"'Get off my back! Get off my back!'" Scarper yells, a crude impression of your voice. "I clean up after you, and now I'm cleaning up after Clay." His will to argue seems to go out halfway through the sentence. He's afraid for Clay. You watch him from the corner of your eye as he slowly deflates, returning to his scrawny homid form.
It's a frantic ten-minute drive to the auto recycling center where some corrugated fencing and old trailers mark the home of northern New York's greatest champions of Gaia. A blackened chunk of the pipeline hangs like a trophy over the main gate. The garage door opener in the van isn't working again, and Scarper starts screaming and ripping at the steering wheel until you hop out of the van and throw the door open manually. The galliard almost clips you as he guns the engine and the rusty yellow van lurches into the garage. He stumbles out of the driver's-side door, swearing about the snow around the garage door that you didn't shovel.
"I'm okay," is the first thing Clay says when you throw open the back of the van. "Don't worry. It's fine."
It's not fine, though the old werewolf has returned to his homid form—that's all four of you now. His face is streaked with black veins, and his teeth are bloody. A gray film covers his eyes.
"I told you not to eat," Black Tarn tells the old man.
"The First Share of the Kill for Greatest in Station," Clay whispers. Maybe that part of the Litany made sense once, a thousand years ago. Clay tries to spit at Black Tarn, but only vomits blood.
"What do we do?" Scarper whispers, on the verge of panic.
"Watch him," Black Tarn says. Her eyes are clear, her voice firm; her madness has passed and she's the pack theurge again, mistress of spirits and secrets. "You, cub, come with me."
She heads into the breezeway, stumbling over old phone books you're not allowed to throw out, and hastily dresses in cast-off clothes. You make sure she's wearing boots.
Black Tarn is only barely lucid, and for how long? "You killed that trucker, Black Tarn. You're losing control."
"If you want the spirits to tell you what happened to Clay, it was that flesh he ate." A violation of the Litany's spirit if not its letter.
"Can the spirits help us?" I almost never interact directly with that half of my nature.
"I'm glad you're lucid again, Black Tarn, but there's no reason to hurry. You saw Clay. He's as good as dead."
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"Correlation is not causation," Black Tarn says. "Aha, you don't expect that sort of clear-headed analysis from a crazy old theurge, do you? Think of this ruined world as a spiderweb smeared in shit: touch any part of the web, and the whole thing vibrates, and also shit flies everywhere. Cause and effect are trickier to discover than you think, cub. But maybe we can learn something."
You follow her from the breezeway into the cluttered and filthy living area—old sofa, wood-paneled walls, the smell of wet animals—through Black Tarn's kitchen with its hanging dried herbs (sage, parsley, others that don't go in food and don't have names) and its overflowing trash can. You've been focused on that Bane and haven't cleaned all week, which means nothing has been cleaned. Black Tarn kicks some cardboard boxes out of the way and opens the cracked storm door that leads into the garden.
"Do not fucking leave!" Scarper shouts from the other room. "We have two crime scenes to clean up!" But Black Tarn yanks you outside.
Even under a blanket of snow, the garden is beautiful: stark blue-white under the starlight, as the moon set an hour ago, shaded by three old and gnarled apple trees. Low stone walls wind around the garden, also snow-covered, a gentle and natural counterpoint to the hard, ugly lines of the recycling-center-turned-lair. The air here even feels warmer, and though you're covered in blood, you feel pure here.
A crystal-clear stalactite spills from the gnarled limb of an apple tree all the way to the ground. When you catch your ghastly reflection in it, you know enough to fear what Black Tarn plans.
"Come, little cub," she says, "we must learn more. We must enter the Umbra, the world of spirits. And there is no time to delay."
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The Umbra: the spirit-shadow cast by the Living Earth. Once a place for Garou to heal, seek enlightenment, and—if you believe Scarper—ambush enemies from the fourth dimension—now it is nearly inaccessible. You always had a spiritual side as a kid, which might be why you never thought "maybe I'm a werewolf" until your First Change. Werewolf stories were always about flesh and Rage and madness, and though you've had plenty of that, you never knew that real werewolves were servants of the spirit world, seekers of enlightenment, scholars of ancient mysteries.
"The spirit of my pack has been asleep for a long time," Black Tarn says, her voice tired. "The spirits sleep because they are too weak to act. But we may be able to awaken them for a time. They alone can help Clay."
You start to contemplate how much that matters to you. Then Black Tarn squeezes your wrist hard enough to bruise. "Tell them who you are, cub," she says.
You are no true Garou yet, and have no deed name. You hope the spirits will react to either the first name on your New York state ID, or the names your normal friends called you back when you had normal friends, because you don't have anything else.
Mason.
Xavier.
Aidan.
Luis.
Victor.
My name is… [Enter text]
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