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Lykos- Lone Wolf

Chapter 2

Kyle, Steve and Jessica made their way through the woods, tracking the scent of the wounded human. They eventuall reached the road, where the scenet stopped. "Shit," Kyle exclaimed. "He drove away. Tracking him now will be nearly impossible!"

"There has to be some way," Jessica said. "I mean with a sense of smell as strong as yours, it has to be possible."

Kyle sighed, thinking deeply, then looked at her with a wince. "Does your little brother still have that skateboard?..."

*****

Meanwhile, the other trio followed the path of the unnatural beast until they came upon something that couldn't be described by anyone who had never played any of the Silent Hill video games. To say that it was the mutilated corpse of some massive beast was the understatement of the century. It was in reality, a pile of decaying flesh that might have been some mad god's idea of an attempt at a four-legged animal, only one that had been so twisted and distorted that it was clear that the thing it had been belonged in no world where sunshine and happiness flowed rampant and free. In the harsh light of the morning sun, it was hard for Jack to avoid vomiting up his late night snack. The stench coming off the unholy monstrocity only made it worse. They noted that the thing's stomache was torn open in a way that suggested that something, or someone, had torn their way out of the monster's body.

"What the hell is that?" Luke asked, his face a mixture of horror, revultion and confusion.

Jack swallowed a small amount of stomache acid with difficulty. "I... I think that's the husk."

"You mean this thing," Ken asked, staring at the remains with disgust, "Is a direwolf? This is what was running around loose last night?"

"I'm afraid so, but this is merely the cast off shell of the beast. It turned back into its human shape and tore its way out of the direwolf's body." He took a deap breath and almost fainted from the smell. "Try to pick up the scent. We need to see where they went from here."

It was difficult, but they eventually found the trail of a man who reeked of decay leading farther on through the woods, leading them in a curving path that eventually led them to the road that cut through the woods, where they stopped. "Don't tell me," Jack said weakly.

"I'm afraid so," Luke told him gravely. "It looks like he had a car or something. He's gone."

"Let's get back to Ino. The others need to know what we've found.

With that, the exhausted trio made their way back through the trees...

*****

Jessica and Steve followed Kyle, the werewolf trying hard not to laugh at the rediculous posture of his pack mate, who was laying on his stomache and propelling himself along with his hands as he sniffed the ground occassionally to keep them on the trail.

"Why am I the one doing this?" Kyle whined.

"It was your idea," Steve replied merrily, the humor of the situation having driven the fear from his mind, allowing him to be his usual jovial self.

Jessica interrupted Kyle's grumbling. "Are we any closer to finding the person we're looking for?" she asked.

"Do you know how many vehicles travel along these streets?" Kyle asked with annoyance. "It's like finding the olfactory equivalent of a needle in a haystack. Shit! I lost the trail again!" He rolled backwards through the intersection, trying to sniff out the trail of the car they were looking for. Fortunately, the trace amounts of blood on the outside of the vehicle and the unique tang of the car's exhaust made it stand out, but with all the other overlapping scents of other vehicles, it was like trying to find Waldo by smell.

"This way," he grumbled, turning right. The others followed, ignoring the occassional odd stares they got from passers by and the annoyed drivers who had to circle around them, honking testily as they passed the trio and sped away.

It took nearly two and a half hours, but the city wasn't that large, rather small by the standards of an actual city, and they eventually arrived at the enclosed parking garage of an apartment building. As soon as they reached it, they learned that finding their quarry would be harder than they'd anticipated. The complex was a secured access location, requiring keycards to enter and leave, and hopping the fence was out of the question. Not only would seeing a man leap higher than any human could draw a dangerous level of attention, there were security cameras aimed at every entrance, making entering the premesis without detection impossible.

"What do we do now?" Steve asked, yawning deeply.

First Jessica, then Kyle, mimiced him. It had already been a long night, and now it was turning into a long day. The woman glanced at her watch and was shocked to see that it was nearly noon. "Well... I guess all we can do is stake the place out and wait for him to come out. He has to leave eventually."

"We can't stay here," Kyle replied curtly. "I'm about ready to fall on my nose and people will get suspicious if we hang around here with nothing to do for hours on end."

"There's a park," Steve suggested, pointing across the street from the complex. "We can wait there and see if we can spot anyone suspicious leaving the building."

"I guess it's all we can do," Jessica said tiredly. I'll take first shift. You guys can get by with less sleep than I can."

With that, they made their way across the street and planted themselves under a thick shade tree. The wolves were asleep in seconds, leaving the human woman to watch the building with bloodshot eyes. "You better not keep us waiting forever," she grumbled to herself, glaring at the building across the way...

