Seducer: Alliance

By Dan Champagne

Volume II, Book I of the Abaddon Trilogy.
Laiel Brockade is missing. He has been, for close to a year, although it’s only just now that most of his friends and allies are realizing it. That’s what happens when you’re a son of the Devil, with an unlisted phone number. But now, they’re on the case. And with the Devil’s Reapers motorcycle gang, the unshakable detective Ben Arlington, the immortal assassin Cupideau Ahmee Etienne, even Laiel’s apprentice Andy, as well as one new-crowned shadow Prince searching for him, it’s only a matter of time before the man is found and brought out into the light.
But the children of the Devil don’t do well in bright light, and Laiel has finally realized just how small of a chess piece he is on the really big gameboard. His opponents have made their moves. Now it’s time for Laiel and his coven to start making some of their own.
Genres: Occult & Supernatural, Horror, Action & Adventure, Sub/Urban Fantasy, Humor/Satire, Philosophy, Religion, War, Pre/Post-Apocalyptic.
Prior Reading:
Provoker. Volume I
Nocturnal Whispers: Volume I
Further Reading:
Seducer: Escalation. Volume II:II
Seducer: Insurgence. Volume II:III
Nocturnal Whispers: Volume II
Destroyer: Onus. Volume III:I

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dan Champagne
• Release date: May 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991357864

Dan Champagne

Dan Champagne Born: 1974, Died: ???? Writer, Occultist, Dark Magician. A small, thin, but muscular bald man, with pale skin, and piercing hazel eyes, almost always dressed in black. [Note: All stats, GURPS® 3rd edition] ST:10, DX:12, Speed:5.75, IQ:14, HT:11, Move:5, Dodge:6. Advantages: Animal Empathy, Combat Reflexes, Eidetic Memory/1, Magical Aptitude/3 (Limitation: Black Magic only), Strong Will+1, Composed, Less Sleep/2, Versatile, Awareness, Racial Memory, Immunity (the negative effects of self-cast Black Magic). Disadvantages: Personal Code of Honor, Split Personality, Unluckiness, Secrets, Insomniac, Undiscriminating, Voices, Xenophilia, Divinely Cursed. Quirks: Loves foreign foods. Prefers his women heavy. Doesn’t care about nostalgia items like photographs. Talks to his cat like it’s a person. Skills: Thaumatology-13, Writing-14, Acrobatics-10, Brawling-12, Broadsword-11, Guns (pistol/rifle)-13, Karate-10, Climbing-11, Survival (northern forests)-12, Computer Operation-13, Ecology-11, Geology-11, History-11, Literature-11, Occultism-14, Psychology-11, Theology-13, Acting-13, Stealth-11, Tactics-10. Languages: English (native)-17. Equipment: Dan will nearly always be found with a knife somewhere upon his person, although he is usually careful to ensure that the item is legal for him to carry. Depending on the time period of his life in which he’s encountered, he may also be carrying other weapons, including, but not limited to: a pistol, pepper spray, a pressure baton, and perhaps a taser. Character Notes: This is Dan as he is most likely to be met in a contemporary setting. Note that this is a conservative, mostly realistic treatment of the author, which does not assume that the supernatural is either real or not. A cinematic treatment of Dan, especially one that includes the existence of supernatural elements, would have much higher skill levels, the addition of spells, and even other supernatural advantages and disadvantages, such as the ability to spontaneously cast spells, reputations among angels and demons both, plus allies and enemies among them as well. Dan was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1974. He showed aptitudes for art and language at an early age, but was always somewhat socially withdrawn. His earliest memories of interacting with other children were ones of alienation. By the age of twenty-one, he had been married and divorced, and events previous to that left him convinced that he was somehow fundamentally different from other people, and would never fit into contemporary society. At age thirteen, he received a copy of The Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor LaVey. Upon first reading it, he became enamored with philosophy, but by adulthood he had abandoned the tenets of modern atheistic Satanism in favor of a more broad and personally-developed Left Hand Path philosophy. When he was a teenager, he became a ward of the state due to difficulties involving his home life, mostly surrounding his mother’s divorce from his father, who, while not being Dan’s biological, was the man who had mostly raised him. During these years, his anti-social tendencies deepened, but these feelings were somewhat lessened during his early twenties. Since childhood, Dan had been plagued by undiagnosed schizophrenia (reflected by the disadvantages of Split Personality, and Voices), which had served as the springboard for his interest in the occult and supernatural in his youth. The author made an unsuccessful attempt at a college career. While being a stellar student, his college aspirations eventually failed due to a combination of his worsening schizophrenia and problems financing his education. He managed a comic store for a decade, which coincided with his short college attendance. After this period of his life, and due to several hospitalizations from acute mental illness, Dan came to the conclusion that his best destiny was as a writer, and he increasingly concentrated his time and efforts to that end. Encountered: Dan can be socially abrasive, but how much of that is truly self-generated, versus being an understandable response to others’ negative reactions to his strangeness, is debatable. Due to his focus on his writing, he increasingly evaluates situations on how much they might help, or harm, his writing career. At times he can seem cold and distant, or even hostile, but this is another reaction to, and often even an anticipation of, the poor treatment generally dealt to those who are socially divergent. Despite the above, few people come away from an encounter with Dan without being left with an impression of the energy, intellect, will, and pride that form the core of his personality.

