Seri's Story

The padding of light footfalls on the rooftop above Arman would likely be the first that he knew of Seri's presence. It was likely that if the raggedly dressed werecat had wanted to remain undetected he could have, but he seemed to be making no effort to hide himself. The yellow-eyed boy peered down at the heavier-set man with a grin. "What do we have heeeere then?" he purred mockingly, "Looks to me like someone's been a bad, bad dog again, haven't they?"

Seri hopped from the rooftop to the fire escape below nimbly, balancing precariously upon a guard-rail with seemingly no trouble at all. "Can't contain yourself for a few measly days? Tut tut. Anyone might think the puppy was rabid. Is that it, Arman? Are you foaming at the mouth like a dumb animal, a slaaave to your instincts?"

"Hello Kitten"

As much as he wanted to despise the odd little creature, he really didn't. Seri was an unusual thing -a freak. That's why he belonged. Sharp of tongue, claws and teeth; there was no use in getting stirred up and striking out at his wind up games. Not if you didn't want to make a fool of yourself. Arman had learnt so. Besides, he was weirdly charming; in a way that made you want to tie him up in a bag and dump him in a trash can.

Despite being rash and often brutal, Arman was not hateful, not towards pack members, and neither was he that easily angered. There might have been some malice to Seri's words and his regard for Arman. But the werewolf took it all as friendly jibes, as he usually did when he was met with hostility within the pack. He remained happily in his sphere of social ineptness.

He gave the werecat only one glance before fixing his eyes forwards and on his way.

"Big bad dog? Sure you got a word wrong there.
I'll have you know I have a good hold on my instincts. If I didn't... don't you know what dogs do to cats?"

Letting that hang for a while, he then let out a small, barking laugh. It was lost of humour.

"Did she survive?" He asked, interested as he strolled trying not to be put off by the feline manner in which Seri moved. It made him a little uncomfortable. Arman assumed Seri knew what had come of the attack, since he knew about it in the first place.

Seri nodded his head absent-mindedly, as though he hadn't really thought about it. "Found by one of Baron's wolves, taken away to a hospital. Lucky girl. Not so lucky for us, though. Baron won't be happy... won't like humans getting attacked on his doorstep, I'll bet. He's got a fondness for them, can't imagine why. Nasty hateful things that they are."

He stretched out on his perch, yawning, before stalking after Arman along the railing. "If you don't start being more careful, one of these days somebody's going to come to put the rabid wolf down." he said, voice laced with snide disapproval. "Church, Ardelean, Baron... doesn't matter. We're gonna get caught in the crossfire." The werecat slipped from the fire escape onto the top of a half-ruined wall, bare feet padding across the brick.

"Lucky girl. That's good. Really good. I'm glad." In support of this, he smiled in a nastily toothy way.

"Hm" he continued, scratching the tangle that was his dirty beard in a worried way at the mention of Baron. "Not so lucky. Don't worry your strange self, nothing'll happen to the pack. I'll make sure of it. And especially not you. I've never met anyone better to wriggle out of things. I have everything under control. Everything will be ready-" he cut off, a menace eclipsed the previously buoyant glaze.

"Maybe it's time to expand our territory, Kitten..."
In fact, he had a few things in mind that Baron would like even less.

They were heading towards a row of ruined houses, their insides gutted, making a good, covered pathway. The warehouse was located at the other end. As Arman passed beneath the first roof from a gaping hole in the side of the house, he started to hum, which lightened him up some. The sound would ricochet, an eerie echo ensued which matched the scene of rot perfectly. There were signs of recent life lined along the walls, mouldy blankets, cheap wine bottles; the smell of urine was particularly potent.

"So, have you all missed me? I'm certain Cass has." He was only half joking. Arman was under the illusion that quite a lot of the pack members actually liked him, rather than that they were too scared to be outwardly belligerent.

"There's murmurs in the pack that you go too far, you know. I'm sure you hear them, you have good ears, yes?" Seri murmured, shaking his head. "Expand our territory... and then what, hmm?" he hissed in a breath through his teeth. "Then we're out from under the feet of the bastards who tread on us? For a whiiiile, at least. But then? Then the boot would come down harder. Splat. Bye bye, us."

