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            "Jack," came a distracted greeting from within.

            "Harper," responded Jack just as briefly.

            From where I was crouched I saw Jack pivot his foot on its heel, toe rotating a couple times towards the open door to motion me inside. Bent as low as I could go without crawling, I edged around him and into the room: a heavy oak desk safely concealing me from Harper's sight. Jack entered the room as the thick door latched shut with a dull clank behind him, then moved casually to take a seat in one of the leather upholstered chairs in the far corner of the room which appeared to be done up as a posh office.

            "All that blood and dirt on your clothing; you look terrible," muttered Harper.

            "You don't look so good yourself," replied Jack.

            "Yeah, it's been a bad day for all of us," he replied with a loud sigh. "I've never had this much trouble from one of these bastards before; but then I've never not killed a half-breed I intended to, even if it took a while."

            "Seems like he has a bit of his dad in him, eh?"

            "Hah! Target #023 is stronger than even Target #001 ever was; we need to hit him from a different angle. Sniping didn't work, surprise night raid at the house failed; as you know those tactics worked especially well for #005 and #011. Even attacking his heart by luring him with a female—something we've only attempted once before with #014—failed as well! And now, I have to explain to the Senator tomorrow why 3 soldiers died in a 'training accident' (in addition to all those who got hospitalized before), why my face looks like this, not to mention why the helicopter needs repairs. All of this is sure to lead to detailed review of our finances and questioning about malfeasance and misappropriated funds. That mangy cur sure made a mess of things this time. I can't just let him walk away from this."

            A cur am I? We'll see about that. My heart was beating rapidly pumping adrenaline through my body in anticipation; Harper was almost mine! I heard him stand and open something heavy; I backed up closer against the desk.

            "No, we've got to kick him while he's down and make sure there's no going back. This time, we'll try cyber warfare. If we can't kill the beast, then we'll just have to do the next best thing: ruin its life forever. After that, it will only be a matter of time until we find it again or it comes to us. We've got to finish this quick; that video of #023 transforming needs to be released to the local media in time for the nightly news and uploaded to the internet tonight." I saw Harper's arm reach over the table and drop a memory card in Jack's open palm. I held my breath, but Jack was smart enough not to let his gaze flicker down to where I sat on the floor and give my presence away.

            "This is going to be huge; finally the public will know werewolves exist, and #023 will be alienated for the rest of its life!" I could tell by Harper's voice and the squeak in his office chair that he'd turned his back on Jack and I, and the shuffling papers and a scratching pen meant he was distracted once more. Now seemed like the perfect time.

            "Ok, I'll get right on that," replied Jack rising to his feet. He turned towards the door and opened it, then silently dropped down out of view in a crouching position next to me as it swung closed again. I gave him a questioning look; he slid silently to lean his back up against the desk to stay hidden, then nodded grimly. It was finally time.

            I shot up from where I'd been hiding.

            "Harper," I spat venomously.

            He jumped at my voice and whirled in surprise, then squinted in confusion. I noticed the left side of his face had 4 deep slashes running vertically across his cheek from where I'd raked him with my claws earlier. The wounds were held together with butterfly bandages in preparation for later stitches. His eyes searched mine in confusion at first; he knew he'd seen me before, but the uniform I wore threw him off as to the where. When recognition showed in his shocked features he sprung to his feet, office chair clattering to the ground behind him. In the same motion, he reached to grab a handgun on a stack of papers. He sure moved fast for a guy who must have been in his late sixties, but of course that mattered little to me; I'd already jumped up onto the smooth wooden desk with boots squeaking and grabbed him by his shirt with both hands. I smashed him forcefully against the shelves on the back wall causing a cascade of books and papers to rain down on the floor.  He grunted in pain, then opened his eyes widely and looked over my shoulder.

            "Meyers!" He exclaimed. "Hurry and shoot him, he's an enemy in disguise!"

            What the…? I'd never even heard the door open! Whirling to face the new threat, I saw no one. Confused, I turned back just in time to see a smirking Harper point a revolver at the center of my forehead. Gah, I'd fallen for his trick!

            I adjusted my hold and punched his hand away with a crack of breaking bone half a second too late; his finger had closed on the trigger firing off a shot. The right side of my jaw lit up with that same burning sensation I'd felt when Jack had shot me with that revolver back at the motorcycles a week ago. I'd been hit again with silver! I clutched my face in both hands and screamed out in pain, dropping him to the ground. Harper hit the floor yelling his own string of profanities, clutching his broken hand in agony. But then, his gaze shifted to the revolver which had fallen several feet away.

            No! I couldn't let him best me again while I was this close to taking him down for good. I took my bloody hands from my marred face, and noticed I could no longer see from my right eye. On the wall directly behind me was a dripping, red mess with a shiny bullet lodged in the center. Clenching my teeth, I turned towards Harper with my good eye burning in rage. As he saw me stand once again, he made a final lunge for the dropped handgun—but I wasn't going to be shot again. From up on the hardwood surface, I grabbed him roughly by the neck with one hand while using the other for balance and slammed him down back first onto his own desk, knocking all its contents to the vinyl tiled floor. I leapt up to stand on his ankles and grasp his wrists, shifting to my full werewolf form as I did. The Army Combat Uniform I had on was more durable than other clothing I'd worn before (which made shifting feel more constricted), but finally it began to tear at the seams before shredding completely off. He yelled out again as my weight steadily increased, first cutting off the circulation to, then crushing the bones in, his wrists and ankles.

            My head wound hadn't healed at all of course, and continued dripping a steady stream of crimson onto his forehead. I roared long and loud straight into his face through a half-ruined jaw and watched in satisfaction through one eye as he cowered. With all four of Harper's limbs pinned securely below each one of my own, I could finally demand answers to everything he'd been doing all this time.

            "Why are you trying to kill me?" I roared. He said nothing, only stared with a mixed expression of rage and fear, clenching his teeth and occasionally moaning and breathing rapidly because of the pain. I growled and punched him in the face to return the favor of facial damage, opening up another gash on his opposite cheek and breaking several teeth. He swore loudly, then spit one of his loosened bicuspids straight back into my face.

            "Kill me now! Do it!" He spat at me again, splattering my nose. Recoiling and closing my eyes in disgust, I had to exercise herculean restraint to not grant his wish and pull his head off right then. I needed to know why he'd killed Emmalee, my parents, and so many other werewolves, and if I lost control now I might never know the full truth. This time I dug claws into each of the limbs I had pinned, causing him to holler at the top of his voice in misery.

            "WHY?!" I bellowed again. It was so loud that several objects in the room vibrated.

            "Do your worst!" he stammered loudly. I paused to count to 10 instead of turning his throat to hamburger, then took a stab in the dark.

            "So, you won't talk? Well, fine. I wasn't sure just how I was going to kill you, but now I've decided on something much worse than death," I said matter-of-factly, removing my claws from his skin and inching my mouth closer to his ear. "Instead, I have a great idea," I continued in a low, threatening voice that was almost a whisper. "Since you won't tell me what I want to know, and since you hate werewolves so much, how about I bite you so you can become just like me. How does that sound, becoming the very thing you hate?"

            His countenance slowly changed from one of indignant anger to a pale white mask of shock and horror as what I'd said finally sunk in. As if he'd been hit by electricity, he started struggling violently against my grip. The insane expression he wore would have been comical under other circumstances, except just now the situation was dead serious.

            "NO! YOU CAN'T! I have money. You can have it all and then kill me, but DON'T do that!"
I brushed my bared fangs against his neck.

            "AURGH! I'll tell you whatever you want, just get those teeth away from me!" he screamed as he started to shake. I moved my head back to stare directly into one of his eyes.

            "Why have you been killing werewolves? Why did you kill my Emmalee?" He swallowed before answering.

            "You werewolves are an abomination! You're a freak of nature, neither human nor animal, trapped in the middle with no place to go! You're a blight to the human race, mating with our women and biting healthy people to spread your foul disease! I've made it my personal mission to wipe you all out. I won't let you corrupt the gene pool more than you have already!" I growled at that; he only frowned and dropped his gaze.

            "We're humans! Humans with a great gift! Many of us just try to enjoy it and live our lives in peace, but we can't because you're bent on genocide!"

            "Genocide?" he spat. "More like the euthanization of unnatural mutations that need to be culled from existence and put out of their misery!"

            "Misery? MISERY? I was doing just fine living a happy life until you came and destroyed everything that's dear to me. Even before discovering you killed my parents I was happy living with my aunt and uncle. What have us werewolves ever done to you? Why did you kill my parents?"

            "Your bastard of a father was a soldier of mine, a damn good one too. In fact, he so easily outstripped all the other soldiers in strength and endurance that I thought he must have been taking performance enhancing drugs. Searches of his quarters failed to produce a single cigarette let alone any steroids. Still suspicious, I had him closely followed; his every move was watched. Eventually I got reports back saying that he had the ability to transform into some sort of monstrous beast. I laughed in their faces. Laughed, that is, until they showed me the photo they'd managed to take of him in mid-transformation.

            "I couldn't believe it—a monster straight out of fairy tales and legends right here under my command. The top man in my unit was a werewolf! When I confronted him in my office, he got extremely nervous and wanted to leave. When I refused, he got angry and muscled his way off the compound with the very tactics we'd taught him. But I wasn't going to let him get away that easily; the idea of half human freaks running around disgusted me so I decided to do something about it. I recruited Jack Acevedo, the next best soldier after Davis, to help me take care of the job. He was more than willing; he'd been competing unsuccessfully with Davis for the last several months and wanted to get back at him for cheating."

