FSE

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The radio in the patrol car crackled as Andy’s voice, the department’s dispatcher came through, “Hey, Lupo. You still in the dog house?”

David glowered in the patrol car’s passenger seat, ignoring the dispatcher’s probing question as he tried to sketch in his sketchbook. The week since the pack’s raid on Cannon’s vault had been quiet. Even by Pioche’s standards. Even the town’s resident repeat offender, Randall, had been behaving. So with nothing to do but patrol, the Sheriff’s department fell into what it always did when nothing was happening.

They started gossiping.

Word had somehow gotten out that David did something to upset Colin. David didn’t know how the community found out, since it was because he wouldn’t let Colin join the rest of the pack and mages in raiding the stolen magic vault. So it wasn’t something that regular, unknowing humans would be privy to.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” chuckled Andy after not being given a reply.

David sneered at the radio, which made Morrison chuckle.

“Not fun when you’re the one on the receiving end of the rumours, now is it?” asked Morrison.

David scoffed, so it was Colin who let everyone in the town know. The wolf-blood knew the importance of keeping The Herd in the dark. So they would’ve phrased it in a way that hid that stuff. If he said anything at all that is. He could have very well had not said anything at all and let others fill in the blanks for him, which would have made the rumour spread all the faster.

While it was all quiet on the Mundane front, it was far from quiet on the supernatural side. Ever since Poe’s cabal retrieved the copy of the Book of Life, mages from the Las Vegas Consilium had come streaming in. Though they always had at least one of Poe’s cabal escorting them as the rest of his cabal catalogued the vault’s content.

The mages were behaving themselves, which was made sure of by Jesse spying on them and the rest of the town with hidden cameras he had set up. But there was still one loose thread.

Cannon was still alive. Somewhat. He was soulless, but wherever he had fled to was unknown. Despite the mage’s assurances that they were still looking for him, it still left the pack uneasy.

David continued drawing in his sketch book. He had claimed a few ingots of perfected metal from the vault that he wanted to use to create fetishes. He wanted to claim the entirety of the metals, but the Old Man only let him take half. Since the protectorate was only due a cut of the vault’s contents, not all of it and had to let the others in the pack claim stuff for themselves.

So he was left with a comparatively small amount of the perfected metals with no idea how to get more without indebting himself to the mages. With such a limited supply he had to pick and choose what fetishes to use them for. He couldn’t experiment as freely with the materials as he wanted.

That was what he was sketching out as he waited for something to happen while on duty. It was a simple, plain mirror. It seemed like it would be a simple thing to sketch out. But for it to work how he wanted, it needed to be just right, so he had actually sketched several designs. As of yet, none of his ideas he felt hit the mark.

But even when he would eventually settle on a design, there was still one more matter he needed to settle before he created any fetish, let alone the mirror.

He still needed to avenge Matt Dane’s death and make the coyote spirit that did it suffer. Just killing David’s mentor was enough to warrant a death warrant. But the coyote spirit had not only done that, but it crossed the Gauntlet without permission, possessed a human, possessed and Claimed another human, and tore open a Wound atop Mount Irish. The coyote deserved a punishment far worse than death, and David knew just the punishment.

But he had to find it first.

Lucas had sent out feelers into the Spirit World, asking the coyote spirit that he had befriended when he and David set out alone into the Spirit World’s reflection of the Mojave a couple months prior to ask other coyote spirits to find the offending the offending member of their brood.

David, for his part, tracked down a spider spirit and, with plenty of essence to grease the wheels, convinced it to teach him a rite to bind and trap the coyote spirit when they eventually find it.

The radio crackled again and David snatched the handset from its holder and yelled, “Stop fucking asking me about Colin!”

“Temper, temper,” said Andy from the other end, a smirk audible in his voice. “I’m not. Got actual work this time. The department over at White Pine found a dead hiker at an abandoned mine. Died of exposure. They’re asking for help identifying the victim.”

Morrison laughed, “Idiots like playing in mines. Don’t know why so many are still open. Too damned dangerous.”

He took the handset from David and said, “We’ll be over when we can. There’s a couple things we need to do first.”

When he returned the handset to the holder, David asked, “What things?”

The Old Man shrugged, “Don’t know, just a feeling. You’ll learn to trust those feelings when you’re older.”

***

Back in the den, Kaiden was sitting at the dining table doing coursework on his laptop. Colin was up and about, getting ready for his closing shift at the Nevada Club of Pioche. Gabby was already at work at the clinic, though she had left different ads for houses on the table before she left. Sleeping on the library’s couch was starting to wear on her.