The warehouse was fast approaching at the end of the street. Seri deftly ascended the side of the building, still looking down at Arman below. "There's a reason you haven't already taken charge, rabid wolf. Cass keeps us safe. You put us in danger. Not everyone's as... ambitious as you. Keep that in mind." he purred, before slipping inside through a hole in the roof, choosing not to take the door with Arman.

A black sedan rolled by ever so slowly. It paused briefly outside of the warehouse before moving on. Most of the street lights here didn't work so the only light on the road had come from the car. It was not often that a vehicle came down this way.

Almost immediately behind the sedan was a truck. The occupants of the truck seemed to pay no heed to the Sedan, though, as it too crept by the warehouse.

"This place gives me the creeps." Cally said as she turned to Arren, while he was driving.

"Yeah, stinks like shit too." He commented, pointing the spotlight up at the dilapidated buildings. "I don't know if this place will even be worth the investment... I'll pull up here and we can get some photographs of the place.."

Seri watched the cars go by from his perch up on a stack of rusted shipping crates, above which was the hole in the roof he had entered by. The werecat grimaced, waiting until they had passed before descending nimbly, dropping from one crate to the next before landing finally atop the crate at the bottom. “Go after them?” Seri rolled his eyes, “To what, punish them for trespassing? Tsk.” He seated himself with his legs hanging over the edge of his perch and stretched out lazily. “Sounds like a lot of effort just to make a point. You don’t see the otherrr packs getting all worked up over people passing through their territory.” He purred, shaking his head.

He wrinkled his nose and spared Michel a derisive glance, “You smell like a brewery, Michel. A brewery full of hobos. It’s repulsive.”

Finally, Seri turned his attention to Cass. He unhooked a small bag from his hip and tossed it across the warehouse to her. Inside was a bundle of pill-boxes, bottles of medicine, a roll of bandages and – interestingly enough, some contact lenses. It was exactly what you might have expected to find in an average person’s medicine cabinet – likely because Seri had simply swept his arm across the shelf without paying attention to what he was taking. Thankfully, all of it was labelled. “I ... found this, while I was out.” He remarked with a coy grin.

"Hey, man, Arman. You gotta stop soundin' so fuckin' serious 'n creepy shit. Like a fuckin' old guy from the dark ages. We're in a shit hole but we've got light bulbs, y'know, pal? Just... lighten up or somethin'."

Walking past Arman was the tall, and hardly intimidating Hubert. Chubby and never without a grin, most didn't take the man seriously. He wore plaid shirts and washed out jeans nearly every day if he wasn't working at the restaurant. He liked to laugh. He liked to joke. Acted like nothing was ever meant to be grim and dark. Trying to be the one big joke in a city filled with drags.

Between the fingers of one hand was a sprite and water, in the other, a box of crackers. He boxed Michael over the head with the crackers and chuckled. "Hit the bottle like a champ, yeah? Hahaha! When you're done blowin' yer shit outta your mouth I got somethin' for you to eat. If you don't lose your stomach somewhere there. Yeuch."

He nodded up to Seri and Cass, giving them both a phony salute with the bottles. "'ello, 'ello. Whassat you got? Done stole'd some goods?"

“And when people are passing through other pack’s territory, they’re aware of it, and show respect…” Arman bristled. Speaking of respect, he was getting none. He wondered why he bothered with this lousy group of children, jokers, and downright imbeciles. They clearly needed direction - direction which he could offer.

In other circumstances Cass might have offered Seri some warm words or at least a smile as she snagged the bag from the air and peered inside for a quick inspection. But she was too tense for niceties. This was how it’d always start. Arman would act like that uncle that everyone was fond of when he returned, despite the obvious sense of hostility which would fall upon the warehouse whenever he entered.

Arman growled under his breath as Hubert flounced by. Just what he needed when he was about to make some serious suggestions. He didn’t think the man understood what serious meant. His expression grew darker, just like a creepy old guy from the dark ages.

