Werewolf - The Forsaken - Predators.pdf - Werewolf - The Forsaken - FatumTech

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Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Jess Hartley, Forrest B. Marchinton, Deena McKinney and Ethan Skemp

World of Darkness ® created by Mark Rein • Hagen

The girl was crying blood.

She wept silently, scarlet tears running red tracks

down her pale cheeks, and she made no sound above her

whispery breathing. A moment’s trembling was followed

by more of the stinging pain she had felt earlier. She was

cutting herself again, and again her guardians took note

of the injuries. They were talking now, but the girl knew

they were not speaking to her, only about her… and the

thing that was inside her.

The stinging pain felt good. It dulled the agony that

ﬂowed through her body with every beat of her heart.

“Sweet Heaven, she’s doing it again. I thought you

took the knife away from her.”

“I did. She’s using her ﬁngernails this time.”

Stronger hands, the hands of her guardians, held the

girl by her wrists. The stinging lessened, but the agony in-

side her blood returned with vicious force. Her guardians

did not understand the delicate balancing of her pain.

“Look, she’s… made… more of those runes. Not just

the ones on her cheeks but here, too, on her forearm.”

The girl knew her female guardian was close to tears

again. In some strange way, she felt pleased by this. With

that realization, something inside her stirred and writhed

through her mind like a serpent. It, too, was pleased at

the female guardian’s grief. It was pleased with everything

— saturated and content with the girl’s pain as well as the

emotional hurt of her guardians.

“What do these markings mean?” The female guard-

ian spoke then, running her ﬁngertip along the symbols

the girl had carved into her own skin. They had been pre-

cise and neat at ﬁrst, when she had used the kitchen knife

to score the soft surface of her ﬂesh. When her guardians

had taken the knife out of her grasping hands, her ﬁnger-

nails left ragged scratches rather than precise cuts.

The male guardian (perhaps he had been her father?)

also came to look at the fresh markings.

“I don’t know what the newest ones mean. I know

the one on her cheek means ‘sacriﬁce’ and this one on her

neck means ‘eternity . ’ I have no idea about the others.” He

took a deep breath. “I think they’re magical in some way.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it hurts my eyes just looking at them.”

The girl knew that it was because the runes in her

ﬂesh were holy — sacred signs that meant something to

the serpent-thing inside her. Both the signs themselves

and her pain were holy to the thing inside her head.

“I can’t take any more of this.” The female guardian

said in sudden anger. “I’m going to gather the pack.”

“They’re just as new to all this as we are. I told you,

none of us know how to… exorcise… whatever it is.”

“Someone will. Someone in one of the experienced

packs outside the city. They’ll know what to do.”

“We are not leaving the city. It’s hard enough to ﬁght

whatever horrors are running around our estate at any

given time. We are not leaving the protectorate just to get

killed by our own kind when they decide we’re not worth

helping.”

The female guardian stood anyway, and walked to the

door of the small room. The girl watched her stand in the

doorway, and then felt the unwanted touch of the male

guardian’s hand on her own.

“I’m staying here, honey. I’ll keep you safe.”

The female guardian spoke through tears. “You stay

here and watch over her. I’m going to call the others , and

we’ll track the pack that run outside the city. The ones

we met two months ago. They had a pretty old Ithaeur,

and he’s the best chance we have to save her. She’s your

daughter, and as good as mine. We have to try.”

Daughter. The word sounded alien to the girl’s ears.

The serpent-thing inside her head smiled at the thought of

one of the guardians leaving, and made the girl wave her

hand in farewell. The spirit spoke through the girl’s lips in

the hissing voice of a snake-like demon.

“Bye, Mommy.”

• • •

The werewolf ran. For a couple of heartbeats, white

sneakers pounded onto the dry earth as she sprinted away

from the screams. It was one of her packmates screaming

— screaming her name. For a moment, the wrenching cry

hung in the still air before sinking into uneasy silence.

Then, once again, the other screams began. It was her

whole pack dying back there. Still the werewolf ran.

The sneakers became clawed paws, two feet became

four and the wolf ran as though her heart would burst.

Another scream shredded the night air, echoing with

alien resonance through the metal and concrete labyrinth

of the industrial estate. The screamer’s identity was lost in

the pain-wracked cry.

