Artiface of Strength

Florence shrieked in agony as she watched her parents die, both of them having just been gunned down with silver bullets by a deranged soldier. These were not the wolves that had sired and whelped her; but rather, the Beth and John Billington who had raised her from a pup. They were her real parents, these two the world had seen crumple to the tarmac in Sacramento. They had died, live on CNN, while she and her mate had sat peacefully on the couch watching the evening news.

Tristan screamed for vengeance. "Men will die, lots of men will die!"

William however, was torn between these two extremes. He was their Alpha, so he keenly felt both of their emotions as if they were his own, and a good Alpha was always influenced by his pack's emotions, generally allowing the pack's consensus to guide his decisions. He didn't delay, his orders were delivered quickly; "First we cry, and then we kill those who've done this."

"Joseph,"

Will immediately sent to his code-talking Choctaw,

"Get Jefferson on the phone and ask for our orders."

"Yes Alpha,"

replied Joe briskly.

"Tom, are the bikes ready?"

"Yes, Alpha,"

Tom replied.

"Mount up. Start moving the warriors to Sacramento. Now!"

"Yes, Alpha."

Ja-mul, on the other hand, had been forecasting John's death since before he'd even met the man; he had seen the couple dying on a runway in one of his visions. The in-between world had great power, but he'd never been allowed to tell John or Beth of the exact time of their deaths-- Xwun had her own plans for the two wolves. The shaman had only been allowed to warn them that their time was coming and for them to remain strong. He'd known one thing however; he'd known that neither had expected to see Whiskey Lake again once they had left their home with the Homeland Security people.

So he didn't take time to cry, nor did he swear vengeance. As Di-yin, he just stopped briefly to wish his friends a good passage to the other side; paused a moment; and then called out to Agent Edwards, who was now acting as his aide and handler, "get the Great White Father on the phone for me. We might still have time to avert this war!"

Edwards looked up from where he was perched at the other end of the bar and said, "Umm, you know that the current President is black...right?"

Ja-mul looked back at his newest target and prodded, "I can't believe that you actually fell for that."

Edwards didn't reply or show any distress, he just reached for his phone and speed dialed the appropriate number. The President didn't actually answer the phone himself, one of his aides did that for him, but Ja-mul and the President were talking within minutes, both of them trying desperately to prevent the bloodbath that they knew was coming.

Thirty minutes later, a different phone call had ended, and Joseph reported back to his Alpha, "Jefferson just called with his orders, Alpha."

"What are they?"

"Vengeance... we are to strike in Sacramento."

"Did he give us any specific targets?" Will asked.

"He said that it is Florence's choice."

Will thought about that and then said, "He understands that the jet was part of Burton's fleet, right?"

"He said this was Florence's choice, with no restrictions whatsoever."

Florence had heard every word from where she sat crying in William's lap. Her tears had not yet stopped falling and her hatred was already building. "William," she said with cold conviction in her voice, "I will have my vengeance, but I will not kill your children's mother or grandfather until I am 100% sure that they were directly involved."

William stood up, still grasping his mate to him tightly, and as he carried her to where the bikes were waiting for them, he sent directly into her soul,

"If they were involved, I will not stop you, my mate. If they were responsible for this, then they deserve whatever punishment that you decide upon. I give you my word."

"We've got to protect your children,"

she sent back.

"We can't let them grow up to be like those people, but it wouldn't be healthy for them to see me killing either. The sight of it would remain, and they'd remember that blood for the rest of their lives; we have to temper our vengeance with mercy for the children if we can. Burton has to pay, but we can't make the children pay his debt."

"First things first," William replied grimly. "We'll find out what he knows, and then we'll decide what to do about it."

And as they rode to Sacramento, the explosions began. Every pack in the country struck, all of them at more or less the same time. As it got dark, the nation's power plants went up in smoke, as did its water treatment facilities, rail lines, satellite towers, bridges, and even a few of its aqueducts. The targets were picked with care; none of them were selected with the intent of injuring the humans who had taken their Alpha, instead, the targets were picked to inconvenience and to terrify the populace, and it worked all too well.

