Rocket swore softly.  This close to the moon, the beast held greater sway, which was usually not much of a problem.  With a mind as rubbery as their forward scout’s, however, it was something he should have predicted and accounted for.  She wasn’t even snarling a response.  It could mean nothing; in his own natural form of full lion, it was often tempting to ignore the faint buzzing in his own ear.  For someone who hadn’t been fully developed at the time of the change, there was no separation.

Moving to plan B, he checked his laptop for the tracking device on her bike.  Ah, so she was definitely in position.  She’d ridden too close, which also meant it was likely she’d drawn attention to herself.  Now was not the time to worry overmuch about her, though.  As he lay back, panting at the exertion rolling over had required, he closed his eyes and tried not to feel sick.

From the front seat, Kitten was singing along to a country song about a rear window being torn off.  He wondered, for perhaps the millionth time, if she was actually tone deaf or if she sang as she did deliberately.  She began texting one handed and he groaned, hoping the sound itself would berate her into driving more safely.  The last thing they needed was for one of the local constabulary to put on his lights, make a fuss, and glance back at where he lay with his red and yellow bandages.

Going to a proper hospital might be nice, though.  Where he went when he awoke probably wouldn’t be, naturally, but that was a future problem.  Kitten took a turn a bit too sharply and the mobile hot-spot slid across the van floor.  Sighing, Rocket closed his eyes and concentrated on healing the gash in his midsection.

The chime of one of the pride’s many contacts responding to his inquiry was loud enough for him to startle from head to foot.  Cursing himself softly, he rolled onto his side and looked at the message.  “Goods to be delivered in person.  40.336018, -119.914643”

Well, that was fairly settled.  Checking the maps, he noted that this was a Dusicyonothrope community with which they’d dealt a few times in the past.  They weren’t rich, though they were reliable.  The folks were incredibly insular, a trait necessary to their craft.  Thiriothropes reverted back to their human form on death in most cases.  To properly capture the form for taxidermy, specialist techniques needed to be employed.  These were not quiet techniques.  The members of Darwin’s crew who had carried the disease back to Europe, however, were masterful at hiding their affliction.

They were also very small in number.  While wolves were the most common, followed by rats, bears and the various feline strains, maned wolves and their cousins the Warrah composed less than five percent of one percent of the total population, according to the most recent census data.  Of course, the less populous strains tended not to announce their presence in the least, for security reasons.

With that bit of business settled, Rocket relaxed and prepared to try his hand at napping.  Fate, naturally, cursed his luck and Kitten pulled into a parking lot just as his mind settled into the routine.  Glaring at the plain gray ceiling, he concentrated on not infecting the human.  Nope, he would not do her serious bodily harm as she pulled open the sliding side and let the sunlight fall directly onto his eyes.  Nor would he form and dig his claws in as she helped him to his feet and limped him… Rosetta had gotten a third floor room.  And the elevator was busted.

As he and Kitten finally reached their room and Rocket claimed a bed all to himself, injecting a localized anesthetic directly into the flesh surrounding his abdomen with minimal concern for accuracy -- a perk of having a freight train of a metabolism -- and prayed for the drugs to have an effect lasting more than thirty seconds -- the downside to the same -- Babier’s voice filled his ears.  A glance at Kitten indicated she heard the same.

“We have position.  Zinnie is badly wounded and got herself treed.  All hands on deck.  Rose, Kit, get yourselves sandwiches and remember to throw the wrappers away.  Benji, bring my fresh pair of socks.  We’re bats in a rock concert.  Move!”
The volume regulator capped out, such that the shouted last word was no louder than the whispered first.  Still, the pitch and whine clearly indicated the strain with which Babier spoke.  This mission of vengeance was going precisely downward and to hell with the handbasket.

Rocket groped for his phone as Kitten called Rosetta, darting out the door about as quickly as it was possible for her to dart, and he scrolled down his extensive list of contacts.  There weren’t any hands nearby that would be of much help… except perhaps his own old pride.  That could do.  They’d try to kill Babier, of course, but the chance at adding a few more lionesses to their pride would certainly be an incentive.

The idea faded as quickly as it had come.  The three males that ran that group were local to Anderson.  With such small towns, the chance that they would see this as a deliberate incursion was too great.  Seeing his king in danger was one thing; seeing the pride driven out at gunpoint was entirely another.  Still, he felt impotent laying here in convalescence.  Idly, he checked the boards for the next job.  Ah, a small gig in Klammath Falls.  

