The Stray Human: A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves, werewolf community center book 1

by Abigail Smith

  Gavin’s expression turned from worried curiosity to ferocious in a split second. “What?” he growled.

  He held up his hands, almost like a reflex, and I noticed that his fingernails curved a bit inwards and became darker like they were made of bone instead of just nail. I looked at them for a moment and then remembered what my dog’s nails looked like. My eyes went wide as I realized he’d partly shifted, just his hands, in his rage.

  His rage? Was I really that important? Or was he just a monster waiting to tear into something?

  “Well, stalked and then confronted by some people,” I said, trying to calm him down.

  It didn’t work. “Where are they?” he asked.

  All the werewolves in the room had their eyes on Gavin. Okay, all but the one they were looking at. Even Minerva, tummy ache and everything, got up in case they needed to restrain him.

  “I lost them at my campus. They most likely went back to wherever they came from,” I said, my voice rising.

  Gavin sighed, and his hands turned back to normal.

  “Come on, Gavin, lighten up. Girls don’t like overprotective guys!” Cassy said, sticking out her tongue.

  Gavin sighed and sat down at the table beside me. “I doubt this counts as overprotective considering people are literally out to get her,” Daniel said.

  “Thing was when they had me surrounded, they said they didn’t want to hurt me and started talking about sin and something or other.”

  “You don’t remember what they said?” Cassy asked.

  “I was more or less freaking out that they brought like six hundred percent more people.”

  “So, what five guys?” Cassy asked, looking up, possibly picturing the scene.

  “Seven,” Daniel corrected, “because it’s six hundred percent more.”

  I sighed as the two went on about why that made sense for a while. I ate the fries slowly. They were pretty good, but I wasn’t sure if that was from their actual taste or if they just tasted better right after my life being in danger.

  “So, do you want someone to walk you home tonight? Maybe we could send someone out with you,” Gavin offered.

  “I guess, at least for a night or so.”

  The door flung open, and I jumped a little in my seat and turned. “Oh, hey, E-lis is here. You sure are early for your shift!” David said with that smug little smile.

  He then read the room. I felt as though I was trembling while Minerva and Daniel still explained mathematics to Cassy. All the while, Minerva clutched her stomach.

  “You know what?” David asked. “I think now would be an excellent time for a martial arts lesson.”

  Chapter 11

  David, Gavin, and I walked up three flights of stairs to get to their little gym.

  By the end of it, I was panting like a dog, and they were… completely unfazed. “Stupid werewolf powers. Totally unfair,” I muttered.

  “Right, here’s the gym where we practice our various martial arts and keep ourselves fit because an out of shape man, and an out of shape wolf, are still out of shape,” he said.

  We went inside. The place smelt like wet dog. I realized that human plus dog equals a dog capable of sweating. I nearly gagged as David walked off and got a few supplies.

  “For now, we’re going to start you off with a simplified anti-knife style,” he said, taking out two knives.

  They weren’t real knives. They were training knives. The ones that if you stabbed someone, the blade would retract inside the hilt and wasn’t made of metal. Since I wasn’t familiar with those kinds of knives, David demonstrated by stabbing his hand. He did it a few times to make sure I’d heard the spring inside squeaking.

  “So, I guess the first thing would be to know your stance. A stance is how you position your body when you do your martial art. It’s designed to be your support against the suspected attack and allows you to perform all you need to do fairly easily.”

  He raised a hand to Gavin. “For example, savage wolf’s stance.”

  I looked at Gavin, suddenly afraid the martial art he was about to show me was called savage wolf.

  Gavin lifted both his arms and put one leg back while bending the front leg. “Come on, Gav, she needs to see why this works. Transform!” David said.

  I gulped, remembering the partial transformation before. Gavin, without getting angry, simply shifted. His face got longer, resembling a wolf head, his arms got a thick layer of fur, and his nails turned into claws.

