literature

Learning the Family Business

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Cold wind blows across the mountains and the interstate, scattering the snowflakes like scared lambs.  It cuts through my sheepskin coat and even my very pelt like an icy razor.

Great way to start my first war.

My brother is out hunting our rivals' hired thugs and I get four hour long guard shifts in the motel parking lot, cold steel of the fifty caliber AK cradled in my arms.  Icy black asphalt sends the cold right up my legs, my pawpads barely offering any defense.  I walk back and forth, trying to get my blood moving.  I'm skinny by werewolf standards, even if humans just see me as another hulking monster.

The thugs from New Denver must be absolutely freezing.  We hunt wild game in the mountains, even through sleet and snow.  We learn not to tolerate cold.  When we're not doing typical lupine stuff, we're helping smugglers with their cargo – illegal guns, illicit liquor going into Lunar Knights' territory in Utah, stolen Old World tech, drugs of all shapes and sizes, even some legal cargo in need of the security that only a werewolf pack can provide.  Everyone knows that they can trust a werewolf.  We're cruel and predatory, but we're straightforward.  We don't lie and we never backstab our clients who pay as promised.  We don't hold one gender against the other either.  In our culture, females like me who are old enough to shoot and know how to handle themselves get a gun and do their duty, same as any male.  That's why we control illegal traffic on the old Interstate 70 just the same as we hold dominion over the prey animals of our territory.  The fat gangsters in New Denver don't understand this yet.  That's why we're on the roads now, camped out in fortified safehouses like this motel, hunting hijackers and hired guns like deer and elk.

I hear a door slam.  Cousin Red comes out of the motel suite.  I give him the AK and the spare magazine from my pocket and practically run inside.  The carpet is threadbare and frayed, walked over by hundreds of sets of sharp claws, but it feels as warm as a blanket after so long on the rough, icy asphalt.  Cousin King and Cousin Tyrus, twin brothers, sit on the ragged couch in the living room, diligently cleaning their Mossberg-Fenris riot guns and passing back and forth a giant bottle of red wine.

"Wipe your feet, little one," says a deep female voice.

I do so.

"I'm seventeen, Aunt Broken Fang," I say.

"Even when you're two hundred, you're always going to be my little one," she says.

My senses come under attack.  There's a noxious, burning smell coming from the kitchen.  A radio plays horrible Old World music with some twangy half rock, half hillbilly ballad about Alabama.

I have no idea why Aunt Broken Fang likes this sort of stuff.  She used to be human before the bombs came, just like my parents, but they know full well that they're not human anymore.  She's not my aunt either, but mom and dad make me call her that.  No mate, no pups, and probably not related by blood to anyone alive.  She's not even all that old by werewolf standards, but her human family likely died out sometime between the bombs falling and now, a hundred years later.  That's probably why she's so crazy.  Either that or because of how she got her name.  During the bad years right after the bombs, she and my dad joined the army together, reestablishing law and order in the region.  Some human with a big enough rifle shot her in the head.  By sheer luck, the bullet left a big, jagged scar on her muzzle and clipped one of fangs without actually hitting the rest of her.  Coming that close to being killed, by a human no less, can't be good for the spirit.  At times like these, I wonder if my parents made her Beta Female out of sheer pity.

Knowing how crazy she is, I didn't want to be on Aunt Broken Fang's hunting party.  Things got feral when I argued with my parents - hard stares, snarls, tongues half stuck out in annoyance.  I might argue with my parents, but I never argue with my Alphas.  They probably put me and my brother on her hunting party as punishment for something we did.  I just wish I knew what.

I hang my ice-coated sheepskin coat in the closet.  I never wear anything under it aside from my belt knife and gods-given pelt.  I walk into the kitchen, closer to the sinus-frying scent.  Aunt Broken Fang is wearing jeans, a t-shirt with the Lupus Arms logo, Bowie Knife in a sheath on her belt and massive brass belt buckle engraved with a wolf skull and crossbones on it.  There's a million and one insults to describe a werewolf like this - "furless," "house pet," "lapdog," not to mention the ruder ones.  But anyone who would say those to Aunt Broken Fang would be insane.  Even in the remodeled motel room with vaulted ceilings and bigger doors to accommodate our nine foot height, Aunt Broken Fang has to hunch over to avoid hitting her head and walks sideways through doorways.  If that wasn't enough to convince others to be polite, she always carries a Lupus All-American in a leather shoulder holster.  As much as I hate human stuff, that gun is an exception - a handgun first made in 1911 by some guy from Utah, scaled up to fire werewolf sized .75 Auto rounds, modified with big controls for paws, and custom tuned to surgical grade accuracy.  I once saw Aunt Broken Fang blow a fleeing deer's head to pieces from at least seventy yards away.