Dozens of simultaneous attacks took place throughout the country, both in urban and in rural areas nationwide, and the attacks had most of the populace crying out in mass terror almost immediately. For years, the nation's politicians and media had been conditioning their citizens to panic early, and to panic often; the nation's people had been living in an irrational state of fear ever since the attacks of 9/11, and the Were took full advantage of this weakness in the nation's psyche. If the humans were going to let acts of terrorism terrify them, then the wolf society would be more than happy to accommodate them, wolves were well versed in attacking an opponent's weakness.

Of course, the armed forced were quickly deployed around the nation's assets, but as usual, a standing army moves too slowly, tending to arrive after it was already much too late to do anything but manage the mess left behind. The armed forces spent most of their time rebuffing the local survivalists and militias who were eager to participate in the turmoil, and reassuring the frightened populace who were not. The military never sighted any of the attackers; the wolves always struck quickly and then faded back into the populace. Modern armies were very good at managing areas of ground and protecting buildings from visible enemies, but as both Afghanistan and Iraq had proven all; they are almost useless against insurgencies where their enemies wore no uniform and looked like the rest of the population.

Shots

were

fired and some people

did

die, but none of the deaths directly involved the Were. Most of the deaths came from the so-called 'friendly fire' incidents that surround any war zone; most of these generally involved one group of armed men mistaking another group of armed men for the werewolves that they'd all seen on television.

The rest of the world looked on in growing horror as the always militaristic Americans were once again turning their guns upon each other. It was not lost on the rest of the world that these attacks were

only

taking place in the United States and nowhere else, when it was becoming pretty clear that borders meant very little to werewolves. Surely, they reasoned, there were wolves both in Canada and Mexico, and yet, these wolves were taking no actions whatsoever. Behind the scenes, these governments were trying to figure out how to reach out to their own Were, desperately hoping to avoid the conflict that was taking place within their large neighbor's borders.

While all of this was happening, there was only one single pack of Were sighted by the human authorities. A small unit in Wyoming was in the process of detonating the main power feed that supplied Cheyenne, when a large number of local police arrived, but the wolves had easily, almost effortlessly taken the policemen into custody without any casualties whatsoever. The policemen were treated with deference and were eventually left trussed up, but undamaged, in the backs of their squad cars. Jefferson had been quite clear when he'd issued commands, other than whatever Florence decided to do, there were to be no deaths...yet.

Burton was doing the same thing that almost every American was doing that night; he was watching his television set with growing alarm, but then again, he knew something that most Americans did not. He knew that the Were had reason to want his head. He'd seen what everyone else in the World had seen, his jet, clearly marked with his company's logo, right in the middle of the biggest story of the century. Everyone else had seen two distressed looking Werewolves reassuring themselves with a romantic kiss, and then being shot to death by a deranged man armed with silver bullets, but Burton knew the rest of it as well. He knew why those werewolves been on that jet, and his mind spun with greater and greater dismay with every explosion that took place across America.

Yes, the American people now knew about the silver bullets; one of them had passed through the lovers and lodged within one of the network cameras. It had immediately been dug out of the unit and presented on live television before the army had even had the time to clear away the bodies. The talking heads all agreed, the myths were correct, silver did indeed kill them!

As Burton continued to watch his screen, his private phone began to ring, and he knew that this was a

really

bad sign for him, there were not ten people in the entire World who had his number, and almost all of them were connected to the security establishment in one way or another. He didn't answer the phone right away however, he knew better. He knew what these men wanted and he knew the questions that they would ask. Burton was going to put off answering those questions for as long as was humanly possible, the longer he waited, the more he'd know. He'd already gotten some good news with the media reports that all of those involved in the kidnapping had been killed. He knew that if Armstrong were dead, he still might have some vestiges of plausible deniability left, at least to the United States Government. The Were would be another matter entirely.