She had not found the other pack. She had found

nothing but danger and death in the spirit wilds surround-

ing the city. Even here in the Shadow reﬂection of the

industrial complex, there were faded, dying tree-spirits

that moved like crooked old men and reached for her. Any

comparisons to lecherous elders were instantly banished as

they lashed out with their razor sharp branch-claws. She

leapt aside and ran on. There was no thought of destina-

tion, no cohesive plan of escape. There was only the bitter,

chilling sense that what was killing her pack would soon

be coming after her. She howled as she ran, though her

hammering heart and heaving lungs broke the wolf-cry as

it left her throat. It was less a call for help and more of a

cub’s pining for its mother.

Something unseen, with the force of a horse kick,

thundered into her ribs. Winded and unbalanced, the

she-wolf lost her stride, crashing to the ground. As she

struggled to raise herself on four trembling legs, she caught

the coppery scent of her own blood. Pain bloomed like a

living thing in her side, spreading out into her body like

a rapid cancer. She whined piteously as she turned her

head to see the source of her pain: an arrow, silver-tipped

by the acidic feel of it, stuck out from her ribs at a crazy

angle. Who could be so mad…? As she took hesitant steps

forward, her paws shivered at the intensity of the pain.

The silver tip scraped maddeningly against the bones of

her ribs. Even through the agony, the she-wolf could think

of nothing more than ﬂeeing the scene where she’d left

her packmates to die.

She scented the approach of others, but lacked the

strength to run.

“And who are you, little wolf? Going somewhere in a

hurry, whoever you are. Let’s stop a while and talk about a

small concept known as territory.”

The human words rang eerily in her wolf-mind, but

she understood their meaning. She yelped as the arrow

was unceremoniously yanked out of her body. Immediately

the pain lessened, though it remained a constant, pulsing

ache. With great effort, she shifted to her natural form,

and lay on the ground, panting through clenched teeth.

She looked through teary eyes at the four ﬁgures that

stood around her in a half-circle. One of them spoke.

“Manners are such a simple thing to remember, yet so

often they go unused.” He stepped closer, looking down at

the woman on the ground. The speaker had lightly tanned

skin and black dreadlocks that hung to his chin. He wore

faded jeans and a nondescript white T-shirt, but in his

hands he carried a long, slender klaive bow.

“My dear,” his sarcasm caustic, “This is the part of the

conversation where you introduce yourself. And after the

pleasantries are behind us, you can explain why the hell

you are on our hunting ground.”

Standing unsteadily, she held a hand to her bleeding

side, covering the hot blood ﬂow with her palm. She spoke

her pack name, as formally as she could manage through

teeth gritted so savagely together.

“I’ve been looking for you.” She said in a small voice.

“My pack and I, we’ve been looking for you for hours.

We… I… need your help.”

The four ﬁgures, two men, a woman and a teenage

boy she now realized, looked at her dispassionately.

“You’ve found us.” The woman said with a raised

eyebrow.

“What did you wanna ﬁnd us for? What help d’you

need?” The teenager’s curiosity was overcoming the deri-

sion written all over his face.

“My stepdaughter, there’s some kind of spirit inside

her, and… ”

The dreadlocked man, clearly the pack alpha, waved a

hand sharply. “Forget that right now. Where’s your pack?”

The injured woman looked back the way she had ﬂed,

casting her eyes over the spiritual reﬂection of what had

once been a forest, and was now an abandoned industrial

complex. There must have been a great wealth of emotion

invested in such a place for it to have manifested in the

Shadow.

The pack turned their heads as one and followed her

gaze. The dreadlocked leader blinked once and said, very

quietly, “Oh. Fuck.”

• • •

The pack moved slowly past the ghostly echo of a

factory. The injured woman and the teenager had shifted

into Dalu form. The man and the woman of the pack

loped along silently in the wolf form, stopping every

few moments to sniff at the ground or the air. Only the

dreadlocked leader remained in his human shape, keenly

watching his surroundings and clutching his klaive bow

in his ﬁsts. A steel-tipped arrow was nocked, ready to be

drawn and ﬁred at the ﬁrst sign of danger. The factories

and warehouses were deathly quiet, beyond the malicious

whisperings of a few fading nature-spirits that somehow

clung to life in such a place.

