Dragon 1 Chapter 21 (Patreon)

It was easier to see Brent’s pack magic now that I was clear-headed and not looped up with drugs. His magic wasn’t as dirty as the pack magic the wolves in the factory had, but it had the same oily darkness mixed into what was once bright, gleaming orange. The part that concerned me, though, was that it was like he was the center of a spider web. The pack magic flowed out from him, and it was the dirty pack magic that was flowing.

He had time for it to have gotten better, but from what I could guess, it hadn’t changed at all. The isolation and his healing abilities hadn’t been able to fix it. If anything, it seemed like it had gotten worse as it poured out and collected from the other wolves.

I watched it a moment longer, and a bigger puzzle emerged. Where the links were dirty, they seemed more flexible. It was almost like something was pushing on Brent’s magic, pulling and tugging at the pack bonds.

“Zach, what do you see?”

I didn’t feel the need to turn to her, wanting to keep watching the magic. “His magic is still dirty, and it is flowing out to the rest of his pack. And like a feedback loop, the same dirty magic is coming back to him.”

“The alpha is the source of our magic, and we all support him. But you are saying that it is getting worse?” our host asked.

“Slowly, yes. But I’m not even sure that’s the biggest problem. There is something external putting pressure on all of your pack bonds. Pushing and pulling them, trying to realign them.” Then it hit me. “If this drug is making your pack magic flexible, could it do the same for the omegas? Make it flexible enough to make a new pack?”

She shrugged. “You tell me. It sounds like you have a better view of all of this. But this pressure is what is causing our alpha to lose control?”

I wasn’t sure of anything, but logically and instinctually, it felt right. I had a feeling the side effect on the human population was just a happenstance and way of earning extra revenue. This drug seemed to best loosen pack bonds, and it was allowing the omegas to reforge the bonds under a new alpha.

“Morgana, I think this drug is allowing someone to reform pack bonds and create a pack out of omegas. Now that it’s affecting Brent and his pack, I think it could break his bonds or reform them.”

“Could it take his pack from him and give it to this other alpha?” Morgana asked, eliciting a gasp from our host.

“I… yes. Yes, I think that’s exactly what is happening.”

Our host’s gasp turned into a ragged sob. “No. No, no.” She pulled at her hair, and I realized the mania in her eyes. Even considering such a thing was agonizing for her.

“Calm down. Please, calm down.” I turned to her and grabbed her by the shoulders.

She whimpered as she bit the inside of her cheek and shuddered. Just the idea of their pack bonds being broken or repurposed was sending her into a fit. What would the same pressure do to their alpha? I looked up at all the bloody and injured wolves and got my answer.

Brent was being driven insane by whoever made the drug and was exerting pressure. That also meant there was an expedient solution of removing said person. If only we knew who it was.

“Okay, we have at least a rough understanding of what’s going on, but I have absolutely no idea how to fix it. I’m way out of my depth here, Morgana. How can we stop the drug from pressuring this pack?” I let go of our host, who took the opportunity to go sit down. She put her head in her hands as she tried to put herself back together.

“Well, I guess it isn’t so much a drug as a potion now. If it is playing with magic, it’s a potion. So, we need to solve it with the same; we need a potion to counteract it. Elves used to use some simple tinctures to cleanse their magic. We could start there, and see if there is anything stronger out there.”

I could feel my eye shift back, and my vision became normal once again. “Okay, that sounds like a decent start.”

Kelly waved as she came over, worry evident in her eyes. “Sorry to listen in, but I couldn’t help my curiosity. You think you can help him?” She pointed with her chin towards the man wrapped now in an anchor chain, her father.

“Maybe. We at least have a working theory and a plan. Are you noticing any differences? Any effects from this?”

“Eew.” Kelly made a face. “I’m not in the same pack as my father. No, the newly formed pack hasn’t had any issues.”

I thought about Chad and his baggie of white powder. If she wasn’t feeling anything, maybe Chad never ended up doing the drug last night. “Good, I saw Chad hocking V-phoria. I was worried he might make a dumb decision and end up spreading this into his pack as well.”

The face Kelly made next should have gone down in the dictionary, next to disappointment. “I really wish there was another big shifter in town to push Chad out.” She looked up at me, hope clear in her face.

