McKitty
05-22-2009, 08:15 AM
Branded
An Alexandria Morton Story
Chapter One:
Friday nights were cemetery nights. The clubs, bars, and backstreet alley-ways filled with a stench of piss, filth, and despair rolled together in bitter scent-biography of the homeless were the jurisdictions of my human-born peers. They avoided the hallowed ground of the dead after the sun settled because they were superstitious; still believing that the bogey-man would rise up from behind a tombstone to suck away one's life. Or perhaps they were the smart ones who drew the locations that would allow them to clock in at the end of shift tired, but in one piece and without nightmares to trouble them while they slept. I figured it was the latter, I had never once followed the safe guidelines. My therapist cringed in fear every time I walked into her office, dreading the newest horror my mind dredged up from the gutters of my memories.
My being a monster myself couldn't have been the reasons why I wandered through the broken paths of the dead alone. Sure, the ability to rely on more than a bullet dipped in holy water was a bonus, but really, I prided myself on being able to keep my personal life from affecting my professional decisions. When I had first applied to the M.O.S.S unit, I had made damned sure to keep my heightened everything in check. No shifting, no aura of dominance, no twisting of one's fear to snatch the advantage. It was a sign of insecurity if a werewolf tried to establish herself above her human cousins by abusing her wolf-soul.
Once one added in the fact that the average human soiled themselves and fell into a near-catatonic state of horror when they saw the wolf, it was sheer foolishness to stroll through the hills of Seattle thinking that my uniqueness would keep me out of harm's way. No, it simply was a fact that since humans avoided the cemetery like my last boyfriend avoided commitment; they were free of the overwhelming scent of the human herd and thus a way to do my job and end my nights with a clear head.
That, and I really enjoyed watching my therapist resist the urge to duck out of our sessions.
15th Avenue was deserted as I strolled up the way towards the cemetery's only road into the winding paths inside the fence. There was no need to hop the fence, or to sneak through the southern wall by Volunteer Park; most of the delinquents I caught were garden-variety: teenage witches who wanted a sample of graveyard dust collected at the midnight hour to curse their boyfriends with impotency, freshly-bitten werewolves that had followed the smell of the dead in a vain attempt to scavenge without the local M.O.S.S agent snatching them off the street, vampires unearthing their most recent childer. Occasionally, a walk-by drug up something of a higher caliber: an empath abusing the local emotional auras of the earth-locked ghosts, or a zombie-master digging up a grave to stock his supply cabinet; or the vampire throwing said childer back into the grave to suffer the quiet loneliness of the truly dead. Those cases usually ended up with my mouth reeking with the taste of unwashed, rotted flesh, my clothes torn and battered from the Change, and wasting three hours to find space in the small jail we kept for the Others who decided to break the law.
I kept my vision to human-standards, using the weak light of the half-moon to guide me through the first few loops of the road. Tuning my senses to the wolf-soul burned up energy that was better saved when things needed a growl or a snarl to set in motion. That, and the bloodlust rose too close to the surface. I was supposed to be the one locking up the bad guys, not joining them in causing mayhem.
From what I could see, nothing was out of the ordinary, but as any police officer who had worked a beat longer than a month knew that first impressions weren't always good judgment, and as I stood there at the bottom of the southeastern quarter, my skin didn't prickle.
Ghosts were territorial. Earth-locked ghosts who had never been guided to the Underworld were even more so. Any encroachment on their territory provoked them, and they did what they could to make their sentiments quite clear. Unfortunately, ordinary humans without a drop of the Otherworld in their veins weren't quite able to pick up on the messages the angry spirits wanted to get across.
I could though, and I wasn't feeling anything. No prickle on the back of my neck, no heavy weight of a gaze, not even mutters issued just underneath the whisper of the wind. No shadows darted behind gravestones at the corner of my vision.
The ghosts were scared, and not of me.
“Shit.” I muttered, knowing that the night was bumped up from 'curses on boyfriends' to 'potential hornless goat sacrifice'. Vaudun wasn't much practiced up here in the Northwest, but there were still a few followers of the loa. Ghosts weren't intimidated easily, but a powerful voodoo priestess could silence the dead quicker than holy water. They would allow a strong vaudun practicer dance on their grave and kick the tombstone if it meant keeping their bodyparts out of the wrong hands.
Zombie-raising was illegal, but it didn't stop the practice.
I kissed goodbye the idea of an easy night and allowed my wolf-soul to awaken my senses. Color faded from my vision, but the moonlight now illuminated the landscape like it was high noon. The cool, October wind carried the musty scent of the long-since-dead to me, mingled with the ever-constant salt from the Sound to the west. The sounds of the city came alive as well; I could make out the theme music of a t.v drama from one of the houses across the eastern fence. To all supernatural observations, I was still myself; but my aura blazed a bright silver all around me. The wolf-soul was awake and her gifts spread over my body like an invisible coat.
I sucked in a greedy gulp of air and rolled the scents over my tongue, tasting them. In this corner, the scent trails were a few hours old. Whatever was spooking the spooks was to my northwest. I undid the clip on my belt-holster and started in that direction.