            Cheating. Just living and doing the best he could with what he had, and my father's actions were being called out as some kind of cheap trick? Oh come on! I resisted the urge to glare down at Jack on the floor and instead let out another growl into Harper's face.

            "You wanted me to talk and that's what I'm doing!" he rushed out, flinching. "Before Davis got back to the apartment where his wife was living, we'd already planted C-4 plastic explosives with a remote detonator on the gas tank of his car. As Private Davis and his wife left the city with everything they could fit in their small car and started rounding that sharp mountain corner, we blew them straight over the edge to their deaths below in a tangled, burning wreck that even a werewolf wouldn't survive.

            "Since he was a soldier going AWOL, the military police was granted exclusive investigatory rights, and since I was his commanding officer, I led that investigation. Of course that permitted me to recover and hide key evidence. Even when the local police showed up on the scene, I'd already removed all remaining pieces of the bomb and detonator so it was deemed an accidental vehicle explosion and the case was closed. I'd gotten away clean, and the world had one less —or two I guess since his bitch was also diseased—werewolves in the population. Of course, I never knew they'd had a son; otherwise you would have been dead 18 years ago. Very clever of him to have hidden your existence from me like he did.

            "But after that, I realized there must still be other werewolves out there. It wasn't right to have human-animal hybrids running around breeding, and I was going to do whatever it took to eliminate them. I did some investigation on Davis' friends and found Target #003. Him I tortured until he finally broke and gave me Target #004's name and location. After a long chase I finally captured #004 and killed him right in front of #003. Turns out they were brothers. Then I finished him off as well." His voice was intoned with a sickening pride, like he was doing something honorable. I grimaced.

            "From then on, we hunted and killed werewolves when I or one of my sources discovered them, doing all the dirty work ourselves. Sometimes we put them under right away, other times we experimented on them and collected samples. Much later, early this year in fact, one of my sources who had a son on the Bruins high school basketball team said he noticed a player on the opposing side that seemed to be just a little bit better than everyone else, and effortlessly so. The way he moved didn't seem quite right, he said. Can you guess who he was talking about?" he finished with a sneer. The Bruins—that was Em's school mascot. How ironic that the first day Em saw me also happened to be the first day Harper was made aware of me as well. The pain on my face must have been apparent; he chuckled, so I dug my claws even further into his wrists. That shut him up.

            "Now, want me to do that again?"

            "No, no! Argh!" I pulled my claws back out.

            "Ok. Continue."

            "I pulled up all the information on you I could: you averaged 25 points and 6 steals a game, led your team to win the state championship; there were even rumors that the NBA was considering drafting you straight out of high school. It did seem that you were a bit too good but nothing I found matched any werewolves I knew about. Something about your last name was familiar, but I killed the only other werewolf with the last name of Davis that I was aware of, and he hadn't had any offspring (or so I thought). We started monitoring you, and what we saw confirmed our suspicions. As with others before you, we started watching you even more closely to find an angle to hit you from.

            "Later, we found out that you were in contact with this Emmalee Sorensen; she seemed to be the only person you really spent time with outside of school. It all became even easier when your girlfriend's brother Ryan turned out to be a student of one of my sources who's a college professor (being in the military for 30 years, you make a lot of useful connections). We cornered Ryan in the crowded university library and threatened him, telling him that we'd kill his entire family unless he led us to you through his sister. At that point we still didn't know that the Sorensen family also happened to be werewolves, of course.  Ryan told us his sister had let him know that you were going to meet her at a certain spot in the mountains later that day.  We suggested that he might want to keep his sister away from that area if he could; but reminded him that if he let on that he knew anything and alerted you that I'd kill him and his family anyway."

            So that's why Emmalee had been late that day! Her brother was betraying me and didn't want her to get caught up in it!

            "I thought it strange that you showed up in your werewolf form where you were going to be meeting Emmalee, especially out in the open (I know how secretive your kind is). Either way, we used a tactic that had successfully been carried out before; you were already going to meet her in an isolated place, so all we had to do was mask our scents and use camouflage while waiting for you to arrive, then hit you hard from a distance; You were going to be kill number 23 in fact. It would have been perfect; school was out and you had just graduated which meant less attention once you went missing, there would have been no evidence left behind after we recovered your body, and I would have been long gone from the scene.  I still don't know how you survived; we'd used .50 cal rounds to bring down other werewolves before. Even if the bullets had failed to flat out kill you, 6 of them should have at least knocked you down so we could finish the job up close.

            "After that failed attempt, we came back to Ryan and got him to make sure you were at home the night we chose our next attack. I was in Washington meeting a senator that day and had Jack run that one. You slipped through the nets and even got your aunt and uncle out of the house! My men used high concentrations of Etorphine, an elephant tranquilizer that's powerful enough to kill an adult man within a few minutes if even a drop comes in contact with the skin, and yet by all reports you barely even slowed down! Acevedo shot you with silver, and still you healed! After you slipped through our grasp yet again, we couldn't leave any evidence of the attack, so of course I remotely gave the order to torch house along with the body of that stupid dog of yours that was so easy for them to silence and kill.

            "Needless to say, Ryan wasn't too happy when we came around the third time. Same threat, but we raised the stakes; this time his sister would have to die as a lure. If he refused she would die anyway along with him and everyone he loved. It's amazing what people can do when faced with the right leverage; necessity is the mother of invention after all! He came up with the plan to coax both you and Em out to us safely without causing a scene; he even picked the place."

            If Ryan, the brother of my future fiancé could betray his own sister and fellow werewolf in cold blood to save himself, was my biting Jack really enough to ensure he was on our side? I cast a wary, sidelong glance in Jack's direction; he responded by staring straight back with a grim expression and nodded. I took it as a confirmation that he was with me. I hoped that was the case...

            Harper continued without appearing to have noticed our exchange. "Once Emmalee and Ryan got to where we were waiting, he ran off. What a coward; looking back now, I've never seen a werewolf be so weak before. When Emmalee caught sight of the guns, she instantly shifted to protect herself even though the odds were against her; that's when she became Target #024. We were all taken off guard of course, but since we were already prepared to take you down, we just started with her first. One thing to her credit, she was a fighter, defiant and strong until the end. Either way, her shifting explained the mystery of you being in werewolf form while waiting for her that first time; she was a werewolf too and her family had to be as well.

            "Of course we didn't wait to give her brother (Target #025) the chance to defend himself, though he probably wouldn't have even tried. He didn't defend himself at all the first several times we cornered him. He was only a short distance away, and when we caught up with him, he was lying on the ground in tears. When I told him that things had changed and his family was going to die now as well, he broke down in sobs and started begging like the dog he was. Of course, removing one's head will also sever the vocal cords; I had to stop his annoying whining somehow. Then, we got back to the helicopter and waited.

            "The plan was playing out flawlessly, but naturally you still managed to escape my trap and slaughter 3 of my men in the process. I still thought we had you, dangling there with my harpoon embedded in your chest. I was really going to do bad things to you: diluted silver implant in your brain to sedate you, live vivisection to analyze your body's various systems, instant deep freezing of some of your tissues in werewolf form to prevent them from reverting for later study. But then you grabbed that tree, and barely two hours later, here we are."

            Silence.  I was speechless, and the only sounds were Harper's occasional sharp intakes of breath from the pain. After not knowing all these details and now getting them all in a rush like this left my head spinning. When Harper spoke again, I nearly jumped.

            "Of course it's you who brings me down now after so many years; Ironic how it all turned out. First werewolf I took was your father, and now last of all I get taken by his son. I've never seen a werewolf like you, seems like you can survive anything, but can't save those you love from dying around you."

            Finally my mind found something to respond with.

            "I never killed anyone you sent after me—despite being shot up like crazy—until you murdered Em. Didn't that mean anything to you?"

            "You're stupid. Strong, but stupid if you think that matters."

            "Regard for human life matters. You call me the monster, and yet you're the one willing to push and force the situation, putting innocent people's lives in jeopardy until they die. To you I'm not really human, and yet I care more about humans than you do!"

            "You're a dumb animal; I don't need you to talk to me about philosophy. It's not important anyway; that video of you shifting is being distributed to the world as we speak. It's safely out of your reach now; no matter what you do to me, it will still get out. You'll be forever exposed for what you really are to everyone you've ever known, and the general public will finally know that werewolves exist!"

            "Actually," said Jack as he got to his feet for the first time, "I'm right here."

            "JACK! Help me! Kill it!"

            "Well, I would but…I'm with him," he said, jerking a thumb in my direction.

            "What? What are you saying?!"

            "I never uploaded that video," he replied, holding up the memory card between two fingers before bending it in half with a sharp snap.

            "Why the hell not?!"

            "Words are too complicated; you wouldn't believe me if I told you. I'll just give you a live demonstration instead. That'll eliminate any misunderstandings."

            Within seconds, Jack's human appearance melted into that of his black-furred werewolf self, his shredded clothes around his paws on the floor. Harper just stared in angry shock, his expression growing darker as Jack changed.

            "Et tu, Jack?" said Harper.

