Roy quickly puts the rifle in the trunk of Alisha's car, then whispers to the others. "Stay calm, act normal. Any of you good with words? I'm not the biggest people person, especially when it comes to nosy norm cops."
Hey there Officer, how are you doing today? Xannder says with a large grin on his face.
"Hey there folks...This isn't the best time for you to be visiting Crested Butte. I suggest you head back the way you came and come back at a better time."
Is this a tourist city? Did we come during the off season?
Xannder turns to his companions.
See I told you guys this wasn't the right place.
"Shut up." Roy gives Xannder a disgusted look. Jesus Christ, if the norms can't even deal with this much, they ought to leave right now. He looks to the cop. "Why isn't it a good time? Are we breaking any laws by passing through a town, officer? Or is it now illegal to stand and talk?"
Roy pauses and holds out his hands, realizing that he was starting to yell. Calm down, man. "What I mean to say is, if you have a problem, I'm willing to help."
Alisha Quinn takes more of Xannder's stance, thinking this place is unfriendly to outsiders. She looks to Xannder and says, "Yes I do agree we are somewhat off our destination. Perhaps we should have taken the interstate rather than take a more rural route to head toward Wichita."
She then looks to the officer and says, "We appear to lost our way on these rural back roads officer. As we have traveled far today we are currently looking to get a room for the night. Does this town have lodgings available?"
"You folk are welcome to stay, the problem is that almost twenty people have gone missing in the last three weeks. No bodies so far but people are on edge and not exactly welcoming strangers right now. You best be careful if your for staying." replies the officer.
20 people missing? That seems like an awful high amount. What is this town known for that would keep people interested in staying?
Alisha Quinn says to the officer looking surprised, "Oh dear god that is terrible to hear officer. Twenty people in the past three weeks in a small town seems very unusual. This place appears to be a fairly peaceful town and not inner city of Detroit after all. Have you thought about calling the federal authorities to investigate? You could have a serial killer on your hands. Perhaps you can tell us more about the goings on in this town of late."
Alisha tries to chat up the officer and hopefully get further information on the situation.
Seeing that Alisha seems to have the situation under control socially, Roy heads back to his motorcycle. There, he pulls out his phone and calls Harvey. "Harv, it's Roy. We're in town now, Crested Butte. We found a campsite, looks like a hunter was there. Hunting log said a pack of lycans was in the area, they've done some bad damage... We're talking to a cop now, trying to figure out what the norms think is going on."
You examine your phone and find that you have no signal.
The police woman notices you Sorry nobody's had any signal in weeks. Your going to have to use a land line if you want to make a call. Anyway just follow this road straight and you'll see the hotel. The FBI team that came to investigate have their headquarters there but they should still have some rooms." she explains.
Alisha Quinn says to the officer, "Thank you officer for your assistance. We shall proceed to this hotel and make arrangements. I wish you all the best in your continuing investigation."
Alisha waits to be given leave and then proceeds back to her car.
Roy frowns at the lack of signal and nods to the cop. Walking back with the others, he continues frowning. "I don't like the idea of the FBI being involved. They're typically nothing but trouble."
The officer waves goodbye and heads back to her car and drives off.
Alisha nods to Roy and says, "I agree that having the FBI involved could be a problem. They may not have the means or the manpower to deal with the threat of these werewolves. In the meantime I do suggest we check ourselves into the hotel to keep up appearances that we are complying with the local authorities. There we can further decide on a plan of action."
Sounds like a plan. Lets just try and keep a low profile so we don't attract attention.
You head down to the hotel mentioned by the police woman and you spot a few guys in black suit walking around and you see a large tent setup in front of the hotel with lots of them going in and out of it while some stand guard. You count a dozen or so men in black around the area.
Domingo Santana -- “Dom” to his friends -- took a sip of lukewarm coffee and tried to ignore the group of Agents that were milling around outside of the hotel’s café window. He suddenly remembered a joke his father told him.
What do you call a large gathering of FBI?
Give up?
A cluster-f*%&.
Dom smiled. The Old Man had a sick sense of humor for a former Fed.
It was time for another day of pointless leads and dead-ends. Assuming, of course, he wasn’t next, and then ended up missing, presumed dead, himself.
Stupid arrogant pricks. Seven hunters on one case. Seven! You would think they would be able to work together, stomp some evil ass, and then have a beer. But, no! Everyone wanted to be Batman, and work their own angle.
Typical.
Dom fruitlessly motioned to a waitress as she sped by.
