Chapter 25

  “He got away?”

  “Yeah, boss. Well, not by himself. Some crazy guy came out of the woods. He was like a werewolf. Fangs and claws and shit.” Slim explained nervously. For the second time. “Son of a bitch was crazy fast— like, we could barely keep up— right Hog?” The beefy man grunted in agreement. “He broke my hand, fucked up Hog’s shoulder. We, uh, made a tactical retreat.”

  “You pussied out, you mean.”

  “C’mon boss. What would you have us do, die?”

  “Where’s Walter and the— werewolf?”

  “I don’t know. Probably long gone by now.”

  “No, Walter knows our M.O.,” Chris said. “He’ll make camp somewhere nearby and then shove off early in the morning before we send a squad.”

  “We got ‘em pretty good. Mario ain’t—” Slim was interrupted.

  “Don’t call him that. He isn’t one of us anymore. His name’s Walter.”

  “Right, uh, Walter was pretty banged up. He ain’t gonna be movin’ fast. I say we wait till—”

  “Get some guys together. Biggs, Johnny, and Wreck, plus a few others. Walter broke the rules. I’m not letting him shake us that easy.” Chris ordered.

  “Got it. We’ll be ready in—”

  “Not you two. You are on bucket duty.”

  For the first time, Hog stepped forward. “I ain’t shovelin’ no shit buckets,” he said.

  Chris walked forward until only a foot separated the two men. Hog was over a foot taller than the leader. They stared each other down. Hog glared down at the leader of the Brotherhood. Staring right back, there was a strange look in Chris’s eye. Not anger, or pride, but an eagerness like a smile in his eyes that his mouth didn’t dare mimic. It was as if Chris was begging the large man to pull something, to give him an excuse. Chris popped his neck. Hog folded. “Bucket. Duty.” Chris repeated. “Get me that squad in five minutes. It’s time for a little shock-and-awe.”

  ___________________________________________________________

  Sleep was hard to come by. Resting after just sending injured messengers to call revenge-seeking bikers down upon them felt like a poorly thought-out plan. Mario had explained it in about five different ways. It was a psychological tactic: the Brotherhood would rest up and comfortably prepare for revenge while those on the run would have anxiety-ridden sleepless nights. The Brotherhood would be fresh and their prey would be anything but. Then there was Hog and Slim. They were the lowest-status members of the Brotherhood, according to Mario. They got all the jobs the other members scoffed at, got the worst rewards, got the last pick of any spoils, and were held in general contempt by everyone in the gang. Any slight against those two would take its sweet time getting punished.

  The small snippets of Brotherhood life that Danny had heard made him overwhelmingly grateful that his Tutorial had been a solo endeavor. Sure it got lonely at times, but there were no biker gangs mandating who dug the latrines. Danny shivered at the idea. Danny also wondered if it was a setup. He didn’t know Mario. No one was around to vouch for his character. Maybe turning in fresh meat would be enough to pardon whatever crime he had committed in the gang’s eyes. That creeping suspicion kept his gaze locked on the tent. Danny didn’t give the man the prime sleeping space purely out of the kindness of his heart. It was much easier to hear someone come and go when they had to fumble with a zipper. His experience with the Horrors taught him that things weren’t always as they seemed, and his talks with Aspen emphasized that other people were often more dangerous than monsters. His only comfort was the thick fur coat of Ash.

  She matched his wary regard of the tent where Mario slept. The coarse hairs were itchy, smelly, and matted in places, but she had a calming presence about her. Ash never got anxious, at least not like Danny did. Her head rested on her large paws. Ash’s long furry tail made a blanket. Danny’s feet were warmed by a coiled orange comforter that had fallen sound asleep in moments. That innocence made his heart melt. After all they had been through, Indy didn’t consider for a moment whether or not Danny and Ash would protect him. His only worry was chasing fluffy little rabbits in his dreams. Ash perked her head up.

  A snapping sound caused Danny to sit up. He followed the wolf’s gaze into the trees. Something was out there. An animal— deer most likely. But Ash didn’t relax. Fangs bared, a low growl began to emanate from deep in her throat. Danny could feel the vibration of it. A deep bark caused a stirring in the tent. Another caused a not-so-graceful struggle with the zipper. After a third bark, a bald head poked out of the tent. “Will you shut that mutt up, I’m trying to—” Mario was cut off by an arrow that tore a red line above his left eyebrow. “Shit!” The ex-biker dove back into the tent. Danny shot to his feet. The hairs between Ash’s shoulders raised as she rose to a stand. Danny wished he would’ve named the fox Houdini because he had disappeared. Picking his staff up from the ground, Danny was thankful that always having a weapon in arm’s reach was hammered into him.

