“Do you really think you’ll survive?” I sputtered, surprisingly sounding like I had the courage I was desperately trying to cling onto.
The woman was taken aback and retreated a few inches seeing this. I jumped in headfirst. “I’ve seen what these fellas can do,” kind of, “and a bullet with your fancy metal might kill him if you shot him in the head, but you’d never know how long it’d take him to die,” I bluffed.
Gavin raised an eyebrow but went along with me. “Let me tell you this, no one remembers the person who pissed off the massive beasts, only the person who ended them. You’ll be as pointless to your group as the second person to climb Mt. Everest was.”
“That’s a little disrespectful to the person who climbed Mt. Everest second,” Gavin said.
“You’d have a point if you could remember his name,” I said, waving my arms. “So, what’s it going to be? Useless peon or the one who got away?”
She looked to me, looked to Gavin, and looked to the other people on the roof. To no one’s surprise, she sneered as the rest of the group finally got in range to fire at us.
“Doesn’t matter so much when we’re together now, does it?” the woman said.
I smirked at the fact she backed up to be further away from us than the encircling group. Then I remembered life-threatening peril.
I looked down at the flask in which I’d mixed the ingredients and, essentially, what I had was a Molotov cocktail, minus everything that made that. I noticed Gavin looking at it, too. He must have known what it was since Silvia was so into alchemy.
I hadn’t gotten out the ingredients for the Taser mixture, but since that was a one-target sort of thing, that wasn’t going to work.
“Why do you hate us so much?” Gavin asked. He’d been in a position to block me from most of them, but he moved a bit to better block me from all of them. “What is the point of trying to kill us?” He sounded like he genuinely wanted to know.
“Isn’t it obvious?” responded one of the male group members. “This is our mission from God, our God-given purpose if you will.”
“Mission from God?” Gavin raised an eyebrow.
“To help eradicate Satan’s minions and prevent the birthing of the Antichrist. You are his minions, and whatever you’re doing is pure evil. You’ve even corrupted a pure maiden for use in your nefarious schemes.”
“You’re talking like people playing Dungeons and Dragons, not people who have legitimate reasons to carry around guns and shoot innocent people with them!”
They all took aim, clearly done with talking. Gavin shot me a glance over his shoulder. “Close your eyes,” he said in a soft low tone.
I did. Gavin gave a feral growl, and it seemed like he was transforming. He moaned, and then a wave of warmth and light washed over me, so bright I could see it with my eyes closed. Gavin then jumped on top of me, shielding me from the gunshots that rang out in tandem.
Screams of anguish and terror filled the afternoon air.
“My eyes!”
“I’m blind!”
“What did you do?” I asked, squinting to open one eye.
The area around wasn’t flooded with light. “I can’t tell you. Throw the flask!”
I unstoppered the mixture, and instead of throwing it, I held it horizontal and swept my hand sideways. I sent the stream of combustible liquid in an arc towards the encirclement of people.
Even more screams of terror rose to meet our ears as most of them caught fire. Gavin shifted to his wolf form and barked at me. I didn’t need to be a werewolf to understand that command. The next roof was of similar height, so it took barely a jump to get over it. From there, he took the fire escapes the group had used to get to us.
Calming down from the adrenaline high, I wondered why Gavin couldn’t tell me what he did, or how he did it. Whatever it was, it seemed much more powerful than Leonardo’s spells the previous night.
We jumped from roof to roof until we were nearly back at the community centre. Gavin shifted back and put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me. “If they keep cornering us like that, we’ll be sitting ducks. I don’t have that much more in me.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me or prepare me for what’s to come?” I asked, smiling at him.
He nodded and then kneeled to look out at the second group of black-cloaked people around our goal, the community centre. These people had on some actual armour, clearly learning from the last batch that tussled with us.
“God, we need to end this soon. They look like they’re gearing up to raid the place,” I observed.
Gavin transformed once again. I felt despair in the pit of my stomach. I knew we were going to just jump off the building. I got on and held on tight. Gavin woofed, and I clutched harder. He jumped and landed in the alleyway below, using his legs as shock absorbers to help decelerate.
It’s not a pleasant experience, but the silky-smooth fur brushing up against your face as it’s smashed into the thick coat is a silver lining.
I had barely enough time to catch my breath when Gavin leaned forwards and bolted towards the community centre. One of the garage doors opened, and Gavin booked it through before a single shot was fired from the onlookers above.
Inside, Lorenz was there, leaning up against a loading bay. “How’d it go, you two? I can see you’re already riding every boy you know here,” he said with a smug smile.
“It’s possible to decipher the message, but we need a password, and it may be version one or version two of the note, depending on whether or not the cypher wheel offset is divided by three or not.”
“The who and the what now?”
“We’re going to have to try to get into Carl’s head to decipher these things,” Gavin explained. “Or start interrogating him.”
“He’s still here, right?” I asked, remembering that thing about upstate New York.
Lorenz nodded to me and lifted his hand like he does as he spoke. “How exactly are you going to get into his head? He doesn’t think like most werewolves and doesn’t seem to think like most humans I know.”