            "You're really playing the victim here?" scowled Jack with bared fangs as the shift completed. "All this time I was convinced that what you were doing was honorable. I let you persuade me time and time again that werewolves were less than human and not to be trusted, and that by getting rid of them we were performing some great honor in defense of national security. Have you ever gotten to know a werewolf? Well I have; Seth saved my life back in the forest at his house after I tried to kill him. He could have just let me die, but he didn't. In the short time since I've been bitten, I've gotten to know him as a decent person who's just trying to make his way in the world like anyone else. I was so wrong, you were so very wrong. Now that I'm a werewolf, I know everything you've ever told me is all lies!"

            "I should have known," sputtered Harper. "I learned before that it's stupid to ever let anyone get too close to you, but after all these years I thought you were my man."

            "Even now, you don't even address the issue directly! What do you have to say about deceiving me all these years?"

            "You're dead to me Jack; I never knew you." He turned his gaze from him and never looked at Jack again.

            "Defiant to the end, even when you're dead wrong. After all the time we've known each other it ends like this? Thanks for confirming even further I made the right choice in betraying you," sneered Jack through bared teeth.

            "Well, it's obvious he'll never stop hunting our kind unless we take action," I cut in. "It's time to end this now."

            "WHAT?! YOU SAID-" I inched my face closer and bared my fangs, silencing him.

            "I'm not the only one who can get played. Notice how I never specifically said I wouldn't bite you if you talked. Besides, there's really no other option. Death would be far too easy a way out after what you've done. Maybe confining you to a cage somewhere to let you spend the rest of your existence as the one thing you can't stand will do the trick."

"You wouldn't… No. I—"

            "That, and once you're unconscious from the bite," added Jack, "I'll just use your finger to unlock your biometric fingerprint safe and we'll have access to all your files anyway."

            Harper's was the most terrified I'd seen him yet; his eyes widened in panic and he was so utterly defeated that he no longer even tried to respond.

            "It's time." With that I plunged my fangs deep into his neck.

            "Noooooo!"

            As Harper struggled wildly in vain causing most of the bandages on his cheek to break free, I went through my own struggle. Like with Jack before, I had the impulse to bite down harder and simply sever his neck, ending it all. He was a murderer and would continue killing innocent people unless stopped now. I fought it. If he hates us this much, becoming the object of his disdain will be a punishment worse than death for him anyway. Once I knew enough time had passed for the virus to do its job, I withdrew my fangs, blood and saliva soaking the commander's uniform. I'd won.
I continued to hold him tight until his movements slowed from the effects of the virus. Apparently my teeth being somewhat damaged from the silver gunshot wound had no effect on the potency of the bite;  Harper closed his eyes and let out a deep breath as if admitting defeat, then went unconscious.

            "Seth, while we're waiting for him to come around again, you need to retrieve what's in this safe," explained Jack, gesturing towards the heavy metal box on the wall. "All the werewolves that have been killed are documented there."

            I lifted my paws off Harper's limbs, then used my left arm to grab him around his torso and haul his limp body over to the safe. We both left drips of blood along the floor as we went, me from my ruined face and Harper from his wrists and ankles. Just then his wounds started closing, confirming the bite was successful.

            I threw up a little in my mouth thinking that Harper, like Jack before him, would now be my kin. I wasn't sure how it worked when a young werewolf bit someone older than them; was I Harper's grandpa? Never mind… I really didn't care to know.

            Once at the safe, I used my right forepaw to position his thumb on the biometric fingerprint lock on the safe, causing it to click open and reveal several hanging file folders inside.

            I stepped over to the desk and carelessly dropped Harper on top once more. While Jack removed the contents of the safe, I gathered pieces of our shredded uniforms left over from when we shifted and slit them into strips with my claws. Joining them together I was able to form a type of thick rope which I used to tie Harper's arms and legs together loosely behind him under the desk.
Once I was done, I joined Jack on another table where he was looking at the files.

            "I always knew these were here, but never had direct access to them before." He handed me the stack and nodded to me to take a look.

            Each folder was labeled consecutively with the numbers 1 through 25; I grabbed the thick manila folder on the top with the number 1 on front and looked inside with Jack peering over my shoulder. Attached to other documents with a paper clip was the photo Harper had described to me earlier of a partial transformation, and another where the transformation was complete. This was the first time I'd ever seen my father in werewolf form; my fur was just like his. I started choking up, and Jack moved to put a forepaw on my shoulder in a comforting gesture, but I shrugged it off. This had been his fault too.

            I moved on to folder 2 which was of my mother. There was all kinds of information about her here, including her photo on a torn-out page of what looked like her college yearbook. I closed that folder and continued on to the next. As I continued to look through all the files, I saw that Harper's victims were of all ages. The youngest was a 9 year old Asian boy from a poor family who'd apparently been attacked and bitten by a werewolf while walking his dog in the park. They'd simply driven over him several times in a hit and run murder while he was on his way to school. The oldest was an 87 year old retired business owner who'd been a werewolf since birth. With him, it was 3 silver bullets to the back of the head as he swam in his mansion's outdoor pool. My eyes got wider and wider as I went on; one being burned alive here, another being dragged by their arms for miles on a freeway there, and slow starvation for another still. Harper's victims were as varied as his methods of murder and came from all walks of life, both old and young, rich and poor, married and single, male and female.

            As I got near the end, I came across my own folder which was labeled Target #023. The two photos they had for me in my human form were my driver's license and what looked like a still capture of security camera footage from one of my high school hallways. There were also several night vision prints of me in full werewolf form near the soldiers on motorcycle from several weeks ago; all were remarkably clear. They had everything: My social security number, my truck's license plate and vehicle identification numbers, map printouts pinpointing anywhere I'd been with my cell phone, a log of my text messages, my high school student ID number and senior year class schedule, the IP addresses for my home computer and any school computers I'd been on, user IDs for various websites I was a member of, a list of several acquaintances, notes from surveillance operations on my property, floor plans and photos of my house from before they'd burned it down, details on my parents including past medical records with scribbled notes pointing out how everything was normal and that they weren't werewolves, and my connections to the Sorensen family. For the first time, the gravity of my situation really hit home. With everything they had on me, it would have only been a matter of time. Honestly, I was amazed and humbled that I'd lasted as long as I did.

            I got to Em's folder which looked like had just been created. Her only photo was of her having just shifted as evidenced by the torn clothes around her; she was in a defensive position with teeth bared and palms forward, claws at the ready. I realized that this was taken as she was being attacked by Harper and was one of her last moments alive. She looked fearless and majestic. I stared in awe.

            It took me a long time to finally move to Ryan's folder; his photo was a stark contrast to his sister's; he was on his human hands and knees sobbing and looking up at whoever was taking the photo with frantic fear in his eyes. That, too had to have been just before they… I shook my head and moved to the last 3 folders which were all blank, almost as though they were ready for the rest of the Sorensen family. I scowled and closed the last folders to meet Jack's gaze.

            "He was getting ready to go after the rest of them. He never would  have stopped."

            I set the files down and held my head in my paws. "Are there any other copies of this?" I asked.

            "Harper was a bit old-fashioned," said Jack. "In a similar situation, anyone else in the military would have stored everything electronically and backed it up in the government's data centers. Anyone that had access to that database with the right clearance could have retrieved those files, including all the photos of different werewolves fully-shifted, and leaked them out to who knows where. Fortunately, Harper insisted on paper records only; any electronic data recorded during a mission was overwritten 35 times using the Gutmann secure data erasing method, effectively eliminating any electronic trace of the data. What you hold in your paws is the only copy of this information."

            There was enough documentation about the werewolves Harper had murdered, the various sources he'd contacted, all the evidence of his misappropriation of funds, the secret military operations carried out on American soil (twice in the forest and once at my house) which violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, not to mention all the other privacy laws that had been broken. Bottom line, this was enough to get him fired, court-martialed, put in prison, and possibly executed for murder.

            I sat in numb silence for a while. If I could survive the rest of today with everything that had happened and all I'd learned without losing it, I'd count it a miracle.

            Then, Harper's hand twitched. I must have been looking at the files longer than I thought. I grasped the stack of folders and placed them in a corner where they were less likely to be disturbed if things escalated with Harper.

            Soon he was conscious but kept his eyes closed and remained motionless where he was tied to the table as if hoping everything had all been a bad dream and he was about to wake up.

            "Congratulations, you're a werewolf now. How do you like being the very thing you hate?" I sneered.

            The only indication he gave of hearing me was a scowl that rolled across his features. His face was pale and it looked more and more like he was going to throw up. Then his twitching increased. I ghosted closer, then spoke directly into his ear causing him to jump.

            "Time for your first transformation." That's when his moans began.

            As Jack and I looked on, Harper started convulsing and jerking against his makeshift bonds. Apparently the first transformation is a lot harder on an older body. Soon, silvery white fur that matched his hair color began running across where the bandages remained uselessly affixed to his now healed face and then down his arms. His muscles expanded to burst his clothing, adding pieces of his uniform to the existing pile on the floor. Then something odd happened.

            "AUGGGH!" Harper suddenly started screaming in agony, as if he were in extreme pain. While shifting can be a bit painful it first, it was never that bad. I thought he was just overreacting at first, but as we watched in amazement, something was rising up from under the skin on his hip. With a final crack, what looked like some kind of medical implant emerged from his body and fell to the floor. It was a hip replacement! Then, small flesh-colored hearing aids dropped to the table from his ears, closely followed by metal tooth fillings. I'd had plenty of experience with bullets being expelled from our bodies with shifting; apparently that applied to any foreign object.

