by Joe Jackson
“For saving my life in the bell tower, yes,” Kari conceded, replacing her scimitar in its sheath. “But for killing my prisoner? You’ve ruined everything! I finally had my hands on a demon that knows what’s going on in the underworld, and you tore her throat out when she was helpless. I should thank you for that?”
“You don’t interrogate demons, you kill them,” Sharyn countered. “They only tell lies anyway, and if you think your Order is strong enough to have kept that thing in custody, then you’re a fool. You know what she was up to here: she was trying to become a goddess, or a demon king at the very least. How could you be so stupid as to risk the lives of everyone around you to try to get answers from something that dangerous?”
Kari sighed. “Those manacles I had on her once kept someone far stronger than her completely helpless,” she said. She wiped the gathering moisture from her face, the rain slowing to a stop, and then she ran her hand back through her hair. “She was completely under control and at my mercy…you had no right to kill her.”
“I had every right to kill her!” Sharyn shot back. “She was a demon, an invader, and she was a threat to every living thing–"
“She was a threat to no one,” Kari interrupted more forcefully. “Do you think I’d have just left her lying there and turned my back on her if she was still a danger to anyone? Gods, I’d really love to know why everyone thinks I’m an idiot.”
“Your Order has a strange concept of what hunting demons is all about,” Sharyn said. “‘Love justice but do mercy?’ There is no mercy for demons. No lies they could tell you, or any truth they could sprinkle in between, will ever be worth the danger they pose. The only mercy you give them is death.”
“And we would have, eventually,” Kari said. “After we got some answers from her. This whole plot of hers, these murders here in Barcon and back in DarkWind…this was all nothing; a sideshow. There’s something much bigger and much more dangerous going on, and that’s why I took her prisoner instead of just killing her.”
“No, you admired her fighting style. I watched you two fighting, and these ears,” Sharyn said, running her fingers up the long, pointed ears of the werewolf beside her, “don’t miss much. Asking her about her teacher as if you were more interested in learning from her than putting her to the sword? She would’ve never been your friend or ally; she would’ve killed you without a second thought.”
Kari touched her chin and waved her fingers toward Sharyn in a rude gesture. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, her blood beginning to simmer.
Sharyn folded her arms across her chest. “I’m no fool, Kari. I’ve heard all about you, of both of your lives. Widely considered one of the best sword-fighters in history...it must really chafe your ass that Turillia was as good as or even better than you, doesn’t it? Even after she killed three dozen people and split your face in half, you still admired her! Wanted to learn from her, or at least find out who her master was so you could find out how someone could be better than you or your own teacher. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Kari shook her head slowly and worked to keep her anger from spilling forth from her mouth. “You’re dead wrong,” she said. “When I asked who taught her to fight...it was because I was trying to gauge how many assassins of her skill set might be out there. If there’s someone training more of these...half-succubus things to come here and kill people, my Order’s going to be neck deep in situations like this. If I could’ve brought her back to DarkWind, maybe we could have beat that information out of her.”
“Then why did you chase me instead of trying to capture Emma? She could’ve given you many more answers – and likely more truthfully – than that succubus ever could or would have.”
Kari looked away for a moment, sighed through her nose, and then met Sharyn’s obnoxious, smug gaze again. “I realized something when I went to capture Emma,” she said. “She’d hit me with lightning a couple of times before, but both times there was something odd about it. Maybe you felt the same thing in the graveyard, but both times Emma shocked me, I got this feeling like it could’ve been much, much worse.” Sharyn gave a noncommittal shrug. “If I’d tried to capture her after I fought Turillia, Emma would have killed me; her magic cuts through my willpower like it’s nothing. She could have killed me both times she shocked me before, but she either held back or there was...a healing element, I guess, added to them. Emma clearly needs me for something, but the danger of her getting caught…my life wasn’t worth that risk to her.”
“But you don’t think she’s a threat?” Sharyn asked incredulously.
