MetaDeprivation - 11. MetaPrompts 582: Plan (MW4)

“How can I tell him about the accident, when I can’t even keep it together?” She was overdoing it. She kept it together pretty well. Her makeup was impeccable, her hair hurricane-proof, and the white blouse as stiff as a knight’s armour.

Iris nodded. This day hadn’t gone according to plan.

They had known Sam wasn’t as honorable and loyal as the 2nd enforcer of the late Winter Fir Pack should have been. But that he would go so far and sell Colt to the vampires was unexpected. Having to watch how he threatened the boy with a colt, while two cars with half-deads approached in the heat of a summer day in California, was disheartening. They had prepared to reveal themselves in case Colt would be in danger, and his White Wolf personality wouldn’t manifest itself as protection.

How could they have missed that?

And as if Betsy could read her mind, she stated: “We didn’t miss it. He knew.”

“Precious knew?” Iris asked in disbelief.

“I’m pretty sure. It was another one of his tests. To see whether my boy has it in him; to test whether his beasts are loyal enough to be his messengers.”

“Well, Prime is for sure,” Iris huffed.

The ‘accident’ hadn’t been an accident at all.

Sam on the run hadn’t been able – or willing – to hit the brakes hard enough to avoid a collision with the golden wolf blocking the street. Metal pierced itself into wolf flesh; pieces drilling through the whole body and reexiting on the other side. Glass turned the furred wolf into a bloody porcupine, and the sturdy radiator grill had broken most of Prime’s bones in his legs …

… when he lay on the road in front of a shattered car he was a big bundle of bloody meat and broken bones; only useful to make wolf soup from him.

The driver looked equally bad. Half of his head was missing. One arm had been ripped off, and for some reason he had now three legs, some limbs had gotten thoroughly rearranged within the squashed cabin of the car. He had been too weak to even moan or cry for help. He would die within minutes.

‘Idiotic wolves,’ Betsy had wanted to think. But the extent of injuries and damage to the car made her nauseous. She knew she should call Precious; surely it hadn’t been his plan to have the lead wolf killed just a few days after Colt had shot him. Or had that been his plan? Was the next step to remove the Alpha to make Colt the unchallenged leader of his pack? Or to harden him further by making him lose his big love? Like they had made sure Colt’s first love Trent never came to fruition. Or all the other men who had tried to approach him during his years on college: Al, Ronny, Hank, Dylan, or that army boy; making sure he became sufficiently hardened for the job ahead, and desperate for the men they had chosen for him instead.

The golden wolf recovered surprisingly quickly. When his bones had reconnected, the shards of glass fallen off the healed skin, and the blood dried he trotted towards the dead human in the car. He sniffed and then he howled.

She had to concentrate not to lose her bladder control. The howl was earth shattering; it made tree lose the leaves, turned dried grass to dead hay, gave most animals in a 500 m radius a heart attack; and made the ‘dead’ driver behind the car open the one eye he still had left. And against all her expectations, the human slowly shifted into the mangled shape of the gray-brownish wolf dragging his sorry ass out of the cabin of the car to fall into the grass on the side of the road.

Prime watched closely how Sam Sr. healed.

And when the treacherous gamma wolf had most of his limbs at the right place again, grown a second eye and looked as if he would survive this ordeal, despite having been turned into minced meat, roasted, and then resuscitated, Prime growled, forcing the other wolf to his human state.

There he stood. Sam: bloody, limping, broken, exhausted, wary of what was to come.

And seconds later. Prime: tall, angry, sweaty, looking forward to torture the man who wanted to sell his Meta to the vampire, torture him slowly to his well-deserved death. A car accident exodus would have been much too kind for the traitor.

Out of nowhere Prime produced handcuffs, attached them to an unresisting Sam, and nearly dragged the man by his neck to another car that approached them.

Betsy knew which fate was in store for Sam. Torture, interrogation, then castration, and eventually the welcomed death. She had seen it too often. He just hoped the beast wouldn't make her son watch it. He was so frail, so delicate, so young. She had always had reservations about employing wolf shifters as his messengers, his ‘Good,’ but as much as it hurt her, Precious had been right. This was what Colt wanted. He and her sister-messengers had made sure of that since he had born; starting with his trips to Silesia, a place they had chosen because they knew the local pack was howling incessantly and they would imprint him on this. Not mentioning the repeated exposure to crude and uncultured military men.

She was shaken by that accident herself, and she was more than 3000 years old and had seen all cruelties men did to men: from the conquest of Troy, the Roman ‘games,’ the crusades, the witch hunts, the conversion to Christianity in South America, to two World Wars, artificial hunger in the two communist superpowers, and the flames of the nuclear bomb. Her son was too young for all of this. He wasn’t ready for war. She needed to tell Precious, he would understand. After this accident, she was even more sure of that.

The rest didn’t even matter.

It didn’t matter her son had chosen the wrong beast. They had prepared the Latino wolf from Florida over the years to join Colt’s ‘Pack.’ Had made him tough, but kind; masculine, but compliant. His olive skin, his dark hair, the rough tattoos, and the deep voice should have been perfect for the ‘type’ Colt had been imprinted on, but something had gone wrong.

In the factory hall, Colt had chosen that fat security guy instead; baby face, whale body and cheese skin in one.

They had to meet and discuss what that meant; whether it endangered the ultimate fight against the Lord of the Dark. After all, how should that fat donut-eating blob fight in that battle?

She sighed.

“Feeling better?” Iris asked.

“Not sure. You?”

Iris bit her lip. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to think that her Warren had been chosen to die next to Colt in his battle against the beast. She had taken Warren under her wing while she had had her eyes on the Winter Fir pack, especially on Luke and Burt. Warren had never been part of their plan. Warren had been the son that had died a too long time ago. She wasn’t ready to lose another one. “Not really.”

Betsy hugged her. “I know. I guess we better tell him now.”

“Yep,” Iris agreed. “He has now taken two wolves we didn’t really plan for: Sam and Warren. Where does that leave the two wolves we have still for him? The stunted alpha and that Charleston kid?”

Betsy found her mobile phone. “I don’t know. Maybe he can have more than eight messengers; or those unplanned wolves will die before the fight with the Dark Lord.”

“Or he will choose who dies …,” Iris suddenly suggested.

Betsy wanted to contradict. She wanted to say her Colt would never kill one of his messengers; but she ultimately, she knew Fate was cruel.