Burton was a smart man, and he'd started to make the connections. If John Billington and his wife were werewolves, then their daughter certainly was a wolf as well...and she'd be pissed. What was it that the news people had said? The kidnappers had been torn limb from limb? He wondered how his deal had gone so wrong, so quickly. The largest vein of silver on Earth and it was right directly under those damned Indians' land, and now it turns out that these are werewolves instead of Indians.

He'd never have believed a word of it if he hadn't seen the video for himself, but now he began to see why Armstrong had kept that information to himself. Burton knew that he'd have thought the Colonel to have lost his mind if he'd shared it. Maybe he could still make some sort of a deal? If the werewolves didn't kill him without waiting to talk, maybe there was still a way out? He knew that William would want his children back, and now that both of them were safely out of the country, Will might have to bargain. It wasn't much, but Burton knew that he was out of options, so he picked up the phone and made the only call that he could make.

It was dark in the nation's Capitol now, very dark. Night had fallen and in many parts of the city, and fires burned brightly. There had not been much looting in the city yet, that wasn't why the fires burned; these fires were for warmth, and for light. Jefferson's pack had been extremely successful in destroying power coming into the city. They should have been successful, many of them worked for the power company. They'd been preparing for this day for decades.

The power was still on at the White House however; its generators took care of that. The President and his advisors had enough light to sit in the situation room and glumly listen to the reports as they came in, one disaster striking after another.

"Mr. President, they are making us look like amateurs, they are making one successful strike after another. They've done massive targeted damage in every single place that they've hit. They appear like ghosts, destroy their targets without fail, and then, they fade back into the general populace. It's amazing that the death toll has been so low. Not to mention... that the deaths that have happened can't really be attributed to them."

"Josh, the media is reporting deaths all over the country, and yet, you say the death toll is low?"

"Sir, the deaths are mostly coming from militias and survivalists shooting at one another, or worse yet, shooting at the army. The weekend warriors are out in force, and they are driving our men crazy. They've constantly been getting into the way; making things worse; and shooting at almost anything that moves."

"Has the press started to figure any of that out yet?"

"Well...some of the networks have, but others are portraying these guys as if they are some kind of heroes defending us from terrorists; it depends on which station you watch. We've seen pretty much everything; one network is even claiming that werewolves are part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and don't even get me started on some of the evangelists; they are even worse. There have been a number of the minor ones who have been screaming that wolves have been sent from Satan to bring on the apocalypse."

The President sighed, and then he said, "So they've all lost their minds."

"Yes sir."

The President turned to his representative from the Armed Services and asked, "...and we have not caught

any

of them?"

"No Mr. President, and although Josh's press people have not caught wind of it yet, even though we both know that they will... the wolves are leaving messages. They say 'for John' or just "Alpha John'. Sir, they could have killed tens of thousands of civilians by now if they had wanted to do that, maybe even hundreds of thousands. They have hit us with an incredible precision that I don't think we could match if we tried. Hell Sir, we are thinking that they revealed themselves to us in Wyoming just to prove that it was werewolves, rather than ghosts."

The President then turned to his chief of staff and asked, "Denis, what's going on politically?"

"It's ugly out there, sir; the usual demagogues are running wild, although most of them are just blaming their favourite 'other'. Senator Rafael is calling for the implementation of martial law and a delay in the coming elections until peace has resumed."

"He's still behind in the polls then?"

"From your lips to God's ears, sir."

The President grimaced at that before saying, "Josh, go talk to the press. Tell them that I will be speaking to the nation at 9 a.m. tomorrow pacific standard time."

"Any clue what you are going to be saying sir? You know that they will tear me apart asking for a preview."

"Sorry Josh, I wish that I knew what to tell you, but we are going to have to wait and see what else happens between now and then."

