When It Falls

by Jan Stryvant

  "Thanks," Chad said and turning towards the garage, which had all three doors opened, he quickly saw Roxy working on what looked like a couple of browning M2's.

  "Hi, Rox!" he called out as he got closer.

  "Hi, Chad," Roxy nodded over towards another guy sitting in the back going over some sort of device that Chad had never seen before, "That's Maitland, he's Sean's mom's uncle, on the faerie side."

  "What the hell is he working on?"

  "Some sort of magical weapon. Sawyer sent us eight M2's with a promise of four more tonight, two short range sixty millimeter mortars, a couple dozen landmines with another two dozen coming soon, two anti-tank guns, six flame throwers!" Roxy laughed at that, "I think he sent us a couple of crates of RPG's as well."

  Chad nodded and looked around, "Where's Sean?"

  "He had to go deal with other business, so I'm in charge," Roxy said with a wink.

  "I thought you were always in charge?" Chad said with a chuckle. "Well, introduce me to this great uncle of Sean's and after he explains to me just what the magical stuff does, we can grab your head wolf and start walking the property and get things set up.

  "If nothing else, you need to get some sentries and start putting down some barbwire."

  "Barbwire?"

  "They're not going to wait for you guys to get dug in. As soon as they learn Sean's setting up here, they're gonna move on him."

  Roxy stopped by Maitland and introduced Chad to him.

  "So, what is that, and what does it do?" Chad asked.

  "It's an undead shield," Maitland told him, "it has a radius of about a hundred meters. It's nice to see that this Sawyer gentleman of yours sent you one."

  "So it'll keep out zombies and ghouls and such?" Roxy asked.

  "And vampires," Maitland nodded, "they're the ones you really have to worry about, because they tend to sneak in when you're not looking."

  "How do we turn it on?" Chad asked.

  "Oh, it's on now. First thing I did when I found it was to activate it. Now this over here is a spell shield, it's not as big, it'll only cover one building and it has a lot of limitations on it."

  Chad listened as Maitland went over the list of the shield's shortcomings, however Chad could see its uses. Maitland then showed him the rest of the gear. A lot of it was very impressive; the magical landmines would lock whoever was in their field effect in place for a short time. There were a number of non-lethal weapons that could be used to incapacitate or repeal attackers. The lethal weapons were pretty nasty, one of them shot lightning bolts fifty meters and would electrocute anyone in their area of effect. However once fired they took a long while to recharge, so there were only four of them.

  All things considered, regular human weapons of war tended to be a lot nastier than their magical counterparts.

  "Which is why most magical combats end up as close quarter fights with swords and other melee weapons," Maitland told Chad as they finished going over everything.

  "What about rifles?" Chad asked, looking at Maitland.

  "Firearms don't work in the faerie realms, which is all probably for the best. Otherwise we would most likely have slaughtered each other into extinction. We're a contentious lot at best, and wars are common. At least with swords we've managed to keep the actual killing to a minimum."

  "So everybody just maims each other and goes home?" Chad asked with a chuckle.

  "Wounds heal, death does not."

  "True, but I like my enemies dead, they're a lot less trouble that way," Chad grinned. "Now, how about we survey the property and get an idea of what goes where, what our firing lines are going to be, and see if we can figure out how to sight those mortars in without upsetting the neighbors."

  Roxy watched and listened to Chad and Maitland as they looked over the property and discussed the defenses. They disagreed on almost everything, no matter who started, the other one came up with an opposing opinion. They even started quoting events from historical battles and at one point got derailed into a discussion of just where some commander had messed up in a battle that took place at least a thousand years ago.

  "Guys!" Roxy said, bringing them both up short, "Argue about the deployment of your pikemen's squares later! We need to finish this first!"

  She was pleased to see that they both looked rather sheepish at that. Still, it was two more hours until they'd finally finished, drawn up a plan, and put everything on it.

  "I must say, that was fun," Maitland said once they were done.

