, he heard the rapid heartbeat of an animal in agony.

He nodded, “It’s trapped, and will be for a very long time.”

***

Colin was in the Nevada Club of Pioche setting the chairs up for the night. Blondie had clocked off for the night a half hour before, trusting Colin to close up for her. He was glad for the extra work, it helped take his mind off what the pack was doing.

He checked the time, he had gotten a phone call from David eight hours ago where he quickly shot off that he and the others had found the killer of Matt Dane’s pack, Luna’s Pride. David had hung up before Colin could even get a word in.

He sighed to himself, he wished he could have joined in on the hunt, but he knew travelling to the Hisil was too dangerous for a Wolf-Blood like himself. He had only gone to the Hisil once to petition the Lunes, and even that was in a safe region of the Hisil in the very centre of their territory. It was about as safe as it could get.

So there he was, left behind to tend to the territory like a good little Wolf-Blood while the Uratha went off to hunt. Again.

He couldn’t join the Pack’s current hunt. He wasn’t even asked to help when the Balehound intruded on their territory. He was kicked out of Cannon’s hunt before its end.

His vision blurred as tears started to sting his eyes. He wiped them away, he knew he shouldn’t complain. Shouldn’t feel bad for himself. He was a Wolf-Blood, his duty and role was to tend to the territory, not hunt as if he was Uratha.

He was also supposed to tutor David, his pack and tribemate. His mate. But when was the last time he had a lesson? Weeks? Months? He had tried to come up with more lessons, but it was all subjects that David had learned from others such as Matt Dane, or Elder Morrison, or subjects that Colin could not properly teach or already had.

He had started tutoring Jessica after the pack took her in after her own pack’s death. But it wasn’t the same as tutoring newly changed Uratha. It wasn’t the same as being Uratha himself.

A loud rapping on the bar’s front door shocked him out of his downward spiral.

He spun around and saw Jesse excitedly knocking on the door, with the rest of the Pack standing behind him.

He made his way over to the door, and opened a crack. He smiled, burying the sorrow he felt just moments before and asked, “You found it? What did you do to it?”

David held up the clock, a look of almost child-like excitement on his face that made Colin’s smile become more genuine.

“I imprisoned it in here,” said David just before the clock struck Three O’clock. When it did, a canine shriek of pain rang out from the clock three times.

“Huh,” said David as he looked at the clock. “I was wondering if it was gonna do that.”

Colin opened the door fully and waved them in, “Well get in here before anyone thinks a coyote’s getting tortured by you.”

They all piled in, pulling down the barrel-like chairs that were set on their usual table and started to celebrate their successful hunt.

As everyone was celebrating, with Tsu’mara and Morrison competing with each other by downing whole bottles of moonshine, David pulled out his sketchbook and put it on the table.

“You’re able to change things’ shapes,” David told Lucas.

Lucas sighed and downed his cup of whiskey, knowing that that was the closest David was going to get to asking politely for his help. “What do you need?”

David opened his sketchbook to the page where he had the finalised design for the mirror he had been working on. It was a simple design, a round handheld mirror from a solid piece of silver. Its only details were the phases of the moon that bordered its back, and word ‘Truth’ in the First Tongue in the very middle of the mirror’s back.

“I need some Lunargent shaped for this fetish I want to make.”

“Sure, I’ll help,” said Lucas. He pulled the sketchbook closer to himself and looked over its design. He asked, “What do you hope to have it do?”

“Tell the truth,” answered David.

“Okay, Mister Firetouched,” chuckled Lucas.

David kicked him in the shin before saying, “That’s why I need it made of silver, and want all my fetishes to have silver in them somewhere. To keep them out of The Pure’s hands. Especially this one.”

“Why lunargent though?” asked Lucas. “Why not just regular silver?”

“I’ve read through all of Dane’s books on fetishes and their crafting,” said David.

“You’ve been reading?” asked Lucas in mock disbelief.

David growled at Lucas’ teasing remark before continuing, “They never mentioned anything about Perfected Materials. But they, and he, always stressed about using the best possible materials for fetishes. You can’t get any better than these supposed Perfected Materials.”

Lucas nodded and stated, “Dane was a renowned fetish crafter. So you want to add on to that legacy with these materials. Make him proud.”

David was silent before he admitted with a nod.

“I’ll do this. But why a mirror?” asked Lucas. “Why not a polygraph if you want it to just tell the truth?”

“There are a series of paintings in the Eighteen-nineties by the artist Jean-Léon Gèrôme-”

Lucas did a small double take when David pronounced the artist’s name with a perfect French accent.