“Not a were unfortunately.” I did my best to hide my wince as she nicked the big cut on my side. “But back to your father. Morgana says there is something the elves used to use to cleanse their mana. We’ll do some research and see if something like that could help your father. We need to remove what the drug did to his pack magic before any of this will get better.”

I avoided talking about reforming pack bonds for fear of setting her off like I had our host.

Kelly nodded, her face pensive at best. “Sounds like it is worth a shot. Any chance we can solve this by killing someone? That would make the pack happy.”

“Maybe, if you could find the alpha who was leading this drug ring. The drug is warping their pack magic and the pressure on their bonds is coming from him. If he was gone, I think that pressure would disappear.”

Whispers picked up, and what I said was being repeated around the bottom of the bunker. It seemed to spread like a wildfire after a drought.

Kelly gave me a snort, her ears twitching, following the growing conversations. “Oh, boy. You really shouldn’t have said that.”

Growls picked up around us as several of the wolves of Brent’s pack started to shift. Bandages tore as their bodies bulged and warped.

“You need to get out. Now.” Kelly pushed us towards the spiral staircase in time for the first wolf to come charging through. “Back.” Kelly snarled and partially transformed. Her hands turned into paws, and her ears popped out on the top of her head.

More and more of them shifted, with barely contained violence in their eyes. “What’s happening?”

“You just gave them a target for their aggression. They are going to find this other alpha and tear him apart.” Kelly snapped at a wolf that got close, but more and more of them were shifting and prowling forward as we made our way upstairs.

Howls picked up at the back of the pack, and the rattling of chains caught my attention. Brent was waking up and starting to thrash about.

More than a few wolves shifted over to check on Brent, but dozens were pressing us up the stairs while Kelly held our rear, warding off the eager ones.

I had thought it smelled like wolves before, but now it was overpowering. The bottom of the bunker filled with werewolves shifting and howling. They followed Kelly up the stairs keeping a good distance, but they stacked in shoulder to shoulder, crowding each other up the stairs.

One got bold and snapped at Kelly only for her to swipe at his nose and send him reeling back with a whimper.

“Up. Move it.” Kelly yelled. I stopped looking at the wolves below us and started up the long spiral staircase as fast as I could manage. But each time I rounded another bend, it was like a stop motion film. The wolves crept forward.

Morgana flung open the door at the top of the stairs and was met with a growling wolf.

Shit.

I threw myself forward just as the werewolf lunged. I grabbed the scruff around its neck and brought it down with me, its maw snapping dangerously close to my face. “A little help here?” I called out. Sure enough, Morgana was there, putting two rounds into its back.

“That should keep it down for a bit.” The wolf’s body went still, but there was still intelligence in its eyes as it snapped at me. I pushed it off me.

“What did you do?”

“Shot its spine. It’s a werewolf, it’ll recover in about a day. Plenty of time for us to get out of here.”

Kelly was right behind us. The wolves charged her, trying to through the door. She swatted at them as they got close, but it wasn’t enough to deter them now. While they might act like wild animals at times, they were as intelligent as any person. They knew once that door closed, they would be trapped.

I pulled my gun and squeezed off three rounds, aiming for center mass in the two closest wolves before grabbing the door and helping Kelly pull it closed. “Does it lock?” I braced myself by putting a foot against the wall next to the door so I could hold it closed.

“From the inside, this is a shelter, not a prison.” Kelly snapped.

She was clearly upset. Worry for her father had already exhausted her, and now she was holding off his pack.

I looked around for a solution. Spotting a few aluminum hanging fixtures with tube lights above us, I got an idea. “Kelly, can you rip that off?” I pointed with my chin. My hands were too busy bracing against the door.

The peeling of the thin aluminum sounded above me, but I was distracted watching through the little square port in the door. Werewolves were throwing themselves against the door, their claws scraping loudly against the metal, and occasionally one of them would catch the handle on the other side and jerk at the door.

“Got it. What do you want with it?” Kelly asked, holding a bent and torn piece of aluminum with shattered glass all over the floor.

“Twist it up to make it more solid, and then we’ll use it to bar the door.”

Kelly’s big dangerous looking paws started to crunch the metal. More than once she hissed in the process, but she managed to create what looked like a wadded up straw wrapper dotted with blood. I made room between myself and the door to jam it in. “That isn’t going to hold them long.”

