I don't own White Wolf or any of it's concepts, I only use them for my own personal plots with characters that I create and plots that enjoy writing. Please read and enjoy. Reviews are welcome.
Hannah Delaney stared at her tire in disbelief. It was pouring down rain, she was across town from her nice comfortable home and her nice comfortable bed at 10:00 pm and the front left tire of her mother's Jeep Grand Cherokee had decided that now was the time to explode and cause her to have to pull to the side of the road in the bad part of town and stare in disbelief at her tire.
With a sigh she pushed a wet strand of her long blond hair out of cerulean eyes and looked up and down the streets. This part of town still had businesses open, the only problem was that the propietors stood behind counters, protected by barred doors and the baseball bats, or worse, shotguns underneath their counters for when the criminal element came calling. Not to mention that the 16 year old girl just didn't wanna be out in this part of town at this time of night. There were untold amounts of muggings, or worse, rape in this part of town, especially to pretty girls like herself.
Hannah WAS a pretty girl, so most said. She stood around 5'9" and weighed just under 120 lbs. Long blond hair reached to midback and she had deep cerulean blue eyes set in delicate features with full pouty lips. Her clothing was rainsoaked, the faded denim hugged her graceful legs and rode low on shapely hips. Her white t-shirt clung wetly to her slender curves and her small, developing breasts, the outline of her now hard tips perfectly visible beneath the soaked material. Worst of all, her trenchcoat, 100 % authentic leather was getting soaked, all soaked. She felt like crying, this didn't happen to her. Her father was Alfred Delaney, the most powerful, well respected attorney in all of Welsh Falls, hell, his name was known as far south as L.A. and maybe even as far north as Seattle.
Hannah groaned and tried her cellphone for the fifth time, just a busy signal. The server had probably been hit by lightning or something. With a frustrated groan she slammed the phone shut. Oh well, she'd just have to confront one of these store owners and ask if she could use their phone. She made sure the hazard lights were still blinking and hit the button on her keypad that armed the car alarm, a resounding BLOOP! assuring her that it was indeed functioning before she shoved her hands in her trenchcoat and started toward the nearest store.
The sign over the door proclaimed Late Nite Drugstore-Open 24 Hours. With a sigh at the misspelled word she pushed open the glass, bar covered door and walked in, a bell tinkling overhead to alert the clerk at the counter to her entrance. A middle aged Korean man turned his attention away from a black and white television screen just long enough for his eyes to wander up and down Hannah's form, stopping for a long moment on her chest, causing her to realize just how visible some things were. She tugged her trenchcoat closed with a harrumph and tied the belt shut before walking toward the counter, which of course had a glass partition separating her from the storekeeper.
"Excuse me…sir? Do you have a phone I could use? I have a flat tire and…" She began softly as she approached. The man looked up and spoke in heavily accented English, cutting her off.
"You buy. No buy, no phone." He turned back to the TV screen, quite obviously dismissing her out of hand. Hannah frowned slightly and grabbed a snickers bar off a shelf and set it down on the counter. The store clerk looked up again, an annoyed look flashing across his face that she would dare tear him away from his precious TV show. He regarded the snickers bar for a second and then looked to her shrewdly.
"Seventyfive cent." He said with a bit of a smirk. Hannah reached into her pocket and pulled out three quarters, sliding them under the partition, as there was a small square opening just big enough to fit her hand through. Laughing, the storekeeper pointed to the back of the store and turned back to his TV, muttering something. Hannah followed his gaze and saw a payphone on the far wall of the store. Cheeks burning, she strode purposefully across the aisle toward it, passing the sole inhabitant of the store. He was tall with a purple mohawk, couldn't have been much older than her, and wearing a trenchcoat over cargo pants and a wife beater. He was looking both ways rather nervously, almost flinching when Hannah walked by him. She was used to having that effect on men, and often times used it to her advantage when at school or at the country club with daddy. He smiled weakly at her and she just let her full lips quirk into a bit of a smile as she walked past him, some of the redness in her cheeks fading as she saw him nearly go weak in the knees.