Several teens had been changed by a rogue wolf.  Apparently, the local were-population was composed almost entirely of were-rats and a variant of the standard thiriothrope.  When the disease came from domesticated animals, in this case a pomeranian line, very strange things happened to the infected.  The problem didn’t have much of a bounty on the table but it was just the sort of thing Babier specialized in.  Zinnie was the most stable adolescent he’d ever seen changed and, even so, he didn’t trust her outside of the hunt or more than thirty paces from a powerful member of the pride.  Her brain wasn’t right.  There wasn’t the beast’s desires and the human’s breaks; there was just impulse, human perversion, and bestial cravings.  Catching this affliction as a child was hundreds of times worse than catching it as an adult.  He placed a partial cue on the job, saving the screenshot with contact information to run by the King later.

Kitten slammed the door open again, dumped most of the bags down, and shouted down that she was ready to roll out.  Ah, so Rosetta was downstairs.  Rocket smiled faintly, hiding his worry at being left so vulnerable and alone.

...

Glancing at his king as Babier gave a majestic toss of his head, Levi hid his blush in the final inspections of his equipment.  Zinnie was down and trapped in her true form, which only heightened the stakes.  On the plus side, it seemed she had the cackle’s full attention.  The downside -- that she had been shot repeatedly -- was also good.  The fact that she still wore her goggles meant the team had seen how many times she’d been shot.  Her continued movement indicated that silver rounds were not being frittered, which meant this band likely didn’t have too many such bullets to spare.

The use of drones could well be a problem.  Babier, in full and magnificent Warrior’s form, lowered his binoculars and twitched an ear.  “They’re almost in position.  Final check?”

Andes flexed claws that had always been a touch more translucent than normal and settled low, his Taurus Model 605 dwarfed by his oversized hands.  Levi glanced over at the figure and felt his chest puff in preparation of a low woof sound.  He did not like the idea of fighting at Andes side and not his brother’s, much though there was no mistaking the incredible talent of the larger male.  

Checking his own little Ruger one last time, Levi was immensely grateful when Babier gave the signal to move out.  He fanned a little to the left while Andes fanned a little to the right, both of them just a little ahead of Babier.  Their job was to cut through the flack that their king might take down the matron of this immortal enemy in bloody and ritualistic slaughter.

Of course, the use of weapons was not a part of the ritual.  It took discipline and a strong leader for the beast to be calm enough to handle such machinery and fully automatic bits tended to have disastrous results.  The impulse to squeeze could be so very, very strong.

Underfoot, the smooth, lightly rounded felsic rock was a ruddy orange with madrone trees and any number of thin, almost gray-white grasses peeking out where bits of skree and dust accumulated.  A few oaks and pines sagged under the heat of midday and a few billion insects could be heard to the north, alongside the soft sounds of the lakeshore.  A few scattered pines and oaks rose on the tops of hills, though these were the exception to the rule in the ten meter scrub they pushed through.

Rounding a bend, he snarled faintly as the wind brought the peripheral ring of the enemy’s territory into painfully sharp relief.  Babier’s beast flared somewhat, dwarfing his own as he soothed spirits and kept the pride together.  Levi could almost imagine the aura spreading out across the entire expanse to re-knit the females and bring them all into one big cohesive whole.  Scientists might chock some of it up to hormones and a sensitivity between aflicted but anyone who lived with thiriothropy knew there was a mythical component.  Not knowing what exactly it was did not preclude its significance.

A small camera swept the ground in front of a small cave.  Andes threw a knife, one of many on a bandolier across his chest in full machismo glory, and took the thing out.  He moved further to the right and Babier knelt before the hole, scenting the air.  Levi took his cue and scouted to the left, finding and dispatching another camera as he passed.  He scented the air and froze, carefully touching his paw to his upper wrist where the implant buzzed faintlly against his expanded nerve endings.

“Scenet praudorn innkates tripwires.  Smerl oall guns.  Poleeestyereen.”  HIs tongue twisted around the difficult word-sounds, though he knew his teammates would understand.  Until he came into close combat, it was best, by far, to keep his human mind in full control.  That meant enunciating as best he could, thinking in terms of security measures and reminding himself that he held a gun in his off hand.  It also meant Andes was struggling.  Anything past nearly human gave his beast a bit too much leeway.

