Tooth and Claw: One Damn Thing After Another

Monday, July 9^th, 2012

                Jones Kelly awakens to the sound of her phone buzzing.  It’s a text message from headquarters, instructing her to check her email.  She rolls blearily out of bed and stumbles across the hotel room to where her laptop sits open on the table.  Jiggling the tiny mouse to rouse the machine from its own slumber, she enters her password and brings up her inbox.  Sure enough, one new message awaits:

                Agent Kelly,

                Excellent work.  Postpone follow-up until resolution of next case.

                Terse and to the point, with a congratulatory flourish.  Some dozen attachments lurk beneath – she clicks “Download All” and heads for the shower.

                The hot jets both relax and invigorate.  She breathes deep of the steamy air and works the stiffness out of her joints.  Yesterday had been her recovery day, her time to rest and eat while composing and filing her report.  Her grafts were marvelous things, improving her performance in nearly every area – but damn if they didn’t work up an appetite.  Whether running, healing, or simply perceiving beyond the bounds of her mundane senses, everything had a calorie count attached, and the price was steep.  Yesterday’s dull ache had faded to a languorous stiffness by the time she bedded down, belly full at last.  As always, the stiffness seemed to have tightened its grip on her overnight, but it would be gone in a couple hours as long as she stretched.

                She turns off the shower, dries off, brushes her teeth, and performs her stretching ritual to work out the last few kinks.  She then dresses and heads to the lobby for coffee – whatever it is, it can wait until she’s fully awake.  She checks the time as she heads down the hallway:  a quarter past noon.  At least she’d been able to sleep in.

                Two cups of decent-for-free coffee later, a third in hand, Jones is back in her room and perusing the attachments:  dossiers on five hunters in Las Vegas, just like she’d received for her current case, as well as some intercepted network chatter and a load of photos.  She sets up a new case file and starts working her way through the mass of information.

Tooth and Claw: Into the Bramble, part five

Whew!  Finally finished this part.  For whatever reason, Blogger is giving all my text this white background.  Not quite sure what I have to do to fix it, but for now, you get "slightly off-color text background that was as close as I could match it to how it's supposed to look."  Of course, if I ever change my background, it'll be totally screwed up... but that's something I'm willing to ignore for now.

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

                “All right,” Samantha says as they close the last dozen yards, “here we are.  This could be anywhere, but it’s where the Sandstorm Hourglass was first made.  Well, and between two doors, and at night.  Probably more low-key than our last few dealings.  But pay attention, and you might learn a thing or two.”  She smiles and pushes at the handle – the door budges, but does not open.  Sam looks to the door’s edge at her left and sees hinges, then pulls, and it opens as she chuckles at herself.

                On the other side, a man in a black robe sits at a large desk, writing with a quill pen upon a broad sheet of parchment.  He pays no mind to the women entering his quarters.  On a simple table to her right, Della spots the Sandstorm Hourglass:  its wood is a little brighter, its glass is a little clearer, but it looks otherwise identical to the magical timepiece she remembers.

                The door shuts behind them, and Della sees another to her right, past the hourglass.  They are in a corner room of some apparently circular building, perhaps a large tower, the wall to Della’s left curving around to join the straight wall to her right with the straight wall at her back.  A floor-to-ceiling window gives a view of the night sky, resplendent with stars in the dim candlelight from the man’s desk, clouds billowing just beneath them and a gibbous moon shining brightly above.

Tooth and Claw: Into the Bramble, part four

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

                “Whew,” Samantha says, pausing to calm her nerves.  Della is more overcome by confusion than anything else, but the fear is visible on the bramblekin’s face.

                “The Hell was that about,” Della asks.

                “Those were gods,” Samantha says.  “Or at least extremely powerful fae.  Either way, bad news.”

                “Why’s that,” Della asks as they forge on down the path.

                “Gods,” Samantha begins, “or fae in general, are really only interested in two things:  their domain, which is the part of the world they have power over, and garnering worship from mortals, which is how they get power aside from the influence their domain has in the world.”

                “Is that why the seven seals are there,” Della asks.

                Samantha looks sidelong at Della and says, “My, you have been doing your homework.  In a word, yes.  The gods, from what I understand, proved to be more trouble than they were worth.  So they were banished to another side of the Coil behind seven seals.  And yeah, from the looks of things, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that la mujerta succeeds in breaking them.  So now we just have to figure out how she does it.”

