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It was early morning and everyone was having breakfast as they got ready for their day.

Lucas pointed at the scorched bone-charm necklace hanging from David’s neck. The fetish he created the previous day. “Now you’ll actually be useful to the pack.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” snapped David.

“Here we go,” sighed Kaiden.

“I was already the pack’s Ithaeur before you joined,” said Lucas pointing to himself with his fork. “I already do all the shamanistic rituals.”

“You were happy that the pack was getting another Ithaeur,” pointed out David.

“Yeah,” admitted Lucas, “but then you punched me in the jaw and strangled me.”

“And I’ll do it again,” snapped David, standing up from his chair and getting ready to leap across the table.

“Don’t. Fucking. Start.” Growled Morrison, not even looking away from his breakfast. “I’m too sober and it’s too fucking early in the morning for you two’s crap.”

“And hide the damn fetish under your uniform,” he added.

David growled under his breath and sat back down, tucking the necklace under his department uniform’s shirt.

Soon after David’s phone rang. It was from an unknown number.

“What?” He answered rudely.

The voice that came through immediately set him, and everyone else, on edge, bar Colin and Gabby at first but they too went on edge once they saw everyone else’s reactions. It was a girl’s voice, that of a frightened child. Matt Dane’s teenaged daughter Jessica.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” she said, her voice barely audible and trembling in terror. “Dad’s dead. Everyone’s dead. Something killed everyone.”

“Where are you?” demanded David.

“ET Fresh Jerky,” she answered.

“Stay there,” ordered David before hanging up.

Everyone scrambled to get ready to leave immediately.

“Stay here,” David said to Colin.

Colin nodded and turned to Gabby, “Miss Martinez, you should stay here too. Where it’s safest.”

Gabby gave only a single scared nod, staying in her chair at the dining table as everyone else left the Den.

“I got the tracking lantern,” said Kaiden, holding the lantern close.

He and the others made their way to the truck but were pulled away from it and towards the SUV.

“The department’s SUV will let us cut straight through Caliente,” said Morrison.

They all piled in, with David kicking Lucas out of the front passenger seat, and they screeched away from the Den towards Pharangat Valley.

As they came down from the mountains, and entered Pharangat Valley, it was easy to see the valley’s natural beauty. An oasis in the middle of the dry desert. Yet, David and the others couldn’t shake the feeling as if something was missing. As if the wilderness were only a two dimensional painting, painted onto a brittle and rotting canvas.

There was only a single car in the parking lot of ET Fresh Jerky when they pulled in. It wasn’t a car they recognised and reasoned, from the time of day, that it was probably that of an employee.

Kaiden pulled out the lantern to start tracking Jessica to find where she was hiding.

It revealed two sets of tracks. One from the jerky store employee’s car, and an unknown set of tracks leading towards a pallet of crates at the side of the building.

They followed the tracks to the crates, and as they drew near they began to hear terrified breathing. David grabbed one of the crates and pulled it aside, eliciting a short scream of shock from Jessica.

She calmed down, somewhat, when she saw who it was.

“What happened?” asked David, looking down at the scared teenager.

She was too upset to answer, near hyperventilating, and couldn’t get her words out.

“Spit it out,” snapped David, making her worse.

“Jesus Christ, man,” said Kaiden, shoving David aside. “Have some damned tact.”

Kaiden knelt down and went to reach out for Jessica but pulled his hand away when she flinched. He said gently, “Jessica, please, follow what I do.”

He then slowly breathed in, bringing his hand up, palm up, and then slowly breathed out, bringing his hand back down, palm down. He continued the breathing exercise, guiding Jessica through it, until she was able to finally speak a full coherent sentence.

Her voice still trembled, “Dad is dead. Someone stabbed him-”

David had a sharp intake of breath.

“-He’s dead up in the mountain. The rest of the pack, they’re gone too.”

She covered her face and sobbed, “God. There’s so much blood.”

“Where?” asked Kaiden.

“It was at the church,” answered Jessica, “The church locus they attacked us. The abandoned church on Cottonwood.”

David raised his eyebrows, Matt never told him his territory had a second locus, just about the one at their den. Though, to be fair, no one outside of his pack knew about the locus in Mine Head nearby the Den.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” said Jessica, snapping David out of his distraction.