Tsu’mara and Jessica were also out of the house. Tsu’mara at work, and Jessica at school.

Lucas was busy reading in the library when he dropped whatever it was he was reading on the ground.

“Oh shit!” said Lucas, before running out of the library. He told Kaiden, “We have a problem. Someone crossed our territory line. Tripped one of the wards I set up. An unknown Uratha. Could be Pure.”

“Any idea where they’re heading?” asked Kaiden.

“South-East in the desert,” answered Lucas, pointing towards where the ward was tripped. “If we’re fast we can intercept them.”

Kaiden sighed and closed his laptop, “What are we waiting for then? Let’s go.”

“Grab Jesse,” said Lucas as he pulled out his phone and started texting, “I’ll text Howlmore to meet up with us.”

“Do I have to?” asked Kaiden.

“He’ll just follow us anyway, so you may as well,” said Lucas as he pocketed his phone.

“He’s right,” said Jesse from the dining table he was now sitting at, making both Lucas and Kaiden start.

“Come on,” said Lucas walking out of the den and towards the truck. “Howlmore and David will meet us there.”

It took around an hour for them to reach the border of their territory. It would have taken them less time, but they had to ditch the truck as the border violation was at a place in the desert not reachable by road and had to go the rest of the way on foot. They met up with Morrison and David, who had to do the same with the patrol car.

Lucas pointed at a small ridge, “Okay, the edge of the ward is right over there.”

They turned around the ridge and found sitting under the shade of a mesquite tree just within the Pack’s border a lone shewolf.

They paused when they saw her, on edge. It could have been an ambush, but she was sitting in plain sight just within the border, just like they had when they entered Dane’s pack’s territory and waited for permission to travel through or enter.

David looked to Kaiden, knowing that he would be the better choice to introduce themselves politely.

“Why are you here?” asked Kaiden.

The shewolf stood up and shifted to Hishu. Her human form was a short Asian-American woman in her late twenties with long hair tied back in a pony-tail and was dressed in utilitarian hiking clothes.

She gave a polite bow and introduced herself, “I’m Melissa Lightstep. Blood Talon Irakka of the Honeycomb Rocks pack. Just across the Utah border.”

“My pack sent me to meet with you to discuss a threat that crossed state and territory lines,” said Melissa. “It’s something you’d be interested in.”

“Honeycomb Rocks pack?” asked Morrison, “I heard of you. Is that old bastard still running the pack?”

Melissa looked confused at the question, “Uh, no. I think he died maybe ten years ago. Before I joined the pack.”

Morrison shook his head, “Damn. Oh well.”

He looked to the pack, “Well something’s crossing state lines and our territory’s. It’s good you notified us about it.”

“Should we go somewhere more comfortable than out here in the desert?” asked Melissa.

“The Historic Silver Cafe?” offered Jesse. “It’s where we take anyone else.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Morrison. “May as well.”

They beelined straight for the cafe, and feeling confident that they weren’t going to be ambushed, it only took them twenty minutes to reach the Historic Silver Cafe. There they ordered coffee.

Melissa leaned back on her chair after she got her coffee. After she took a sip, she said, “So you’ll probably be able to tell, Honeycomb is right across the state border over near Enterprise-”

“Beam me up, Scotty,” muttered Jesse under his breath.

Both Morrison and Kaiden slapped him up the back of the head.

Melissa continued, “Our territory includes a wound. The Mountain Meadows Massacre site.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar with it,” said Morrison with a nod. He gestured to the Pack, These lots are still pups. Can you fill things in for them?”

Melissa teetered on her chair and started explaining, “Way back in the Old West. Mormons ran their theocracy in Utah- Well, they still do, just a lot more open about it back then. During the late Eighteen-Hundreds, there was a lot of tension between Smith’s Utah Colony and the Federal Government. It got a bit heated and started the Mormon Wars.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Kaiden.

“There was this one instance where a bunch of knuckle heads thought that if they ambushed non-mormons that they could pin it on natives and get the feds to massacre the natives for them. They didn’t get away with it. It was clear that Mormons did it. That was the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It wasn’t the only settler on settler violence but it was one of the most famous. I think there was a documentary on Netflix.”

She then started getting side tracked, talking about other documentaries about massacres and other gruesome topics.