Book preview

SEDUCER:

ALLIANCE

Volume II, Book I

of the Abaddon Trilogy

by Dan Champagne.

published by PonderHouse.

copyright 2015 Dan Champagne.

[smashwords edition]

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, creatures, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, organizations, faiths, or actual persons, living or dead, or manifest entities, undead or otherwise, is entirely coincidental, with all due respect intended.

Copyright 2015 by Dan Champagne

Artworks copyright 2015 by Creative Monkey Designs

All rights reserved.

a PonderHouse publication

produced, edited by silent.

version 1.2s  2019/02/14

ISBN-13: 978-0-9913-5786-4

ISBN-10: 0-9913-5786-8

NocturnalWhispers.com

PonderHouse.com

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Penned in the United States of America,

New Hampshire.

If you bought this book,

the author appreciates it.

To my Mother,

Without whom, the Devil wouldn’t be my Dad,

and none of this would be possible.

SEDUCER

  by

Dan Champagne

[legal about]

Book I: ALLIANCE

01.Wherein the form of wolf and man become as one, much to a regular guy’s dismay.

02.Wherein we meet another of Laiel’s friends. A demonic bloodsucking sociopath. No surprises there.

03.Wherein an unsuspecting pack of wolves and a lovestruck decapitated Frenchman set out upon a quest together.

04.Wherein the rescue of the fat Hellbound apprentice serves up slaughter for dinner.

05.Wherein a Prince takes up cloak and crown, and sits upon his throne of shadows.

06.Wherein the waiting room of another fell Prince some wary conversations, and a few drinks, are had.

07.Wherein shadows serve their Prince, an assassin gains a wife, and heroes escape from darkness to light.

08.Wherein a vampire and a biker thug take a stroll through the woods, down a crevasse, and up to the top of a mountain. All to pick up the fat kid.

09.Wherein the allies are gathered at last, and a rescue operation is discussed.

10.Wherein the rescue operation goes into play. Not as smoothly as some would have preferred…

Book I:

ALLIANCE

In the latter part of their reign,

as the transgressors act to completion,

there will stand up a king fierce in countenance,

and understanding dark sentences.

He will become very strong,

but not by his own power:

And in a wonderful way he will cause ruin,

and shall prosper and practice.

And he will actually bring mighty ones to ruin,

his cunning shall be against the holy ones.

And according to his insight

he will also certainly cause deception to succeed in his hand.

He shall magnify himself in his heart,

and destroy many by stealth.

But when he rises against the prince of princes,

he will be destroyed,

but not by human power.

 

–The Apocalypse of Daniel:

Eighth chapter, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth verses.

Dramatis Personæ

Peter: Wolfsinger, the Obsidian Prince.

The Bisclavret Werewolves: Guillaume, Didier, Olivie.

Cupideau Ahmee Etienne: immortal, beheaded French assassin.

Eftemie Shaithisanu: gentleman vampire of the Nagyszalonta.

Dawson: human switchboard of the supernatural underground.

Greg ‘Tommy’ Thompson: educated thug.

Andrew Slade: the fat Apprentice, living grimoire.

Sir Taeliesinn: the Evil Prince, keeper of The Mirror.

Bessalina Navalov: vampire Queen, Dracula’s descendant.

Patel: Caitiff Angel of the Heavenforge.

Elterenne: Gadarene Demon of the Hellforge.

Antiphes: Gadarene Demon of the ritual planck.

Benjamin Arlington: gumshoe, serial killer hunter.

The Devil’s Reapers: outlaw motorcycle gang.

Alexis Oliver: necromantic Gypsy witch, gang leader.

Crispus McBride: the uncommon outlaw, muscle.

Jimbo Givens: the Squire, the Ripper, tech support.

Simon Diamond: supernatural serial killer.

Abigail Fuller: werewolf, covener of the Antichrist.

The Warlock: Antichrist’s left hand, ancient.

one

Hi, my name is Peter Bisclaret, and this is the story of how I became a fucking werewolf.

Now, before we go any further, I have to say something that sounds pretty lame, even to me, but it’s the truth. I’m just a regular guy. Sure, I know, you’ve heard that before, right? You’re thinking to yourself, ‘Yeah, Pete, you’re a regular guy, just like Luke Skywalker was a regular guy, or, maybe more appropriately, just like Jack from Fight Club was a regular guy. But you just opened up with Hey, I’m a werewolf!’

A regular guy, Peter, you are not.

And you’re right to think that.

But I’m telling you, I am. Or at least I was.

