Prophecy

Alan Wolfe slept lightly, even for him. Every sound, even new smells wafting into the cave on the cold air, brought him to the very surface of unconsciousness. Nearby, showing more trust than he thought her capable of, Alex slept in the ancient wolf den. Sasha crouched nearby, occasionally rising to stretch or pace to keep herself awake. She was supposed to be keeping watch.

Several times during the day, Alan was aware that she came and kneeled next to the last figure in this small cave. Her mother, Lily Black.

Her mother’s visit to Valerton came as a surprise. In half a dozen years, mostly spent living in far off London, Sasha’s mother had never visited her, or even returned her letters. The distance between the two was wide, and when Alan met her, it was clear that she was not here to bridge it.

Hardly glancing at her daughter, Lily ordered her out of her own office to talk to Alan. Wolfe wanted to get up and hit her. Sasha wasn’t having an easy time of this and her mother didn’t even seem to care. What had happened to make her so cold, so distant?

She announced that she was a Silent Strider, which later turned out to be only part of the truth. She readily told Wolfe that Sasha’s father had been a Shadowlord kin from Japan, or Hakken, which might have been Japanese for Shadowlord for all Alan knew. But she hadn’t told Sasha anything of her birthright and was even mad at Alan for doing so.

It was obvious that they were not going to get along, even passing over her open hatred for vampires. But her anger that he had brought Sasha into the world of darkness, and that he was her lover, gave him some hope. If she wanted Sasha kept out of the dark dangers underneath the surface of the world, if she disapproved of Alan because he was a vampire, maybe she cared about Sasha after all. He knew that lupines tended to be distant from their kin. There were centuries, even millennia of traditions of arranged marriages and breeding, and besides, a garou’s life was dangerous and the further they stayed from their family, the further away they kept those dangers.

He was shocked that she had not only heard to the Gaia’s Blood prophecy, but that it was spread in different versions over much of the world. For something supposedly created by vampires, diverse garou seemed to know a lot about it. He didn’t get long to think about it before Lily black was inserting herself into the prophecy, claiming that she was one of the two women destined to help him.

Wolfe knew she was wrong. He had Sasha and Alex and that felt right. Although she was right that having a garou along may be useful when dealing with their prophecies and he could not think of a better fighter for this cause unless Black Johnny stood with him.

He made it Sasha’s call. He felt protective, but in a much different way than he had before. It wasn’t just her life he was trying to save from dangers real and imagined. His lover was obviously heart broken. She craved a love that not even he could give her. If Lily couldn’t give it to her, then he would at least make sure that she didn’t hurt Sasha any further.

It was another few days before things came apart. Alex agreed to accompany Wolfe and Sasha to Johnny’s caves. Alan smiled at her. How could she claim to be a monster? She was willing to delay clan business, expose her heart to him, even trust Sasha to stand over her during the day if necessary, all to help him. It made it harder to push her away when she put her arms around him and whispered in his ear. He hated to hurt her, but he loved Sasha.

Alex arranged to have all of Sasha’s equipment brought to her manse. The sprawling house had much more room, and a better power supply than Alan’s low-rent apartment, and she was willing to offer it as a safe place for her Sasha to do their studies. Studies that had drastically changed in purpose now. Robin Red was suddenly an ally, not an enemy.

As they walked up the scree to Johnny’s cave, Alan reflected briefly that if he was never the envy of the local Toreadore, that surrounded by Sasha and her equally beautiful mother, and Alex Dorian, that he would be now. Things seemed to be going so well.

Until they found the prophecy. There was something in the air, there, nothing real or tangible, nothing seen or smelled. But Wolfe knew that those words were not meant to be seen by all. In the centuries of his inhabitance, Johnny had never seen the glyphs carved plainly into the stone around the deepest cavern. Alan soared out over the underground lake, taking in the words of the prophecy.

The last section sent chills through his undead body. If it were true, he would have to sacrifice one of those who helped him. Sasha. Alex.

Perhaps the worry distracted him, but he never saw the betrayal coming. So cold and aloof, Alan had assumed that Lily Black was just a cold bitch and that bearing Sasha had only been done as a duty to continue the garou species. Then she took the scrap of notepaper, turned in the dark, and ran.

The sight of her lupus form as she shifted, startled Wolfe, but he did not place the importance of her bile-green eyes and ragged pelt until Alex shared what she had sensed in Johnny’s cave earlier. His memories had been stolen, and his cave-painting journal had been erased, but the memories that seeped into the stone told her that he had met Lily Black before, and that she was a Black Spiral Dancer.

The name was old and powerful, like a memory of the ghost stories he used to swap with his siblings as a child. He could almost hear them moving in the dark, an ancient tribe of garou gone over to the enemy, devoted to the worship of the Wyrm that was slowly killing all of Gaia. Only…there was one moving in the dark.

Alan changed his shape and flew hard and fast, his wingtips brushing the dank rock, the dark rocks flashing by him in a blur that only his gleaming red eyes could see. Strangely, even though he knew that Black Spiral Dancers were some of the most dangerous creatures to walk the world of darkness, and that their interest in the prophecy was deadly, he was thinking of Sasha. Hoping that he would not have to kill her mother.

He fell on her as he caught up with her at the mouth of Johnny’s cave, but couldn’t stop her. She was too fast, too powerful. But Wolfe figured out quickly where she was going. Brightwind’s cabin. Shit.