David leaned over to Lucas and whispered, “Definitely an Irakka. Gets sidetracked about murders just like Jesse does.”

“You were talking about the threat that concerns our pack,” said Morrison, hoping to get the foreign Irakka back on topic.

“Right, yeah,” said Melissa, “Yeah, so lots of death in one place does its thing and created a Wound. Couple decades back a pack got together and healed it. It’s been a few decades but they can reopen from time to time. We found out that one reopened after a couple spirits of murder and death appeared and were Wound-tainted.”

She leaned forward, stopping her leaning on the chair, “This has my pack quite concerned. We’re keeping an eye on it. Last week we tracked a man entering the site just to see him dump a bunch of severed heads on the memorial plaque.”

“I assume that was the hiker that was found dead in the mines,” said Kaiden.

Melissa shook her head, “That would be nice, but I doubt it. He also wrote a bunch of glyphs in First Tongue all over the site. Part of a ritual that was reopening the Wound. When we found him we chased him but he gave us the slip. Pretty fast too. Didn’t help that he was one of us.”

The last part made Morrison pay far more attention to what the Irraka was saying.

She continued, “He shifted to Urhan and we chased him out into the desert for hours. Lost him near Panaca. We’re thinking it’s one of the Pure near Caliente. It’d be pretty important for you to know if they’re up to something, since whatever this dude is doing involves Wounds.”

Morrison nodded, “That’s something Pure are known to do.”

Mellissa nodded in agreement. She stood up from her chair and said, “Yep, so that’s pretty much the gist of things.”

She pulled out a pen, and grabbed a napkin and wrote down a number she gave to Morrison. “The phone number you can use to reach my pack with. If you catch the Pure up to anything let us know and we can help figure out what these bastards are up to.”

She pulled out her wallet and left a ten dollar note on the table before walking out of the cafe.

Morrison leaned back and shook his head, “Well that was a subtle threat.”

“I think that was the first time I saw an Irraka walk out instead of disappearing,” said David before he snapped his attention to the Old Man as he registered what they said. “Wait, what threat?”

“You wouldn’t catch why,” said Morrison. “What she said about the Pure is right. What you don’t know about is that there’s another pseudo tribe called the Balehounds that worship the Maeljin. Dark, evil spirits that lord over Wounds. Lots of packs are distrustful of the Vegas packs cause of the Protectorate’s study of the Wounds.”

He smirked, “What they don’t know is that Vegas developed a method to weed out Balehound traitors. Though some consider the cure as bad as the disease.”

“Do I even want to know what the cure is?” asked David.

The Old Man looked to the side, unusually nervous, “Uh, I'll tell you when you’re older.”

“I’m twenty-six,” said David.

Morrison refused to elaborate saying instead, “The way she showed up implies Balehounds. Her losing them near Panaca implied that the traitor came from Pioche, not Caliente. Their pack suspects us and is keeping an eye on us as much as they’re keeping an eye on the Pure.”

David had stopped listening, lost in his own spiralling thoughts. He thought back to that fateful day sixteen years ago that shattered his life. He had grown up in Nellis, and at the time, was at the border of Las Vegas. Colin had assured him that it would’ve been one of the Pure that slaughtered his family and that there were border incursions at the time. But, now that he had learned of the Balehounds’ existence, he couldn’t help but wonder if they might have had a hand in it. Gruesomely slaughtering an entire family in their home could be a way to try and create a Wound, whether the attempt was successful or not.

***

Out in the desert, East of Panaca, the pack was just outside their territory borders searching for clues to find the trail that Melissa had lost. The Irraka was a skilled tracker, so it was difficult to pick up where she had left off. They struggled for well over an hour to find any sort of trail, with all but Morrison failing to find anything.

Morrison a scent, a faint one. One that smelled of old, stagnant blood with a strange flavor to it, like it was diseased blood. Instead of going North to Pioche, or South to Caliente, it went directly to Panaca to a Greyhound Bus Station.

When they passed the border into Panaca, David looked around confused, “How wasn’t Lucas’ ward tripped? It tripped for Melissa.”

Lucas shrugged, equally confused, “They’re tripped anytime an unknown Uratha cross the boundary. It only applies to Uratha, Claimed, and Spirits in the Twilight at the moment. So vampires, mages, and other supernatural beings can still pass by. We’d need to set a second boundary ward to filter for other supernaturals boundary lines. I don’t know. It should wake me up too if I’m asleep.”

“What if it’s not a Balehound?” asked Morrison.