I drive a cheap car that breaks down a lot. I won’t name my employer, but I will tell you that I work for not much more than minimum wage, and I wear a blue vest at work every day. I get together and play cards with my friends on the weekends, and I eat cornflakes for breakfast. I don’t have a girlfriend right at the moment, but I do OK in that department. I don’t care for football all that much, but I love baseball (go Red Sox!).

So, I mean it when I say, I’m a regular guy.

The only problem with that statement is, it just isn’t true.

The truth is, I’m a werewolf.

But I didn’t know that until very recently.

This all starts with, or maybe goes back to, family. You can’t escape family, right? You can put a lot of things behind you in life, or even run away from them. But even if you’re living in denial, you can’t ever change who your family is, or where you came from. That’s not something any of us has any real power over. Including me.

So what can I tell you about my family? Not much, because there’s not much to tell. My dad died when I was very young. Eight years old, and he got struck by lightning working on a power line in a thunderstorm. No need to offer condolences, it was a long time ago, and I’m over it. That left me and my mom. And that’s how I grew up. An only child. No brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, or any other close or more-distant relations that I ever knew of. My mom told me how a couple of generations back our family immigrated to America from France. They were poor farmers, and sailed over here to find a better life.

So, thanks to all of that, here I am.

You might think that I sound a little sad, maybe even bitter about my life, but that’s not true. I’m a pretty happy person. I like my life, and I like myself. I love my mom. I don’t have much, but for me, that was never what life was all about anyway.

And I know you’ve heard that before too, but in my case, it’s true.

So, you’re probably waiting for me to get to the good part, meaning the part where I wolf-out and kill a bunch of people, then wake up naked somewhere the next morning with no memory of it, covered in sticky blood and guts, like in a movie.

Well, that’s not how I became a werewolf at all. Thinking about it now, if that was how it had happened, it would have made it a whole lot easier for me. Simpler. Because the truth about what happened to me is a lot more complex, and dare I say?– scarier.

So, I’ll leave off boring you with a lot of the details of my ordinary life, because believe me, it was very ordinary, and I liked it that way. I know, it might give you a clearer picture of who I was before all of this happened to me, but I feel like I would be belaboring the point. I could go back six months before I noticed anything weird going on, and give you a day-by-day description of everything that I did in the before time.

But honestly, what would be the point of that?

Am I right in assuming that’s not what you want to hear about?

And I think you’ll get to know me best by seeing me as I navigate the craziness that my life has become, rather than hearing a lot about what it was like when it was a life like any number of other people’s lives. I think there’s truth to the idea that you’ll learn more about someone by seeing how they act for one hour during a crisis than you will by seeing them for a year’s worth of average days.

So I guess I’ll skip to the part when I started to notice strange things going on around me, and we’ll walk through it from there. I will tell you, right now, that there will come a certain point in my story where I won’t be able to tell you how it comes out any longer, because you’ll be right there with me, living it as it happens.

And I’ll tell you the one thing that I’m hoping for in all of this.

I’m hoping that I survive it.

~~

You’ve heard it before, but it really bears repeating here– Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

And that’s how it started for me. I noticed that I was being watched, and followed.

Now I can’t say that I’m a detective, or that I’m the most observant person in the world either, but this was just strange. I mean that it was strange from both ends, so to speak. Not only was what I was seeing strange, but what I was feeling was strange, too.

I noticed this kind of un-ordinary guy following me, first. He stuck out, there’s no other way to say it. If I recall correctly, the first time that I noticed him was when I was at the mall. I was just sitting in the food court, minding my own ‘P’s and ‘Q’s, and eating my golden arches burger, when I took note that he had passed by me in the hallway three times within ten minutes.

But that’s not what really made me take notice. It wasn’t even the way that he stared as he passed that did it. No. It was the feeling that I got. I was neither a believer or a disbeliever in psychic phenomenon, like a ‘sixth sense,’ or premonitions, déjà vu, or anything like that. But the second time that he walked by me, I just got this creepy-crawly feeling all over my skin. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was a true-to-life I’m being watched feeling, and it was so strong that I couldn’t ignore it.

It was unlike anything else I’d ever experienced before.

The feeling screamed unnatural at me.

My head was turning, and it was like I’d lost the power to control my reaction. And when I’d turned and taken a look, there he was, walking past me from behind where I was sitting, and like I’m sure you’ve guessed, he was staring right at me.

And because I’d turned to look, I was staring right back at him.

I know what you want to know, and I’m ready to deliver. I’ll tell you not only what he looked like, but also the impression that I got from looking him in the eye.

He was maybe six feet tall. Just a little taller than me I’d guess, because I’m five-ten. But he was a lot bigger than me. I’m maybe a bit on the light side of average, being about 155 pounds, but this guy looked stocky. And I don’t mean fat. He looked strong. Thick and broad, with muscles.