            The shift also seemed to be taking longer than normal, probably another factor of his age.  As his shift continued, his mouth bulged out from his face and extended into a lupine jaw, his eyes turned gold, sharp claws and paw pads rose out from his feet and hands, and lastly his tail slid in with a "schlooping" sound. The only movement or sound in the room now was his labored breathing.

            "Well?" I said simply.

            Harper experimentally bent his leg at the hip as far as the restraints would allow. "My hip hasn't felt that good in years! I feel as good as I did when I was in my prime." A slight smile of wonderment came to his face. "I can hear better than I ever have, and without hearing aids." The horror soon returned to his face, however. "But that's not the point! I'm a filthy animal now!" he bellowed. "I can't live like this! Let me die!"

            Harper's mental stability appeared to be quickly deteriorating, and it seemed as though he'd lost the will to live. At that, he began struggling against his bonds, trying to stab at his throat with his own claws. Jack and I went to restrain him, but he continued to struggle.

            He was relatively weak by werewolf standards; it must have been because he was bitten at an old age instead of maturing into an elderly werewolf as Clint, who was much stronger, had done. His new muscles were still superhuman however, and Harper just managed to break the bonds. Our combined strength was still superior however, and it seemed that we'd be able to hold him easily.
Whatever disadvantages he had in strength were eclipsed by another ability however; if he'd been quick by human standards despite his age, with this enhanced body he moved like lightning as he wriggled free from our grasp, rolled once across the floor, then wrenched open the door to pad out into the hallway. Jack and I looked at each other in shock.

            "Come on, we can't let him get away!" He yelled before tearing out of the still open door after Harper. I lunged to grab the folders from the corner and clutched them to my chest with both arms before joining in on the chase.  I was able to catch sight of Jack's tail just as he rounded each corner; I had to make sure to keep him in sight because he was familiar with the building knew the way out.

            There was gunfire ahead as we turned down the final long hallway that led to the front entrance, and soon we saw that the few soldiers left in the building were firing at Harper. To them, he was just the first of 3 huge werewolves straight out of a horror flick that had somehow gotten inside the base and were now running towards the exit; they had no idea he was actually their leader in another form. To his credit, Harper just covered his head and kept running straight out into the night. Upon seeing Jack and I they opened up with their M16 rifles and peppered us as well, but I was so used to being shot at that it didn't faze me as we continued on. Jack got hit a few times and gasped in pain, but he was also able to keep moving.

            As we all got outside the building, it was the same story. The soldier at the gate fired at the 3 of us, the flash from his automatic weapon creating a strobe-like effect in the semi-darkness. Harper jumped in one of the parked Hummers, started it up, and sped toward the gate with bullets sparking as they pinged off the exterior. He tore out of there without a care for anything else around him, running over the two soldiers who had come out from inside and crushing the last beneath the gate as he easily drove straight through it with the armored vehicle. Jack jumped in the driver seat of the remaining Hummer and pointed me towards the passenger side.

            "Get in, we're going after him!" he bellowed as I came into view. I debated going after Harper on foot so as to travel faster, but at the same time that would leave Jack alone in the vehicle and I didn't fully trust him not to leave at the first chance just yet. I pulled open the door and slid onto the rigid seat. This was the first time I'd ever entered a vehicle in my full werewolf form, and now I remembered why. I found myself shoulder to shoulder with Jack, my knees folded up at an uncomfortable angle against the dash despite the relatively roomy interior. I noticed a heavy canvas duffel bag in the back, so I tossed the folders inside and cinched it shut to give myself more room up front.

            "Well, sitting in the driver's seat isn't quite the same; there's lot less room, it feels awkward having to sit on my tail, and it's a bit strange feeling the pedals against my bare wolf feet," said Jack. "Let's just hope I can still drive without these claws getting in the way of steering!" Jack turned the ignition and gunned the powerful diesel engine, showering gravel against the parked helicopter behind us as we continued hot on Harper's new tail.

            Having no time to stop first, I winced a little as we ran over the downed gate with the soldier still underneath; if he hadn't been killed in the first pass he was definitely dead now. Once off the gravel and on the yellow-lined pavement, we saw Harper's headlights illuminating his path on the road ahead. Despite the difficulties he'd mentioned, Jack seemed to be driving just fine as we tried to catch up.

            Fortunately we were the only two on the road; as we accelerated to keep close on his tail he weaved all over the road as if he were drunk; it was like he didn't really care if he made it out alive or not. We were about 20 feet behind him when our headlights illuminated his paw coming out the window grasping an MP5 submachine gun pointed in our direction.

            "What's he up to? We both know these vehicles are armored," thought Jack out loud.  "Unless…" His words were cut off as Harper opened fire and bullets broke through the glass and tore up the inside of the Hummer. "Armor-piercing rounds!"

            We were each hit a couple times, but the bullets passed straight through allowing our wounds to instantly start closing. To put a stop his continuing shots, Jack rammed the back end of Harper's Hummer in a PIT maneuver that caused him to spin out and send the machine gun flying into the trees as he came to a stop. Seemingly unfazed, Harper threw his vehicle in reverse and cranked the wheel in a hard turn, pointing himself back the way we were originally going.

            We continued following him, but with all the bullet holes in the glass it was harder to see what was ahead. After another minute or so, his tail lights suddenly winked in and out of existence behind some branches and disappeared completely as Harper veered into the trees. Jack took the turn onto the dirt road with barely any decrease in momentum; the two wheels on Jack's side lifted completely off the ground as we rounded the bend, causing me to hit my head on the roof with a growl as we landed.

            "Hang on!" Jack yelled, then continued to accelerate after the other vehicle despite the increasingly bumpy path. Good thing Hummers were built for this type of thing; any lesser rig would have been shaken to pieces by now. We got closer and closer until finally Jack edged near enough to ram Harper's back end once more, this time causing him to slam sideways into a tree. That didn't stop him though; he continued right on his way.

            "Slow down! I think I saw a cliff in this area on the way up," I instructed as Harper sped ever faster ahead of us.

            "What cliff, I don't see a… crap!" Jack hit the brakes hard as we saw Harper's tail lights suddenly disappear in front of us. Jack had no choice but to turn sideways into the trees as the wheels locked up, causing us to roll twice before slamming roughly into a pine that finally stopped us, our wheels pointing straight up in the air. As the engine seized up and the headlights shut off, my eyes were more able to adjust to the night as I lie on my back on the ceiling. Most of the windows were cracked heavily enough to be opaque, but being bullet-proof they'd all stayed in their frames without shattering everywhere. I opened my jaws to run my tongue over the reopened silver-caused wound on my face, causing a few drops of blood to splatter and run down my already bloody chest fur. In fact, both of us were bloody and dirty from head to foot, whether from bullets or the impact of the crash.

            With some difficulty, I managed to pry open my door and climb out onto the forest floor. Since his door was held closed by the tree we'd rolled into, I laid flat on my stomach and reached back in through the passenger side to help pull Jack free from where he was still tangled inside. Once he seemed loose enough to make it the rest of the way out on his own, I got up to sprint the final stretch to the edge of the cliff and peered over.

            I'm not sure what missiles or other explosives that Hummer had been carrying, but it had burst into flame upon impact. All I could make out of Harper in the orange glow of the wreckage below was a single furred, clenched fist shaking from strain. As I watched, the shaking steadily decreased in intensity until his forearm went limp altogether, then slowly shrank in size and melted back into the form of his human hand.

            "Werewolves always revert back to human form at death," I muttered softly as Jack joined me. He stared down at the flames in silence, intently studying the scene below before answering.

            "He killed himself. He never faltered or tried to stop himself when driving over the cliff like we did, and before that—well, you saw the way he was clawing at his own throat back on his desk. Apparently for him, being a werewolf—no matter all the benefits—was too terrible to live with, so he ended it." Too many werewolves had died tonight.

            Needing a moment to collect myself, I backed away from the edge and sat propped against a tree, staring blankly at my clawed toes. Everything had come full circle for me now; Harper was dead. He'd killed himself, dying in the same way he'd murdered my parents. I had plenty of information about Harper's crimes against us werewolves to do with as I pleased, and now it seemed the nightmare was finally over. Exhaustion hit me like a thousand pound weight. I should have felt something—happiness at my revenge, a sense of closure now that there was no longer a threat, sadness at all that I'd lost—anything. All I felt was numbness.

            "I have nowhere to go now," said Jack, breaking the silence and bringing me back to the present. "My old life is over. They'd question me about tonight, and I wouldn't be able to answer. If I went home, they'd find me. If I tried to look for another job or withdraw funds from my bank account, they'd find me. I've got nothing now."

            "You'll have to come with me until we decide what to do with you," I replied. I left the implications of what that meant up to his imagination; he had helped Harper kill innocent werewolves. If there was a time to run, to betray everything we'd worked together to achieve, now would be it. Instead, without any indication of surprise, he only closed his eyes for a moment with a slight nod in acknowledgment, accepting his fate.

            The sound of approaching engines and sirens in the distance broke the contemplative silence. I got up slowly and trudged back to our Hummer, pulling open the back door and scooping up the canvas bag from the ceiling where it had been flung in the crash. I slung the long strap across my chest, and turned to the black-furred werewolf a few paces away.

            "Let's get out of here."

            Jack met my gaze and nodded. I dropped to all fours and began the trek back to the Sorensen home, Jack following close behind as we disappeared into the trees.