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  Another arrow whizzed through the air, this one aimed at Danny. He moved his staff to intercept. Shock caused Danny to freeze. A feathered stick stuck out of Danny’s arm near the shoulder. Danny stared at it, forgetting what he had been about to do. It was… so fast. Couldn’t even…

  “Good fuckin’ shot Biggs!” One of the ambushers shouted. Startled to his senses, Danny realized that three men were now in the clearing. Another showed themselves, then another. No sign of the archer. The momentary lapse quickly gave way to the drilling and training that Danny had endured over the past three months. Danny threw himself to the side. He groaned as his wounded arm was aggravated by the evasive maneuver. A quick flash was the only thing Danny saw as another arrow sailed through where his head had been a second ago. A brilliant orange followed by panicked screaming heralded Mario’s joining. A bearded man walked toward Danny, blazing forest and smothering smoke in the background.

  “Danny!” Mario shouted, “I got the archer son of a bitch.” Danny wasn’t able to make use of this development. A pair of muscular arms with all the give of steel beams locked him in a headlock from behind. The bearded man in front of Danny smiled a yellow smile as he rained punch after punch onto Danny’s stomach. Sickness rose in Danny’s throat. A blur of orange flew towards the bearded man’s head and Indy grabbed ahold of the man’s ear. He let out a pained shout as he was pulled downwards, wrestling with the fox. Danny threw his head backward in a reverse headbutt. For a moment, he was surprised it worked before he wrested himself free. Ash snarling and snapping at the man who had restrained him put an end to his delusions of bar-fighting grandeur. Danny hurriedly surveyed the clearing. Six men, all in the Level 50s, had invaded the clearing. The archer was nowhere to be seen, but the lack of projectiles flying through the air made Danny believe that Mario had well and truly dealt with him.

  A couple of swift staff strikes to the temple of each of the bearded men sent them into unconsciousness. They looked eerily similar, like twins. Danny discarded the distracting thought and pushed forward to find Mario. It took all of two seconds to locate the ex-biker. He was slung over a massive man’s shoulder. He wasn’t quite as big as Hog, but he was more muscular, sculpted. He looked like a candidate for Mr. Olympia, albeit one that had done multiple stints in prison and was clad in leather. The man carrying an unconscious Mario bellowed, “Where’s Johnny? He was with that kid with the staff.” No one answered. “Find him! Someone go check on Biggs, too.” He shifted Mario around like carry-on luggage. “What’re you waiting on? Boss said to make it quick!” The men suddenly began to spread out, searching. Intermittently they let out cries of “Johnny!” or “Biggs?” Danny’s enhanced senses from Lupine Ferocity were the only reason that he could see them through the smoke and low light.

  They didn’t say anything about finding me. Danny thought. But could he really just leave Mario in the hands of the Brotherhood: who knew what they would do to him? He gripped his staff tightly and began to walk towards the group.

  What are you doing? The familiar voice in his head stopped Danny short.

  “I have to go help him,” Danny answered. “We didn’t know each other very long, but he needs our help.”

  Even with the three of us, we barely took down one of them. What makes you think we could take on the whole group?

  “One? There were two guys, thank you very much.” But when Danny looked down, there was only one body. Instead of two twins, there was a single bearded man on the ground. Just how common are clones in this place? “Are you really saying that we just leave him behind?”

  It was never our fight to begin with.

  This had been the most Danny had heard Ash speak since they had met. Why is she so apathetic towards this guy? It almost seemed personal. Danny’s internal war was interrupted by one of the searching men getting closer.

  What about the fox? What will they do to a crippled animal like him if we get captured?

  Regardless of how unappreciative Danny was about Ash preying on his protectiveness of Indy, she did have a point. Whatever these men had in store for their captives would not be pleasant. The decision left a pit in his stomach and a foul taste in his mouth. Danny plucked Indy from the ground, turned, and ran. Ash followed behind.

  Danny's enhanced speed, lent by his Lupine Ferocity ability, allowed him to build distance between himself and the biker gang rapidly. Soon, the scent of smoky, charred wood gave way to the fresh pine of the unburned forest. Danny hoped that Mario didn’t start a forest fire. Part of him wanted to look back and check, but the rest of him couldn’t bear to face Mario, even if the man would have no way to see him from this far. It became clear that they were not being pursued. No footsteps or cracking sticks followed them. Birdsong returned to the area. By all accounts, Danny should feel relieved, but the feeling was soured by the fact that Danny had turned his back on a person who needed him. Although it felt childish, Danny hoped he would be a hero. Someone to save others from the unfair and cruel people of the world— from the monsters, even the humankind. Instead, he ran. When the odds were stacked against him, Danny didn’t hold his own, or go down swinging in a blaze of glory. He ran.

  He didn’t lie to himself. If Danny had tried to fight off the Brotherhood members, he would have ended up in the same position as Mario, maybe worse. The rational argument did little to assuage the guilt. “I guess I am no different than before,” Danny said ruefully, “a coward.” He had run away before the Integration and it seemed that the mysticism and video game power ups hadn’t changed a thing.

  Sleep was something he denied himself. He might not have saved Mario, but Danny could at least suffer alongside him. It also felt like a fitting punishment. The drone of insects tried to befuddle his mind and make him forget why he was so intent on staying awake. The faint moonlight weighed on his eyelids. Cool, night air coaxed him to rest— just for a moment. He fought valiantly, but the night’s events had thoroughly wrung out the energy and willpower from his body. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when Danny opened them next, bright sunlight bore down on him.