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

by Abigail Smith

  “I thought Anderson was the leader?” I said, turning my attention away from the guy.

  “There’s three. The leader of the werewolves is Anderson. There’s a group of witches, who help to mask things and work as intelligence gathering, and then there’s the mage squad led by the sorcerer dude himself,” Cassy said, pointing to Leonardo.

  “Yes, everyone has their little place, and people who aren’t magical don’t have a place here. So, either get out or the woofers will have you for breakfast!” His glow transferred to his arm, and a glyph appeared. It had five empty circles but was brimming with power.

  “Leonardo,” Gavin said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  “What?” he growled.

  “Is that any way to treat a member of the community? She’s saved the life of someone, and this is her repayment, a stable job.”

  “We owe the people of this world nothing. I don’t care if she’d saved my life! She does not belong!”

  I watched as Gavin tried his best to calm the man down. While they did that, I grabbed the electromoss and pyro putty containers. I’d left them on a higher shelf than last time and mixed them in my compact yet again.

  “What would your father think about you not returning the favour of someone who’d been owed a life debt?” Dan suggested.

  “You woofers, always so sentimental. It’s clear I’m going to have to make an example out of you,” he growled at me. Another glyph appeared. “Ventos Servitas Galvos!” A shockwave burst out from him, sending Gavin and Dan stumbling back from their protective stances.

  “Oh, hey, your incantations are just like in—” I started.

  “Silence! FUEGO!”

  Yeah no, I’d read enough books to know where that was going.

  I held open the compact, since I’d gambled on the metal drawing in the lightning over my comrades. This was easy since he’d blasted them all back. A blue electric arc shot from the material striking Leonardo in mid-torso. He seized up, and the magic slowly faded as he fell to the floor.

  “Oh, he is not going to like that,” Gavin said, peering at him.

  “Now then, this note. What to do about this note?”

  Cassy, bemused as always, looked up at me. “Know anyone who could decipher it?”

  “Decipher, yes actually.” I stuffed it into my purse, knowing just who to talk to.

  Chapter 24

  Since the groups that kept showing up didn’t seem to hurt anyone the school decided that things would go ahead, warning all students to stay away from the black clad folk for their own safety and to answer any questions from the cops. I twitched my eye slightly at the email, but was also thankful, because I needed to go to class for something…

  I was escorted to class again. This time by Gavin, who despite his size is much more inconspicuous. He also chose to look at his phone while waiting and watching. Unlike David, who scanned the area constantly.

  “Keep an eye out for any cops, too… the fact that I’m at the centre of those weirdos’ obsession is going to come up…”

  Gavin nodded, staying pretty quiet as we both walked into the lecture hall and waited for it to start.

  Today’s lesson was an elective history course that had focused on cryptography recently, which, luckily, was the thing I needed help on. The note Cassy had pickpocketed off Carl was not ordinary math. There was about half a page of numbers, every two digits followed by a space. I decided to ask my teacher about it, and wouldn’t you know, that was the lesson for the day.

  The lesson was fairly exciting, talking about the great uses of cyphering data in history. This was just an elective course, but it was pretty much the most enjoyable course. One thing did catch my attention, a story of an alphabet with multiple symbols for each letter, making it impossible to decipher with the standard find the E strategies.

  A finding the E strategy boiled down to find the digit or number that showed up the most and assume it was E and work from there since E is used so frequently in English.

  I started to scribble down some wolf claw scratches, smiling to myself like an idiot. Like I could make enough different symbols with those, but hey, worth a shot.

  The classes ended, and those who were English majors walked out while a few people interested in these things went to talk to the teacher. Gavin came in, and I waited my turn patiently to ask the professor my questions.

  “And what can I do for you, Miss Brown?” he asked, his bushy mustache bumping up and down as he talked.

  “I actually came across some cyphered text in the wild and wondered if you could help me decipher it,” I said, holding up the sheet of paper.

  He took a look at it, stroked his mustache, and grabbed the paper. “Sure this isn’t maths?” He gave me a joking look. “I’m quite the useless teacher when it comes to that!” He gave a spry chuckle and grabbed a magnifying glass out of his pocket to read the things up close.

  “Hmmm… interesting,” he said, glancing at it.

  “What? Can you read it?” I asked.

  “Don’t be daft. It’s still numbers, but it’s not one to twenty-six. No, it’s three to seventy-eight, but only in multiples of three.”

  Gavin, suddenly behind me, joked, “I thought you said you were no good at maths.”

  I jumped a little. Gavin moved with the silence and grace of a ninja. The old professor laughed again.

  “I can do basic stuff, but there is one odd thing, a three-digit number at the start, one… eight… zero.”

  “Divided by three, that’s sixty?” Gavin asked.

  “I’m unsure whether or not that one’s related to the others. It might be part of the cypher key, given with each note. Where did you get this from?”

  Gavin and I shared a look as I started to formulate my lie in my head. “Someone who might be up to no good dropped it, and we need to tell what he’s up to.”

