Wolf in League

by A. F. Henley

  "You didn't pay attention?" Randy squeaked. "How could you not pay attention to something like that?"

  Rafe sighed, exasperated. "Well, forgive me, Randy. I was a little caught up in something else right then." His gaze tripped over to meet Vaughn's, then Hannah's. "It was... well, the baby. He was..."

  "What was wrong with my baby?" Hannah asked, eyes wide.

  "Nothing," Rafe said quickly. "Nothing was wrong with him. Just..."

  "Rafe!" Vaughn growled at Rafe's pause.

  "He was just dressed weird," Rafe said finally. "Like... you know how someone is dressed when they go out hunting? With the hunter's cap and the jacket and the pants and everything? And... "

  This time no one yelled at Rafe to keep going. They gave him the moment that he needed. And when he finally spoke, nobody seemed all that surprised. "And there were stakes tucked into his little belt. One on each side."

  When Vaughn heaved a long drawn out sigh, Rafe hurried to add, "It could mean nothing."

  "And it could mean everything," Matthew added.

  "One thing it definitely means," Gavin said, rising. He reached for Matthew and helped Matthew to his feet. "Is that I think we're all going to be together for a while."

  Matthew smiled. "There are worse things."

  "Yeah." Gavin nodded. "It doesn't sound like a bad thing to me at all."

  It had been a long couple of weeks with a lot of very bad moments. But that simple statement made Matthew's chest swell with emotion. At least he and Gavin would be together. The rest of them were an added bonus.

  Matthew squeezed Gavin's hand. "Hungry?" he whispered.

  "Always," Gavin told him right back.

  They walked out of the living room and left the rest of them to stare at the television.

  VAMPS IN NY – IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

  By: Larry Deeds

  The National Report

  September 30, 2016

  New York, U.S.A.

  There are real-life vampires walking among us. It isn't the first time these rumors have circulated but yesterday's press release was one of the most dramatic ways that the "information" has been presented. Following a "mostly unplanned newscast" arranged and orchestrated by journalist mogul Ivan Freeman, worldwide watchers and bloggers got to feast their sensitivities on the folks who are claiming that vampirism not only exists in our society, but is more common that we think.

  As to why Freeman ran with such an inconceivable (and, as some are saying, ludicrous) story, Freeman simply shrugged and told reporters, "It didn't take much to convince me. They're pretty good at making their point."

  According to the North American spokesperson for the "vampires", their existence is something that the government has been trying to keep hidden since the early 1900s. And Arius—the only name he goes by—says he should know. According to Arius, he's been a non-tax-paying, conspiracy-theory-weaving, blood-drinking constituent of the United States of America since 1921. He looks surprisingly good for ninety-five.

  Newscasts ran on the same day in every continent on the globe, and they all said pretty much the same thing: We're here, don't fear, but it's time to get used to it.

  Doctor Philip Horst, a postdoctoral resident at the Valdemar University Psychological Center and one of the guests in attendance for the North American press conference, says that he once served not only as a donor during his five-year study on the New Orleans vampire population, but as an activist for a small group that were trying to publicize information about the vampires back in the early 2000s.

  "It became very apparent, very quickly, that the government was going to do everything in its power to keep these people and our reports out of the media," Horst claims. "If you're asking yourself why the vampires have gone public, with such a worldwide presence this time, one needs only look back and see where the volunteers of our study ended up. And if you get that information—where they ended up, I mean—please let me know. Because not one of them are anywhere to be found. Not the ones that we sought out, nor the ones that came to us when they heard what we were doing. After the study, they just disappeared."

  Time will tell whether these men and women are who they say are or are just extremely clever storytellers. Doctors in some of the highest levels of research have agreed to investigate their claims, an agreement which has many people asking, "Why this time? Why these guys?" What has made this story different from any previous claims? And why, with the public treating the news as either a huge gag or an outright insult to their intelligence, while hilarious online doodles and outrageous Tweets and posts flood social media, are top politicians remaining so quiet on the subject?

  One can only wonder with the presidential election drawing ever closer—and assuming that the vampires are real, and that they have been kept a secret for this long and under such suspicious circumstances—will they be voting? And are they Republicans or Democrats?

  Related Stories:

  Minnesota: Local church burns to ground during midnight vigil against the 'unholy'

  Washington DC: Dupont Circle investigations continue

  Wyoming: Probe into GDBCG gains momentum

  National: Database of unsolved deaths scrutinized

  IT'S NOT A HOAX

  By: Moriah Halliday

  Buzz Post

  October 10, 2016

  London, England

  If you've never seen a bloke run across a football field in the time it takes for the average person to blink an eye, if you don't believe that certain skin can heal as fast as it is being cut, or that same skin, on exposure to sun, can blister to ruin and then heal in the same amount of time, then you weren't watching Birks' Late Show on Saturday night.

  Stunning viewers, guests, and the medical staff in attendance, eighteen of the recently-gathered and newly-named "Night Walker Coalition" took to the stage and showed just exactly what they meant when they told us all that they were real-life vampires.