Description
            "Jack," came a distracted greeting from within.

            "Harper," responded Jack just as briefly.

            From where I was crouched I saw Jack pivot his foot on its heel, toe rotating a couple times towards the open door to motion me inside. Bent as low as I could go without crawling, I edged around him and into the room: a heavy oak desk safely concealing me from Harper's sight. Jack entered the room as the thick door latched shut with a dull clank behind him, then moved casually to take a seat in one of the leather upholstered chairs in the far corner of the room which appeared to be done up as a posh office.

            "All that blood and dirt on your clothing; you look terrible," muttered Harper.

            "You don't look so good yourself," replied Jack.

            "Yeah, it's been a bad day for all of us," he replied with a loud sigh. "I've never had this much trouble from one of these bastards before; but then I've never not killed a half-breed I intended to, even if it took a while."

            "Seems like he has a bit of his dad in him, eh?"

            "Hah! Target #023 is stronger than even Target #001 ever was; we need to hit him from a different angle. Sniping didn't work, surprise night raid at the house failed; as you know those tactics worked especially well for #005 and #011. Even attacking his heart by luring him with a female—something we've only attempted once before with #014—failed as well! And now, I have to explain to the Senator tomorrow why 3 soldiers died in a 'training accident' (in addition to all those who got hospitalized before), why my face looks like this, not to mention why the helicopter needs repairs. All of this is sure to lead to detailed review of our finances and questioning about malfeasance and misappropriated funds. That mangy cur sure made a mess of things this time. I can't just let him walk away from this."

            A cur am I? We'll see about that. My heart was beating rapidly pumping adrenaline through my body in anticipation; Harper was almost mine! I heard him stand and open something heavy; I backed up closer against the desk.

            "No, we've got to kick him while he's down and make sure there's no going back. This time, we'll try cyber warfare. If we can't kill the beast, then we'll just have to do the next best thing: ruin its life forever. After that, it will only be a matter of time until we find it again or it comes to us. We've got to finish this quick; that video of #023 transforming needs to be released to the local media in time for the nightly news and uploaded to the internet tonight." I saw Harper's arm reach over the table and drop a memory card in Jack's open palm. I held my breath, but Jack was smart enough not to let his gaze flicker down to where I sat on the floor and give my presence away.

            "This is going to be huge; finally the public will know werewolves exist, and #023 will be alienated for the rest of its life!" I could tell by Harper's voice and the squeak in his office chair that he'd turned his back on Jack and I, and the shuffling papers and a scratching pen meant he was distracted once more. Now seemed like the perfect time.

            "Ok, I'll get right on that," replied Jack rising to his feet. He turned towards the door and opened it, then silently dropped down out of view in a crouching position next to me as it swung closed again. I gave him a questioning look; he slid silently to lean his back up against the desk to stay hidden, then nodded grimly. It was finally time.

            I shot up from where I'd been hiding.

            "Harper," I spat venomously.

            He jumped at my voice and whirled in surprise, then squinted in confusion. I noticed the left side of his face had 4 deep slashes running vertically across his cheek from where I'd raked him with my claws earlier. The wounds were held together with butterfly bandages in preparation for later stitches. His eyes searched mine in confusion at first; he knew he'd seen me before, but the uniform I wore threw him off as to the where. When recognition showed in his shocked features he sprung to his feet, office chair clattering to the ground behind him. In the same motion, he reached to grab a handgun on a stack of papers. He sure moved fast for a guy who must have been in his late sixties, but of course that mattered little to me; I'd already jumped up onto the smooth wooden desk with boots squeaking and grabbed him by his shirt with both hands. I smashed him forcefully against the shelves on the back wall causing a cascade of books and papers to rain down on the floor.  He grunted in pain, then opened his eyes widely and looked over my shoulder.

            "Meyers!" He exclaimed. "Hurry and shoot him, he's an enemy in disguise!"

            What the…? I'd never even heard the door open! Whirling to face the new threat, I saw no one. Confused, I turned back just in time to see a smirking Harper point a revolver at the center of my forehead. Gah, I'd fallen for his trick!

            I adjusted my hold and punched his hand away with a crack of breaking bone half a second too late; his finger had closed on the trigger firing off a shot. The right side of my jaw lit up with that same burning sensation I'd felt when Jack had shot me with that revolver back at the motorcycles a week ago. I'd been hit again with silver! I clutched my face in both hands and screamed out in pain, dropping him to the ground. Harper hit the floor yelling his own string of profanities, clutching his broken hand in agony. But then, his gaze shifted to the revolver which had fallen several feet away.

            No! I couldn't let him best me again while I was this close to taking him down for good. I took my bloody hands from my marred face, and noticed I could no longer see from my right eye. On the wall directly behind me was a dripping, red mess with a shiny bullet lodged in the center. Clenching my teeth, I turned towards Harper with my good eye burning in rage. As he saw me stand once again, he made a final lunge for the dropped handgun—but I wasn't going to be shot again. From up on the hardwood surface, I grabbed him roughly by the neck with one hand while using the other for balance and slammed him down back first onto his own desk, knocking all its contents to the vinyl tiled floor. I leapt up to stand on his ankles and grasp his wrists, shifting to my full werewolf form as I did. The Army Combat Uniform I had on was more durable than other clothing I'd worn before (which made shifting feel more constricted), but finally it began to tear at the seams before shredding completely off. He yelled out again as my weight steadily increased, first cutting off the circulation to, then crushing the bones in, his wrists and ankles.

            My head wound hadn't healed at all of course, and continued dripping a steady stream of crimson onto his forehead. I roared long and loud straight into his face through a half-ruined jaw and watched in satisfaction through one eye as he cowered. With all four of Harper's limbs pinned securely below each one of my own, I could finally demand answers to everything he'd been doing all this time.

            "Why are you trying to kill me?" I roared. He said nothing, only stared with a mixed expression of rage and fear, clenching his teeth and occasionally moaning and breathing rapidly because of the pain. I growled and punched him in the face to return the favor of facial damage, opening up another gash on his opposite cheek and breaking several teeth. He swore loudly, then spit one of his loosened bicuspids straight back into my face.

            "Kill me now! Do it!" He spat at me again, splattering my nose. Recoiling and closing my eyes in disgust, I had to exercise herculean restraint to not grant his wish and pull his head off right then. I needed to know why he'd killed Emmalee, my parents, and so many other werewolves, and if I lost control now I might never know the full truth. This time I dug claws into each of the limbs I had pinned, causing him to holler at the top of his voice in misery.

            "WHY?!" I bellowed again. It was so loud that several objects in the room vibrated.

            "Do your worst!" he stammered loudly. I paused to count to 10 instead of turning his throat to hamburger, then took a stab in the dark.

            "So, you won't talk? Well, fine. I wasn't sure just how I was going to kill you, but now I've decided on something much worse than death," I said matter-of-factly, removing my claws from his skin and inching my mouth closer to his ear. "Instead, I have a great idea," I continued in a low, threatening voice that was almost a whisper. "Since you won't tell me what I want to know, and since you hate werewolves so much, how about I bite you so you can become just like me. How does that sound, becoming the very thing you hate?"

            His countenance slowly changed from one of indignant anger to a pale white mask of shock and horror as what I'd said finally sunk in. As if he'd been hit by electricity, he started struggling violently against my grip. The insane expression he wore would have been comical under other circumstances, except just now the situation was dead serious.

            "NO! YOU CAN'T! I have money. You can have it all and then kill me, but DON'T do that!"
I brushed my bared fangs against his neck.

            "AURGH! I'll tell you whatever you want, just get those teeth away from me!" he screamed as he started to shake. I moved my head back to stare directly into one of his eyes.

            "Why have you been killing werewolves? Why did you kill my Emmalee?" He swallowed before answering.

            "You werewolves are an abomination! You're a freak of nature, neither human nor animal, trapped in the middle with no place to go! You're a blight to the human race, mating with our women and biting healthy people to spread your foul disease! I've made it my personal mission to wipe you all out. I won't let you corrupt the gene pool more than you have already!" I growled at that; he only frowned and dropped his gaze.

            "We're humans! Humans with a great gift! Many of us just try to enjoy it and live our lives in peace, but we can't because you're bent on genocide!"

            "Genocide?" he spat. "More like the euthanization of unnatural mutations that need to be culled from existence and put out of their misery!"

            "Misery? MISERY? I was doing just fine living a happy life until you came and destroyed everything that's dear to me. Even before discovering you killed my parents I was happy living with my aunt and uncle. What have us werewolves ever done to you? Why did you kill my parents?"

            "Your bastard of a father was a soldier of mine, a damn good one too. In fact, he so easily outstripped all the other soldiers in strength and endurance that I thought he must have been taking performance enhancing drugs. Searches of his quarters failed to produce a single cigarette let alone any steroids. Still suspicious, I had him closely followed; his every move was watched. Eventually I got reports back saying that he had the ability to transform into some sort of monstrous beast. I laughed in their faces. Laughed, that is, until they showed me the photo they'd managed to take of him in mid-transformation.

            "I couldn't believe it—a monster straight out of fairy tales and legends right here under my command. The top man in my unit was a werewolf! When I confronted him in my office, he got extremely nervous and wanted to leave. When I refused, he got angry and muscled his way off the compound with the very tactics we'd taught him. But I wasn't going to let him get away that easily; the idea of half human freaks running around disgusted me so I decided to do something about it. I recruited Jack Acevedo, the next best soldier after Davis, to help me take care of the job. He was more than willing; he'd been competing unsuccessfully with Davis for the last several months and wanted to get back at him for cheating."