  "I'm going to hold you to that promise to send me the histories of the wars in the Faerie realm," Chad replied smiling, "some of those battles sounded fascinating! It's one thing to speculate on the use of magical weapons and creatures in combat, another to read the actual results."

  "I must say that it is refreshing to see that there are still people who appreciate the fine art of war," Maitland replied. "I'm really not at all pleased with all of this drive of modern man to replace it all with machines."

  Chad snorted, "They've been singing that song for fifty years now, it'll never happen. The weapons will get better, and the warriors will need to be smarter, but the infantry will always be with us."

  Roxy rolled her eyes, "If the mutual admiration society has finished, we still have weapons to check?"

  "Unfortunately, I can't stay," Chad said, "I have my own problems to deal with. It was nice meeting you, Maitland. Hopefully we'll meet again soon."

  "It was a pleasure meeting you as well, Chad. Be well."

  "Later, Chad," Roxy said and gave him a hug. "Now I need to go track down Oak and have him start detailing the work crews for these plans and call John and get him up here to start laying down some security gear. Say hi to Max for me."

  "Will do!"

  Driving back, Chad saw another wolf running down along the side of the road and realized he'd forgotten to call either Ryan or Claudia. Slowing down he pulled out his cell and called Claudia.

  "What, Chad?" she answered.

  "You got anybody running along three-ninety-five?"

  "Nope, must be one of yours!"

  Chad sighed, "Must be. Time to do a little whip cracking. Bye."

  Rolling down his passenger side windows, Chad slowed down and paced the wolf, who looked at him, surprised. Chad noticed he had a wad of rolled up clothing in his muzzle.

  "You!" Chad yelled and pointed, "In the back of the car! Now!"

  Eye's widening, the wolf took off, and swearing, Chad gave chase. It was late and the sun was starting to go down, so when the wolf cut away from the road, Chad followed a short ways, then stopping he got out of the car and shifted.

  Pulling out his phone, he called his second, Ryan.

  "Yes, Chad?"

  "I'm turning on the tracking app, get a team and come find me, I'm just north of eighty."

  "On the way!"

  Clipping the phone to his collar so it wouldn't 'disappear' when he went full wolf, Chad shifted and gave chase. There were rogue wolves in town; he figured this was probably one of them. Maybe even a small pack. Normally he'd have just sent Ryan or one of the others off to deal with it, but wolves running along the highway would draw attention, and right now, attention was something that nobody wanted.

  Chad caught up with the wolf as he reached one of the cheaper motels, Chad was familiar with the place, the owners were well known for looking the other way, so a lot of the kinkier crowd frequented it. Backing off he watched as the wolf approached the room farthest from the office and was let inside. Sitting down he decided to wait for whoever Ryan was sending to show up.

  "What's wrong, Rufus?" Jace asked as Rufus slipped into the room panting.

  "Someone saw me!"

  "No, someone saw a big dog. So what? That's not exactly uncommon around here you know."

  "No, Jace, he pulled up next to me on the highway and told me to get in his car! Like he was mad or something. I took off, but he might have followed me."

  Jace swore, "Was he a magic user?"


  Rufus shrugged, "I couldn't tell, he was in the car and I was running down the road."

  Jace swore again, they'd been trying to find the local wolves, any of the local lycans for that matter, but apparently everyone had disappeared or something. They hadn't been able to find anybody, anywhere.

  Now this.

  "Wrap the kid up, gather up your stuff, we need to move," Jace said looking at the others.

  "What if it's one of the local wolves?" Beck asked.

  Jace pondered that for a moment. "You wanna stay here and see who it is?"

  "Ummm," Beck looked around the room at the others who were gathering up the few items they had left as someone wrapped Stewart up in a blanket so it wouldn't be completely obvious that they were carrying a body. This was all of his family that was left really. He couldn't go back to Sacramento, and the idea of being separated from them didn't sit well.

  "Not really," Beck sighed.

  "Yeah, me neither," Jace said with a grin. "I think the expiration date on our little package may be about due. They gotta be on their way back to Reno by now; it's been what, thirty-six hours since we went rogue? We need to clear out of town to be out of range of any kill spells."