He looked at David, “Who else do we know that can shift to Urhan?”

David’s face twitched. He felt his teeth and nails sharpened as a sudden rage burned in his chest. He snarled, “It’s not him.”

Morrison rolled his eyes, unphased by David’s snarling.

“I’m not saying it’s Colin specifically,” said Morrison. “I’m saying it’s possible that it was a Wolf-Blood with the same Tell.”

“Wouldn't Melissa have said he put on a hide?” asked David. “Wolf-Bloods with the Second Skin Tell have to be naked to shift into Urhan.”

“She also said that she lost him at several points,” said Morrison. “So it’s possible she didn’t see him turn but caught him in wolf form. There’s also cases of more developed Wolf-Blood can shift by just having their hide on their person. It’s rare, but it happens.”

“I don’t think I have my wards set to detect Wolf-Bloods,” Lucas thought out-loud. “I’ll add that when I next renew them.”

Morrison shook his head, “Don’t bother. You’ll spread yourself too thin if you try and make wards for every single supernatural creature and variant. The wards you have for Uratha and Claimed are enough at the moment.”

“Speaking of every single supernatural creature,” added Morrison, “There’s also mages and other weirder things but those are even less likely. It could have also been some sort of Stealth Shadow Gift that prevented your wards from being triggered. Whatever it was, there’s a lot more going on than what the other pack thought.”

David looked around at the bus station before saying, “Why don’t we just say we’re looking for a suspect in a case that might have escaped on one of their buses.”

“Good idea,” said Morrison pulling out his phone, “But far too grand. We’re a small county. Nothing that exciting happens here. Something about looking for a runaway is an easier lie to believe.”

Morrison called the regional Greyhound number to get all the buses that stopped the day Melissa lost the trail.

“Oh yes, of course,” said the operator. “Three buses passed that afternoon, and one at night.”

“Where did the night one head?” asked Morrison.

“Let me just check,” said the operator, going silent for several seconds as they pulled up the information on their end. “It headed up North to Elko. It made a stop in Ely-”

Morrison and David shared a concerned look. Ely was a part of White Pine County, the same county that had asked for their help identifying a dead hiker.

The operator continued, “-Six people departed and then made the rest of the way with ten to Elko. None of them were accompanied by minors.”

“Darn,” said Morrison, not letting his concern show in his voice. “Doesn’t sound like our runaway was on that bus then. Thanks for the help.”

He hung up and put his phone away before turning to David, “Told you to trust that feeling. Off to Ely we go.”

“Jesse. Go-” he said, going to point to the Irraka but found them nowhere in sight.

Kaiden checked his phone and saw a text from the absent pack member. “He got bored and went back to Pioche to spy on people.”

Morrison sighed, “Yeah, that seems about right. Was gonna tell him to do that anyways.”

He told David, “Ostensibly, this will be part of your training as a deputy. Showing you a body and why it’s important we keep people out of the mines. Kaiden, Lucas, you’ll have to stay out of the morgue. You’re not family of the hiker, so you won’t be allowed, but you can snoop around town and pay Donny a visit. His first tithe is due anyways.”

After getting to Ely’s clinic, the only clinic in White Pine with corpse storage, Morrison consulted with the White Pines’ sheriff and they agreed to show David the dead body, instead of just the face for identification.

The body was laid out on a slab, covered with a sheet. Even from under the sheet, the legs were clearly broken,mangled and broken. Bent at unnatural angles.

Morrison handed the report from the White Pines’ sheriff to David before uncovering the body. The body had an autopsy and the death was ruled as being from exposure after a pair of severe compound fractures to both tibias and fibulas. Scavengers had already begun eating the body by the time it was found two days prior.

“The autopsy was only a preliminary one,” Morrison said to David, “Since the cause of death was so obvious. They only really did just basic tox screens, very open and shut.”

He looked briefly to the local sheriff who was busy talking with the coroner before telling David, “Look at the legs.”

David did as he was told. The legs were completely savaged, but it wasn’t clear to David what specifically the Old Man was trying to point out to him.

Morrison pointed at the exposed bones, “Look at the green coloring on the bones where there’s teeth marks, and marks on the skin around it. This is perimortem, which means it happened at or around death. It also seems a bit large for a coyote don’t you think?”

“You think it was an Ur-?” David started to ask before being cut off by Morrison, who gave him a stern look and flicked his eyes over to the Sheriff and coroner, who were very much still in ear shot.