Morrison rubbed his chin, “Someone stabbed your dad. That would’ve taken a lot to get him, even with taking by surprise.”

“Any other details you remember?” he asked. “One thing at a time.”

Jessica breathed deeply and harshly for a time before answering, “I don’t know. I was with my dad at the fetish workshop in the den. He was working on something new late at night. I went to sleep early cause of school.”

Her breath hitched and she struggled to get the next words out, “When I got up he was dead in a puddle of blood. There was something wrong with the spring.”

“Something was wrong with it?” asked David.

She nodded, “The water was wrong. Like it was black. Like an oil slick was on it.”

“What about the church locus?” asked David.

“That’s where the rest of the pack was,” answered Jessica. “So I went right there. But something came out of the locus. An awful creature like someone in Urshal form. It looked like that, but there was something wrong with it. It tore through the pack like they were normal humans. I ran as fast as I could. I only stopped when I got here and called you.”

“Could it be a bale hound?” David asked the pack. Bale hounds were corrupted Uratha that worshipped demons.

“Possible,” said Lucas. “If it was an Uratha that came through the locus.”

“Alright,” said Morrison, “we got two crime scenes to investigate.”

“The church is closer,” said David, not wanting to see Matt’s body, refusing to acknowledge that he could’ve been killed. There must have been some sort of trick he pulled to get out of it. He was an Uratha. He couldn’t be taken without a fight like that.

The church didn’t take long to reach. It had been closed for years and was rundown. When they approached they could all feel the locus underneath the church.

The interior of the building was grim and was as rundown as the exterior was. There was a faint resonance of faith and moral outrage that hung in the air from the Locus underneath. The pews were largely untouched, except for a few near the entrance that were likely stolen for firewood.

When they neared the altar, evidence of a struggle revealed itself. Pews had been overturned, and a door leading downwards stood ajar. In the darkness of the doorway there was an outflung, lifeless hand.

They approached the hand where they found that it was severed at the elbow. The rest of the corpse was down at the bottom of the stairs. There were two other bodies there too. One seemed to have been bitten in two, and the other had clawed her own eyes out. Their claws were still buried in her skull.

David knelt down by the bisected corpse. It was Sam, the Elodoth of their pack. He shook his head, he may not have liked them since they agreed with the Old Man that he and Colin shouldn’t be together, but they didn’t deserve such a death.

He closed their eyes, which were still wide open in terror, and then noticed odd scratches and bruises on their face and arms. Ones that were disturbingly familiar. He looked over to the other two bodies who had Morrison, Lucas and Kaiden looking over them.

“Sam has self-harm wounds,” said David.

“So does he,” said Morrison as he and Lucas looked over the armless body.

“You already know she does,” said Kaiden, who was kneeling by the other body. “Though it looks like that’s what killed her though.”

“What can cause Uratha to hurt themselves like that?” asked Tsu’mara.

David didn’t answer, but Lucas did, listing off a long list of what things it could have been. Each one worse than the last.

The pack members had died a couple hours ago. David looked around, the tracking lantern only worked for tracks made within the past hour. He looked to Kaiden, who had the lantern, and asked, “Do you think the lantern will work? In case whatever it was came ba-”

The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. He snapped his head towards the very centre of the locus, a brass crucifix hung up on the wall of the room. Something was passing through the locus at that very moment.

He shifted quickly to Urshal, and so did Kaiden. They felt the crossing too.

The air by the crucifix shimmered as the spirit crossed the Gauntlet. It towered over them all, a monstrous, demonic wolf. Its jaws, full of multiple rows of teeth much like a shark’s, were flecked with foam and spittle that glowed, almost as if irradiated.

Its red-rimmed, dilated eyes burned with hatred. Its fur is patchy and missing in many places. Some parts showed scars from teeth and claws, as if it were a wolf whose packmates had turned against it.

It howled, a deep, bone rattling howl like a banshee’s wail that resonated deep into everyone who heard it.

David whined as the howl rattled inside his skull. He wanted it out, and he started clawing at his head, tearing large gashes across his face.

Realising what he was doing, he shook his head and looked to the others. They were all doing the same, shaking off the effect of the spirit’s howl. Except for Lucas, who managed to withstand the urge but was disturbed by it.