  "Well, do we really want to take the kid with us then?" Red asked looking down at the squirming bundle. "We could just kill him and leave him here. Make look like he got rolled by a hooker or something."

  "I don't think anyone's gonna buy that," Jace said shaking his head.

  "How about we hang him from the showerhead?" Rufus said. "We can leave a note, saying that he couldn't deal with Allen's death and having to kill all of us? Kid's a bit of a wimp, they'd probably buy it, and it'd burn his old man."

  Jace shook his head, "I don't think that showerhead is strong enough, but I do like that idea. If they think he took his own life after killing us, they'd stop looking."

  "How about we take him back to the truck and let him suck start one of our pistols?" Gray laughed. "All of our gear is already in the back; they'd expect us to take it with us if we had gone rogue on 'em."

  Jace smiled, "You know what? I like that idea! Gray, you're just full of 'em this week."

  Gray smiled, "Thanks, Jace."

  "Okay everyone, let's get going. Try not to mess the kid up; we need him in good shape for when we kill 'im!"

  Chad watched from the other side of the lot as the door of the apartment suddenly opened and eight guys came out, one of them with a bundle over his shoulder that looked suspiciously like a body. When it kicked a couple of times and the one carrying it smacked it on the ass, Chad had no doubts as to just what it was. But he had no clue at all as to just what they were up to.

  They quickly moved off, heading north, keeping bunched up around the one carrying the body, so it wasn't as apparent that they were in the process of kidnapping someone.

  Keeping downwind, it didn't take Chad long to figure out that they were indeed all werewolves, but one of them was human, and that was probably the one wrapped up in the blanket. At least nobody smelled of sex, so he didn't think it anybody had been raped.

  "What's going on, Chad?" Ryan whispered as he caught up with him.

  Chad motioned towards the group a hundred yards ahead that he was following, "Them."

  Ryan was silent a moment as they padded along.

  "I have Greg and his guys strung out behind me. What do you want to do?"

  "Let's see where they're going first, then we'll have a little talk with them. I'm really curious as to what they're up to."

  Twenty minutes later when they came to a truck parked off the side of the road in a deserted area, Chad crept closer and watched as they unwrapped a young man, who was bound and gagged.

  "Well, Stewart," One of them said as another one apparently took the young man's phone and turned it on. "We weren't able to find anyone to trade you to, and it doesn't look like it's going to be all that healthy for us to stay around much longer."

  Chad could see the kid's eyes get wide as the one talking was handed a pistol by one of the others. Then two of them manhandled the kid up into the driver's side of the truck.

  "Instead, we've decided to stage your suicide, and hopefully the note we're leaving behind will convince everyone that you killed us before you did."

  The one talking turned to another wolf who was doing something with the kid's phone.

  "Gray, you got that suicide note done?"

  "Almost, Jace. I need to put it in the truck before we shoot him, so his blood'll be on it."

  Chad shifted into his hybrid form, noticing the other's behind him shifting as well. It was time to step in and find out just what was going on.

  "Okay, here it is...."

  Chad swore as suddenly all eight of the men suddenly convulsed and cried out loudly in pain, the gun going off as they did.

  "Silver!" Ryan growled and they all charged out of cover towards the men as they fell over onto the ground, thrashing around in pain.

  "Can we save them?" Chad growled as he slid to a stop and pulled the silver tag off of his collar and then undid the clasp.

  "Maybe!"

  Stewart would have screamed in pain as the bullet tore into him and he tumbled out of the truck if he hadn't been gagged. Someone had obviously triggered the silver pellets in Jace and the other traitors, killing them. But the gun Jace had been holding had gone off when Jace's pellet opened, as his body seized with the pain of the silver.

  Then falling out of the truck, well that didn't help either, especially not landing face first in the dirt with this hands still bound behind his back. His head was swimming from the pain of the gunshot wound, while the pain from his face told him he must have broken something there as well. He tried to move, tried to do something, anything at all, but his arms and legs were still tightly bound and he was having trouble concentrating.