                “So we talk to whoever made it,” Della says, “and see if they can shed any light on how it’s done.”

                “That’s the plan,” Samantha confirms.  “I’m not quite sure what good it will do, though.  Que será, será, or whatever.”

Tooth and Claw: Through the Bramble, part three

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

                Della’s mind races with the possibilities.  The revenant, asking for her help?  She had thought that being a bloodkin would give her that sense of the extraordinary she had been seeking, but it was turning out to be a colossal disappointment.  Sure, she saw things and knew things that would have flabbergasted her in mortal life, but this was another thing entirely.  If the revenant was looking to turn the very world on its head – well, Della wanted to be there to see it.  And she wanted to be on the side doing the turning.  Look for the ravens, she recalls, glancing at her watch.  It was something Jamie had gotten for her, after her cell phone was taken for the faking of her death.  The watch took its time and date from cell phone towers, so it should tell her the date.  It was clear that the bramble path she had been walking with Samantha took them not only through space, but through time as well.  Sure enough, the watch told her it was the 19^th of July, 2012.  Less than two weeks into the future.

                Lots of things could change in two weeks.  She thought of her brief romance with Edward, of her martial arts training with Jamie, of their confrontation with the Hunters that had gone from “casual night out” to “cat and mouse” to “face-stomping hunt” in the space of a single night.  She had options upon options, and even if this raven thing turned out to be a bust, she at least had some intel to share with Thomas while still keeping the best parts to herself.

                However things ultimately turned out, tonight everything was coming up Della.  She smiles at the thought as she jogs back to Sam across the catwalk.

Tooth and Claw: Into the Bramble, part two

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

                As Della approaches the door, she sees a darkness through it that is most certainly not her bathroom.  She follows Samantha, uncertain but excited, then feels the world turn inside-out around her.  She’s been drunk a couple of times, hung over once, and the sensation as she steps through is remarkably like the whole process compressed into a single second that seems to last forever – except without all the partying and peeing and wishing you were dead.  She goes dizzy, loses her sense of space and time, feels like she’s been hit in the back of the head with a brick – then she sets her foot down, and she’s through.

                “So this is my place,” Samantha says warmly, gesturing at the open living room as she flips on the light switch.  Bookshelves dot the walls, every one of them filled with volumes of varying height and thickness, their spines perfectly aligned except for the odd gap.  A dining table, the kitchen counter, two coffee tables, and a desk are all covered with books and papers, manila folders piled and arranged here and there.  A few filing cabinets stand stoically in a corner.

                “You sure seem to keep busy,” Della says.

                “Yeah,” Sam says, cocking an eyebrow.  “I don’t eat or sleep.  Made of wood, you know.  So I read and do some, um, ‘filing’ for Jennie.  She’s sure bright, but she can be a bit flighty at times, so I help her keep things in order.”

                “I see,” Della says, taking in the scene.  “So, what do we need?”

Tooth and Claw: Into the Bramble, part one

I'm eight pages into this "vignette," but still haven't finished it.  So here's a chunk, more to come.  :)

Sunday, July 8^th, 2012

                She was made of wood.

                That was the first thing to hit Della, and the thing she kept coming back to.  Thomas had summoned her to his office just after she’d had her nightly pint, and inside had been him at his desk, Herman standing to the side, and what looked for all the world like a six foot wooden doll.

                “Della,” Thomas greeted her as she entered.  “This is Samantha Rose.  Miss Rose, Della Swain.”

                “Pleased to meet you,” Sam says, rising to her feet to shake Della’s hand.  She was a rich brown, like mahogany, a shade or two darker than Della’s own skin had been when she’d had a tan a month and a half ago.  Her joints were held together by fine brass springs where tendons would normally be, and she was bound and fastened with brass pins and wires.  When she spoke, her jaw moved up and down like that of a ventriloquist’s dummy; her teeth and tongue were carved and painted, her green eyes made of glass.  Her hair was a dark lustrous brown that shone golden when it caught the light just right, and all her movements were accompanied by the hum of metallic tension.  She wore a red camisole, blue jean shorts, and leather sandals, so Della could see that she was covered from the crown of her forehead to her toes in a tangle of deep and ragged gouges, like stylized thorns in relief, that had been inlaid with gold almost – almost – flush with the surface.  When she turned to sit down, Della saw that her right shoulder was painted with a single rose blossom, untouched by the glimmering tattoos.