“Oh, she is, but not the immediate kind,” Kari answered. “Eli has known her since before the Apocalypse, and though we don’t trust her and we’re pretty sure she’s up to something big, she’s not the kind of direct problem Turillia was.”
“And why do you believe anything that bastard half-breed tells you?”
Kari straightened up and bristled at those words. She found it insulting that a werewolf would hold a half-corlyps in contempt on account of his race. And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that Sharyn had almost completely ruined Kari’s plan, whereas Eli had been an important part of making sure the plan worked. “I have a lot more reason to trust him than I do to trust any of you,” Kari countered, and it was clear that neither Sharyn nor the werewolf squatting at her side expected such a response.
Sharyn started to counter herself, but then she glanced to her left, and another werewolf came out from the woods. It was the silver-furred one from the cemetery, the one Kari assumed was the pack leader. Now she wasn’t so sure: she guessed it was just as likely Sharyn was the pack leader, even given her youth. The silver-furred werewolf shifted into a purely lupine form, and Kari watched the transformation in awe. He lay down near the growing fire, and his eyes never strayed from Kari. It was strange; in his hybrid form, the werewolf had the same golden eyes as all the others, but in his purely lupine form, his eyes faded to a silver-gray not unlike his coat. He blew out a long sigh and stared at Kari.
“Did you betray me?” Kari asked suddenly, and Sharyn’s brows knitted.
“I killed Turillia, yes, but–”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Kari said, waving off Sharyn’s words. “Just before you attacked Turillia in the city hall, she taunted me by saying, ‘But her power is fleeting.’ There’s no way she could have known exactly what I said when I spoke to all of you, unless someone betrayed me and told her our plans. And, frankly, you’re probably the only person I don’t trust at this point.”
Sharyn started to speak, but paused and glanced at the silver wolf first. She swore quietly under her breath. “I give you my word, it wasn’t me.”
“And what is your word worth to me?” Kari demanded evenly. “You deceived me, you distracted one of my companions from doing his duty, and as I said, you’re the one person in my circle that I don’t trust fully.”
“If you don’t trust me, then you were a fool to come here,” Sharyn spat.
“I was probably a fool to come here regardless,” Kari said with another sigh. “I’m not sure what I expected; clearly an apology was never likely. I guess what I really wanted to know was whether this was always your plan from the start. Did you plan to go against my orders the entire time, or was that some heat-of-the-moment werewolf thing?”
“Kari, I thought I was doing the right thing. Not just for myself, but for my pack, and for the rest of the world,” Sharyn explained. “Everything we learned, and everything we planned…I thought Turillia was too dangerous to try to capture, and that you were out of your mind to want to bring her back to DarkWind. With that shadow demon about, I didn’t think you’d be able to hold Turillia for long. I know you don’t think so, but I did you a favor by killing Turillia. Once Emma was badly wounded, I figured she was the lesser danger…”
“Well, I think we can agree on that point, but even in that condition, capturing her didn’t seem like a real possibility,” Ka
ri said with a grimace. “So it wasn’t you that told Turillia of our plans? You’ll swear to that?”
“On my life,” Sharyn said, and Kari did not miss that the woman ran her right hand across her chest in the same pattern as her scar. “I may have ruined your plans for Turillia, Kari, but betraying you was never my intent. I would be suspicious of that half-breed friend of yours, to be honest.”
“Eli?” Kari asked, and she scoffed. She tried to imagine that the attack in Lajere had been an act, and that there might be some possibility that Eli was working with Turillia, but there was no way Kari could see that being the case. He couldn’t have misled Kari the entire time; she’d been too close to him for too long for him to have fooled her, and the way he’d opened up to her that night in their shared inn room made Kari trust him completely. “You may be great at reading trails and tracking, but you’re a terrible judge of character. He took Turillia’s fangs to his neck, and more, to defend me. I hate to say it, but I don’t think he’s crafty enough to do all that in the interest of betraying me; Eli’s not that kind of man. So if it wasn’t you, then there are only one or two other people it could be, because it wasn’t Sherman, Katarina, or Markus, and I have no reason to believe any of the priests of Temple Street would help a demon.”