  These folks were out to make it very clear that they weren't your garden-variety black-haired, black-clothed, fake-fanged blaggers either. Ranging from the lightest blond, the fiercest redhead, and the as-expected-black haired folk, these pale-skinned men and women showed that their fangs weren't there just for display.

  Outrageous procedures—including the removal of one fang from one brave participant, a fang which after extraction regrew within fourteen minutes under the eye of a perplexed and flabbergasted dental surgeon, Doctor Morris—left their audience in stunned silence and with respectful horror on their faces as they filed out of the studio.

  "Absolute trash," one visibly shaken man told reporters as he led his wife away. "I don't know how they're doing it, but I don't believe a word."

  "Some people could see Jesus Christ descend in front of them and they'd call it a trick of the light," said a disgusted young man, who followed close behind.

  All four doctors in attendance have verified the validity of the tests they ran and/or witnessed.

  Doctor Jennifer Collins, a geneticist with the Center for Disease Control (who has thirty-two years of experience and a career that has seen her in places as rural as Guéckédou, Guinea during the Ebola outbreak and as mainstream as the Stanford University School of Medicine in the late-eighties and mid-nineties as a researcher of HIV) went on record as saying that [the vampires] are "proving to be the most significant discovery of this decade."

  "Whether or not that discovery will prove to be detrimental or advantageous," she continues, "is still unknown."

  Related Stories:

  Infant born with fangs just a hoax – parents charged with endangerment

  'Friends of Feeders' has roster of 25,000 willing donors

  Researchers study DNA for possible benefits

  VAMPIRES—IT DOESN'T STOP THERE

  By: Holly Rahul

  Paranormal Revelations and Investigations Online Review

  November 21, 2016

  Toronto, Ontario

  As the common man gets used to the
increasing presence of vampire kind, reports are surfacing saying that vampires aren't the only unsettling beings of lore who walk among us. What used to be viewed as the hopeful romanticisms of pre-teens or the babblings of lunatics are finally being looked upon as potential realities. And those who have known about the existence of natural oddities are feeling vindicated for the first time in their lives.

  Dennis Redding from Moose Lake, Manitoba who works as a plow operator in the winter months and a grader/excavator during the warmer ones, has been telling people for years about his experience with the paranormal.

  "They all thought I was crazy when I told them I saw Bigfoot in December of '94," Redding said when asked. "You tell me who the crazy ones is [sic] now."

  "They can tell me all they want that what I saw was a figment of my imagining, or that it was nothing but a bear I was seeing through beer goggles, if you know what I mean," Redding says, referring to authorities with whom he reported the occurrence, "but I just says to them that bears don't look like that."

  When Redding looks at reporters and says, "Have you?" it's hard to come up with an answer for him. Reporters here at the PRIOR might not have firsthand experience on this particular oddity, we do know that where there's smoke, there is fire. And where there are vampires, there are bound to be others.

  Elliot Harlow of Parkman, Wyoming has seen his own special 'fire' in the form of wolves that don't stay wolves. "It's not the way they look at you that make you sure, even though those eyes of theirs are more human than a lot of humans I've seen in my time. It's the bits and pieces they leave behind."

  Harlow and his wife, Elizabeth, moved down to Parkman, Wyoming from Vancouver, B.C. hoping to set up their own trucking company for the logging industry. They are both educated college graduates, both "straight as arrows" when it comes to alcohol and drugs, and they are both adamant about what they've seen.

  "It's not so obvious in the milder months," Elizabeth explains. "Walk through some newly-fallen snow in January, though..." She shudders. "The skin's got to go somewhere, you know. Then it just lies there, right on top of the snow with this yellow goo and all that blood... Sometimes you'll come across the wolf shift and it's all fur patches and claws. Other times you're going to come up on the human shift and..." She looks at her husband for support. "Well, I'll tell you, it's like looking at a human body that's been peeled and shredded."

  Vampires in NYC, Bigfoot in MB, and werewolves in WY – the question is, do we welcome them? Or chase them back into their caves?

  Related Stories:

  Night sky over Vermont blazes with E.T. activity

  Religious activities at all time high

  Professor Gary Flint: It's time to correct history textbooks

  SNL takes jabs at Vamp Coalition

  THE WORK DAY IS CHANGING

  By: Rual Leveque

  The Northwestern Daily Post

  November 2, 2017

  Portland, Oregon

  Since the mid-fifties, there hasn't been much of a change in the way that most folks in North America outside of retail and service do business. We start our days at eight or nine in the morning, and by five in the afternoon the streets are littered with cars, buses, and cabs taking us home again. We spend the daylight hours locked in our cubicles, construction vehicles, or home offices and the dark hours tucked between our covers, sleeping sweet dreams of consumerism.

  But that's all changing.

  With the wave of newly liberated vampires reaching into every nook and cranny of the business world, hours which normally went unattended, unmanaged, and "unavailable for assistance" are now bustling with people who not only want to work at night, but who have to.

  Sandra Xu, Chief Operating Officer of "Better Living-Better You" is absolutely thrilled with this.

  "The beautiful thing about this addition to our staff is that [vampires] have shown themselves to be driven, focused, and company-minded. They've spent a lot of time down in the gutters and they want to be out here, succeeding, gaining, and making life better for themselves and the people who they call family."

