You carefully shape the words of the Primal Tongue—the ancient language of the Garou, which you learned almost instinctively after your First Change—as you cannot speak human language in your wolf forms.
The old woman laughs bitterly, a horrible sound to hear from a wolf's throat.
"You cannot teach the spirits, pup," she spits. "They teach you. Or perhaps not even they can teach you—thrice-tried, thrice-failed."
Failed? Confused, you turn as Scarper—tall and lean and shaggy in his near-human form—stalks down the slope, bloody knife in hand, to stand beside the old theurge.
"I finished your work, idiot," Scarper says. "I finished the Bane." Before you can speak, Clay emerges from the icy woods, kneels, and starts to feed on the horse-thing without a word.
"Clay tasked me with destroying the Bane. It's right there, dead."
"I'm not interested in your riddles, Scarper. Say what you mean."
"There are more enemies than just this Bane. It might have allies among the humans. We need to…deal with them."
"I did what you demanded. Now you must acknowledge what I have earned." I am no longer a "pup" or a "cub." In victory, I am Garou.
"From what I know of Banes, killing the host body might not be enough. Should we look for signs that it escaped into the spirit world?"
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"Is that what you think?" Clay says, looking up from his filthy meal. "That we…owe you something, pup? You owed us a dead Bane, and you failed. Scarper did what you could not."
To emphasize his packmate's words, Scarper gestures with his knife across his hairy throat.
You sputter. Where to begin? The "Bane" was the horse Clay is feeding on right now, not the man. The man was already dead—you're sure you killed him. You finished them both without help, even though the others were supposed to back you up, were supposed to…
What would be the point of arguing? You look from Clay's blood-smeared face to Scarper's gleeful smirk to Black Tarn's hard, mad glare, and know that you will find neither mercy nor fairness here. This pack is faithless and treacherous, consumed by old grudges. The Litany is just a weapon to them. You will win no arguments here, nor find any Glory among these cruel old wolves.
"Get back to the van," Scarper tells you. "Get yourself cleaned up. You look like shit. We're going to have to clean up your mess." He flings the keys at you, and you drop them in the darkness. You dig them out of the snow and pick them up in your teeth. Scarper and Black Tarn chuckle as you fumble around, while Clay continues to gorge himself on the horse-thing.
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Keys held securely in your mouth, you pad through the snow, under the dead winter trees, for maybe ten minutes. In the silence and darkness, you forget about Clay, the Bane, and the old pipeline as you pass through a twilight world of shifting shadows and gusting snow—the world as it was ten thousand years ago. Then you suddenly spill back out into the regular world, as if stepping onto a rectangular map laid out on a table. Trucks rumble down a county road; human silhouettes pass under fluorescent lights. The smell of diesel and fast food. One step takes you from the desolate wilderness into what passes for northern New York's civilization: a loading bay behind an Amazon fulfillment center.
It's past midnight and traffic on the nearby road is infrequent, so you lope easily across the street, careful to avoid cameras, until you spot Clay's rusted-out Chevy Astro. You stop in front of the Speedway's big glass windows, because you don't see yourself like this often: a titanic wolf, your bulk prehistorical and monstrous, with enormous canines and bright, clear eyes—intelligent eyes. In the relative darkness of the parking lot, you can't even see any blood on your fur, which is—
Inky black.
Gray.
Dappled gray-brown.
Silver.
White.
Brown.
Red.
Golden.
Blue-gray.
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Like Scarper. The thought intrudes before you can dismiss it. A plain and humble color. In this form, you can pass for a huge dog, when it's dark and people are drunk. That might not be dignified, but it's occasionally useful.
But it's folly to stand here, waiting for someone to walk past and notice the pony-sized brown wolf with the car keys in its teeth. You slink back into the shadows, then force yourself to regain your homid form. The Change to your natural form is easier than the others; the most painful part is when the freezing cold hits your naked body. You scramble into the van and get dressed, grabbing some spare sneakers from under the seat to replace your obliterated boots. Then you just sit there.
What are you supposed to do? Cry? Scream and rage? Accept your fate as a permanent cub in a three-Garou pack, where the youngest member is fifty-three and they all think the world already ended?
Fuck this. I've got a van and the keys. I'm gone. It doesn't matter where. Let's get back to human civilization; this "werewolf" thing isn't working out.
Time to grieve in a constructive manner: by stealing five bucks from Clay's spare jacket and getting something to eat.
Nothing wrong with a good cry. Gonna do that for a few minutes.
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Clay usually keeps a few crumbly old bills in his Desert Storm-era army jacket, and a quick search turns up a whole Hamilton. You're eating good tonight. The van creaks as you hop out with the tenner clutched in your hand and head for the Speedway's sliding glass double doors, eager to join the People of the Map, the people whose lives make sense.
The doors take a second to open, and you see your reflection. Ooh, that's not good. You look like an insane criminal, which you've gotten used to. But did you always look so driven, so furious? Staring back at you is a wild-eyed young—
Man.
Woman.
Nonbinary person.
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