The Power of Ten

“Is it dead?” Sama asked the dogs, calmly reloading and sidling sideways to get a better angle. They cautiously approached the motionless thing, growling hard, and sniffed it all over.

When they slowly straightened up and wagged their tails, Sama finally relaxed. “LIGHTS!” she shouted.

The house lit up in seconds, while Josiah came through the front door, a short spear gleaming silver in his hands, while their mother and her older sister Nancy came out with a rifle up and revolver out, respectively. The yardlights clicked on together, flooding everything with illumination easily as bright as day.

“Dogs, sniff the treeline. Make sure there’s no others. If there are, howl and run.” She didn’t think it likely, as the wind would have brought the scent by now. Both took off at a run for the back of the property.

The whole family came down to look at the dead werewolf, with her father last to appear, his shotgun still in hand as he came down the porch. The others followed him.

Sama whistled to the excited Kingly, tossing him a carrot. He caught it with deft skill in midair, and proudly sauntered back to his stall in the barn with his prize. She could take off his silvered ‘boots’ in a while.

Her father didn’t relax until he saw the bolt transfixing the narrow skull, and finally lowered his shotgun, staring at the hairy, inhuman body with everyone else.

“It’s female,” Sama said, squatting and looking at her. “Young, late teens or early twenties. Prime breeding age for them.”

“Your saying she’s got a mate?” her father spoke up, looking sharply at the surrounding hills.

“Gonna have something interested in her, at least. She’s not infected, or she would have sought out a temple.”

“Wolf clans...” Darren Piotrowski felt his blood run cold. That was so not good news. While the anthropes had gone public and did their duty to their country like everyone else, and were very careful to obey human laws, it was no secret that they privately considered pack law considerably more important than mere human laws. That some of them went wild and had to be put down was no secret... something the were-clans preferred to do themselves, rather uncaring if mere humans had died during the course of a rampage.

Killing a member of the clans could have some bloody implications...

“She’s got no tags, Papa. We’ll have to wait until dawn to see what she looks like.”

“Cover her up and wait for it, then. Everyone else, back inside and back to bed.” There were only murmurs from the rest of the family as they took their last looks and headed back inside.

Her father sighed as he looked at the dead werewolf. “I see we ain’t getting much sleep tonight.”

“We still have to track her back to her lair in the morning, Papa,” Sama said softly. “You still got that wildlife camera for deer hunting?”

“Yeah. Needs new batteries.” He took a long breath. “Toss a blanket over her. We’ll figure out what to do with her in the morning.”

“You want to chop her, or you want me to do it, Papa?” she asked, sliding out her mithral-edged Sword.

He only winced a little. “Do it.”

She knew how to chop. Cutting through a human neck is not an easy thing, but she snapped her arm out with a twist of her hips. The very sharp sword hacked through the werewolf’s neck, its flesh hissing and burning at the touch of the starsilver, and its head dropped free of the stump.

Anthropic blood was useful material for any Potions or Inks dealing with shape alteration effects, but she let it go. Making money off her was hard to resist, however...

------

Sama threw the oldest and rattiest horse blanket over the corpse, with the thought that she’d have to burn it after they were done using it. Then she went into the barn to take those boots of silver off Kingly, as they definitely weren’t made for prancing around in, and she’d be riding him in a few hours.

--------

Her dad looked at Chomps, kitted out in a fitted harness with side bags, and Cujo, tongue lolling there, only his normal collar on. “We’re not taking him?” he asked his daughter, handing her the supplies she was quickly tucking into the saddlebags for him, before throwing them on Yucca, the pale tan mustang that was his preferred ride.

“He’s going to check the back trail of the werewolf, see if it ends at the same place the zombie came down yesterday. She came out of there,” Sama chopped her hand, “not over there.” She pointed where they’d be heading.

“She climbed down the ridge,” he nodded, getting the difference. He glanced at his watch’s hands. “Couple minutes to sunrise.”

“Get the camera ready, just in case something decides to come in and take the body.”

“So, we’re not calling the sheriff.” He felt surreal asking his ten-year-old daughter that, especially when she shook her head.

“I’ve a feeling they are related.”

He thought about yesterday, and the sheriff saying nothing about the wolf bite, and just got the camera ready.

Sama glanced at it. Cell phone technology was good as far as it had developed, but the lack of rocketry and satellites hampered some things, and truly small electronics tended to be unstable magically.

