Stocking up. Wed

on Wednesday

I took the Jetta to ferry supplies over to my base. I didn't keep much food there any more and if I was going to have a guest then I needed to stock up - especially under the circumstances. Erynne,wouldn't really be herself while she was staying there.

I was on my way before I remembered that, if I was going to take a car at all, it probably should have been one Grant owned, not one of the three that Percy and I had stolen. There didn't seem to be police around Sunnydale any more but there might be some kind of warning out on it elsewhere and under the circumstances keeping a low profile might be good.

I'd been spending more time elsewhere since Willy's closed, and since I'd understood my situation better, and I was realizing that I'd started acting almost as though the dying town and the rest of this world were in different dimensions.

I'd been smoking about, meeting people and living in a way that would pass for normal, in the world outside. Then I'd smoke back to base, or to Grant's, and fall straight back into this kind of survivalist mentality - like the people around me, of course. (If you're an empath who travels a lot then orienting yourself that way...well, it helps. It's got disadvantages, though.)

Armegeddon, the musical - Thur

Helping Percy to steal the cars had just seemed natural at the time. It'd felt like being on a war-world, or in one of those 20th century dramas where a handful of humans try to survive after the plague, or the nuclear holocaust, or whatever. The survivers usually have to deal with anything from dog-packs to rats, but the biggest danger comes from outsiders. That kind of story was very popular last century - not realistic though. There are plenty of places where people fight to survive on this planet, but they aren't usually post-industrial - not yet, anyway.

There are plenty of radioactive ruins scattered around the multiverse, too, but there's not much call for the musical mojo and my usual kind of gig in any of them. I started to think about it, anyway...

This is the land all causes lead to,
This is the land that the war breathed through,
This is the land that is dead forever,
This is .....

( Desolate drive )

When I actually saw the car I'd been thinking of, open, abandoned by the roadside and with a gun in the back seat, there was a moment when I didn't believe it. I got out of the Jetta and offed the mental sound-track - and the noise hit me!

I'd actually been thinking about dog-packs in ruined cities and that was my first thought. There was a kind of howling roar, with yelps, whimpers and snarls mixed into it, and a deep, grinding vibration that sounded almost mechanical. I couldn't see any animals but I was into the back seat of that Caddy with both hands on the gun before my mind caught up with my body!

Something hit the door so hard that the car shook.

.......................................................................................

Hunters' Moon.

I'd been thinking about disaster movies and dog-packs in ruined cities right before I'd seen Grant's car, empty, with a gun in the back seat. His cherished Caddy was half off the road, keys in the dash. I stopped the Jetta in close and was already several steps away from it when the noise hit - raging angry animals, roars, howls and yelps and a grinding snarl that meant murder.

I was in the back seat of the caddy, grabbing the gun, in a second - and a split second later I'd realised that an open car might not be a good place to be. It'd be a lot easier to smoke out from the Caddy, though, and I wanted to find out what was going on.

( Werewolf fight )

almost the first thing Erynne had said to me was that she wasn't as inflammable as most of the women I knew - she'd seemed to know all about me from first meeting and just delivered that as a throwaway line. It was an intriquing one, too.

Anyway, she's never seemed to worry and I'd always thought that only silver could kill a were. Grant had seemed to believe that he couldn't be killed at all - but he'd been sure that his wolf was bound into a portrait, too. All that should have meant that they couldn't kill each other, but to judge by the fight, neither of them seemed to believe that .

So I tried. Something about -

Return, remember who you are,
your human mind has not gone far,
returning to your human mind,
now to your human form to bind....

That's not quite it, and the original was nothing steller, either, but at least there weren't any lines that were mostly filler. It's possible that it worked too - but if it did it only affected one of them.

Suddenly Grant, human Grant, was backing away from the smaller wolf. I think he punched at her and the wolf dropped away from him, into a crouch. Then she sprang again and he went over backwards, hitting his head against the car. She had moved forward and was nuzzling toward his throat when I reached down and shot her with the tranquilliser gun, almost point blank. She made a small sound and dropped.

( aftermath )

She would probably know that I'd shot her and I didn't think the wraps would slow her up much if she came around as the wolf. I just wanted to be able to smoke out of that car fast if she did.

Grant nodded, sadly. I knew he'd be guilt-tripping about all this for a long time to come. He took the Jetta and I saw him start to drive back to the house as I took Erynne on to my base.