Chương 42: Alpha's Plan

Something tears through the woods at a terrifying pace, lashing past the trees, leaping skyward, Crimson, now a werewolf. Yellow light burns in his eyes, his face twisted into raw animal fury, his arms driving forward with each powerful bound. He plunges into the shadows, into the night. Churro bursts through the front door of the Croft house. He throws himself into his Jeep and brings the engine roaring to life. Moving fast.

Crimson's warped and eerie vision blurred past the trees, crashing through the underbrush, quicker and quicker as he springs up from the dark, landing atop an empty car in the parking lot. His breath comes in ragged plumes between his fangs as he stares past the other cars outside the sports store, his gaze settling on Larch's Porsche. Through the windshield, Willow and Larch can be seen conversing inside. A conversation that seems innocent enough. Until Crimson blinks. And the perspective shifts.

The talking turns into heated groping and kissing. Larch's mouth roams Willow 's neck while her palm flattens against the window. His hands slide up her shirt, coaxing the small of her back to arch into him. Inside the car, though, Willow and him were still merely talking.

"But did you see him?" she asks"I saw someone standing in the hall. It might have been Autzee. Yet no features would come into view for me. It was simply this sort of dark silhouette." Crimson's soft growls grow deeper as he watches them, his yellow eyes flickering in rapid blinks. For a brief instant, all he sees is the two of them chatting. Then his view shifts once more, and he sees Larch slide on top of Willow, drawing her near with his free hand, their kiss growing ever more heated.

Still mid-conversation, he edges nearer to Willow, his voice dropping into a nervous whisper.

"This is the part that's tough to put into words. The guy... or whatever he was... He dropped onto all fours. And then he just bolted." With one final inhuman snarl, Crimson launches himself off the car's roof, diving down into the parking lot. His clawed hands scrape along the black pavement as he surges ahead, bounding faster and faster. Then, leaping high into the air, he comes down directly atop Larch's car.

The car shudders as something crashes onto it, and they both glance up in shock as, perched atop the car, Crimson lifts a clawed hand to strike, only for something to come flying out of the dark and send him tumbling to the ground. The shadowy figure somersaults forward, landing squarely on his feet. It's Autzee. In werewolf form, fangs bared at Crimson. And very much alive... Larch and Willow whip around, straining to peer through the fogged-up windows.

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"What in the world was that?" Willow 's hand drifts toward the door...

"Don't!" He yanks her backward, his fear plainly greater than hers. Crashing through the undergrowth, Crimson struggles to fend off Autzee, yet the elder werewolf's strength vastly outmatches his own. He hammers him backward into the forest, hauling him down among the shadows.

"Crimson..." Yet the boy keeps thrashing, still fighting to break free.

"Stop. Crimson, stop." Autzee bears down on him, snarling with a wild, unchecked savagery. Then, faster than a blink, he is a man once more. Crimson stares at him as though he were a stranger.

"Autzee? You're alive." Then his eyes fall to his hands. The claws. The weight of what he has done crashes down on him.

"What's happening to me?"

"Precisely what he intends to happen."

Churro comes flying around the bend and stomps hard on the brakes. He notices a handful of Sheriff's department cruisers lined up beside an ambulance right along the edge of the road.

"No... no..." Leaping from his jeep, Churro desperately scans the crowd of officers for his dad.

"Hey, where's my Dad? Sheriff Valentine? Where's the Sheriff? Where's Valentine?" Then a gurney emerges from the trees. He watches, frozen with dread. He lunges toward it as voices yell at him to halt. Reaching the gurney, he realizes the body before him is not his father's. It's Unger. The guy in his twenties who was with Reddick, the one who swiped their bottle of Jack while Churro was busy getting Crimson drunk. The corpse is scorched, burned beyond recognition.

"Churro?" He spins around to see his father stepping out from the darkness of the woods.

"What the hell are you doing out here?" But Churro can't form a single word. He simply collapses into his father's embrace, on the verge of tears and completely worn down by the day. With no clue what to say or what his son has endured, Valentine just holds him close in return. Not one of them spots the SUV rolling up close by. Ash looks out from behind the steering wheel, with Lily in the passenger seat.

"That's Churro, isn't it? Are you going to fill me in on that conversation you had with her?" Ash asked as he stepped out.

"Answer something for me first. That night when you ran into the two Betas? One of them was smaller, correct? Was he only smaller? Or might he have been younger as well?"

Autzee guides a worn-out Crimson over to his bed. His brief captivity has left the room in complete shambles.

"Wait." Autzee pauses at the doorway and glances back.

"This isn't something I can do. I can't live like this and still be with Willow. You have to give me the honest answer. Does a cure actually exist?"

"For a person who's been bitten? I've caught wind of one. Though I'm not sure whether it's real. You have to kill whoever bit you. Take out the Alpha." The sheer weight of what's being asked makes his head drop. Yet Autzee moves closer once more, looking down at him.

"You'll help me track him down, Crimson? And in return, I'll help you end him." Beyond Crimson's open window, the full moon continues to blaze in the night sky... and beneath that moon, far up on the rocky slope of a sheer hill, the Alpha drops to its knees. As moonlight spills across its massive, heavily muscled frame, the creature shifts. Snapping backward in an instant, its monstrous form melting away into the bare torso of a man. Just an ordinary man.

That same night, a trembling and dazed Larch steers his car into the garage and steps out. Yet just as he pulls the driver's side door shut, he stops... Under the glow, something catches his eye. Something attached to his car... he walks over and takes a closer look at the rear windshield. Something is wedged in the gap where the glass meets the roof. He pulls it free and holds it up to the light. It's a claw... a light flicks on beneath a worktable. Larch sets the claw down in the soft glow.

Beside it, he lays a lacrosse glove he had scooped up from the field once the first game ended. The name in bold black letters across it: Croft. Larch hesitates, as though weighing whether he truly wants to make the connection. But then he lifts the glove in one hand and the claw in the other and slowly draws them together.