Michel was too out of it to react quickly to the light bosh around the back of his head but gave a groan a few seconds afterwards and said something which sounded vaguely like “I’m sorry” – well, it was more a slurred whine. He swayed for a little while then sniffled and started to look for something to clean with under Cass’s unimpressed stare.

“Stole?” Cass piped up, regarding Hubert the same way she did the smaller children. “Didn’t you hear what he said? He found it whilst he was out.” The smile she offered him was only a whisper of what it would usually be.

Arman remained stood in his bubble of imagined superiority.

“Are we not going to address the fact that we’ve got some posh ‘uns snooping around? Someone said something? Someone told someone there are people here?” His tone grew more aggressive and he glared around at those inside the warehouse as he demanded, although many had already shrunk into the shadows, sensing trouble ahead.

"Get over yourself," Seri replied to Arman with a yawn, "You know, if it weren't for your one-man crusade, nobody would care where we lived. There's a lot of street rats like us in this part of town, too many for the sort who cruise around in cars to bother sifting through. Until you start kicking their nest, reminding them they live next door to us."

He lay back languidly on the crate, one leg dangling down from it. His yellow eyes lay boredly on Arman, like a housecat might watch an angry terrier while safely perched out of reach on a shelf, and he sneered. "But sure, come up with a conspiracy. That's probably more fun to play along with, anyway."

Marry watched the arguments and bickering from a shadowy corner. Some of the wolves looked scary, others looked nice, but Marry knew to stay safe she had to stay quite. Quivering in her human form, Marry slid down the cold wall to her tush and brought her knees to her chest, hugging them as she watched behind her jet black bangs.

Lindsay walked the streets of her new home, it wasn’t dark out but still in-between buildings were shadows and bottles being kicked about. The buildings didn’t perk much interest in her focusing on a rock on the ground she begun kicking it around as if she was playing soccer, kicking it away with the instep of her foot, she saw it ricochet off a bigger rock and into the shadows, her interest being perked by a warehouse that seemed abandoned, she peeked inside and stepped inside, ”Oh, hello” she said with a calm voice, ignoring the men in the room.

"Found it! Right, right," chimed Hubert with a chuckle. "He found all of that." He gave Cass a wink, then set himself down on the floor, elbows on his knees. He made sure he was a bit away from all the yuck. It smelled something awful. Like the rest of Phantom Quarter.

"Can't we get some new digs, Cass? This place is really startin' to ware on me, y'know? Ain't a good place for nobody. Especially the kids. Not as old as Lord Arman the First of the Dirtage, but old enough to be concerned."

He looked up as Arman spat. With his anger bubbling, just a bit, he got up and walked over to the man. "Listen, buddy. There ain't no reason to get all riled up! Listen to Seri. Even he's on your case! You're the one bitin' people all willy nilly! We can't do that, bud! We don't turn into dust bunnies after we get bit. We turn into monsters! What's that whole lecture about power and responsibility? Stop actin' like you probably didn't get us in this mess!"

He paused at the hollow sound of a rock hitting the warehouse floor. His eyes narrowed. "Th' hell are you? Nah, nah, let me guess. Another one of Arman's victims? Good goin' man!"

Lindsay looked at the man, getting in a defensive stanse. "Who's Arman?" she asked, her eyes narrowing, maybe this had been a mistake. There were too many men inside. "I wish to speak to the alpha" she said, her stanse still defensive, not caring if she was a percieved threat. "Believe me, I wouldn't let someone do this to me." she spat.

Kicking the nest, Seri had said. Arman pressed his lips together into an angry line. He couldn’t argue, that’s what he was doing. But it needed to be kicked. But still, he refused to believe that he was the reason for the disturbance. There was nothing that would lead anyone who found the bodies to the warehouse. He’d made sure of that.

“New digs?” Cass repeated, her incredulity breaking through the tension. “Yeah? Hubert? And who’s paying for our lovely new hom-“

“Conspiracy? Come on the- No way could this be anything to do with me-” Arman broke through her in a rage which was equally dishhed out to both Seri and Hubert. It was soon cut off when a figure wandered into the warehouse. As casual as could be.