Hannah was just picking up the receiver off its cradle when she heard who could only be the punk, scream, his voice nearly breaking.
"Gimme all the money in the register old man!" She looked toward him and saw him pointing a large, shiny revolver at the store owner. In shock, she dropped the receiver, causing it to clatter loudly against the wall. No, this couldn't be happening to her dammit, these things just didn't happen to her! But it was happening to her, the punk looked toward her and pointed the huge gun at her for a moment, his eyes wide.
Probably his first time, Hannah realized. Great, she got to be his dress rehearsal for knocking over a drugstore. She cursed her rotten luck, wishing her daddy was here, he'd know what to do. But for some reason, she wasn't scared, she just felt herself getting pissed off that this little pissant would point a gun at her.
"Get up here! I don't want no funny stuff!" He said in his wavering voice. Hannah obeyed rather quickly, something told her that the only thing more dangerous than a kook with a gun, was a kook who didn't know how to use the gun. And judging by the way the revolver shook in his hand, it looked like he was choice number two. Hannah rubbed the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Something annoying you miss?" He started like he was starting to get pissed. He waved the revolver back at the store owner without looking and suddenly the unthinkable happened. The gun went off. The glass partition apparently wasn't as bullet proof as it was supposed to be and it shattered, the Korean man crying out as blood exploded from his left shoulder and he fell off his stool to land on the ground.
"Jesus!" Hannah exclaimed, moving to help him. The punk swung the gun back around and it ended up right in front of her nose, causing her to freeze quite quickly.
"Don't move dammit! That wasn't supposed to happen!" For some reason, at this point, Hannah felt something inside her snap. First this little bitch had the nerve to hold up a store while SHE was in it, then he pointed the gun at her and ordered her around…and finally he let it go off and probably kill someone and it WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?! She was more pissed off than she ever remembered being in her entire life and a red haze settled around the edge of her vision. Hannah took a step forward and got bopped in the nose with the barrel of the gun. That was a mistake, one that pushed her over the edge. She felt pain explode in her gut, driving her to her knees holding herself. Red haze took over her vision and she vaguely felt strength suddenly flowing through her like nothing she'd ever felt in her life before. Her clothes seemed to grow tight about her and then suddenly just explode with a great RIPPING sound. Her bones she felt moving, rearranging as warmth suddenly covered her. Her senses of smell and hearing suddenly became almost painfully acute. All the moaning she'd been doing from the pain became deeper, more feral until it was little more than snarls and growls. When she finally stood up, she was huge! At least head and shoulders taller than the punk. He stared at her now with wide eyes, his gun hanging loose in his hand down at his side.
"B-b-big dog!" He stammered. It didn't matter to Hannah, she had only one instinct at this point: KILL! Hannah lashed out with one hand, somehow not surprised to find her arm long and apelike, covered in pitch black fur. Her hand huge, with long fingers that ended in razor sharp talons. Razor sharp talons that tore through the punk's throat like wet tissue paper, spraying blood across the wall behind him as one clean swipe of her powerful arm and razor sharp claws literally decapitated the punk. His head flipped through the air to land behind the counter. But it didn't matter to Hannah. Her prey was dead and now the need to flee seemed to be overwhelming. She turned and leaped, one single movement which carried her across the entire store. Sailing through the air with her unexpected inhuman strength, she crashed through the window with a loud shattering sound, landing on her feet outside easily, not feeling the slightest bit of pain, though now there were bits of glass stuck in her fur. The few people walking on the sidewalk as she exploded out of the drugstore took one look at her and ran in the opposite direction like the hounds of hell were at their feet, nipping at their heels. Hannah just looked around and found the dark alley to be most appealing, she ran into it, moving so incredibly fast that she must've seemed a blur. One spring of her powerful muscles and she cleared the dead end wall and she cleared the wall and kept running, the red haze washing away logical thought and fueling her flight instinct.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Hannah became aware of what the hell she was doing again sometime later when she found herself stumbling through an alley, her bare feet sore from pounding on the pavement and the many sharp, hard things scattered across it. Her first realization was that she was naked, uncovered and exposed to the cool wind, which caused her nipples to tighten even as she shivered in terror and huddled against a wall in the shadow of a dumpster. Her second realization was that her right hand was covered in blood almost up to the elbow. What the hell happened?! She thought, going over the play of events in her mind. That damn punk had waved the gun at her, then he'd just touched her. But she'd snapped and turned into that-that…WOLF thing. Now that she thought about it, her feet had been like paws, even though she stood up. And that strange itching had been a long bushy tail. Even her face had pushed out into a huge razor sharp teeth filled snout. Conical ears. Glowing green eyes, she was sure. The whole bit.