            Cheating. Just living and doing the best he could with what he had, and my father's actions were being called out as some kind of cheap trick? Oh come on! I resisted the urge to glare down at Jack on the floor and instead let out another growl into Harper's face.

            "You wanted me to talk and that's what I'm doing!" he rushed out, flinching. "Before Davis got back to the apartment where his wife was living, we'd already planted C-4 plastic explosives with a remote detonator on the gas tank of his car. As Private Davis and his wife left the city with everything they could fit in their small car and started rounding that sharp mountain corner, we blew them straight over the edge to their deaths below in a tangled, burning wreck that even a werewolf wouldn't survive.

            "Since he was a soldier going AWOL, the military police was granted exclusive investigatory rights, and since I was his commanding officer, I led that investigation. Of course that permitted me to recover and hide key evidence. Even when the local police showed up on the scene, I'd already removed all remaining pieces of the bomb and detonator so it was deemed an accidental vehicle explosion and the case was closed. I'd gotten away clean, and the world had one less —or two I guess since his bitch was also diseased—werewolves in the population. Of course, I never knew they'd had a son; otherwise you would have been dead 18 years ago. Very clever of him to have hidden your existence from me like he did.

            "But after that, I realized there must still be other werewolves out there. It wasn't right to have human-animal hybrids running around breeding, and I was going to do whatever it took to eliminate them. I did some investigation on Davis' friends and found Target #003. Him I tortured until he finally broke and gave me Target #004's name and location. After a long chase I finally captured #004 and killed him right in front of #003. Turns out they were brothers. Then I finished him off as well." His voice was intoned with a sickening pride, like he was doing something honorable. I grimaced.

            "From then on, we hunted and killed werewolves when I or one of my sources discovered them, doing all the dirty work ourselves. Sometimes we put them under right away, other times we experimented on them and collected samples. Much later, early this year in fact, one of my sources who had a son on the Bruins high school basketball team said he noticed a player on the opposing side that seemed to be just a little bit better than everyone else, and effortlessly so. The way he moved didn't seem quite right, he said. Can you guess who he was talking about?" he finished with a sneer. The Bruins—that was Em's school mascot. How ironic that the first day Em saw me also happened to be the first day Harper was made aware of me as well. The pain on my face must have been apparent; he chuckled, so I dug my claws even further into his wrists. That shut him up.

            "Now, want me to do that again?"

            "No, no! Argh!" I pulled my claws back out.

            "Ok. Continue."

            "I pulled up all the information on you I could: you averaged 25 points and 6 steals a game, led your team to win the state championship; there were even rumors that the NBA was considering drafting you straight out of high school. It did seem that you were a bit too good but nothing I found matched any werewolves I knew about. Something about your last name was familiar, but I killed the only other werewolf with the last name of Davis that I was aware of, and he hadn't had any offspring (or so I thought). We started monitoring you, and what we saw confirmed our suspicions. As with others before you, we started watching you even more closely to find an angle to hit you from.

            "Later, we found out that you were in contact with this Emmalee Sorensen; she seemed to be the only person you really spent time with outside of school. It all became even easier when your girlfriend's brother Ryan turned out to be a student of one of my sources who's a college professor (being in the military for 30 years, you make a lot of useful connections). We cornered Ryan in the crowded university library and threatened him, telling him that we'd kill his entire family unless he led us to you through his sister. At that point we still didn't know that the Sorensen family also happened to be werewolves, of course.  Ryan told us his sister had let him know that you were going to meet her at a certain spot in the mountains later that day.  We suggested that he might want to keep his sister away from that area if he could; but reminded him that if he let on that he knew anything and alerted you that I'd kill him and his family anyway."

            So that's why Emmalee had been late that day! Her brother was betraying me and didn't want her to get caught up in it!

            "I thought it strange that you showed up in your werewolf form where you were going to be meeting Emmalee, especially out in the open (I know how secretive your kind is). Either way, we used a tactic that had successfully been carried out before; you were already going to meet her in an isolated place, so all we had to do was mask our scents and use camouflage while waiting for you to arrive, then hit you hard from a distance; You were going to be kill number 23 in fact. It would have been perfect; school was out and you had just graduated which meant less attention once you went missing, there would have been no evidence left behind after we recovered your body, and I would have been long gone from the scene.  I still don't know how you survived; we'd used .50 cal rounds to bring down other werewolves before. Even if the bullets had failed to flat out kill you, 6 of them should have at least knocked you down so we could finish the job up close.

            "After that failed attempt, we came back to Ryan and got him to make sure you were at home the night we chose our next attack. I was in Washington meeting a senator that day and had Jack run that one. You slipped through the nets and even got your aunt and uncle out of the house! My men used high concentrations of Etorphine, an elephant tranquilizer that's powerful enough to kill an adult man within a few minutes if even a drop comes in contact with the skin, and yet by all reports you barely even slowed down! Acevedo shot you with silver, and still you healed! After you slipped through our grasp yet again, we couldn't leave any evidence of the attack, so of course I remotely gave the order to torch house along with the body of that stupid dog of yours that was so easy for them to silence and kill.

            "Needless to say, Ryan wasn't too happy when we came around the third time. Same threat, but we raised the stakes; this time his sister would have to die as a lure. If he refused she would die anyway along with him and everyone he loved. It's amazing what people can do when faced with the right leverage; necessity is the mother of invention after all! He came up with the plan to coax both you and Em out to us safely without causing a scene; he even picked the place."

            If Ryan, the brother of my future fiancé could betray his own sister and fellow werewolf in cold blood to save himself, was my biting Jack really enough to ensure he was on our side? I cast a wary, sidelong glance in Jack's direction; he responded by staring straight back with a grim expression and nodded. I took it as a confirmation that he was with me. I hoped that was the case...

            Harper continued without appearing to have noticed our exchange. "Once Emmalee and Ryan got to where we were waiting, he ran off. What a coward; looking back now, I've never seen a werewolf be so weak before. When Emmalee caught sight of the guns, she instantly shifted to protect herself even though the odds were against her; that's when she became Target #024. We were all taken off guard of course, but since we were already prepared to take you down, we just started with her first. One thing to her credit, she was a fighter, defiant and strong until the end. Either way, her shifting explained the mystery of you being in werewolf form while waiting for her that first time; she was a werewolf too and her family had to be as well.

            "Of course we didn't wait to give her brother (Target #025) the chance to defend himself, though he probably wouldn't have even tried. He didn't defend himself at all the first several times we cornered him. He was only a short distance away, and when we caught up with him, he was lying on the ground in tears. When I told him that things had changed and his family was going to die now as well, he broke down in sobs and started begging like the dog he was. Of course, removing one's head will also sever the vocal cords; I had to stop his annoying whining somehow. Then, we got back to the helicopter and waited.

            "The plan was playing out flawlessly, but naturally you still managed to escape my trap and slaughter 3 of my men in the process. I still thought we had you, dangling there with my harpoon embedded in your chest. I was really going to do bad things to you: diluted silver implant in your brain to sedate you, live vivisection to analyze your body's various systems, instant deep freezing of some of your tissues in werewolf form to prevent them from reverting for later study. But then you grabbed that tree, and barely two hours later, here we are."

            Silence.  I was speechless, and the only sounds were Harper's occasional sharp intakes of breath from the pain. After not knowing all these details and now getting them all in a rush like this left my head spinning. When Harper spoke again, I nearly jumped.

            "Of course it's you who brings me down now after so many years; Ironic how it all turned out. First werewolf I took was your father, and now last of all I get taken by his son. I've never seen a werewolf like you, seems like you can survive anything, but can't save those you love from dying around you."

            Finally my mind found something to respond with.

            "I never killed anyone you sent after me—despite being shot up like crazy—until you murdered Em. Didn't that mean anything to you?"

            "You're stupid. Strong, but stupid if you think that matters."

            "Regard for human life matters. You call me the monster, and yet you're the one willing to push and force the situation, putting innocent people's lives in jeopardy until they die. To you I'm not really human, and yet I care more about humans than you do!"

            "You're a dumb animal; I don't need you to talk to me about philosophy. It's not important anyway; that video of you shifting is being distributed to the world as we speak. It's safely out of your reach now; no matter what you do to me, it will still get out. You'll be forever exposed for what you really are to everyone you've ever known, and the general public will finally know that werewolves exist!"

            "Actually," said Jack as he got to his feet for the first time, "I'm right here."

            "JACK! Help me! Kill it!"

            "Well, I would but…I'm with him," he said, jerking a thumb in my direction.

            "What? What are you saying?!"

            "I never uploaded that video," he replied, holding up the memory card between two fingers before bending it in half with a sharp snap.

            "Why the hell not?!"

            "Words are too complicated; you wouldn't believe me if I told you. I'll just give you a live demonstration instead. That'll eliminate any misunderstandings."

            Within seconds, Jack's human appearance melted into that of his black-furred werewolf self, his shredded clothes around his paws on the floor. Harper just stared in angry shock, his expression growing darker as Jack changed.

            "Et tu, Jack?" said Harper.

