Stronger Together chapter 137 (Patreon)

Andi ended up coming home with us. Barb still had a room technically  but she pretty much lived with Rae and I so she gave up her digs for her  friend. We helped Andi pack up all her stuff. She said once this was  over she would find a new place but she didn't want to come back to the  apartment she'd shared with Kirby alone. I didn't bother correcting her  but I saw Barb's face when she said that. Our supernatural halfway house  had another permanent resident. I wasn't going to complain Andi was a  friend and she needed us.

Luckily we'd had an addition put  on the house when Morgan and Sam and Cinder had made thing's a bit too  cramped. All told we had eight rooms and three bathrooms now. Michael  had been, no pun intended, a godsend. He found us guys that were experts  in their field and oversaw the work himself. He didn't say it but we  all knew he wanted to make sure Kara had the best. She had grown much  closer to the family in the last year and even Inari, who was now a full  fledged white court vampire, if a very well fed one was a mainstay at  their place.

When we got back to the house Yang came out  to help move the bags and give Andi a big hug then they all headed back  inside while I followed Harry over to his place. Bob was in the basement  workshop of course but we didn't head right down, instead stopping in a  small pink room at the back of the house. I leaned over the crib  Michael had made by hand and scooped out the small child inside spinning  her around. Her giggles were music to my ears "Maggie! Hey there little  sister! How was the rest of the dinner?"

A dry voice from  behind me responded "Tiring, which was why I put her down for a nap.  Thanks for ruining that by the way. You always come over and get her  worked up." I turned to look guiltily at Susan who had an eyebrow raised  at me to firmly demonstrate her lack of amusement at the situation.  When she saw the guilty look she kept up her stern facade for another  minute and rolled her eyes. "Oh give her here you little menace. Go run  along and play in your magic hole in the ground. You're forgiven."

I  gave a whoop of joy and passed the baby to Susan, giving both her and  the baby a peck on the cheek before racing off, happily avoiding the  lecture I had been expecting "Thanks Sue! Sorry again, talk later! Come  on Harry we have a bad guy to track down." The smile slipped from my  face a bit as I remembered what we were hunting. Man, nothing could  clear your emotional palate quite like holding a baby. I was glad we'd  decided to stop in Maggie's room, we'd both needed that. I slowed to a  more sedate pace as my somber mood reasserted itself and Harry caught  up. His eyes were full of pity as he led me to the door at the back of  the house.

Harry had set up the  entrance to the basement here as a ladder. Partly I think because he was  a creature of habit, but partly because a single small ladder shaft was  easier to defend or lock down than an entire staircase. Aside from the  lessons Henry had supervised the construction via phone. I'd given him  one of our scrolltech phones so he could keep in touch just like Harry  which had made things much more convenient. The basement was small, ten  feet by ten feet. Harry didn't have the skill Henry did, or the help.,  and he was more used to cramped quarters anyway. He had plans to expand  slowly but for now this was it.

Harry  used his flickum bickus spell to set the candles alight and illuminate  the place. All his old stuff had been moved here, including Lash's coin  which Raven had helped ward this time. Over to one side was an old desk  with a very shimmery and well made set of scale mail on it. A perfectly  tailored set of godsteel armor for Kara, still in the very long process  of being enchanted. Even with godsteels amazing properties Harry said a  permanent enchant like that was a bit beyond him and would take months  if not years to complete. Plus I'd only finished making the scale mail  recently, having had to make it piece by piece over the entire year.

All  the old books and potion ingredients were here too, neatly organized  and shelved according to use and origin. Barb had helped move everything  over and insisted on an organizational system. Harry had tried to argue  but he was pretty much putty in the hands of his redheaded apprentice.  Yang probably could have managed the same but she never really played  the doting daughter card. It was nice having a second home like this,  all three of us had been welcomed into the family Harry and Susan were  making and we spent as much time over here as we did at our own place.

Finally  on a very nicely carved pedestal that Kara had made with some  instruction from Michael (she'd decided to take up carpentry because she  was a total daddys girl and the man had looked so proud when she was  learning I thought he would explode) sat Bob's skull. The bleached skull  with the symbols carved into it still looked eerie as hell under the  flickering candle light. Speaking of flickering lights Bob's eye lights  sparked to life as we made it to the bottom of the ladder. The dry  accented voice of the spirit of intellect inhabiting the skull drifted  out, having long since gotten permission to speak in front of me without  needing any sort of dispensation for it.

He  sounded the same as always, amused and bored at the same time somehow  "Well if it isn't the prodigal son. Cameron, what brings you here?  Something unpleasant if past experience is anything to go by, you never  stop by just for tea or discuss my romance novels. I suppose you're here  to pump me for information again. Well, what is it this time? Another  swamp monster in the everglades? Or am I going to be helping identify  another subspecies of cave elves? Between the two of you, the redhead  and the blonde I never get any rest. A man can only take so much." He  very notably made no perverted comments about the girls. Harry had  expressly forbidden it.