"Wow, you're lucky to be alive kid. After running through public like that." Somewhere a few feet to her left a match flared to life and lit the cherry of a cigarette, briefly bringing into view a stubble covered face. He waved the match and it went out, though the cigarette stayed lit, the cherry glowing briefly brighter as the man took a drag and reduced part of his cancer stick, as Hannah called them, to ash. Stepping forward into the lone circle of light cast by a single bare bulb overhead, she saw he was a tall, somewhat handsome man with a powerful build covered with a trenchcoat. He had dark brown hair and ice blue eyes set in chiseled features covered by a five o'clock shadow.
"Wh-who are you?" Hannah asked, moving her hands to at least cover herself for the sake of modesty.
"My name's Matthew Harrison, and I'm like you. A werewolf." He stepped forward and kneeled down, removing his trenchcoat to reveal jeans and a black t-shirt that clung tightly to him. He draped the trenchcoat around her and gave her a brief smile.
"Werewolf? What the…?" Hannah tried to back away from this crazy bastard, but found herself smacking into the wall-her bare back touching rough brick. Matthew held up a placating hand.
"Now now, just hold on and listen for a moment. Look at your hands, you're agitated as hell." Hannah looked at her hands and started in surprise, her fingertips had started to grow into long, wicked talons again. "Just calm down. I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help you, but you've got to trust me."
"Why should I trust you?" Hannah's voice wavered as she fell back against the wall again. Matthew stood up and took a step back, regarding her silently for a moment before speaking.
"Because, like I said, I'm like you. And I'm one of the few people around here that don't want to kill you. But I guarantee with the way that you ran through public in your war form, there's going to be people after you. People that have big guns and bad attitudes. People that know what you are, and either want to kill you, or worse. Study you. Kid, listen, we're werewolves. Born to defend nature, or Mother Gaia as we call her from anything that might want to hurt her. Our worst enemy is called the Wyrm. It IS corruption incarnate, decay and death. A cosmic force really. But we're born with the weapons to fight, even if we're a dying breed."
Hannah blinked and looked at him like he were crazy…which to her, he was. "Werewolves? Wyrm? What the hell are you smoking? And pass it over here, because I want some too." Matthew smirked a moment.
"And you're the one sitting her naked in an alley with blood all over your hands, yet you call ME the crazy one. Look, I'm trying to help you kid, so listen quick. You were born to fight. You've got the power to change shapes-gaining supernatural strength, speed, and stamina. You can heal almost any wound in moments. We can walk the spirit world and command the spirits of the land and the air. But most important kid, we've got our Rage. Remember that anger you felt? That red hot burning hatred that you felt right before you changed and killed whoever it was you killed? And I know someone died, someone always dies when one of us changes. Someone who pushed us over the edge and provoked us into using our natural weapons for the first time. Happened to me nine years ago. My grandfather thirty years ago. We lead violent lives, and many of us die, more everyday, certainly more than those that are born. But listen to me. Despite all this, that anger, that Rage as it were, is put there for a reason. By Gaia who created the whole damn universe. It's the white hot supernatural anger of fighting a war to save a dying mother. And while it can fuel some of our most amazing abilities, if it takes over, we're stripped of all identity and turned into mindless killing machines…." Matthew trailed off when he heard footsteps coming down the alley and voices, not trying to disguise themselves. There were at least three men. He looked up and growled softly. "Shift to Crinos kid."
