The Stray Human: A college age urban fantasy with werewolves, werewolf community center book 1

by Abigail Smith

  Lorenz took a bit of hair that’d fallen in his face and moved it aside and flashed me another damn smile. “It’s rather charming you can think of the health and safety of others with what’s going on in your own life.”

  I blinked, expecting this to lead to a dig, or for his expression to change as he contemplated the statement, then I realized that was supposed to be a legitimate compliment.

  “What’s going on in her life?” Silvia asked.

  “Oh, you didn’t hear?” Lorenz asked.

  Silvia shook her head. She was so cute with her chubby cheeks and childish responses. I found myself smiling at her. Meanwhile, Lorenz had lost his smile as he looked over for David or Gavin.

  “Uh, well, if he didn’t think you should know then—”

  “There were some people chasing after me. I think they’re—” I was about to explain my theories, that possibly their plan was to try to use me to take down this little community centre full of werewolves when Silvia interjected.

  “What?” she shouted and, in an instant, she was transformed, no slow or at least slow-ish elongation of the snoot. There was no hair growing at a rapid pace. Just one second, she was screaming, the next, she was in… I guess that form would be a hybrid of both wolf and human, so hybrid form it was.

  “What’d they do? Where are they?” she said, her cute mannerisms replaced with the guttural growl of her hybrid form.

  “I… don’t know,” I said, leaning back into the liquor shelf.

  Gavin burst through the kitchen door and went up to his sister and held her close. “Easy, Silvia, easy,” he said.

  His voice was so melodic that I could fall asleep listening to it. He patted her head, and she slowly calmed down and transformed back.

  “So, transformations seem to go at different speeds depending on… stuff like that,” I said, giving a weak smile to try to ease the tension.

  “E-lis, why would people want to hurt you? You look pretty normal, right? No sinful creature inside of you.”

  “Sinful—” I started.

  “Don’t talk like that, Silvia. There’s nothing wrong about being a werewolf. We haven’t harmed any humans on a mass scale, and most of them don’t even know we exist,” Gavin reassured her.

  “Hey, Sil—”

  “You should always take pride in yourself, Silvia. Never be ashamed of who you are, or you’ll become a bitter person,” Lorenz said, losing his confident look and avoiding eye contact.

  “Hold on, we—”

  “Silvia, it’s okay. We’ll find those bad guys, and we’ll—”

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  The entire mood of the area switched back to tense as I looked at the three guys. “Silvia, what did the man say when you were attacked two days ago?” I said, looking her in the eye.

  While I could see how Silvia got it in her head that having a bunch of people around was good with all of them swaddling her, I needed to get some information from her and didn’t have time to reflect on it.

  “They were talking about cleansing the Earth and removing the sinful abominations,” Silvia admitted, clearly taking that designation into her identity.

  “So, they’re definitely the same organization, but what could they want with me? How could they have known I was here?”

  “Look,” David said, “how about we all take a trip up to the roof and chill out a little? Lorenz, you watch the bar.”

  I grabbed a few containers I hadn’t labelled yet and stuffed them into my purse for easy carrying, hoping to label them while we were discussing this.

  Chapter 12

  Once again, passing through a threshold caused a cooling sensation all around me, but instead of the dulled smell of werewolf, it was crisp clean and slightly humid air. The roof was surprisingly barren, possibly just having the entrance for maintenance.

  There was this one object, which seemed to be a little computer and dish antenna setup. It was tucked into the corner, with its cute little blinking lights and stuff. As we got fully onto the roof, its blinking lights suddenly stopped.

  “This is nice,” I said.

  Silvia hugged me from my right, and we followed David towards the centre of the roof. He sat down and sighed, splaying out his legs and leaning back to look at the night sky. It was so serene I forgot what we were talking about prior.

  “I brought you up here, so we didn’t panic everyone and send them into a frenzy,” he said, his voice cold and in charge.

