The New Pack

"Hi everyone, it's me again. Hank, the werewolf."

[Group: Hi Hank!]

"It's been fifty-five days since I devoured anyone, and that one was a tyrannical, three hundred year old vampire so he shouldn't really count. Heh.

"Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I lost my job at the used car lot. With the economy the way it is, you'd think used car sales would be going up. And they are everywhere but where I worked. The idiot who owns the place figured the increased market for late model used cars meant he should jack up his prices. He figured he'd make even more money with each sale. What happened was people just went to another used car lot that wasn't trying to rip them off. He had to have someone to blame, though, so I got canned. I'd gotten to where I hated working the used car lot, anyway, so I don't mind not having to go there every day. But I still need a job, so if you know any place that's hiring, let me know.

"Over the weekend, Michelle, my vampire girlfriend, decided she was going to cheer me up. I always like it when she cheers me up, if you know what I mean! But this time she meant to get me out of the apartment, somewhere we weren't likely to run into any of Riley's rallies against us ALPSers. I don't think I'd have chosen a youth soccer game, but the son of Michelle's best friend, Wanda, was playing and the boy had been begging 'Miss Michelle' to come see him play. I figured why not go? It would make Michelle happy and might even be fun.

"I had no idea that youth soccer was such a big business! I figured we'd just go to some park somewhere, watch the kids and then go home. Nope. We went to this huge soccer complex. There must have been at least fifty soccer fields and kids as young as four or five up to teenagers. Thousands of parents and grandparents were out there with folding chairs, cheering on the kids. With the crowd and all those fields, it took Michelle and me a while to find the game we were looking for. The game had already started when we got to the field.

"Michelle walked up to a man a woman and said, 'Hi Wanda! Sorry we're late.'

"Wanda smiled, 'You know, you really didn't have to come.'

"Michelle just laughed, 'Jack made me pinkie swear. And he says you can't go back on a pinkie swear!' Then she turned to me, 'Hank, this is my friend Wanda and her husband Ron. And the little scamp who just had the ball taken from him is Jack.'

"Wanda gave me an appraising look masked in a polite smile, 'So, this is the man I've been hearing so much about!' Wanda leaned close and loudly whispered, 'She's totally gaga over you, you know!'

"Michelle growled, 'Wanda!' I love it when she growls like that!

"I whispered loudly back to Wanda, 'She's sunk her fangs pretty deeply in me, too!'

"Wanda chuckled a bit but Michelle started laughing so hard at my joke that Wanda gave her a questioning glance. Pulling Michelle into a hug, I quietly whispered in her ear, 'Wanda doesn't know about you, right?'

"Still laughing, Michelle whispered back, "No. She doesn't know about you, either.'

"We turned back to watch the game and make small talk. It wasn't like a regular soccer game. There wasn't really any flow, just kids getting around the ball and kicking for all they were worth. Every now and then a player would break away from the big mass of kids, make a run on the goal and sometimes even score. The coaches would stand on the sideline and call out instructions like 'Stay in your position!' or 'Pass the ball now!' or even 'Jimmy, don't take the ball away from your own teammate!' But the kids looked like they were having fun and parents were all supportive, so it did take my mind off of being unemployed.

"In the second half of the game, things started to get tense. I couldn't figure out why, but the parents all around us were getting nervous about something. Michelle noticed it, too, and asked Wanda what was going on.

"Wanda replied, 'Our team is winning and the other team can get really...upset...if they lose. It's not really the fault of the kids on the other team. They really can't help it, but...' She trailed off, like there was more she wanted to say but didn't think she should.

"I figured it wouldn't hurt to kick up my senses a bit and figure out what was going on. It didn't take long. Every single player on the other team was an ALPSer! I looked at Wanda, 'Why is there an entire team of kids with ALPS?'

"Wanda looked surprised, 'How did-? Never mind. Some of the parents didn't want their children on a team with kids who had ALPS. They were afraid of what might happen, I guess. So the league took all the ALPS kids and put them on one team. But that just makes it worse. The ALPS kids feel like they're being shunned, so that makes them more likely to get mad at the other kids. Sometimes, when they're losing, some of those kids get really mad and then they change. It doesn't help that the ALPS kids' coach is as scared of them as all the other parents.'

