Chapter I: Dealing with shadows
Aran. A young wolf, thrown into a world of grown-up people, while he was not fully grown up himself. He liked to think of himself as a strong, independent young adult, but never considered the possibility that he might have left a part of himself at home when he moved out of his parents' house.
He was rudely woken up on that special Thursday by the sound of his ringing phone. Without bothering to open his eyes or sit up, he blindly grabbed his phone from his nightstand and answered the call.
"You've got Aran, who's this?" he initiated, still only half awake.
"Bro, it's me," a familiar ruffian voice sounded, "I'm in trouble."
"Mike? What happened?" the wolf replied agitated.
Now fully awake, he sat up straight, eager to find out what the bear had gotten himself into.
"You know that job I did last week with Chris?"
"Of course, you've been bragging for the entire day after about how you got away clean," Aran scoffed.
"Well, apparently, we didn't. Last night, the cops got Chris and they cut him a deal."
Chris, obviously. Call me a racist, but his species portrayed his personality.
"Let me guess, decreased punishment if he gave up his accomplice?"
"Swing and hit, bro."
"So he betrayed you? I know the guy's a weasel, but now he's a rat as well?"
"Can't be helped, Aran."
"Wait, speaking of deals, you were going to buy-" Aran started, but his friend cut him off.
"Shut it, bro. Don't get me into more trouble than I'm already in. I'll be off the streets for at least a couple of months. Go there yourself if you really need to."
Before the wolf could respond, Mike ended the conversation. With his phone still his hand, he idly sat on his bed for a while, trying to make sense of the conversation he had just had. His best friend was in jail, betrayed by one of their associates, and he had to make a deal with someone only Mike knew.
Still, he had little choice. He was not addicted to the stuff, but he did not want to live without his daily dose of ursaurine. A synthetic drug, an enjoyable combination hallucinating relaxation on short terms, with a side effect comparable to the main use of light steroids.
Not that Aran was the bodybuilding type, but with his five-foot-something frame, he was a bit of an underdog. Some considered him a runt, since he was a both small and black. Black wolves are a fairly rare subspecies, only born from two wolves that both carry a recessive gene.
So in all this, to compensate for his small frame and the general prejudices that came with it, he used ursaurine. Not only did he greatly enjoy the near-immediate effect that caused a hallucinating trance, he also noticed that it took him much less effort to train his muscles.
Aran halted his train of thought and got up from his bed. Mike and he both kept a small notebook in a hollow under one of the floor planks of their small house for cases of emergency. The notebooks contained information about people to contact, places to flee to and people to avoid should certain things happen.
It also contained a few pre-scripted testimonies they would recite to the police in case any of them was caught and confronted about some crime they had committed. Flipping through the little book, the wolf looked for the page that contained phone numbers and names in an encrypted notation. Mike had developed that notation during high school and although it was fairly easy to decode, one needed the key to crack it as there were a few different ways to translate the words.
Some of it rested on inside jokes between the two buddies, which were the result of six years of friendship. Although, friendship, it was more about breaking rules and covering up for each other. Supposedly, every friendship is based on a unique principle.
Soon he found the name and the phone number of the person he needed to contact. The wolf grabbed his phone from his bed and dialed the number. It took a while, but eventually, someone answered the call.
"Mason. What do you want?" a somewhat rude voice asked.
"I want what you are going to sell to Mike tonight," Aran answered, trying not to let his slight anxiety seep through.
"Where'd you get this number?"
"I'm a friend of Mike's, but he got himself caught by the cops."
A short silence followed.
"All right. Meet me behind Dixon's Diner at eleven. Come alone, come unarmed."
Before the wolf could respond, 'Mason' cut the connection. All he could do was wait for the evening to come, so he wasted his daytime like he usually did. Eventually, the time had come for Aran to leave. He put on his sturdy boots and his long, dark grey coat. The benefit of the coat was not only its color and the warmth it supplied, but also that it mostly concealed Aran's tail and therefore masked an important part of his body language.
He reached the alley behind Dixon's a good ten minutes before the deal. Mike had taught him that it is best to scout the place where you are going to meet with someone, in case something goes bad. That way, one knows where the escape routes are and where one could possibly hide.
In the dark area between two streetlights, he waited for Mason to show up. As if it was a scripted scene from a movie, two tigers dressed in dark coats appeared from around the corner. A nearby tower bell boomed its message: eleven o'clock.
"You Aran?" the taller one asked with a rough voice.
"Depends," the wolf bit back, "Are you Mason?"
"That depends on whether you can pay me," he answered.
They were now in front of the wolf, only a few feet away.
"Search him," Mason commanded his partner.
Aran put his hands up and let the tiger search him for weapons.
"You alone?"
He nodded.
"You got what I want?" Aran asked, not wanting to be there any longer than necessary.
"Maybe, maybe not. You see, I don't know you, and I don't like you. One day, my buyer is arrested and the next day, some weirdo I have never even heard of shows up, claiming to be a friend of my buyer. Don't you think that's at least a little fishy?"
"As long as you get your money, do you even care?" the wolf countered.
Mason got close to Aran, his muzzle right in front of the wolf's, staring in his eyes.
"I think I know what's going on here. Mike got himself caught and now he's being a rat to wiggle out of whatever trouble he's in. How can you prove you're not some undercover cop?"
"I can't," Aran stated bluntly.
Mason looked at his partner.
"We figured as much. Get lost," Mason spat at the wolf, then turned around to leave.
"You can't do this, man! I need that stuff!"
"Listen, punk," the other tiger said, "Mason is the kind of guy that does whatever he damn well pleases. Now get lost."
"What's the problem? Why don't you want to deal?"
"There is no deal, blackie," Mason said, "I don't deal with people I don't trust."
"And since you have such a hard time understanding that, we'll make sure that you will," his partner added.
Before the wolf could even grasp half of the meaning of that comment, Mason landed his fist on the side of Aran's muzzle. He wanted to run, but Mason's his partner kicked him in the knee and prevented his escape. Aran's body hit the hard cobblestone surface of the pavement, but that was not enough for the tigers.
On the contrary. They moved in and repeatedly kicked the small wolf in the chest and back, until Aran stopped moving. Mason finished it off with one more stomp against the wolf's head, leaving their victim battered and dazed as they disappeared in the darkness of the night into the direction from which they had appeared.
The wolf tried to get back on his paws, or at least to sit up, but his body refused. The tigers had dealt some serious pain, turning Aran into a sad little heap of whimpering wolf. From the other side, a stranger appeared and approached the wolf. Although it was quite dark, Aran could make up that the figure was a canine, probably some kind of dog.
"Need some help?" the stranger asked.
"Yeah... I guess I do," Aran replied with a weak voice, "You're not one of Mason's guys, are you?"
The stranger did not respond, but extended his right arm instead. Aran accepted the invitation and took hold of the hand as firmly as he could. As soon as the stranger had pulled him up, the wolf felt a small prick in his upper arm.
He blinked in an attempt to focus his vision and saw that the dog had stuck a pen with a needle in his arm.
"Night-night," the stranger whispered.
Somewhat baffled by the unusual comment, Aran tried to discern what the dog meant. He never reached the answer, as his brain agreed with his body that it was time to close his eyes and drift off to sleep.