As I moved, the second half of my wolf-soul kicked in. Red tinted the very edges of my vision and my temper shortened. Every step I took towards what was disturbing the dead was another step underneath the haze of bloodlust. If I wanted to call on my beast, then I would have to risk riding the frenzy if it took over. Though, if it was a vaudun priestess torturing the dead to do her bidding, the blood-craze would be a decent defense against her power.
Now that my sight was clearer, I could see what I had skimmed over with the human blinders on. In the distance, near the center of the graveyard, there was the subtle flicker of pale light over the headstones. Ghostlight candles. Simple parlor tricks that any witch could whip together, but a staple of any ceremony that required candles, but didn't require the attention flickering gold light drew in. Humanity saw only 'tricks of the light'. Otherworld denizens saw the light. I had missed it earlier because while the wolf-soul was asleep, so were my senses. An annoying side-effect, but it was better than riding the edge of frenzy constantly.
The fact that there was Ghostlight candles confirmed the perp was a magic user. Another few steps closer and the acidic tang in the air cemented it. I circled to the west, trying to pick out the shadow of the ritualist without alerting them to my presence. Nothing came up.
Troubling.
I moved closer and my neck tingled. Discomfort tickled down my spine and I fought the sudden urge to turn and avoid the central crossroads. I cursed silently and glared at the mocking light just a dozen meters away.
It was a warding spell, and a strong one, if it was registering me as a human, even with the wolf-soul stirring just underneath my conscious. I reached my hand out and connected with a invisible force that felt like putty. I pushed and it gave way, but didn't break. I pulled my hand back, and the spell's power shimmered on my palm before dying out.
I barely kept my growl in check. Changing here would mean dropping my guard, not to mention stripping down so I didn't ruin my only set of clothing. It also meant that I wasn't going to be able to use my gun. Even wolves brought into the bloodlines via the Blooding Moon ritual couldn't endure Changes past the full moon. Hereditary wolves, like me, could Change whenever we wanted to, but we also had to ration how close together the shifts were. Too many, and you burned out your reserves and risked falling into a coma while your body healed from the abuse of reckless re- knitting of bone, muscle, and organs. I was young too, just brushing my twenty-fourth birthday, and if I committed to a Change now, I wouldn't be able to risk coming back for a couple of hours.
There was something going on, though, and I wasn't about to call in back-up for one magic-user. I was the only full-blooded wolf on the force and if I called in backup, of either the human or the wolf-touched kind... well, ego commanded that wasn't going to happen.
Pride is a cruel mistress.
An Alexandria Morton Story
Chapter One:
Friday nights were cemetery nights. The clubs, bars, and backstreet alley-ways filled with a stench of piss, filth, and despair rolled together in bitter scent-biography of the homeless were the jurisdictions of my human-born peers. They avoided the hallowed ground of the dead after the sun settled because they were superstitious; still believing that the bogey-man would rise up from behind a tombstone to suck away one's life. Or perhaps they were the smart ones who drew the locations that would allow them to clock in at the end of shift tired, but in one piece and without nightmares to trouble them while they slept. I figured it was the latter, I had never once followed the safe guidelines. My therapist cringed in fear every time I walked into her office, dreading the newest horror my mind dredged up from the gutters of my memories.
My being a monster myself couldn't have been the reasons why I wandered through the broken paths of the dead alone. Sure, the ability to rely on more than a bullet dipped in holy water was a bonus, but really, I prided myself on being able to keep my personal life from affecting my professional decisions. When I had first applied to the M.O.S.S unit, I had made damned sure to keep my heightened everything in check. No shifting, no aura of dominance, no twisting of one's fear to snatch the advantage. It was a sign of insecurity if a werewolf tried to establish herself above her human cousins by abusing her wolf-soul.
Once one added in the fact that the average human soiled themselves and fell into a near-catatonic state of horror when they saw the wolf, it was sheer foolishness to stroll through the hills of Seattle thinking that my uniqueness would keep me out of harm's way. No, it simply was a fact that since humans avoided the cemetery like my last boyfriend avoided commitment; they were free of the overwhelming scent of the human herd and thus a way to do my job and end my nights with a clear head.
That, and I really enjoyed watching my therapist resist the urge to duck out of our sessions.
15th Avenue was deserted as I strolled up the way towards the cemetery's only road into the winding paths inside the fence. There was no need to hop the fence, or to sneak through the southern wall by Volunteer Park; most of the delinquents I caught were garden-variety: teenage witches who wanted a sample of graveyard dust collected at the midnight hour to curse their boyfriends with impotency, freshly-bitten werewolves that had followed the smell of the dead in a vain attempt to scavenge without the local M.O.S.S agent snatching them off the street, vampires unearthing their most recent childer. Occasionally, a walk-by drug up something of a higher caliber: an empath abusing the local emotional auras of the earth-locked ghosts, or a zombie-master digging up a grave to stock his supply cabinet; or the vampire throwing said childer back into the grave to suffer the quiet loneliness of the truly dead. Those cases usually ended up with my mouth reeking with the taste of unwashed, rotted flesh, my clothes torn and battered from the Change, and wasting three hours to find space in the small jail we kept for the Others who decided to break the law.