"Right then Jack's team scored another goal. They jumped up and down and cheered but the parents got even more tense than they had been before. With my heightened senses, I could tell they had good reason to be tense, too. A couple of the ALPS kids were pretty upset and were probably going to transform in the next few seconds.

"Turning to Wanda, I said, 'Get Jack and his teammates off the field now.' Then I walked out onto the field, heading toward the ALPS team.

"I could hear the coach and parents behind me calling to Jack's team to come over to the sidelines. I saw the ALPS team's coach just standing on the sidelines, totally out of his element. The ref saw me and ran over, yelling, 'No parents are allowed on the field during a game!' When I ignored him, he came up to me as said, 'Sir, no parents are allowed on the field during a game.'

"I didn't stop walking but said to him, 'I'm not a parent and you are the one who should get off the field. You're about to have a bunch of little were-creatures running around out here. They won't want to hurt you, but they will if you get in the way.' The ref's face went pale and he turned and left the field.

"I walked right up to the kid who seemed most likely to transform and said, 'You don't want to transform, kid. It won't help you win the game or make you feel better.'

"The kid had a really good 'up yours' stare already; pretty impressive for a six year old. He gave me that stare and said, 'You better run, mister.' And then he transformed in a little werewolf cub -- cute little thing -- and he started growling at me. That kicked if off for the other kids and they all transformed, too. I had ten little were-cubs in front of me; six wolves, two tigers, a bear and a cougar. They were all snarling and growling and ready to leap. So I transformed and gave the little pack what it really needed; an alpha.

"A bit of growling, a little nipping at their ears, a couple of good cuffs with the paw and I had the ten of them sitting in front of me acting a whole lot more polite. I growled a bit more, letting them know who was boss, then transformed back. The kids transformed back, too.

"I called over the ref and both coaches. The ref came and so did the coach for Jack's team. The coach for the ALPS team just stood there on the sidelines, staring at us. Ignoring him, I said, 'The kids are under control now. We can finish the game.'

"The ref looked at the other coach. He shrugged and said, 'Why not?' Then the ref looked at me, 'Are you willing to stay on the sidelines with these kids? You've got some, uh, standing with them no one else here can match.' I agreed and led the kids to the sideline. Sometime during the discussion with the ref and other coach, the ALPS team's coach had left. I guess it was just too much for him. Anyway, we finished out the game without any trouble. My ALPS kids even scored a goal before the game ended.

"Both teams did the 'Good game' walk. Since no one else was around, I took the place of the coach in the line. I led the kids back to their parents and wasn't really that surprised when they asked me if I would take over as team coach. I told them I didn't really know anything about coaching soccer, but if they didn't mind that, I told them I'd be willing to be the coach.

"The kids cheered and the parents smiled and Michelle came over to meet my new little pack. She said Wanda had a whole bunch of questions after I transformed. Michelle just told Wanda she'd talk about it later.

"All in all, we had a fun time out at the soccer game. And later, when we got back to my apartment, Michelle cheered me up again!"

Werewolf Geneology or a New Look at the Three Little Pigs

"Hi everybody. My name's Mike Stump and I'm a werewolf."

[Group: Hi Mike!]

"Last time I was here, I told you about a long ago ancestor of mine who was the wolf in the real story of Little Red Riding Hood. Well, having tracked that story back to a werewolf, I began wondering what other fairy tales owed their origin to other were-creatures. Since I'm a werewolf, I researched wolves, first. And the one I managed to track down really surprised me. It was the tale of the three little pigs!

"Here's the thing that really surprised me; there really were three pigs. But they weren't little and weren't really pigs. They were boars. Were-boars, actually. Unfortunately, I never was able to find names for any of those involved.

"The werewolf involved was probably a hermit. He was definitely a loner, living out in the forest in territory he'd claimed as his own. As best I can tell, the werewolf had been a monk of some kind before he contracted ALPS. The monk believed that he had 'received Satan's curse.' The monk sort of communed with nature-"

[Person in the crowd: They had hippies back then?]

