Page 64 of Stargazer

“Are you ready?” Kit asked, leaning forward on the table and playing with her septum ring.

“No,” I replied truthfully. The whir of the coffee machine was unnecessarily loud, draining out the chatter of the other Knights across the living area.

“You’ll be fine. We all will be. We’re well prepared,” Billie said, her voice soothing and consoling like always.

My weapon of choice for tonight was not my twin sai or even the silver bullets, but a fine powdered dust like the Omitters—although the sais would be sheathed across my back for ease of access in case my first choice failed me. The powdery herbal mixture used to wipe memory probably wasn’t going to be the most useful in this situation, but the new formula that Carter helped create with Major Harper that tranquillised the wolves meant we could stop the creatures without killing them.

It would give me and the other warriors time to decide what to do with the unconscious bodies.

That was my goal: no killing unless absolutely necessary. Our focus would be on stopping the rogues from successfully turning more humans.

We had a whole arsenal of coloured powders lined up on the dining table. Ready for us to pack and arm ourselves with. We’d been prepping for days, filling pouches or dissolvable bullet casings with the multi-coloured creations:

Omitters—the blue dust for wiping away the memory of any potential targets or witnesses.

Deviators—a serum, also turned into a yellow-coloured powder, in case we needed to stop a wolf’s ability to shift. Assuming they were not yet rogues and were able to revert back into a human form.

And Tranquilisers—the new and finely ground purple blend for putting our enemy to sleep.

The Knights back at the New York compound were also working on a final concoction:

Restorers—a last minute anti-venom solution to combat the initial shifter transformation. If used quick enough, it would reverse the poison secreted through the fangs and prevent the human from becoming a wolf shifter to begin with.

This proposed remedy wasn’t ready yet, and after tonight Carter would head back and forth between us and the compound to provide his assistance. Hopefully by the next full moon, this would be our secret weapon.

At least that was the plan.

We’d practised using talcum powder on the wolves in training, allowing us to get a feel for using the real dusts in battle situations, with no consequences on our furry friends—other than some slightly irritating sneezing. But they were good sports about it and understood why it was helpful for us.

So we practised again and again.

And I made sure that Celeste was armed with the stuff herself and had decent exposure training with it.

For people like us that were new to this, blowing some dust in the face of a scary wolf seemed a lot less intimidating than stabbing them with something pointy and sharp without getting impaled by their fangs … that were equally as pointy and sharp.

As the sun began its descent and the sky became streaked with hues of pinks and purples, the rag-tag group of individuals that made up this cadre assembled in the clearing at the back of the pack house—wolves and hunters in tow—ready to go through a final briefing before splitting up and heading to our designated locations. Each one tactically chosen to ensure no encroaching rogues made it far without running into at least one of us.

Even though deterring the rogues rather than killing them was our plan, Billie’s quiver still had a handful of silver tipped arrows and Griff still carried his silver sword, that moonstone centre glowing in the luminance of the setting sun like it was speaking to him.

Bleu and Santi were loaded with daggers and knives of the silver variety, strapped across their black bandoliers and leg holsters. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure which type of bullets their black Glocks were currently loaded with, but within every unit, there would be warriors armed with both.

A safety precaution.

We’d be ready for either option. Ready to make those split decisions on the spot, depending on the circumstances.

If the rogues attacked, so would we. If the rogues killed, so would we.

I was praying it didn’t come to that.

Taking in the assembled squad before us, everyone’s faces were serious and drawn. We had a lot riding on tonight.

Thea had checked in earlier and informed us that most of the Knights back in the city, as well as across the state, would be on watch this full moon too, trying their hardest to use whatever information we had managed to gather from Amelia to stay ahead of the rogues. Any warriors that could be spared, had already been dispatched to various state forest regions where other informants like my mother had been located.

For whatever reason, the rogue threat didn’t seem to spread much further than New York, except for a few states in the New England region. It was mostly a localised problem. Odd. But we hoped to keep it that way.

Noticing the apprehension on the Alpha’s face, I approached him.

“How you feeling?”

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