He had long wavy black hair. It was held back in a ponytail, and he sported a goatee, also black, but shot with gray. His skin had a little of that weathered look to it, and his eyes were green. The word ‘piercing’ would fit here. He was wearing what looked to me like biker leathers, and I’ve got to say that his general look said ‘European’ to me.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I was afraid of him.

Our eyes were locked. And then he just walked by. No growled threat, or even a curt nod of hello. It happened so fast that I was left with a feeling of wondering whether it had really happened the way I thought it did.

But it had.

And it happened again, several times in fact, under different circumstances.

I saw him two nights later as I walked to my car after getting out of work. He jumped in his own vehicle and was gone the moment I looked his way. Then I saw him while I was at the grocery store. Believe me, this is a guy you won’t forget seeing as you’re going up the frozen-foods aisle. The next time I saw him was maybe the creepiest, because the other times I could at least leave some possibility in my mind that the whole thing was just a really weird coincidence. I happened to look out the window of my apartment one night, and there he was, down on the street. He walked away, and the way I saw his body move the moment that I caught sight of him out there told me one thing for sure. He had been just standing there a moment before, and when he saw me in the window, that’s when he started walking.

Well, as I’m sure you can imagine, after I’d seen this guy on the street three more times over the course of the week, I was decidedly nervous. Scared enough to talk to my friends about it.

You can imagine how that went. The jokes ranged from me being sent to a rubber-walled room, to me being stalked by a gay biker secret admirer. So, I stopped talking about it to them. The only person in my life that I didn’t mention it to was my mom, and of course, as it turns out, she might have been the only one that would have had any chance of having some understanding of what was going on.

But come on, who’s going to go and burden their mom with something like that?

Not me, I can tell you that much.

So I kept it to myself after that, and told myself that nothing had really happened. It had to be a wild coincidence. My life isn’t a movie. Nobody would be following me around. What reason could they possibly have to do a thing like that?

So, just as I was doing my level best to put the whole spooky series of episodes behind me, I saw the wolf.

It was Saturday night, late, and I’d just left a bar that me and my friends like to hang out at. I’m not proud to admit this, but while I can’t say that I was exactly drunk, I had had maybe one too many beers to be driving home. But hey, this story isn’t about my minor and forgivable sins. It’s about me becoming a werewolf, right?

Don’t get the wrong impression, I wasn’t stumbling around and slurring my words here. Not by a long shot. I just had a little buzz going. It was winter, so it was pretty frosty out there at one in the morning. I walked to my car, quick. The place was deserted. Just cold asphalt for as far as the eye could see.

Except, that it wasn’t quite as deserted as it had at first appeared to be.

I was doing the typical looking down and fumbling at the lock with the keys thing, when I got that feeling again. I know how stupid it sounds, but I can only describe it as an intense feeling of being watched. So I looked up.

There he was, standing a fair distance away across the parking lot, but still too close for me. He looked even meaner to me than he usually did, if that was at all possible. And this time he wasn’t alone. He had a big black dog with him, standing at his side. Now, as scary as the man looked, the dog was worse. It was the animal that my attention became fixed upon.

I’ve never seen a wolf in real life, not even in a zoo, but I have seen my fair share of nature shows on TV. So I can’t say that I’ve technically never seen a wolf before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming to be an expert on wolves here. No way. But I got a good long look at that animal, and it had that kind of vibe to it, the one where you look at an animal, and you just know, it’s wild.

It got as cold inside me as it was outside in the winter air. I looked at it, and this little voice started to whisper in the cold emptiness inside of me.

It said– That’s no dog. That’s a wolf.

I’m guessing that right about now is where you’re having a laugh to yourself at some kind of ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf!’ reference.

Well, for my part, I was fairly well shitting my pants at the time.

I was too afraid to cry ‘Wolf!’ or anything else, for that matter.

And what happened next didn’t make me feel any better, I’ll tell you.

The wolf raised its head up, and sniffed the air. I saw the steam of its breath clearly. Then it dropped its muzzle and nosed along the ground. But it wasn’t coming towards me, at least not at first. It was moving away. I knew what it was doing in a second.

It was following the trail along the ground of where I had walked across the parking lot a few moments before. I knew I was right when suddenly it turned around and started to come toward me. It was quiet enough out there that I could hear it snuffling the air through its nose, and the click of its claws on the ground.

I was frozen in place for a second. In that moment the wolf’s eyes flicked up, and we looked right at each other. It had its mouth slightly open as it was sniffing, and all I could see was the green of its eyes, and the long white slivers of its teeth.

That snapped me out of it.

I had the right key in the door’s lock faster than I think I’ve ever done it before. I don’t have any clear memory of getting in my car, or of starting it, but I do remember driving away.

I remember that because I happen to have glanced back. And I saw the big guy standing right where he was when I first saw him, except that he had his arms folded over his chest. He looked… expectant, maybe.

I went home and locked myself in my apartment. I didn’t sleep that night. I just sat there with all the lights on, holding a baseball bat. Not that the bat would have done me any good.