"No, they did not. The monk communed with nature to witness God's hand in creating everything around the monk. He wrote about everything he studied and was quite a good naturalist. He also wrote about the 'curse' that came upon him every full moon. Like last time, I'm going to tell the story the way the monk did in his writings.

"I have lived by myself for years, as Satan's curse demanded. Yesterday, while walking the forest, I happened upon a crudely built hut. Thinking a woodsman or huntsman had moved into the area, I feared what might happen to them when the full moon rose that night. I knocked on the door to the hut. The hut was so crudely built, the entire thing shook as my hand struck it.

"The door was opened by a very short, heavy-set man. His eyes were piggish, displaying little intelligence. The man's speech was almost bestial, so much so that I could barely understand him. 'What..want?' was all I could discern.

"Speaking carefully and slowly, I told him a cursed beast stalked the forest. The man either did not understand or did not care. 'Bah' was all he said as he closed his rickety door in the my face.

"I attempted to move as far from the hut as possible before my curse came upon me. I did not wish harm upon the short man. Satan felt otherwise, guiding me directly back to the hut. Approaching the crude hut, my nose detected the scent of wild boar rather than man. A normal wolf would not attack a boar alone. A creature cursed with the power of Satan would not hesitate. At least I would not be responsible for murder this night!

"I crashed through the fragile door and came face to a face with a very small boar. We fell to fighting, the boar attempting to impale me on its tusks while I move constantly, snapping at the boar's flanks and legs. I did not succeed in killing the boar. It ran off into the forest and I let it go.

"This morning I returned to the scene of the fight. The crude hut had been destroyed. I hope the small man has left. I could find no evidence of him. I believe the man witnessed the fight with the boar and has been frightened away. I hope so.

"I returned the next day and discovered a new hut had been built right where the old one had been. This hut was built more strongly than the first one but it, also, was crudely contructed. Hoping to convince the man to leave, I knocked on the door to the new hut. Once again, a short, heavy-set man with piggish eyes opened the door. It was not the same man, though it was almost certainly his brother.

"Once again I attempted to explain about the cursed creature who roamed the forest when the moon was full. As I spoke, the man from the other day appeared in the doorway as well. God knows I attmpted to make myself plain to the men but neither of them seemed to understand the danger. As his brother before him had done, the small man shut the door in my face.

"As before, Satan's curse returned as the sun's bright light as replaced by the moon's baleful illumination. As before, I found myself drawn to the crude hut. As before, the scent of man had been replaced by the scent of wild boar. As before, I broke through the door. I found myself facing two small boars. The boars and I fell to with avengeance. Doing battle with one boar had been difficult. Had these boars been larger, battling two would have been impossible. I know not how long we fought though the eventual result was the same. The two boars escaped into the forest together.

"I returned to the scene in the morning. As I anticipated, the hut had been destroyed. I returned to the scene each day for seven days. Neither then men nor the boars returned.

"Okay, I'm taking a break from the monk's point of view for a minute. He wrote a lot of stuff that isn't important to the story over the next four months. Content that the men had been scared off, the monk did not return to the scene of the two fights during all of that time. I'm returning to the monk's point of view four months after the second fight.

"Today, my studies of God's wonderous world brought me back to the part of the forest where the huts had been built. To my dismay, I discovered a cabin standing where the huts once stood. The cabin was of sturdy construction, built with large, strong logs. Though I doubted any good would come of it, I knocked on this new door. The door was answered by a third man, obviously the brother of the other two. As before, my warnings fell on deaf or uncomprehending ears. The man just laughed and closed the door in my face. With Satan's curse due to return this evening, I am certain I will return here.

"My expectations of that afternoon were correct. The curse came and I found myself drawn to the cabin. I was not surprised to discover the scent of man was once again replaced by the scent of boar. As Satan had cursed me with the form of a wolf, so he had cursed these men with the form of a boar. Arriving at the cabin, I immediately threw myself at the door to the cabin. The door did not give way. Again and again, I threw myself at the door only to be repulsed each time. Finally, even my bestial mind realized I could not break through the door. I searched for alternative entrances, even climbing to the roof on split logs stacked for fire wood. There was a chimney on the roof but it was quite narrow. I could not have descended through it even in the form God gave me. Eventually, my cursed form gave up and went elsewhere in search of accessible prey.