"Crinos? What? I don't know how…" Hannah stammered, growing scared by the look on Matthew's face. Matthew swore and concentrated for a moment. He began to grow, to change. He became taller and much more muscular, black and gray fur racing over his body as his face pushed out into a snout tipped by a black nose and lined with whiskers. His ears turned conical and moved to the top of his head as his eyes turned a startling shade of green. Matthews arms became long and apelike, incredibly muscular. Talons tipping his hands and his paw like feet as his ankles arched high with a loud crack, a long bushy tail sprouting from his tailbone and swishing about his pawlike feet. His clothing just seemed to melt into his fur as he grew into his huge half wolf, half man form. Just in time too. The three men, all wearing what appeared to be black body armor and black masks under trenchcoats turned the corner, all holding submachine guns trained on Hannah and Matthew. The one closest to Matthew and Hannah spoke, his voice muffled by the mask.
"Kill them both." Before any of them could react however, Matthew sprang forward, that unbelievable strength propelling him high in an arch that let him land in the middle of the trio despite their being 20 feet away. As they turned around, Matthew picked up one in his huge hands and simply tore him in half, casting the ragged halves of his body in separate directions. Turning with inhuman speed he clamped his jaws down shut over the entire head of the second one, jerking his head back and tearing his attacker's head completely free from his neck, spitting it back out at the last one standing. It's quite a shock to have a head just spit at you, and it bought Matthew the time he needed to shove one clawed hand right INTO the last would be assassin's stomach and withdraw it holding a handful of ropy intestines, letting them drop and hit the ground with a plop. Hannah watched this incredible display of gut churning violence with a slack jaw, it all happened so fast and now they were all dead. Suddenly Matthew looked toward her and shouted in a strange half tongue that she instinctively understood.
"Danger! Behind!" Hannah turned just in time to see the butt of a shotgun descended in between her eyes with stunning force, causing pain to explode in her head and colors to dance before her eyes. She fell to the ground and could feel the ground shaking as Matthew hurried his fastest to make it to her before the man could train the shotgun on her. But just like before in the store, she felt the anger flowing through her again and suddenly the pain was gone and she was standing there in front of her own assailant, in her "Crinos" form as Matthew called it, at least eight feet tall. The man tried brought the shotgun around anyway, but before he could even think of using it on her, Hannah fell upon him and her six or seven hundred pounds of muscle drove him to the ground as she began to savage and tear at his body with her front and hind claws, rending and stomping him. Her jaws locked onto his shoulders and tore bloody rents. Somewhere in front of her she heard a resounding boom and felt a prick of pain in her shoulder, causing the red haze to clear some. She looked up to see another man holding a smoking gun at her. But even as Hannah looked at him, she felt the wound closing, pushing the metal imbedded within to the surface and letting it fall to the pavement with a slight clinking sound.
Again moving with that inhuman speed, before he could get off a second shot, Hannah leaped forward and lashed out with her clawed hand in an upward swipe. Her wickedly sharp claws tore easily through flesh, bone and muscle to rip him open from crotch to collar bone in one strike, organs falling out and hitting the pavement with a plop a moment before he fell with a thud. Hannah stood there breathing heavy for a moment, her sharp senses telling her there was only one other thing even breathing in that alley, right behind her as a matter of fact. She whirled around and saw Matthew standing there looking up at her, he had resumed human form by this time.
"Now do you trust me? Ya know," he mused thoughtfully, not seeming phased by the fact that five people had just died. "I'll bet my money that you were born under a full moon." Something clicked in Hannah's head and she looked up toward the sky. A pale crescent moon hung high in the sky amidst the twinkling, star filled firmament of the heavens. When she spoke, her voice was inhumanly deep, almost frighteningly so. And she didn't so much speak as she growled.
"Full moon? By the way…I'm sorry, my name's Hannah." Matthew laughed slightly.