  Seeing it allowed me to get a better understanding of the stance. It was a lot more like a bear getting ready to maul someone, wide up top, ready to charge.

  “Very good, and I think she’s getting it! Now for my stance,” David said.

  He got into a stance with one leg forward and one back, though less tilted forwards than the savage wolf. Instead of his entire body changing, he just focused on his hands. They grew a layer of fur and claws formed. It almost looked like he wore wolf hands or put on a glove; it just ended abruptly halfway up his forearm.

  He held his hands up like a boxer about to end the fight. “What’s yours called?” I asked.

  David smiled that same smug smile. I wanted to punch it off his stupid face. “Clawv Maga.”

  I blinked and looked around. “Huh?”

  “There’s a human martial art called Krav Maga, but since we’re werewolves, Clawv Maga.”

  “Oh, good, it’s a pun,” I said, looking to the side.

  “It’s also nothing like Krav Maga, except with the focus on offence,” David admitted.

  “Mainly because you don’t typically punch things when you have claws,” Gavin amended.

  “Anyway, this is a fairly well-used stance,” David said, pointing to his legs.

  “It’s strong for forward and back movement, and so, if someone’s ramming into you or is hitting you from the front, you won’t just fall over. Try it!” David instructed.

  I lifted my hands and moved my feet to where I thought they should have gone. Both men moved towards me, and David tried to test my stance. I suddenly found myself falling at an odd angle.

  “Gah!” I shouted before Gavin caught me and lifted me back up. “Your legs are too close together. You don’t want them in line with each other,” he offered.

  David nodded and turned around to give me more chances to see his stance. I tried again, putting my feet closer to shoulder-width apart, yet still one foot forwards and one back. David tested again, pushing me back.

  It looked like he was doing a light tap, but it felt like a hammer. I just barely resisted falling over.

  “Nice,” he said, nodding.

  “So, that’s the basic stance. Now, we’re going to show you a few moves. Like, how to get out of grabs and disarm knives. We’ll demonstrate, and then you’ll practice.”

  Gavin came up and grabbed a knife. David looked at him for a moment, and then nodded, apparently having a different script but liking the new direction. They went over a few ways of blocking the knife and getting it out of their hand or otherwise stopping the other person from getting to me.

  I practiced a bit, but most of the time when I blocked, they’d shatter my defences. “Eh, sorry. Hard to turn off enhanced strength, which brings us to a good point, and I don’t want you to take offence to this,” David said, walking up to face me head-on. “Never get into a strength competition with an assailant. In most cases, and keep in mind the variety of cases now includes werewolves and mages, the attacker will most likely be stronger than you. Use your head and knowledge to disable their attempts, but never try to overpower them.”

  I glared, but his eyes were calm and slightly worried, looking me right in the eye. I could tell it was an unfortunate truth he didn’t like to admit as much as I didn’t want to accept it.

  “What if the attacker’s also a woman?” I asked, remembering the woman who’d nearly caught me.

  “Well, number one, assume if they are coming after you that they are either stronger or have an advantage you d
on’t know about because odds are, if whatever happened involved a woman engaging with you, she’s supernatural in some regard.”

  His eyes shifted to Gavin, and then back to me. “And supernatural women are probably even more deadly than supernatural men.”

  I cocked an eyebrow to the look they gave each other when I heard the gym door open.

  “Hey, Carlson!” David said, waving his hand.

  The man was a much different profile than anyone else I’d seen here. It was clear most were fairly athletic and ready for battle, but this guy was scrawny and had thick-rimmed glasses on his face.

  “H-hi,” I said.

  “Carl’s fairly new here, from a werewolf pack from upstate New York. He apparently wanted a fresh start and has been chilling out here for a bit.”

  He waved.

  “What are you up to, Carlson?” David asked.

  I’d assumed David used his first name when telling me about him, meaning this man was Carl Carlson, which seemed off at the time.

  “Oh, you know, getting in some exercise,” Carl commented.