As a result, super-miniaturized vacuum tubes had replaced the semiconductors she remembered. Truly high-end phones, like the new Vaccines, incorporated Cantrip-level magic into them, but the camera technology and data storage was not as developed as the games and computers she remembered were. As a result, most cameras were still devoted cameras, not parts of phones, although they were made to connect to one another, and the loud protests from the Churches meant there were universal standards, despite how much some companies wanted to patent and protect their own family of electronics.

Not that she was going to touch them. The whole family knew enough to loudly exclaim whenever she was going to use something electronic. Sure, it might suck that they had to type in everything for her when they went on the internet, but then they made a lot of money, so it wasn’t that bad.

They were both watching as the first dim rays of the sun stabbed in from the east, washed across the land, and touched the furred corpse of the dead werewolf. Natural Renewal came with it, washing across the land, cleansing away and fighting dark magic with the start of a new day.

The fur on the corpse began to recede away, not so much withdrawing into her body as just dissolving under the dim light. Smooth and pale skin soon melted into view, mashed and mangled by being trampled, bruises black and blue accentuated by searing dark burns from the silver slugs, quarrels, and hooves that had seared her flesh.

“Know her, Papa?” Sama asked, after her father had taken a dozen snapshots.

“No. But run this into your mother, and have the kids see if they can find her on social media related to the sheriff or his deputy.” Even with the bloody hole of the quarrel in it, her face was still quite distinct. Sama took the memory stick and ran it inside to her mother, who was up cooking breakfast, and exchanged it for two hot pies and grim good wishes.

Darren was swinging up in the saddle as she came back outside. She handed him his breakfast, flowed up into the saddle on Kingly, and promptly led the way towards the backtrail that would lead up to and along the ridgeline north and east.

Cujo ran off at her direction, while Chomps paced alongside her father. He was faster and a better runner than Cujo, who was much more powerful a fighter, and so Chomps was more suited for the escort job, which was going to cover a lot of miles.

-------

“So, how long have you been able to talk to animals?” Darren asked his daughter casually.

He wondered if he would surprise her, and failed. Instead, black whiskers suddenly painted themselves across her cheeks, like a kid’s rendition of cat whiskers, and even her nose was blackened.

“Since I was four months old, Papa,” she replied calmly. “How long ago did you notice?”

“It was more the way the animals get trained by you so quick, so I’ve suspected it for a few years. I figured it’s why you won’t slaughter them, although you don’t mind butchering them.”

“I don’t like hearing them scream,” she admitted. “Some of them are friends, and others just... are. Animals are very dumb, Papa, very simple, but they also have little subterfuge... most of the time. If they are not stealing carrots.” She flicked Kingly’s mane as his ear twitched, and the horse nickered, sounding suspiciously like a laugh. “They don’t hold grudges for butchering members of the herd, understanding it is part of the price they pay for safety and food otherwise, but I do not want to put them down.”

He grunted, thinking about what it might feel like to listen to the death cries of the animals, and know exactly what the sounds meant. “So you’d rather hunt.”

“I have not fed the deer every day, cleaned their stalls, and let them out to roam and play for years. And nature will not miss a few rabbits and squirrels. Or turkeys.”

“Mind telling me how you got those whiskers, then?” he asked carefully.

“I have always had them, Papa. They are scribed onto my soul.”

He had an interesting look on his face. “Do I even want to hear this? I always knew you were precocious, and you knew more than you were telling anyone...”

“If you do not wish to hear it, you merely need not ask, Papa. I will not lie to you, but I will remain silent.”

And she had remained silent for her whole life on this matter, he reflected. “How bad is it?” he had to ask.

“I will have to leave the family in a couple years, Papa.”

He huffed as that hit him square. “That doesn’t sound good, Samantha.”

“It is to protect you. It is not a bad thing. I will be making enemies, and I do not want them coming after you.”

The cold, clipped way she said it, as if making deadly enemies was a natural thing, made his blood run cold. “You won’t even be a teenager!” he protested. “How dangerous could you be?”

“Would it surprise you to know I’m a Three, Papa? In four Classes?”

He gawked despite himself. He knew about Classes; everyone did, even if they couldn’t pursue them very far. The real Classes, for fighting and Casting and stuff, made people superhuman.

He had known Samantha was talented, but not like this...

“I had no idea,” he admitted, scratching his head. “Although, thinking about it, it should have been kind of obvious...”

She favored him with one of her rare smiles. “It has been difficult keeping a low profile, Papa.” She waved her hand and moved ahead of him as they came to the more difficult part of the trail, and addressed the horse, “Follow us carefully up the trail. You know what to do.”

He watched the horses whuff in response to her, and shook his head in mild wonder. No wonder she could train them so easily...