*****

Ben awoke several hours later, then rose and took a shower, pausing in confusion as he looked at the wounds on his arms. Funny, they seemed to be much smaller and less serious that he'd thought they were when he'd tended to them last night. After he bathed, brushing his teeth in the shower to save time, and putting band aids over the cuts on his arms, he found that he was starving and went to the kitchen of his small apartment, looking for something to eat. After riffling through the fridge and cupboards, he realized that what he really wanted was meat, and a good amount of it, too. The thought made his mouth water and he nearly drooled. Disgusted with himself for acting in such a vulgar fashion, he rinsed his mouth out in the sink, then went to get dressed.

After putting on his clothes, Ben decided to wear the ring he hadn't worn the previous night for fear of thieves. He opened the middle drawer of his dresser, moved the shirts out of the way and grabbed the ring from its place. In mere moments, though, he yelped in shock and pain, feeling a searing sensation in his fingertips. Alarmed, he let go of the ring, which dropped back into the drawer. Ben instinctively brought his hand to his mouth, sucking on the thumb and forefinger to nurse them for a few moments. As he removed his fingers from his mouth, he could see thin red lines of irritation, almost like burn marks, engraved across the tips of his fingers. As he stared at them in shock, the marks began fading slowly.

"What the fuck?" he muttered. He looked down at the ring, the silver circle of metal sitting innocently in the drawer where he'd dropped it, then reached for it again. He picked it back up to examine it, and as his skin came into into contact with the ring, the burning flared up again, slowly like a spark igniting into an inferno, and he dropped the band, which bounced off the edge of the drawer, then off of his shirt, then the lowest closed dresser drawer, before it came to a stop against his sock-covered foot, where it sat there, looking perfectly ordinary. Squatting down, he looked at the item with confusion. He'd worn that ring often, and it had ever caused him harm before. Ben stared at it, unable to comprehend what was happening.

*Did someone sneak in and dunk it in battery acid, or something?* he wondered silently. He went to pick it up, thought better of it, then opened the bottom drawer of the dresser, pulled out a sock (because it made sense to arrange clothes in the dresser by the level of the body parts they went onto), and used it to pick up the ring. He stood up and examined the ring closely, but didn't see anything wrong with it. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him of just how hungry he was. Shaking his head in confusion, he dropped the ring into the mug on top of the dresser that held a collection of pens of questionable quality of usage, left the sock on top of the dresser, then grabbed his wallet, keys and such and made his way out in search of food.

As he left the garage, he took no notice of the three people sitting across the way under a tree...

*****

Kyle's head shot upwards suddenly as the garage door opened across the street and the distinctive smell of tangy exhaust hit his nose. "It's him!" he blurted out, making the others jolt awake. Jessica rubbed sleep from her eyes and stared at the man inside the car. He looked ordinary enough, short dark hair and beard, both trimmed short. He looked like any other fairly attractive man in his early thirties. They watched as he drove away, then got up and hurried over to Jessica's sedan, which Jack and Luke had driven over earlier, both to give her back her mode of transportation, as well as to compare notes on the events since they'd left the wolves' sanctuary that morning. They scrambled inside, then hurried off after the man, following him covertly to a barbeque restaurant that was slightly pricey, but not ridiculously so, showing that the man apparently had enough money for occasional splurges.

*He sure doesn't spend money on his car,* Jessica thought, looking at the old, battered Honda sedan the man drove. It looked like it had spent some time in a demolition derby, but seemed to run alright.

The wolves didn't even consider the state of the car, or anything else, for that matter. All of their attention was focused in the smell of cooking meat wafting through the air and they began drooling uncontrollably at the incredibly delicious smell radiating from the restaurant. Kyle, who was riding shotgun, stared at the building with a deep longing, then he whimpered pitifully, remembering something. "Jessica? Can we have some ribs?"

It took a moment for the meaning of the request to sink in. "Where's your money? Don't tell me you spent all your pay from your last design job already."

"Not all of it..." Kyle answered timidly. "But I don't have enough left for ribs." Desperate, he turned to the backseat to implore his packmate. "Steve?"

"Don't look to me, I barely have enough to get by 'til Friday," the other wolf said, holding up his hands helplessly.

Kyle turned back to Jessica and gave her literal puppy dog eyes, his lower jaw trembling.

She stared at him with a deadpan expression. "I am NOT buying you ribs! I'll get you a pulled pork sandwich, but that's it. I'm not made of money you know!"

"But... They don't have bones. I wanted some bones to gnaw on later..." Kyle pleaded.

"Bones sound really nice," Steve mumbled, staring longingly at the front door of the restaurant.

Jessica resisted, but the whimpering and copious amounts of drool pouring from their mouths finally got to her. "ARGH!" she snarled, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes in frustration. "You guys are impossible! Fine! HALF-RACKS ONLY!"