“Uh, a mountain lion scavenging the body?” finished David, making it seem like his cut off ‘Uratha’ was just him thinking of what animal to say.

“Probably,” said Morrison. He looked at the hiker’s face and said, “You seem to have an eye for this.”

David looked to see if the sheriff and coroner were still occupied. When he saw that they were, he peeled open one of the hiker’s eyes.

He gazed into the dilated, clouded eye. At one moment he was in the clinic’s mortuary, and then the next he was looking through the hiker’s eyes, seeing the very last moment of their life as if it were his own.

He was looking at a frozen moment in time, his legs covered in blood. Legs snapped. Flesh torn to ribbons. He felt an overwhelming sense of pain and terror as he looked directly in the eyes of the culprit. A single large canine, eyes gleaming with an unnatural, malicious intellect. It was mangy, with clumps of blood and dirt in what intact fur it had. What fur could be made out under the mess was a dark grey.

Then he was back in the clinic, gazing into a dead man’s eye.

“What are you doing?” asked the White Pines’ Sheriff who had approached while David had his vision.

“I was showing him that eyes dilate and cloud over after death,” lied Morrison.

The Sheriff nodded, instantly buying the lie, “Yeah, they start clouding a couple hours after death.”

He gestured to the hiker’s now open eye, “They cloud over to that degree a day or so after death. Depending on if the eyes were open or not. Same goes for how hot and humid the environment is as well.”

He looked David over, curious. “Huh. Usually you rookies are a bit more squeamish after seeing their first body. Especially one as messed up as this one.”

“It’s not my first,” David said bluntly.

The Sheriff looked at David with a concerned, off put look. He looked up to Morrison who was quietly slicing his hand across his throat in a ‘cut it out’ gesture.

Morrison mouthed, "Personal tragedy. Don’t ask.”

The Old Man then spoke up, clapping David on the shoulders and gripping his shoulders in a death grip. A silent warning. “Well, we’ll get out of your hair. We’ll keep an eye and ear out for any information on your John Doe”

He then turned and left, dragging David with him.

The moment they were outside the clinic and out of ear shot Morrison roughly grabbed David by the scruff of the neck and growled, “I shouldn’t need to remind you that you have to at least act human in front of humans? You can’t cleave to the human if you don’t.”

He shoved his rookie towards the patrol car, telling him, “Let’s meet back up with Kaiden and Lucas. They should be finished with Donny about now.”

***

Donald was in the middle of Ely’s abandoned AT&T building’s basement, tapping his foot as he ordered his minions around as they set up the Ladybird Room for the next three nights of the half moon.

“No, no,” snapped Donald at a ghoul who was dragging the Blackjack table into a far corner close to the door leading to the auction room, “That goes near the bar so I can get them drunk and make it harder for them to count the cards.”

He watched the ghoul start to drag the table to where he wanted it. Since the dealers of the previous gambling ring were killed during the Pack’s raid on the Ladybird Room and left him in charge of building it back up, he had to procure more dealers. He used the same tactic that Mister G used, having people who were indebted to the Ladybird Room to serve as dealers. After they had paid off a portion of their debt, he would then sweeten the deal for them. Offer to completely wipe away their debt. All they had to do was drink a small amount of his vitae that was in some alcohol he offered them. Little did the dealers know, was just how addicting it was for humans to drink his vitae, and upon drinking and, enforcing his will upon them, he turned them into ghouls and his loyal thralls. A small downside is that they smell a touch like meat just about to rot, but nothing a bit of perfume and deodorant couldn’t cover.

Another one of his ghouls, a plain looking brown haired, white man who was a former ‘professional’ gambler that wracked up a truly impressive amount of debt in a shockingly short amount of time approached him.

“Excuse me, Mr Sullivan?” he asked.

Donald groaned, snapping at his minion without looking at them, “What?”

“There’s two salesmen here who say they've been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty,” said the ghoul.

Donald looked at the ghoul with utter confusion, “What?”

The AT&T building was, on paper, abandoned. No one worked there, so there wouldn’t be any paperwork linking him to the old telecommunications.

“Donny!” said Kaiden with a smile from the other side of the Ladybird Room. “Long time no see.”

Donald drew a sharp intake of breath. He held it as he composed himself before turning to face Kaiden, with Lucas standing next to them at the entrance of the bunker turned casino.