"Maybe you better resume human form, or better yet, wolf form. Then I can tell you. Yeah, probably wolf form, that way we can travel faster to the caern and you can meet the elders and the other garou, that is what we call ourselves-not werewolves, but garou." Matthew said. He shrank and melted into a black and gray furred wolf, a little on the small side, but with a stocky build.
"How, how do I change? How do I become a wolf?" She lisped, her Crinos muzzle having a hard time wrapping around the words trying to come out.
"Just pretend, like when you were a kid." Hannah looked confused for a moment, but decided to try it anyway. She closed her eyes and tried imagining herself as a wolf. A huge beautiful black furred wolf. She let herself drop to all fours and prance around a bit, almost singing in her deep deep voice.
"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad-"
"Alright!" Matthew cried, really barking and whimpering, though again for some inexplicable reason, Hannah understood him. She opened her eyes and indeed, when she looked down at herself, she was indeed a sleek, wolf with luxurious black fur, a bit larger and more muscular than Matthew even. Her eyes gleamed with pride.
"What's this about a full moon? Isn't there some rule about changing on full moons?" She asked.
Matthew laughed as he began to trot toward the mouth of the alley. "Not quite Hannah. What phase of the moon we're born under pretty much determines our role in garou society. Almost as much as our tribe does. Werewolves are divided into different tribes, kind of like the Indians. I'm called a GlassWalker, and judging from the color of your coat, I'd say you were a Shadow Lord. Anyway, no moon means you'll be a trickster, or as we say, Ragabash. Crescent moon means you are a Theurge, or spirit shaman. Half moon is a Philidox, the judges and mediators of our kind. Gibbous moon is our galliards, those that hold our tales and sing of our deeds. And full moon, which I'm betting you are, is called an Ahroun. The warriors of a warrior race. Born and bred for war even more than most garou. Now, come on kid. I don't trust the physical world for travel…come here and lay a paw on my shoulder, I'm gonna take you for the ride of a lifetime…" Hannah trotted over and placed a paw on Matthew's shoulder. Matthew gazed down into a puddle and concentrated again, suddenly the world around them seemed to shimmer as a cold feeling enveloped Hannah completely and suddenly when the world stopped shimmering, the buildings seemed a uniform gray, covered, shockingly enough in large glittering spiderwebs. Which somehow seemed WRONG to some part of Hannah's soul. Every once in a while a spider the size of her dog at home could be seen scuttling across the web, something that made Hannah shiver.
"What the hell is this?!" She exclaimed as she fell into place beside a rapidly retreating Matthew. He didn't break stride or even look as he spoke.
"This is the sign of the Weaver, just like the Wyrm is the cosmic force of corruption and decay, the Weaver represents progress and order. Both of them used to be normal, before they went insane and started lashing out at the world. While the Wyrm wants to destroy the world, the Weaver wants to freeze it in perfect stasis. Lastly to our little love triangle we have what's called the Wyld. We, are creatures of the Wyld. It is pure primal creation and chaos. All together they're called the Triat. Originally the Wyld's creation energy was formed into something usable by the Weaver and destroyed by the Wyrm, who kept balance in the universe, when its time was up. But our legends say the Weaver grew jealous of the Wyrm's power to destroy it's creation and so began to weave a web around the great Wyrm to try and snare it and stop it from ever destroying its precious creations again. The Wyrm, not liking being bound lashed out with all it's strength, driving the Weaver mad with pain as the Wyrm went mad from being bound. And all that time, the Wyld just swirled about mindlessly crashing through things and sowing it's creation energies, for the Wyld never truly had any sanity…and that's how the world is today. What we're in is called the penumbra, or just the Umbra in general and it is the Spirit world on the flip side of a spiritual barrier called the gauntlet…" Matthew sounded a bit like a professor as he spoke, but Hannah cut him off as she said a bit skeptically.
"Wait a minute, so you're saying we're a dying race fighting a desperate war to save a dying mother from a universe that's completely and totally insane?!"
"Yeah, that about sums it up kid." Hannah just blinked and stopped moving for a few seconds, looking at Matthew's still moving form in disbelief. Matthew sighed and looked back at her.