"Come closer, little one," Aunt Broken Fang says.

I shuffle closer.  Aunt Broken Fang is stirring something - bright red like blood, but thick and chunky.  The scent is all wrong.  Fried vegetables and oil.  No meat.  She stirs.  With a paw cupped underneath it, she raises a ladle full of toxic liquid towards my mouth.

"Taste," she commands.

My lips curl, pink tongue slowly emerges from my jaws, touches the evil concoction.  It's... it's...  wonderful.  Rich, herbal, warm.  I lap at it eagerly, feeling it slowly permeate through my bones.  When the ladle is empty, Aunt Broken Fang pulls it away and I whimper like a puppy.

"What is that?" I ask.

"Marinara sauce.  The recipe is one of the few things I remember from before.  Amazing what memories survive the Change – scents, tastes, feelings, muscle memory."

"What's it made of?"

"Come over here and I'll teach you how to make it.  A leader makes sure that his or her werewolves are fed – and, unlike our four-legged cousins, always eats last.  One day, when you're Alpha Female, you'll have to feed the whole pack.  That's when you'll member this recipe I'm teaching you."

She shows me the ingredients - things I never knew went together.  I see cans, bags, boxes, little glass bottles, all tiny human-sized servings from a grocery store.  It seems so obvious now.  Of course we can't stop our duties to go into the mountains to hunt.  I've been in a couple raids, plenty of hunts, and done a ton of guard duty, but this is my first war on the road as a hunter.

"Start with olive oil in the pan," says Aunt Broken Fang.  "Fry your garlic first, not too hot.  Then add your canned tomatoes.  I use a mix of paste, smashed whole tomatoes, and half diced to get that variety... well that and because feeding werewolves means buying practically every can that the store has.  Fry them - and stir or it'll burn.  Put it all in a pot.  Mix in basil and oregano - fresh if you've got it.  Simmer.  What I like best about this stuff is that it can stay warm in the pot all day – great for when you've got hunters going in and out.  Add your meat and all you have to do is boil some fresh pasta and serve."

"But where's the meat?"  I ask.

Aunt Broken Fang smiles.

"Waiting on it," she says.  "In the meantime, keep stirring – I've got to get my secret ingredient.  Assuming that your cousins haven't drunk it all, add a bit of wine to the sauce."

She walks over to the couch and yanks the bottle of wine out of Cousin Tyrus' paw.  He scowls, but to no effect.  She pours a splash in the pot with the rest and hands the bottle back.

"Just a touch," she says.  "Then some sugar.  See how that balances out the flavor?  And keep stirring, little one."

I'm cooking like a human.  It feels bizarre, foreign.  Pack dinners typically consist of ripping apart carcasses moments after they die.  We've always been a half-feral pack: eating off the land, living without excessive luxuries, and giving protection to smugglers to pay for the items that nature couldn't provide: weapons, booze, medical supplies, vehicles, fuel, materials to repair the pack compound, and the like.  Yet I do have a few luxuries, especially as the Alphas' daughter.  I sleep in my own room with an actual bed in it and blankets.  Out here, in this shoddy motel, I curl up on a cheap mattress on the floor with my packmates, without the privileges of high rank.  Cousin Ironsides, as number two, gets the couch and Aunt Broken Fang sleeps alone in a giant bed.

I hear a vehicle outside.  Knock on the door.  Aunt Broken Fang already has her All-American out of its holster and at the low ready when Cousin Red appears in the door.

"They're back," he says.

Aunt Broken Fang grabs him by the scruff of his throat and shows him her fangs.  Cousin Red's eyes go wide.

"Are you paying attention?" she asks.

"Yes, Aunt Broken Fang!"

"I should have heard that knock five minutes ago.  You can't hear a truck?  How do you hope to hear a couple of humans on foot?  They could have killed you ten times over – and worse, could have killed all of us.  You're on your third war and still as lazy and slow as the first time I took you."

Cousin Red tries to look down and away, a submissive puppy.

"Get you head up!" she barks.  "Look at me!"