The wolves bolted from the car, scrambling for the building.

Jessica threw herself savagely out of the car and slammed the door. "Those guys are going to drive me crazy!" she snarled, fuming to herself as she followed after them ...

*****

Jessica sat there, watching the werewolves slobber over their meals, their teeth scrapping the bones repeatedly. "Don't gnaw on them in public!" she hissed with annoyance.

"Why not?" Steve asked, dragging his teeth eagerly along the length of a rib bone. "He's doing it," the wolf added, nodding at their quarry, who was eating a full rack of ribs and using his teeth to get every last molecule of meat and cartilage he could from each bone before dropping it and moving onto the next one.

"Can you guys tell if he's a werewolf now?" she asked them.

"I'd have to get closer to tell. There's too many scents in here," Kyle said.

"Then get close to him and find out," the woman ordered firmly, yet gently.

"But my ribs-"

"-Will still be here when you get back," Jessica interrupted with annoyance.

"Don't take my ribs," he warned Steve, who was already eyeing them while picking the meat off of one of his own.

"Go!" the human ordered firmly, this time with a trace of annoyance. Kyle rose from the table and walked away with great reluctance.

Steve watched him leave, then moved his hand towards Kyle's plate.

Jessica snatched it away. "No!" she told him sharply, feeling like she was dealing more with a disobedient dog than a full adult werewolf. Normally the guys weren't this bad. They were often more intellectual than they were acting, but the lack of sleep seemed to have them more in instinct mode than usual, so she had to treat them like unruly pups, rather than adults as she normally did. *Just one of the burdens of becoming a Keeper, I guess,* she thought wistfully to herself.

Kyle made his way across the room, then snuck into the empty booth behind the bearded man and leaning back, took a strong whiff through his nose. The man's scent confirmed what he already knew. *He's one of us now... At least I hope he is. If he was turned by a direwolf, though, would that make him one of them, or one of us? I've never heard of a direwolf changing someone before. Usually they kill anyone they meet. He smells kind of nice, actually...* There was no doubt that the man was very attractive, but his mind was most likely that of a human, seeing as how lupine instincts took time to settle into place. Sometimes it could happen quickly, but Kyle wasn't going to assume that this man had adapted that quickly. The way he carelessly tossed aside the bones certainly showed a lack of care about savoring them more later, what with how he was casually mixing them in with the refuse of his meal. The animal in Kyle was heartbroken to see good bones go to waste, but he couldn't take them without making a scene.

Speaking of ribs... He rose up to glare at the table where the others were seated, and saw Jessica roll her eyes and show him that his plate was safely beside her. 'Well?' she shrugged. He was about to shrug as well when the man he was spying on paused and looked over at Jessica, who quickly picked up her biscuit and stuffed it into her mouth, trying (and failing miserably) to look inconspicuous. The man went to turn in his seat, and Kyle bolted from the booth in a panic and dashed to the bathroom door, earning a confused stare from the bearded man as the door swung closed behind the wolf.

Jessica grimaced to herself, feeling her face turn read with shame...

*****

Ben frowned to himself as he saw a strange man dash away from the booth behind him and into the bathroom, then turned back to his food after glancing to the woman he had thought had been trying to get his attention, shaking his head. "Weirdos," he muttered. "This is why I hate being around people."

He finished his meal, cleaned himself up, then left the restaurant. He went to the grocery store next, finding himself still wanting meat despite having gorged himself on ribs *I can't believe I blew thirty bucks on a single meal!*, and stocked up on ham, hamburger and frozen chicken breasts, as well as some of his normal stuff. He bought a chocolate bar with almonds in the checkout lane, then headed home with his purchases, oblivious to the trio who had been following him.

He relaxed at home, checking his email while a sci-fi cop show about humans with android partners played in the background, then feeling eager for a treat, got the chocolate from the fridge, sat down on the couch and scarfed it down rapidly, surprising himself with how fast he was eating today.

Ten minutes later, however, he was doubled over the toilet, having just barely made it to the bathroom before he voided the contents of his stomach into the bowl. He finished and flushed the disgusting mess down, then went to the sink to rinse the taste of bile from his mouth. *Must have been the ribs. They tasted fine, though. The only other thing I had was the candy bar and it tasted fine too. I ought to go back there and complain that they gave me food poisoning! Shit... There's no way I can prove it was the ribs, though, so they'll likely just brush me off. Fuck! All that money wasted!*

Fuming with resentment, he went to bed, stripping down naked, figuring that wearing clothes to sleep in was a waste of time, and fell into odd dreams of running through the forest while being chased by shadowy figures he could never make out clearly...