Chapter 3

Aliases and Lone Wolves

Chapter 3: Aliases and Lone Wolves

“Your record hasn’t been updated yet for this year. You’ll need to report to the Southwestern Connecticut DONHE Clinic to get your blood work, dental x-rays, and other vitals done,” Agent Crow said.

Wendell was aware. After he stopped going to his primary care doctor and his dentist, both DONHE-compliant Howley-Kirkwood pack members, he knew that meant going back to the DONHE ones. It wasn’t ideal, but neither was continuing to see Cayden’s family (and his in-laws) while he was in the middle of divorcing him.

“For now, we can start with the questions,” Agent Crow said.

In a parking lot in broad daylight in a highly concentrated human area? Wendell didn’t buy it. Normally, this was done privately at his house or on DONHE property.

“Todd’s my case manager,” Wendell said, “He and I have an appointment in two weeks at the beginning of July.”

Wendell would never forget the first time he met Agent Todd Oddsworth, a tree elemental, last year.

Immediately after introducing himself, Todd anxiously asked, “You’re not going to pee on me, are you? The last werewolf whose case I managed popped his leg every time I came around. I had to start wearing my waterproof hiking pants. I think he could smell the tree in me.”

“He’s unavailable. Indisposed. I’m taking over your case for the foreseeable future,” Agent Crow said.

More alarm bells rang in Wendell’s head. DONHE agents always had an exit interview with their clients if they dropped their case or were moved to another assignment. Todd was such a stickler for the rules and so by-the-books, there’s no way he’d be okay with this.

Although Todd wasn’t exactly okay two weeks ago when Wendell last saw him.

He really lived up to Wendell’s, Dani’s, and Aurora’s secret nickname for him – Odd Todd – when he turned up at Wendell’s house to do the question part of Wendell’s yearly physical with his eyebrows and eyelashes burned off and his lips curved into a duck bill.

Every few words out of his mouth were punctuated by an indignant quack like a duck inside of him was trying to bust out.

Days earlier, he was recruited by another branch of DONHE in an all-hands-on-deck illegal and unregistered potion lab bust and was the unlucky victim of a smashed bottle of an unregulated transfiguration potion.

But for all of Todd’s odd ways, Wendell really liked the guy. Todd didn’t hold the same prejudices against werewolves as some of Wendell’s previous case managers. It was an uncommon trait among DONHE employees.

Agent Crow loudly cleared his throat and thumped his pen against the hefty notebook. “I don’t have all day, Wendell,” he said impatiently.

With that attitude driving him, he briskly fired off a string of the standard questions DONHE had for registered werewolves.

Wendell opted to play along and feign ignorance of the fake DONHE agent. He answered honestly but didn’t elaborate. He gave this guy, whoever he was, the bare minimum to work with.

“Wait!” Wendell cut off the agent. “You missed two questions. You’re supposed to ask me about how many blackouts I’ve had and to rate how unusual my dreams have been.”

“Right. Go on,” Agent Crow grunted.

Wendell gave fake answers to the fake questions. Neither were on the list of official DONHE questions.

“Look, let’s finish the rest another time,” Wendell interjected when Agent Crow hit him with two more rapid-fire questions. “I really have to go now.”

As if right on cue, Wendell’s cell phone rang.

“You have my address, meet me there on Thursday,” Wendell said, as he accepted the call from Aurora and slid into the driver’s seat.

He knew as soon as he said it, he’d probably never see this guy again.

He clicked the car locks shut, tapped the speaker phone option, and set his phone on the passenger’s seat next to him. He was tempted to floor it and speed out of the parking lot, but that would look too suspicious. Instead, he waved goodbye to the fake agent and drove out at a reasonable speed.

“I got the sense that something weird was happening,” Aurora said instead of a typical greeting.

“Your senses were on point. A fake DONHE agent just accosted me in the parking lot outside my therapist’s office,” Wendell sighed. “He called himself Gideon Crow.”

“If that’s not an alias, I don’t know what is,” Aurora said.

“I know. That wasn’t the strangest thing, though. This agent was human, Auri,” Wendell said.

Hiring human DONHE agents was unheard of. Humans are too squishy and fragile, and most can’t hold their own against the monsters and non-human entities DONHE is tasked with policing.