Cass was staring too. Please, not now. Those gaps in the walls sure made for quick escape routes, but also left them vulnerable. She regarded the girl cautiously; they’d already had enough unwanted visitors today.

Arman studied the newcomer briefly then shrugged “Not one of mine.” So nonchalant.
“Alpha?” An unpredicted guffaw crashed through his currently heated temperament. “Alpha male is right there, girly.” He jabbed a finger towards Cass. “Be better off speaking to me, though.”

Michel looked up from his mopping, drunk and dazed.
"Howdyou find uz?"

Meanwhile, a low growl ran away through Cass’s tightly clamped teeth. As someone who always kept a hold on their wolfish instinct, this was a bad sign.

Seri cast the new girl a bored look, assessing her and finding her to be ... well, disappointingly ordinary. He had to hand it to her for just waltzing up to a pack of werewolves without seeming the slightest bit afraid - even as a werewolf herself, she should have known better than to stray into the midst of another pack uninvited. Even a ragtag one like theirs.

He turned his attention back to Arman for a moment, sneering at his bravado, before he swiftly turned to Cass. She was growling.

His eyebrows rose. This was sure to be interesting.

Lindsay listened to their argument and pondered backing out, but it was far too late for that. ”Okay, miss Alpha” she said turning towards Cass, ignoring the boys. ”I would like to join your pack, I don’t have one, and I think it would be a good time to actually have one” she said in a more confident tone. ”I am just glad it is ruled by a female, a more appropriate alpha than a male” she said, adding a growl after ‘male’. ”I understand your growling, I know how stupid it is to wander in here.” she said, her eyes never leaving Cass.

Mary still clung to the shadows now behind Cass.

"If you wanna speak to an absolute dick, you speak to him, yeah," Hubert sneered at Arman. He moved forward towards the new wolf, up beside Cass to give her some sense of backup. She seemed to be very concentrated on Cass. Something he wasn't really fond of. The hair on the back of his neck rose on end. Ready to pounce at any second.

"The hell you talkin' about, lady? I don't think you really understand what a big mistake you've made."

"You don't just get to waltz in and start talking bullshit, princess," Seri hissed, "Like you have some sort of right to claim a place here. You quite clearly have no idea what you're talking about."

The werecat rolled his eyes, shifting back into a sitting position. "Cass is pack leader because we respect her. Not because of her gender, or anything else. You have some back-pedalling to do... you're coming across as arrogant. Disrespectful."

He bared his fangs in a feral grin. "That's a bad move."

Lindsay never took her attention off of the alpha, ”Listen here boys, I don’t have to explain to ya’ll why I’m here, I have to explain to her because she is alpha, and ya’ll aren’t.” she snarled, now starring at the boys speaking. She could feel the hate for her and the threat of an attack if she made the wrong move, which she normally did, she turned her back on the door, not wanting to have any of the males behind her.

”I have seen several packs, with numbers far greater than yours. I think ya’ll could use a hunter and fighter like me, unless you want to lose more members than you can afford.” she countered, her eyes softened as she saw the little girl. ”I do understand we are off on the wrong paw, my name is Lindsay, Lindsay Blare, I didn’t choose this life, it was chosen for me.” she said, catching her tears before they could form, as she remembered the attack.

Mary clung to a wolves legs as she was being watched now by Lindsay.

Miss Alpha.

Cass still found it all a bit confusing and flattering as the others flocked to her aid, but having a good blush was the last thing on her mind. She needed to have a proper think on what to do about those nosiers in the cars. The feeling that they’d been somehow compromised was strong, and as she swept the warehouse, she was only yet again reminded that she could not let anything happen to these people. A plan needed to be drawn up. But the problems just seemed to be rolling - or strolling - in one after the other.

Seri was right. Hubert also. This girl really had no clue what she was talking about. Cass had bigger things to worry about than this Lindsay who had taken it upon herself to proclaim herself worthy. She didn’t look nearly pathetic or rough enough for Cass to feel any real kind of sympathy. The tone she was taking – especially with the males – was also threatening to trigger another snarl to follow the one which had only just trailed off. She also simply hated the term ‘pack’. They were people, not animals of the sheer instinctive sort.

