You look like a bum. Cheap clothes because you keep ripping them, hair hacked short because otherwise it gets tangled when you change. Everything bent around the need to Change, everything distorted by the Wolf. A warped-mirror you. Like the real one is somewhere else, wearing chinos and a sweater at a college party right now instead of a dirty parka and a torn black fleece covered in stains.
But back to business: this place has a Tim Horton's and a Subway. The overwhelming urge for raw meat you experienced after your First Change has faded, along with the desire to rip small animals apart with your bare hands, but shapeshifting still leaves you ravenous. You sniff the air, looking for something you can get for ten bucks that won't taste too bad.
Meat! I know what I am, and I know how to feed the monster.
I still have hope that I can learn more about the Bane tonight, so I get coffee and donuts to stay alert.
Normal person food: a sandwich and some chips. I need to do more regular-human stuff so I don't just drift away into the wilds.
All this food feels spiritually unwholesome. I'll refrain for now.
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You were a weird kid, but you still grew up in civilization, with its full selection of Frito-Lay snack food products and YouTube tutorials, and sometimes you want to return to that. You order a turkey sub from Subway, because you read somewhere that it's the most popular, Sun Chips and a Coke. You eat standing up, still jittery from the fight, and for a few minutes you imagine that you blend in. Maybe you look like a runaway or a street kid, but you're one of them. And then a woman a few years older than you orders a caramel latte supreme and a sesame seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese from the Tim Hortons and you think—it's the clearest thought in the world, like an old-timey radio guy announcing it to your brain—that you could rip her head right off. She'd never have a chance, soft and clueless, don't even know what they're doing as they bumble through life, flinging their trash everywhere, shitting up the earth…
She walks back through the sliding doors, hops in her Honda pickup. The headlights burn your eyes. You're not one of them, never will be.
The rest of the turkey sub tastes like grass and sawdust. You eat what you can and ball up the trash—more poison for Gaia to process, like a drunk guy's liver working on overdrive—and step outside into the icy air. That's when you spot movement on the far side of the parking lot, where the semis are parked.
Black Tarn darts between two trucks, still in the form of a huge wolf. She freezes, bewildered, as if she's never seen a parking lot before, never seen the normal world of signs and maps. Then Scarper appears, dragging what at first glance looks like a huge black plastic trash bag with someone in it. Did they bag another monster? But then you recognize the screams and growls coming from the thing Scarper is dragging: it's Clay. A moment later, you realize that it's not a trash bag at all. It's Clay's flesh, shifting and sloughing off, leaving a trail of black filth between the semis.
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The Bane fight felt slowed down, as if it took hours, but now everything is happening too fast. Black Tarn is in the middle of the parking lot, near the diesel pumps, howling as if she can summon all the spirits of northern New York. Scarper, seven feet tall and shaggy—still in his near-human form—keeps trying to drag or carry Clay. And Clay is a nightmare, a tangle of shifting flesh, black as oil except for occasional white glimpses of bone or teeth. Where is his blood?
You scan the parking lot. Someone is going to see Black Tarn. In fact, a truck driver is slip-sliding through the snow around his cab now, and if he gets near her, you fear what she'll do. She already walked under a camera pointed at the pumps, and the other two will be there in a moment. A "huge dog" recorded on camera is bad enough, but what happens if someone sees Clay?
And what happened to Clay? Can you help him? Should you? As you watch, the now-familiar face of "Uncle" Clay bursts out of the black tangle, expression twisted in a rictus of agony. You finally see blood around his lips.
Maybe eating the horse was a bad idea.
I need to keep that trucker away from Black Tarn. I get up in his face and scare him off. Better I "act crazy" than a wolf tear him in half.
My near-human glabro form will give me the intimidating presence I need to frighten away that trucker, without looking obviously supernatural.
I pick up a rock or something and break that camera. Better a vandalism charge than a recording of Clay.
I know how to sneak around a camera. I run for Scarper and Clay and cleverly maneuver them around the edge of the parking lot to the van.
We need to help Clay: I run to Scarper and help him physically haul Clay to the van.
I shift to glabro form, giving me the size I need to help carry Clay.
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In his glabro near-human form, Scarper is at least twice your size, but he's still struggling with Clay's shifting body. Knowing that the longer you stay in this parking lot, the worse things can get, you sprint up to Scarper and grab two fistfuls of slithering black fur. The sensation is revolting, but you get a good grip on the oozing wreckage of Clay's body and sort of hold it together as Scarper runs across the parking lot. He yells at you the whole way, like you're making everything worse, but you use both arms to keep Clay off the asphalt and prevent him from glopping onto the ground.
"Keys!" Scarper snaps when you reach the open back of the van. He lets go of Clay and the howling, groaning mass nearly crushes you, but you manage to shove him into the back, on top of an old pizza box and a pile of tools. That went about as well as possible.
"I said fucking keys!" Scarper says again, rapping you in the back of the head. Rather than wait, he plunges his clawed hand into your fleece, ripping it open, wrenches the keys out, and slams you against the back of the van. You move to close the back of the van, but Black Tarn—now in her homid form, naked and smeared with steaming blood—shoves past you and jumps in behind Clay.
You can't see that trucker, but from all the blood, you suspect he's dead. You close the van and hop into the passenger seat just as Scarper peels out.
"Fuck!" Scarper shouts, screaming across the parking lot, "there were cameras! Why didn't you fucking tell me?"
"You needed help with—"
"You colossal fuckup," Scarper snaps as he blows through the red and turns left. "Can't even trust you to deal with security. Don't fucking talk, just let me think."
"Drop me off and I'll hide that dead trucker." Mortals are nothing but trouble and we need to stop an investigation before it starts.
"What are we going to do about the footage? They're bound to look at it once they find the trucker." We still have time to cover that up.
"How's Clay?" I ask Black Tarn. We may not get along, but it hurts to see Clay suffer like this.
"Get off my back, Scarper. I did everything you wanted and Clay messed up." I'm sick of these old fools.
"Does anyone want to stop for breakfast? I'm buying if it's not horse." My elders are idiots and I'm enjoying this as I plan my way out of here.
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