True to this musing, a sharp rat-rat-rat indicated his fellow submissive male hadn’t registered the advice for what it was. Glancing to the side, he saw Andes shake that wondrous mane and lick a shoulder wound a few times before throwing a dagger at something inside the cave and chancing to move back in again.  Levi slunk a little ways into his own bolt and used a bit of flying lead to take out the infra-red sensor hooked to a simple pully array.  Slipping down it, he found the scents stale and unused, though the tunnel continued a fair distance.  He stepped out and moved on, counting his steps and pinging to Babier with a soft snarl at each hundred paces.  

Three more such tunnels and he smelled where they left the bodies.  The temptation to find Chamomile’s body was strong, though this he fervantly resisted.  Drawing yet more wrath to himself was not wise, not by any stretch, and there was too much ground to cover.  Later, when they had more time -- if -- he would come back and bury what remained.  Or give her a funeral’s pyre.  She might have been a weak and simpering thing, always meek and perpetually appologizing, but she was one of the family.

The buzz in his ear suddenly exploded in sound.  None of it was loud, as the volume limit had been manually set to prevent pride-wide tenitus or the like, but his imagination filled in what capped at a soft whisper.  It didn’t take much effort, truth be told.  He’d plenty of experience with firefights.

...

Benji slammed his bulk forward, plowing the burly woman before him to the ground while Sasha and Dhalia punched sequential holes into her frontal lobe.  Behind them, Kelly kept the rest from getting too close.  Hers was a highly regimented style and her background now reeked of formal training and the blue of district police.  She aimed twice at the heart and once at the head for every target before moving to the next.  The staccato rap-tap-tap, pause, rap-tap-tap was somewhat distracted, though he was glad to have Dhalia so close at hand.  Both of her minds were in full accord.  Both were cold, calculating creatures with definite psychosis, but right now he loved that she didn’t even seem to notice the blood cascading down her left arm.

He was up and tearing toward the next target, his bone spurs and claws flashing brilliantly as he dropped to all fours and sprang with all the force his six hundred pounds of warrior’s form allowed.  The hyena, still in transition, stood no chance.  He felt her spine shatter under the contact and let loose a roar to freeze the rest as they were in there forms.  Another rap-tap-tap issued from behind him, followed by the bellow as Sasha brought her elephant cannon to bare, clearly having expended her ammo for the smaller piece.

Closing himself to the restraining minds of both human and lion, he let himself get lost in his primal form, spanning easily between the two as his skin ripped and hardened muscles sprouted a thin layer of bristly golden fur and his mane went perfectly albino white.  It would have been a dark brownish gold had he and his twin carried the proper pigments.  Alas, presently he did not, though he knew in a vague sort of way that the almost glowing white of his coat presented a different kind of terror.

Dhalia and Sasha stayed back, shooting with almost mechanical precision.  They would stay back while he went for the initial charge, staying in near-human form with only ears, eyes and, in Sasha’s case, a tail present.  Behind him and still fighting the beast with astounding bull-headedness, Kelly followed his advance.  As he stepped into the gloom of the cave, he felt silhouetted by a flashlight and knew without looking that the newest addition held light and gun as a soldier or special ops officer might.

Another line of bullets tore through his flesh as Benji launched himself down a tight corner and ripped the offending defendant nearly in half, viscera dripping as lungs burbled at the scream that lacked pressure enough to issue.  Behind him, he was aware of Kelly dropping to all fours, nearly shifting as, even still, she fought to remain fully human.  It was reckless, that.  The longer she held out and fought it, the less control she’d have when it came.  Well, at least after the first moon.

Ignoring her, he pushed onward and downward, noting tripwires only vaguely in the sense that they were obstacles to be avoided.  His enemies fought with some small degree of skill, but each time a second moved to close with him there would be a sharp rap-tap-tap and his combat would be uninterrupted.

Distantly, he heard his brother’s firing pattern and advanced toward that.  Something was wrong in the way the defense was being held.  This was a fairly straightforward pincer with a rearguard playing sniper.  In about twenty minutes, Rosetta and Kitten would come close to do the mop-up.  The enemy, however, was acting as though there was some sort of danger deeper within.  As he neared both what seemed the deepest point and the junction down which Levi must be, he clotheslined a smaller male in full bestial form as it charged away from what seemed their deceased drop-off pit.  