“Ma’am, could you get me a -- refill,” he finished resignedly when she ignored him. He sighed. “Figures. Can’t even get warm coffee in this berg.”
But then movement drew his gaze to the hotel lobby.
Alisha Quinn moves into the hotel lobby keeping out of the way of the FBI agents and approaches the front desk of the hotel. She says to the front desk personel, "Greetings. I am looking to get some rooms for the night for myself and my friends."
Xannder keeps his hands at 10 and 2 as he drives past the FBI trying not to fixate on their judging stares. He pulls up beside Alisha and is so nervous that he almost doesn't stop in time. He gets out and follows Alisha into the office.
Seems like a nice enough place. I mean, not that there are a lot of options, but still, could be worse.
Dom sized up the two new faces that walked into the Hotel.
Tourists? He doubted it.
Visitors had trickled down to basically nothing since the madness started. And, frankly, anyone who came to town who wasn’t one of the Feds was suspicious.
Perhaps it was time to meet some new people -- make some small talk.
He dropped a $10 bill on the table to cover his coffee and give the lazy waitress a very unearned tip. He walked over to the front desk, where the bookish looking woman was pulling out a credit card. He casually grabbed a complimentary newspaper stacked at the front desk. He leafed through it casually. Skimming over the headlines.
Oh, look, a teenybopper pop singer did something stupid on TV last night. Stop the presses, he thought sarcastically.
He walked next to the nervous looking fellow, and raised his eyes from the newspaper feigning as if he was only now noticing him.
“Oh, hello. How are you? Wow, it sure is nice to see some new faces around here. What brings you to town?”
Roy keeps his motorcycle at a slow pace behind the cars, hoping not to draw any more attention than a Kawasaki Ninja generally does to begin with. Once he's parked and puts the kickstand down, he moves into the hotel, hoping they don't have any form of security that'll pick up the Beretta under his jacket.
Inside, he pulls down his bandana and looks around. The norms are already booking a room, looks like. Wonder if they'll get something big enough for all of us, or two each, or if they'll just grab one for themselves.
The young girl at the hotel counter does a quick check.
"We currently have two rooms available with two beds each...I'm afraid that all at the moment with the gentlemen from the FBI staying here. I hope that's enough to accommodate you and your friends." she says
Very rapidly without waiting for responses Xannder replies.
Great, how are you! fantastic! nice weather? anything good to eat around here? I'll just shut up now.
Alisha Quinn says, "I can see that the hotel is quite busy at the moment with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on this case. There is currently three of us in our group and I would not like to overbook your rooms. Could we take one room and get a pull-out bed so that we can have three people in a single room?"
Dom smiled disarmingly.
"Oh, no, it's perfectly okay. I know how nerve wrecking it can be to meet new people. As for food, well, I could recommend the Hotel Cafe, but I don't think I hate anyone quite that much. They mostly seem to specialize in various flavors and temperatures of burnt coffee."
He put out his hand for Xannder to shake.
"The name's Dom."
The stranger seems friendly enough, Xannder relaxes a bit and offers his hand.
Thanks. Yeah, I guess I don't get out much. Xannder says with a nervous laugh and a ridiculous smile.
Hear that guys, guess we wont be eating the food here!
The hand shake goes on a little longer than is comfortable, and Xannder seems to forget he is even shaking someones hand. When he realizes it, he quickly takes his hand back and says Name's Xannder.
Hearing Alisha ask about a single room, one corner of Roy's lip quirks up a small amount. Good. It's right about then that he notices Dom, and approaches the man.
"Dom, that you?" Roy asks. "Damn, it is. You here for sightseeing, or business?" He poses the question normally, but it's easy for those in the know to sense the undertone meaning.
Dom’s eyes widened in surprise and then relief at the sight of Roy. He smiled and shook the hunter’s hand.
“Hey, Roy. Man, is it good to see you! And you know me -- a regular workaholic, like yourself.”
He gestured to Xannder.
“So, uh, you two here working together?” he asked in a roundabout way.
This was perfect, he thought. A hunter who actually knows how to work with other people.
Dom’s chances of survival were looking up.
Alisha Quinn turns a glance to the new individual and says to him. "It appears you are an acquaintance of Roy. And yes we are on the job so to speak but currently we are looking to get a room for the night to rest up and plan our next step. My name is Alisha."
Dom’s face turned serious when Alisha confirmed they were here to hunt.
