Once, when he was very young, maybe eight or nine, his father had forgotten to lock the door to the garage and Jim had snuck inside. His heart had felt like fists beating at his chest. His tongue was too thick, and he could feel the drumbeat pulse of all the big, icky veins in his neck. He'd lifted the biggest piece of scrap wood he could carry over to the monstrous table saw in the corner, and turned the machine on like he'd seen his dad do so many times. The blade bit into the wood with a ferocity Jim hadn't expected and he let go. A jagged piece of shrapnel flew into his left eye, and his world exploded with pain.
It was the only pain he had felt that could possibly compare. The memory flitted through his mind like a piece of paper caught in the wind, and for a moment Jim was a child again, screaming like a child, the moonlight in his eyes feeling like that bit of wood-- the kind of pain that sent all your severed nerves screaming, fire running up the pathways to your brain so fast you'd think it would blow the back of your head out, and there was nothing around you anymore but that red, bleeding supernova of sensation.
In the midst of unbearable agony, Jim's body stretched and stretched and stretched. His jaw snapped and blood gushed from his mouth as spiny new teeth erupted from his gums.
He thought of a shark.
Thick black hair tore through his skin, and it was like watching an elapsed-time reel of grass growing.
He thought of a wolf.
He thought, Oh god. I'm insane.
She stiffened, looked to her left. A wolf was there.
She glanced away, down towards the street, and then back to her left. A man was there.
"The leeches are out in force tonight."
He didn't say hello. He never said hello. It wasn't his way. She smiled.
"They're out in force every night. They feel us moving in. They already feel our jaws at their throats."
In the street below, four figures in hooded sweatshirts moved in ragged formation, heads whipping back and forth in nervous frenzy. From here, she could here the hissing and spitting that passed for their language. And she could smell their alien fear; a stagnant and meaty cloud, like the body odor of a corpse in a crawlspace.
"Hawke's at the end of the street. Bobby's tailing them. They've got nowhere to go but through us."
He didn't say goodbye. Jim never said goodbye. He simply rose into a crouch, put his hand on the ledge, and flung himself down into the alley beside them. Elle smiled, and grabbed the ledge, and threw herself into the darkness after him.
The four hissing figures paused at the mouth of the alley. They became stiff, alert. The one on the far right hissed to the one on the far left, and that was all the time they had. Two hulking nightmares erupted from the shadows and smashed them into the pavement.
The walls bent and rippled like water under a stiff breeze, and his nose was suddenly filled with the conflicting smells of apple cider and burning plastic. But the spirit world was like that, and the unnervingly surreal qualities of this place (dream? Dimension? Reality?) only rarely phased him. He drew the bone knife across his open palm and then gripped the bleeding hand into a fist, scattering huge crimson droplets across the seemingly-random collection of roots, animal bones, and feathers at his feet.
The walls quivered again, and in the depths of the spirit-reflection of the alley, something shifted into focus. An impossibly enormous tree, defying his perception of scale, with a man's face emerging from the bark and withered hands instead of leaves sprouting from the infinite branches.
"I like it here. I stay here. I stay. You go."
The voice was the suggestion of a whisper, the product of hundreds of hostile fingers rubbing together in pale and disturbing imitation of green oak leaves in the wind.
"You've already defied the order of things enough. You are the Shunned. Do not make me and mine end you. Return to the forest. Release the foreign essences. Become a respectable spirit once more."
"I stay here. I stay. You go."
The branches bent cruelly forward, countless hands grabbing and swiping at the empty air as they reached for him.
Hawke sighed.
It was never as easy as asking.
The crowbar hit much harder than he had expected. The snap of his jaw fracturing in three places was like a gunshot in his ears, and he tumbled backwards, planting an elbow through the driver's side window of the car behind him. In a flash, the crowbar impacted inches from his face, doing further damage to the unfortunate vehicle. He crouched and leapt, rolling backwards over the hood and rapidly back-pedaling away from his opponent, putting several more cars between them. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the pavement, and wiped his chin with his shirtsleeve; the bone and muscles of his jaw were already knitting themselves back together with a harsh grinding noise he could feel at the base of his skull.
His antagonist was circling wide, wary. Bobby could smell and hear the guy's packmates, lingering at the edges of the parking lot. Waiting for the signal to move in for the kill.
"Shouldn't have come back here, Bob. Blood feud's not over. Your alpha took one of ours. We're gonna smash your pretty-boy skull to make up for it."
The bigger man took a running jump, bounding from car to car like a rubber ball and landing light on his feet, right into Bobby's waiting fist. Bobby hadn't wasted any time; the other guy hadn't noticed him Shifting into his second form, and now he matched his hirsute opponent mass-for-mass. His eyes gleamed golden in the streetlight, and it glittered off teeth now closer to fangs.
In the distance, and closing rapidly, his own packmates howled. Bobby grinned.
"We'll see about that."
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