"That's really all the monk had to write about the confrontation, but you can see the main part of the entire story as we know it today. The monk soon left that part of the forest entirely, afraid he would eventually be forced to fight the boars for the territory. He knew he couldn't win such a fight, so he moved deeper into the vast forest."

[Person in the crowd: So you figure some storyteller ran across the monk's story and came up with the three little pigs story?]

"Certainly, though I doubt he came up with the story as we know it today. Oral stories tend to evolve from teller to teller, from year to year. But the important thing to me is that we're starting to see just how much truth lies behind these stories once thought fanciful.

"These are stories that have stood for centuries. I've already told you of two stories that were inspired by our ancestors. This is something astounding we can all hold onto, all appreciate. When this world starts to get you down, think of our contribution to world literature and take pride in who you are!"

Missed Call

(Ring, ring, ring)

“This is Scott. Leave a message at the tone.”

(Beep)

“Hey Scott, this is Tim. Are you there? I’ll just give you a minute, in case you’re screening your calls…

“Cause I would screen my calls, if I were you. Actually, I do screen my calls, and I’m not you.

“So, you there?

“Ok, I guess you’re not. Anyway, you probably remember me from the last WCA meeting. I tried to talk with you afterwards but you had that meeting you were late for… I got your number from Tina. She’s in charge of all the paperwork for the meetings. I guess you volunteered for something or other a while back so she had your number... Hey, was it you that brought the greenbean casserole to that Thanksgiving picnic? I’ve been trying to find out who brought that, it was really good. Do you know Tina personally? I accidentally bumped into her while she was carrying a bunch of WCA folders. I saw your number while I was helping her pick up all the papers and I memorized it. If you could just keep this between you and me, that would be great. She’s kind of cute, and I’d hate to lose any future chances with her.

“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you, I’ve figured it all out. I’m sure you’ve noticed how silver’s been doing in the market recently. It’s so totally being manipulated! That’s because the government’s buying it all up, only they don’t want the average Joe to know about it. They’ve been buying it all up, see, and then making it look like there’s still plenty to go around. They don’t want folks to know what they’re up to. But I’ve got them figured out. It’s the bullets. They’re melting all that silver and molding it into bullets to kill all us weres with.

“So I was thinking, with all your government connections, is there anything you can do about this? I don’t know where they’re hiding the bullets or anything. It’s not like they’d call me up on the phone and tell me something like that, like (continuing in a silly voice) ‘Hey Tim, this is the government. We’re keeping all the silver bullets in Roswell.’ (He chuckles). But you, you’ve got a foot on the inside. I figure if anybody can get to the bottom of this thing, it’s you. If you could just find out where they’ve got the bullets stored, we can formulate a plan. I’m sure we could get Hank and some of his friends to help us dispose of them.

“Anyhow, call me back when you get a chance. I wish I could have spoken to you about this in person... Wait a minute; I’m talking to your machine! Uh, do me a favor and erase this message after you’ve listened ok? Thanks. Actually, now that I think of it, DHS has probably picked up on this call…

“Shoot… I’d better go…”

First Date

I have it bad for la chica bonita. Go figure. I live in Minnesota. I'm as Nordic as Nordic gets. I come from that ancient genetic factory somewhere north of Oslo that makes 'em tall, broad, and strawberry-blonde, with a beard you could hide a battle-axe in. In school they called me 'Harald the Red.'

Yeah, that's right, with two a's and no o. My dad is a history buff. He shook the name out of our family tree somewhere. It last belonged to my great, great, great-- somebody.

So why is it that Nordic blond women do nothing for me? You could pull me through all of time and space and set me up on a hot date with Elke Sommer or Ursula Andress at her absolute peak...

And somewhere, something ancient deep inside my brain would say, "Eh. I knew your mother. I knew your grandmother. I knew all your foremothers back to the dawn of our race, and frankly, they were all a bunch of depressed neurotics."

But introduce me to some dulce little chica--let her bat those big brown eyes at me, or wiggle her cute little butt in my general direction. Show me two minutes of Salma Hayek doing her snake-dance thing in From Dusk 'Til Dawn...