“It may just have to be trial and error, or perhaps some social engineering,” I said.
Chapter 27
Rushing in through a storage area and a connection to a kitchen, I flung the door open to reveal… another door. I blinked, confused, and reached for the second door handle, which grabbed me! I recoiled, pulling the actual person behind this out from their illusion: a stern-looking woman with slight Asian heritage.
Her hair was black, with a blue portion that hung down along her face. She had some crow’s feet, showing her age, though she kept most of it under wraps fairly well. She wore a form-fitting silk pink dress with golden accents, like the ones I’d seen in films about historical China.
“Are you Miss… Elizabeth Brown?” she hissed.
“Miriam? What are you doing here?” Lorenz asked. Gavin got into the Clawv Maga fighting stance while Lorenz seemed to ponder transforming.
“Speak!” the woman, apparently Miriam, shouted.
“Yes, that’s my name, and where exactly did you get it?!” I said, trying to override her intimidating presence with my own.
“You wrote it down on your notes in your business class.” The implication wasn’t lost on me.
“And how did you find those?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“How else would a witch find anything? Oh, that’s right, you have no idea. And not only did you have no idea who you were messing with when you came here, you also don’t have any idea who you messed with last night, and by God, you’re in for a rude awakening when you figure out who I am!”
She was right up in my face. Her eyes bulged, her nostrils flared, and she exhaled harshly. I took a step back and composed myself.
“So, I’m assuming you’re a witch, well then, where’s the mole in your organization?”
“What are you blather—”
“There’s a mole in your organization. I’m assuming you’re the head of the wi
tches here. Cassy said they are in charge of intelligence, meaning you must be the master spy of this organization, so to speak. So, where’s the mole?” I put more emphasis on that last part.
“I’m looking at her! Every woofer,” there was that word again, “witch, wizard and sorcerer all know what’s at stake. They’d never betray the order. A sub-woofer would love to simply use your insider knowledge to advance herself, wouldn’t you?”
“Interesting conjecture, but I’ve got some witness testimony and some evidence that proves you wrong,” I smiled smugly. I tried to calm down my screaming nerves as they nearly rattled my hand out of my smug pose.
“What? There’s no way someone would testify in your defence.”
“There’s four, maybe five currently,” Gavin barked.
“Isn’t there up to eight?” Lorenz asked.
“Minerva and Cassy are a bad call, and I honestly don’t know how Dan feels about her.”
The woman tried to regain her composure and seemed to adjust a pair of glasses that weren’t there. It might have been just a nervous tic or perhaps she only recently got contacts.
“Well then, guess we’ll have to have a trial and see who’s really innocent. Just keep in mind that assaulting the commanding officer of the unit will not do you any favours.”
“That was justifiable self-defence at worst,” I said aloud. And he totally deserved it at best, I thought.
The woman stormed off, and the door illusion disappeared.
“Shit, two out of three leaders of the unit are out to get you,” Lorenz said, grimacing.
“Well, the leaders don’t show up often. Let’s hope I can make you guys safe from knife-wielding cultists before they reveal their ugly mugs!” I said.
Chapter 28
I walked past the doors that led to the kitchen. When we entered the bar, Cassy impatiently waited, and Silvia mixed some drinks.
“You’re back!” they both said like eager schoolgirls.
“Did you do it?” Cassy asked, getting into this.
I walked over and set the two notes down, since they were both random garbage to anyone else. The girls frowned. “The professor thinks this is a Visionaire cypher, and we need a key. Is there any expression Carl uses all the time or…?” I whispered.
“Ah, write it down or text…” Silvia said, squeaking a bit.
I gasped softly and whipped out my phone, we were all pretty bad at this…
Silvia and Cassy in tandem put their hands to their chins and thought about what I was asking.
“Nope, at least not that I know. He’s kinda a loner here, which is a real shame. People here are way nicer than in my old group,” Cassy wrote on a piece of napkin, her speed just a little too fast for my liking.
“If we assume he’s working for the enemy, perhaps we should go with their known attributes and pick passwords from that,” Gavin texted.
Gavin, while trying to be helpful, was clearly shaken by Miriam’s declarations. I wondered if I should tell Silvia.
“Gavin just really wants the password to be Jesus Christ so he can be right,” I informed them.
Hopefully, I was keeping my voice down enough while joking to mask my fears.
“Hey, my brother isn’t like that,” Silvia whined, giving me a betrayed look.
I set them down and grabbed a napkin to write the different messages using the cypher. The first password: Jesus Christ.
I got about five letters in and realized I was turning garbage into different garbage. I tried the other, same deal.
“Doesn’t look like that’s the password,” I said, setting my pen down.
“What if he included some fake letters to dissuade people from deciphering it?” Silvia asked in text as she took the cypher grid and pen from me.
About five moments later, Silvia realized things were still wrong. She put the pen down and pouted.
I gave her hair a bit of a ruffling. “Hey, they could still be doing what you said, we just have the wrong password,” I suggested.
“Like, shouldn’t someone go guard Carl so he doesn’t see us doing this?” Cassy asked.