  His voice was far from what I’d expect from a New Yorker accent. He went to the weights bench and started to do bicep curls.

  “The gym is usually empty at this time of day. I don’t think he likes working out with other people around,” David said, before grabbing one of the practice knives.

  It was a long few hours but, eventually, I got the idea of how to disarm someone with human-level strength. I collapsed to my knees and panted by the time my shift started.

  “Looks like it’s just about six o’clock. Best be getting down to the bar,” David said, running his hand through my hair and screwing it up.

  I glared and slowly arranged it back to how I like it, a bit disheveled but with an air of class – something the internet always called the working mom look.

  Gavin walked behind me but remained silent, and Carl went back up the stairs. We went downstairs, and Gavin grabbed an apron and headed into the kitchen, and I went behind the bar.

  “Oh, right!” I sputtered suddenly, grabbing my bag. I pulled out the label maker and started to reach for each magical ingredient.

  “David, I need your ability to identify these things,” I said.

  Lorenz stepped in a moment later, but David had locked eyes with me, and I gave him a look that said, ‘I said your name, come do it!’

  Lorenz sat at the bar to see what we were doing. “Ah, organizing. You remind me of my sister,” he said with a sly smile.

  “It’s mainly just labelling so she knows what she needs to make everything,” David said.

  “Ah, so I could order anything I wanted from the special menu tonight!” Lorenz said, leaning back and smiling wider than before.

  These guys smile too much. Bring back the brooding edge lords haunted by their dual nature. On second thought, don’t bring them back. Just add one I could talk to for ten minutes, at the most.

  I printed off a label for aqua mushrooms, and a little biohazard warning sign, or as close as you could get on a label maker. I made one for dragon salts and put a smiley face for not going to make someone’s guts betray them.

  There were about a hundred different plastic containers, and from my own experience with packs of those, I estimated they used nearly one hundred percent of standard household levels. That was impressive, to say the least.

  “Well, how about we introduce a few more things?” Lorenz asked as he turned around the drinks menu and flipped to the blue pages.

  “I’ll have a,” he said, examining the pages, “Shadow Martini.”

  I took a look at what that needed: shadow plant leaf, essence of light, and a pinch of alchemical solvent.

  “Jesus, this one’s hard,” I said as I looked to David for these ingredients. He started to retrieve them as I typed them all into the label maker.

  As he handed and identified things, I snipped off the appropriate part of the label and stuck it on. What I had was a very black thing, and a very shiny white thing, and… something that looked like water, but it was evil. More accurately, water that looked suspicious.

  I mixed all of them, causing darkness to radiate outwards, which was alarming, to say the least. I then plugged it into some vodka, poured that into a shaker can, and mixed it, hopefully killing anything that made the different powders. Finally, I poured it into the right glass.

  “Very nice. You’re good with your hands!” Lorenz said as he took the drink and downed it.

  The light around him seemed to dim, and any movement seemed to delay when hitting my eye. It was a freaky effect.

  “Guess that one could be used for sneaking around, huh?” I asked.

  “Eh, but a purer mixture might work,” David said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “These things aren’t going to make people sick?” I asked, kicking myself mentally for not asking sooner so I could put the symbols down.

  “Just the essence of light. Alchemical solvent is something you’ve gotta make, so it’s fine. The shadow plant leaf is literally a leaf of a black plant, which I hear comes from further planes than the earth elemental one.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting. What kind of plants are they?” I asked.

  “You know how trees lose their leaves in winter? Well, these ones would just die in winter because they synthesize with heat,” David explained.

  “They are fairly low down, where the pressure turns a lot of rock into magma. Where some theorize you’re closer to the plane of fire,” Lorenz added.

  “Wow,” I said, trying to imagine the landscape of deep underground caverns turned orange from the light of lava flows and magma pools filled with black trees.

  “Would charcoal work in this thing? Does the black leaf just provide the pigment or…?”