“What was he after?” Aurora asked.

“No idea. He was pretending he was taking over my case from Todd,” Wendell said.

“How is Odd Todd?”

“I haven’t seen him in weeks,” Wendell said. “Not since he got all messed up from that potion lab bust. He’s supposed to meet with me again in early July. I guess we’ll see if he shows.”

Wendell stayed on the phone with Aurora as he drove back home.

Pacing around his house, he was telling her about how his also strange therapy session went when his doorbell interrupted him mid-sentence.

“What is it? Did you order takeout?”

“No,” Wendell said, feeling a surge of anxiety. He quietly crept to the front door and peeked through the tiny window hole in the middle of the door. No one. He slowly counted to two hundred and then opened the door.

A brown paper envelope was propped against the glass storm door.

“It’s an envelope,” Wendell said as he carefully picked it up.

He brought it to the kitchen and slit it open with a pair of scissors.

Inside was a carefully cut-out newspaper clipping.

It was a 1993 article about Wendell’s Boy Scout troop being slaughtered by a pack of feral dogs. A grainy, black-and-white photo of Wendell was one of the featured pictures in the article, and bold text declared him the lone survivor.

Handwritten red letters scrawled across the article warned: YOU WEREN’T THE ONLY ONE.

Wendell read them aloud in a shaky voice.

“Dani and I will be over in ten!” Aurora said breathlessly.

* * *

“This is totally not cryptic, weird, and stalkery,” Dani said as she pinched the newspaper article between her fingers like it was a bug. “Auri, can you ‘see’ who left it?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Dani,” Aurora sighed. “I can’t use my clairvoyance on demand. I wish I could, trust me.”

Wendell’s heart hadn’t stopped racing. The words repeated themselves in his head over and over, bashing into each other like bumper cars. “What do they mean, I wasn’t the only one? Everyone in my troop was slaughtered by those werewolves. I saw them die. I saw their bodies,” Wendell choked out.

The carnage still haunted Wendell. He closed his eyes, and there he was, at the campsite with the mauled and mutilated bodies of his friends and fellow scouts heaped and strewn all around him. Tears dripped down his clenched eyes.

“Hey, Wen, it’s okay. You’re here. You’re here,” Aurora said gently, rubbing a warm hand on his back.

Wendell’s teary eyes blinked open. He swallowed thickly and tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace.

“I don’t understand who’d do this,” Wendell said. He wandered into the kitchen to turn on the electric kettle to make tea.

“Do you think it has anything to do with that fake DONHE agent?” Dani followed him.

“Or the upcoming Super Blood Moon?” Aurora added.

“It could be both,” Wendell paced as the water boiled. “But it doesn’t explain why a human would involve themselves in something that happened twenty years ago? What would they have to gain from it?”

“I have an idea,” Aurora said. “Wen, do you have anything from that night?”

Without skipping a beat, Wendell dipped out into the hallway and came back with a framed shadow box. He gently snapped the back off and held out his friend Brad’s bloody merit badge sash.

It was one of the only things that wasn’t ripped and shredded beyond recognition in the demolished campsite. It meant so much to Brad while he was alive that Wendell couldn’t leave it there. He offered it to Brad’s parents, but they told Wendell Brad would’ve wanted him to have it. The next day, Wendell’s mom bought him a shadow box frame to put it in for safekeeping.

Dani flinched away from the merit badge sash as Wendell held it out to Aurora.

“That’s a little morbid that you still have that, Wen,” Dani cringed, “It’s a little serial killer trophy-ish.”

“Dani!” Aurora elbowed her. She gently took the sash. She ran her fingers over the embroidered patches that filled the olive green space.

“Are you getting anything?” Wendell asked eagerly.

Aurora sadly shook her head. “It’s a void of silence. I’m not even catching a hint of a whisper.”

“It’d be too easy if you had all the answers,” Wendell said disappointedly. He put the sash back into the shadow box.

“I don’t want you to have crazy nightmares or anything, but maybe try thinking about… that night before you go to bed. Sometimes our subconscious can see things that our waking selves aren’t aware of. It could be a teeny tiny thing you missed that might be the missing link,” Aurora said.