I kept my vision to human-standards, using the weak light of the half-moon to guide me through the first few loops of the road. Tuning my senses to the wolf-soul burned up energy that was better saved when things needed a growl or a snarl to set in motion. That, and the bloodlust rose too close to the surface. I was supposed to be the one locking up the bad guys, not joining them in causing mayhem.
From what I could see, nothing was out of the ordinary, but as any police officer who had worked a beat longer than a month knew that first impressions weren't always good judgment, and as I stood there at the bottom of the southeastern quarter, my skin didn't prickle.
Ghosts were territorial. Earth-locked ghosts who had never been guided to the Underworld were even more so. Any encroachment on their territory provoked them, and they did what they could to make their sentiments quite clear. Unfortunately, ordinary humans without a drop of the Otherworld in their veins weren't quite able to pick up on the messages the angry spirits wanted to get across.
I could though, and I wasn't feeling anything. No prickle on the back of my neck, no heavy weight of a gaze, not even mutters issued just underneath the whisper of the wind. No shadows darted behind gravestones at the corner of my vision.
The ghosts were scared, and not of me.
“Shit.” I muttered, knowing that the night was bumped up from 'curses on boyfriends' to 'potential hornless goat sacrifice'. Vaudun wasn't much practiced up here in the Northwest, but there were still a few followers of the loa. Ghosts weren't intimidated easily, but a powerful voodoo priestess could silence the dead quicker than holy water. They would allow a strong vaudun practicer dance on their grave and kick the tombstone if it meant keeping their bodyparts out of the wrong hands.
Zombie-raising was illegal, but it didn't stop the practice.
I kissed goodbye the idea of an easy night and allowed my wolf-soul to awaken my senses. Color faded from my vision, but the moonlight now illuminated the landscape like it was high noon. The cool, October wind carried the musty scent of the long-since-dead to me, mingled with the ever-constant salt from the Sound to the west. The sounds of the city came alive as well; I could make out the theme music of a t.v drama from one of the houses across the eastern fence. To all supernatural observations, I was still myself; but my aura blazed a bright silver all around me. The wolf-soul was awake and her gifts spread over my body like an invisible coat.
I sucked in a greedy gulp of air and rolled the scents over my tongue, tasting them. In this corner, the scent trails were a few hours old. Whatever was spooking the spooks was to my northwest. I undid the clip on my belt-holster and started in that direction.
As I moved, the second half of my wolf-soul kicked in. Red tinted the very edges of my vision and my temper shortened. Every step I took towards what was disturbing the dead was another step underneath the haze of bloodlust. If I wanted to call on my beast, then I would have to risk riding the frenzy if it took over. Though, if it was a vaudun priestess torturing the dead to do her bidding, the blood-craze would be a decent defense against her power.
Now that my sight was clearer, I could see what I had skimmed over with the human blinders on. In the distance, near the center of the graveyard, there was the subtle flicker of pale light over the headstones. Ghostlight candles. Simple parlor tricks that any witch could whip together, but a staple of any ceremony that required candles, but didn't require the attention flickering gold light drew in. Humanity saw only 'tricks of the light'. Otherworld denizens saw the light. I had missed it earlier because while the wolf-soul was asleep, so were my senses. An annoying side-effect, but it was better than riding the edge of frenzy constantly.
The fact that there was Ghostlight candles confirmed the perp was a magic user. Another few steps closer and the acidic tang in the air cemented it. I circled to the west, trying to pick out the shadow of the ritualist without alerting them to my presence. Nothing came up.
Troubling.
I moved closer and my neck tingled. Discomfort tickled down my spine and I fought the sudden urge to turn and avoid the central crossroads. I cursed silently and glared at the mocking light just a dozen meters away.
It was a warding spell, and a strong one, if it was registering me as a human, even with the wolf-soul stirring just underneath my conscious. I reached my hand out and connected with a invisible force that felt like putty. I pushed and it gave way, but didn't break. I pulled my hand back, and the spell's power shimmered on my palm before dying out.
I barely kept my growl in check. Changing here would mean dropping my guard, not to mention stripping down so I didn't ruin my only set of clothing. It also meant that I wasn't going to be able to use my gun. Even wolves brought into the bloodlines via the Blooding Moon ritual couldn't endure Changes past the full moon. Hereditary wolves, like me, could Change whenever we wanted to, but we also had to ration how close together the shifts were. Too many, and you burned out your reserves and risked falling into a coma while your body healed from the abuse of reckless re- knitting of bone, muscle, and organs. I was young too, just brushing my twenty-fourth birthday, and if I committed to a Change now, I wouldn't be able to risk coming back for a couple of hours.
There was something going on, though, and I wasn't about to call in back-up for one magic-user. I was the only full-blooded wolf on the force and if I called in backup, of either the human or the wolf-touched kind... well, ego commanded that wasn't going to happen.
Pride is a cruel mistress.