“We just need a head start. Morgana, do you have any backup you can call?” That question was punctuated with a deep bestial roar greater than anything I’d heard before.

“Shit. Dad’s up. We need to be gone, now.”

The sound of metal being ripped to shreds was coming from beyond the door, and I had to agree.

Turning, we ran as the door continued to pound with werewolves, trying to tear it down.

We rounded the corner on our way out and the security guard that let us in was shifted, raising himself up to glare at us. Something between a bestial scream of rage and a howl ripped from his lungs before he charged.

Three flashes went off next to my head. I heard the first one, but after that all I could hear was my ear ringing. Morgana had just fired off at the security guard. I was less pleased that she’d decided to do it right next to my head.

She yelled something at me, but it sounded like a million miles away. Luckily I didn’t need instructions to know what happened next; it was time to get out as quickly as we could.

I ran to the door, but it boomed as I came to a screeching halt.

Kelly was on my other side, which was ringing slightly less. “It’s a door meant to keep out the paranormal; you aren’t going to be able to brute force it.”

I’d heard what she said, but somehow it only translated into a challenge. Unlike some of my other physical feats, I didn’t have to worry about mass. I was far stronger than a werewolf, here where I could wedge myself between two objects, I could put that strength to use. Grabbing the locking bar, I pulled up, throwing my whole body into the motion for leverage. It was solid, but I could feel it give just a little, and that was all the encouragement I needed. Rooting my feet on the ground.

The metal groaned as it warped and bent enough to pull the bar out of the lock.

“Holy shit.” Kelly said behind me. “I’ve seen my father try that; it didn’t even budge.”

“I’m strong, but your father would destroy me in the mass department.” I kicked open the door and the bright sunlight suddenly felt like heaven after being down in the bunker.

Morgana was already on her phone as she ran to the van. I was right behind her, but Kelly paused in the doorway.

“Kelly, we need to go.”

But she shook her head. “You need to go. I’ll be fine.”

There was a loud bang deeper in the building. They must have finally gotten the door to the stairwell open, because howls echoed out from there.

“I’ll try to stall them. Go.” Kelly repeated and shifted fully into a werewolf, tearing her own clothes and heading back in.

I got to the van and had one foot inside the car when Morgana gunned it. Nearly falling out, I swung myself in and slammed the car door.

“Yes, Rupert, this isn’t a joke. Brent’s pack is going wild and they are going to be loose soon. We need all the help we can get to contain this.” Rubert, who I assumed on the other end of the line, started saying something, but she hung up and started dialing another number.

I braced myself in my seat and clicked on my seatbelt because Morgana’s driving terrified me as she hit one hundred. And she wasn’t even looking at the road this time.

“Claire. Tell your asshole of a brother it is an emergency. Council session now. Get your people ready. A pack is going crazy and on the loose. We need all hands on deck to contain it.”

It continued like that as Morgana went through her mental rolodex, calling everybody she could think of.

“You’re calling everyone to arms. Where do we go to get these potions you mentioned?”

Morgana paused between calls. “Zach, I think that’s out of the question now. A crazed werewolf pack is about to run loose in the city. The council is going to call open season and starting doing damage control.”

“So? If we don’t figure out how to stop this, it is just going to happen again and again. Let’s see if we can’t save at least one of them.”

It was clear Morgana wasn’t convinced. Killing those that caused trouble seemed like an easier solution to most problems, and likely the approach they’d been taking for centuries. It was like they were still using medieval logic.

Maybe it was the future doctor in me, but I had to believe there was a way to cure it. It was going to keep happening, and I wanted to help those that were affected by it.

But the drug also seemed to have the potential of continuing to make the alpha behind all of it even stronger. If we didn’t cut it off somehow, they might become too powerful to stop. My options were to find a cure or allow the deaths the council was planning for. I opted for a cure.

Ridding the harm from their pack magic could be the first big win in pushing back the damage that had been done. So far, all we’d been able to do was slow them down.

“Shit Morgana. If they are doing what we think and trying to disrupt the other werewolf packs, then that means any other pack around Philly is at risk.”

Morgana cursed along with me and pulled her phone back out, shooting off texts. “Fine. We are going to see one of my old friends.” She banked a hard right as howls sounded loud enough behind us that I almost thought it was a weather siren going off.

But unfortunately, it was the sound of a crazed werewolf pack on the loose.