“Well, it’s good to meet you, Alisha. I’m Dom. And, yeah, me and Roy go back a ways. We worked together on a job in Florida. And I can certainly use the help,” he said quietly.
“I’ve been here since before most of the hijinks ensued. We’ll need a quiet place to talk. I have a room here, but we can use yours, if you prefer.
He looked over to Roy.
“Something weird’s going on here. And I mean weird even for us. So you three tell me where you want to do this and I’ll fill you in.”
Alisha says to Dom, "It is good to meet you Dom. If you are an acquaintance of Roy then you are a friend of mine as well. We should all meet in my room once we have the room arranged. If you are on our side on this issue then we need all the help we can get."
Dom smiled gratefully at Alisha.
“You have no idea how good it is to hear that.”
"We can't provide any kind of pull out bed or anything like that but if you have a sleeping bad or something like that one of you could sleep on the floor." replies the girl at the counter
"Heh. The Florida run? That was an interesting one." Roy shakes his head at the memory.
"You mind if I bunk with you, Dom? That way we don't have to give the hotel too much trouble, and it cuts on costs." Roy looks to the others. "'Course, that's if you two don't mind sharing a room all to yourselves."
“Yeah, no problem. Just don’t ask me to braid your hair,” he said to Roy with a small smirk. But it didn’t take much to see the strain behind his words.
After some last minute technicalities with renting the rooms, the four stood in Alisha and Xannder’s room. Dom fidgeted for a while before he made his way over to a small desk with a chair and sat down. After a minute, he started to talk.
“I got here about 2 weeks ago. A friend called me. Her name is Reena and her dad was a hunter back in the day. He was a good guy. Helped show me the ropes after I got my wakeup call. Anyway, she called me because there was something wrong with him. Something the doctors couldn’t figure out.”
“I took a look at him, and I agreed. I’m pretty sure he was suffering from some sort of Hex. That’s, uh, harmful magic to you new guys. Anyways, I called Harvey. Figured he might know a guy who could help out. But, well, her dad died before we could do anything.”
He paused as he fought down the bad memory.
“It -- it wasn’t an easy way to go. He suffered a lot at the end. And the drugs didn’t do squat. He -- he deserved better.”
Dom’s hands tightened into fists as he tried to keep from losing his composure.
“I failed him. And I failed Reena. So at first I didn’t notice her acting strangely. She just buried her Pop. Of course, she’d be bent out of shape. Hell, I was bent out of shape. I’ve been there, you know. Now she’s locked herself in, and won’t see me. I decided to just let her deal. After all, I had a hunt.”
“I went a little nuts trying to find the bastard that did it. It’s a slight miracle I didn’t get tossed out of town. And that’s when people just started disappearing. People would wander off into the woods and just be gone. I found some evidence of werewolves, but that didn’t make any damned sense. It had to be related to Reena’s dad somehow, I just knew it. But the idea of a pack of werewolves casting black magic just seemed so unlikely. And that’s when a freaking castle shows up!”
“At that point, I called in the Cavalry. This was way too much heat for one guy to handle. Harvey delivered -- sort of. I like the guy, but he’s way too Old School. Kept sending me the Lone Wolf types. They heard ‘werewolf’ and ‘spooky castle’ and decided to mount up like the Regulators. They wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t coordinate, wouldn’t even share information. And I’m pretty sure one of them stole my ex-wife’s car. She’s going to be pissed about that. Other than that, I don’t know what happened to them, but I can guess.”
Dom sighed wearily.
“That’s when the Spook Squad showed up.They say they’re FBI. And maybe most of them are. But I’d bet dollars to donuts, at least a couple of them are Department 7. I’ve been avoiding them mostly. Don’t know which ones would believe me, if I told them what was up. But I’m pretty sure I know exactly how many of them would help me.”
Dom raised his thumb and forefinger and made a “zero” shape.
“So that’s the story so far. Any comments from the peanut gallery?”
Roy stood leaning against the wall for most of Dom's story. He shakes his head at the loss of Reena's father--"Shame"--and again when Dom relates the lone wolf Hunters who came through. "Idiots. I hate people and I know you work in teams."
At the mention of Department 7, though, Roy's eyes widen. He waits until Dom stops talking and then stands up straight. "Dep Seven? You think--? That's even more trouble, great."
Roy pulls the journal from the campsite out of his pack. "We found this at a Hunter's camp outside town, little ways back down the road. Sounds like one of the boys who came here, by your telling. Things aren't sounding any good."