"No one said it's fair, but that's the way it is. Now come on, we've got to go meet the other garou and make sure you're protected from any creatures of the Wyrm that actually try to follow us." The whole time they'd been keeping to the center of the street, as far away from the buildings on either side as possible. And now as they stopped, the spiders on the buildings seemed more interested in the creatures in their domains, wandering a bit away from their webs toward them. Matthew barked sharply. "Let's go." Hannah jumped, but fell into step beside him anyway. They walked for about an hour, the landscape slowly changing from corrupt and sterile and filled with webs to vibrant, shining with vivid colors as buildings gave way to trees and cement gave way to dirt and grass. The world teemed with life, animals around every tree and leaping every rock. Hannah felt a joy rise in her like nothing she'd ever felt, a contentment, a RIGHTness as right as the WRONG had been wrong before in the city. Very suddenly in their path a literal path of pure light seemed to rise from the ground and into the sky. Even more amazing, Matthew stepped onto it and started to trot into it. Hannah followed, figuring Matthew to know what he was doing.
"What is this?" She asked in the wolf tongue.
"This is called a moon path, sister Luna blesses us with moon paths during the night time, they make traveling a lot easier on us as they can cover miles in a fraction of the time as we could on the ground. We'll be at the caern in no time."
"What's a caern?" Hannah wondered.
"A caern is a spiritual site of great power, holy and sacred for us Garou because it is where the barrier between the spiritual world and the physical world is still weak and Gnosis, which is magical energy flows back and forth between the worlds, nourishing each one and helping us replenish our own stores of gnosis, which is what we fuel the gifts, or magic abilities as it were taught to us by our spirit allies to fight against the Wyrm, and less often, the Weaver," He sounded distasteful as he mentioned fighting the weaver. "They're our last greatest resource, and a sign of gaia's strength, everytime one of them dies, Gaia dies a little bit more. So we gather around them in…family units, called Septs. And we protect them with our lives." Matthew explained. The moon path started to arc down and finally set down in a grassy clearing with few trees scattered here and there. The only visible being there was a large white wolf, the size of a pony. It was obvious he wasn't in wolf form, but in a different form, a Dire Wolf, Hannah vaguely remembered from History Class. She made a note to ask Matthew later. As the both of them stepped off the moon path, the white wolf started to trot toward them. Immediately Matthew dropped onto his back haunches and lowered his gaze, ears going flat. Hannah followed suit only because it seemed like the thing to do. The wolf spoke in the wolf tongue to Matthew.
"Good job young Fostern" He nearly boomed. Matthew's tail thumped the ground at about a million miles an hour as the huge dire wolf praised him.
"Thank you Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement-rhya." The word Rhya struck something in Hannah. It meant importance, she knew-the same way she could understand the half tongue of the huge war beasts, and the wolf tongue that they spoke now. "I have told her what I could about the garou…it is up to the elders to continue her education from here on out." Matthew finished.
Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement looked at Hannah for a moment before he rose up onto his hind legs, melting into his human form, a tall, beautiful man in his mid thirties with long blond hair to his shoulders framing icey gray eyes and noble features. His powerful frame was covered in ornate white and red armor and he wore a long red cape, with a huge silver sword at his hips, the hilt wrapped in leather, a wolf's head pommel visible. Hannah couldn't keep her eyes off of him, he had a majestic aura about him that she couldn't deny. "What is your name young one?" His voice in human form was deep and rich, beautiful, just like the rest of him.
"My name is Hannah Delany, Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement-rhya." She said. Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement actually laughed heartily.
"I am Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement, born Evander Crestmore, to a human mother under the light of the half moon. Athro of the Silver Fang Tribe, rulers of all garou. "
"Half moon…that's phildox judge type, right?" Hannah tilted her head. Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement laughed again.
"You learn very quickly Hannah Delaney. Come with me, there is much to show you, but first…come and meet some other garou, get cleaned up and then get some rest. You had a big day today, but your education begins tomorrow." Piercing-Gaze-of-Judgement turned and walked into trees and Hannah followed, ready to begin learning.