“You know,” said Donald, with barely restrained annoyance, “It would have been nice to have been told that I shouldn’t be in the basement when this place shifts into the Ladybird Room. I got stuck in here hoping to get the Ladybird Room ready early. The doorway got blocked by solid rock and I had to wait for three whole days till I could leave. Who knows what would have happened had I been in this version of the basement when it turned over and had to wait two weeks to leave.”

He noticed that the two werewolves didn’t seem to care about his plight and he sighed, “I’m busy setting up for the night and have several clients booked. So is there anything I can help you with, my dear overlords?”

“We need info on any supernaturals that may have come through here,” said Kaiden before adding, “The town in general.”

“I don’t really keep an eye on the town,” admitted Donald, ”But at the casino. Had several vampires, my best clients I might add, a couple cheating mages, and even a couple of those fairy fuckers that thought they could cheat.”

Kaiden leaned over and whispered to Lucas, “Fairy fuckers?”

“Changelings,” whispered Lucas. “Humans kidnapped by and changed by the Fae. I don’t know much about them, they’re not that common.”

Donald continued, not noticing their whispering, “I threw them out along with the mages. Haven’t seen anything weird. You looking for anything specific?”

“A Wolf-blood,” answered Kaiden. “Or at least what we think is one. Came through on the bus.”

“A bus?” asked Donald before shaking his head, “Wouldn’t be my clientele. They’re all high class.”

“High class?” asked Lucas. “Fuck off.”

Donald looked insulted at the remark, “”I’m trying to get the standards up. Get more money flowing through.”

“I haven’t seen any dogs- I mean wolves,” said Donald. “Don’t know of any of those Wolf-bloods of yours coming through. The only wolves that come through are you guys. Almost like you’re a territorial lot.”

“Yeah, imagine that,” said Kaiden sarcastically.

“Oh yeah, the fairy fuckers,” said Donald, remembering something. “There’s a whole colony of those fuckers in Elko. Sell all sorts of magical stuff in a market.”

“And you only mention this now, why?” asked Kaiden.

“I only just found out about it,” said Donald. “They call it a goblin market. Don’t know when it’s held but they buy and sell. Hopefully that info’s helpful.”

Kaiden shrugged, “We’ll take it.”

“Aside from the cheaters, nothing else happened,” said Donald. “Just schmucks losing their money at the table. I’ll keep my eye out though, this has turned out to be a very good arrangement.”

“There is one small problem though,” said Donald. “I can’t keep an eye out during daylight.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” said Lucas.

“Well I don’t really know what I can do,” said Donald. “There’s not much of a nightlife here outside of the Ladybird Room with not much of an overlap with the actual residents of this town. I guess I could get a ghoul to do some work during the day if you need.”

“That will be helpful,” said Kaiden.

“I can’t make any promises,” warned Donald. “They’re just humans with a bit of vampire juice in them. They don’t have any super sniffers like you do.”

“We just need them to keep note of anything weird,” said Kaiden.

With that, Kaiden and Lucas turned around and left. Letting Donald and his minions finish setting up the Ladybird Room.

It wasn’t until they exited the AT&T building and walked out into the early afternoon sun that Lucas realised something.

“We forgot to get the tithe from Donny,” he said.

Kaiden looked back at the nondescript door they exited before shrugging, “Leave that to David. Give him something to do when he’s off duty.”

Lucas laughed at the idea.

***

They met back with Morrison and David who were overlooking the hiking trail where the hiker’s body was found. In viewing distance there was a mine entrance that had two White Pine deputies nailing planks of wood over the entrance to replace the simple chain link fence that covered it before and was cut open. A trail of blood led inside the abandoned mine.

A spot, just outside the mine’s entrance, had the largest concentration of blood. The spot where the body was found.

There was a cast bronze plaque in the very middle of the bloodstained dirt the body was found propped up against a signpost, ten yards from the mine entrance. The sign was unblemished and was a memorial for the victims of the 1892 mining accident that occurred there. Fifty-seven men were crushed or suffocated to death after a collapse.

One of the deputies noticed the four of them checking out the plaque and told them, “Yeah, that’s where some other hikers found the body. Poor bastard dragged himself out of the mine and bled out on it.”

He got back to work helping his colleague in blocking off the mine’s entrance.

As David and Morrison were looking at the sign, they felt a chill emanate from the ground beneath them. A chill that was at complete odds with the desert heat.

They looked down at the ground at the same time and they realised. There was a Wound, deep, deep down in the ground.

Someone was deliberately making sacrifices to reopen old Wounds.