  The sudden tone shift of the rooftop to the danger room caused a bit of whiplash. “Right,” I said.

  “So, what you’re saying is the guy who attacked Silvia and the people who were going after you seem to be affiliated?” he said.

  He cut his hand through the air to accent what he was saying. He looked me in the eye with the razor focus of a wolf on the prowl.

  “That’s right, she mentioned getting called a sinful creature, and when they came to me, they talked about ridding the world of sinful creatures,” I explained.

  “Those two definitely seem affiliated, and it certainly seems like we’re in trouble.”

  David closed his eyes and rubbed his hands over his face, and then bounced a fist off his head lightly. “What would Dad do at a time like this?” he asked himself.

  “I know one thing for sure, he’d strike back,” Gavin admitted.

  “We can’t do that till we know where to strike. They’ve practically got us blind.”

  “We have leads we can follow, we’ll sniff them out!” Gavin assured him.

  Silvia moved her other arm around me, leaning into me heavily. I patted her back gently. I was trying to keep her calm because if sudden rage transformations were a thing, well, I’d more or less be squeezed in half.

  “Maybe if we had Lorenz here, we could—” I suggested.

  “Lorenz isn’t the strategizing type. He’s the let’s stop for booze and a good date kind of teammate,” David said.

  “Solid fighter, though,” Gavin said.

  “If you consider gunmetal claw fighting,” David said, getting into a less danger-room discussion tone and more of an argumentative tone.

  “I’m just saying we’re a trio, not a duo or a solo.”

  I leaned onto the ground, not the most comfortable position. Since David was practically doing it, why not?

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” David said dismissively. “You know how I get when I don’t know what to do,” he added, crossing his legs up in the air.

  “These people are just coming out of the woodwork and trying to attack us. How’d they even know we’re interesting? I mean, yeah, a lot of people have swelled bank accounts, but not Silvia.”

  “I doubt any of them are the banking types, and even so, they’d be trying to swindle us, not attack us.”

  Silvia was clearly uncomfortable with the topic, but I guess it was important to think of why people were attacking. The first person I’d run into who’d assaulted Silvia only had a knife. I guessed it must have been silver or something for him to be confident.

  “Hey, is a silver weakness myth or fact?”

  “Fact… kinda.”

  “The knife that man used on Silvia, was it made of silver?”

  Gavin and David gave each other a look. “We should have checked that out, huh?”

  “If they knew you were weak to silver, I mean, with the whole myth, some might just assume,” I said, realizing how one would normally react to being told a werewolf infestation was taking over a town.

  “If it was silver, we wouldn’t have to worry much, but, if it was alchemical silver, we’d know someone from the greater magical community is after us.”

  “Alchemical silver?” I asked.

  “An alchemical substance, which bonds onto metal and seriously fucks werewolves up,” Silvia said.

  “Silvia!” Gavin and I said in unison.

  “Eh, let her have this one swear. It’s pretty true, but since most people in the greater magical community rely on werewolves as bodygua
rds, they don’t typically manufacture it.”

  “How secretive is your greater magical community? Could information slip out? Enough to get a group of crazies with reverends among them to come after you?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but anyone who did it would put themselves at risk, unless they were a human who’d infiltrated us.”

  David looked over at me with his signature smug smile. “Would anyone believe them, though?”

  “Crazy people with reverends among them,” David said.

  I drew in a deep breath of the cool night air, and David followed suit. He then bolted upright. I found myself copying him.

  David exhaled sharply through his nose, about to retort, when his eyes went wide. “Is that… gunpowder?” he asked.

  Chapter 13

  The next few moments seemed to go in slow motion. The two men transformed into their hybrid forms. Gavin dove towards Silvia, and David turned to the east side of the building. I sat there with a ‘deer in the headlights’ look as they noticed something I hadn’t been able to. Both flung an arm towards me as a bullet flew by.

  I recoiled as it passed right through David’s and Gavin’s arms and only just missed my head.