“What if someone was possessed at the time?” Sharyn offered.
Kari shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “No. The demon chills the air around it, even when it possesses someone. I’m pretty sure one of us would have noticed the chill, at least. No, at this point, I think Marshal Saracht is about the only person it could’ve been, but I’m hesitant to even suspect him. I suppose he could’ve told Lord Black accidentally, but that he would use my exact words...it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“Maybe there was just someone else in the church of Ambergaust when you said that,” Sharyn said with a shrug. “I don’t know. Turillia was crafty, and that shadow demon is even craftier than she was. I’d offer to help you out with the shadow demon, but, well...”
Kari waved off Sharyn’s offer. “But whether or not I trust you is only half the issue, now that a good number of people know you’re a werewolf,” she finished. “So what’s the story with you and your pack-mates, do you serve the Beast?”
Sharyn looked around into the dark spaces between the trees, where Kari could see more sets of golden eyes watching them now. “No, nothing like that. We don’t represent any one culture or faith. We come from many different walks of life. Jared here is Jewish, and he came to us from the big cities of the Strekan Province years ago, when he realized what he was,” she said, nudging the silver wolf in the rump with her boot. She touched the werewolf squatting beside her on the shoulder and added, “Darren grew up in Ceritopolonis, where he was a scout for the duke’s army; he worships Garra Ktarra.”
It had been a long time since Kari had heard the term Jewish. If she remembered right, it referred to one of the ancient human religions they had brought with them to Citaria. She didn’t remember much else about it, except that it was rare to find humans – or werewolves, for that matter – that followed that faith outside of the Strekan Province in the northwest. “Did you turn Sherman into a werewolf?” Kari asked, interrupting Sharyn’s impromptu introductions.
There was a moment of silence, and then Darren, the werewolf beside Sharyn, let out a growly, bestial chuckle. Jared, the silver wolf, put his paw over his nose, but Sharyn simply shook her head. “We can’t make people werewolves,” she said. “Kari, we’re not lycanthropes: we’re natural shape-shifters. All of us were born werewolves, we didn’t become such from a bite or a scratch. I like Sherman. If there was any chance I could have...infected him, if you want to call it that, I wouldn’t have become involved with him. As it stands, I don’t know how I would even try to explain this to him.”
“That makes two of us,” Kari said. She was still angry about Sharyn having killed Turillia, but if what the ranger woman was saying now was true, Kari realized the werewolves could make powerful allies – and that represented a strong counter to having lost Turillia as a prisoner. How Kari would present the idea to the Order was another matter altogether. “I thought you were going to take advantage of him. He’s still pretty young.”
“So am I,” Sharyn returned. She ran her fingers along the line where her scar was hidden by her armor. “I was only six when I got this, and it’s only been twelve years since…”
Kari nodded, unsure why Sharyn had trailed off, but then the demonhunter’s brows rose. “Since you were resurrected?” she asked.
“It’s a long story,” Sharyn said. She scratched the ear of the werewolf crouched beside her. “But yes, you’re not the only one.”
“Twelve years ago would’ve been about the same time as me, though,” Kari said. She rubbed her chin reflexively and flinched from the painful wound.
“You should get that looked at,” Sharyn commented.
The demonhunter nodded. “Oh, I plan to, first thing when I get back to the city. Gods, I wish I knew what this all means. But I’m smart enough to realize that meeting you wasn’t a coincidence. I don’t suppose you know anything about the Temple of Archons?”
“Nothing other than the obvious,” Sharyn answered.
Several of the other werewolves emerged from the woods, some in their human forms, some still in their hybrid forms, and one in lupine form. There were five males and three females in all, and all of them looked young in their human forms. Kari wondered where all of them came from, how they had ended up werewolves, and how they had all found each other if they did indeed all come from different walks of life. Again she thought of what powerful allies they would make, and she considered that Sharyn’s ability to track Turillia had been based as much on scent as on her skills as a ranger. To have such friends available for future missions could make Kari’s hunting much, much easier.