I  snorted at the put upon spirit "You aren't a man Bob. You're a spirit  of intellect. Complaining that we make you think too much seems a bit  absurd." His eye lights flickered a bit and I got the distinct  impression he was really serious about this, so I continued. "But you're  not wrong about how helpful you've been since we started taking  separate cases for Harry. Which is why we made you a present." Barb had  been expecting this and she and Kara had worked together to make Bob a  bribe of sorts.

I  reached into a bag Barb had stashed over here for just such an  occasion, figuring Bob would be more receptive to it when he was feeling  underappreciated and pulled out what looked like a tablet. "This is a  scrolltech kindle. Pre loaded with literally tens of thousands of  romance novels of all kinds. Totally magically compatible so Harry won't  affect it. " I knew from the books Bob could interact with electronics  since he wasn't mortal and this seemed like a solid peace offering. "Now  we need some help here, Kirby was killed, we need help tracking down  what did it, Harry used the Sight to get a look and has some info maybe  you can help with."

Harry  launched into a recitation of the facts and Bob continued making pages  flicker across the screen. As a spirit of intellect the skull could  multitask, but I think he sensed the seriousness of the issue because  after Harry finished he shut the thing off...somehow...and flicked his  eye lights up to us. "So you're looking for a werewolf that's old as  dirt and a total psycho? That's not exactly a long list, werewolves  don't usually live too long, even shorter life expectancy than normal  people honestly because of all the things that try to kill them. Plus  the suicide rate is astronomical. If I had to put money on who it is I'd  say The Beast is probably in town."

Harry  and I gave each other confused looks before I spoke up. "See I feel  like you're saying those words with capital letters but they're  incredibly general ones to use in a title. Wouldn't any given werewolf  be eligible for the name The Beast? That isn't exactly helping us narrow  things down. What are we supposed to research." After answering he'd  turned the scroll back on but at my question he groaned and shut it off.  He clearly felt like he'd answered us fully but that wasn't exactly a  helpful lead to follow up on. Asking our sources about a werewolf who  went by The Beast would get us laughed out of whatever shady parking  garage or back alley we happened to meet them in.

Bob  gave a frustrated grunt, which considering his lack of lungs or a  throat was weirdly impressive "The Beast of Gevaudan. Harry, you  remember I told you the medieval french were big into werewolves and the  Loup-Garou curse started there? Well the Beast is the original recipe.  Eleven secret herbs and spices of crazy. He was some inn-keeper in  medieval France who pissed off a sorcerer by banging his wife when they  stayed at his place. The Sorcerer in question laid the first Luop-Garou  curse, but he made the horrible mistake of making that curse a full time  thing instead of just the usual three days a month."

I  was confused "Ok, but Kirby was tortured by electrical wire. No way a  Loup-Garou had the presence of mind or even the manual dexterity to  manage that. Those big ass butcher knife claws have to get in the way  when doing delicate work. I could see how he might still be alive but I  doubt a fucking ten foot tall killing machine covered in fur could make  it into the country without SOMEONE noticing. What makes you think The  Beast did this?" I couldn't imagine a full fledged werewolf running  around looking for someone in wolf form all the time and not making the  news or at least starting some rumors. Mortal blindness only went so  fucking far.

Bob  scoffed "Because of why it was a horrible mistake. I wasn't done the  story. The Beast was stuck as a Loup-Garou all the time, but part of  what makes the curse so effective is the time spent as a man. It's three  days of horror a month and a chance to decompress and return to a  normal state of being so it sucks just as month the next time. The Beast  was stuck as a werewolf. The man and the animal were stuck together.  Which was fine in the short term, except Loup-Garou don't age when  transformed. Because of the healing factor."His voice was excited as he  continued "After the first century or two as a monster the man managed  to fight back and suppress the wolf, leaving him with the power of a  Loup-Garou under his complete control."

Oh,  well that was... pretty bad. Sadly he wasn't done. "Apparently being  trapped inside the head of a slavering animal for two hundred years  drove The Beast crazy. The guy cam back fifteen shades of twisted and  pretty much everyone avoids him. I think he's signed onto the accords as  a free holding lord, he spends most of his time in France abducting and  torturing tourists for kicks. If he's here for the baby wolf I can't  even guess what he wants but I can promise you it's definitely not  nice." Fuck. So we had yet another serial killer running around town  with powerful supernatural abilities, this one with the primordial  strength and magic resistance of the fucking king of all werewolves.  Well shit.