  I hit the ground, hoping for safety from the knee-high wall of the rooftop as a sonic boom accompanied the gunshot. I dropped the strap of my purse from my low stance, and didn’t re-shoulder it in the ensuing panic.

  “What the hell?” I shouted, the sound of the blast still echoing inside my head.

  “Ahh, Jesus, gahh!” David growled as he held his arm.

  “Oh, look, a good reason to use gunmetal claws,” Gavin said.

  “Not,” the gun went off again, and it crashed into the lip of the facade that rimmed the building, spraying dust upwards into our sight, and I swore it almost cracked the thing, “now!” David shouted as his semi-humanoid form melted into that of a quadruped.

  Gavin followed suit, and both moved back, then started to run, jumping over to the next building.

  I held Silvia and kept her head down. “Oh, shit,” I muttered, watching as the two hulking brutes raced from rooftop to rooftop.

  I rushed Silvia to the side of the stairway. I then peered out from behind it.

  The villain was about five buildings away, and it was one story higher than ours. The one beside it was one story lower.

  “They can’t get to him,” I said as my nails bent against the brick I was holding onto.

  “Uh,” Silvia whimpered, “I just feel so helpless!” Tears flowed down her face in thick streams.

  “I—” I said, turning from her to the action.

  I’d been in her place before, a small girl, without the ability to stop a disaster from happening. I gritted my teeth.

  The two wolves scrambled up the two-story difference, digging their claws into crumbling bricks. Alas, they couldn’t quite get up to the ledge where the gunman was located. He holstered his sniper rifle, or what I assumed was one, and took out a handgun.

  “We can still help! Silvia, can you like… howl at them that the guy’s going to shoot them with that 9mm?”

  Silvia nodded and turned into her wolf form. She hunched down and howled. The two turned instantly, looked up, and then leapt off the building. I gulped, wondering how well they’d take a four-story drop. Even then, if the man could lean over for the shot…

  “E-lis. E-lis, get ready to hop on!” Silvia said, transforming back momentarily.

  I looked at her, nodded, turned to the action, glanced back, and said, “Wait, what?”

  Before I could get an answer, she transformed back. She pushed her head through my legs and bolted towards the front of the building. I grabbed hold of her fur for dear life as she jumped off with all the grace of a majestic horse.

  I had always had a fear of heights, even after my parents forced me to climb tall ladders to quote unquote, face my fears, so falling off a five-story building was definitely not the best of things to be doing.

  We landed with a jolt, and then a slow compression. We’d apparently jumped onto some of the werewolves getting out of the bar. The two curved around to the left of the entrance to the alleyway, trying to keep formation or something. Silvia landed with two legs on each of their backs.

  I realized asking Silvia to howl did more than just inform the guys of what was going on around them. It called in the whole pack. A flood of black fur and angry eyes poured out of the community centre.

  A group of about ten wolves followed out onto the street and looked around. Silvia, in an excellent example of leadership, barked an order and ran towards the danger. With me atop her, of course.

  Now, I’ve ridden horses before. They are probably the best part of my childhood, even though I was only really there so my mom could show off. They are gentle giants. They could get a human from one place to the other.

  A wolf is nothing like a horse. Number one, if you didn’t have a saddle on a horse, you’d just grab their neck. The neck on a werewolf is way too far down to support yourself with since it goes straight not up. Second, you kind of have to hold your legs up since their legs are the same length as yours. This is fine while standing, but they go real low while running. Third, the bow-legged pose one does on a horse doesn’t work on a werewolf, since their waists are pretty much human proportioned—and it was how I maintained balance on the horses.

  That being said, in modern times, riding a horse is something done for leisure, and this was for combat, so I felt like a badass. We rushed towards the building, and David and Gavin came to meet us when a group of those black-clad freaks appeared.

