"'How's Clay? How's Clay?'" Scarper barks, a crude impression of your voice.
You turn around to look at the old warrior, but you can't see anything except the occasional streak of light from passing motorists illuminating Black Tarn's naked and blood-streaked body. Her eyes and teeth flash in the darkness.
"Stop fucking twisting around!" Scarper snaps. He's deflating as he returns to his scrawny homid form. "You can't fix anything right now, so just shut up and let me think."
It's a frantic ten-minute drive to the auto recycling center where some corrugated fencing and old trailers mark the home of northern New York's greatest champions of Gaia. A blackened chunk of the pipeline hangs like a trophy over the main gate. The garage door opener in the van isn't working again, and Scarper starts screaming and ripping at the steering wheel until you hop out of the van and throw the door open manually. Scarper almost clips you as he guns the engine and the rusty yellow van lurches into the garage. He stumbles out of the driver's-side door, swearing about the snow around the garage door that you didn't shovel.
"I'm okay," is the first thing Clay says when you throw open the back of the van. "Don't worry. It's fine."
It's not fine, though the old werewolf has returned to his homid form—that's all four of you now. His face is streaked with black veins, and his teeth are bloody. A gray film covers his eyes.
"I told you not to eat," Black Tarn tells the old man.
"The First Share of the Kill for Greatest in Station," Clay whispers. Maybe that part of the Litany made sense once, a thousand years ago. Clay tries to spit at Black Tarn, but only vomits blood.
"What do we do?" Scarper whispers, on the verge of panic.
"Watch him," Black Tarn says. Her eyes are clear, her voice firm; her madness has passed and she's the pack theurge again, mistress of spirits and secrets. "You, cub, come with me."
She heads into the breezeway, stumbling over old phone books you're not allowed to throw out, and hastily dresses in cast-off clothes. You make sure she's wearing boots.
Black Tarn is only barely lucid, and for how long? "You killed that trucker, Black Tarn. You're losing control."
"If you want the spirits to tell you what happened to Clay, it was that flesh he ate." A violation of the Litany's spirit if not its letter.
"Can the spirits help us?" I almost never interact directly with that half of my nature.
"I'm glad you're lucid again, Black Tarn, but there's no reason to hurry. You saw Clay. He's as good as dead."
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