  “I mean, yeah it could, but who wants to ingest charcoal?” David said.

  “Pfffft. Do you know nothing about alchemical reactions?” Silvia, just entering the area, interjected.

  “Oh, hey, Silvia. How are you?” I asked, grabbing a craft beer and Coke.

  “Alright, school is pretty boring. Ended up reviewing my alchemical lessons in the end. Which, you know, apparently, we’re talking about.”

  “Oh? You’re going to a special magical school?” I asked.

  The three looked at me. “No, a regular high school. I just have alchemy notes on me,” Silvia responded.

  “Right. This is real life, not like the books,” I had to remind myself as I poured her the beer and Coke.

  “Now you know the truth, why’re you still watering down my beer?” Silvia asked, a little disappointed.

  “I-I just don’t like the fact you’re still under-aged, no matter how little its effect on your brain,” I shrugged.

  “Well, good to know you care,” Silvia said with a wistful smile before sipping from the bendy straw.

  “How about a Spark Plug?” Lorenz asked.

  Everyone gave him a look, cocking their eyebrows for a moment. Then the sudden realization hit me, and I flipped a page in the menu book. Sure enough, there was a recipe for something called a Spark Plug.

  I got out the vodka, grabbed some of that electromoss, and something called pyro putty, dehydrated pyro putty. I put them both in. When the yellow and orange powders met the drink shot out sparks, and electrical arcs, into space and even the table.

  “Whoa!” I said, no doubt wide-eyed and staring intently at it.

  Lorenz gave it a drink, and he started to spark and zap. He even zapped Silvia sitting next to him.

  “Ouch!” she yelped in pain.

  “Hey, watch it!” I said, pushing Lorenz away from her.

  The discharge ended up zapping me, and it was an alright amount of pain, something one could endure easily.

  “Sorry,” Lorenz said. “Usually had that one at the tables and that wasn’t an issue.”

  “Oh? You were usually at the tables?”

  “Yeah, me, David, and Gavin would share a table and laugh and joke throughout
the night before we more or less became administrative staff,” he said, looking off to the side.

  “We’re not administrative staff. Gavin just found he liked to cook, and Anderson thinks I’m leader material,” David explained.

  “Unrefined material,” Silvia said in a low, mocking tone.

  David ruffled her hair like he did mine. Hers was in a tight braid today, though, so it didn’t work. I thought it seemed as if she chose that style specifically so it couldn’t be used against her by her older brother. Then had to remind myself that wait, Gavin was her older brother not David.

  I shook my head and went back to work. Others came in, and I needed to be ready.

  Anderson walked up. “I’ll have a beer, please. A light one.” I handed him the bottle, and he popped the top off again like he had the last time. Cassy and Daniel took up stools on the bar as a few more new faces walked in.

  “Dragon Sunrise, and for you, Cassy?” I asked.

  “Hmmm,” she said, turning the drinks menu around.

  For once, it seemed someone was considering all the drinks I knew how to make instead of all these new magical drinks.

  “How about some whiskey shots with some dragon salts in them?” she asked.

  I sighed. Figures they’d want some magical something in their drinks. I got out three shot glasses and looked for the whiskey.

  “I’ma need at least six shots, new girl!” Cassy said.

  I nodded. “Right… two livers.”

  I put up three more shot glasses and found the whiskey. I poured it and got out a few pinches of dragon salts.

  “Since the shot glasses are out, I may as well have a line of Firecrackers,” Lorenz said.

  “Jesus, you’re going hard today, huh, Lorenz?” I asked, remembering the whole bartending training and my obligations in this instance.

  “Well, you gotta become familiar with the special drinks we make, and I’ve got two—”

  “No!” I said, sternly pointing at him. “Just because you have two, or maybe even two point five livers, doesn’t mean you can drink like it doesn’t affect you! It just means that you sober up at one more standard drink every hour or so. Pound back six times that number of drinks and you’ll still get drunk!”