I guess they’d gotten enough of a look at me by that time, because the next night was when they took me.

~~

I didn’t say anything to anybody about any of it at work the next day. By that time, I knew nobody would have believed me. What they would believe was that I had completely lost it. And I had enough on my mind, I just didn’t want to have to deal with that. But my coworkers could tell that something was wrong. After pulling that all-nighter on wolf-watch, I couldn’t hide it. I was tired, even haggard, and it showed.

It was one of those days. You know the exact kind that I’m talking about. The kind of day where you’re exhausted, and your job is the last place on earth that you want to be. But I’m a trooper. I stuck it out. It was a ten-hour day for me, and I got through it, somehow.

By the end of it, I was too tired to be scared or even worried anymore. I just wanted to go home and fall into my bed, wolves chasing me or not. And that’s exactly what I planned on doing.

And I almost made it.

I got to the front steps of the apartment building that I lived in, and no farther under my own power. I was so tired that I was somehow not thinking about the things that had caused me to lose sleep. I was fishing the key to the door out of my pocket, and I lowered my eyes for a second. I was still stepping forward, and as I looked up again, I ran into someone. In the condition that I was in I couldn’t really be surprised that I hadn’t noticed him walking down the sidewalk.

I bet you’re thinking it was the big guy with the long hair and the goatee, right?

Well, it wasn’t.

It was a different guy.

He was taller, and kind of thin, with short brown hair, and brown eyes. He looked pretty normal. Button-down shirt with a nice long coat pulled over it, and a pair of dependable winter shoes at the bottom of it all. I opened my mouth to apologize to him, when I heard a growl.

I turned and looked, but I already knew what I was going to see.

As it turned out, I did see what I expected to, but it wasn’t exactly what I had expected.

It was a wolf all right, just not the same one that I had seen the night before. This one was black too, but it was bigger, and a whole lot meaner looking. It was standing at the corner, about half a block away from me, right beneath a street light. I could see it plainly. The fur was black, but with a peppering of gray that shifted to almost all gray at the muzzle. Seeing it gave me the weirdest sensations I’d yet experienced in what had been a parade of weird feelings.

Let me say first, I was terrified. And I mean that by the dictionary definition of the word. You know how sometimes people will describe being so scared that their blood freezes, and they can’t move at all? It was just like that.

I got two very distinct impressions in the second that I was afforded to look at it.

The first was that it was too big to be a wolf. I’ve already admitted that I don’t know jack or squat about wolves, but I know enough to know that if you see a wolf standing beside a car, and the arch of the beast’s back is level with the roof of said car, that you’re looking at an unnaturally large animal.

The second impression that leaped into my terrified mind was even more strange than the first.

Somehow, I knew that I had seen the wolf before.

But that wasn’t possible. Except for the one I’d seen the night before, I’d never seen a wolf with my own eyes in my life. And this one was definitely not the one I’d seen previously.

But I was absolutely sure, in that moment, that I had seen this wolf before.

I mean, I was sure in the same way that you’re sure that the sun will rise in the morning. Or that gravity will make something fall if you pick it up and let it go. I didn’t have any time to puzzle over any of it, or even to run, however.

Because that was when the guy that I’d bumped into hit me in the back of the head.

At least I was getting that rest I needed so badly, even if it wasn’t at all how I had intended to get it.

~~

And that’s the beginning of how my oh-so-regular life slipped into the darkness. Now, you and I will just have to see how this all turns out, together.

~~

I wake up in the dark.

But it isn’t totally dark, I realize. There’s a little bit of light.

I’m lying on my stomach, and I’m in pain. Like the light, it isn’t a lot, only a little. I’m sore all over, the same kind of way as when you wake up after having slept in a bad position, and there’s an ache in the back of my head.

This is like the bad aftermath of a night of good drinking.

I roll over to get a better view of the light, or maybe look at the alarm clock on the little table beside my bed… and that’s when it all comes rushing back in.

I’m not in my bed. Or in my apartment. And somehow, I’ve got a sneaking intuition that I’m really far away from both of those things, because the last thing I remember is facing off with a big wolf, and getting knocked out from behind.

I’ve been kidnapped, and I can’t say that I’ve often heard of that ending well before.

I’m lying on my back now. I don’t think that I’m quite ready to try and get up yet, but I can see where the light that I woke up to is coming from.

There’s a window, high above where I’m lying. It looks tiny, and it has bars on it, which I wish I could say comes as a surprise. The light is coming through the window, and through it I can see exactly what it is.

It’s the moon. The full moon, to be truthful.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen it looking as full and bright as it does to me right now.

But it isn’t a comforting sight.

As a matter of fact, the sight of it scares the hell out of me for some reason that I can’t describe. And I can’t seem to stop staring at it, but I somehow manage to. I take a look around.

I’m in a cage.