            "You're really playing the victim here?" scowled Jack with bared fangs as the shift completed. "All this time I was convinced that what you were doing was honorable. I let you persuade me time and time again that werewolves were less than human and not to be trusted, and that by getting rid of them we were performing some great honor in defense of national security. Have you ever gotten to know a werewolf? Well I have; Seth saved my life back in the forest at his house after I tried to kill him. He could have just let me die, but he didn't. In the short time since I've been bitten, I've gotten to know him as a decent person who's just trying to make his way in the world like anyone else. I was so wrong, you were so very wrong. Now that I'm a werewolf, I know everything you've ever told me is all lies!"

            "I should have known," sputtered Harper. "I learned before that it's stupid to ever let anyone get too close to you, but after all these years I thought you were my man."

            "Even now, you don't even address the issue directly! What do you have to say about deceiving me all these years?"

            "You're dead to me Jack; I never knew you." He turned his gaze from him and never looked at Jack again.

            "Defiant to the end, even when you're dead wrong. After all the time we've known each other it ends like this? Thanks for confirming even further I made the right choice in betraying you," sneered Jack through bared teeth.

            "Well, it's obvious he'll never stop hunting our kind unless we take action," I cut in. "It's time to end this now."

            "WHAT?! YOU SAID-" I inched my face closer and bared my fangs, silencing him.

            "I'm not the only one who can get played. Notice how I never specifically said I wouldn't bite you if you talked. Besides, there's really no other option. Death would be far too easy a way out after what you've done. Maybe confining you to a cage somewhere to let you spend the rest of your existence as the one thing you can't stand will do the trick."

"You wouldn't… No. I—"

            "That, and once you're unconscious from the bite," added Jack, "I'll just use your finger to unlock your biometric fingerprint safe and we'll have access to all your files anyway."

            Harper's was the most terrified I'd seen him yet; his eyes widened in panic and he was so utterly defeated that he no longer even tried to respond.

            "It's time." With that I plunged my fangs deep into his neck.

            "Noooooo!"

            As Harper struggled wildly in vain causing most of the bandages on his cheek to break free, I went through my own struggle. Like with Jack before, I had the impulse to bite down harder and simply sever his neck, ending it all. He was a murderer and would continue killing innocent people unless stopped now. I fought it. If he hates us this much, becoming the object of his disdain will be a punishment worse than death for him anyway. Once I knew enough time had passed for the virus to do its job, I withdrew my fangs, blood and saliva soaking the commander's uniform. I'd won.
I continued to hold him tight until his movements slowed from the effects of the virus. Apparently my teeth being somewhat damaged from the silver gunshot wound had no effect on the potency of the bite;  Harper closed his eyes and let out a deep breath as if admitting defeat, then went unconscious.

            "Seth, while we're waiting for him to come around again, you need to retrieve what's in this safe," explained Jack, gesturing towards the heavy metal box on the wall. "All the werewolves that have been killed are documented there."

            I lifted my paws off Harper's limbs, then used my left arm to grab him around his torso and haul his limp body over to the safe. We both left drips of blood along the floor as we went, me from my ruined face and Harper from his wrists and ankles. Just then his wounds started closing, confirming the bite was successful.

            I threw up a little in my mouth thinking that Harper, like Jack before him, would now be my kin. I wasn't sure how it worked when a young werewolf bit someone older than them; was I Harper's grandpa? Never mind… I really didn't care to know.

            Once at the safe, I used my right forepaw to position his thumb on the biometric fingerprint lock on the safe, causing it to click open and reveal several hanging file folders inside.

            I stepped over to the desk and carelessly dropped Harper on top once more. While Jack removed the contents of the safe, I gathered pieces of our shredded uniforms left over from when we shifted and slit them into strips with my claws. Joining them together I was able to form a type of thick rope which I used to tie Harper's arms and legs together loosely behind him under the desk.
Once I was done, I joined Jack on another table where he was looking at the files.

            "I always knew these were here, but never had direct access to them before." He handed me the stack and nodded to me to take a look.

            Each folder was labeled consecutively with the numbers 1 through 25; I grabbed the thick manila folder on the top with the number 1 on front and looked inside with Jack peering over my shoulder. Attached to other documents with a paper clip was the photo Harper had described to me earlier of a partial transformation, and another where the transformation was complete. This was the first time I'd ever seen my father in werewolf form; my fur was just like his. I started choking up, and Jack moved to put a forepaw on my shoulder in a comforting gesture, but I shrugged it off. This had been his fault too.

            I moved on to folder 2 which was of my mother. There was all kinds of information about her here, including her photo on a torn-out page of what looked like her college yearbook. I closed that folder and continued on to the next. As I continued to look through all the files, I saw that Harper's victims were of all ages. The youngest was a 9 year old Asian boy from a poor family who'd apparently been attacked and bitten by a werewolf while walking his dog in the park. They'd simply driven over him several times in a hit and run murder while he was on his way to school. The oldest was an 87 year old retired business owner who'd been a werewolf since birth. With him, it was 3 silver bullets to the back of the head as he swam in his mansion's outdoor pool. My eyes got wider and wider as I went on; one being burned alive here, another being dragged by their arms for miles on a freeway there, and slow starvation for another still. Harper's victims were as varied as his methods of murder and came from all walks of life, both old and young, rich and poor, married and single, male and female.

            As I got near the end, I came across my own folder which was labeled Target #023. The two photos they had for me in my human form were my driver's license and what looked like a still capture of security camera footage from one of my high school hallways. There were also several night vision prints of me in full werewolf form near the soldiers on motorcycle from several weeks ago; all were remarkably clear. They had everything: My social security number, my truck's license plate and vehicle identification numbers, map printouts pinpointing anywhere I'd been with my cell phone, a log of my text messages, my high school student ID number and senior year class schedule, the IP addresses for my home computer and any school computers I'd been on, user IDs for various websites I was a member of, a list of several acquaintances, notes from surveillance operations on my property, floor plans and photos of my house from before they'd burned it down, details on my parents including past medical records with scribbled notes pointing out how everything was normal and that they weren't werewolves, and my connections to the Sorensen family. For the first time, the gravity of my situation really hit home. With everything they had on me, it would have only been a matter of time. Honestly, I was amazed and humbled that I'd lasted as long as I did.

            I got to Em's folder which looked like had just been created. Her only photo was of her having just shifted as evidenced by the torn clothes around her; she was in a defensive position with teeth bared and palms forward, claws at the ready. I realized that this was taken as she was being attacked by Harper and was one of her last moments alive. She looked fearless and majestic. I stared in awe.

            It took me a long time to finally move to Ryan's folder; his photo was a stark contrast to his sister's; he was on his human hands and knees sobbing and looking up at whoever was taking the photo with frantic fear in his eyes. That, too had to have been just before they… I shook my head and moved to the last 3 folders which were all blank, almost as though they were ready for the rest of the Sorensen family. I scowled and closed the last folders to meet Jack's gaze.

            "He was getting ready to go after the rest of them. He never would  have stopped."

            I set the files down and held my head in my paws. "Are there any other copies of this?" I asked.

            "Harper was a bit old-fashioned," said Jack. "In a similar situation, anyone else in the military would have stored everything electronically and backed it up in the government's data centers. Anyone that had access to that database with the right clearance could have retrieved those files, including all the photos of different werewolves fully-shifted, and leaked them out to who knows where. Fortunately, Harper insisted on paper records only; any electronic data recorded during a mission was overwritten 35 times using the Gutmann secure data erasing method, effectively eliminating any electronic trace of the data. What you hold in your paws is the only copy of this information."

            There was enough documentation about the werewolves Harper had murdered, the various sources he'd contacted, all the evidence of his misappropriation of funds, the secret military operations carried out on American soil (twice in the forest and once at my house) which violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, not to mention all the other privacy laws that had been broken. Bottom line, this was enough to get him fired, court-martialed, put in prison, and possibly executed for murder.

            I sat in numb silence for a while. If I could survive the rest of today with everything that had happened and all I'd learned without losing it, I'd count it a miracle.

            Then, Harper's hand twitched. I must have been looking at the files longer than I thought. I grasped the stack of folders and placed them in a corner where they were less likely to be disturbed if things escalated with Harper.

            Soon he was conscious but kept his eyes closed and remained motionless where he was tied to the table as if hoping everything had all been a bad dream and he was about to wake up.

            "Congratulations, you're a werewolf now. How do you like being the very thing you hate?" I sneered.

            The only indication he gave of hearing me was a scowl that rolled across his features. His face was pale and it looked more and more like he was going to throw up. Then his twitching increased. I ghosted closer, then spoke directly into his ear causing him to jump.

            "Time for your first transformation." That's when his moans began.

            As Jack and I looked on, Harper started convulsing and jerking against his makeshift bonds. Apparently the first transformation is a lot harder on an older body. Soon, silvery white fur that matched his hair color began running across where the bandages remained uselessly affixed to his now healed face and then down his arms. His muscles expanded to burst his clothing, adding pieces of his uniform to the existing pile on the floor. Then something odd happened.

            "AUGGGH!" Harper suddenly started screaming in agony, as if he were in extreme pain. While shifting can be a bit painful it first, it was never that bad. I thought he was just overreacting at first, but as we watched in amazement, something was rising up from under the skin on his hip. With a final crack, what looked like some kind of medical implant emerged from his body and fell to the floor. It was a hip replacement! Then, small flesh-colored hearing aids dropped to the table from his ears, closely followed by metal tooth fillings. I'd had plenty of experience with bullets being expelled from our bodies with shifting; apparently that applied to any foreign object.

