Tag: wolves

Bonding!

“Yes. Let me start by saying I don’t care what your orders say. Mine are to make sure Jalopy Charisma returns to us, preferably in chains. Your dead criminals are of no interest to me; they deserved to die at his hands. We want him for other things.”

“If he surrenders, that’s fine.” Xasan shrugged. “If he resists, I’m in fear of my life. In case you don’t know, that’s Human for ‘I can straight-up shoot his ass and my bosses will clear me afterward.’”

Coronation had an excellent sneer, he decided. Very imperious. “Just how were you planning to do that? Four of your kind had him surrounded and drew weapons, and he still put them all down.”

Xasan’s grin had a very carefully calibrated amount of teeth in it. “My turn for a question. What did Charisma do that made him decide to bust out of the only safe place for him within a hundred miles?”

“That’s none of your concern, Detective.”

“Funny, that was what I was going to say.”

The Pale!

Xasan had been on the force for a year before the Returners, ha, returned, and he’d spent some time in the part of Coaston that had been ‘given’ to the new arrivals. He’d also been involved in the relocation of all the stubborn holdouts who weren’t going to move unless they were made to. Nobody had died in Coaston over being relocated, but that was more luck than anything else. The Returners hadn’t been shy about exercising their squatters’ rights, after all.

He was mildly surprised to see how little the Returners had changed the place. The streets were still there, and the traffic lights; even the trees and grass looked the same. The signs on the shops and the billboards all used that weird chicken-scratch alphabet, and the Pale smelled different in the spring evening air, but if you squinted it didn’t seem too strange. Everything was well-maintained, too, with nothing out of place and nothing left to stay broken. The Returners weren’t slobs. It felt empty, though. He knew the Returners liked having more personal space than humans did, but seeing all this quiet really drove that home.

Meet the Returners!

From a distance, Melancholy Traveler of the Settlement Authority looked normal. Handsome, even. All the Returners did. It wasn’t until you got in the same room with one that you started noticing how weird their faces were. People said that you could get used to it, but Xasan wasn’t so sure. He didn’t have enough experience to say; and he didn’t really want any, either.

Speaking of experience, Traveler didn’t seem to be enjoying this meeting any more than Xasan was. “One of the Kith will lead the search,” he told him. “You will track and advise her on her hunt. Is that clear?”

Xasan considered it. “No,” he replied.

The Returners were hominid — that word was now common usage — enough to share some facial gestures, like furrowing their brows to show confusion. “I don’t know how to make that clearer,” he admitted.

“Oh, you were real clear, Mr. Traveler. Problem is, I get paid by the City of Coaston, and my boss told me that I’m here to work with you, not for you.” Xasan made very sure that his asshole grin wasn’t showing any teeth. Returners could get twitchy about that. “I want to get this guy as much as you do, but we’re not gonna play dominance games. If he’s out beyond the Pale, he’s ours to deal with.”