He didn’t know how long the walk had taken. It had been dark for hours, and a stitch had formed in his side long ago. Desperation had driven him along, even when the sky opened up. At first it had just been drizzle, soft and quiet. Then the rain had come down and soaked them both clean through. This worried Ahren because if Laruku did not die from this disease, he could die from the weather in his bones. Coughing and struggling, he had crossed the border and stood there, knees locked, panting.

     The rain had stopped maybe half an hour ago. Like phantoms from the mist they had crossed into this new world, one carrying a disease and the other just starting to show the signs. Thick fog was starting to creep in around his feet, and the whole world seemed ethereal, unreal. Shaking his blonde hair from his face, Ahren called out. “Laurel!” He didn’t have the strength to howl, and his voice was a raspy, heavy thing.

There was fog. Somehow, he knew it in an instant, and the slippery sort of awareness he had seemed to sharpen momentarily. But this was not home, oddly familiar as it was anyway, it was not home. There was no home to go back to; he knew that. He had been told where this was, but he could not recall the words. He was more feverish than before, but icicles clung to his fur and he shivered, clinging onto his friend like some sort of leech. The name Ahren called out was familiar, and he thought about a bookstore, but then it was gone. His head hurt, and he was tired of being in the same position.



P'm'down, he mumbled. I k'walk. Like a legless soldier still convinced he was all right.

Smoke trailed thinly from the end of his cigarette as he had stoked the fire back to life, grumbling about how the rain seemed to always put it out once he had got it going decently. The log crackled and popped while a headache brewed in the recesses of his skull. He rubbed his face idly, half tempted to check up on Jasper again to see if the boy had improved any. Laurel wasn't sure if he had gotten better or worse since he had last peeked in on him, but at least he was resting. Resting had to be good, right? Maybe in this case he was just on the edge of death and he didn't know anything about it.



But that was when over the sound of his own breathing and the sounds of the night, he heard Ahren's voice. The stress, the strain, it sent a chill down his spine in the same way when the blonde had threatened him. There was no hesitation in the way that Laurel rose and there was plenty of haste in his run as he worked through the surrounding forests to the east. Finding the man wasn't that hard to do as he was just inside of the border, but a particular mustard-coloured fellow over his shoulder caught Laurel's attention. Laruku? His breath in his throat, he was still glad he had some for his voice.



“Another one?”



Things had suddenly got a little bit worse.

     Both of his ears turned back to Laruku, but Ahren did not look at him. “Shut up,” he said again, knowing that the moment he moved to put the hybrid down his legs were going to give out and leave them both in the mud. At this point, Laurel came running into the scene, and the taller, older man’s tone indicated that he was worried for part of the same reason Ahren was—whatever this disease was, it was spreading. “He needs to get inside.” Likewise, the blonde needed the same. His breathing was still ragged and his heart kept pounding; the cold rain had not helped this much at all.

It was a trade off of sorts. In the darkness, he could see nothing at all, could not make out the silhouette of trees or the shape of the newcomer who should have been more familiar than he was, but sense of touch was still vibrating with acute awareness. The air was cold; his body was warm, and increasingly, the body he had been pressed against was getting warmer, its heart beating faster still. It upset him, just as it upset him that this was not his home. Rather suddenly, he found that he did not really want to be there at all. The journey had been more fun than the destination.



I don't belong here, he said in an insistent whisper, blind to the world beyond the man still carrying him. I don't want to be here. As he finished his sentence, the same paralyzing pain that had gripped him before returned. He squeezed his eyes shut as his jaw rattled against his skull, chattering his teeth. The hybrid froze on Ahren's back, unable to push away, but unable to hang on anymore.

He didn't say anything at all, only nodded and started to lead the pair back through the fog and the wood. The pace that he definitely picked was a quick one, but not so quick that it was impossible to be kept up with. Having to lug someone around wasn't the easiest thing to do, especially in mud and through fog. “I checked in on Jasper a little while ago,” he said over his shoulder, spying the blonde and his companion, “and he's still resting pretty comfortably, looks a lot calmer than he did before.” He argued with himself that it was a good and a bad sign, but thinking that if he was at least out cold, he wasn't thinking about how bad he felt or how much anything hurt. The camp site came up quickly and Laurel beelined for the small shack that Laurent and Jasper had built only a week or two before.

     “Shut up,” he repeated, as if that would solve everything. Laruku was sick and didn’t know what he needed. Then he followed the coyote to the shack, and managed to get Laruku off his back. “Stay here,” he said, giving the scarred hybrid a pointed look. A moment was given to his son, who was sleeping, and then Ahren went back outside. He made it maybe two feet out of the door when his legs gave out and he sank to the ground. There he sat, exhausted, and yet he had enough strength to find a cigarette from the cargo pocket of his shorts and light it. The first drag caused him to cough violently, and he had to take a moment to regain his breath. “Fuck!”

When the two had disappeared into the shack, Laurel had turned his interests elsewhere for a minute or two, prodding the fire absently with a stick. By the time he had accomplished that much, Ahren had re-emerged and he had turned back to the blonde sinking to the ground and lighting a cigarette. “Nasty cough you've got there,” he said lamely, inwardly hoping that he wasn't picking up what the others were getting. “I know that guy you brought here, Laruku, right? Just met him a few days ago and he seemed fine then.” Whatever was going on had definitely transpired recently, and he didn't like being connected to it for all obvious reasons. His olive-tinted eyes hovered on the door to the shack for a moment, and then turned back to the blonde sincerely. “S’there anything I can get you? Some water maybe?”