“How much further?” the pack alpha whispered to the

werewolf that stood next to him. He noticed with a twinge

of guilt that the arrow wound in her side still trickled dark

blood. In answer, the huge ﬁgure merely pointed a clawed

ﬁnger straight ahead. The leader raised his klaive bow,

but did not pull the string. The injured werewolf stepped

ahead of the others. Her worry for her packmates overrode

most of the fear she had felt up to this point.

There was evidence of struggle outside the cavernous

warehouse. Red splotches marked where the blood of her

packmates had fallen. Several larger pools of blood, still

wet but no longer warm, told tales of where her brothers

and sisters had died. While the area was devoid of any

corpses, there were several messy trails of smeared blood

leading across the tarmac and into the large, dark ware-

house ahead.

The bodies had been dragged inside.

“How many were in your pack?” The leader’s sarcasm

was gone now. Even in human form his Rage beat down

his fear, and his face looked set in stone.

The word came awkwardly to the woman’s throat,

and sounded like distant thunder. “Five.”

The pack looked at the ﬁve

trails of smeared blood that led

into the darkness.

There was little exposed ﬂoor or wall space at all,

so dense were the scarlet webs that decorated the

huge room in seemingly haphazard

and random patterns. A dozen

cocoons dotted the web structure

at irregular intervals. Each was

the size and shape of a person. One was

on the ground , a body bag made of red

cobweb s , while the others were stuck to

the walls at various heights.

“That one there. Look, it’s not

ﬁnished.”

The pack jerked at their alpha’s

sudden words.

“Sorry.” Even in the presence of

this alien architecture, he half-

smiled as he pointed. “That one

there.”

All eyes turned to see. One

of the cocoons against the wall

was incomplete, still revealing

the head and left arm of the man

inside. He was obviously dead,

head rolled back on his neck,

eyes staring up at the cob-

webbed ceiling.

The alpha used his free

hand to run his ﬁngertips

through his dreadlocks.

“Was he one of your

pack?” he asked hesi-

tantly.

The injured Uratha

trembled a moment, be-

fore throwing her wolf-head back

in a howl of devastating volume.

The cry echoed around the

warehouse with deafening

force, causing the other

wolves to ﬂinch away and

the alpha of the pack to slam

his hands over his ears.

• • •

“Get out of her!”

The male guardian

was losing the inner strug-

gle against his fury, and began

to change. He grew tall and hairy, massive

with muscle. Claws glinted in the reﬂected

moonlight that came through the window.

The girl had never liked seeing her adop-

tive parents shift, but her eyes were caked

with drying blood and she could barely see

past her own nose. She hadn’t blinked in over

ﬁve minutes. She couldn’t anymore.

• • •

“It’s okay, honey. She’ll be back

soon.”

The girl ignored the repeated mutter-

ings of the male guardian. Runes of pain

and suffering ached like an acid alphabet

on her skin. It did not feel good by any

means, but she felt complete, covered in

holy sigils of agony. The serpent in her

brain was everywhere inside her now.

Her ﬁngertips were raw and blackened,

and her ﬁngernails had broken off.

Her arms and legs throbbed with

hot pain from all the wrack-

ing spasms. She could feel the

serpent swimming through her

heart and making it hurt with

each pounding beat.

“She’ll be back real soon,

honey. Don’t worry. Not

much longer now.”

“The mother will be

too late.” The serpent-thing

said with the girl’s lips.

“This host is pregnant with

pain now. I grow satiated

on its suffering. Soon it will

crack into pieces and break like

a used shell.”

The male guardian stood and

stared at the girl. A thousand emotions

ﬂashed across his face, yet none took

hold. His own hands began to shake.

“Get out of her.” It was almost a

threat.

“Soon I shall do as you say.

Perhaps then I shall bond with you,

yes?” The girl choked and laughed,

sounding like she was dying of lung

cancer.

“Get out of her. Please.” It was not

even close to a threat. It was simple beg-

ging.

“Soon.”

“ Get out of her! ”

The girl choke-laughed again and didn’t

stop for some time.

• • •

The warehouse was a scene from Hell.

Blood-red cobwebs, each strand as thick

as an index ﬁnger, layered the walls and ﬂoor,

and ran in thick arcs across from wall to wall.

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