  "We can now serve overseas customers at any time of the day. We can take advantage of Internet traffic and phone orders, no matter what time it is," Xu explains. "If our consumer has a question or a problem at three a.m., then I've got a representative to help them."

  And the vampires are proving exponentially successful.

  "They've got years of experience and knowledge," Fred Hanover, Proprietor and General Manager of Tech-True says. "What do you do when you got nothing to do for years and years? You learn. I got Night Walkers that started on the floor putting circuit boards together and within two months I've pulled them out and up into the roles that they belong in. They're working my accounting department, managing my labs, single-handedly running my marketing plans. They blow the normal man away with their intelligence and their work ethic."

  "If that means running my shifts at night instead of during the day," he continues, "I figure it's not that much of a hardship. People will get used to it."

  It's estimated that 20-25% of the population has seen a shift in their workday within the last year, and that that number is expected to rise to 40-50% of the normal "day workers" in the next two to five years.

  Related Stories:

  Ocala, Florida: Vampire Manuel Levitt voted mayor

  Atlanta, Georgia: 'Donor' groups becoming cultish Reverend Toth warns

  San Francisco, California: Night Walker Coalition to sponsor scholarship

  Hamburg, Germany: Vampires attacked during general meeting

  NIGHT WALKERS: TRYING TO BE NICE

  By: Jerod Cope

  United Front Online

  January 4, 2018

  New York City, U.S.A.

  The World Federation of Night Walkers have released a public statement urging people to set aside their differences and embrace the fact that vampires aren't going to crawl back into basements and keep to themselves any longer.

  Jackson Harlowe, a confirmed vampire and CEO of the North American chapter of the Night Walkers Coalition, says that the fear and the fighting have got to stop. "It's no surprise to anyone that there are people out there that are having a hard time with [the vampires'] presence. We expect to have to educate people about our differences, and we know that there is a certain level of fear over what we can do. These rumors that the Coalition is not only actively recruiting normal people but infecting them, is utter nonsense. It needs to stop and we're going to make sure that happens. Furthermore, we're not going to stand by and have members of our group attacked or even killed."

  This statement follows a report by Ivan Freeman, one of the very first reporters to bring vampires out of the dark and into the public eye, which states that in the last several months over thirty-two unexplained deaths and hundreds of assaults have been perpetrated against members of the vampire community. And it's not just random citizens, Freeman's report shows. Police officers, religious leaders, and in some cases even doctors are acting out in public displays of aggression that have the Coalition concerned and baffled as to what their next steps should be.

  "No one would stand still while atrocious acts are committed against the disabled. The public doesn't tolerate acts of violence on homosexuals or those acts inspired by racial differences. So why is it all right when it's a vampire? Why does our ailment, a proven medical condition, get looked on any differently?"

  Harlowe himself has been thrown to the ground, had a brick thrown at his head, and been repeatedly mocked in public. Through it all, he tries to remain calm and understanding. "We could get angry," Harlowe says. "We could get vengeful. And I don't need to tell anyone what that might mean if it happens. We're not here to start a war. All we want is to be part of the world again."

  It's hard to imagine anyone perceiving Harlowe to be anything other than what he is: polite, refined, intelligent, and fascinating. "There are history books in our libraries showing events that we have lived through," Harlowe cont
inues. "We want to share our experience and our knowledge. We have no interest in infecting mankind or making them our slaves. We're trying to be nice."

  That comment comes in the wake of a series of pamphlets and blog posts recently released by yet another anti-vampire sect, "God's Hammer," who have shown statistics that have people wondering just what, exactly, have the vampires been up to since they "came out."

  "There were hundreds of them when they first showed up," one of God's Hammers says. His face and head are covered, and he wears a voice-altering device. His jacket—the official jacket of their cult—shows a hammer crossed with a stake. "Now there are tens of thousands. Where did they come from? How did their numbers grow so exponentially if they're not doing the very thing we've been trying to tell you all that they're doing? They're recruiting, they're infecting, and they're building an army. We're not going to let that happen. This isn't a race war. This isn't a bunch of guys beating up on a cripple. These vampires are evil, and they're not going to stop until they run the [expletive] world. You want to call me wrong for wanting to put a stake through every last one of them, you go right ahead. You'll be thanking us later."

  Harlowe, however, says the God's Hammers are just another bunch of madmen who think they know what's best for everyone. He is concerned, though, that the vampire community is going to get pushed into a situation that nobody wants. "I am a peaceful man. The vampires I know are all peaceful people. But enough will eventually be enough. I don't care who you are, or how well you behave, if you get pushed into a corner and you can't run, you will be left with only one option."

  It won't be a fair fight, either. The vampires have a healing tendency that mere men and women do not. There are rumors that they have the ability to fascinate and, in some cases, "get into" the minds of people. While the Coalition scoffs at these suggestions, studies may prove otherwise.

  "Time will tell," Doctor Avin Cree, who has been working with government officials on the vampire studies for the last eleven months, said when pressed for his opinion. "But the things I have seen lead me to believe that the vampires definitely have skills that you or I do not."