by Harry Nix
“What are you doing?” Ruby asked. Daniel ignored her, and as soon as the sticker was in place, did an about-face and started heading back to his car.
“Wait a minute,” Alex said, suddenly thinking of something. “Are you condemning a few houses in this area today?”
“Yes, I have a few more stops,” Daniel said. Alex walked out from the meager shade of the roof into the blistering sun where Daniel was standing.
“I own a few homes in this area. Can you tell me the addresses you’re going to?”
Daniel opened his clipboard and pulled out a list of addresses, which he passed to Alex. His stomach sank as he read through them. It was well over half of the homes they owned in this area. There were others on the list that he didn’t own but where Alex knew werewolves were squatting.
It appeared that whomever was behind this didn’t know exactly where Alex and his pack were but they’d managed to narrow it down and then leaned on the city council to get this result.
“These ones here are mine. I’m going to send Michael here with you to make sure it’s safe. I don’t want anything to happen to you just because you’re doing your job,” Alex said. He called Michael over and showed him the list and told him to go to each of the homes so Daniel could do his work safely.
Daniel watched the exchange with curiosity. He finally took back his sheet of paper, nodded to Alex and left, with Michael following along behind.
“There are no coincidences,” April said, watching the cars go.
They went back inside where at least it was marginally cooler, although with the power out, the temperature was rapidly starting to rise. River came out of the kitchen, his face sweaty. He took off his bandana to wipe himself down.
“We need the power back on soon or we’re going to lose everything in the refrigerators.”
Jeremiah appeared. He was talking on one of their burner phones with the power company to find out why they were blacked out.
“This is the vampires,” Juno said. She stomped her foot and to everyone’s surprise a burst of cold shot out from it, frosting the walls for a moment before it quickly disappeared with the heat.
“The condemning is vampires, or the power too?” Alex said.
“Both probably. I wouldn’t be surprised if the water goes out too. This is exactly the kind of stuff vampires do, pushing on all the levers, making the system itself hurt you. You might never see a vampire, but still, you’ll be forced off your land, made to sell where you’re living, and somehow a vampire will come into possession of it, and it’ll all be perfectly legal,” Juno said.
“This is one of the reasons werewolves stay out of cities, generally. It’s easier for the vampires to screw us here than out in the territories,” Nia said.
To Alex, it felt like the temperature was literally increasing a degree for every second that passed. He’d expected some kind of reprisal, mages trying to hunt him down, more weredogs, maybe a blood golem—but this? There was no defense against the power getting cut off, which was either someone physically destroying a power line or some kind of bureaucratic thing.
The houses in the area being condemned… It wasn’t as though there was some vampire he could find, to threaten, to cast a spell, to tear their heads off to get this reversed. This was just… government. Slow moving and stupid, filled with forms and regulation, and easy to manipulate if you knew where to press.
Jeremiah got off the phone.
“Oh fuc—I mean, fudge,” he said, seeing the children were still gathered enough to hear.
“Power company says they have no idea why it’s out and they’ll send someone, but there could be a delay because there’s been a few blackouts with the heat. I’m going to send some of the pack in every direction to find out how far the blackout goes, see if we can spot any downed wires or anyone lurking in the area,” he said.
He walked off into the back of the house, already shouting out orders to various pack members.
As he went, Alex’s mind churned. Killing the pain mages was an example of hard power, direct force, but what was happening now was soft power, indirect, but could easily be as deadly. Just with the weather at the moment and the temperature, they’d be risking heat stroke if the power didn’t come on soon. It was hard enough to sleep as it was with the temperature. But how could he exert soft power now?
An idea hit him like a bolt of lightning.
“Is my laptop around here somewhere? We need to print some flyers. Some really dodgy, stupid-looking flyers with, like, clip art on it and using Comic Sans, so normals disregard it but anyone in an enclave or any vampire or witch who finds it can understand it,” he said.