But Johnny was there. Alan felt some of the hope that he had begun this evening with return. They had been tricked and betrayed, Spiral Dancers had thrust their ugly snouts into a struggle that was already mysterious and deadly. But Johnny was there. Alex was with Sasha, and despite her feelings she would let nothing happen to her. Johnny could no doubt take care of Brightwind and Lily. They could do it together.

And Brightwind threw that confidence back in Alan’s face. Over the centuries, Alan had spent a great deal of time with Black Johnny. His sire, his teacher, the man who had taught him such control that in a century and a half, a pair of wolf’s eyes were the only mark of the beast upon Alan. He had gone through periods of paternal affection, craving approval and love. There had been bitterness as well for all the times that the older Gangrel rejected his affection, even anger because the elder had embraced him and stolen his life. But when Brightwind, the psychotic Indian, began to order the proud elder, and he began to slink like a beaten dog towards Wolfe, he felt real pain.

Maybe not a father, but a teacher. A mentor. Now he turned at Brightwind’s command – who was blood-bound to Johnny, who shouldn’t have been able to dominate him – and leapt at Alan. His jaws slammed into Alan’s gut, fangs crushing, snapping bone and gouging flesh. Wolfe threw his sire away and lowered his gun.

Practically, he doubted that a double-barreled shotgun could hurt Johnny, even at close range, but he wasn’t sure he could shoot his Athro regardless. But the straight fact was that he was no match for the ancient Gangrel. Wolfe threw himself back, fumbling out his zippo, and lit the refuse of Brightwind’s cabin alight.

The flames may hold Johnny back, even send him away and Brightwind would have to face them as well. Maybe he would even burn to death in the conflagration. Holding his torn stomach, Alan saw that half his plan worked. The lupine look of misery was erased from Johnny’s face as primal fear took over. He turned and leapt away from the rising fire, hurtling his monstrous animal body into the flimsy rear wall of the cabin. Wood and earth tore and the elder ran into the night. Alan silently apologized, knowing that Johnny would be forever marked by his frenzy tonight, and that sign of the beast was Alan’s fault.

Good. He was safe, and he couldn’t be controlled by Brightwind. If the elder was wise, he would stay away until Brightwind was dead so that he couldn’t be commanded. Alan hoped like hell that Johnny backed out. But Brightwind was still there, braving the flames at began to flicker between them.

Alan grimaced. Bullets and knives he could shrug off and heal easily, but there was something about fang and claw, those of vampires or lupines, that struck to the marrow, to the soul. Blood actually welled up from the wound, soaking the shreds of his white t-shirt, but he gripped his shotgun tightly. Brightwind was one step from being an animal and had much more to fear from the flames than Alan did. Even wounded he had an edge.

But Alan wasn’t stupid. It was a new moon, and the darkness could hide any trick. Alan scuffed his right foot, making it look like he was only widening his stance, but also clearing accumulated bones and debris from the ground in the doorway. If Brightwind gained the upper hand, Wolfe could retreat below the earth and let Brightwind face the flames alone.

The crazed Shaman turned and ran. He ducked through the hole Johnny had made, letting the fire claim his ramshackle dwelling. He’d only build another. Wolfe was disappointed that his flight was calculated, not frenzied. It meant that he chose to leave because he had other plans, or because he thought that someone or something else would take care of Alan.

Lily! She should still be some distance behind him, maybe five or ten minutes. But smoke was rising into the black sky and flames threw light into the forest around them. She’d see the fire and come faster, abandoning her efforts to shake possible trackers.

She came soon enough, not on four legs but two – though not as the beautiful older woman Alan had met the night before. She stood over eight feet tall, slim and feral like that Egyptian god of the dead. Her black coat was mangy and ragged and she raked the clearing with her sickly green gaze.

The fire held her attention long enough, the acrid smoke chocking her nostrils. Wolfe moved up as close behind her as he could, shotgun held out. He should have killed her and done a service to Gaia, the garou and all of Valerton. But she was still Sasha’s mother… he couldn’t hurt her that way.

How do you stop a creature like this without killing it? Wolfe wasn’t even sure any longer if he could kill her. He raised his shotgun only an arm’s length behind her, leveled the gun at her waist. Hopefully it would be enough to stop her, but not kill her. It was.

The boom echoed into the night. She howled in agony as the shot tore through her, ripping a hole in her belly that Alan could have thrust his arm through. She toppled forward, changing as she fell. He turned her over, a tattooed older woman, looking so much more like her daughter now that unconsciousness had robbed her features of her perpetual cold scowl. The hole in her stomach gaped and seeped blood into the earth. Alan wrapped his already bloodied jacket around her waist. She bled and she breathed, if only barely. God, these creatures were tough. Gaia built her defenders strong.

An owl carried a message back to Sasha and Alex and brought them to him, and together they made their way back to Johnny’s cave. Wolfe was nervous being there, a place where it would be only too easy for Johnny, Brightwind, or Lily’s pack, if she had one, to find them. But no matter how Brightwind had escaped the blood-bond or gained control over his sire, Alan was still sure that he could not walk freely under the sun.

So they slept, while Lily lay unconscious, gravely wounded, but astoundingly recovering and not declining, and Sasha kept watch.

A Black Spiral Dancer pack might be out there, waiting for Lily to return with the full prophecy. Someone had messed with Johnny’s mind, and the only people powerful enough to do so where Prince Dorian and the Primogen, powerful enemies. And they still had to find a way to revive the lichen so it could do it’s job cleansing the forest (and Wolfe damned well wanted to learn where it came from). But what he kept thinking about over and over as Alex and Lily lay quietly and Sasha paced nervously, was that if the prophecy came true, he was going to have to sacrifice either Alex or Sasha.