Woof.

Anyway, that's my theory. My Norsemen ancestors didn't go viking for the plunder. They went viking to get away from the Norse women. So when my favorite coffee shop hired a new waitress, and she turned out to be 5-foot-1 of dark-haired, dark-eyed, brown-skinned chicana beauty, I was instantly, hopelessly, smitten.

Yeah, Harald the Red, the mighty Viking. It took me three weeks to work up the nerve to ask her out. Another three weeks to get her to say 'yes.'

And that's when she popped her little surprise. "Harald," she said, "you're a sweet guy. But there's something you really need to know about me, first."

I shrugged. "You're, uh, undocumented?"

"No, not that. I mean, yes, I am, but--well, if you really are serious about going out on a date with me, there's somewhere else you need to go with me, first."

And that's how we wound up driving through Lowertown, just after dark on a Sunday evening. I thought it was some kind of joke or test, at first. The junkies, the winos; the gang tags spray-painted everywhere. "That's where we're going," she said, pointing.

"You're kidding," I said. I craned my neck to look at the name carved in the marble over the entryway. "The Rampant Loon Media Building? What on earth possessed them to locate their business here?"

"They got a great tax break from the city."

So I found a place to park the pickup truck, and we got out and took the sidewalk to the main entrance, stepping over the sleeping bums and the puddles of I don't want to know what and walking past a dark alley entrance that brought all my willies and cold shivers out to dance in a conga line on the back of my neck. But we made it into the lobby okay, got waved past by the security guard, and took the elevator to the 13th floor.

Where we walked into a meeting. Huh. This was something I'd never heard of before: Were-Creatures Anonymous. It was some kind of demented variation on a twelve-step program for people who thought they were—

Well, as my adorable little chica put it, "Hi. My name is Tina, and I'm a were-jaguar."

Actually, for a bunch of people who were clinically nuts, they weren't half-bad. They were for the most part calm, sober, and pleasant—except for this Scott guy, who reminded me of a used-car salesman and left me with a deep desire to wash my hand after he shook it. Everyone there accepted that I wasn't one of them but was only there to support Tina, and they congratulated me on my open-mindedness and all that; it was pretty embarrassing, actually. But we got through the coffee hour okay, and sweet little Tina really seemed to be warming up to me. She kissed me in the elevator, and held my hand and cuddled up to my side as we left the building and walked back to where I'd parked my truck. As we passed that dark alley entrance that had given me the willies so badly on our way in, three young thugs stepped out of the shadows. I saw the flash of a knife blade.

And then my world turned red.

#
The next thing I knew, I was waking up naked in a strange bed and my left arm was numb. I turned my head, saw that the naked woman laying on my left arm was Tina, and from that made the leap to guessing that this was her apartment. I sure hoped the bedroom was always this much of a mess.

I must have made some sound or somehow disturbed her. She slowly opened those beautiful big brown eyes, and then just as slowly eased into the most amazingly satiated smile and snuggled in closer.

"Darling," she whispered, "why didn't you tell me? Madre di Dios, you were magnificent! So strong! So fierce! So...insatiable!" She bit my earlobe, gently, kissed her way down my neck, and then worked her way back up to my ear again. "Why didn't you trust me? Why didn't you tell the group that you're—you're—" She tched. "Were-bear seems such an inadequate name."

"Because it is, and I'm not," I said. "The correct term is bearserkr."

"Whatever." She kissed my neck again, harder and more insistent this time. "Whatever it is, you were unforgettable last night!"

That's when I finally reached across with my other arm, and pulled her on top of me, and kissed her on the forehead and held her tight.

And stared at the ceiling, and let my anger soar up to the sky. Yeah. Unforgettable.

Damn you, Odin, and damn your thousand-year curse! They all say that! But just once, would it be too much to let me remember it?

Relapse

He was looking bad, rough. You can tell when someone's had a relapse, and it doesn't take ALPS-heightened senses, either. They say recovering alcoholics can smell it when someone in their group has gone off the wagon.