He does, slowly, and meets her eyes.  They look at one another, judging.  Finally, she lets go of his throat and hugs him.

"I love you," she says.  "That's why I want you to be aware of your surroundings.  It would kill me if something happened to you.  Learn from this.  Understand?"

"Yes, Aunt Broken Fang," he says.

She lets him go.

"Come along, little ones," she says.  "Let's go look at what your packmates brought."

The truck is a Marauder – one of the semi truck-sized pickups made for werewolves by Navistar.  My twin brother gets out along with Cousin Ironsides.  Both of them bow their head to Aunt Broken Fang.

"Successful hunt?" she asks.

My brother nods.

He drops the truck's tailgate and pulls back a canvas to reveal two half-frozen humans – one dead and headless and the other wriggling in ropes, mouth gagged.

"Found these two idiots in an SUV at the Crossover truck stop," says my brother.  "Armed to teeth, but faces full of diner food."

"New Denver guys?" she asks.

"Oh yeah."

"Why's one dead and the other alive?  You know I prefer live ones."

He looks at his feet and presents his paw for inspection.  There's dried blood all over his fur and on his talons.

"I snuck up like you taught me, even made sure he didn't have his seatbelt on, but when was pulling him out the window he grabbed the steering wheel.  I dug my talons in and squeezed his head… just a little bit.  And… it gave."

Aunt Broken fang chuckles.  She hugs my brother.

"But you still made your first kill, didn't you?"

He nods.

My stomach sinks.  My brother is now Blooded.  A veteran.  A mankiller.  Even in the modern world, where humans and werewolves live side by side, we're still the hunters and they're the prey.  I hang my head.  But I'm not one of them.  Aunt Broken Fang is.  Cousin Ironsides is.  So are Cousins King and Tyrus, and even Cousin Red.

Aunt Broken Fang turns to me and points to the dead one.  

"Pick him up," she commands.  She grabs the live one, prompting him to scream around the gag.

I follow Aunt Broken Fang's lead, dumping the body in the motel room bathtub right on top of his screaming buddy.  His screams stop when Aunt Broken Fang punches him relatively lightly in the stomach.  He coughs and chokes.

"You've probably figured out we're not about to give you a bath," she says to him.

She looks at the thug in the tub and smiles.  He mutters; I think he's trying to say cuss words.

"I could keep you alive; give you a message to give back to the greedy pigs in New Denver."

He falls quiet.  His eyes focus on Aunt Broken Fang, staring at her as a drowning man might stare at a life raft.

"I could do that," she says.  "But I don't have to, because everyone knows how New Denver tough guys go missing out here.  Doesn't that send a message?  And it's so very mysterious – what happens to those who disappear?  Rumors and theories.  The usual nameless graves?  Certainly not with the ground frozen.  Some say that we melt the bodies in acid, just like they do in New Denver, but that's not our style."

Aunt Broken Fang unsheathes her Bowie Knife and places it under the thug's chin, forcing him to lift his head and look into her yellow eyes.

"But what happens to them?  Well… I have a theory: when New Denver sends thugs to our little corner of the Old Interstate, they end up sliced into cutlets, dipped in flour, lightly sautéed in olive oil and garlic, drizzled with fresh lemon, and served on a bed of pasta with a fresh marina sauce."

A gagged scream.

Aunt Broken Fang turns to me, a closed-mouth smile on her face.

"You remember how to butcher a deer, don't you little one?" she asks.

I nod.

"And you remember how I taught you to put your jaws around a deer's neck and squeeze with all your might to make a quick, clean kill?  So the deer doesn't have to suffer too much?"

I nod again.

"Well… here, you want to do the opposite."

My heart leaps.  I lick my lips and give him the biggest smile I can, laughing as his screams grow louder.

***

Breaded cutlets of New Denver gunman sizzle in the pan amid crushed garlic.  Aunt Broken Fang sits on the living room couch next to my packmates, cleaning her knife with a cloth and sharpening with a whetstone.

The kill is fresh on my mind.  That fear in the thug's eyes, that primal understanding that I am a predator and he is prey.

And yet… I hear Aunt Broken Fang singing quietly along with that same dead redneck band on the radio.  A predator in the prey's clothing, singing the prey's song.  I don't understand.

"Aunt Broken Fang?"  I ask.

"What is it, little one?"

"How come you've been listening to that music?"