Jessica too was unharmed by the howl and she turned and ran back up the stairs in terror.

Kaiden raised his head to the ceiling and howled, breaking the others fully from the spirit’s howl and inspiring them to turn their rage away from themselves and towards the monstrous spirit in front of them.

Tsu'mara threw herself at the spirit, shifting into Gauru and slammed into it, swiping it, making it stumble back into the crucifix.

Morrison shifted to Gauru as well and leapt for the stumbled spirit. He collided with it and bit deep into its thick neck. He wrenched his head back and tore away skin and flesh with a spray of ephemeral blood.

David knew that they could use brute force to kill the spirit. By depleting it of its essence and corpus. But the same spirit already slaughtered another pack, and so David knew that the best way to put it down would be to find out its Ban. So, as Tsu’mara and the Old Man tore into the spirit, distracting it, he gazed into its very being. He untangled the abstract and esoteric threads of its being to reveal its truth and within he unwound and pulled a thread that looped around its heart and out through the room and up the stairs.

To Jessica’s heart.

David’s eyes narrowed to a razor sharp glare towards where Jessica ran as Jesse ran silently past him in Urshal and swiped at the spirit.

But the spirit, somehow, saw the attack coming and jerked away just enough for the Irraka’s attack to miss.

But Lucas’s attack didn’t, he, in Urshal as well, leapt onto its side digging in his claws and carving deep furrows into its flank.

The spirit howled in pain as it was attacked on all sides and, in its spite, attacked the who attacked it first, Tsu’mara. It twisted its head around and clamped its jaws on one of her arms and bit down with unnatural force.

Her arm snapped with a wet crunch and she howled in pain. She smashed its snout to release her arm. It hung loosely and wrongly by her side before it snapped back into proper shape as she used essence to rapidly heal it.

She tackled it with all her might, knocking it off kilter just enough to get one of its legs off the ground. She grabbed it, and tore it out of the spirit’s socket.

Using its limb as a club, she beat it relentlessly until she caved in its skull and it collapsed to the ground.

Its body dissipated into a cloud of ephemera as David ran up the stairs after Jessica. He shifted to Hishu when he reached the top and ran outside.

There he saw Jessica struggling in the grip of a State Trooper who was trying to force her into his car.

“Stop!” yelled David running up to them with his badge out. “Sheriff’s Department.”

The trooper stopped, a queer look of amusement on his face and said, as if he was playing along in a game, “You must be that new rookie the County has.”

“The Sheriff’s department needs her for questioning for a crime scene back there,” said David, pointing back towards the church.

“This girl has multiple warrants for shoplifting,” said the trooper, continuing to try and force Jessica into his car. “You’re more than welcome to get back from my station once she’s processed.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere,” said Morrison, coming out of the church. He grabbed the trooper’s uniform, looking at the badge, “Sorry, Officer Cooper, our jurisdiction, our station. Serve your warrants there. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the county sheriff. He forwards complaints to the Under Sheriff, me. I’ll be happy to take your complaints but I’ll be taking her back, thank you.”

“Alright, whatever,” said Officer Cooper, shoving Jessica towards them, “I’ll meet you there.”

With his focus on retrieving Jessica achieved, David noticed something off about the trooper’s scent. Something not entirely human.

The trooper got into his car and drove off. As David watched them go, he turned to Morrison and asked, “He one of the Pure?”

Morrison shook his head, “No, something else was off. More like a spirit’s smell. None of that Firetouched taint.”

“He Ridden or Urged?” asked David.

“Possibly,” said Morrison with a shrug of his shoulders. “There’s definitely something wrong with him. That’s something we’ll have to look into after we’re done here.”

David nodded. With that settled for the time being, he grabbed Jessica and roughly pinned her to the Church’s outside wall.

With his forearm against her neck he snarled into her face, “Why were you tied to the spirit down there?!”

The sudden turn from being saved from the trooper by David to David threatening her, Jessica started hyperventilating only managing to get out a stammered, “I don’t know!”

The others came running out of the church and tore David off the teenaged wolf-blood.

“Jesus fucking Christ, David,” scolded Kaiden.

He worked on calming her down and, after he did, asked, “Was there anything strange before that spirit came through?”