Alisha Quinn says to Dom, "We arrived recently and checked out a campsite where there were signs of a battle. It appears a fellow hunter had a last stand with a pack of werewolves. We promptly vacated the area in case the wolves were territorial in that area. We are rather lacking in silver bullets and if there is six werewolves out there we are also outclassed. I myself am a historian and rather new to all this hunting business. We came here to regroup and come up with a plan of attack. I have a few strategies that may be effective outside of just going in guns blazing if you are willing to hear me out."
By all means Roomie. Xannder says with a smile.
Alisha Quinn says, "You see werewolves are Apex Predators. If the mythology serves true they are superhumanly strong, extremely fast, have terrible natural weapons and possess superior hunting instincts due to enhanced senses. While firearms do give us some range on our enemy, invariably engaging them head on is a foolhardy approach. We must set an engagement on our terms, not theirs."
Alisha takes out her laptop and starts typing some things into the computer pulling up power point and photoshop to do a more visual representation. She continues the discussion "A werewolf pound for pound outclasses of us in a straight on fight. Thus we need to consider a "Thin the Herd" strategy, drawing members of the pack away from their colleague and then overcome them with superior numbers and firepower. Another option would be to "Corral" the pack into an area where we have set up traps to snare them. We also could try a "Bait and Switch" technique and try to provoke the werewolves into some kind of rage in hopes of having them attack one another but that could be extremely unpredictable. As for defeating a werewolf without silver there may be a method. I call it the "Roadkill" method. The only thing that can flatten a werewolf in its tracks is something stronger than a werewolf. In this case using the biggest vehicle we can find slamming face first into them at high speeds much like hitting a deer on a highway. Unfortunately this might involve acquiring a vehicle by less than legal means because my economy class car does not fit the bill."
From what I remember from stories and movies as a kid is that Werewolves go feral when they are in wolf form. Will they blend in with your or I otherwise? Are we thinking that maybe a couple people in town are infected, if it is some sort of disease? Do you know what the details are behind the cause of being a werewolf.
Xannder pauses briefly.
I mean killing them in a fight if needed isn't a bad plan. It's us or them far as I'm concerned. But if they're actually part people, they might not know what's happening to them. If they do, then that is a whole 'nother level of therapy sister.
Alisha Quinn thinks on Xannder's question and replies, "I highly doubt "Lycanthropy" would be a disease. That would not make logical sense in the slightest. It would mean everyone bitten by a werewolf would become a werewolf and the plague would spread like wildfire throughout the populace of the world. It is like saying every person bitten a vampire would become a vampire and thus you would have a propagating species that would grow exponentially. A more solid theory is that Werewolves have an extra Chromosome, something that adds to their DNA that allows them to take some of the characteristics of a wolf and pass this gene onto their offspring. These werewolves are not just randomly killing people on a rampage. They are intelligent and hiding themselves well within the community and apparently covering their tracks. These are not the actions of a mindless beast but purposely done and thus they must be stopped."
"The change is as much mystical as it is biological, as far as we can tell. Some of the newbies go into hardcore denial, but that changes once they've made their first kill. After that, there's usually not much left separating the person and the beast. If we can, we try to find them before that first kill. Some of them can live semi-normal lives if they get themselves a cage and chains. Doesn't always work though."
"As for killing 'em. Sad to say, the best time to do it is when they're human. It's not an easy thing to do, but -- well, it's not easy."
I suppose I will have to defer to your judgement. I am kinda new to all this, and still a little skeptical that these things really exist. I can guarantee that there was someone if not killed severely hurt in the campsite we happened upon on the way into town, but a wild animal could have been able to do that. Of course, not many wild animals are that vicious unless provoked.
Xannder thinks for a second.
If we have to hunt them as humans, how are we going to be able to tell which is which? Not like they will be wearing a big sign saying, He says waving his arms wildly.
Alisha says, "Werewolves even in human form are allergic to Silver so touching a person with silver is a good way to see if they are a werewolf. I have also heard other things such as Wolfbane also are effective but those myths have yet to be tested.
"Never used wolfsbane myself, so I can't say either way. Generally, when a hunter gets called in to handle a werewolf things are long past the point of being civil, so silver is your go to. But remember, we're not looking for a loner. This is a Pack. Apparently with a mage of some sort aiding them or calling the shots."
A mage, you talking magic? Saying that is real too? I wish I had a Cheeseburger...
Xannder wiggles his fingers and flaps his arms.
Not looking good.