I can see by the light of the moon that the window is set high up in a stone wall. Out of reach, even if I stand on my tippy-toes. It looks old. The walls, and the window. Natural stones pulled out of the ground, and stacked and mortared, like you see sometimes in the basements of old houses. There’s a cage made out of bars on the other three sides of me, with the stone wall making up the fourth. It’s a small space, with barely enough room for my body to be laid out on the floor, which is also stone.

I’m not alone.

There are a line of cages, just like the one that I’m in, all along the wall. I can’t see exactly how many, it’s pretty dark in here, but there are two more people in the cages next to the one I’m in, to my left and right. One of them is still passed out on the floor, but the other guy is wide awake.

He’s looking at me right now.

He looks maybe older than I am, and definitely a bit grizzled. Cropped haircut. He looks lean, and muscular, and mean. I wouldn’t want to fight him. He’s giving me a hard look, but that changes to a grim smile in a moment.

Did I mention that all three of us are naked, and that it’s cold in here?

Hey, mate, the guy says to me. Not your best wake-up, I’ll wager.

His accent. I can’t place it for a moment. English? Irish? No, Scottish. That’s it.

No, I say carefully, for you either, I’m guessing.

Right about that, he says to me. Then he reaches through the bars with one hand. I jump back, and who can blame me for it. Sorry, mate, didn’t mean t’startle ya. Just being friendly, seein’ as how we seem t’be in this thing together, like.

Peter Bisclaret, I say, taking his hand and shaking it.

That’s a funny thing, he says, shaking my hand. Onea me grandfathers was named Bisclaret.

It sinks in after a second, how there’s only a smidgen of a chance that that’s a coincidence. We stare at each other, then move on. What else can we do?

I’m Boyd Drummond, he says to me. American?

Yeah, I reply, Scotland?

Guilty, he says, nodding. Glasgow.

Sommerville, I say.

Where’s that? he asks.

Boston.

Ah, he says. Then– Aside from you and me maybe sharing some ancestry a few generations back, any idea what brought us into this sorry situation, mate?

No, I reply. But weird things were happening for a few days before they grabbed me. Then I hear my voice go kind of low and far away as I say– I saw wolves…

I look up at his face, and I know from his expression what he’s going to say before he says it.

You saw the wolves too, he says in a low voice, and I hear some fear there for the first time.

Yes, I answer, because I don’t know what else to say about it.

They didn’t leave us with a stitch on our backs, mate, but they at least gave us a pot to piss in. He laughs. I look down. He’s right, there’s a wooden bucket in the corner of the cell I’m in. Count the small blessings, am I right?

Right, I say. What do you think’s going to happen to us?

Reckon sooner or later that big tosser with the gray in his beard will get around to comin’ in here and buggerin’ us t’death, one by one, he says.

The pucker of my butt squeezes when he says that. This. Is. Not. Good.

Oh shit, I whisper.

What’d ya think ya were here for mate, a party?

No.

That’s right, he says. Just try and get in one good punch when he takes ya out of the cell to do ya up.

We go quiet for a few minutes.

They’re French, ya know, Boyd suddenly says.

How do you know? I ask.

I heard ‘em talking French when they threw me in here. I was awake by the time they put me on the plane, too.

Plane? I ask, bewildered.

Yeah, mate, he says. They tucked me in a bag and threw me in a plane. It wasn’t that long of a trip for me, but it was a mite bit longer for you, I’ll reckon.

I was knocked out the whole time, I answer.

Well, ya didn’t miss much more than the inside of a bag, he says.

So, you think we’re in France?

I know it, he says back to me.

How?

I can just tell, he says. The length of my little plane ride, and smell that air. He sniffs, long and loud. That’s the air of the French countryside in winter. I been there before, so I know, he finishes.

Why would they bring me all the way to France? I say in a distant voice.

Who knows, mate? Boyd says. Who can say why the crazy, raping, murderers among us do what they do?

He wasn’t making me feel any better.

You sound less scared than you should be… I say.

We all gotta die sometime, he answers. I was a soldier, saw action all over the place, the Balkans, Iraq, like that. Been ready to meet the Grim Reaper for a long time. Was always hoping I wouldn’t die bad, but that’s what ya get for hopin’, am I right?

…right… I say.

So. This is it. And I’m not happy about it.

We hear a noise, and in a second I can tell what it is. It’s the sound of someone walking down a set of stairs. I look out through the bars of my cage, but it’s nothing but dark out there. Then I see a crack of light, down low. It’s obvious to me what that is, too. It’s light coming out from underneath a door.

The light is kind of yellow, and it’s moving. Coming closer. The footsteps grow louder as it does. It sounds like more than one person.

There’s a creak and scraping as the door opens. I see it in the light from out there, it’s a very old and worn wooden door, in a stone wall like the one that I have at my back.

Shapes are looming in the door frame, backlit. The first is easy to recognize. It’s the big guy that I saw a bunch of times back in Sommerville. There are two more people coming in behind him.

The next one through the door is the guy that knocked me out. I only saw him for a second, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget him. The third one through the door is the shocker though.