“I don’t know where it came from,” stammered Jessica. “The first time I saw it was down there in the basement when it attacked the rest of the pack. It wasn’t there when my dad was killed. I was asleep and someone stabbed him with a dagger. I can take you there, the body’s still there.”

David went to grab her to take her to the car but was stopped by a glare from Tsu’mara who gently escorted her to the car instead.

They drove to Mount Irish, where Dane’s den was. The mountain looked the same as it ever did. A barren, treeless mountain with shrubs being the largest plant like it had. They parked at its base and walked the rest of the way up the hiking path that led to the tourist site of petroglyphs. They swerved off the path and onto the game trail that led to the den.

During the entire hike that feeling of wrongness, that feeling of rot that they felt when they first entered the valley only intensified as they came closer to the mountain’s peak. When they reached the entrance of the den, the feeling of wrongness was at its worst.

The cavern entrance always felt homely and welcoming to David whenever he visited, but now it felt foreboding. The dark entrance was dark, too dark. With shadows so thick that he could almost see things in them. Sometimes, for just a fraction of a fraction of a second it was almost like he could see their reflections in it.

He looked around as he also noticed other things. There wasn’t a single animal sound. No birds, no insects, no wildlife whatsoever. The only sound was the sound of water from the spring inside, but even that was wrong. It sounded more like static than that of a burbling spring.

There was also a smell of rotten meat. Everything was wrong. Brutally wrong.

Despite their best instincts, they entered the cave and made their way into the cavern.

It looked almost the same as it always did, a cave with random items showing that it was inhabited by several people. Couches, beds, and a workshop area that David had become quite accustomed to. The whole cavern felt wrong. Tainted. Like they walked into a radioactive deadzone.

The workshop was a mess. Drawers and books thrown around from someone or something raiding it. What was taken, David couldn’t find.

“What’s missing?” demanded David. He kept looking around the raided workshop but couldn’t find anything amiss aside from the normally ordered area being a mess.

Jessica gave the area a quick look around, “A necklace maybe? He was working on one last night but I didn’t pay attention to what was going into it.”

“Whatever it was,” said Kaiden as he picked up a discarded book and put it back on the bookshelf. “It might have been the actual thing they were after and his death was just a bonus.”

“That assumes that whoever it was knows he was making it,” said Morrison.

“That’s a problem,” muttered Kaiden with a grave tone.

David looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at the workshop anymore. He was looking straight at the spring at the very back of the cavern. Instead of the clear, fresh water, it was red and reeked of blood, of death, of betrayal.

Icy dread ran down David’s spine as he saw it. The locus had been tainted and corrupted into a Wound. It was no longer a passage through the gauntlet to the Spirit World, but now to a twisted and unknown realm. What that realm was, and what inhabited it was unknown to the Uratha except for the most experienced of Uratha.

What was on the couch next to the spring was worse to David. Laying on it, eyes wide opened and glazed over, was Matt Dane.

He stumbled over to his teacher and dropped to his knees by their side. In Dane’s chest was a silver dagger. David recognised it, it was one of the ritual daggers Dane used in fetish crafting. Their hand was grasping it as if they were about to rip it out before he died.

He couldn’t breathe, seeing his mentor’s corpse, all he could get out was a strangled sob. It didn’t seem real. It couldn’t be. He nudged Dane’s corpse like a child trying to wake a parent. They had told him about the different aspects of the Gift of Death that they said he should expand on. That there was an aspect that allowed the Uratha to mimic being a corpse so convincingly that it could fool even an Uratha’s senses.

He shook his head, even if he did have that gift, Dane wouldn’t have lingered near a wound so long after the threat had passed. Nor keep a silver dagger in his chest, even with that gift it would’ve ended up killing him anyways.

He laid his head on Dane’s chest. He’d never get to show off any of his fetishes to Dane anymore. Won’t ever again pat him on the shoulder like his father did.

Through tear blurred eyes he saw on the ground a discarded latex medical glove. He picked it up and gave it a smell but could only smell the latex. Whoever killed his mentor didn’t want it traced back to them.

He looked back up to his mentor’s face. Their eyes wide open in death, glazed over and frozen in a look of shock and betrayal. He then looked towards the corrupted locus and noticed, finally, the smell of the blood. It was Dane’s blood.

