Crimson Claws & Fangs ch.20

    Peter sits in the passenger sit beside an L.A. police officer as they are driving down the streets of the city. Peter looks down as himself once again in a Sheriff’s uniform and his fancy star shield badge Litmet had, had made for him. He thinks back to the conversation days ago with Litmet as she told him her informants had spotted Samantha York in San Diego. It was a simple matter for them to set into motion events that would bring the police to be aware of her being there and send them on a hunt for her. As well as restoring Peter to being a Sheriff. All of which frightens Peter learning just how much control these monsters he once fought against have over society and fight with each other with out any concern for any human hunters.

 

    His mind moves forward a few days to a report from the San Diego police that Samantha had broken into her old lab and of the person she spoke to, Sam Smith, being held by Police for questioning. He hadn’t been very informative, he told the police she went there looking for help, and he refused. According to him she had said there were others that would help her. The police were forced to release him as the video surveillance at the lab seemed to confirm his statement. However as a stroke of luck the advanced equipment the lab used was able to make out the address on the paper she shook at Sam.

 

 

   The address led to an old warehouse on the outskirts of L.A., they had been watching the place for days. The police on the stake out had reported two men, both very similar in appearance with black hair, one long, the other with shoulder length hair, coming and going from the warehouse often. They had also reported seeing two women, a girl with black hair like the men, and a woman with long wavy grey hair. To Peter these descriptions sound an awful lot alike the Dire he had seen in Pine Ridge, only in human guises.

 

     His mind moves forward again to this same day. The police had spotted Samantha in the city, approaching the ware house’s location. The report stated that she is clearly dangerous as she had single handedly taken out a small gang that had tried to mug her. The police opted to allow her to go the warehouse so they could catch her and her cohorts at the same time.

 

    Peter’s train of thought is stopped as the officer says, “we’re here.” Peter looks down the street as they are parked a block away posing as traffic cops watching for speedsters, “So that’s where your men saw the suspect enter?”

 

    “yeah,” says the Officer, “she was seen entering around one, they have yet to see her leave. They are still watching from a nearby warehouse waiting for our call to move in. There hasn’t been any sign yet of the other four though today.” The officer radios the stake out team, the stake out tells them the suspect can be seen in the window to the warehouse’s upstairs office. Peter, the officer and three from the stake out team’s five men join them as they move in quietly enter the warehouse. As the men slowly move through the warehouse and begin up the stairs to the offices on the second floor the lead officer’s walkie begins to blink informing him of an urgent call from the stakeout team. The officer whispers over the walkie and informs Peter and the others behind him that the stake out team across the street has informed him that they have spotted the other four through the office window, but didn’t see them enter, figuring they must have been using the same stealth technology Samantha York must have used at the lab, so they may already know they are there.

 

    Samantha had been waiting for sometime now, as she stands waiting in the office of this old ware house she thinks about how much trouble it was to find, even having to fight off a gang of thugs, had she not been super-humanly strong she hates to think what they might have done with her. As she looks around the office wandering if she is supposed to be in this room, or where exactly she is supposed to wait out of thin air four people materialize in the room. Two she recognizes as Versa and Riska, the other two, both male she doesn’t know, but something about them seems familiar. Versa says to her, “Greetings Crimson, I would like you to meet Rhuen, my mate, and our son Rish.” She gestures to the two men, “I believe you have twice now met Rhuen, although I imagine not in this form, but rather as a dream fox.” Samantha gets wide eyed as she looks at him.

 

   “So now we meet in a more proper setting,” he says, “and you are Versa’s new were-dire so to speak. I can tell you from our encounters that you have potential kid, & you’re a fast learner to boot.”

 

    Their conversation is interrupted as five police officers, one of whom Samantha recognizes as Sheriff Peter Jones, come bursting into the room, guns drawn yelling out, “Freeze!”

 

     Behind the men a casual woman’s voice surprises them, “an interesting choice of words.”

 

    A chilling wind filled with snow snakes around them encasing their hands and guns in blocks of ice. The source of the voice is a woman who looks exactly like Versa, except that she has hair as white as freshly fallen snow. Versa says to all as though announcing her arrival to all in the room, “My dear Crimson, this is my sister and fellow pride mate to Rhuen, Kitsu.”

 

    Rhuen’s right hand glows with a ghostly gas like green aura, he waves his hands at the policemen and says, “sleep.”

 

   All of them save for Peter fall to the ground asleep. Rhuen announces that even those watching from across the street are asleep as well. He looks directly at Peter with blazing blue eyes as though peering into his fearful soul, “They will not remember anything that has happened here. We have the power to alter their memories.”

 

   Samantha looks at Rhuen and thinks, “So that’s why I couldn’t find my way back to their cave.”

 

   Rhuen looks at her with a smile before turning back to Peter, “You are the last unpunished human who posed himself as a threat to my offspring and made yourself a nuisance to us during our time of breeding.”

 

    With a huff he continues, “Not that you ever were a real threat. My mate Kitsu there needn’t have created that cold, but she so loves ice techniques. Your guns were never a threat to us, which is something you should have already been well aware of. So what exactly were you thinking pulling this stunt?”

 

    Rhuen’s demeanor changes from annoyed to curious, “Maybe you were expecting back up that actually could help you for some reason? Or perhaps your just stupid. Did you think we would act like vampires, letting you take Versa’s consort for the sake of secrecy?”

 

   He points to the men on the ground, “their memories will be altered, they will awake thinking they ran into a group wearing gas masks and were knocked out, same for the ones across the street. You on the other hand will be punished much more severely.” Rhuen extends his right arm straight out from his side. Peter looks forward and behind him, finding himself trapped and his hands numb, frozen in a block of ice to his gun still. Before Rhuen can say anything yet another female voice rings out, “Wait for me I want to see what happens.”

 

   This voice at first raised Peter’s spirit mistaking it for Litmet, but the small bouncy canary blond girl jumping up behind Kitsu most certainly is not Litmet. Kitsu looks down at the girl, “shush now Yasha Rhuen is about to do something.”

 

   Rhuen rolls his eyes in a manner unfit for someone so imposing. Rhuen’s right hand emits an sparkling energy of blue and white sparks clustered like a cloud of energy, like a blue static version of the static on a television screen clustered around his hand and forearm. He waves his arm forward and the energy surrounds them all as he yells out, “Oblivion Summance!”

 

   They find themselves when the energy clears standing on a clear chessboard like platform. Only Samantha and Peter look amazed at this sight, Samantha more amazed, Peter more terrified, not even realizing that the ice on his hands is gone, as his gun and the policemen did not come with them. Below them is a vast seemingly endless forest. On the horizon look to be green trees, but below them nothing but grey ones, like a scene from an old Black and White horror movie. Above his a strange mist like cloud far too high to see clearly, with only a haze of daylight present and the occasional lower hanging cloud.

 

    Rhuen points at Peter, “This is the Dark Forest, my domain, a massive landscape of twisting forests, rivers, and creatures unlike anything you have ever seen. A world with-in a different universe, a place between what you would call Heaven and Hell. I am going to leave you to fend for yourself against creatures that to us are but mere beasts, but to you will be living nightmares. Learn well before you die as our equivalents of rats overpower you that you had no chance against gods.”

 

    Peter finds himself un-able to speak as his body is held paralyzed and lowers through the platform to the forest floor. He looks up as he once again is able to move, through the grey branches and silvery leaves as the platform and all on it are once again encased in a blue sphere of energy and vanishes leaving him behind, listening to the sounds of distant screeching beasts.