                “Please, Della,” Thomas says after a moment, “have a seat.”  She realizes that she has been staring, and clears her throat as she composes herself and sits down in the remaining leather chair.  “Samantha is here from Miami to assist us in locating the Sandstorm Hourglass.  She has a knack for finding things that have been lost or stolen, Alice assures me.”

Tooth and Claw: Tail of the Scorpion, part three

Prologue, Tail of the Scorpion, part two

Saturday, July 6th, 2012

                “This’ll go a lot smoother if you stash your pieces,” Carter says, head high and eyes narrowed.

                “I hope so,” Jones says as she thumbs her safety back on and holsters her pistol.  At her nod, the other Hunters follow suit – Vernon and Patricia share a knowing look and a pointed delay, but they ultimately comply.

                “All right,” Carter says with a respectful nod.  “You want to talk.  So talk.”

                Vernon blurts out, “Do you confess to using shape-changing magic and consorting with spirits?”

                The moonkin look sidelong at each other and suppress their laughter, as Jones snaps at him, “Can it!”

                “So, OK,” Carter says after composing himself.  “No stupid questions, right?  But I think we all know you could be asking some more productive things right now.”

                “No shit,” Jones agrees.  “For starters, what exactly are you doing here?”

                “We’re cleaning up a mess,” Carter answers.  “A big, ugly, bloody mess.”

                “That’s a little vague,” Jones says.

                “That it is.  So how about you tell me how you spotted us?  A little quid pro quo, eh?”

                Jones straightens her back, looks Carter over as though sizing him up for the first time.  “Quid pro quo.  I can handle that.  But I believe I asked for some specifics up front.  So:  you tell me what you know, I’ll tell you how I see.” 

Tooth and Claw: Tail of the Scorpion, part two

Prologue, Tail of the Scorpion, part one

Saturday, July 6th, 2012

                Vernon Christopher leans against an electric ATV past the Winslow city limits, gazing out into the desert for any sign of activity.  The dogs had just run out a couple of minutes ago, as the Sun was setting; the Hunters had learned that wherever this criminal force had struck, they were soon to follow.  So the Hunters had set up two watch points just outside of town, on little hills where they could survey most of the surroundings through binoculars.  Vernon would have liked a tighter perimeter, but Patricia only had the two ATVs, and waiting for two others to catch up on foot from even a few short miles away would force them to choose between letting the trail grow cold and stringing themselves out.

                Patricia opens up the compartment beneath the vehicle’s seat to double-check their supplies:  extra magazines, bottles of water, a first aid kit, and a small bag of tools.  Vernon doesn’t turn around, but can hear her rummaging; he knows there’s no point, the kits were checked and double-checked before they headed out, but he understands that she’s restless and needs something to do.  Fine.  It would be nice if her “something to do” involved keeping a lookout, though.  David and Michelle would only be a few minutes, anyway.  It wasn’t the end of the world.

Tooth and Claw: Tail of the Scorpion, part one

Prologue, Three Pair of Eyes, part three

Saturday, July 7^th, 2012

                Tonight’s the night.  Elias can feel it in his bones as his very own moon shines down on him.  They have been hunting the fugue in the desert, closing in around it like a noose, for over two weeks – but tonight, it all comes to an end.

                For its part, the fugue has led them on quite a chase.  When the moonkin found that it was coming from the West, the fugue would change its route into town, striking at the outskirts from unexpected directions.  It knew it was both predator and prey, and the inchoate streams of fused consciousness all agreed that this was the way to strike back at the invading dragon and its bastard half-breed children:  corrupt their own flock, raise a small army, and bring them to the crater to finish what was started under the eclipse.

Tooth and Claw: Three Pair of Eyes, part three

OK, this is the last bit of this vignette.  These three will probably be their own chapter all together, I have them as one continuous bit on the .doc file.  But it's complicated, and each PoV has to be coordinated with the other two!  :)  Anyway, this one's considerably shorter, but it's got a sweet little game-changer at the end, and I hope you enjoy.