A deep, bone rattling growl rumbled out of David’s chest. A wound could only be created by severe suffering and sin. No simple murder would create one, otherwise the entire world would be a wound. Only a murder of great and terrible sin would create a wound.

He looked at the dagger and Matt’s hand grasped around it. They had enough time after getting stabbed to at least fight back for a few brief moments. But they didn’t. Otherwise the blood wouldn’t have just been their own.

“You,” he snarled. His bones snapped and his joints cracked as shifted to Urshal.

He turned to face Jessica, who backed away in terror as he bared his fangs. He snarled in the First Tongue, “Your own father.”

The accusation sent the rest of the pack on edge.

Jessica backed further away as David stalked closer. Tears were falling down her face. She shook her head, “I didn’t. I’d nev-”

“LIAR,” roared David.

David’s hackles raised and his head snapped towards the spring. Something was crossing over from the other side. He knew what was coming. His ears instinctively pinned back in fear. That was impossible. They killed it.

The bloodied water of the spring boiled, before erupting upwards in a geyser of blood and water. The same spirit they slew in the church's basement leaped out of the water and into the cavern.

It charged straight towards Tsu’mara, spiteful over her killing it in the church. It snapped at her with its many toothed maw, with her barely ducking out of the way.

Morrison quickly charged it, changing quickly to Gauru and pulled it away from his pup, slashing it across its snout.

Kaiden joined in, in Gauru as well, leaping on it and bit down at the base of its wide neck. Adding another bite wound to the spirits many wounds.

David turned away from the spirit to see Jessica gone. He snarled and ran off after her in pursuit. He burst out of the cave and skidded to a halt. He could see a large part of the game trail from there but no Jessica.

He snarled to himself, there’s no way she would have been able to outrun him, not when he was in Urshal. There must have been another, faster path up and down the mountain he never knew about.

He looked back into the cavern, the savage sound of combat echoed out.

He turned away, they could handle themselves long enough for him to chase Jessica. He shifted down to Urhan and picked up Jessica’s scent and resumed the chase down the mountain.

When he reached the base of the mountain, his keen hearing heard the engine of the patrol SUV start.

“Fucking bitch,” snarled David. Jessica was stealing the SUV.

He sprinted for the parking lot, the Charred Death Rattle around his neck burning. He was going to blow up the engine once he was in range and tear out her heart for what she did.

He ran, getting just within sight of the SUV just as it pulled out of the parking and screeched away down the road. He tried desperately to blow up the engine, but the SUV was already out of range.

He shifted to Hishu and pulled out his service pistol, aiming it at the fleeing wolf-blood.

“Do NOT start blindly firing!” roared out Morrison.

David lowered his pistol and turned to glare at the Old Man. He was shocked at what he saw.

The Old Man was limping and had blood all over his legs.

“The fuck happened to you?” asked David.

“It broke my legs,” said Morrison. “But I killed it in return.”

“No thanks to you,” said Tsu’mara, her clothes torn. “Why the fuck did you leave us back there?”

“The spirit is tied to her,” said David, pointing harshly down the road that Jessica tore down in the pack’s SUV. “It looks like it’s going to keep coming back until she’s dealt with. I just need time to-”

Tsu’mara stormed up to him and grabbed him by the throat. She brought her face close to his and snarled, “There. Is. No. Time.”

She threw him to the ground. When he tried to pick himself back up, she grabbed him roughly by the back of the neck and pinned him, making him cry out in pain. “Never leave us like that again.”

The others caught up, all in a state of healing from grievous wounds caused by the spirit and were giving David glares.

They set out, on foot, to track down the SUV. They found it surprisingly quickly, abandoned on the side of the road. The driver’s door was wide open and the keys were still in the ignition.

There were a second set of tire tracks going away from the SUV, towards the church.

“Shit,” said David. “The spirit thing attached to the trooper got her.”

“We should’ve dealt with it when we found it,” said Lucas.

“Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve,” said Morrison, climbing into the SUV. “We had bigger things to deal with at the time. Now get in.”

They all quickly did as they were told and tore towards the church.

Approaching it, they saw parked outside of it; Officer Cooper’s patrol car.

Morrison had barely stopped the SUV when David leapt out of it, shifted to Urshal, and ran into the church, following the trail back down into the basement.