“Mages are dumping silver on packs and doing aerial photography, vampires are getting us evicted and the power is out, and you want to print a flyer?” Nia said dubiously.
“Plus put a crappy website with an email address. It’ll say anyone who silvers werewolf land will be killed. If you want the latest magical weapons, get in contact and we’ll sell them to you. Things like that. Sure, we’ll get a lot of nonsense, but if we print enough of them, it’s eventually going to get back to the enclaves. They must know by now that we’ve killed nearly a thousand Corvus mages. You remember Henry, from Xavo? He said there was an argument going on in whispers within their enclave. We need to apply soft power to make mages doubt what they’re doing, to take those cracks and widen them into canyons. Because as much fun as it was killing all those Corvus mages, blood is not going to be the only way forward,” he said.
Alex saw everyone around him break into grins, the mood of the room shifting immediately, and then he realized he had pulled on that power and nudged all the werewolves in his pack, including Nia, who had gone from angry and worried to smiling.
“I can absolutely design some crappy flyers with just the best clip art,” she said.
“The laptop battery only lasts a couple hours, so we need to get moving, and in the meantime, someone’s going to have to contact the city council, see what’s happening with this condemning,” Alex said.
There was a sudden busyness that erupted around him. Nia went off to find the laptop, closely followed by Juno, who was insisting a black cat piece of clip art should definitely be on it. Part of Alex’s mind was on the next step of registering a website domain and getting it quickly set up, which he knew he could do from a phone in under half an hour, but he was also thinking about how he’d just nudged his pack without intending to. It hadn’t cost him any magic. There was no spell being cast. It wasn’t mind magic, but something else, and it was definitely growing stronger.
3
Alex tried to sneak up on Jacob, but even in human form, the young werewolf’s hearing was too good for that. He turned and spotted Alex. “You’re going to need to do better than that, old man. I can hear your footsteps and breathing from a mile away,” he said with a grin.
“Yeah yeah,” Alex said, ceasing his creeping. He walked across the rooftop to join Jacob in surveying the burger joint across the street.
“See any mages today?” he asked.
“We think so. If I had to bet, they were either dropping off money or picking it up,” Jacob said. Alex looked across three rooftops to where he could see Scout, one of the newer members of the pack. Another rooftop down was Mel, who was squatting in the shadows, almost indistinguishable. The sudden influx of werewolves meant that no one had to go anywhere alone now, so even simple surveillance missions like this one involved at least three werewolves.
“Binoculars?” Alex said. Jacob passed them over and Alex saw they were bejeweled.
“Are these Ruby’s?” he asked.
“I think Juno stole them,” Jacob said. Alex smiled and shook his head before looking through the binoculars down at The Grill. It was a burger joint that they believed was owned by Xavo. It seemed stuck on some halfway point between being cheap and cheerful and high-end, as though it hadn’t decided which direction to go. Although half the building was set up with tables and chairs
and booths, and looked quite upper-class, the rest of it looked like standard cheap burger joint: small tables and chairs, bright lights and annoying music. Alex had looked up the menu online and it was similarly schizophrenic, with a bunch of cheap burgers alongside gourmet creations that cost almost as much as a steak.
Despite the fact that Alex had shredded the ward on a Xavo home, which had caused an explosion, killing the mages within, he wasn’t finished with that enclave by a long shot. They had still silvered his land, killed Bish, and shot Jem in the forehead, leaving her in a coma from which she had never awoken.
They had been keeping a watch on the address that Stephen the necromancer had given them, as well as other locations they tracked Xavo necromancers to. A few days ago they’d followed them to The Grill, and they’d gone again the very next day. Stephen had mentioned that Xavo had their fingers in a few pies, one of which was fast food, as a way to diversify their income. So now they were watching The Grill, hoping to track any mages so they could snatch one up if they needed.