  He could hear the sounds of the wolves as they thrashed and cried out in pain around him, dying. He just hoped whoever had killed them found him before he died as well. Of all the rotten luck! If they'd just attacked a minute earlier, he wouldn't have gotten shot!

  Panting heavily around the gag in his mouth, Stewart noticed that he couldn't hear the sounds of the dying wolves anymore. Well, thank the gods for that! At least they got theirs, the bastards! Pulling his legs up, he cried out in pain as it pulled on the gun wound. He had to get out of these ropes, he had to get away from here, he had to....

  Something grabbed him by the neck and he felt himself being dragged off across the ground and into the brush.

  "There's the truck!" Stan called out as they turned up the road, following the tracker spell.

  "Dammit, Stan, did you have to set off their pellets? I wanted to take them back," Matt complained.

  "With all the shit coming down on us, you're worried about a few wolves? Matt, you need to get your priorities straight! Besides, you didn't say anything the last three times I cast it as we drove through town!"

  "Yeah, well, we weren't near the truck. If they stuck to the truck, then they deserved a little better."

  Stan just shook his head as Matt parked the car and they got out.

  "Un-oh, this doesn't look good," Stan groaned as they walked over to the parked truck. It was pulled partially off the side of the road facing the wrong way. As he walked around to the driver's side, which had been pulled up onto the dirt, he could see that the door was open, and there was blood, everywhere.

  "Oh, shit," Stan said and bending over he saw the pistol laying on the ground.

  "What the hell happened here?" Matt swore coming around from the back and seeing the open door and the blood.

  "They killed him, that's what happened!" Stan swore.

  "Then why the hell is the gun still here? Where's the body?"

  "Check the back!"

  "I did already, all of their gear is in it, they're not. Lot of blood back there too, but it's all dried up and the shovels are missing."

  Matt looked around a little, "Who's phone is that on the floor of the
truck?"

  "Probably the kid's."

  "Well, check it out."

  "I don't want to leave my fingerprints here! Sooner or later the police are going to show up!"

  Matt just shook his head and stepped by Stan and grabbed the phone.

  "Kid was sending a text message," Matt said, looking at it.

  "Did it go through?"

  "No, no service here."

  Stan sighed, "Idiot. What's it say?"

  "It says, 'Dear Dad, Allen got killed in the attack, most of the wolves died too, Matt and Stan took off and left us there. I took the survivors and we got rid of the bodies. Then I remembered that Allen had told me that if anything happened to him, to kill them all. It was terrible, Dad. They begged me. They just wanted to go home, they begged me, Dad. I just can't stop seeing it and hearing their screams of pain as they died. I'm sorry, Dad. I can't live like this, I can't take it anymore. Goodbye.'"

  "Wait! What!" Stan said and grabbed the phone, no longer caring about the blood on it. "Oh no! Fuck no! That little bastard didn't just do that to me!"

  "Guess he wimped out and shot himself," Matt said with a shrug.

  "Then were the hell is the body?"

  "Looks like something dragged it off," Matt said looking at the ground. "Probably a real wolf or a wild dog. They got those out here you know."

  "Dammit! We go to all this trouble to find the kid and he kills himself! We are so fucked! What are we going to tell his father! What are we going to tell Harris?!"

  Matt shrugged, "Tell him whatever the hell you want to tell him. I'm going to Alaska."

  "You're leaving?" Stan said, staring at him.

  "Hey, I got a truck here full of supplies and weapons. I just need to hose off some of the blood and it's good to go. You can either follow me, or go back home. I figure I'll leave his phone someplace where there's a signal so his daddy knows what a little coward he raised." Matt shrugged, "But I'm not taking the fall for Kurt's brat."

  "Get your stuff out of the car. If you want to go, I'm not gonna stop you. But I am gonna call Harris and see what he says. I won't tell him where you're going, but if he tells me not to come back, I just may join you."