He skidded to a stop, snarling, at what he saw. Standing by the locus, gun to Jessica’s head, was Officer Cooper.

“It really does pay to study your opponent,” taunted Cooper. “That thing has it in for me too.”

David glared at the trooper, the gears slowly turning in his head. Something wasn’t right, beyond just whatever spirit was associated with the man.

Cooper handled a necklace he wore, carved wooden beads on a leather cord. David didn’t know exactly what it did, but did recognise that it was a fetish. A talen to be precise. So a one time use. He said to Jessica, “Your dad was really onto something. But I just can’t figure out how it works.”

He looked towards the group as the rest of them joined David but continued to taunt Jessica, “You’ve been running scared but it’s your fault. You’re the one.”

David snarled, he could blow up the gun with his Tongue of Flame. He immediately disregarded that idea. He still felt that something wasn’t right, and it was all centred on Jessica. So he needed her alive. Blowing up the gun, especially while it was still pointed at her, would kill her.

He took a single step forward, hoping to get the gun pointed towards him. Because at least then he could still blow up the gun. He can heal from a gunshot easily.

He then saw a shift in the shadows, only a slight shift. He would’ve missed it had he not grown accustomed to the one responsible for it.

Jesse reached out and tapped the pistol pointed at Jessica’s head. The gun, by itself, then ejected the mag, racked the slide and ejected the round in the chamber, the slide then slammed forward and off the receiver before completely falling apart to its base components.

“Ohoho,” Cooper chuckled in surprise, “The wolves have clever tricks.”

Kaiden then came from behind and put him into a chokehold.

Using the distraction, David tackled the trooper to the ground. He slammed a hand-paw onto their skull and started to clench it, digging his claws into their skull.

“Stop!” yelled Kaiden. “Let’s question him first.”

David growled and let off, shifting to Hishu so he could handcuff them. He was rough about it, had it been a mundane arrest, he would have been risking censure for police brutality.

All the while, Cooper mocked them and Jessica. “You know, killing Matt was so easy.”

That made David pause. He looked down at the trooper, snarling at them.

They continued to taunt the pack, “Bet you’ll never guess what body I used to do it.”

Jessica screamed and tried to launch herself at the trooper. Tsu’mara caught her by her collar.

“Do you know whose body I hijacked?” Cooper continued to taunt, cackling. “Just whose eyes he looked into as he choked his last?”

He pointed to Jessica with his head, “She killed him”

Jessica screamed again, and everyone's hair on the back of their necks stood on end and they felt the Gauntlet around the Locus ripple as something started crossing. They all knew what it was.

David snapped his to Kaiden and yelled, “The necklace!”

The monstrous spirit wolf leapt out of the crucifix, straight for Morrison.

He ducked to avoid it, but one of its claws caught his shoulder. He shifted to Dalu and swiped at the spirit as it landed by him.

Kaiden snatched the necklace from Cooper’s neck and quickly put it on Jessica.

“Nothing’s happening,” he said. He turned to David, “Why isn’t anything happening?”

“She’s a wolf-blood,” snapped David as Jessica struggled in Tsu’mara’s grip. “She can’t use essence. She needs to resonate with it in a certain way to get it to activate it. It’s a talen. We only have one shot.”

Hoping to buy the pack more time or at least appease the spirit, he picked Cooper up from the ground and threw the possessed trooper towards the spirit.

But midthrow, the trooper disappeared as if he was never there to begin with. A yipping laughter echoed in the basement as David’s handcuffs fell to the floor. He had, at some point, used an illusion to escape.

“We’re going to have a little talk,” Tsu'mara said, keeping Jessica restrained with one arm. With her other she grabbed Jessica’s head and forced her to look at the spirit Morrison was trying to restrain. “That spirit is tied to you. That’s on you.”

“Please,” she begged Jessica, her grip on the teenager’s head tightened, “Don’t make me lose another child.”

Jessica let out a single, wracking sob and the talen then glowed. The glow then spread over Jessica then outwards.

When the glow hit David, he felt all his violence drain from him. That’s what the talen did, he realised. It pacifies.

He looked over to the spirit. Even before the glow hit it, it had stopped fighting Morrison through its link to Jessica. It let out a single, mournful howl before leaping through the Locus and back through the Gauntlet.