She laughs and smiles.

"It's complicated, little one.  And not something for a young mind."

I scowl at the frying pan.

"But I'm Blooded," I say.

I hear a chuckle.

"You are indeed, little one," says Aunt Broken fang.  "Do you know what my name was as a human?"

"No."

"Neither do I.  It's lost to the ages, just as much of the Old World's knowledge and technology was.  But I remember how to make Marina sauce.  And when I hear Skynyrd?  I know most of words by heart.  The first time I touched an All-American, it was as natural a weapon to me as my teeth.  Sometimes, especially when I'm sleeping in a strange bed like now, I wake up and wonder why I'm not back in my old house.  All of this stuff: the cooking, the clothes, the music, it helps me feel like human again."

"But I don't understand.  You want to be human again?  You don't like being a werewolf?"

She puts down her knife and whetstone and walks over to me.  I cringe, pure instinct, waiting for her to grab my throat.  Instead, she wraps her arms around me and pulls me as tight as she can.  I feel her muzzle and the patch of furless scar tissue nuzzling my forehead.  I look up and her eyes meet my own.

"Nothing would make me go back, little one.  I love this.  I love feeling the cold wind ruffle my fur.  I love serving my Alphas, knowing that they trust me with their lives – and with yours.  I love teaching you, protecting you, watching you grow.  I love hunting, I love war, I love being the predator who decides life and death.  I have loved every moment of my life since I became a werewolf, even the cold and painful ones."

"Then why were you listening to that music?"

She smiles.

"Remember when I was teaching you to hunt and I told you to think like a deer?  A hunter must understand the prey better than the prey understands itself"

Now I understand.  I understand why I am in Aunt Broken Fang's hunting party.  I understand why my parents have made her the Beta of the Pack and trust me to her care.  I understand how much she has to teach me.

The door opens and my brother enters with the AK.  I realize that I lost track of time – taking care of the prey, helping Aunt Broken tooth butcher the bodies, putting the scraps in the refrigerator, freezing the bones so we can make soup, breading the cutlets, chopping the garlic, frying the garlic...  It's dark now, snowing harder than before, and it's my turn to stand outside.  I shiver at the thought of another four hour guard shift.

"I'll do it," says Aunt Broken Fang.  "You just worry about the meal.  Bring me a plate and a fork when it's ready."

She lets me go and we attend to our duties.  I work diligently, watching the cutlets turn from pink and covered with white flour to a golden brown.  The garlic and oil sizzle.  I stir the tomato sauce, smelling carefully to balance the sweet, tart, and herbal flavors.  When the last cutlet is finished, I place servings on plates, giving them to each of my cousins and my brother.  They eat like wolves with opposable thumbs, tossing fistfuls of pasta and meat into their mouths, covering their jaws with red sauce not unlike the bloody muzzles we always brandish after a successful hunt.  I don my sheepskin coat, pick up my plate and Aunt Broken Fang's, and step outside into the blizzard.

She stands at attention in the nearly empty parking lot, AK slung across her chest.  The wind screams across the mountains and empty interstate.  I try to protect the carefully crafted meal from the snow, with little success.  Under the wind, I can hear her sing of blue skies and coming home.

She turns to me and smiles, taking the plate from me.

"Fork?" she asks.

I produce one from my pocket, of the werewolf-sized variety.  They were gathering dust in the back of a drawer.  I watch as she stabs each piece of meat, twirling noodles around it with a deftness I hadn't imagined possible from a werewolf's paw, and gently places it inside her mouth.

"Aunt Broken Fang?"  I ask.

She doesn't speak as she chews, only raises her brow.  I produce a second fork from my pocket.

"Can you teach me?"
What's this? Two pieces of writing in a week? Made while I'm working on something with a contest? This feels really weird.

More werewolf stuff, but of a different variety. :iconjoeyliverwurst: provided inspiration here as did a certain pasta-related scene from a famous movie about organized crime: [link].

UPDATE:

There is now art to go with the story, courtesy of

:iconkigai-holt:



The usual deal applies. Have a question about something? See something messed up? See something you really like? Think that Aunt Broken Fang is the coolest aunt ever? Let me know. I respond to all comments and criticisms, even negative ones.



And don't steal stuff. I can very easily prove that this is mine.
© 2012 - 2024 QuebecoisWolf
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phoenixdragongod's avatar
this is really interesting. Is there anymore to this story?