“You know, we should go in there and buy a whole bunch of burgers just to shake them up a bit. I mean, River might be annoyed, but with the power out all day, there’s not going to be much food worth salvaging anyway,” Jacob said. It was just past nine and still sweltering, the buildings and roads of the city holding the heat. The sidewalk itself was still unpleasantly hot to touch.
Alex had a burner phone with him, and last he heard, the power was still out. The pack had gone out and discovered the circumference of the blackout. Jeremiah thought it could be traced back to one transformer. But despite repeated calls to the power company, no one had come out, and then as soon as it hit five p.m., it seemed that everyone there had gone home.
Juno, who could summon balls of ice, had done her best to keep the refrigerator cold, but her chaos magic went up and down, and perhaps because she was so distressed about the situation, it had dropped to nothing for a long while. The werewolves were using dwindling cash reserves to buy bags of ice, having to scour the city for it, as apparently with the hot weather plenty of other people had done the same.
Alex had managed to get the website up and running in short order as well as the email address, and Nia and Juno had designed a bunch of truly crappy looking flyers, which they managed to get printed off at a local print shop in the afternoon. Now, every werewolf that went out was carrying them with instructions to leave them in places they knew mages frequented. A pack of werewolves was even sticking them up next to various band and movie posters around the city in random alleyways.
“The burgers are good…” Jacob sang.
Alex’s stomach grumbled at the thought of a burger.
“See? Your gut agrees with me,” Jacob said. Alex took another look at The Grill. The counter was staffed with teenagers. He had only seen a few adults in there, one being a fat little man who he assumed was the manager.
A long time ago, Alex had talked to Howey, discussing asymmetrical warfare, how it was about convincing hearts and minds, making groups pick a side in the struggle and convincing them to pick yours. Given the bright red stickers on their homes today, it was clear the vampires, or whoever was behind it, had an ability to exert soft power that Alex couldn’t. He didn’t know anyone in the city council, had no allies that he could call to get such things overturned. The only plan he had thus far had been to survey the burger place, keep tracking mages, finding not just their business locations and compounds, but their homes.
Sometimes Alex had crazy thoughts of tracking hundreds of mages, finding where they lived and then killing them all in one bloody night. But perhaps the slow burn was more effective now; they had shown their power with Corvus and now it was time to press in other ways.
“You know what? Let’s go get a burger,” he said to Jacob. He signaled the other two werewolves that he was going down to the burger place and they were to stay in their locations to observe. Moving over to the edge of the roof, Jacob shifted into hybrid form and Alex let the pull of it take him too. They both stepped off the edge and landed in the dark alleyway before shifting back to human.
“I really like having shifter charms. It was so annoying to have to keep taking your clothes on and off all the time,” Jacob said.
“Probably an advantage for Yvonne too,” Alex said as they walked out of the alleyway, giving Jacob a light push. The young werewolf broke into a grin.
“Yeah, she likes it,” he said.
They crossed the street, Alex keeping an eye out for any mages in the vicinity before going inside, the gust of cool air-conditioning at the door exquisite.
“Fancy or cheap?” Alex asked Jacob.
“Definitely cheap. There’s hardly anyone over there,” Jacob said. The expensive half of the building was virtually empty, only two couples eating, whereas the cheap side was busy. They joined the queue. It was mostly teenagers and young people out for the night.
Alex saw Jacob looking over at a group of teenagers in the corner who were eating food, stuffing fries in their mouth and generally messing around, flicking food at each other and laughing. For a moment, Alex felt the pull of the things that Jacob had lost or had never had. Despite the fact the pack had increased in size, it had been almost all adults. They’d only added four extra children, and the reasons for that were grim and dark: attacks out in the territories killed children, teenagers and the elderly first.
As they shuffled forward, Alex tried out lines he could say to Jacob but everything sounded lame and stupid, excuses for something that Alex could hardly change or fix. The fact was that most other types of supernaturals went to normal schools. Plenty of them had jobs, bought houses, paid taxes. It was the werewolves who lived out in the territories, split between some kind of wild nature and civilization. While Baxter was surrounded by werewolf packs that stretched off for hundreds of miles, there weren’t officially any werewolf packs in Baxter except for Alex’s. Most werewolves came for work, getting money before returning to their territory.