  A cyphered letter doesn’t necessarily mean someone’s keeping secrets. Considering Dan, Cassy, Minerva, Gavin, etc., didn’t know why he had it, it was a good idea to investigate. Especially with a possible mole in the werewolf community.

  “Oh, dear. How about we head to my office and start putting some work into this?”

  We followed him upstairs, through a few buildings before arriving at his office. He set his things aside and put the paper and magnifying glass down, getting out some different office supplies and metal disk things.

  “So, let us first transcribe these into letters,” he started, getting another note and scribbling down the letters.

  It seemed to be random garbage, which was when he took out the wheel. “This is a cypher wheel. It was a pretty crude and easily deciphered method of cryptography, but it seems like it was used to add a layer of complexity to this puzzle.”

  He turned it, making a one-eighty-degree turn. “Lines up letters with other letters,” Gavin spied.

  “Precisely, only it changes the entire alphabet at the same time, and only in linear ways, unlike the Germans’ enigma machine. Which through several mechanical and electrical processes—” The professor stopped. “Opus, look at the time. I must be going, I’m afraid.”

  He wrote down the message on two different sheets of paper, one of which was one-eighty-degrees, and the other at sixty. Both seemed to be complete garbage again.

  “Did it work?” I asked.

  “Whoever you got this from, definitely doesn’t want what is on this sheet of paper getting out. If you scan it, there isn’t any one letter that’s repeated as often as Es are, meaning they must have used something like the enigma machine or…” the professor said.

  He took out some grid paper and started to write down lots of letters. One set horizontal, and the other vertical, and then he just continued, filling it in like a grid.

  “It could be possible that in order to ensure that only their comrades got the message, they used a Visionaire cypher. One that requires a password to function!” the professor said, clearly getting into this.

  “A password?
” Gavin said thoughtfully.

  “Yes. You see, cyphering works like this, you find the letter you’re changing up here, then you find the first letter in the password. Their intersection is where you’ll find your cyphered letter. Keep going through the letters of the password and the message and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “But the password could be anything, and they might have gone with two passwords or something.”

  “Well, that’s a judgement call you’ll have to make. Is the person receiving it as smart as the sender?” the professor said.

  That caught me off guard. “What?”

  “If both parties are highly intelligent, they could try to visualize or workaround two passwords. It’s rather hard to work with a three-dimensional grid when the point of the grid is to see things.”

  “I guess it’d most likely be one password, but what could it be?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Gavin said suddenly.

  “What?” I asked, looking out the window.

  “Try Jesus Christ. You said it yourself, they…” Gavin looked to the professor and tried to temper his words, “really liked church, and if it’s just him playing with his friend, he might go for that.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have much time. Perhaps you can test out the different passwords you come up with by yourselves. And if those don’t work, there’s always enigma machines online, if you can figure out what configuration they used.”

  “Thank you so much for your help, professor.”

  He gave me a sly wink and exited.

  “So, think you’re going to get stabbed in the shoulder?” I asked, looking to Gavin, a heavy feeling in my heart.

  “I don’t smell anyone like that. It’s most likely they took the police intervention to heart and are going to try to be sneakier. The problem for them is, you can be a lot sneakier on the roof of a building.” He gave a sly smile and offered a hand to help me up.

  Chapter 25

  We walked through the halls towards a good vantage point. There were a lot of security and police walking around. I couldn’t help but frown. The entire campus was now living in fear all because some random group was after me to get to some werewolves.

  The cop who’d come to ask me questions before walked up to me and Gavin. “Ah, Elizabeth. Good to see you’re alright. After that ambush yesterday, I wasn’t sure where you went. Are you still certain you don’t want to join the witness protection program? At the very least I think you should come by the station and answer a few questions…” His eyes were focused and his voice was stern.

  I looked to Gavin, who seemed just as shocked as I was. I looked pointedly at his nose and back up to him and he mouthed the word cologne, or at least I think. Still, according to the email, these people hadn’t been hurting students, so as long as I didn’t want to come in, their hands were tied by the legislation.

  “N-no, I don’t want to join it and… I really can’t head to the station… I have to meet up with a few people…” I said, feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

  “Well, at least offer me a few questions, many of the people we’ve taken in for questioning report many of their number are missing, do you know anything about that?”

  “Just missing?” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t know why. “Like, they disappeared, or they’re sacrificing them?” He frowned—apparently he didn’t like me suggesting the sacrificing angle.

  “According to one of them, this is a holy war, and that the hellspawn took out a number of them. We investigated, and while we couldn’t find out where they went, we found an armoury that was half-empty and no sign of the people who’d been living there.”

  I mentally kicked myself. That armoury could have been a great boon to the community centre.

  “Perhaps it’s a gang war? Maybe the other gang buried them to make sure their… territory didn’t have random bodies in it?”

  “If that were the case, what reason would they suspect you of being in said gang?”

  My eyes went wide, and I gulped. I didn’t realize what I suggested wasn’t helping me.

  “You were recently with another man before this conversation. Is the gang sending you out with different people to keep you safe?” The detective looked at Gavin suspiciously.