The creature healed a little from the claws drawn against its trachea, though the rap-tap-tap from far too close halted that annoyance.  What was odd enough to stop the rampage and cause him to push Kelly’s gun toward the floor, however, was the tucked tail and direction of flight on the still spurting corpse.  He listened intently over the roar of the other five gunmen close at hand and sniffed the air, testing for some greater horror.  He smelled corpses and stale blood.  He also smelled silver residue and the acrid burning scent of silver-poisoned blood.  Closing his eyes, he filtered the scents, wishing he had Sasha or Zinnie’s gift for scent discrimination.  

Something was familiar and he parked himself at this junction, gesturing for Kelly to set herself to holding this otherwise innocuous point.  He reported his held possiton and received, without the least surprise, no response.  Over the gunfire and active combat, it would be odd for Babier to activate the microphone and reply.

Only after a few moments of surveilance did he note just how bad off the newbie was.  Her skin had ruptured in dozens of places, the long tears showing raw muscle and bits of matted fur beneath.  Her eyes were too big for the occipital caveties and bulged a little at the front as though being squeezed with only one escape point.  Not just her nails but her knuckles bled in steady streams and she’d switched her gun to her left hand that her light be held in a wrist that was no longer human and not the least bit felid.

The pain must have been unbearable, yet her expression as she checked the three tunnels was grimly set.  Nothing would get past her guard, not even the beast that bucked beneath her skin.  He’d never seen anyone manage to hold out for so long, not without a shaman to take the strain and channel it into themself.  

As he swung his gaze back down the tunnel and she turned away, he caught a terrible sight from the corner of his eye.  Her face and ears were human normal, but the back of her skull was misshapen, as though the lioness had decided that death was better than captivity.

...

Her name was Karrissa.  Now she was called Kam, because she took snapshots of everything.  It was to stay out of sight.  The photographer is the only soul that is invisible in the picture, after all.  The images in front of her were dark purple with splashes of crimson and green clumpy bits and a strange orange bit with bunches of white that kept clinging to her.  It was someone else who wasn’t in the picture.  That meant she could hate it.

In fact, there was no picture.  The film was bad, so it was just her.  No one would spot her, though.  The old one who had thought to make the device have its little red light turn green crunched between her molars, the bone difficult to crack but yielding under her relentless loathing.  There was no reason not to destroy, not to lash out.  

These were old, familiar thoughts.  A femur still oozed a little and she dug a claw in, pulling out a bit of the marrow that had regenerated.  Soon, soon she too would be dead.  That was okay, too.  It wasn’t something she sought but it was something that felt inevitable, like nightmares when a light flicks off or memories that shout whenever things are quiet enough.  She’d lived her life amid those she hated.  Now, she was again amongst those she wished had never been.  There had been an interlude, but that was on another reel of film.

A gasp off to her left had Kam pouncing, her long claws digging into flesh that, unwisely, tried to defend itself.  She closed her eyes, though she knew they must still be open.  After, Babier had always said her eyes were open.  

When her eyes were no longer closed, she lay in the spaces between where the enemy had been.  On her back.  Babier… that name was familiar, but it must just be a memory.  All of her past shouted at her.  There was no Babier, just as there had never been a mother and a little sister.  If there had been, then she’d watched her sister get raped until she bled out from the inside and there had been survace cut to put pressure on to stop her life from escaping.  If Dhalia was real, then her mother’s stern face closing down as the woman accepted money and the strange men took her was also real.  

No, much better to stay where she was.  There was no more movement, which meant it would soon be time for her to seek out more and make it stop.  For the moment, however, the limbs surrounding her were warm.  Her chest felt broken and hurt and there was a sense that time was slipping away, that her reality was losing its past and future, dissolving into the relief of destroying these things around her.  Distantly, a memory said in a voice that sounded like a Sasha or a Shauna told her that she was losing herself to the moment of the moon.  

It sounded peaceful, just to let go.  None of the badness mattered if she let go.  Then, there was no pain.  Only anguish and the moment remained, or so it soon would be.  Her body became languid and she knew her flesh shifted around her, distorting what remained of a digestive tract that her form match her purpose.  There was harmony in this, and a kind of tranquility in letting her all-consuming rage destroy those things which were not a part of it.

Next Chapter: In the Earth