Josh filed out of the room; wishing that he owned a pair of asbestos underwear, but then again, he knew that getting flamed came with this job. The President waited for the door to close and then said to his chief, "Get the old man in here as soon as possible. I am not eager to do this his way, but I'm not sure that I see a way to avoid his suggestions now."

"Yes sir."

"...and get the Canadian Premier on the phone. We need to find out if either he or the Mexican authorities have managed to contact their own Were."

"He's brand new to the job sir; he's only been in office a couple of months now."

"Then I guess his learning curve is going to be kind of steep isn't it?"

"Yes sir, right away."

And then it got worse.

Reverend William Franklin took to his Facebook and Twitter pages, loudly declaring that Werewolves were not part of God's natural plan, and that meant that it was obvious to him that they were from the Devil instead. He preached that was time to present arms for the Lord and to protect God's chosen nation from the ravages of Hell itself.

By daybreak, many like-minded evangelical ministers had endorsed Rev. Franklin's writings or had even doubled down on his comments, commanding their followers to kill the demonic Were on sight. All in all, roughly 20% of American citizens had decided that the Rapture was upon them. Few of these citizens chose to go to work or to send their children to school that day. Most of them had hunkered down inside of their homes armed with their Bibles, their guns, and their cable television in front of them. Oddly enough, most of the churches were empty.

The nation's militias were out in force though, especially in the states along the Mexican border. Cars were being stopped, but not by the nation's border patrols, but instead by the volunteer soldiers. Armed men were making damned sure that werewolves weren't gonna sneak into their county. Most of them had no real idea what they were looking for, so most of them settled upon their oldest enemy, Mexican Nationals. Men were pulled from their cars and beaten, none of the self-proclaimed patriots quite understanding that if real werewolves were involved, the militias would have been torn into pieces.

In some localities, the local militias decided that since silver bullets had successfully killed John Billington, this meant that to expose werewolves to silver would harm, or even kill them. But unfortunately for them, silver was not readily available in the United States since it had been removed from the nation's coinage in 1965. What little silver that they could obtain was contained within their jewelry, and in the American Southwest, that mostly meant Native American art.

Silver and turquoise jewelry was ubiquitous in this part of the world. Many ranchers and men of the West wore the stuff almost everywhere. It had been fashioned into their rings and bracelets, and even into the tips on the string ties that many of them wore. They quickly pressed their jewelry into service, both as a sign of their own tribal loyalty, and from the belief that no Were could withstand its touch. Strangely enough, it never occurred to any of them to wonder why the Native Americans would be so freely using a metal that was deadly to their own totem animals; deep thought wasn't exactly a hallmark of militia membership.

The sun had come up over most of America, but as it was not yet 9 a.m. in California and the President had yet to speak to his panicked nation. But there was one small place where peace and tranquility still held sway; there was a small glen with a trickling creek running through it, and from there, the stream ran down into the clear, blue lake below. In that glen, there was a newly mated pair of wolves who were just now waking with the arrival of the sun. Sitting near them was a beautiful woman, comfortably seated in her favourite lotus position, patiently waiting for her wolves to return to the land of the living. Now this was not part of our Earth; this glen was located within the next one. This was the world that the Lady had described as 'a better world' and a 'world without humans in it'.

Beth's eyes slowly opened and she was reassured to see that her mate was curled warmly around her, and lost in his warmth and presence, she never thought to wonder where they were. In truth, she didn't really care; she was with her mate, and they were together at last. John still slept, so Beth continued to lie with him, safe in his arms. The Lady knew that Beth was awake, but the Lady was in no hurry; she was content to allow them to wake in their own time.

Eventually though, John did wake, and as he woke, he saw Beth gazing into his eyes, watching him as he regained consciousness. He felt his heart swell with a kind of joy that he had never experience before. Like Beth, he didn't bother to wonder where they were now; he just saw the love before him, and he was content to remain wherever they were for now. He took his lover in a warm embrace and they started their morning, and their new lives, with a soft kiss.