This was partly written because of a situation I'd frequently run into with my Pen & Paper gaming group:  some event would crop up where players J and K knew what was going on, but couldn't inform player L until after things had settled down.  So player L would obviously want to arrive on the scene as soon as possible, right?  So the storyteller, usually Jack, would react to L's "I rush to the scene" declaration with, "OK, it takes you twenty minutes to get there."  Player L then says, "Well, I'd try to weave in and out of traffic."  Replies the storyteller, "Do you break traffic laws?"  "No," L says, "I get there as fast as possible without attracting police attention."  "OK," the ST responds, "It takes you twenty minutes."  "Ugh," player L would sigh/grunt at this point, "Fine.  Can I make a 'driving' skill check?"  "Sure," the storyteller replies, waiting out the die roll, then replying regardless, "It takes you twenty minutes."

Unless, of course, a critical success was rolled.  Then it would only take fifteen minutes.  But I'm assuming that, because it literally never happened.  So here you have what player L should have done the whole time.

Z, you may or may not be happy to know that I originally wrote that as "players X, Y, and Z," but then I realized that you never pulled this shit.  One player L most certainly did, though... so I rearranged a bunch of variables to exonerate you and incriminate the guilty.  :)

Prologue, Three Pair of Eyes, part two

Friday, July 6th, 2012

                Evan Lawrence lays on his back beneath his car, pulls the plug free of the oil pan, and starts to twist his filter counterclockwise.  His phone buzzes on the workbench, and Evan nearly bangs his head on his car’s undercarriage out of a conditioned reflex to immediately respond, but he gets himself under control.  Whatever it is, it can wait – he’s not going anywhere until his oil is changed, anyway.

                After the oil has drained and his filter has been replaced, Evan replaces the oil plug and tightens it with a torque wrench, slides out from beneath the vehicle, and wipes his hands on a rag.  His phone has buzzed regular reminders to him during the intervening minutes, but he’s put it out of mind; his focus is on the task at hand, and whatever’s going down can damn well wait until he’s got his vehicle back in driving condition.  Five quarts of oil glug-glug-glug their way into the engine, replacing what has been removed.  After screwing the cap back on, Evan starts his car, and checks his transmission fluid:  nominal.  He shuts off the ignition and clips his keys back to his belt, then checks the oil level:  right on.  He takes a sip from a can of cola on his bench.

                Buzz.

                Oh, right – Evan looks at his phone:  Facebook has pushed a notification.  “Jim Reynolds posted to Gravediggers Poker Club.”  Evan presses the “View” button as he takes another pull from his soda.

Tooth and Claw: Three Pair of Eyes, part two

Prologue, Three Pair of Eyes, part one

Friday, July 6th, 2012

                Jim Reynolds sits at his table, morosely pulling at his beer.  It wasn’t… fair?  No, fair isn’t the right word.  Life isn’t fair.  Just?  Nahh, same thing.

                It didn’t make any goddamned sense, fairness and justice be damned.

                He and his fellow Hunters had just started to get a solid trail on this bloodsucker, Cochran.  He’s moving in on a high-schooler, which was depraved even by bloodsucker standards.  They tended to avoid anyone under the quarter-century mark, probably (Jim supposed) because missing minors tend to be a lot more noticeable in the media than full-fledged adults.  Then, on an odd Tuesday, they both fall off the face of the map.  What, did they fuckin’ elope or something?

                He had seen straights get turned before.  Night owls, shut-ins, overnight workers – pickings were easy in Las Vegas, the party never stops and normal people tend not to notice when their mostly-nocturnal friend becomes entirely nocturnal.  Friends are understanding like that.  Loners tend to be missed even less.  Whenever Reynolds and his crew managed to bring down one of those pests, it seemed that three more would spring up in its place.  Hopefully there were other Hunters in the area “raising the stakes,” so to speak.  But if there were, they sure weren’t part of Jim’s Poker club.

                It was pretty rare in Jim’s experience for a vampire to turn a mortal and then just disappear, though.  “Rare,” as in, “never happened once.”  Vampires were territorial to a fault, and while Jim had heard stories of them being driven out by rival clans, that sort of thing only happened out in the sticks.

                Then there was the faked death.  While it wrapped up the girl’s disappearance into a neat little package, the deception was more than obvious to an experienced Hunter like him:  the body wasn’t exsanguinated, the time of death was in the wee hours rather than the early night, and the cause of death was pretty clearly exhaustion rather than anything more immediate.  While mortals could die like that any day of the week, it didn’t make sense for a bloodsucker to go to such lengths to make a kill – there was clearly something else going on.