David continued, unaware of his packmate’s surprise, “-where he anthropomorphised the concept of Truth as a naked woman. His most famous in the series was ‘La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité’.”

“English,” said Lucas.

David sighed in annoyance and translated, “Truth Coming from the Well Armed with Her Whip to Chastise Humanity.”

He pulled out his phone and quickly googled the painting and showed it to Lucas.

Lucas looked at the painting on the phone depicting a naked woman climbing out of a well wielding a whip and screaming at the viewer.

“What does a mirror have to do with this?” asked Lucas when he didn’t see one in the painting.

“It’s because she’s often depicted with one,” answered David. He pulled up another painting, Truth at the Bottom of the Well, and showed him. “This one was painted by him the year before in Eighteen-ninety-five. This one she has a mirror.”

He pulled up another painting, Truth Lies Murdered at the Bottom of a Well, “This one was from the same year and has her dead at the bottom of a well, murdered, with the mirror illuminating her corpse.”

He put his phone away and said, “He wasn’t the only person to paint about the naked truth, wells, and mirrors. Like Édouard Debat-Ponsan’_s ‘_Truth Coming out of the Well '. It’s just that _Gèrôme’_s paintings are just the most famous of them.”

Lucas leaned forward, intrigued by and curious of David’s plans for the fetish. “What kind of spirit are you gonna use for it?”

“A well spirit ideally,” answered David. “If I can’t find one, or convince it to power the fetish, a regular water spirit would have to do.”

“What about conducting the rite?” Asked Lucas. “How will you do it?”

David shrugged, “By recreating his most famous painting. Climb out of a well while naked and holding the mirror.”

“I’d love to see that,” teased Colin, who was evidently eavesdropping, which made Lucas snicker and David blush.

Jesse walked by, dragging Kaiden. “Come on. You’re the only one of us who hasn’t petitioned the Lunes yet.”

Kaiden resisted, trying to pull out of his packmate’s grip, “But I don’t know what to petition them for.”

“You’re a Cahalith,” said Jesse. “Petition them to recognise your Glory.”

“What would I even tell them?” asked Kaiden. “I don’t know if I’ve done anything glorious.”

Colin thought for a moment before saying, “You fought Cannon. You could word it like you defeated a superior foe. He was pretty powerful. For a mage.”

“Perfect!” cried out Jesse and started dragging Kaiden even harder. “Come on! Let’s go!”

Morrison called out, “You should also do things that are considered Wise. Like bolstering the Minehead locus. I shouldn’t be the only one doing that.”

“I will!” called out Kaiden just before he was dragged out.

“I wonder what aspect of what Shadow Gift he’ll get,” said David.

“I hope it’s the glorious Aspect of the Gift of the Elementals, Catastrophe," said Lucas. “It enhances the other Aspects like your Tongue of Flame and my Breath of Air. It’ll also make him immune to them too.”

“Your what?!” asked David. Breath of Air would make the air itself dance and howl to their call. To control and intensify the air itself. “You never mentioned you having that.”

Lucas went to say something, but David cut him off, “And don’t try to say it’s cause I never hang out with you like with Kaiden’s Wolf Gift, Skin Thief. You have never used it, and never mentioned it before now.”

“Don’t fucking start,” warned Morrison. “We’re supposed to be celebrating. We’re not even meant to be here either. We can’t have Colin needing to explain to Blondie why the club was trashed.”

He checked the time, “Speaking of which, we should leave before we’ve drunk too much. So that he doesn’t have to explain so much missing stock either.”

***

It was the next day in the afternoon at the Den, and everyone who participated in the hunt was sleeping in after spending all night hunting Coyote Liar-Heart. Jesse and Kaiden joined them in bed a couple hours after the others after they petitioned the Lunes, where Kaiden did indeed get the Catastrophe Shadow Gift.

Lucas shot up from the bed. He shifted from Urhan to Hishu and shouted, to wake everyone up, “Oh, shit! Problem!”

“What is it?” asked Tsu’mara after shifting to Hishu.

“The wards were tripped,” Lucas said quickly. “Lots of them. Seven Uratha crossed the territory bounds and coming fast from the South. Probably in a car.”

Tsu’mara bolted out of the bedroom to wake Morrison in his cabin.

Morrison rushed in not long after, “Seven you said? Could be the Talbot’s. They have eight left.”

“We don’t know that for sure. It could be Dixie coming in again,” said David, remembering the woman’s flagrant disregard for the legal speed limit.

Morrison’s phone beeped from a text. He pulled it out and his face became grave. “It’s from Father Albert. The Talbot’s just pulled up outside Martinez’ clinic.”