            The shift also seemed to be taking longer than normal, probably another factor of his age.  As his shift continued, his mouth bulged out from his face and extended into a lupine jaw, his eyes turned gold, sharp claws and paw pads rose out from his feet and hands, and lastly his tail slid in with a "schlooping" sound. The only movement or sound in the room now was his labored breathing.

            "Well?" I said simply.

            Harper experimentally bent his leg at the hip as far as the restraints would allow. "My hip hasn't felt that good in years! I feel as good as I did when I was in my prime." A slight smile of wonderment came to his face. "I can hear better than I ever have, and without hearing aids." The horror soon returned to his face, however. "But that's not the point! I'm a filthy animal now!" he bellowed. "I can't live like this! Let me die!"

            Harper's mental stability appeared to be quickly deteriorating, and it seemed as though he'd lost the will to live. At that, he began struggling against his bonds, trying to stab at his throat with his own claws. Jack and I went to restrain him, but he continued to struggle.

            He was relatively weak by werewolf standards; it must have been because he was bitten at an old age instead of maturing into an elderly werewolf as Clint, who was much stronger, had done. His new muscles were still superhuman however, and Harper just managed to break the bonds. Our combined strength was still superior however, and it seemed that we'd be able to hold him easily.
Whatever disadvantages he had in strength were eclipsed by another ability however; if he'd been quick by human standards despite his age, with this enhanced body he moved like lightning as he wriggled free from our grasp, rolled once across the floor, then wrenched open the door to pad out into the hallway. Jack and I looked at each other in shock.

            "Come on, we can't let him get away!" He yelled before tearing out of the still open door after Harper. I lunged to grab the folders from the corner and clutched them to my chest with both arms before joining in on the chase.  I was able to catch sight of Jack's tail just as he rounded each corner; I had to make sure to keep him in sight because he was familiar with the building knew the way out.

            There was gunfire ahead as we turned down the final long hallway that led to the front entrance, and soon we saw that the few soldiers left in the building were firing at Harper. To them, he was just the first of 3 huge werewolves straight out of a horror flick that had somehow gotten inside the base and were now running towards the exit; they had no idea he was actually their leader in another form. To his credit, Harper just covered his head and kept running straight out into the night. Upon seeing Jack and I they opened up with their M16 rifles and peppered us as well, but I was so used to being shot at that it didn't faze me as we continued on. Jack got hit a few times and gasped in pain, but he was also able to keep moving.

            As we all got outside the building, it was the same story. The soldier at the gate fired at the 3 of us, the flash from his automatic weapon creating a strobe-like effect in the semi-darkness. Harper jumped in one of the parked Hummers, started it up, and sped toward the gate with bullets sparking as they pinged off the exterior. He tore out of there without a care for anything else around him, running over the two soldiers who had come out from inside and crushing the last beneath the gate as he easily drove straight through it with the armored vehicle. Jack jumped in the driver seat of the remaining Hummer and pointed me towards the passenger side.

            "Get in, we're going after him!" he bellowed as I came into view. I debated going after Harper on foot so as to travel faster, but at the same time that would leave Jack alone in the vehicle and I didn't fully trust him not to leave at the first chance just yet. I pulled open the door and slid onto the rigid seat. This was the first time I'd ever entered a vehicle in my full werewolf form, and now I remembered why. I found myself shoulder to shoulder with Jack, my knees folded up at an uncomfortable angle against the dash despite the relatively roomy interior. I noticed a heavy canvas duffel bag in the back, so I tossed the folders inside and cinched it shut to give myself more room up front.

            "Well, sitting in the driver's seat isn't quite the same; there's lot less room, it feels awkward having to sit on my tail, and it's a bit strange feeling the pedals against my bare wolf feet," said Jack. "Let's just hope I can still drive without these claws getting in the way of steering!" Jack turned the ignition and gunned the powerful diesel engine, showering gravel against the parked helicopter behind us as we continued hot on Harper's new tail.

            Having no time to stop first, I winced a little as we ran over the downed gate with the soldier still underneath; if he hadn't been killed in the first pass he was definitely dead now. Once off the gravel and on the yellow-lined pavement, we saw Harper's headlights illuminating his path on the road ahead. Despite the difficulties he'd mentioned, Jack seemed to be driving just fine as we tried to catch up.

            Fortunately we were the only two on the road; as we accelerated to keep close on his tail he weaved all over the road as if he were drunk; it was like he didn't really care if he made it out alive or not. We were about 20 feet behind him when our headlights illuminated his paw coming out the window grasping an MP5 submachine gun pointed in our direction.

            "What's he up to? We both know these vehicles are armored," thought Jack out loud.  "Unless…" His words were cut off as Harper opened fire and bullets broke through the glass and tore up the inside of the Hummer. "Armor-piercing rounds!"

            We were each hit a couple times, but the bullets passed straight through allowing our wounds to instantly start closing. To put a stop his continuing shots, Jack rammed the back end of Harper's Hummer in a PIT maneuver that caused him to spin out and send the machine gun flying into the trees as he came to a stop. Seemingly unfazed, Harper threw his vehicle in reverse and cranked the wheel in a hard turn, pointing himself back the way we were originally going.

            We continued following him, but with all the bullet holes in the glass it was harder to see what was ahead. After another minute or so, his tail lights suddenly winked in and out of existence behind some branches and disappeared completely as Harper veered into the trees. Jack took the turn onto the dirt road with barely any decrease in momentum; the two wheels on Jack's side lifted completely off the ground as we rounded the bend, causing me to hit my head on the roof with a growl as we landed.

            "Hang on!" Jack yelled, then continued to accelerate after the other vehicle despite the increasingly bumpy path. Good thing Hummers were built for this type of thing; any lesser rig would have been shaken to pieces by now. We got closer and closer until finally Jack edged near enough to ram Harper's back end once more, this time causing him to slam sideways into a tree. That didn't stop him though; he continued right on his way.

            "Slow down! I think I saw a cliff in this area on the way up," I instructed as Harper sped ever faster ahead of us.

            "What cliff, I don't see a… crap!" Jack hit the brakes hard as we saw Harper's tail lights suddenly disappear in front of us. Jack had no choice but to turn sideways into the trees as the wheels locked up, causing us to roll twice before slamming roughly into a pine that finally stopped us, our wheels pointing straight up in the air. As the engine seized up and the headlights shut off, my eyes were more able to adjust to the night as I lie on my back on the ceiling. Most of the windows were cracked heavily enough to be opaque, but being bullet-proof they'd all stayed in their frames without shattering everywhere. I opened my jaws to run my tongue over the reopened silver-caused wound on my face, causing a few drops of blood to splatter and run down my already bloody chest fur. In fact, both of us were bloody and dirty from head to foot, whether from bullets or the impact of the crash.

            With some difficulty, I managed to pry open my door and climb out onto the forest floor. Since his door was held closed by the tree we'd rolled into, I laid flat on my stomach and reached back in through the passenger side to help pull Jack free from where he was still tangled inside. Once he seemed loose enough to make it the rest of the way out on his own, I got up to sprint the final stretch to the edge of the cliff and peered over.

            I'm not sure what missiles or other explosives that Hummer had been carrying, but it had burst into flame upon impact. All I could make out of Harper in the orange glow of the wreckage below was a single furred, clenched fist shaking from strain. As I watched, the shaking steadily decreased in intensity until his forearm went limp altogether, then slowly shrank in size and melted back into the form of his human hand.

            "Werewolves always revert back to human form at death," I muttered softly as Jack joined me. He stared down at the flames in silence, intently studying the scene below before answering.

            "He killed himself. He never faltered or tried to stop himself when driving over the cliff like we did, and before that—well, you saw the way he was clawing at his own throat back on his desk. Apparently for him, being a werewolf—no matter all the benefits—was too terrible to live with, so he ended it." Too many werewolves had died tonight.

            Needing a moment to collect myself, I backed away from the edge and sat propped against a tree, staring blankly at my clawed toes. Everything had come full circle for me now; Harper was dead. He'd killed himself, dying in the same way he'd murdered my parents. I had plenty of information about Harper's crimes against us werewolves to do with as I pleased, and now it seemed the nightmare was finally over. Exhaustion hit me like a thousand pound weight. I should have felt something—happiness at my revenge, a sense of closure now that there was no longer a threat, sadness at all that I'd lost—anything. All I felt was numbness.

            "I have nowhere to go now," said Jack, breaking the silence and bringing me back to the present. "My old life is over. They'd question me about tonight, and I wouldn't be able to answer. If I went home, they'd find me. If I tried to look for another job or withdraw funds from my bank account, they'd find me. I've got nothing now."

            "You'll have to come with me until we decide what to do with you," I replied. I left the implications of what that meant up to his imagination; he had helped Harper kill innocent werewolves. If there was a time to run, to betray everything we'd worked together to achieve, now would be it. Instead, without any indication of surprise, he only closed his eyes for a moment with a slight nod in acknowledgment, accepting his fate.

            The sound of approaching engines and sirens in the distance broke the contemplative silence. I got up slowly and trudged back to our Hummer, pulling open the back door and scooping up the canvas bag from the ceiling where it had been flung in the crash. I slung the long strap across my chest, and turned to the black-furred werewolf a few paces away.

            "Let's get out of here."

            Jack met my gaze and nodded. I dropped to all fours and began the trek back to the Sorensen home, Jack following close behind as we disappeared into the trees.