Tooth and Claw: Three Pair of Eyes, part one

Prologue, Alice Takes a Road Trip

Friday, July 6^th, 2012

                “So how much does a fake ID cost,” Della asks Jamie as they stroll East along Sahara Avenue.

                “Depends on how many you need,” Jamie answers with a shrug of her shoulders.

                “What do you mean?”

                “Well, if you just need the one, you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you.  You probably won’t know that person very well, so you’ll pay a premium for that.  But if you’ve got contacts in that line of work, you’ll probably need it pretty regular.  That drives the price down.”

                “I see,” Della says, thinking on the matter.  “And for us?”

                “Psh, when you need that kind of thing regular as we do, you score your own gear and do it all in-house.”

OK, this is a little much. Even for me.

I'm trying to make Tooth and Claw be Like Reality Unless Noted, because that will make filming on location easier when I get a movie deal for it.  Ha!  Ha!  No, seriously, it's because the mood is best served by setting it in a world that's just like ours, only slightly off-kilter.  Tee-hee, still lying.  It's actually something of a behind-the-scenes homage to the playstyle of my gaming group, where we'd take real details from the real world (culled from our knowledge of the town or Google Maps) and then just overlay our campaign on top of it.  Jeez, I need to stop this.

OK, so all of those are partially true (or at least, in the case of the movie deal, earnest wishful thinking).  But the reason that actually gets ink on the paper, as it were, is that I am lazy and know nothing; and "the internet exists" means that a bit of on-the-spot research makes stealing details from reality way the fuck easier than inventing plausible details from whole cloth.

But sometimes, reality is a bit... shall we say, "generous."

Tooth and Claw: Alice Takes a Road Trip

Prologue, Words and Shadows, part two

Wednesday, July 4^th, 2012

                Alice sits at her desk, smoking a long black cigarette.  It had been a few days before she had been able to reach out to Jennie; something of an emergency had come up, trouble in the dreams of some of her fellow mages.  It was one of those things that seems to be nothing, then suddenly blows up in your face.  The Maestro had put her on the case, and it was shortly determined that there was a lesser demon trying to work its way into the world.  Life and spirit were Alice’s main concentrations, and she was something of a dabbler in fate magic as well, so she had been rather well-suited to tackle the problem.  Having put out that fire, she returned to the matter of Thomas’ missing hourglass, and put out a call to Fae Jennie.

                That was eight days ago, a week and a day, and Alice had a feeling that Jennie would be calling her today.  Her calendar was clear – her head, not so much.  It was brimming with questions and possibilities, slowly bubbling away on the backburner these past few days, and she hoped to have them answered soon.  Knowing Jennie, maybe not so soon, but there would at least be another bread crumb on the trail.

Tooth and Claw: Words and Shadows, part two

Prologue, Words and Shadows, part one

                She spots Vernon after disembarking and turns in his direction without breaking her brisk stride.  Vernon spots her easily:  despite her black suit, she walks with the casual assurance of an experienced martial artist.

                “Vernon Christopher,” he says as she approaches, extending his hand.

                “Jones Kelly,” she replies, taking his hand and shaking it.

                “Any baggage to claim,” he asks.

                “No,” she says, adjusting the carry-on hanging from her shoulder.

                The Hunters leave the airport in Vernon’s car, a dark gray Lincoln.  Vernon takes an instant disliking to his new partner – something he can’t quite place about her eyes.  He studies her in small glimpses while looking this way and that as he navigates through the traffic.  Then he spots it:  as Jones tucks a lock of her shoulder-length black hair behind her ear, he sees a thin silvery scar encircling her left wrist.  As she folds her hands back in her lap, the scar is hidden by the cuff of her sleeve.  But now that he knows what to look for, it is unmistakable:  her hands don’t quite match.  Her left hand is the tiniest shade paler, the fingers a little more bony.  It’s a very good match, but not perfect.

                Vernon had heard of this before, but today was the first time he had seen it with his own eyes.  Hunters were garden variety homo sapiens, driven by vengeance or principle to war against the supernatural forces that threatened human civilization.  But the Hunters had one crippling disadvantage, which was that they had not gained dark powers by sacrificing their humanity.  Some seriously misguided Hunters (by Vernon’s judgment) had taken it upon themselves to even the odds by sacrificing their humanity in bits and pieces, to gain small amounts of the very tainting power they fought against.  Vernon found this to be the very height of hypocrisy and self-delusion – one does not extinguish the enemy by becoming the enemy.  Act like the enemy, when necessary; think like the enemy, when planning; infiltrate the enemy, when possible; but to become the enemy was to lose sight of why you were fighting in the first place.  It was worse, in a way, than simply joining the enemy outright.  At least the bloodsuckers and the dogs and the rest of them had the honest conviction to go all-out.  These monstrous abominations, no matter their technical proficiency, try to straddle the fence and just end up getting crushed in the middle.