It’s a woman.

A beautiful woman.

She’s got dark hair, and a pretty face, and she looks very French to me. It’s hard for me to put my finger on exactly why I say that, but I think you know what I mean. She’s wearing a nice dress, it’s a dark blue color that’s almost black. She’s carrying an old-style lantern in one hand, which she carefully places on the floor to the side.

Once I see her, I decide that I really have no idea what’s going on.

When they come into the room, Boyd goes crazy. Violently so. He throws himself at the bars, reaching through, trying to get his hands on them. But they’re not dumb enough (or suicidal enough) to get close enough for that. He also lets loose a stream of threats into the air. It goes a little like this–

YOU FUCKIN’ WANKERS! COME ON GREYBEARD, JUST LET ME GET MY HANDS ON YOU AND WE’LL HAVE IT OUT, YOU BASTARD! I’LL TEAR YOUR HEART OUT AND EAT IT, YOU BLOODY BITCHES!

You get the idea. The worst thing is, they just ignore it. Me? I back away, from him and them both. But there isn’t far I can go in the cage. Even with my back against the wall, someone could still probably reach in and touch me through the bars.

They start to have a conversation between the three of them, in low voices, although how they can hear each other with the racket that Boyd’s raising is beyond me.

They seem calm as they walk back and forth in front of the cages, talking to each other. And why shouldn’t they be? We’re the ones locked in cages like animals.

They point at one or the other of us occasionally as they talk. I can hear bits of what they’re saying, despite how Boyd is screaming like a madman, practically in my ear. They’re definitely speaking French to each other. I don’t know a word of it, besides maybe oui, but it’s easy to recognize the language when you hear it.

Then I guess they’re done talking over whatever it is they were figuring out among themselves, because the big guy with the goatee steps away from the other two. He starts taking his clothes off.

Oh, shit, I breathe. Rape and death it is, I suppose.

First he shrugs his broad shoulders out of the leather jacket he’s wearing. I have no idea why, but he stoops down a little, bending at the waist and knees, as he unbuttons his shirt. He puts toe to heel and kicks out of his boots one at a time as the shirt comes off. He’s hairy under the outer layer. I mean really hairy. Too hairy.

His chest and arms are covered in fur. It’s not hair, it’s fur.

I look up at his face, and his face is covered in the same thick, black fur.

But it’s his eyes that I’m looking at.

They’re yellow. Bright yellow. And I know enough to know, the fur notwithstanding, that people just don’t have yellow eyes like that, ever.

I’m so scared that I can’t even scream. I can’t move either, not that there’s any place that I can run to.

I realize that Boyd has stopped yelling.

The big guy falls down onto his hands and knees. Somehow my eyes dart to his hands when he does. I’m both shocked, and not surprised, at the same time by what I see there. His hands are long, longer than human hands can be, and there are claws at the tips of the fingers.

I only get to look at them like that for a second, because he reaches back and hooks his thumbs into the waist of his pants, and pushes them down. As his pants come off I see his legs transform. I see them alter, right there in front of me. The way they bend changes. They have thick black fur all over them, and as the last leg of his pants come off, a tail springs up in the back, big and bushy.

I’m not ashamed to admit that right then I felt a warm stream of pee go down the inside of one of my legs. Don’t judge me, I’m sure you probably would have done the same if you were in the position that I was in at that moment.

For some reason, what my eyes are drawn to is the pile of his clothes that are on the floor beneath him. Then my eyes snap up, and even though I know what I’m going to see, it somehow still blasts the sensibilities right out of my mind.

He’s turned into a wolf. A huge wolf.

And not just a wolf, he’s turned into the wolf.

The one that I saw on the street when they took me.

That wolf.

I’m beyond afraid. Now, I’m numb.

He’s a fucking werewolf. I’m about to get eaten by a fucking werewolf!

I can’t move. All I can do is watch. I see the woman pick up a bucket. I hadn’t noticed it there before. She walks up and douses the guy that’s still passed out in the cage beside me with water.

He starts to wake up from that. He groans pretty loud, then gets his hands under him, and starts to rise. I see him shake his head. He starts to turn over as he gets to his knees.

I don’t think he sees it coming. The werewolf reaches through the bars, and with a growl that I swear I’ll take to my grave, slashes the guy open with a sweep of its claws. Fast. Vicious.

The guy yelps. He starts talking, but it’s more like babbling. I think it’s German, but I can’t be sure. He’s torn open, wide. I see ribs exposed in his side, and one of his arms is red, from bicep to dripping fingers. There’s skin and bits of meat hanging from the wounds.

He collapses back down onto the floor, face on the stone again. He sputters, and blood flecks from his lips. He’s dying. Right here in front of me, he’s dying. The blood pooling around him looks black in the shadows thrown by the lantern light.

And they’re cheering it on. I swear, the other two are cheering him on while he’s dying on the floor of the cage.