Besides, not many of the people in this warehouse had chosen this life, who would choose such a lif-

“You should be grateful” Arman said, seeming to be the only one to be taking on Lindsay with any kind of seriousness. Probably because he was insane. “Now you are so much more than you used to be, your limits have been stretched, you can do so many things that before were-“

“Shut up.” Cass said, directing her venom at Arman. Her voice was loud, clear. A shiver ran up her spine and it arched and twisted visibly, a scary sign that a turn was approaching. “And get out.”

Lindsay sighed and leaned against the wall of the abandoned building, she dug into her pocket and began playing with her lighter, ”Miss, I mean you no disrespect, I just don’t trust men”[b] she said, looking up at Cass, keeping her distance. [b]”I’m sure your male members are good people, I just have a long history with men screwing me over” she said as she opened the pack of cigarettes, and put the trash in her pocket, ”I would love nothing more than to join your pack, I feel I can offer a lot.” She said, putting the lighter in her pocket. She slid down to a crouching position, looking at Cass. ”If you decide I am not good enough, I will leave” she exclaimed.

Cass wasn’t aware of what this newcomer was saying, only of the smell of the smoke which was aiming to fill the warehouse with its stench at its own liberty. Much like the person causing it.

In response to her demand, Arman laughed. And that was it.

It took her longer to turn into the huge, dark-haired dire wolf than it did for Arman to switch into his bipedal monstrosity. But she had a head start. Still, he recognised the oncoming turn quick enough to be able to make the first move. His werewolf weight slammed into her muddled body before her transformation was complete, throwing her to the floor in a whirl of furred, canidae limbs and fragile human ones. Layabout fallen rafters and leftover sheets of plastic and metal were sprayed across the warehouse floor in the commotion that followed. Cass packed more brute force but Arman had the gift of those arms that seemed to have been made especially for crushing throats. His claws weren’t much of a contest for her jaws and inches of teeth, once they’d locked down once on his grabbing arm she was able to writhe away from the initial drop, broken but still able. His blood stained the worn concrete floor, but still, they continued to battle, moving so fast it’d be unwise for anyone to attempt to intervene. Except for perhaps Seri. If it had been Cass suffering from the wounds which were painting their home, there’d have probably been more objections. But each bite that met its mark was Cass’s. He couldn’t get his arms around her; they were slick with blood anyway. With each darting attack she’d dance away on those four, agile legs.

This was why his plan had been to force her to attack more often, so that she didn’t have time to heal herself. He regenerated faster, if he caught her weakened, then she would be his.

But not today. His knees were weakening by the time she’d shepherded him towards the door. He left, sinking into the dark, left to defeat and discomfort.

The dire wolf remained for a few more panting minutes before Cass returned to her human form, broken. She limped, naked and silent, to where they kept their ragged clothes and pulled something hastily over her head. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but still, she felt ashamed, even though she knew it had to be done.


“Everyone needs to leave.” She said to the wall she faced as she changed, unable to turn and face the people who depended upon her. They looked to her to keep them safe. And safe they were not. Not here. “Meet back here in a fortnight.”

“I’ll find somewhere for the littles. But… we need to scatter, split. He’s going to come back. I feel… I think we’re being watched. The cars. If they find us after what’s been happening in town… It’s not safe here. We’re not safe.” Cass crossed her arms across her chest, hands wrapping around the tops of her arms. Finally, she turned to face the warehouse. The children, the misfits, the lost of Lutetia… the people who had nowhere else to go but here. And now she was telling them to leave.

“Go…”

Lindsay was getting mad, she had no clue why she was angered by the wolf attacking the woman, but she was mad. "I'm not leaving. If Arman comes back, I'll help. I'm not leaving" she said, gathering the courage to speak up against the alpha. "The others might, but not me" she added, litterly putting her foot down. Her skin began to twitch, she could feel her change comming. She quickly calmed down, and the twitching slowed but still remained.