Tooth and Claw: Words and Shadows, part one

Prologue, Whispers at the Window

Saturday, June 30^th, 2012

                Vernon Christopher stands in the Winslow-Lindbergh Regional Airport arrivals terminal, holding a placard that simply reads, JONES.  He had needed to think about this decision quite a lot more than he would have liked.

                Last night, he had received a terse note in his mailbox, hastily written:  KELLY, JONES.  W-L RGNL, UAL f718.  So he had to pick up KELLY, JONES at the airport; but KELLY, JONES would doubtless have no more idea how to identify him than he would have of how to identify KELLY, JONES.  So he decided to stand with a sign, as he’d seen done in movies.  He’d be wearing a suit, after all, and wouldn’t look out of place.

                But what to write on it?  Just KELLY might draw attention from all the Kellys who might be excited to get surprise limo service; just JONES could do the same for all the Joneses; KELLY, JONES would perhaps be indiscreet.  And how would he recognize this KELLY, JONES, anyway?  Was she a woman named Kelly Jones who had a mix-up in her personnel file?  Or a man, for that matter?  Or was this person actually named Jones Kelly – as someone with a given name easily switched with his surname himself, Vernon Christopher was sympathetic to the plight of this KELLY, JONES, whoever he or she was. 

Tooth and Claw: Maintenance!

I spent the weekend ironing out the timeline in Tooth and Claw, which I thought would be easy but was complicated by noob mistakes.  Like, y'know, having Virgil watch Bad Ass with his friends on Friday night, then having Keira call DHS from work the next day.  Rock star accountants don't work Saturdays.  Oh, and I also gave no indication of the ten-day time jump between then and Della's confrontation with Ferraille, to stick to examples from the same chapter.

Gosh, it's almost like I'm making this up as I go, or something...

Anyway, most of it was pretty minor, though I couldn't resist amending the occasional infelicity.  But chapter eight seven (yes, I failed at counting - no, I can't change the URL now) wound up with significant differences at the end, so I edited it to include the changes.  And since I also moved around the end of chapter six, I'm fixing that, too.  The rest is staying as-is, because that's what first drafts are for - what's on here needs to make sense, but it's still very much a first draft.  I did, however, add links to every section (to the prologue, what came last, and what comes next), since navigation is otherwise a hopeless endeavor on this tangled knot of words.  There are also some weird formatting issues on Blogger's end - pasting the last paragraph in a totally different font (and then not letting me change it, grr!), adding a superfluous carriage return at the start of the entry (but only after I post, so I have to immediately go and edit it, grr!), and inconsistent jump spacing (so I have to trial-and-error it every time, grr!).  But I'm not sure how to fix those, and it's nothing to do with the book per se, just "how the first draft shows up on the internet," which is unimportant enough to let it slide (but relevant enough to make me go grr again).

Also, I think I probably need Scrivener.  My pile of notes is getting steadily messier (one page is dedicated just to tracking the time loops I'm gonna have, and holy shit, if I ever lose that sheet of paper...), and stained from its double duty as a coaster.  On the plus side, it's starting to get that sketchy supernatural conspiracy vibe, so maybe that's not such a bad thing, after all.

Tooth and Claw: Whispers at the Window

Prologue, Showdown in the Desert

Thursday, June 21^st, 2012

                Elias runs across the desert, taking care not to stare down the setting Sun as he settles into his runner’s trance.  He parked his truck at the rest stop on highway 40, just past the end of Red Gap Ranch Road.  He keeps the railroad tracks in sight to his right; it’s just over five miles to Canyon Diablo.  He can’t run all the way from Winslow yet, not at one go, but he’s able to run great distances (by his own standards) with sufficient breaks to rest.

                After his first mile, he takes a swig from his water bottle and splashes a little on his face.  His beard is definitely a beard, though a somewhat scraggly one.  He’s found that he can trim it without affecting his fur too much when he changes (which he does rarely).  He thinks of his pack.