  I froze, unsure of what to say. “Me and the other guy were both friends of the girl she saved. And since some crazy things are going on, we’re trading in walking her to school just to keep her safe. E-lis was just guessing as to the solution to your problem, again, as far as I know. She’s helpful like that.”

  Gavin was a pretty good liar. I was impressed.

  “Can I get some ID from you, sir?” the cop asked. Gavin took out a wallet and produced his driver’s licence.

  He took it and wrote a few things down. “Alright, have a nice day, you two, and, sincerely, I hope you stay safe. Just know that if these people stop co-operating, we might need to take you in for your own safety…”

  The detective walked away, and I waited until we were a bit further through the halls to ask Gavin about it.

  “Couldn’t they use that ID to track you down and find things out? What if they suspect that you could be a werewolf?”

  “Well, standard protocol is when a witch sees a cop come to the building, everyone’s informed, the portal room is sealed off, and they let them tear the place apart if they need to. If they suspected I was a werewolf, their superiors would have them take a psych evaluation.”

  “What if they look under the bar for the alchemicals?’’ At this point I was just panicking and not thinking straight.

  “We claim they’re coloured sugars and props for a LARP. There wouldn’t be much they could do to prove that statement wrong.”

  I felt a slight twinge in my eyebrow but said nothing about this.

  “Secondly, like you did, people who’re mundane typically try to rationalize what they see. An easy explanation offered will typically go further than you’d think.”

  I sighed in relief. It’d take more than one nosey detective to reveal the supernatural world to the… world. I wondered, though, what it would take to convince people werewolves existed.

  We slowly approached the exit, passed by cops and police cars, and walked towards the midrise area, where we ducked into an alleyway, and Gavin leaned down.

  “Hop on and hold tight!”

  Chapter 26

  And I thought going up the stairs werewolf-style was bad. Oh, God, I was pretty much ready to puke after Gavin wall-jumped us up to the rooftop. I felt like I should look up the definition, or possibly the symptoms of whiplash.

  He got down onto the roof and transformed back, setting me aside so I could relax and breathe.

  “You alright? After the first jump, you felt like you were trembling,” he said, looking at me for signs of injury.

  “I’m alright, just, not used to moving so fast back and forth. How do you do that, anyway?” I asked.

  “Part-momentum, part-claws, part-strength. A bit of magic probably doesn’t hurt.”

  Ah, something I hadn’t explored yet. Leonardo made it seem like werewolves were incapable of magic, that wasn’t alchemy. Yet, Gavin was using some to help get him up onto the roof.

  “You guys have magic, huh? What kinds of stuff can that do?” I asked.

  “Uh, no… werewolves don’t have magic. I mean, other than the magic that makes up the lycanthropy.”

  “So, wait, what stops people from watching you jump up onto the roof?”

  “Tanooki no Jutsu,” Gavin said.

  “Come again?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “People don’t tend to look up very often,” he offered.

  “Why’s it got such a unique name?”

  “It’s part of ninjutsu or the martial art of ninjas.”

  I blinked, looked him right in the eyes, and without the slightest bit of tempering my choice of words, I said, “Oh, my God. Are you a werewolf ninja?”

  Gavin seemed uncomfortable about that question. �
��Eh, not quite. Still a few things I have yet to learn.”

  Gavin lifted onto his knees and looked around. “They’ve stationed people on the rooftops.”

  My sudden childish glee was replaced with a bone-crushing weight in my stomach. “W-what?” I said, clambering onto my knees to peer over the small ledge of the roof. Sure enough, patrolling around on the rooftops were some people in black cloaks.

  “How do they have so much manpower?” I asked, looking around.

  “Some of them are women,” Gavin said.

  He was going with a reassuring tone, which confused me, I just waved off what he was saying and got down under the shallow lip. I pulled a few little plastic bags of alchemical reagents and a few flasks out of my bag.

  “What are we going to do? How can we get past them without making this a huge deal?” I asked.

  “Well, we either try to stealth it or—” There was a clicking sound behind Gavin’s head as a gun was placed right against it.

  I looked up slowly to find one of the black-cloaked women had snuck up on us. I didn’t see where she’d come from. Perhaps behind one of the air conditioner units?

  “Don’t move.” Her voice was hoarse like she’d smoked a pack a day for every day of her life.

  I saw some smoke rising from where the gun touched Gavin’s head. It must have some residual alchemical silver left on it. Wait, that meant it’d been fired, possibly recently.

  My hands froze, and I felt a cold fear ripple through me. “Hey there, lady, don’t hurt him!” I said.

  More of those fools popped out from behind the air unit. Some even came up from other rooftops via fire escapes.

  My voice went shrill, and I felt like a pathetic weakling. The woman backed up a bit, smiling a devilish smile. “Want to spare your little friend? Or have you finally come to your senses?” she asked.

  “I…” I started.

  I closed my eyes, clenching my teeth inside my mouth. Trying to steal the courage and resolve needed to get us both out of this mess, I looked at her. Her smile was so curly, her eyes gleaming with malice.