  I pulled back, hoping Silvia would slow down, but as the rest of the wolves sped past her, she just tried to speed up. The black-clad mysterious warriors took out shiny daggers and knives. Several wolves jumped up to become bipedal again.

  Silvia then turned right towards the front entrance of their building. I, seizing the opportunity, tried to put some of my anti-knife training to use and kicked a man’s hand.

  I unfortunately missed and, instead of sending it flying, the guy cursed and grabbed his kicked hand.

  Silvia reared up and pulled open the doors with her wolf paws and ducked inside. It was an empty rental space. Silvia charged towards the stairwell and, this time, I reached forwards to twist the doorknob. She slunk in while I manoeuvred the door.

  Then came the most nauseating time of my young life. Werewolves have four very long, very strong legs for a dog. So, when they go upstairs, it isn’t just like a big dog, carefully putting a paw on every step. It’s jump over the first half of the stairwell and jump off the wall of that area to get up another half-flight.

  I assumed this only worked on spiral staircases, like this one, and the one in the community centre, for that matter. Though the only thing I could think about while going around in the circle was, Oh, God, I’m going to puke.

  The roof door is always a push bar, so Silvia just landed against it with both front paws, and the door swung open, slamming against the side of the door frame.

  The gunman, currently looking down the front with two pistols drawn, took a scant look back at us as Silvia jumped twice to get closer to him. She reared up and transformed back to her human self, landing me thankfully with my feet on the roof.

  She took her fighting stance. I thought about the previous martial arts lesson—David had his claws out, Gavin had to transform, what was this?

  The man turned around and holstered his gun as Silvia karate chopped his arm. I blinked. They had all these cool werewolf martial arts, and they taught her karate? I’d be mad if I wasn’t so nauseous. Thinking back, it might have not been karate. I only saw one chop.

  I looked at the situation. I was trained in anti-knife not anti- what? Military dude?

  Silvia kicked him in the side. The man tried to smash her knee with his elbow. Silvia pivoted and jumped, bringing that leg back to support her while she used the other to kick his side. Silvia had a good amount of speed on him, but she was
clearly the less experienced fighter of the two. Soon, that speed wouldn’t do her much good.

  The man threw a staggering punch right into her head, sending her reeling to the side. I screamed and tried to body check him, charging though the space Silvia just occupied. Just like before, it wasn’t very effective. I’d learn later that body checking is only really good if you’re really heavy. Which I wasn’t.

  I hoped some others would enter the building and climb up onto the roof to help us.

  He gritted his teeth, kicked me back, and took out one of those knives. I stumbled back and tried the kicking move. His giant meaty hand didn’t even move as he grabbed my leg with the other hand and twisted. He sent me face-first into the hard rooftop. I tensed up on impact, my cheek took the brunt of it, at first not painful before burning from the texture. I grunted in pain, but I couldn’t let it stop me.

  Silvia came back into the space in front of the man, aiming her chop for his neck. He grabbed her arm and pulled back the blade. She then transformed her head and bit down on the man’s arm. He screamed and dropped the knife, using his other hand to try to wrench her jaw off him.

  I crawled over behind him, and I grabbed the knife, to try to deny him it in the future. Silvia interlocked her leg with his and threw him to the ground. She jumped on him, head still wolf-like, and she reared back to bite his neck.

  I shifted my body weight, still low to the ground to get into position. “No, no, no, wait!” I said, winding back, kicking the man in the temple as hard as I could.

  Silvia looked towards me confused and shifted back. “I-I don’t want to kill anyone just yet,” I stated, panting, still nauseous and adrenaline-fueled.

  “Uhh…” she said, looking down at the man with a guilty look.

  “What?” I asked.

  She retrieved his belt with the two holsters and handed it to me, as well as the sniper rifle and its harness. We both slowly stood up.

  “N-nothing…” Silvia said with a grim look on her face. “Take these. Maybe they’ll come in handy, maybe not, but we don’t have much of a budget for weapons, so let’s make do.”