     The second drag was smoother, and Ahren was glad for this. He had traded his old addiction for others—for violence and nicotine, which let him escape. A bedraggled and almost vicious smile crossed his face and he looked up to the older coyote. “Sure,” he said, taking a drag. “If you have any whiskey I’ll take that too,” he added with a laugh, wanting to warm his body from the dampness still embedded in his coat.

“Yeah, we've got that,” Laurel said with a laugh, a smile breaking on his face briefly for the first time in what felt like days. “I think booze was one of the biggest sums of things we drug out of the city,” he went on to say as he crossed the short distance to his tent and pulled a couple of bottles from it. Whiskey was his drink of choice, though he didn't really discriminate when it came to booze. All of it did the same thing in the end and at least the bottles were useful for something. Storing water, beating someone's brains out, and so on. Handing the blonde a bottle, he plopped down on the ground beside him and opened his own bottle.

     Of all the things Ahren was skilled at—murder for one—he was a champion at drinking. In part, this was due to his alcoholic past, and this also was one of the reasons he tried not to drink so much. Still, sometimes he needed it, just like he needed the cigarettes and the silence. The blonde opened the bottle and drank the equivalent of about four shots before he pulled it away and licked his muzzle, feeling a familiar and welcomed heat rushing through his throat. “You sound like my kind of people,” he said suddenly, pushing a chunk of blonde hair behind his ear.

One thing that he appreciated from whiskey in general was the way it seemed to burn a slow fire down the back of his throat. Sometimes it didn't taste the greatest and other times it was just plain horrid, but it was that internal warmth that always drew him back. It was far too easy to drink and sleep, no doubt with the things hanging over them. “I guess that's nice to know,” he chuckled, after taking a swig. Laurel thought he seemed like the kind who would sit back and share a drink. “We keep things pretty simple around here. Good food, good music, good drinks, everyone has something they can do to contribute here. Regular ol’ gypsy band, I guess.” He took short drink and then added with a slight laugh, “I think folks around here don't know how to react to us, especially when my partner in crime is also a coyote.”

     Another mouthful, another hot rush through his body. This wasn’t entirely the whiskey’s doing, but Ahren didn’t care. He was freezing and he needed something warm, something to take him away from his body and away from his mind. The word ‘gypsy’ made something dark cross through his eyes, though it was gone as suddenly as it had come. “I used to live with coyotes,” he said, taking a drag on the cigarette. “The leader of Inferni is my son,” he added, as if this might mean something.

It meant something, but not overly much to Laurel. He had heard a few things about Inferni already, mostly that it was a coyote pack and strictly that. No excuses, so on and so forth. But if his son was the leader and he had been there once, well… kind of blew that theory out of the water. “Folks really like to say that Inferni is strictly for the coyotes, but if you were there, I guess that kind of says otherwise. But I've spent a lot of time around folks who just don't care what you are. Probably because there's a lot of mixed blood out there, it's not like we're cats and dogs.” They were cousins to one another on the creature tree, essentially family in the grand scheme of everything.

     “They let two wolves in,” Ahren explained, shifting his weight and taking another drag. “Both of us because we were with one of the founders, Kaena Lykoi. Hellfire incarnate, that woman was. I’ve never seen anyone like her before or after,” he stated, smoke pouring from his mouth and nose. A strange gleam had crept into his red eye, and he was grinning in a wicked sort of way. “Though I doubt Gabriel is going to be letting that trend continue—he’s got a real grudge against most wolves.” Shrugging, he butted the cigarette and drew another one, sparking it up. “So what all did Jasper tell you about me?”

There were darker parts to the world that he didn't know anything about, though from the way some talked about it, and Laurel often wondered if he didn't pay attention to it. Of course, if he had ever gotten one look at the likes of Kaena Lykoi, hellfire incarnate would have been a great way to explain her. “Not much, really. Just mentioned that you were his father and wanted to know if you ever came around and wanted to stay if I'd let you.” Which of course, Laurel would, but he wasn't about to imply anything beyond what he already had. “It was one of the things he wanted to know before we came here, back when he and Laurent were living in the city.”

     There were more dark places in the world then the average man would ever see. A line had to be crossed in order to pass into that shadow-world, that underground, and after that there was no going back. Ahren’s eyes remained dull, almost glazed, but a dull and ancient shadow flickered through them as he stared ahead into the darkness. “You don’t want me here,” he said suddenly, without looking at the coyote.

He took another drink, only turning his ear at the blonde's words. It seemed almost like a funny thing to say and he wasn't sure just how to interpret it. He didn't care whether or not Ahren stayed or went, but it was hard to place his tone, wondering if there was some sort of warning there. Maybe there was something about him that prompted it. He went with the latter for now. “I'd ask why, but here our pasts don't matter. Maybe you've got some reason for keeping yourself away from places and I respect that.” Of course, he assumed that Ahren lived alone too. “But like I said, you're welcome to stay here if you want to. It won't bother me one way or another if you do or you don't.”

     Ahren’s face did not so much smile as it did crack, and he began to laugh. It was the desperate laugh of a man who had seen half the world over and had broken down several times in the past. He laughed like the end of the world had been a long time coming and the fire in his belly and in his throat was in his blood and his mind as well. “All right,” he said, taking a drag on the cigarette. “Just remember you opened the door.”

“I won't forget,” he said, trying not to seem as unnerved by his laugh as he felt. It wasn't the first time he had been blessed by seeing crazy in action, though needless to say it never left that great of a feeling in the pit of his stomach. But in time, he figured it would go away. Things would work out, they never hadn't before now. Sighing, he let the silence fall between them and finished his drink before leaving the blonde to his own devices.