They’re both yelling and cheering in French, so I can’t understand any of it, but I’m getting the weird impression, despite the terror numbing my brain, that they’re not actually cheering for his death.

I think they’re cheering for him to get up.

But he doesn’t get up. He tries, once, but he can’t even get to his hands and knees. He falls back down, and the blood stops seeping, and he’s dead.

The other two cheer for a few more seconds, and then it peters out, and stops. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, but they look disappointed.

This is bad. The whole situation is bad, but I can see now where this is going.

The werewolf pads across the floor, head down, and eyes staring… at Boyd.

Boyd backs to the wall of the cage. He knows as well as I do what’s coming next. But the guy is a fighter, if you couldn’t tell, and he’s determined to go out that way. He’s got his lips pulled back in a snarl, and his teeth are gritted together.

COME ON, YEH FUCKER! Boyd yells.

The werewolf leaps. It’s so fast, all I see is a black blur in the air for a split second. Then the long, furred arm is through the bars, and the claws rake savagely across Boyd’s chest. He cries out. It sounds more like rage than pain, and his body stiffens. He tries to grab the arm that got him, tries to hit back, but it just doesn’t work.

It’s like three ragged seams have been torn open in Boyd. He stays standing, somehow, but blood comes down like a waterfall from his chest to the floor. I see all the little lines in the muscles of his chest just before the blood flows over them.

I’m in hell, Boyd whispers. I’m in hell…

Then he topples over.

They cheer for him to get up, and for a second it looks like he’s going to. The guy that knocked me out back in Sommerville even crouches down just outside the bars to Boyd’s cage and is yelling at him.

Then Boyd collapses back down. I can hear him gasping for breath. He gasps, and gasps, and then he stops. He’s gone. They’ve killed him, too.

The tall guy stands up again, and he starts yelling– Merde! Merde! Merde! while throwing his hands up in the air in angry frustration.

He sounds really unhappy that Boyd died just now. The woman isn’t saying anything about it, but she doesn’t look any more happy about it than he does.

That just leaves me. Last man standing.

The werewolf turns toward my cage, and looks at me through the bars. It cocks its head to the side, and huffs a heavy breath out of its open mouth. All I can see are the yellow eyes. Yellow, sure, but a man’s eyes. Then it opens its mouth up wide, and I see the long white teeth. Then it gives me a growling roar.

That does it for me. I turn around and jump for the window above me. I reach it somehow, and grab the bars with both hands, pulling myself up to it. I press my face against the cold iron, and look out. I see a moonlight-drenched countryside, and a snow-covered slope going down to a dark forest beyond. I look up and see the face of the moon, full and silver, up there staring down at me.

SOMEBODY HELP ME!!! GET ME THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!!!

None of this is going to save me, but there’s no way on earth you could convince me of that right now. So I try anyway. I keep yelling.

I hear a harsh growl, and then red-hot knives are cutting me apart from behind. I feel weightless for a second, inside a fiery ball of pain the size of the sun, and then I’m jarred with impact.

I just hit the floor. I feel the hot wetness of my own blood all around me. This is it.

I guess I die, lying in a cage on the floor of this basement somewhere in France. Killed by a werewolf. I would never have guessed this is how I cash it in. Not in a hundred years would I have guessed this is how it would happen.

I manage to turn myself over. I want to at least look in the eyes of the monster, and the people who killed me, as I die. I know, what a time to get heroic about things, right?

I can feel myself bleeding, down my sides, and all over the floor. The blood feels warm, but my skin feels cold. My heart starts to beat like it’s inside my head, and it’s getting slower. Here we go. The great beyond, here I come.

I close my eyes.

I’m not dying quickly enough. I know that’s a hell of a thing for me to think right now, but I’m in pain. I amend, calling it pain is like comparing a paper cut to having both of your arms and legs hacked off with a dull axe.

I suddenly realize that I can hear them cheering for me.

Part of me thinks they’re being real jerks for it, but another part of me is listening really close. So, I listen.

My heartbeat picks up. My back starts to hurt even more. So much more that I can’t lie still any longer. I arch, and then roll onto my side, and end up in a ball there on the floor, in a pool of my own blood. Cold air from the window up above is coming down on me, and I start to shiver.

The pain is easing. I’m shivering, and I can feel myself sweating, which just makes me feel colder. They’ve stopped cheering. For some reason I feel like this is a breathless moment of… what? Anticipation?

Then I hear a voice speaking. I realize it’s speaking to me, because it’s talking in English. My eyes are still closed, and I have no intention of opening them, ever again, in this lifetime at least.

Hey, Peter, can you hear me?

It’s a man’s voice. The tall guy. It doesn’t sound anything like I would imagine the big guy would sound.

Why isn’t he changing? The woman, definitely. Her voice sounds pretty, like wind chimes.

I don’t know, the other says, in a bewildered voice.

Let me see him, a third voice. Deep, and rough. The big guy with the goatee. Guess he’s decided to rejoin the ranks of men.

I hear a rattle, and then the click of