Scott didn't smell funny, but clearly, he'd lost it. Normally the guy was overdressed to a fault and cheerful like a daytime game-show host. Then he went missing back in mid-January, and now here he was in group again, looking like something the cat had dragged in.

"Hi," he said. He looked up, started to make eye-contact, then went back to looking at his shoes. I saw they were scuffed and salt-stained; another bad sign. Crockett & Jones, Leeds, U.K., a thousand bucks a pair—we knew because he'd told us, repeatedly, and now here he was looking like he'd been playing street hockey in them.

"Hi," he tried again. "My name is Scott, and I'm a were-weasel."

"Hi, Scott."

He managed to look up and hold the eye-contact for a few seconds this time, and almost managed a smile. Progress.

He went back to looking at his shoes. "First off, I'd like to thank my sponsor, Tom, for getting me back into group."

Okay, no wonder he looked like something the cat had dragged in. He'd been dragged in by the cat.

"I—" he paused, gulped, swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. Yes, I've—" He looked up, around the circle, and nodded. "Yes, I've had a setback. I screwed up. I—" Another heavy sigh.

"I started doing politics again."

What could we do? Nod sympathetically. Encourage him to keep talking.

"I thought I could handle it. I thought, just a little taste. Just once, for old times' sake. I thought—" He shook his hands in the air, as if wrapping them around some invisible something right in front of his face, and then dropped them into his lap, and sighed.

"I couldn't handle it." He went back to looking at this shoes.

When it seemed like that was all he had to say, Tom cleared his throat. "Go on, Scott. Tell us the rest."

Scott locked eyes with Tom, took some kind of strength from it, and nodded. "Yeah. You're right. They need to know." He took another deep breath, sat up a little straighter in his chair, and then a bit of the Old Scott came back into his voice.

"As you've probably guessed," he said, "I've been down in D.C. for the last six weeks, angling for a job in the new administration, or at least a lobbying gig. I mean, were-weasel, politics: a natural fit, don't you think?" Everyone around the circle nodded sympathetically.

"Well let me tell you, friends, I didn't have a clue. You don't have a clue. There are things crawling through the halls of Congress now that... that...

"Look. This administration is like an enormous frickin' magnet for Dark Life."

Joe the Lion blinked. "Dark Life?"

"Y'know, dark matter? Dark energy?" Scott thumped himself on the chest. "Dark Life. Us. Cryptids. Beasties that go bump in the night. Creatures that don't officially exist—or at least we didn't, until the ALPS activists started coming out of the closet and getting into people's faces.

"I tell you, there are things going on that none of us have a clue about. There are things walking the streets of D.C. now that haven't seen the light of day since the Carter administration. You can't even get an interview for a contract job on K Street unless you're at least a sasquatch. I ran into a frickin' wendigo in the Dirksen Building!"

Joe the Lion was blinking again. "Wendigo?"

"It's Algonquin. Look it up later. While you're at it, look up cryptozoology, too.

"Look, people," he said to the rest of us, "there is—"

He paused, and pointed across the circle. "Hank, I've been following your blog. Don't worry about that Reverend Riley. Internment is the least of our worries. People, there is a frickin' war building up out there."

Joe the Lion nodded. "I knew it. Vampires versus were-beasts."

Scott scowled. "Oh, don't give me that comic-book crap. We're talking about war between the New Breeds—us—and the Old Line dark life; the ones who liked being in the shadows, because it gave them more power."

I finally had to interrupt. "War? Really, Scott, don't you think that's being just a little extreme?"

Scott turned and looked at me, and gave me the full-bore heavy sigh and rolling eyes treatment. "No, I don't think that's 'a little extreme.' Right now there are clashes going on out west between the were-cougars and the were-jaguars, who are trying to push north and muscle in on cougar territory. So far they've managed to cover it up and blame all the murders on drug gangs, but it's only a matter of time..."

He broke off, and sighed again. "Look. All I can say is, there is stuff going out there that scares the willies out of me. We are only scratching the surface; ALPS is only the tip of the iceberg. We think we understand this disease. We're only buying into the cover story. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one am scared beyond my capacity for rational comprehension."

He sighed one more time, then shrugged, sat back, and tried to smile.

"But hey, what do I know? I'm just a weasel."