I nodded in agreement but put a finger to my mouth to shush her. “Gavin’s too quiet, that means it either has to be David or Lorenz. I don’t think Lorenz has reason to talk to him, while David has the you’re new and I’m the leader thing going on,” I whispered.
Everyone was suddenly staring at me. “What?” I asked.
“David’s not our leader. What gave you that idea?” Lorenz whispered.
“Uh, wasn’t he barking, no pun intended, orders when the thingy happened?”
“The thingy? E-lis, you shouldn’t be calling events thingies just yet. You only just started coming here,” Silvia pointed out.
“I mean…” Gavin started rubbing the back of his neck, “Anderson does seem to help him with leadership skills and treats him like a second in command.”
Lorenz dropped his hand and gave Gavin a death glare. “Benjamin,” he said.
There was a bit of silence in the room, so much that you could hear the sleeping Minerva breathing in the dog bed.
“No, that’s Gavin,” Silvia said, giving Lorenz a quizzical look, apparently not following.
“No, try Benjamin. That’s his name,” Lorenz said.
Lorenz looked defeated and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Whose name? Carl?” I asked.
“I found a clip on the security, where he answered his phone with, ‘Benjamin here.’ Saw it just before you got back.”
A fake name. Yeah, that sounded like a mole thing to have. “Oh, shit. We need to find out what the password for this thing is,” I said in a panic. “Lorenz, can you check the security tape for when Carl first joined? If he’s the one who dropped the bugs, number one, we’ll know where to find them, and number two—”
“He’ll know you know because he’s listening to them?” Gavin pointed out.
I ran my hands through my hair, flaring it out and letting it drop no matter how messy it became. “Oh, God, we suck at this,” I said, realizing just how hard it was to constantly keep your voice down.
“Okay, Lorenz, mind switching with David and getting him on distraction immediately?” I asked, starting to panic. Probably should have moved this outside, but then again, I had work, and they wanted drinks. It’d be fine if we could stop Carl from hearing what we’d been up to though.
“Alright, but first, pour yourself a shot of whiskey. Should help calm your nerves,” Lorenz suggested before rushing off to the exit on the other side of the room.
We tried a few more possible passwords, including the one Lorenz mentioned, and every time we got a string of random letters in return. Silvia kept on talking about how there might be a few letters to confuse people trying to decode the message. Each time we ended up going further and further.
“So, like, while you think of more passwords, mind explaining to me what exactly you plan to do with Carl if it turns out that it was him who did all the stuff?”
I looked up from the napkin and gave her a look, only to bite my tongue as I realized there were only a few possibilities. I took out my phone and started to text.
“There are a few possibilities. We fake that we didn’t figure it out and use him to feed them false information. We use him to find out where they are hiding and try to take them down. Finally, figure out how he’s communicating with them, and just take it over and give him his justified beating,” I wrote.
Cassy smiled a vicious smile at that last part. She struck me as someone I shouldn’t get on the bad side of. She then started to text back, and I grabbed my phone to see what she was typing.
“Hey, wanna go shopping with me and Minerva this weekend?” she said with a smile. I raised an eyebrow.
“Does Minerva even like shopping?” I asked aloud, hoping it wasn’t some code she expected me to crack.
“God, no. She doesn’t, but all the other girls here are super boring. At least Minerva knows how to joke
. You could help me get her into a dress!” Cassy said, bouncing up and down.
“Cassy, I’d never wish a dress on my worst enemy. I’m not going to try to force Minerva into one, especially since I kinda owe her since… you know.”
Cassy shrugged and hopped off her stool.
“While I have this out and the contacts are open, I should probably get everyone’s contact info,” I said, looking down at the screen.
“It’s—” Lorenz burst through the door before immediately putting his hand over his face. He quickly got out his phone and wrote down what he wanted to say.
“It’s definitely Carl, watch this!” Why he put the time into finding the exclamation mark, I’ll never know. He reached under the lip of the bar top and pulled out a small gizmo.
Turns out, it wasn’t hard to find Carl placing the bugs on the security cameras. Lorenz managed to grab the most pressing one.
It was a bug, obviously, but seeing such small tech was weird. It was never meant to be seen, and thus wasn’t designed for looks. There were just bare computer parts haphazardly melded together to serve its purpose.
“God, it’s so tiny,” I said aloud.
Silvia leaned in close to inspect it while I got out the phone and quickly texted Lorenz the various ways we could handle the situation. He looked at the phone screen as I held it up, and he frowned, putting the bug back.
“I’ll go ask Anderson, about… the ice then,” he said.
It was going to be interesting to see what Carl did since we weren’t that great at code speak and were talking about finding out his secret for quite a while.
Lorenz disappeared to seek advice from the actual leader of this area. While I tried different things I’d heard were in the Bible, like Biblical names: Mathew, John, Luke.
The best I could get was an I to start things off, which doesn’t count.
“Well, I’ma go see if any of the witches want to go shopping!” Cassy said as she stretched and walked out of the front door.
Had I not been so focused on deciphering, I might have asked where she was going.
The Stray Human: A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves, werewolf community center book 1 Page 12