Page 19 of All That Has Flown Beyond
His feet shuffled him to the bed. He fell back into the nothingness.
The next morning the alarm went off.
He clicked snooze again. At the third time, he turned it off.
**********
After the decimation of the Garrow pack, the neighbouring packs had rallied around them. The Saba pack especially, their neighbours to the west, had felt indebted to them. They had known about the pack who attacked the Garrows but had failed to share the information in a timely manner. By the time they had realized the enemy pack’s intentions, it had been too late.
Despite the help, the remaining Garrow trio struggled to defend their land and lives. The first real threat they faced was a pack of meanderers. A pack of shifters without land or loyalty, without Kephale or structure. They sought power by taking it from established packs, and Ahmik’s small group was ripe for the picking.
Ahmik, Thea, and Kaiyo had been ready for the attack. They had known the meanderers were coming. The Saba pack had helped them ward their land and sensed their entry. They had connections to a police officer who knew about Ousía and the world of shifters. Thea’s deep knowledge of computers let them hack into local ATM and traffic cameras.
Despite this, it had still been a close call.
The three of them had watched their pack house from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Each of them wore an enchanted amulet masking their scent and heartbeat from the attacking pack. They peered from the darkness with racing blood as the foreign shifters neared the house in a circular formation, each approaching a different entry point: the front door, the back, the kitchen, the most accessible first-floor window. They had snuck silently through the night, but the house was not as innocent as it seemed.
Kaiyo and Thea had devised a series of booby traps, setting them up around the house with Ahmik’s help. As they had expected, the attacking werewolves tried to breach the threshold at the same time, setting off the traps in unison.
The first let out a burst of pepper spray, blinding one of the werewolves who stumbled away with a roar. Another trapped the encroacher in a circle that filled with a piercing shriek, bursting the werewolf’s eardrums. Another let off a smell that had the werewolf doubled over and retching in an instant.
Ahmik, Thea, and Kaiyo had leapt from the shadows, tranquilizer guns in hand. They had fired at the werewolves with enough shots that some of them hit their target even in the confusion and the dark, incapacitating them. Three of the werewolves had fallen in twitching messes. One, however, had escaped the attack.
Everything rushed past Kaiyo. The adrenaline pumping through him made the world large and sharp and insane. The escaped werewolf, however, seemed to move in slow motion. Kaiyo saw every detail of her. The glowing eyes and sharp claws of her half-moon shift. The way her elongated muzzle suddenly snarled in fury, revealing the rows of teeth. The way her claws had seemed almost translucent in the waning moon, aiming at Ahmik.
Kaiyo didn’t have time to think. He’d leapt between Ahmik’s back and the werewolf. He hadn’t even felt the pain of her claws slicing through his shirt, grazing his skin enough to split it open. He’d pulled the trigger of his gun blindly, feeding the tranquillizer darts point-blank into her chest. Her eyes had looked wild and feral before they rolled away as she crumpled to the ground.
Kaiyo panted, staring at the unmoving form of the werewolf. There was a ringing in his ears. His body was shaking.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Ahmik roared. It took Kaiyo a second to realize the fury was aimed at him.
“What?” he said dizzily. Ahmik had pressed a hand to Kaiyo’s bleeding side, making him hiss as the pain finally made itself known.
Thea rushed over.
“Let me see. Jesus, Kaiyo, what were you thinking?” She inspected the wound. “It’s just a graze. Let me get the bandages.”
“We have to take him to the hospital,” Ahmik said as Thea disappeared into the house, making sure to disable the trap that hadn’t been sprung before entering.
“We need to take care of them first,” Kaiyo said, pointing at the unconscious werewolves. Ahmik opened his mouth to protest. “It’s a graze. It’ll hold until we take them to the Sabas.”
Ahmik had just clenched his teeth, his anger obvious.
A few members of the Saba pack were already waiting for them at the edge of their territories.
“You okay?” one of them asked Kaiyo, nodding at his bloodied side.
“Yeah,” Kaiyo said, ignoring the faint dizziness at the edges of his vision. Ahmik hadn’t spoken, but Kaiyo could practically hear his teeth grinding.
The ER staff had a lot of questions, but they accepted their explanation of an escaped dog. Kaiyo thanked the stars that his mom wasn’t on duty. She’d find out in the morning, but the headache could wait until then.
Ahmik had driven them back to the pack house in a storm of silence. Kaiyo closed his eyes, resting his head on the car window.
“We’re here,” Ahmik said as he parked the car. Kaiyo let Ahmik help him into the house. It had been quiet and still inside. Thea had cleaned up the traps while they were in the hospital. It was as if nothing had happened at all.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Ahmik said lowly as they paused in front of the stairs leading to the second floor. Kaiyo shut his eyes for a moment. He was too tired to think.
“She was about to cut you in half, Ahmik.”