“Is that it?” asked Morrison as gashes across his body healed.

The glow from the talen died down as its power was used up. After no more incursions from the Spirit World, David answered, “I think so.”

“Good,” said Morrison. He turned to Tsu’mara who had fallen to her knees and was trying to comfort the sobbing Jessica. “You got the girl, we’re going after that asshole.”

It was easy for them to track the trooper down with the lantern. False trails tried to drive them off track, but the lantern revealed the truth behind what ones were real and what were not. They led them to a scrap field in the West of town.

There they found Cooper, and he was changed. And not for the better. He peered at them through half lidded eyes that glowed bright yellow like dim fluorescent lights. There were patches of yellow coyote fur growing from his eyebrows, jaw, ears, and the back of his hands. His teeth were jagged and crooked in the sickly grin he gave them. It was clear to the pack what it was. The trooper wasn’t Urged or Ridden by a spirit. He was Claimed. Whoever Cooper was before was gone. Subjected to a fate worse than death. His soul obliterated and denied an afterlife by the coyote spirit Claiming his body.

“You’re kidding me, right?” he asked, backing up against one of the pillars. His glowing eyes darted around, trying to find an escape. But each one he found, another one of the pack appeared. Cutting it off. “Not wolf enough to go after the Big Bad Wolf? Instead you decide to go after the little guy in the desert? Kick sand in his face, is that it?”

He raised a furred hand, “Well, you’ll have to catch me first…”

A gun shot rang out as Morrison speed drew his service revolver and shot the Claimed. The shot went straight through the monstrosity and blasted a small hole in a large piece of metal behind them. The Claimed trooper then disappeared. Another illusion.

The coyote spirit laughed, appearing nearby, “Ahah, try again!”

Lucas fired his own revolver to the same effect.

The coyote spirit possessed trooper continued to taunt them. Too focused on taunting them that he failed to notice one member of the pack missing. At least until Jesse appeared behind them and in Gauru and swiped across the back, making them stumble forwards.

Taken by surprise by the Irraka, their laughter stopped and they looked for an escape. There was only a single route. They tried to bolt for it just for a roaring wall of fire to erupt into view, blocking off the escape and surrounding them all.

“No running now,” snarled David, flame roaring from his lighter. The runes on his Charred Death Rattle burned as bright as the fire around him as the spirit inside gleefully fed on the rage contorting his face.

Kaiden leapt onto the spirit possessed trooper, slammed their head into the dirt and used his whole body to pin them to the ground.

Morrison pulled out a sawed off shotgun out from his service vest. He shoved it inside the trooper's mouth and fired, blowing a large hole into their skull.

Normally, such a wound would be a death sentence, but all that happened was make the spirit laugh. Yipping cackles emitting from the ghastly bloody wound where his mouth used to be.

Lucas aimed his revolver at their chest, letting Kaiden move out of the way first, and fired right into their chest, blowing out their heart.

But still the spirit cackled. It cackled as it wrench its arm free from underneath Kaiden with a snap of bone. It raised its broken arm and cackled, “See you all later!”

“ NO! ” roared David and tried to leap for the outstretched arm.

***

David came to several feet away, ears ringing and every part of him aching. With the worst pain coming from his thigh. He groggily looked down to see a large, bloodied shard of bone sticking out from his side. It looked like a part of a femur. Not his own. He grabbed it and slowly pulled it out.

He looked around the scrapyard and saw the others of the pack picking themselves up from where they blasted away to.

All except Kaiden.

Being in the epicentre of the blast, he took the brunt of it. He laid face down in a twisted heap the furthest from all of them. One of his arms was twisted in several unnatural ways.

“No,” said David, his stomach dropping. He scrambled to his feet, stumbling as leg still hadn’t fully healed and ran towards his packmate. “Nononono.”

He skidded to his knees and worried over Kaiden, hoping the worst hadn’t happened, and turned them over onto their back.

They were still breathing which made David gasp out in relief. He looked around for the coyote spirit. But all he could find was a red smear of bone and offal at the epicentre of the explosion. It had destroyed the body it had stolen before they could destroy all of its Essence. It would reform in the Spirit World.

He fell back and put his head into hands. It had managed to run after all.

He failed.