                Carter and Willy, such opposites – but like two sides of the same coin.  They took such vastly different approaches, but always with the same goal in mind.  Uma, the shaman’s apprentice – tuned in, but off-key.  Maybe that, though, was due again to his standards.  She lived off the grid, like Tajo, like people would live if they had only themselves to rely on.  Of course, she still had to pass as a standard garden-variety civilian, which involved certain concessions to the surrounding culture.  No wonder she seemed ill at ease among what he thought of as the comforts of civilization.

                Then there was Tajo.  Even Carter deferred to Tajo’s judgment, whenever the shaman so much as voiced disagreement.  Carter was the alpha, unquestionably – but Tajo was the man behind the man.  He was aged, that was clear; but he moved with determination and vigor, and so did not seem old.

                And here Elias was among them, fresh young Midwest transplant from the trail business, don’t you know we take people on hikes in the desert?  Yeah.  He was gonna fit in just fine.

                Elias took no notice of his second mile, and ran on, slowing only to drink freely from his water bottle once he’d set foot on Hell Street.

Tooth and Claw: Showdown in the Desert

Prologue, Chapter Seven

Monday, June 25^th, 2012

                It was just as Father Dragon had said:  Death was coming from the West, smelling of rose petals and citron, bearing an hourglass.  She had the wind at her back, and so the pack caught her scent on the air before she came into sight.  Beneath the fruity floral scent, there was also the unmistakable smell of decay – blunted by the perfume, but their keen noses would not be deceived.  The straights wouldn’t register it on a conscious level, and were too polite to pay attention to their instincts; they’d just judge everything a bit more harshly around her without even realizing it.

                So that’s how the dead walk among the living, Willy thinks.  His heartbeat kicks up; the others remain calmly alert.  They are crouched on the roof of the Barringer Crater museum, Willy in the lead.  Carter is at his right shoulder, with Uma and Tajo flanking and Elias at the rear.  Willy stares into the night, but he can’t see anything beyond the glare of the sodium vapor lamps below.  They are shielded from sight by a low safety wall at the roof’s edge, and in exchange their own sight is limited.  Loose gravel crunches under Elias’ shoes as he shifts in the electric darkness, the buzz of the lights carrying on beneath the drone of the air conditioners.  They had chosen to wait on the very Southwest corner of the building, as far as they could be from the parking lot lights and rooftop machinery while still being on the roof itself.  To their left was the crater, where Father Dragon watched in the Wild with doubtless equal anticipation.  To their right, the audiovisual cacophony of civilization, electric torches blazing against the night while machines grind against the silence.  And above, the crescent moon waxes, as much Tajo’s moon as it is Uma’s tonight.

                A long silence passed in tension, the pack’s hackles raised, waiting for their quarry to arrive.  There was a tactical advisability to it:  to wait and watch when facing an unknown foe.  Let her do her business and then, then, when she has passed from the eyes of civilization – then you may chase.  But until then, watch.  Wait.  It went against all their instincts.

Tooth and Claw, chapter seven

Prologue, Chapter Six

Thursday, June 21^st, 2012

                Della opens the doorway to the trophy room, nodding to the two bloodkin standing guard.  They regard her disinterestedly; along with the stables and the dojo, the trophy room has become part of her nightly routine.

                She walks through the windowless tangle of climate-controlled halls, housing all manner of trinkets that look like they belong in a museum.  Here is a painting, here a sword; there a book, there a pendant; a scroll under glass, made delicate by age; a device of unknown purpose, corroded almost to dust.  Unlike a museum, there are no explanatory placards declaring the name and origin of each item to all passersby – Della can only guess at what was acquired when, to say nothing of the how of the matter.  That would have to wait for another conversation with Thomas, some other night.

                Her first time in the trophy room, just a few nights ago, Thomas had walked her through to the central chamber without a word.  Her senses had sharpened – yes, sharpened was the word, as though ground against a whetstone until keen and raw.  Her reflexes had quickened, not smoothly and all at once, but in fits and starts, a macabre echo of puberty.  One night in the dojo, it came to a head:  Della was restless, anxious, itching for some action as she had been just a few nights earlier, but not even an “advanced” lesson from Jamie could calm her down.  Jamie saw it, then, in Della’s eyes – Della had been feeling it all night, but Jamie already had a name for it:

                “Ahh,” she’d said, “You need to hunt.”