There were a few who stayed, becoming civilized, usually couples who did their best to fit in. Some werewolves sent their children to normal schools. Nia herself had gone off to school, to high school, and then to college. But with the constant threat they were under, there were times when having such a large pack felt like an extreme weakness. There was simply no way to keep them all safe at all times. For all he knew, if he sent Jacob off to a local high school, one day he’d vanish, taken by mages or vampires, or who knew what else.
Soon they reached the front of the queue and ordered three burgers each, as well as fries and soda. Alex looked into the back of the kitchen as they waited, watching the manager bustling about the place, pointing at burgers and fries, and generally appearing to tell teenagers to do what they were already doing. Soon the girl behind the counter got the order together and passed it over to them on two large trays.
“Do you guys have job applications? Do you think the manager could come over once he’s free?” Alex asked.
The teenager, a skinny girl who was wearing a dot Band-Aid over her eyebrow hiding an eyebrow ring for when she was at work, looked back into the kitchen.
“I could let him know,” she said.
“Thanks,” Alex said. They found a table in the corner, which had good sightlines to the door and out the window, and wasn’t too close to the teenagers who were still making a ruckus.
Jacob was about to dive in until Alex stopped him, quickly casting Analyze 50x on the food. It was beef, high in salt, high in fat, high in everything good and delicious and not poisoned, so Alex waved Jacob on, who started inhaling his burgers like it was a race.
Alex unwrapped his, a beef burger, sniffed at it then took a bite. He knew it was stupid, but there was something unsettling about the idea of necromancers owning a burger chain. The mind immediately went to: where did they get their meat? Even though Alex knew that they weren’t doing anything stupid like serving human in burgers to people. Analyze 50x had already told him it was b
eef. They chowed their way through the burgers and soda and the incredibly salty fries. River’s food was good, but sitting there in the air-conditioning, eating the food, was some kind of amazing combination.
They were just finishing up when finally the manager came over to their table. He was watching Alex with a wary expression, and Alex suspected he knew who he was. He quickly checked the street; although there was plenty of traffic coming and going, thus far he hadn’t received any warning text messages from his two scouts up on the roof that there were any mages out there.
“Hi, my name is Harvey and I’m the manager here. I understand you asked for a job application,” he said, handing it to Alex.
“Thank you. Can I borrow that pen you have in your pocket there?” Alex asked as he passed the application to Jacob, who took it with his greasy fingers. Harvey gave him the pen and Alex pulled out one of the flyers and turned it over. He wrote I want to speak with Henry on the back and the burner phone number, before giving it to Harvey.
The front of the flyer looked like it had been designed by a 10-year-old, which was exactly the look they were going for. It was covered in a mishmash of clip art and clashing fonts, and just looked like a stupid childish prank. Alex saw Harvey’s stance subtly shift as he read through it, including the line in the dead center: Any enclave who silvers werewolf land will be utterly destroyed.
“I will… see if I can find that person for you,” Harvey said. He then nodded to Alex and Jacob, and bustled back behind the counter and soon vanished, Alex and Jacob watching him go.
“Two things. One, dude needs to stop eating his own products, and two, he’s totally calling his enclave right now,” Jacob said before taking a huge gulp of his soda and letting out a burp that caused some of the girls at the nearest table to laugh. Alex saw Jacob getting a few scowls from some of the teenage boys over there. It was obvious that Jacob had attracted the attention of the teenage girls, which wasn’t surprising considering the build of the young werewolf. One of the teenage boys at the other table took a gulp of soda and then burped as loud as he could, but all he got were looks of disgust from the teenage girls. Apparently, such things were only funny if you were handsome as well.