“Hey, Wen,” Dani cut in, “Did Cayden send someone from his pack here to talk to you? There’s some guy sniffing around your front yard.”

Wendell dashed to a window in the front of the house.

The guy in question was skeletal with a clump of black, greasy hair that looked like oil pooling down his scalp. His worn, holey T-shirt showed off his heaving rib cage jutting out. He shakily paced back and forth, unwilling to cross the grass where Cayden peed a few hours earlier.

“I’ve never seen this guy. He’s not a Howley-Kirkwood,” Wendell said solemnly.

“You’re not going out there to talk to him, are you?” Aurora asked timidly.

“That dude looks like bad news,” Dani agreed.

“Maybe he saw who put this out in front of my house,” Wendell held up the newspaper clipping. “And if he didn’t, he’s here for a reason… and I’m going to find out why.”

Instead of approaching the stranger head-on, Wendell went out his back door and went around the side of the house. The man continued pacing and muttering to himself, completely unaware of Wendell’s presence.

Up close, Wendell could see what he suspected was correct. This man wasn’t a fae drug addict. He wasn’t on drugs at all. He was a lone wolf, and he was starving. He stayed on the street outside the peed boundaries Cayden marked. It was good to see that they were as effective as Cayden said they’d be.

Finally, the lone wolf noticed Wendell.

The man’s murky brown eyes were bloodshot and sunken into his yellowed skin. “Wendell Howley-Kirkwood?” He asked in a trembling, hoarse voice.

Instead of confirming his identity, Wendell turned his own question onto the stranger. “What do you want?”

Who this lone wolf was wasn’t as important as why he was here.

The man continued pacing. He coughed a dry, rattling cough. It sounded so plague-stricken it set Wendell’s teeth on edge.

“Did you see who left an envelope on my front porch?” Wendell demanded.

The lone wolf’s expression was pained, but blank. If he knew anything about the envelope, he did a damn good job of keeping his reactions to himself.

“They’re coming,” he rasped. “They’re coming. They’re coming. She’s coming.”

“Who’s they? And who’s she?” Wendell asked, losing patience.

“They’re coming!” The lone wolf insisted.

“Who?! Tell me!” Wendell commanded.

The lone wolf took in a deep, shuddering breath. Then, he froze. Cautiously, he sniffed the air. His eyes widened in horror. “He’s here,” he croaked. His entire body tensed up, then, like a shot, he bolted.

For someone who looked and sounded so ill, Wendell was impressed by the man’s ability to sprint like his life depended on it.

Wendell hated that his first thought was that Cayden was the mysterious “he” that was scaring the lone wolf. He hated even more that he didn’t hate the idea of his almost-ex-husband running to his rescue. Not that he needed rescuing from barely a conversation with a lone wolf who was practically on his deathbed.

When no one appeared, Wendell went back into his house. Inside, Aurora and Dani double-teamed him with questions.

“I know nothing,” Wendell said, frustrated. “He warned me that someone was coming, then fled for his life. I didn’t smell any werewolves, though.”

“Maybe you should call Cayden,” Aurora said.

“Why? He already knows lone wolves are in the area,” Wendell scoffed. “Plus, I’m going to see him at Astrid’s baby shower. If anything else happens, that’s when I’ll tell him. But nothing else is going to happen. Nothing at all.”

“If you say so,” Dani said brightly.

“Aurora, can you still induce visions from the past?”

“Retrocognition? I’ve been practicing on myself, but I can’t make any promises about whether it’ll work on other people,” Aurora warned.

“Well, it’s better than me waiting around hoping I’ll dream about what happened and that it’ll be vivid enough for me to actually pick out clues about what I might’ve missed,” Wendell asserted.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Aurora asked nervously. “I don’t know what the long-term psychological impacts are.”

“We’re just looking back at one moment,” Wendell held up his pointer finger. “I need answers, Aurora. Fake DONHE agents, lone wolves, and threatening newspaper clippings might just be the start. Not to mention the mysterious ‘theys’ and ‘she’ the lone wolf warned me about.”

“Okay, that’s valid. I still don’t love the idea of putting you through what was probably the worst moment of your life again, but I understand what your motivations are,” Aurora sighed. “Are you ready to start?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Wendell said, steeling himself for the trauma he was about to relive.