Kari figured that if she were to become head of the Order, she might be able to convince the Order to trust the werewolves tentatively, but that still left the issue of how to differentiate them from their lycanthrope “cousins.” Eli had spoken of a battle with vicious werewolves, and Kari figured those must’ve been lycanthropes, not the same as the people before her. These folk seemed totally in control of their curse – or was it a gift? Sharyn had spoken of werewolves being a force of nature, and Kari wondered if their ability to shape-shift wasn’t a curse at all. It was yet another thing she could have the Order or its allies research when she returned home.
A young woman with long silver hair moved closer to look Kari over. She was dressed in simple garb: utilitarian leather trousers with many pockets, a loose-fitting button-up shirt, and sandals upon her feet. Her face was round and what Kari would’ve described as cute, with eyes that were grey like Jared’s. Kari wondered if perhaps the two were siblings, or otherwise related by blood. The girl was pretty, about the same age as Sharyn, but there was a softness to her that led Kari to believe she hadn’t been out in the wilds for long. After studying Kari for a silent minute, the girl held her hand out to shake Kari’s.
“Kari, this is Gillian Erin MacKenzie. She’s new to our pack,” Sharyn said.
“Just call me Gil,” the girl said with a disarming smile.
“Karian Vanador, Sword–” Kari started, but the girl interrupted.
“Of the Heavens, by Zalkar’s Grace,” Gil finished. “Yea, I know. I’ve heard all about you.”
Kari looked northward as thunder rolled in the distance. “I’d better get back to the city; we still have to try to get that shadow demon out of Lord Black,” she said, turning back to Sharyn and the others. “Do you want me to try to explain things to Sherman?”
“What would you tell him?” Sharyn asked.
“That you love him,” Kari said, “and then take it from there. I just think he needs to know. I’m going to tell my Order about you, too, but I’ll take that slowly. I don’t want them to send hunters down this way looking for you, or stirring up unrest with the
ranger network. Can you trust me on that?”
Sharyn looked down at Jared, and the silver wolf nodded his lupine head. The ranger woman turned back to Kari. “I suppose we’re going to have to trust someone eventually,” she said. “Trying to live in the shadows and stay a secret from the common people hasn’t worked out too well for our predecessors.”
“If I tell them about you specifically, it should keep them from doing anything rash,” Kari assured her. “The existence of another person – a werewolf, no less – that was resurrected will make them curious. There’s got to be a reason, a purpose behind all of this.”
“Do you want to use me as a visual aid?” Gil asked, and she chuckled at the surprised expression that crossed Kari’s face. “I can come up to DarkWind and show your Order that you’re serious.”
“That could be risky,” Kari admitted.
The girl laughed again, a jovial sound that betrayed her youth. “Let’s just say I’m no stranger to danger, and leave it at that.”
“All right, but you’d better give me some time to get back home to DarkWind and try to explain things to my Order. Maybe you can come up for midsummer? I should be able to get my point across to the Order by then,” Kari said, and Gil agreed. “Sharyn, I’ll talk to Sherman. I’m not sure what’ll happen, but I’m sure he’ll get in touch with you either way.”
“I understand. Thank you, Kari,” the ranger woman said. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding with Turillia. I hope you understand why I did what I did.”
Kari sighed but then shrugged. “There’ll always be more demons,” she said. “And we’ll meet again, I’m sure. If I learn anything, I’ll send word to you. Farewell until then.”
The werewolves bid her farewell, and Kari began making her way back to the city at a brisk pace. There was still work to be done, and though things had come to a head, the situation seemed to be getting more complex instead of more simplified. Kari could only shake her head at what had just transpired: she had spoken – spoken – with a group of werewolves, and had all but welcomed them as her allies. It was something she wanted to have a long talk with Aeligos, Lord Allerius, and the Demonhunter Council about, because the complexity of the plots she was uncovering was beginning to overwhelm her.
